We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Taylor Borchmann. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Taylor below.
Taylor, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of our favorite things to brainstorm about with friends who’ve built something entrepreneurial is what they would do differently if they were to start over today. Surely, there are things you’ve learned that would allow you to do it over faster, more efficiently. We’d love to hear how you would go about setting things up if you were starting over today, knowing everything that you already know.
If I were to start my writing career from scratch, I would run away from trying to “fit in” to the traditional publication narrative. I chased what I thought traditional publishers wanted for so long that I lost myself and what I loved to write about along the way. I was too focused on writing what I thought would sell, trying to make my novels too literary, and being everything to everyone. In the end, I was writing for everyone else but myself, and I found that I hated everything I wrote. The moment I gave up trying to write the next bestseller, I found joy in writing and I found peace with myself. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. It’s easy to get caught up in the NYT Bestseller list (which, let’s be honest, the big publishers control with book orders) and forget about your friend’s kid whose favorite book is the one you just wrote. I wish I would have learned that lesson faster. But practically speaking, I wish I had started researching independent publishing and advertising sooner as well. Learning the ins and outs of Amazon and how to create an eye-catching cover would have saved me a lot of money. I still want to sell books, after all. I just want to sell the stories I love writing and not the ones that publishers tell me I need to write.
Taylor, 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 knew I would be a writer in middle school. It was out of the question that I would or could be anything else. Granted, I do have a day job that I love, but writing is my passion (cliche, I know). I specifically got into independent publishing when I had a literary agent have her entire staff read my novel only to have them split down the middle about whether they should represent it over one easily editable plot point. It felt completely petty to turn me down over something that would have been a quick edit, and since they didn’t even ask whether I’d be open to changing that piece of the story, I had to sit down and ask myself who I was even writing for. At that point, I was writing for the literary agent. I read all the emails, blogs, and books I could get my hands on about landing an agent. I honed my craft, I went to the conventions, and I pitched to agents. You name it, I did it. And then suddenly, I hit a wall. I could keep trying to push through the wall (and some do) or I could try something else. At that point in my life, I realized I needed to try a different route. If I could stay in control of the story I was writing, then ultimately I would feel more satisfaction with my writing. So I edited my story to what I wanted it to be, I made some mistakes with publishing it but hey, you live and you learn, and I’ve received nothing but positivity from my readers (and I promise they aren’t all friends and family haha). The main thing I’m most proud of in my journey is knowing how much my characters have resonated with the people who have read my books. Knowing how much care I put into crafting these complicated and messy individuals, and how much love people have for them and their stories, is the most meaningful thing to me. I recently learned that one little girl carries my novel around with her everywhere she goes, and another young boy I know tells people that a book I wrote is his favorite. Those kids understand my characters and get to grow up with them. I want to create the same type of magic for them growing up as I had with the Harry Potter books.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
So many! Kindlepreneur is huge for Amazon marketing. The Self Publishing Formula is amazing for everything from writing your novel to marketing it across multiple platforms – the Facebook pages are also full of resources for the process of publishing as well since there are so many factors from ISBNs to Shutterstock images to cover design and print quality. I should have read Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody over nearly every other craft book. From someone who has read many, it’s the superior format, hands down. And she doesn’t knock independent publishers like other craft books do. Figure out what way you retain information best, and take notes/keep tabs of all these different resources. It’s going to be overwhelming but you’ll start to feel confident in the process the more knowledge you take in.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
My first novel took me ten years to write. And that was only after several failed novels that I completed but then decided I hated haha. The Gatekeepers was a journey of writing and rewriting and reading some craft books then rewriting again then having some friends read it then editing and then editing some more. It was a painful process and I nearly gave up multiple times. But something told me to keep going. My main character, Amelia, was haunting me (which is a funny joke if you read the book), like an itch in my brain that I needed to scratch. I read a quote that said something along the lines of “if you find that while editing you’re going back and forth between whether the word ‘that’ is needed, you’re done editing” (sorry if I butchered this, but I have no clue where I read it and can’t look it up). Once I realized I was in that stage of editing, I decided to stop stalling and start figuring out how to publish my story.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @taylorborchmann
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/taylorborchmann
