Don’t throw out your old manuscripts!

I’m doing it again. Querying a novel. A few months ago I queried one that I wrote last year while the pandemic was still raging and even included a pandemic segment, so I thought agents might be intrigued. Nope. Not one request for the partial or full manuscript came of it.

Now I’m digging into my old oak barrels and pulling out a manuscript I actually wrote a long time ago, but I feel like it might have some wind under its wings in the current climate. It’s not much like other books I’ve written, but it could well be something that agents are interested in because it’s a speculative/dystopian story, and in some ways it feels like it could be torn from world headlines right now. Especially vis-à-vis Ukraine. It surrounds the invasion of an unnamed country by its ruthless neighbor and the flight from danger of the only man who might be able to save the nation—with his words. He’s a writer/teacher/philosopher, and he’s the only hope of the defeated population.

Yes, maybe words can save the world. I hope that’s possible, but like I said before, the meaning of words can be twisted.

This new/old book ironically has a timeliness that could be attractive. Worth a shot anyway, but I think this is the last of my older manuscripts I haven’t done anything with. The others are either unfinished or their trains have left the station topic-wise.

But let this be a lesson to you writers out there: Don’t throw anything away. Time goes on, things change, and what once seemed a lost cause could become the goose that lays a golden egg.

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Photo by Christa Dodoo on Unsplash.

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