We were lucky to catch up with R.h. Bird recently and have shared our conversation below.

R.H., looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright – so having the idea is one thing, but going from idea to execution is where countless people drop the ball. Can you talk to us about your journey from idea to execution?

In a prior life, I was the Senior Vice President of Product Development at an online brokerage firm. Ideas for new products were all over the place and most of them good ideas. That was never the difficulty. The challenge was in the execution. How do you go from an idea to a commercial product? The drive and persistence to see a project from beginning to end was the most important skill.

Like a lot of people, I wanted to write a book. But I don’t have a Masters in English, MFA, or hadn’t taken a creative writing class. So, how to get started? The library or book store has always been the first place I go to for any new skill, career, or professional development. So, I bought a book on writing. After reading a few, I found some writing seminars at the local library. At one of the seminars, the instructor said we should join a writing group.

But first, I got to work on my manuscript. I wrote it, rewrote it and finally went to the writing group. I can still remember how nervous i was, but I was certain they were going to tell me my story was as good as anything Stephen King could write.

The way writing groups generally work is that you bring a chapter to the group, read it out loud and they give you a critique. The advantage is that you receive honest feedback, not your mom or family telling you that you ARE better than Stephen King. Even though I had given many speeches in my life, my voice cracked like a thirteen year old going through puberty.

When I finished reading, I received the dreaded “show don’t tell” advice, except I had no idea what that meant. And no one thought it was very good. So, I revised my chapter and kept going back. Each time it felt like I got my butt kicked. One guy used to say, R.H., I’m going to be brutal, and he was. One caveat here, most groups offer an honest critique, but they do it in a positive or friendly way. This group was the exception, although at the time i didn’t realize it, they were the only group I had ever gone to. (They’ve since disbanded.)

Some nights I’d drive home and ask “what did I just put myself through?” But I didn’t give up. I continued revising. Eventually, I wrote a second manuscript. I thought this one was so much better, but the feedback wasn’t. One thing writers always hear, is that you have to find your voice. I suppose I hadn’t found mine yet.

Eventually, I tried a YA story, and there it was – the voice i’d been searching for. This manuscript wrote itself, but I rewrote it about twenty or thirty times. However, now the feedback I started to hear was, “Very Funny Scene” or “Great Angst” or “This feels like a Disney Rom Com.”

The idea to write a book, or even the idea for the story wasn’t the difficult thing. The enormous challenge was finding the resilience to go through years of hard work and negative feedback to believe that I could get published.

R.H., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I write Young Adult books and hopefully, plays too. My first novel “Promposal” was published in 2024. The sequel, “Last Prom Standing” is coming out in 2025.

In addition, I’m collaborating on a play for “Promposal” and working on book number three – a dystopian loosely based on MacBeth.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

How does someone get traditionally published? With self publishing options, today anyone can publish their book–and that’s fantastic.

But I wanted a traditional publisher. I wanted a professional in the industry to tell me my story and writing was good enough to meet their high standards.

The path for a first time author is extremely difficult. The odds of finding an agent or a small publishing house willing to take a risk on you is very small. Each agent receives 1,000 to 2,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year, and maybe offers ten people a contract The easy way is if you know someone in the industry, but like most writers, I didn’t know anyone. So, here’s the process.

You have to write a query letter, (a letter to an agent asking them to read your manuscript), a synopsis of the story, and your bio.

Then I searched out agents or small publishing houses who were looking for new writers. Once I had my list I began the painful endeavor of emailing out query letters. This is the part of publishing all writers hate. I just put my heart and soul into an 80,000 word manuscript but my 400 word query letter decides whether or not an agent will read my story. If they don’t read my story, they’re obviously not going to offer me a contract.

Rejection is super high in this business. There are plenty of stories of how publishers or agents rejected J.K. Rowling or Stephen King or every other published writer. So, how many query letters should a first time author send out?

I hear some writers say they tried for a month or two, or sent out twenty letters and never even heard back from the agents so they gave up.

I tried a different way. I cold called clients early in my career so dealing with rejection via email was no big deal. Every night I sent out 5 to 10 query letters, usually 10. That’s 50 query letters a week or 200 a month. I decided to do this for a whole year before I thought about giving up. A year’s worth of query letters would be 2,400 before I queried these people all over again.

However, after 6 months I found myself with a contract to publish, “Promposal.” Obviously, the most important thing was that the story was good enough to find a publisher. Almost as important was that I was willing to send out 6 months worth of query letters and endure the rejection and find a way to keep believing in myself when others would have stopped a long time ago.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

There are very romantic scenes in movies or books where writers go off to a cabin in the woods or a summer retreat to write their manuscript. This may be true for some people, although I don’t know any, but most of us have to find time to write while life goes on around us.

How are you going to write while you have a job, family, friends, errands, a house to maintain, etc.? Where’s the free time going to come from?

You have to find it and it can’t be once or twice a month or even once a week. You need to write every day. Well, maybe not every day but almost. If you’re working, most people are going to try after they come home. But what if you have a husband or wife, or kids, or softball or soccer games? Those people will want your time and attention, too. Your spouse or children may even resent you if you go into an office or the kitchen table to be alone.

So, where does the time come from? One thing I learned a long time ago is that your family may not like it if you spend time away from them AFTER work, but no one cares if you wake up a couple hours early. If you normally wake up at 7:00 a.m. for the office, start getting up at 5:30 a.m. Take a shower, drink that coffee and hit the computer.

It may take a few days for your muse to find you that early in the morning, but never fear, if you keep it up, she’ll show up.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rhbird.com
• Instagram: @rhbirdauthor
• Facebook: @rhbirdauthor
• Other: TikTok – @rhbirdauthor

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