Month: December 2012

Lucky 13

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This post, by Vincent Zandri, originally appeared on the New Wave Authors blog on 9/21/12.

I’ve finally gone and done it.

Come December I will have thirteen books in print with the publication of Murder By Moonlight. So why is this number so significant? What’s the big deal? 

Thirteen years ago, almost to the day, I published my first "big" novel with a Random House imprint. They gave me tons of money, wined and dined me. I even played drums in my editor’s band and ummm, dated my publicist. If you want to call it that. I was fresh out of writing school. Young. Pretty good looking (Not Barry Eisler good looking, but passable). Newly divorced and living the life of the rock star. 

I remember tossing twenties around to the hotel clerks asking them to bring bottles of booze up to the room so that there would be plenty on hand when the guests came. The guests usually consisted of literary agents, writers, artists, musicians. The room was so full of cigarette and pot smoke you could hardly see. The booze flowed like a river and it just happened to snow during the warm weather, if you catch my drift. I found myself living the dream, and living it hard. It was everything I always wanted. Bright lights, big city, big ego, big books, big future…

All I had to do to maintain the life of the rock star was write one book per year. My hot shot agent would take care of the rest. My lifestyle wouldn’t be supported by sales…Sales?…What the fuck are sales? It would be supported by big advances. Sales weren’t sexy in the eyes of my then agent. It was measured in the amount of advance money he could demand. Six and seven figure advances were what made him hard. Not sales figures typed out on spread sheets. Advances caused headlines in Publishers Weekly. Sales trickled in and never made up for the big advance. Well, almost never, anyway.

Somehow I wrote the second book. But something happened along the way. My imprint got sucked into another. The new imprint editor looked at the advance money owed me and compared it to real sales and nearly puked. The firm honored their contractual committment and paid me, but as soon  as the second book was published, I was shown the door. Goodbye publisher. Goodbye parties. Goodbye rock-star status. Goodbye New York City. Goodbye ego. Goodbye hot shot agent.

 

Read the rest of the post on the New Wave Authors blog.

Are You Still Submitting? Determination Is The Key.

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[Publetariat Editor’s Note: strong language]

You’ve heard it before, I’m sure – you have to keep swimming. That’s true for the actual act of writing in the first place. No matter how hard it is, you just keep going. To quote the erstwhile Chuck Wendig, “I will finish the shit I start.” And then, to explain why, we’ll quote the incomparable Angela Slatter: “You can edit shit, but you can’t edit nothing.”

Notice how shit features in both those quotes? Subconscious, I’m sure, but it helps to make the point. Nothing is shiny first time around. In writing, you really can polish a turd, if you keep at it, make the necessary changes, listen to critique and so on. But you have to have a turd to start with, and that means working hard, writing, writing, writing, essentially, keep pushing until you’ve squeezed one out. And then start polishing.

But I think it’s time we moved away from the crappy analogies. Sorry, it seems I can’t help myself.

Let’s assume you did get the thing finished, be it novel or short story or whatever. Then you started polishing. You edited, tweaked and buffed till it was perfect. Then you sent it out to your critiquing friends and beta readers, and those bastards pointed out all the imperfections. So you listened, because you’re smart like that. And you polished again and again. Eventually, it really was about as good as you could make it. So you submitted it to your favourite market.

And it got rejected.

“Fuck ‘em!” you cry, and send it somewhere else. Their loss if they can’t recognise your genius, right?

Yes, to a degree. Because no matter how good a story is, it might not be right for that publisher’s catalogue, that editor’s taste, that publication’s readership and so on. You have to have a good story – that, above and beyond everything else, is a pre-requisite – but you also have to find the right home. And that’s as much luck and determination as it is smart planning and skill. Of course, if you send your werewolf story to a soft porn magazine it’s not going to sell. Are you laughing? Cos that happened to me.

To be fair, it wasn’t really my fault. When I was moving to Australia permanently, I asked an Australian friend what magazines out here might be good for fiction. I thought I’d start submitting, see if I could get a bit of Aussie publication going before I got here permanently. He said to me, “Picture Magazine publishes fiction, give them a go.” And he sent me the submission address. Old-school post back in those days. Of course, he was winding me up, but I didn’t know that Picture Magazine was a soft-core porn publication. I sent them a story about a werewolf detective. I got a letter back. It said, “This is a beaut yarn, mate, but really not the sort of thing we publish. Thanks anyway.” That’s because the fiction they usually publish is a reader’s-wives/confessions-of-a-randy-plumber type of thing. I didn’t know this before I submitted or when I got the rejection.

When I got to Australia I looked into it. I laughed. Then I went and kicked my mate in the nards for being such a douchebag. Then we both laughed about it. True story. Anyway, write good shit and know your market, is the core of what I’m saying here.

After that, it becomes all about determination. I write this post now because I was recently reminded of the importance of determination by a friend of mine. Ian McHugh is a bloody brilliant short fiction writer. He’s sold stories to such pro markets as Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s and many more. He’s a Writers Of The Future winner and his first collection is coming from Ticonderoga Publications in 2014. Yes, he is one accomplished bastard.

Why am I citing Ian as an example of determination? Well, even with a record like his, he still gets a lot of rejection. He recently made a pro sale with a story that has taken a long time to find a home. How long? I’ll let Ian explain:

This was actually the 19th time I’d submitted this particular story, so it’s my new record holder for number-of-rejections-before-selling. Previous best was 14. My general rule has been to trunk a story after 15 rejections. I broke it for this one because I got some lightning-to-the-brain feedback with the 14th rejection and rewrote the ending.

That means that not only was it rejection 14 times before he had a sudden realisation about how to improve the story, but it was subsequently rejected another four times withthe new ending before it found its home.

As Ian said, “Take whatever lessons you will from my Obsessive Compulsive Bloody-Mindedness Disorder (OCBMD).”

The lesson I take from it? Trust in yourself and keep looking for a home. My personal record of rejections before a sale is the same as Ian’s previous best: 14. What really surprised me was the people on our email list expressing amazement at Ian’s tenacity, saying things like, “I couldn’t handle that much rejection” or “I give up after two or three rejections.”

What!?

Let me share some of my own numbers. My recent short fiction sales are all stories that didn’t find a home right away. In fact, my stories hardly ever do. Only a handful of things I’ve written have sold to the first place I sent them, and those are usually things written for a specific themed anthology, or stories written by request/commission. Of the 3 recent stories that I wrote simply because they were in my brain-juice, and then tried to sell, I got 11 rejections, 2 rejections and 6 rejections before they sold to the 12th, 3rd and 7th market respectively. That’s actually a fair cross-section of submission numbers. (And I was bloody happy with the one that sold on the third attempt!)

So, don’t give up on writing something – finish that motherfucker. Then, when it’s finished and polished to its highest possible sheen, start submitting and do not give up. Stay open to the possibility of change, like Ian’s sudden inspiration. I recently did that and changed a story’s structure entirely after something like 10 or 11 rejections, but it’s still essentially the same story and it’s still out there looking for a home.

Finish it, polish it, submit it, repeat.

Off you go.

Caveat: It gets to a point when you have to admit that your story might not be a polished gem at all, but actually just a stinking turd. Sometimes you do have to trunk a story. Ian’s method is give up after 15 rejections. Mine is probably about the same. But when I give up, I never really give up. I rewrite the story, use the ideas in a different way, make it into something else and then send it out there again. Never. Give. Up. 

 

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

How to Use (not abuse) Jargon, Slang and Idioms

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This post, by Susan Bearman, originally appeared on Write It Sideways on 4/20/12.

I started my writing life as a business writer, compelled to try to improve the tortured, often incomprehensible language I found in operating manuals, annual reports, memoranda, and other formats that some bad writers tried to pass off as business “communication”. There seems to be a great misconception that passive voice, undefined acronyms and abbreviations, and loads of jargon make for good business writing.

Not true. All writers—whether writing for business, science, or academia, or those writing fiction and creative nonfiction—should strive for clarity.

But does that mean jargon, slang, and idioms are always taboo? Not if you do your job to make them serve your writing, rather confuse or bore your readers.

Jargon

jargon (noun) — specialized technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject; a characteristic language of a particular group.

To use jargon effectively, you must know your audience. Almost all industries use jargon to some extent, and that’s OK, because most practitioners of a particular profession have a basic understanding of the material and its associated jargon. Business and sports writers are notorious jargon users, as those in medicine and education.

For most writers, the goal is clarity. Unless you have a specific reason to use jargon, it’s best to avoid it. If you must include jargon, be sure to define it or make it understandable within the context of your story.

Bad writing is often the result of too much jargon. While jargon can be helpful when communicating within a specific group, too much jargon, or jargon that is not clearly defined can lead to muddy, confusing writing. If you find yourself having to reread a sentence over and over again, it is often because it contains confusing jargon.

Well-placed jargon in a piece of fiction can lend the voice of authority or the face of authenticity to a particular character. If one of your characters is a pompous Wall Street trader, using some insider jargon will help readers hear his voice on your page. Genre fiction, such as crime fiction, often relies heavily on the use of jargon. Here again, know your audience.

One way to help define jargon in your writing is to spell out acronyms or abbreviations the first time you use them:

Fuzzy: SCBWI announced on June 19 both the winner and runner up of the Don Freeman Memorial Grant-in-Aid.

Better: On June 19, the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) announced this year’s recipients of the Don Freeman Memorial Grants for picture book illustrators.

See if you can translate the following jargon into language that could be understood by a general audience (note, I did not make these up). You may need your search engine to help you. How many clicks around the Internet did it take you to understand the original jargon?

 

Read the rest of the post on Write It Sideways.

Avoiding Common Grammar Mistakes

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This post originally appeared on the George Mason University English Writing Guide site. While it’s intended for use by students of that University who are following a specific essay-writing curriculum, the common errors it lists will be helpful for anyone who’s doing a self-editing pass.

Introduction

By this point you’re done composing your essay. You’ve written an introduction and conclusion, incorporated transitions, and you’ve made use of textual evidence to support your argument. But you’re not done with your first draft yet—you still need to comb through what you’ve written to make sure that you don’t have any grammar mistakes.

 

Common grammar mistakes not only get in the way of your reader’s ability to understand your argument, but they can also undermine your credibility in the reader’s eyes. We’ve compiled here a list of common grammar mistakes that came up most often for professors in the English Department.

Common Pet Peeves for Teachers

Grammar Errors

  • Comma splices—A comma splice is where a comma is used to join two independent clauses which should be separated by a period. An independent clause can stand on its own as a sentence. Do not simply use a comma everywhere a reader would pause.
     
  • Subject/pronoun disagreement—There are two types of subject/pronoun disagreement, shifts in number and shifts in person.

    • Shifts in number—This phrase means the shifting between singular and plural in the same sentence. Be consistent.
       
    • Shifts in person—This error occurs when the person shifts within the sentence from first to second person, from second to third person, etc.
       
  • Its/it’s—"Its" is the possessive form of "it." "It’s" is the contraction of "it is." They are not interchangeable.
     
  • Mis-use and abuse of semicolons—Semicolons are used to separate two related independent clauses or to separate items in a list that contains commas. Do not abuse semicolons by using them often. They are best used sparingly.
     
  • Dropped commas around clauses—Place commas around words, phrases, or clauses that interrupt a sentence. Do not use commas around restrictive clauses, which provide essential information about the subject of the sentence.

    • Interrupting clause—This clause or phrase interrupts a sentence, such as "however." Place a comma on either side of the interrupting clause.
       
    • Restrictive clause—This clause or phrase provides essential information about the subject of the sentence. Without this clause or phrase, the meaning of the sentence changes.
       
    • Non-restrictive clause—This clause or phrase modifies the subject of the sentence but does not change the meaning of the sentence if left out.
       
  • "Naked this"—Always include a referent with "this," such as "this sentence" or "this rule." With no referent, "this" can confuse the reader.

 

Read the rest of the post on the George Mason University English Writing Guide.

Writing The First Draft Of A Novel Using Questions And Modelling

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Whether you have made the 50,000 or not, it doesn’t matter, as long as there has been some focused writing this month! And, there’s still time.

For anybody else wanting to write fiction, this might help you with the dreaded first draft (which for me, is definitely the hardest part).

Trying something new …

I have made life difficult for myself, because I decided as my NaNo project to write a story that has been on my mind for a while, or at least some of the settings, characters and themes have.

 

But I only had one day, Oct 31st to do some rough plotting and to be honest, I didn’t get too far. I had an opening scene and that was about it. No character sketches, no plot layout. [Note: This is NOT the best way to do NaNoWriMo!]

I also decided to write a crime novel with thriller elements, rather than a straight thriller, so it’s a new genre with new rules. (Whatever you think about rules, readers in a genre expect certain things and we have to deliver on that promise).

What’s the difference between thrillers and crime, I hear you ask!

The main difference for me is that in thrillers you know who the bad guy is and the good guys have to stop him/her destroying the world in a race against time, or something along those lines. But basically, you know who the antagonist is and you write scenes with them in and even from their POV throughout the book. Lots of mini-crimes go on during the book but the big explosive threat is what must be stopped.

In a crime novel, you open with the body and then you have to work out who the killer is, so the crime has been committed and it’s a hunt for the killer. The skill is to keep the audience from guessing ‘whodunit’, but not to make it so obscure you annoy them at the end. So they are quite different, although the genres are put together on Amazon as a macro-category.

crime sceneI’m trying to blend the two with the classic crime structure but I also want a bigger thriller plot behind it, and definitely thriller pacing. I also need to keep the promise to my reader with my brand “Ancient mystery, modern thrill” and include detailed history and setting which my readers enjoy.

So on about Day 5 of NaNoWriMo I wrote this to guide me …

Draft back blurb

When the body of a young heiress is found dissected at the Hunterian Museum within the Royal College of Surgeons, London, Detective Inspector Jamie Brooke is in a race against time to find the killer. An ancient ivory figurine found inside the body is the only lead and she enlists Blake Daniel, a reluctant clairvoyant, to help her discover the meaning behind the figurine and the message it holds.

As Jamie and Blake delve into an increasingly macabre world of body snatching, dissection and the genetic engineering of monsters, they must fight to keep their sanity, and their lives.

What are the questions this raises in your mind?

From the back blurb, a whole load of questions are raised, and since I hadn’t written much of the book at the time of writing, answering the questions is a good place to start.

  • Who is the victim and what is she an heiress to?
  • What is the significance of the Hunterian museum?
  • What is the ancient figurine? What is the meaning behind it and how is it linked to the killer?
  • Who is the killer?
  • Why did they do it and what does the killer want?
  • Why is this a race against time?
  • Who is Jamie Brooke?
  • Who is Blake Daniel?
  • Why is he a ‘reluctant’ clairvoyant?
  • Who are the other characters in the book? What are their motives for murder?
  • What are the stakes of the book?
  • What are the themes of the book?

From those questions, a whole lot more emerge and you can start writing the answers in scenes. For example, in deciding on the other characters/suspects, I can then write scenes with the Detective interviewing them and as I free-write on those, more questions will come to light.

This great episode on plotting from the SelfPublishingPodcast guys also talks about the questions you can use as the basis to plotting.

So this is something you can try if you’re struggling with your NaNo book.

Deconstructing and modeling

I find the above is enough to get to about 20,000 words (if you’re mostly a pantser at least), but especially with a new genre, you need to work out how the plot is supposed to work. I love intricate and clever plotting, so this is important to me. Those of you who prefer character driven plots might not be so interested in this!

When I learned to write a thriller, I deconstructed bestselling books, working out the structure by which they worked in terms of scene length, pacing, setting, character development POV etc.

I read a lot of modern crime, but to go back to basics I started re-reading some Agatha Christie novels, but quickly realized that although the books are great, today’s audiences expect fast moving crime, like the TV shows.

So I watched a couple of episodes of popular crime shows Castle and Bones, both open with a body, then spend the episode trying to solve the crime. I particularly like Castle as it is less police procedural and forensics based. Invariably, you can’t guess the murderer until near the end, regardless of whether you know the ‘formula’ because they drip feed the clues. Both shows have a male and female relationship at the center as primary characters.

Deconstructing those shows was brilliant, as I learned how each clue set up a different suspect and then new information led onto someone else. Once I knew how it worked, it was much easier to do with my own book.

At that point, I was able to really plot out the novel and get the hang of how the scenes should be structured, and whose POV I should use. These tips enabled me to at least get a good chunk of the novel sorted in my head, and a lot of it onto the page.

What other recommendations do you have in terms of techniques for writing the first draft? 

 

Image: Crime scene from BigStockPhoto.com

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Self Publishing in 2012 (Links From My Ignite Talk)

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This post, by Kevin Dangoor, originally appeared on his site on 10/26/12.

Last night, I spoke at Ignite Ann Arbor 7. As always, the Ignite talks covered quite a range of topics and the speakers gave us a great time!

My own talk was one about self-publishing, which is something I’ve had some experience with this year. Back in 2006, I co-wrote a technical book (Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears) for Prentice Hall. That year, I also self-published a DVD (the TurboGears Ultimate DVD). But, my focus in this talk was my experience this year self-publishing the first three books in my 11 Quests children’s fantasy series.

Publishing companies have their place, and I’m not actually against using their services. My view is that we, as authors, should recognize how much more powerful self-publishing is today than it was even a few years ago. The Internet and modern technology and services are making life increasingly difficult for middlemen of all sorts.

After that bit of background, I dove into things that I found useful in my publishing adventure. First, I started with the writing. I wrote the first 11 Quests stories during National Novel Writing Month 2011 (NaNoWriMo, as it’s more succinctly called). I did all of my writing in Scrivener, which is a fantastic program that is available for Mac and Windows. Scrivener helps organize your writing. And, as an added bonus, Scrivener did a good job of producing my ebooks and the interiors of my print books!

MacHeist, which has been extended for 3 days (through Monday, October 29, I’m assuming), currently offers Scrivener along with a bunch of other apps for just $29. It’s a really, really good deal. And, with NaNoWriMo starting up again on Thursday, the timing is wonderful.

Next, I got into cover design. 99Designs, CrowdSpring, and DesignCrowd all allow you to post a price you’re willing to pay for a design and have a bunch of different designers produce artwork from which you pick the winner. These sites are controversial because only one designer gets chosen, but a bunch of designers are doing the work to try to get selected. Only you can decide how you feel about that issue.

Less controversial would be to find a local artist or someone at a site like DeviantArt or Elance. It’s a much more traditional relationship where you agree upon a price and the work gets done.

The approach I took to cover design was “do-it-yourselfish”. I started with DAZ3D which is free 3D software (Mac and Windows). I’ve also used Poser a bit, but I settled into DAZ Studio for my work. What makes these programs great is that you can buy, for not a lot of money, 3D models and then pose them and otherwise customize them to get the image you’re looking for. These programs have a learning curve, and there’s a lot of work required just finding the right models to match what you’ve written. But, I was happy with the results that I got.

 

Read the rest of the post on Kevin Dangoor’s site.

The Proverbial Sex Reassignment Surgery: What This [Publishing] Transition Is Really About

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This post originally appeared on Publishr on 4/27/2010. It’s fascinating to see how visionary the post is now, two years later, and to consider how little the industry has heeded its advice. 

Forget the words “print” and “digital” even exist. Now, what is the transition in publishing really about?

Publishing is, and has been for many years, a B-to-B business. In fact, the walls of the publishing house have traditionally been closed off to anyone without an in. On one end, we have agents who work as buffers to the outside world, so we are not required to interact with anyone who does not have any official business. On the other end, book buyers shield us from having to interact with readers. 

Almost everything about our industry is set up in a way that lessens contact with the outside world. The whole mystique of this industry is based on its inaccessibility to the outsider.

Some examples, to name a few:

Agents: Most publishers do not accepts direct submissions. This, in itself, limits front-end interactions with both published and aspiring authors. In fact, agents serve an important purpose, they act as buffers to the world-at-large, to all the people who think they can write a book. They are the first line of defense, as it were, to prevent contact from the (unsavory) outside world. For scouting works, for performing triage, for acting as a buffer, agents are compensated in percentages based on performance of those things they bring in from the outside.

Review pubs: Industry review publications seem to go beyond just buffering publishers from the outside world, by performing the task of marketing our products to ourselves. This is something that works perfectly in a B-to-B system; different houses vying for space in industry publications to look better than others, our books over your books, our authors have more name recognition than yours, angling for buyers’ attention always with the thought that they will order more copies. Are these publications relevant to the average person on the street who is going to visit a retail location or eCommerce site to purchase a book? No. Not at all.

Industry Conferences: Like review publications, many if not all of our industry conferences consist of self-referential presentations with little to no interest given to the outside world. While this is the case throughout many industries, we seem make a heightened effort to market and promote our latest titles at these conferences. Think about the amount of money spent on galleys, booths, travel, and accommodations for BEA. Take note of the amount, and remember it. It’s going to come back to haunt you.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Publishr.

Peering Into The Future And Seeing More Value In The Random Penguin Merger

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files blog on 11/26/12.

So now in addition to the Random House and Penguin merger that is being reviewed by governments far and wide, we have the news that HarperCollins is exploring a tie-up with Simon & Schuster in a deal that hasn’t been made yet. That leaves Hachette and Macmillan, among the so-called Big Six, still on the outside as the general trade publishing behemoths rearrange themselves for whatever is the next stage of book publishing’s existence. 

I am not sure we really need an “explanation” for what is the resumption of a perfectly natural phenomenon. Big publishers have been merging with each other for several decades in a process that suddenly stopped after Bertelsmann acquired Random House (to add to its holding of Bantam Doubleday Dell) in 1998. We didn’t know it at the time, but that concluded a long string of mergers that had recently included Penguin’s acquisition of Putnam-Berkley, but which stretched back to the 1970s when pursuit of the paperback-hardover synergy had driven Viking and Penguin; Doubleday and Dell; and Random House-Ballantine and Fawcett into each other’s arms.

(Perhaps HarperCollins should get credit for the resumption of the era of consolidation. Their acquisition of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, combined with their holding of Zondervan, created a powerful position in one of publishing’s biggest vertical markets shortly before Penguin and Random House announced their plans.)

But consequential events always get an explanation, whether they deserve one or not, and this merger appears to many to be driven by consolidation among the retail intermediaries and the rational concern — amply documented by recent experience — that the retailers would use their leverage to press for more and more margin. This is complicated by the fact that both of the dominant retailers — Amazon in the online world and Barnes & Noble in the brick-and-mortar space — have small publishing operations of their own that are always available to put additional pressure on publishers at the originating end of the value chain.

There is an important asymmetry to take note of here. The retailers publish and are always a threat to acquire manuscripts directly and cut the publishers out but the publishers, particularly the biggest ones, don’t do retail and there is no obvious path for them to enter retailing in any significant way. (That last sentence was written with full cognizance that we await the debut of Bookish, which is an attempt by three of the Big Six to enter retailing in a significant way. Maybe when concrete plans for it are announced there will be some reasons provided to amend that thought.)

In my opinion, the dominant position that Amazon holds in online retailing and that B&N owns in shops are impregnable on their own terms in ways that the positions of each of the big publishers are not.

The threat to Barnes & Noble is that bookstores will become unsustainable: that a retailer trying to exist at scale with books as its primary product offering will, because of ebooks and online purchasing of print, simply become unviable. The threat to Amazon is more nuanced and more distant. One can imagine a world developing where content retailing evolves into niches by subject or tastemaker. But that world is not around the corner (an environment toxic to bookstore chains appears to be much closer) and it would be far easier to imagine how Amazon could adapt to niche online retailing than to see B&N adapting to deliver retail book selections that are only viable at a fraction of their current size.

(I consulted to them a decade ago and suggested that to no interest. They were shutting down their mall stores at the time and the idea seemed totally counterintuitive.  I’ve also written about it.)

 

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.