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 (Published authors frequented the list, so it wasn't just a group of unpublished writers confusing one another.)

One thing I learned is that unpublished writers look for magic bullets.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.