J.J. Kochmanski

Tag: publishing

  • The Isolated Camaraderie of Debuting as an Author

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    Joseph Kochmanski
    in

    It’s a strange thing, publishing your first book. Everyone around you gets suddenly excited. Your family and friends, after years of nodding along to your rantings and ravings about the competitive publishing industry, the querying trenches, and the unexpected stress of submission, abruptly show a genuine interest. They want to know about the launch events,…

  • A ‘no system’ writing system

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    Joseph Kochmanski
    in

    Perhaps the dirtiest secret of my writing process is that I completely lack a ‘system.’ No strict word count per day. No specific writing times. Minimal outlining. No spreadsheets of character traits or motivations. And no fancy software or virtual assistants. It’s just me and the ol’ blank page, waging war. Of course, I don’t…

  • Discovering a genre while (accidentally) writing in it

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    Joseph Kochmanski
    in

    When friends and family ask me about the plot of my debut novel, The Side Questers, I sometimes find myself getting cagey with the details. Not because I’m embarrassed by its content or quality, but because I can’t help but think the average person would have no interest whatsoever. After all, it’s a book I…

  • Scientific vs. Fiction Publishing — The Same?

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    Joseph Kochmanski
    in

    I mean this quite sincerely: Thank you, academia, for (mostly) preparing me for the agonizing pace of traditional publishing. In science, ideas can develop quickly, but their execution is slow. A typical molecular biology project looks something like this: secure collaborators, write a grant, wait six months for a review/score, wait some more to (hopefully)…

  • Learning to “love” feedback

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    Joseph Kochmanski
    in

    Writing a novel is a deeply personal activity. It’s a translation of one’s own imagination into physical words, ostensibly for sharing with others, but also as a permanent record of the ideas that gather between a person’s synapses. The stories I’ve written feel like children–I know them better than anyone and understand their oddities and…

  • Revisiting my first query attempt (circa 2019)

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    Joseph Kochmanski
    in

    Querying a novel is a difficult thing to do. Indeed, I would argue it’s even more difficult to “get right” than actually, you know, writing the book. I’m sure there are a rare few out there who land representation from the very first query they jot down, but for the rest of us mere mortals,…