It's the writing, stupid

I'm working on posts about a couple of the workshops I attended, but in the meantime, here are some rather rambling thoughts on what felt like the theme of the weekend. It seems strange to me that reminding writers to focus on the writing is necessary, but such seems to be the case.

When I first began to consider writing for publication, I joined an email loop dedicated to a particular publishing house that was targeted by new writers, mostly because they accept unagented work. I lurked on that list for several years, and learned a great deal about both writing and the publishing industry. (Published authors frequented the list, so it wasn't just a group of unpublished writers confusing one another.)

One thing I learned is that unpublished writers look for magic bullets. For some, it’s rules – not of grammar, but of writing: "no headhopping! no more than one POV per scene! It's a RULE. You can't *ever* be published if you break this rule!" -- ignoring that there are very successful authors who do just that. There are other such 'rules,' and from what I can see, they give writers a false sense of confidence: "if I follow all the rules, I'll be published.'

The reality is that most of those ‘rules’ are good things to follow, particularly for new writers. It’s not that a skilled writer can’t change POV in the middle of a scene if the story calls for it, it’s that such switches are difficult to pull off and someone still struggling with the basic mechanics of writing is better off not attempting it.

There are many such 'rules', including genre conventions, (i.e., in a romance, the hero and heroine *must* meet in the first few pages of the novel) that take on a life of their own among writing loops, as authors grab hold of them the way a drowning man might grab hold of a life preserver. I’ve seen flame wars break out over some of this stuff. Seriously. "But it's a RULE," they howl.

Something similar is the way in which writers (and not always new ones) see signing with an agent as the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail: "I can't sell my book, but if I can only find an agent, they'll be able to do so."

Well, maybe. There are publishing houses that only accept agented work. But there are many ways of getting your work in front of an editor, even of a house that doesn't take unagented work. Conferences and contests are two of the best.

This attitude of, ‘if I do X, I’ll get published.” was everywhere I turned this weekend. On Friday night, there was a Q&A with the three headlining authors at the conference (all three New York Times bestselling authors) and inevitably what I think of as The Agent Question came up: “How did you get your agent?”

The authors exchanged baffled looks (though why, I can’t imagine, when I know they’ve heard the question before) and two of them then offered their stories of how they met their agents. (One sent query letters to agents picked randomly out of a guide because she didn’t know any better; the other got her agent after she’d sold her first manuscript.)

The third didn’t answer the question as asked. Instead, she said that the desperate hunt that a lot of new writers go on for an agent is misguided, in her opinion, and is really about finding validation for their work. It’s not that agents are bad, or can’t help you – they can. But agents don’t sell books. Good writing sells books.

Let’s repeat that: Agents don’t sell books. Good writing sells books.

In other words, take much of the energy you’re putting on finding an agent and put it into becoming a better writer, whether through starting a new manuscript, or finding a critique group, or taking a class. Don’t stop hunting for an agent completely, but don’t let it be your focus.

This came across again and again all through the conference. At the editor’s Q&A, all three editors repeatedly said that they’re looking for good writing. Even the two that don’t accept unagented work said that if they see good writing (through a contest, for example) they get excited. They want to find something they think will sell, just as much as we want to sell it.

Another way of getting your work in front of an editor (or an agent, for that matter) is charity auctions, where a critique or reading of a partial manuscript by a professional is auctioned off, either through a conference or through eBay. This is NOT the same thing as paying an agent to look at your work, which is generally regarded as a scam being perpetuated on desperate writers by unethical individuals. Rather, these are bona fide, respected editors and agents offering their time (and your money) to charity in hopes that they might find that next author/novel they’re looking for.

Why do I mention that in a post about not looking for a magic bullet of publishing? Because it illustrates, I think, that editors and agents do want to find good novels. It's their fondest dream. If you have a quality, well-written manuscript, they want to find you as much as you want to find them.

But don't get hooked into the temptation of thinking, 'if I can only find an agent, I'll sell,' because there are no magic bullets in selling a book. Good writing sells books.

The business of writing

I attended the Chicago North RWA Spring Fling Conference this weekend, and over the next day or two will post other bits and pieces of what I learned, particularly from a couple of seminars I went to. But first, I want to make a couple of general comments.

(It was an awesome conference, by the way. I really have no idea how they managed to do everything they did on what was really a fairly low amount of money.)



I actually had an appointment to pitch to an agent at this conference, but changed my mind, and here's why:

I follow a number of professional blogs, one of which is literary agent Kristin Nelson's:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/

Kristin was going to be at the conference so I was particularly interested in her recent post about writing conferences. One of the things she said she dislikes the most is appointments with writers who are pitching an unfinished manuscript.

At one point, I'd hoped to have a first draft of my novel completed before the conference, but it hasn't quite worked out that way. I'm still in the process of figuring out what I'm doing, and when I hit a blank wall (or three) in March, at the same time my other life got busy, I wilted. I continued working on the novel in various ways, but it became clearer and clearer that it wasn't going to be finished in any sense by the conference.

So Kristin's post concerned me. Essentially, it came down to this: she gets lots of queries for finished manuscripts. Finished, supposedly polished manuscripts. Manuscripts that are theoretically ready to sell. Lots and lots of those kinds of queries. Sorting through those, responding, asking for (then reading and evaluating partials and fulls) takes more time than she has. So a query (whether emailed or pitched at a conference) for something which might or might not ever materialize into a salable novel is, from her perspective, a waste of time. It's particularly bad at conferences, when she sits there wondering if there are other people at the conference with finished manuscripts she's missing out on the opportunity to talk to.

She's not rude about it, but her standard response to such pitches is always, always, 'once you finish it, send me a query letter.'

I did some research, and discovered other agents saying similar things on their blogs. I posted a question to the conference email loop asking how many others were planning on pitching an incomplete manuscript, and started an intense discussion between published authors who quietly reported that their agents, too, prefer to not have unfinished work pitched to them, and a few unpublished writers who insisted it's their right to pitch and the agents should be willing to help them learn by letting them 'practice' pitching on them. Er...

In the end, I canceled my pitch appointment. Writing is a business, and I think a very good question to be asking is, 'what's the most professional way of approaching this?' In most other businesses, you wouldn't regularly try to sell an unfinished product. It's that simple.

The general consensus on the list is that if you're going to have a novel finished and completely polished within six weeks of the conference, it's fine to pitch it. But any longer than that, most agents aren't going to ask to see even a partial, and you're better off waiting and sending a query letter.

There are stories of agents being so impressed by an idea, or an outline of a novel, that they take it on immediately, even when it's not written. But I suspect those stories are few and far between, and I'd rather wait until I have a finished product than risk someone associating my name with 'wasted my time.'

In the meanwhile, I got to meet an editor and the agent I would have been pitching for. Neither asked for the particulars of my novel, but it's still a contact, and one I'm quite willing to follow up on when the book is finished.

I also attended Kristin's workshop on query letters, and now feel fairly confident that when the time comes, I can write a query letter which will get the right kind of attention from her and her staff. Plus, I can say not only that I follow her blog, but that I've attended her workshop -- both ways of personalizing the letter and demonstrating that I've taken the time to study her company and what she represents.

And I won't have to worry that she associates my name -- with its unusual spelling -- with someone who wasted her time.

Non-fiction (academic) vs. fiction writing

I've always accepted that there are differences between fiction and non-fiction writing (beyond topic) but it only recently occurred to me how important being aware of those distinctions is.

A few weeks ago, someone recommended the book, Getting the words right: 39 ways to improve your writing, by Theodore A. Rees Cheney. It's apparently been in print for decades, but I found a recent (2005) edition at the library.

It has three sections: Reduce, Rearrange, and Reword. I've been working my way through the first section, thinking about all the ways there are of using concision to make sentences more powerful.

But this, on reducing with metaphors and analogies, caught me:

One thing our education has taught us well -- perhaps too well -- is that, when writing nonfiction, we must qualify statements of fact. You must, in the name of truth (accuracy), make it clear that what you've written is not always true under all situations or for all time. You must qualify the statement, then and there, by telling the reader what all the limitations are. This makes for good research, because anyone who reads your work later will know precisely what you meant. The trouble with such qualification-laden writing is that it makes for slow reading -- it requires the long attention span of a highly motivated, dedicated reader. When the habit of qualifying is carried over into other kinds of writing, such as fiction, it doesn't work. (p. 17-18, 2005 ed.)

He then gives some examples such as writing 'the plane was like a bird of prey' rather than the stronger 'the plane was a bird of prey,' as well as listing some common words or phrases that frequently accompany over-qualification in fiction: seem to, apparently, looks as thought, looks like, it would appear that.

This is probably making me sound dreadfully thick that this was such a revelation. As I said at the beginning, it's not that I didn't know there were differences between the two styles of writing, but I don't think it would have occurred to me that over-qualifying was one of them, nor the degree to which I do it.

But I do. Even when I'm solidly in a character's head, I'm more likely to have her think, "It seemed as if the world was ending'' rather than, "the world was ending." I don't even think about it. Deep inside me is the Rigid Rule that 'all things must be crystal clear at all times.' Not for a moment should I risk the reader wondering whether the world is really ending, or if the character only thinks it is.

I remember being confused by a line in one of my favorite childhood novels, where the author used the phrase 'he was a blind and deaf man' to describe a character that was shocked, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out when he'd gone blind and deaf and why none of the other characters seemed to care before I finally realized it was a figure of speech.

Another thing which plays into this is personality. I'm a very precise person, at least in my speech. When I'm describing something at work, I'm more likely to say, 'it appears that...' rather than just stating what's going on. It's always important to me that people know I'm stating my opinion rather than a general truth. But it should be my characters' voices on the page, not mine.

After reading some of Cheney's examples, though, it's easy to see how much better fiction flows without the over-qualifying. So now I'm on the hunt for all the 'it seems to' and 'it looked like' phrases in my writing, as well as any other ways a lifetime of academic writing is messing up my fiction.

Uneasy with Amazon

And on a different topic, Amazon is in the news this week, and not in a good way. They've recently told authors and small publishers that if they don't use Amazon's POD (print-on-demand) service, Amazon won't sell their books.

POD is much more than vanity press books, and this doesn't benefit anyone but Amazon. The fact that a number of small publishers have (if rumors be believed) already caved and signed with Amazon (despite the terrible reputation Amazon's service has for producing shoddy books) illustrates the power Amazon has come to have in the publishing world.

(The details of this situation have been reported in a number of places, but see:

http://www.writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html)

Too much power is never a good thing. Most authors know that for them, Amazon is a mixed bag at best -- how could it be otherwise, when Amazon makes it just as easy for a customer to buy a used copy of your book as a new one that you get paid for?

Even as a reader, it occurred to me a few weeks ago to question how dependent I'd become on them. I started to order a few books I've not found in any local brick-and-mortar store, and then got to the shipping options. Free shipping on already low prices -- what's not to love?

Hmm. For starters, I realized that two of the books I was buying didn't have a discount on them at all. They were paperbacks, and Amazon's price was $7.99 -- no discount whatsoever. And I wondered if in the past I've clicked the 'buy' button without really thinking about whether I was getting a good deal or not, particularly in comparison to the discounts I can get at Borders or Barnes and Noble.

And if I opted for free shipping, they were telling me to expect the books in 14-21 days. That's up to three weeks. Is it worth it? Sure it is -- sometimes. But sometimes I want the books sooner than that. So then I looked at my options for standard shipping (3-7 days). The price for waiting for a week for my three books? Thirteen dollars. And if I wanted the books this week? Eighteen dollars -- for books I was already paying full price for.

You know, I ship things quite often, and $13 is a bit steep for three paperback books (one a very thin one.) I know part of the money is a 'handling' fee, but still...is it worth it? Is free shipping worth waiting so long? Is paying the handling charge worth getting the book sooner? (In reality, I'm sure it pays for the people who opt for free shipping, since that cost has to be covered somewhere. One wonders what Amazon would do for profit if everyone opted for free shipping.)

This post probably sounds like I've developed a hate-on for Amazon, and that's not true. I think they provide a wonderful service when it comes to researching hard-to-find items. But I've realized that I've been making certain assumptions about them that aren't necessarily true, such as everything they sell being discounted (not true, particularly for paperbacks that aren't new releases), that they're the only way of getting certain things (also not true, as most bookstores will special order stuff), and that their 'free shipping' is a good deal. (It is, but only if it's something you really don't mind waiting for.)

In short, I think they've become such a fixture that it's given them an unhealthy amount of power, something which will only grow in light of the POD thing. (Have older paperbacks always been full price, and I just didn't notice? Or is that something they changed at some point, once they thought people were safely assuming they'd always get the best price at Amazon?)

Will I continue to shop Amazon? Certainly. But I don't think it's going to be such a given anymore that my purchases will come from there. Competition is good for the consumer and there are other options -- including free shipping from Barnes and Noble.

Making characters real

(For the record, I've still been thinking about the nature of this blog. What I'd like for it to be is a series of dialogues about writing and publishing, where I'll toss out a topic that I've been thinking about in hopes of learning from others' comments. I'm not making any assumption about the value of my own opinion. I'm not an expert, nor do I play one on TV.)


I've been working on characterization the last week or two, specifically how you make a character seem completely real. A real person, if you will, rather than a cliché. One thing I've discovered is that it's not a process I've given a lot of thought to. Most of my characters have seemed to grow almost organically out of the story. (Which is a good thing, I think, but that doesn't mean the process couldn't be improved upon.)

When I wrote the fanfic novel, I decided early on that the main character would be a woman who was doing the best she could in some rather horrific situations all the while doubting herself. Everything she became and did later in the story flowed from that one decision.

But last week, I saw a question or comment somewhere to the effect of, 'how do you turn a character into more than a list of traits?' and I realized I didn't know. If you begin building a character by thinking, 'let's see...he's smart, a bit of a geek, compassionate, always learning new things' -- what's involved with fleshing that out so you get Tim McGee from NCIS rather than Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1?

It's not really fair to start with that kind of example, because in so many ways writing a character for a television series is very different from writing a novel. (Not the least due to the number of people from director to actor that can influence character development.) So perhaps a better example of what I mean would be if I said, 'he's a sexy man of mystery, wealthy and dangerous' ...am I thinking of Evanovich's Ranger, or Roberts' Roarke? On the surface, that statement applies to both, and yet they're very different characters, right from the first book in their respective series.

So what do you add? Or more importantly, how do you add it?

One obvious answer is background, though given the writers that create a background for a character and then divorce the two, you have to wonder how obvious it really is. If you give a character a nightmarish childhood, you either need to show that it's still affecting him, or you need to explain how he overcame it, and I don't always see that happen.

Ah, but that leads to a separate issue, doesn't it? You can't spend a lot of time in the character's background, particularly in the first part of the book. But even if you never tell the reader what the character's childhood was like, you need to know how it affected her. And you have to be consistent with it.

Another possibility, based on things I've read/heard other writers say, are goals and motives. What does the character want, and why? This one strikes me as more critical than background, actually. Two characters similar on the surface, even with similar backgrounds, are going to behave very differently if they've got different goals.

(And as I'm thinking about it, it occurs to me that if there's a link between character motivation and background, that's even better.)

The last thing I've been considering is mannerisms and habits. I admit that this is one I've not worried about in the past, but I'm rethinking that. We all have mannerisms -- things we do that aren't terribly significant in themselves but which set us apart from other people -- so why shouldn't our characters? I think this is tricky, though, because it can so easily become annoying if overused. A character playing with her hair when she's nervous can get old fast.

So...when you think of your favorite characters, what is it that sets them apart from other characters that might be similar to them on the surface? What makes them 'real'?