At the end of September, I emailed a few of my old professors asking for revision advice. After two years of submitting THE RETURN OF THE FLAME (TRotF) with no agent requests (though some notes of encouragement), I questioned whether I should make changes to the manuscript. I wasn’t against revising again, but if not necessary, why spend my time doing it?
In those two years of pitching, I outlined and drafted another novel about dreams—what I’m calling a thematic sequel to my first—and wrote a couple of short stories. With no progress on the agent front, the draw to TRotF was hard to ignore, a novel years in the making and for which I have placed my highest creative expectations.
The advice was unanimous. That is, that I alone could answer whether or not I should revise.
One professor, Michael Pearson, had an agent for many years at a prominent agency, Writers House, home to authors like Neil Gaiman and Christopher Paolini, but the partnership fell short of advancing his career, though he assured me that if I want a New York publisher, I need an agent.
I do want that. That’s what I tell myself. But because most writers want that, there’s a lot of competition, which is not a bad thing; it means along with my perseverance, I need time on my side.
Every writer who ever tried to get published received a mountain of rejections before any real breakthrough. Work worth doing is usually challenging. What sustains me is that with or without an agent, with or without readers, I would still be writing, the proof of this embedded in my history as an unknown. Without the promise of potential, however, without the prospect of rising to some esteemed place as a result of my great efforts, I would likely lose the will to continue.
Professor Pearson said I should take an honest look at my manuscript. “If you like it and are proud of what you’ve accomplished, then keep sending it out. Do you know how many rejections writers like Faulkner and Melville endured?”
The question is: how do I know if I’m taking an honest enough look?
Another professor, John McManus, disagreed with my assertion that I had reached a point in my revisions where I had done all that I could do for the manuscript, that I had taken it as far as I could alone. “It’s easy to feel that way at a given moment,” he said, “but once I’ve taken a few months away from it, there’s always more to realize about the gap that exists between the story in my head and the story on the page. Of course it would be ideal for an editor and agent to be on the team helping to identify that gap; in the meantime, there’s no end to the work that can be done.”
I agree with him, of course. Revision, I tell my students, is endless. It’s not unheard of for writers to revise their novels even after they’re published. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, for example, which was originally published in 1818, was later revised and republished in 1831.
How then do I determine the best way to dedicate my efforts?
“The question of whether to revise,” Professor McManus continued, “rides on whether that’s what you feel in your heart and soul you should be doing.”
Ultimately, I leaned towards revision, but the massive commitment held me back. I doubted the voice within me that said I should revise.
I outlined this novel—my thesis manuscript for my MFA—in the summer of 2020. I finished a draft by spring 2021. After I graduated, I revised until November 2021. Then again, April to August 2022. I figured that was it. The manuscript was good. Ready, I thought. Two solid years of work. I started pitching agents. Now, after years away, I look at it and think, there are parts that are good, yes, parts that I am proud of, yes, but it needs work.
One of my constant supporters and fellow MFA cohort, Richard Leise, said I should definitely revise, on account of the passive voice and the need to tighten prose. Such friends are worth the world, whose love of good literature is only exceeded by the earnest desire to help others write it.
After deep contemplation, I committed to the revision. It is the right choice. After a few stutter steps at the end of 2024, my work truly began in January 2025. Every weekday morning I write. Weekends, I watch my son, born in June 2024. I’m approaching the halfway mark in the manuscript, and my original goal to finish by summer feels like a distant fancy. The process is slow, slower than when I could write for four to six hours a day while my wife was a travel nurse, slower now with my professor job and my baby boy.
The revision is chugging along. The semester is winding down, and I foresee more consistent writing ahead. Three months ought to do it: the end of summer, not the beginning.
My mindset has altered through pursuing agents. In the two and a half year span leading to this inevitable revision, I have continued to read, and through this reading, I have been able to pinpoint exactly where my book fits in the literary landscape. Genre is a marketing tool; however, understanding the tradition of varying writing styles and its history allows me to identify precisely how to pitch my novel—and how to revise it.
My manuscript is Dystopian, which is nested under the umbrella of Science Fiction. This makes sense considering TRotF is thematically identical to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. My protagonist is not a 30-year-old firefighter who burns books, however, but a boy who has a special gift that is awoken when he holds a physical book for the first time. A Young Adult premise, in which I point to Lois Lowry’s The Giver as comparison. This power, in which fire comes from his hands, is an element I attribute to Fantasy, though the literal flame makes way for symbolism, and ultimately, TRotF is much closer to Literary Fiction than I imagined, probably because I absorbed so much of C. S. Lewis’s writings when I was an impressionable teenager.
In short: TRotF is Dystopian (Science Fiction), Fantasy, Young Adult, Literary Fiction inspired by Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Lowry’s The Giver, written in a style resembling C. S. Lewis.
A writer must be careful not to compare himself with giants, but if that’s who he aims to be, the comparison is necessary, even if he falls short.
I’ve never doubted TRotF’s potential. The writing is not the issue. The problem I face with publication is finding the right people: agent, editor, publisher, readers. The possibility is crystal, and I see the novel’s potential with a degree of clairvoyance, limited by a cloud of uncertainty that moves in and out of view, raising my spirits and humbling me.
I consider this time a crucible, a time to prove myself, to be ready when and if the time comes, a time in which I will come out a sturdy, secure writer. Then I can honestly say, through this period of pressure, that I’ve written the best book I could.
After this revision, I’m hoping to increase my chances of finding representation, but the reality is that I may have to move on for more years to come. This is the life I’ve chosen. The life of a writer. Writing itself must be enough, because recognition may come and go, but the work endures.
Some final words of encouragement from Professor McManus stick with me. “It sounds to me like you’re meant to be writing novels. Don’t get discouraged. You’ll find the right team sooner or later. We’re playing the long game.”
