Candice: Read with interest this article on the BBC website about a teen author who has had her first book published by 17 and is now on course for a film deal. Debut book by teen author could be made into film
Listening to an interview with her, she writes between doing her school work and taking her exams. She’s had one book published and has others in the pipeline. Blimey, should Phil and I just park it for now and forget it!
What I found most interesting was the way she got noticed. She initially posted her story, chapter by chapter, on line and it got so much interest she got picked up by an agent. Now, Phil and I have had a similar idea but I always have the following questions:
How did she make sure she wasn’t just posting crap?
How did she build her followers (we are over a year into blog posts and have a few hundred of you on side)?
How did the agent find her – did she spam them with her links?
Perhaps, being twice her age, I just over analyse and we should just get on with it, but my brain is always thinking of the marketing plan.
I think it probably helps that she’s photogenic and can string a sentence together for interviews.
But, going back to Phil’s and my plans after the self publishing event last week we definitely need to get ‘the book’ out there to you readers, as well as our more conventional route of sending chapters to Agents. Hey, we might have a film deal by the time I’m 50!
nolanparker 
It’s funny. I wrote prolifically as a teenager, and in my twenties decided it was all total crap. Luckily, I kept it. I have files of brittle, yellowed paper with my jottings, and early attempts on an old typewriter. I’m so glad I kept them – because while they still are crap, and certainly not publishable, the emotion and the creativity is astounding (if I say so myself…!) I can’t remember writing this stuff and it comes from a very angst-ridden teenager’s heart, so it’s pretty grim, and yet it’s got the honesty and innocence that makes it zing. What I need to do is extract the emotional impact from the tedious, naive, self-important claptrap… So I do find it hard to see how “good” a teenager’s work can be but then, it depends on who is judging – and how.
Serials have a long history. If it was good enough for Dickens…