Back when I was just getting started with AToB, I used to spend a lo of time browsing the Internet looking for advice for first-time novelists in an attempt to delay actually working on my novel. I came across a blog written by a published writer who actually advised new writers to burn their first novel the moment they were done with it. At the time, I thought that was terrible advice. I still do. The implication is that a first novel is always going to be so bottomlessly awful that it should never see the light of day. Of course, if that were true, we’d never have had Harry Potter or Jonathan Strange.
Learning to become a writer involves more than just banging away on the keyboard until you reach ‘The End.’ You need to learn how to revise and edit your work. You also need to figure out how to market your work to an agent or a publisher. You’re not going to learn any of these things if you’ve reduced your manuscript to a pile of ashes.
My own view is that if I’m going to stick with a novel through the long, drawn-out process of writing and revising, then I owe it to myself to take the final step and try to get representation for it. It doesn’t cost me anything beyond the cost of paper and postage. The worst thing that can happen is that every single agent rejects my work, but at least I’ll have learned something about how writers go about finding an agent.
Codex Lochianus 