John Hearne: How I went from getting 'promising' rejections to seeing my book on shelves

An elevator pitch to a friend spurred him on to write his newly published children’s book. Here, author John Hearne shares the lessons he learned about writing and publishing since he first put pen to paper in the 1990s

John Hearne found publishing success with the third novel he completed and credits research and feedback for seeing his book on shelves.

Most writers and would-be writers scribble down ideas and pleasing phrases in a notebook. Mine runs to over 40,000 words at this stage. I remember hearing Stephen King describe these notebooks as a waste of time, and said that good ideas are ‘sticky’. If it’s good enough, you’ll remember it. Maybe he has a better memory than me, but I’d be lost without that file. One day, I wrote this down: My sisters are trying to kill me.

One of the many things you learn if you spend time trying to become better at genre writing (as opposed to literary writing), is that you must have a viable elevator pitch. It must be possible to state the story in as few words as possible. For example: shark terrorises small tourist town, boy discovers he’s a wizard. I was talking about ideas with a friend who also writes. He thought ‘My sisters are trying to kill me’ was great. That’s what made me run with it.