TANSTAAFL

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." -- Robert Heinlein

Even if you don't have to cough up cash, someone has to pay for it; and if you don't honor the debt you incur, it costs you face and reputation. You may not care, but there's still a cost, always.  Even if you just pull up wild onion by the road, it costs time and effort and sunlight and water.

You have to pay your dues.

I see people, even friends of mine, giving advice all the time. It's usually pretty good advice. I just read Denise Tompkins' blog post about synopses, and it was great.  I spoke with her the other night about the professionalism of her blog voice, how much I enjoy it, how right she usually is, and we laughed about the way a great bit of writing sometimes seems like the swan from the line of ducklings. We sweat and grieve and waffle, then finally put it out there and wait for people to point and laugh, but often the result is actually good.

I'm no expert. This blog is about our efforts to learn, to sink or swim in the world of modern publishing, but I like to think there are useful, pithy bits now and then.  I have no qualifications worth including in a query; my degrees are computers and ancient language, my job is telecom, and I've not had so much as a short story actually published and paid (technically not true, but I assure you the technicality doesn't buy gum.)

Yet I write. I offer my apparently baseless opinions. I query our book with confidence, knowing that it still has so much improvement to be made.

I'm paying my dues, and learning what I need. I'm patient, and I don't give up. In the meantime, I'm writing, polishing the book we've finished, working on the next, tossing in a few lines to others now and then, planning for the day when my backlist is long enough to earn a living.

I'm enjoying the ride. In the meantime, I borrow experience and contacts from dear friends like Denise who's plowing ahead with her Nitecliff Evolutions, and with Raising Cain, which sounds utterly engrossing.

Good luck, Denise, and thanks for the visit. It recharges my batteries to know that talent and perseverance can and do, in fact, make it in today's market.

Hiatus

Attending personal matters this week, apologies for anyone who was actually expecting daily posts.

Will try to get back into the swing asap.

Humans is the Craziest Peoples

It bothers me when people I like say things I can't reconcile. I don't want to hurt their feelings, insult or embarrass them, so I end up trying to just shut up and ignore it...but sometimes it gives me ulcers.

We've all seen it. Normal, likable folk will do something, exhibit some common human foible, and we twitch. In the hope I won't inadvertently wrong someone, I'll try to anonymize an example.

An editor and writer acquaintance who calls herself obsessive recently mentioned (in front of a broadly mixed audience including professional peers) some trouble she habitually has with a couple of homophones. That's common enough - you know people who confuse its/it's, they're/their/there, to/too/two or any of a hundred others. This was a much less common case, one of those nasty ones where the words end in -eet and -ete that stump us all sometimes.

I very briefly tossed her a couple of ways to know which to use, word associations and visual reminders. I only did that because it's the kind of thing we all need, I'd had that very problem, and many of us might appreciate the tools.  Believe me, I'm not shy about grabbing a reference when I realize I'm unsure of something. Simple enough, but her response in front of an audience was to flippantly dismiss it, claiming inability to understand or remember it, apparently intending to just live with the handicap...as a professional editor.

This is a known career writer and editor, blithely dismissing a distinctly professional foible in front of potential clients and peers? Ok, she is a smart, established career woman with a known reputation, and anyone who knows her should dismiss it as a moment's distraction (I hope), but to me it's like a professional programmer saying "pfft, what do grammar, punctuation and spelling matter to a computer?" If you know anything about it at all, you know it matters a lot.

It's like a professional carpenter saying "Wow, I only brought a sledgehammer. Oh well, it really doesn't matter."

It's like a biology teacher, asked whether a squid is a mollusk or a chordate, responding with "Like I care. Go look it up," before going back to a magazine. Anyone else would give such a response, it should be expected - but that person in that situation maybe should not. Not knowing is fine, is only human. Not caring when it's so obviously relevant to what you profess is a little harder to swallow.

I call myself a science fiction writer. I love it when people ask me about odd stellar phenomena, obscure theories, quantum mechanics interpretations or likelihood of life on other planets. Sometimes I may not be in the mood to discuss it, but I don't want my potential audience to believe for a moment that I don't *care*.

I do care. I sometimes use "it's" when I should have said "its", or "that" when I should have used "which", but I care, and if you point it out, I'll fix it. If you suggest rules to help me decide, I'll likely tell you it's absorption in the story, not ignorance,  but I'll try very hard to catch it in the editing.

I don't want my baby to be ugly because of blemishes, but if the problem is just dirt I could have easily wiped away, the fault is truly mine.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been looking over some of my writing, and editing the mistakes that creep in when you're concentrating on moving scenes along, rather than being grammatically correct. It's time for a cup of coffee and some humble pie.

Mood and Voice

It's been a long damned day -- a long year, a long life.  If you know someone unaffected by the twitching economy, offer them a sandwich because they have nothing.  While you're at it, I'll take a PB&J.

Read the torrent of commentary on the web and it seems all anyone wants in this market is commercial paranormal romance with a gut-grabbing opening, a constant fast-paced easy read that doesn't require you have a dictionary nearby, and maybe a soft grade of paper because you're never gonna want to read such tripe again, and will probably burn through a chapter every time your bowels move, so it might as well do double duty.

Do you hear the frustration? The snarky tone? Is this edgy enough, or do I need to throw in more profanity?

---

I love doing that. String together cliché words and phrases and make something recognizable. Fun! Admittedly, it can be a bit trickier to write in a mood you don't currently share, but hey, authors are actors, playing every character in the book. Sometimes you have to get into the part!

It's like writing poetry; dirge of woe or ode to joy, we take words and weave a mood. It's what makes or breaks a story, but I have a quote for you:

"A only writer begins a book; a reader finished it." - Samuel Johnson

• Take the top section and read it with the mindset of gloom and a long face and it comes out one way.
• Go back and apply grumpy anger and it comes out differently.
• Try again with resigned humor and it shifts yet again.

The reader is under no obligation to think of what the writer was imagining. My favorite example: J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Middle Earth in which THE HOBBIT, LORD OF THE RINGS, and of course THE SILMARILLION occur, was a master of this idea.

Do Balrogs have wings? It's a topic people rage over (yes, maybe only geeks, but they are a significant market...)  Look at the argument and some discussion of each side HERE. The answer is, they do if you imagined them that way while reading the passages. Or don't if you didn't.  Your book, your world, your choice. The author did not choose to decide for you.

Yep, I really said it.

So when you buy a book, think of it as unfinished furniture you still have to paint.  The author wrote the words, but you have to give them breath and life.

The Rules of Writing

Two of my favorite courses in college were the advanced creative writing classes. I had a teacher who was very cool, and very good.  One of my favorite assignments was a short work (not a "paper" or a "story" or anything so limitingly descriptive) in which we were to break as many of the basic rules of writing as possible.

Intentionally misspell words, throw in nonstandard and inconsistent typefaces, twist the grammar and punctuation wherever possible -- but never to do so without a good reason. This assignment was to find the good reasons, and create something original but still of value.  On the other hand, any nonstandard feature that couldn't be obviously and immediately identified as intentional and worthwhile was counted off.

This was a great exercise.

Any writing endeavor should use the same tricks.  Never break commonly held rules without reason, and more importantly, without value. If your reason doesn't work for the readers, all you're doing is alienating them.

Cameron McClure posted a great article on this some time ago.

As much as I'd love to preach about it, she already did such a great job that you should probably go read that instead, but I do have to underline one point: if you *do* have a good reason and a good way to do it without breaking reader interest, then no rule is sacrosanct.

I was reading over a related post on Chuck Sambuchino's blog as well.

I notice that there's an interesting correlation between the comments and the rules.  "No dreams", says Ms. McClure, and I tend to agree - I don't want to find out after a whole season of wondering "who shot JR" that it was all a ridiculous dream sequence - but  Laurie McLean, Larsen/Pomada Literary Agents says "I dislike opening scenes that you think are real ..., then the protagonist wakes up. It makes me feel cheated."  On the other hand, I've seen good scenes that were obviously dream sequences from the start.

Elmore Leonard says

     2) Avoid prologs.

but I happen to love a well-written prologue that doesn't waste my time. When some event(s) in the past are relevant throughout the story, inform scenes from the very beginning and save a ton of flashback later, develop character and backstory without belaboring the point or depending on excessive narrative, then you could always just make them Chapter One; but when every other chapter of the book is in the present, one that is obviously different deserves a special status.

He also isn't the only one I've seen saying
     3) Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialog.
Too much unbroken dialogue makes me lose track of who is saying what, and "...said...said...said..." drives me nuts.  The problem isn't when someone uses "asked" or "quipped" or something else instead of said, it's when they do it badly. Asked is appropriate if the dialogue was a question.  Quipped indicates a tone that may not be obvious from the words in the sentence, and sometimes a character wouldn't use words that would make it clear; better to give a small guide word that clarifies a scene than to interrupt a swift banter with an explanatory sentence that forces the reader to pause the flow of action, or to misread and have to backtrack to get the proper sense of it.

Then again, as of this writing I'm not exactly a published author with royalties behind my opinions. Take it with the proverbial grain of salt, and know that if an agent says "I'd like to represent you, but I need you to fix these few little things first," you should look for me in my editing office.

Please? Maybe Just a Little Hint?

I love Twitter. :)

Yesterday I engaged in a volley of relevant commentary with non other than Victoria Strauss, whose Twitter bio modestly lists her as "Adult & YA novelist (8 books), blogger, co-founder of Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group. " Note that I added the links for reader convenience.

She mentioned/quoted Jane Smith, who commented on "Linen Press to start charging £5 per submission." ( c.f.: http://www.linenpressbooks.com/blog/shock-horror-a-charge-for-submissions/1042/ ) I also exchanged tweets with Ms. Smith, and I appreciated the time and input from both these esteemed ladies.

If I could get genuine feedback from every submission, straight from the agent's own preferences, I'd happily pay the $8US. Why?

"I just want to know what I did wrong." It's the writer's perrenial plea when submitting rejected queries.  If you, as an agent, think my book is a stupid premise, or badly written, or anything else, I want to know. You can be honest without being rude, and if you can't, you really shouldn't represent me anyway. I actually do want honest critique.

I really don't want to waste my time pushing a work that's never going to succeed.  If it's got too many typo's, I could fix that, though after editing for two years if we still had rampant typos we would deserve a snarky comment like "maybe not..."

If you just don't like the voice, we could tweak that.  My wife's natural style is terse; not exactly Hemingway, but a little like William Gibson. I tend to be glib. We both welcome feedback.

On the other hand, if you think it would be fine for some other agent, but just doesn't suit your personal tastes, that's valuable info, too.  We've been told that more than once. If you have a suggestion, could maybe give us a referral, that would be gold; we haven't gotten that yet, but it seems to me worth a finder's fee at the very least, if that agent picks us up.

The paranoia whispers that they're just trying not to crush your soul...

Meh. With all that to consider, I'd call $8 cheap for an editing fee. c.f. this from Ms. Smith's blog archive:
 http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/?p=2745
I do hope Linen Press intends more than that for your money, but ...

Basically, every comment is editing.  This would just make it a little more formal. Still, a lot of my conversation with Ms. Smith yesterday repeated this very blog's points, and though there's a great deal of value and truth in it, there are also some very dangerous assumptions, especially from a writer's perspective. No matter what the agent thinks, even a someone with Jane Smith's credentials has to admit that not every agent will think the same. Admittedly, if your manuscript is riddled with flaws you aren't going to get reputable representation, but (from her blog) “I didn’t love this enough” or “this is not right for me” might be the agent's way of shooing you, but they might also be intentionally encouraging you because they didn't personally care for it but believe someone else might.

Then she pointed out something that I had missed - agents give feedback to clients, not random submissions. That's telling.  So often I read these posts and think submission = new author but that's not always so.

Yes, I understand that a smart agent would grab something they felt would sell, regardless of their tastes; but their tastes largely determine what they think will sell.  As I said in an earlier post here, agents aren't machines.  No one can magically know the market.

Rachelle Gardner's recent three minute video blog post addresses it well:

http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/07/why-agents-dont-give-reasons-with-rejections/

Honestly, as a currently unrepresented writer looking for an agent, it's tough; but once I get an agent, I really do want her to give me more time than random submissions. They earn their pay. Don't doubt it. 

Personally, I'm glad agents don't usually charge for submissions. They basically work on commission; if they think your book will make them money, they'll represent it. That seems pretty fair to me.

But I would point out that if not all agents charge for a submission, writers will skip the one that does. It's a quick way to reduce your workload, I guess...

In the end, what this means to the writer is the same mantra I've been preaching.  Do your homework; refine your craft; find a critique group, and keep an open mind and ear, but believe in yourself, or just stop wasting your time and that of the agents you query.  If you can't put in the effort and then have faith in the work, find another hobby.

Anyone out there care to comment? Please, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Could agents get away with charging for submissions? What would it mean for the industry if it became common practice?

Ugly Is As Ugly Does

First, a link: the article below addresses the all too common problem of brats in public, why we all hate them, and how you really aren't doing them any favors by letting them get away with it.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/07/05/granderson.bratty.kids/index.html

LZ Granderson, Contributor to CNN News, I salute you and your sentiment. I think you should also be on CBS news, NBC news, ABC News, Fox News, USA Today, Sesame Street and the Disney channel. Maybe NBC and CBS don't realize what they're missing, but thank goodness CNN is spreading your pithy gospel.

I also thank anyone who's reposted it for the rest of us; in particular, my bud Ben Baker, whose post is (for me at least), even better.

http://porkbrainsandmilkgravy.blogspot.com/2011/07/not-rassling-smackdown.html

It's all about respect, being fair, and doing what's best for everybody even when it's not particularly easy or convenient. Maybe Ben isn't on CNN.com or USA Today, but I bet is Sesame Street got a good photo they'd be happy to make him a muppet...

But I digress. *Ahem*:
<soapbox>What all of this boils down to is that it isn't the screaming brat that's to blame. It's the lazy, careless, or maybe just horribly misguided parent.  Overly Draconian is as bad as overly permissive, but too much of anything is a Bad Thing.</soapbox> 

 So...you do realize that this is still a blog about writing and getting published, acquiring fame and fortune and glory and immortality, right? Right. Thought so.  Accordingly, in the tradition of the past eighteen posts, I will freely mix my metaphors into what I hope to be an alchemist's Elixir of Entertainment while delivering some bit of pithy prose with value to someone.  For all the lead-in, today's chosen topic of pompous pontification is in fact the raging debate over e-books and self publishing.

E-books, and self publishing; a combination like cake and ice cream, and we all know how well those go together.  This wonderful option is commonly touted as the perfect alternative to traditional print publishing through an agent, which is (to stretch the food metaphor just a little further because I'm hungry and I love food in all it's wondrous diversity) the steak and potatoes of the industry.

For the record, I want the steak and potatoes for supper, and the cake and ice cream for dessert, and please don't make me choose. For those of you who want a little more info on the debate, take a look at Nathan Bransford's lovely and insightful breakdown.

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/03/self-publishing-vs-traditional.html

Nathan, you rock.

So, you ask, what has one to do with the other? I'm glad you asked. What? You didn't? Well you should have, but don't worry, I'll tell you anyway.

The one thing Nathan didn't address in that awesome post was marketing.  Published doesn't mean sold. Unsold means unread, unloved, and of course, un-sold, as in, no money.  If you can't get the copies moving, it doesn't matter if you have an ISBN.

I have on a few occasions gone surfing for good new authors on e-book self-pub sites.  Ok, I did it twice.  I lost heart; so very, very much of what I saw struck me as clumsy electronic masturbation that I was embarrassed for the authors, and the signal to noise ratio was so bad that I never did find a good new author to read that way. Of course, a publisher might not market you much either...

Remember, the best marketing is word of mouth.  Get someone to tell someone, and hope it spreads.  That's the Holy Grail, right? The light at the end of this long, dark tunnel is that a certain minimum critical mass of readers will be talking. Someone will notice and blog about you; nearby radio stations will want to interview the local boy done good; reviewers in the papers will notice and tell people what they think.  Readers who talk breed more readers, and you try to hit the point where there are enough readers that some of the ones with media platforms will be among the talkers. Okay, maybe you aren't Kevin Bacon, but if you get people talking, maybe someday you could be Kevin Bacon, or at least someone who knows someone who wants to read your stuff, and who knows Kevin Bacon. After all, Kevin Bacon rocks. <nodnod>

No one will want to talk about your baby if it's really ugly.  If your book is the little hoodlum running about screaming in the restaurant and playing with the light switches, anyone who does talk will be warning off people they like. That's not the kind of publicity you want.

What kind of book is that ugly baby? It's usually the ones with the predictable, classic blunders.

• Poor grammar.
• Poor punctuation.
• Poor spelling.
• Clumsy sentences. 
• Clichés.
• Redundancies.
• Thin plot.
• Overly predictable or undeveloped characters.
• Trend chasing (please, if you're writing another book about vampires or werewolves or wizards, have a little pity on your potential agent and just try something else?)
• Hubris.

Hubris, you say? Yes.  Just because you think NASCAR is the coolest thing since the invention of the sparkplug and happen to like pie, don't assume a book about a pie chef who races is going to be popular.  What makes a book is story, characters, and the telling of it. As a story, Piérre the Pastry Chef who wins a chance to race with the big boys might actually be a good yarn if you can spin it with some wit and panache, but you, the writer, need to make it interesting. Don't just assume it is.

Too many books are published these days by people who pin their hopes and dreams on the POD market without doing the gauntlet at all.  Querying an agent is a pain, but it does inspire you to get your little duckies in a row. Let me assure you that while we are diligently querying agents for representation with a traditional print publisher, we also hope to make the work available on Amazon.com's kindle, and B&N's nook.

Don't get me wrong.  I personally know some self-publishing authors whose books were quite good. I just hope they market well, because otherwise they're putting their brainchild into the rank and file of all the really ugly kids, and they may get lost in the crowd.

But then honestly, isn't that true of the bookstore shelves as well? The only difference is that all those books have already been vetted; they've all already won at least one beauty contest.  If you're out to find a good looking kid, wouldn't you consider looking at the pageant before you scan the alley?  Honestly, when browsing for a book, don't most of us search the shelves? Unless we already have one in mind; then I usually go straight to the net.  

And that's kinda the point.