Read 'Til You Drop

Several weeks ago (whoops!), I received email from a reader, Michele Kennedy, asking me how to go about placing her novel with a publisher.  I told her that I'd love to write a general post on the subject, and she agreed to let me use her name in the posting.  So...  Here goes - a few thoughts on how to get published, focusing on novels, rather than short fiction or nonfiction, because that's what I know best.

1.  Make sure that your novel is the absolute best writing you can manage.  The story needs to be complete (no sections that you're going to flesh out later, no sections where you know the plot is convoluted, but you trust that some expert will help you straighten things out later.)  The writing needs to be polished (no notes to use your thesaurus later, no suggestions-to-self to delete the poetry of William Blake and add your own prophetic statements.)  I find it useful to let the manuscript ("ms") set for a few days/weeks/months and read it with fresh eyes (working on something else in the interim.)  I also find it useful to read the ms out loud - every single word - to hear where I've repeated thoughts, constructs, language.

2.  Make sure that your ms is in the best physical form that you can manage.  There are tons of style sheets out on the Web, some for specific publishers.  In general, your work should be printed from a computer on a printer that had plenty of toner (I'm sure there's someone out there still using a typewriter - make sure you start with a fresh ribbon), on one side of the paper, leaving ample (minimum 1") margins, double-spaced, in a plain font.  (Many editors still prefer Courier; others are willing to accept Times New Roman, and a very, very few - including my current editor - prefer more exotic fonts like Arial.)  I don't think there has ever been an editor born who prefers to read a ms in Comic Sans, or Old English, or any of the beautiful fonts you use for your holiday letters.

3.  Search for an agent.  Yes, I know that generations of authors were published without agents.  Yes, I know that agents take 15%.  Yes, I know that agents can be more difficult to find than editors/publishers.  But this is 2007.  Publishers have consolidated, so that you CAN'T send your ms to 37 different publishers before it finds its happy, best-selling home.  Your agent will more than earn his/her 15% by negotiating your publishing contract.  I speak as a (formerly) practicing lawyer - unless you have worked as an attorney specializing in publishing law, you'll need a trained professional to help you parse your contract.  Besides, an agent will know which publishers will give on which terms.

4.  Don't sign with a bad agent.  Yeah, I know.  How can you know who the good ones are?  How can you weed out the bad ones.  First, check publications that announce sales (Locus, in the SF field; Publisher's Lunch, in general, Publisher's Weekly.)  Your library is your friend, if your pocketbook is light.  See which agents are selling in your field.  Also, check the acknowledgments pages for books that are similar to yours - many authors tip their hat to their agents.  Use websites - Preditors and Editors and Agentquery are two that provide extensive information about the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Remember:  You should NEVER pay an agent to represent you.  If an agent can make a living off your representation fee, then s/he has no incentive to sell your work.  A good agent will NEVER agree to reconsider your work if and only if you work with a specific book doctor or private editor.  (A good agent, might, however, recommend that you consult with a trained professional - and s/he might have a list of professional editors for you to consider.)  Some good agents (and some bad agents) offer contracts, generally for a period of one year.  Just because your agent offers a contract, s/he isn't good or bad.  (I'm on a handshake arrangement with my agent, after our contract expired one day before he made my first sale.)

5.  Listen to your agent.  If s/he recommends making edits, consider those recommendations very, very seriously.  The greatest mistakes in my career have come from not paying adequate attention to my agent's advice.  You're paying this person for his/her expertise; don't walk away from that vast store of knowledge.

6.  Let your agent do his/her job.  Most agents don't report back every single time they submit a ms.  Many agents don't report back every time they receive a rejection letter.  Some agents will not take phone calls (except in career-emergency situations); they prefer to correspond by email.  Some agents prefer phone conversations with current clients.  (No agent wants to talk to you on the phone if you are not already in a business relationship.)  If you know that you need progress reports every day/week/month, tell your agent when you first start to work together.  (And if you need progress reports every day or week, consider another creative field - you're not going to get feedback that often in the writing field.

7.  While you're waiting for your agent to sell your work, learn what you can about the publishing field.  Consider reading other agents' blogs - Miss Snark, Pubrants, arcaedia, here on LJ.  Consider reading editors' blogs - alg, here on LJ, others that you find.  Haunt bookstores, studying what's on the shelf, what's new, what's being hyped (by the stores and by the publishers.)  Read, read, read.

8.  Start writing your next novel.  In a perfect case (and I don't know anyone who has enjoyed this "perfection"), you can sign an agent in a month, and your agent can land a publisher in another month.  (No, don't count on that.  Think in terms of months - plural - or a year.)  Your editor is likely to ask, right off the bat, does Author have anything else?  Make sure that your agent can answer yes.  Now, be intelligent about what you start writing next.  It doesn't do you a lot of good to have seven novels set in the fantasy forest world of R'tel'K, if you're not able to sell the first one.  But other fantasy novels?  Or other directions to take your main characters?

So - there you have it.  My thoughts on how to move toward publication.  Only my thoughts - others will certainly have different opinions.  Anyone?  Care to chime in?

Mindy, enjoying the time to write up entries like this...

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of discussion about writing process and how different novelists create their work.  I didn't have time to engage then (I was, um, too busy meeting a deadline, resulting from the way I create my work :-) )  There was a follow-up discussion launched by technosage, which I did join.  You can read that thread, and some of my initial comments here.  Technosage invited me to expand on those ideas, so I'm going to, but in my own little corner of the world - you know, in case the interest has totally passed.

The specific question at hand was how expand a spark of a character into the fire of a story.

I have started every one of my novels with a firm notion of who the main characters are.  I muddle through their personalities (in my head, not on paper or notecards), playing with quirks and traits that will - if all goes well - make them interesting, but will also make them distinctive from other characters I've created in the past.  For example, I'm about to start writing the Super Secret Synopsis for a new chicklit paranormal series.  I know who the main character is, and I know a lot of things about her personality.  Some of those things have been specifically chosen so that she ISN'T Jane Madison.  (For example, my new character is going to have a hearty aversion to Shakespeare.)

Once I've spent a day or week or fortnight muddling about the character, then I start to sketch out the plot.  The plot is tied directly to the character.  If my plot involves the high stakes world of female bodybuilding, then it's unlikely that my main character is going to be a long-haired, long-nailed, anorexic beauty queen more obsessed with her wardrobe than with her training schedule.  Instead, the plot has to flow organically beside the characters.  Certainly, the characters will be carried by the plot at times, and they might end up at places they had not anticipated, but they can't end up in a totally different world, facing completely different challenges, with completely different supporting or competing casts.

To take an absurd example - caste-bound Rani from the Glasswright Series is not going to pop brightly in Jane Madison's library, ask about the life of Pilgrim Jair, and the hop back into her own story.

There are *times* when I modify a character to match a plot (or a narrative quirk).  For example, Jane Madison didn't originally have two masters degrees (in English and Library Science.) She picked up the English degree when the Shakespeare allusions became too thick for the average librarian to have at her finger-tips.  The core of the character remained the same, but the specifics were tweaked.

If there's a continuum between plot building characters and characters building plot, my writing is probably at about 90% character, 10% plot. 

Where do the rest of you fall on that continuum?  Have you read books that seem completely dominated by one or the other (or a totally different) method of construction?

Mindy, analyzing the process even as she works it

We've all joked with author friends about buying a hundred copies of the most recent book, to boost sales and generally create that gleaming aura of success.  Of course, with book prices being so high these days, most of us are strapped to buy one copy - and then, we need to pick and choose which books we'll buy.  Here are 5 things that you can do to help out your favorite authors, and they won't cost you a penny.

1.  TALK about your favorite authors and their books.  Tell your friends, your family, your co-workers.  If you like an author, spread the good news!

2.  WRITE about your favorite authors and their books.  If you have a blog or a newsgroup or a website, let people know which authors and books you like.  People read those notices and they begin to remember names.  Even if they don't print out your entries to carry with them to the bookstore, you've helped to build a positive impression.

3.  REVIEW your favorite authors and their books.  Go to Amazon.  Take a moment to type in a review, adding the "star" rating that you think is appropriate.  While certain bestsellers on Amazon have hundreds of reviews, most books have fewer than ten.  Your opinion could radically change the appearance of an author's rating, their ranking on Amazon, and the willingness of others to read your favorite books. 

4.  ASK about your favorite authors and their books.  If you try to find them in your local library and they aren't on the shelves, ask the librarians to order them.  Ask them to purchase multiple copies.  Ask them to expand those genres in their collection.  Most public libraries take recommendations from the public very seriously.

5.   PLACE your favorite authors' books.  (Yes, I know this last point is controversial - that's me, balancing on the knife edge of controversy!)  When you go to a bookstore, face the books you like (turn them, so that their face is out, rather than their spines).  I'm not advocating that you move books to a different part of the store (e.g., those tables up front where publishers have purchased display space.)  I'm not advocating that you obscure other books on the shelves.  I'm merely saying that when three or four mass-marke paperbacks are spined on the shelf, turn them to face out.  And if there's extra space on the shelf, without endangering other authors' materials, face your pick.

I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to do one or more of these things on my behalf.  Your time and energy are truly, truly appreciated!

Mindy, who also secretly works on behalf of others :-)

No, not Alcoholics Anonymous.

"Author's Alterations". This is an editing stage I haven't seen before (but seems to be all the rage at sevreal houses :-)

I received the AA pages for GIRL'S GUIDE - they consist of 8.5 x 11 pages of text, with 23 - 25 lines on a page. The lines are numbered on the left side of the page, and the text is basic Courier. My mission is to read through the text and make edits (keeping in mind that any change I make might - accidentally - introduce other changes down the line.) I indicate my changes on a form, listing the page, the line number, the change, and indicating whether it's an author's alteration, a correction of text that I previously supplied to them in correct form, or a correction of text that was improperly edited at an earlier stage. (In theory, if I have a lot of author's alterations, I pay for the changes.)

The pages, with their numbering down the side, look like legal documents filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (without the blue cover sheet.)

The law has ruined my brain.

Mindy, off to the day-job, when she'd rather be completing AAs!

Thanks, all of you, who contributed thoughts about how I should approach the Writing Fantasy seminar. Plans continue to develop - we're looking at dates in October.

In a perfect world, the seminar will be a Friday evening and all day the following Saturday. We are working on getting a Huge Name Author to attend the Friday evening - I would interview him, laying the groundwork for what we'll cover on Saturday.

Saturday will lead off with a session on defining fantasy, testing how far the genre can be stretched before it's something else (another genre, "literature", etc.) Then there will be two sessions on nuts and bolts - worldbuilding, character development, plot structure, and the integration of same. (Those sessions will be broken up by a lunch hour.) We'll wrap up with a session on how to structure writing groups, submit materials, and maximize publication potential.

The course will mirror, in some ways, courses that this organization has done in the past. (They had a wildly successful one on romance writing in 1998 and a horribly unsuccessful one, also on romance writing, just a few months ago.) At other times of the year, they offer hands-on writing courses, more like the ones that Linda mentioned, so I won't be venturing there.

As things progress, I'll keep all of you posted!

Mindy, crossing fingers that Mr. Huge Name makes himself available...

I believe that I'm going to be teaching a course in the fall, tentatively called "Writing Fantasy Fiction." It will be a one-day seminar, divided into four 1.5-hour sessions. It will be offered in downtown D.C., and it will cost approximately $150 (the hosting organization sets the price, not me.)

At this point, I have no idea who will sign up - if the class attendees will be readers of fantasy, writers of fantasy, readers and/or writers of other genres, homebodies who didn't have anything else to do on an autumn Saturday, etc. I likely won't know the class composition until the moment I'm standing in front of the room. I anticipate that there will be somewhere between 50 and 500 people attending, based on other sessions offered by this institution.

What would you want to learn in such a class? If you consider yourself beyond the learning stage for such a class, what would you want to teach? What would you find to be a complete and utter waste of time?

Mindy, soliciting all bits of wisdom...

OK... I'm almost afraid to touch this subject with a ten-foot pole, and the entire length, depth, and breadth of the Internet to protect me.

Writing a synopsis. I do not know a single author who enjoys the project. I know some who are good at it. Others who get by. Lots and lots who are outright terrible at it.

Synopses are hard (in the same way that comedy is hard.) You need to know your audience. Some synopsis-readers (i.e., editors) want a two-page document. Some want a four-page document. Some will tolerate ten pages. Authors know every last detail of their stories; they can't imagine leaving out the imaginative creations that appear at the end of Chapter Forty-Two, for a few brief pages.

My agent coached me to write my synopsis for GIRL'S GUIDE as if I were writing copy for the back of a book. (I decided, though, to make it grammatically correct!) My GUIDE synopsis was very short (about four paragraphs), and it did not "give away" the details of the last half of the book. (Um, I couldn't give them away. I didn't know them yet.)

While I think that I pushed the outer edge of what a writer can get away with in a synopsis by doing GUIDE that way, I think that the "back of the book" advice is good. It makes the author think about *essentials*.

Today, over at Romancing the Blog, there are ten links to websites about writing synopses. I don't agree with all of the advice, but it's fantastic to see it all collected in one place.

So? What's worked for you? And do you hate synopses as much as I do?

Mindy, settling back into Marathoning...

Several times, now, I've mentioned that I get a lot of my writing done during "Writing Marathons." I've never, though, put complete details about the conduct of Marathons in one place. So, here goes...

For Writing Marathon, I select a week when I will have minimal interruptions - from the day job, from family obligations, from pet obligations, etc. I notify the day job that I will be unavailable, taking the days as vacation time (not as "work from home" days.)

I prepare the house, making sure that I have appropriate supplies on hand. Appropriate supplies include a large variety of teas (both caffeinated and decaf/herbal), my preferred breakfast (plain yogurt with berries and a bit of dry cereal on top), snacks that aren't too intensely sugary, a handful of reward snacks for end of day success (e.g., a roll of SweetTarts), and in-house lunch supplies (a ton of different fresh veggies for salad, some protein for said salad (usually garbanzo beans, or a few slices of lunch meat), some pretzels.

I prepare my writing. By this, I mean that I have my outline in place. I know where I am in the story and where I intend to go. I know what happens in each chapter, and where each chapter ends. I know what topics I am likely to need to research (although those topics sometimes arise out of nowhere.)

I identify chosen interruptions. Each day, I need some break, which I try to schedule between drafting the chapter du jour and revising that chapter. Breaks might be some shopping that I know must be conducted (there are few things more satisfying than running dull errands in the middle of the day while the rest of the world is working! I feel like I'm cheating, getting out of the grocery store without waiting in line, or completing a Target run, or buying socks at the department store across the street.)

And then, I write. I set my alarm for my usual time. I do my usual exercise routine. I eat my usual breakfast. I get dressed (not in my usual, office, clothes, but in jeans and casual shirts). And I sit my butt in my office chair and draft a chapter. I take a break, using a chosen interruption. And I sit my butt back in my chair and revise a chapter. In the evenings, I eat dinner, watch TV, go to movies, or do something else that requires very little brainpower. I try to go to bed at normal time (but usually drift a bit later - toward midnight or 1:00.) I read a little before bed, something out of genre if I'm Marathoning on a fantasy, something in-genre if I'm Marathoning chick-lit. (What can I say? It works for me :-) )

For a full Marathon, I follow the pattern for nine days - one work-week and the weekends on either side. I can finish about 5000 words a day - close to have a Red Dress novel. I find that the writing flows more smoothly, because I don't have to refresh my memory on what I've said and done and defined for my characters.

Do others Marathon? If so, in similar or different ways?

Mindy, starting a Marathon (albeit one with known non-Marathonish interruptions on the weekends and on Tuesday)

So, last week, I received my line edited manuscript, for GIRL'S GUIDE. The manuscript was printed out on paper (I had submitted it electronically). It had a number of typesetting marks in the body (indicating that my dashes were m-dashes, correcting a handful of typos (grrrr - there shouldn't have been *any*), adjusting to house style (e.g., "gray" instead of "grey), etc.

There were notes in the margin, where my editor liked specific language (including one wistful sigh over a hamburger joint that really, truly exists here in DC.)

And there were queries. Was it really Monday, or did I mean Tuesday? Hadn't she already told him this story when they went out to dinner? Did these characters know what that one was doing during her twenty-five year absence? Etc.

I took the manuscript, and I looked at every single page. I shrugged at the typesetting marks (there were none I disagreed with, and most were for cosmetic reasons.) I smiled at the compliments. And I placed a Post-It note on each page with a query.

I didn't let myself react. I didn't let myself say, "Yeah, but..." I didn't let myself rant and rave and defend the glorious purity of my prose. I just marked the page.

Then, nearly a week later (due to the intervention of Life), I sat down with the Post-It fringed manuscript. I turned to the first note, and I read my editor's query. I answered it, adding a line of text. For the second one, I added a short paragraph. For the third one, I deleted a word. For the fourth, I hopped onto the Internet, confirmed a fact, and changed a word. Etc. (I left the Post-It notes on the page while I was doing this phase.)

When I had answered all the queries, I went back through the manuscript, pulling out all the pages with Post-It notes, removing the Post-Its, and placing the edited pages into a pile. I double-checked my "clean" pile (the stack of pages where I had marked no queries and made no changes) - sure enough, I found one page, where I had inadvertently returned a formerly Post-It-noted page to the wrong stack.

Today, I'll photocopy my edited pages and put them in an envelope, jetting them up to New York. (Yes, I keep a photocopy of the edits, even if it's an entire ms. Yes, I've needed my photocopy, once, when the USPS let me down.)

And now, I wait for the next stage....

Mindy, quite pleased to have completed her line edits (and well in advance of her March 3 deadline.)

Over the years, I've participated in a variety of online forums. I started out on some sites, desperately seeking information about publishing short stories and, later, novels. I gained a great deal of practical information about the publishing industry from people more experienced than I.

As the web evolves, there are more and more author- and aspiring-author sites out there. One site, with a working forum for conversations, is Bard's Quill. The Bard's Quill forum has a variety of topics, including areas where interested writers can post fantasy or science fiction short stories. (There's also a group of topics devoted to Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series, one of my first great loves in the fantasy genre.)

One of the founders of Bard's Quill, Kendall Boyd, approached me recently, to ask if he could repost one of my posts from year's back, about how I write (and, specifically, how I overcome the hesitation to *start* writing a new book, new chapter, etc.) Very pleased that Kendall had the good grace to *ask* before posting, I happily granted permission.

The Bard's Quill forum is here:

http://www.bardsquill.com/forum/index.php

My writing advice is under Tips and Tricks of the Trade, then under Published Author Tips, or you can click here:

http://www.bardsquill.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29

Mindy (pleased as punch to be in the company of C.J. Cherryh and Holly Lisle!)

As frequent readers of this blog will know, I did a presentation at Bread and Chocolate yesterday, for some law librarians. One of the questions that came up was about my writers' group - did I have one, how did it work, etc. After my presentation, another patron of the cafe came up to ask me for additional information about finding groups - it's a topic that many people find interesting.

I stumbled onto my writers' group. Way back, about ten years ago, I posted in an online forum (Orson Scott Card's Hatrack, maybe?) asking if anyone had ever taken any classes at the Writers' Center, an adult education facility in nearby Bethesda, Maryland. A woman posted with some information, and then she invited me to join her writers' group. She emailed me a date and time and place.

And she emailed me the chapters that she was having the group review at the next meeting - the opening scenes from an anti-death-penalty novel, involving violent death, lesbian S&M, and very naughty language.

The writing was excellent, but I became a bit worried. I mean, people get *killed* when they meet up with Internet friends. How did I know what would be waiting for me at the address I'd been given? How did I know *who* would be waiting for me? Were the chapters a coded warning? An invitation?

I phoned one of my law school study group partners and gave him all the information I had. I told him that I would phone him by no later than 5:00 that Sunday; if I didn't call, he was supposed to report my absence to the police. OK, so I was a bit of a drama queen, but I was really unnerved by the violence in the writing sample. And this was ten years ago, when the whole Internet thing was wilder and perceived-to-be-more-dangerous.

I showed up at the house and was greeted by a friendly, mother-like woman who was wearing a t-shirt with dolphins on it. I entered the sunlit living room of the hosts, and I was given a plate so that I could help myself to desserts from the side table. I met a dozen people who were all well-spoken, kind, everyday people. And when everyone decided to go out to dinner after the meeting, I sheepishly called my law school friend and told him all was well, and that he didn't need to get the police involved.

For other people looking to join a writers' group - if you have an independent bookstore in your area, check to see if they have message boards. If you don't have an independent, some of the large chains help groups come together, or serve as meeting places for groups. You can also check at your public library, or at adult education centers in your area. And if you don't connect with a group that way, there's always the Internet... :-)

Mindy, who laughs now, but was really unnerved at the time.

One of the most frequent questions I get is how I allocate time for writing. So, here goes: an attempted explanation...

I work full time as the director of a large law-firm library - my hours are 9:30 to 6:00, and I have about an hour commute on each end. Therefore, I need to manage my writing time as efficiently as possible.

I wake up each morning by 6:00, and I work out for half an hour, first thing. I eat breakfast, shower, get dressed for the office, and then I plant myself at my writing desk. On a good day, I'm there by 8:00; I always make it by 8:15. And then, I write until 8:45. I used to con myself into believing that I could due various things (check email, read webpages, play Solitaire, play online pinball) to warm up, but I found that I lost all my writing time to those things. So, now, it's writing, straight off the bat. In that half hour (or, occasionally, 45 minutes) I can get about a thousand words written. Or a thousand words revised.

I draft a chapter in a few days, and then I revise it for a few days, usually reading over the material three times until I'm satisfied with it.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Because life interrupts (I have managers' meetings at the office, or the car needs to be repaired, or I succumb to the siren call of the web), this formula doesn't let me complete a book in my six-month contractual time. Therefore, I spend vacation time from the day-job to do Writing Marathon. (Insert long boring story about how I successfully negotiated to have six weeks of annual leave from my day job, in addition to federal holidays, but including sick leave.)

During Writing Marathon, I still get up at 6, I still eat, shower, and get dressed. And then I sit. And write. Draft and revise - a chapter a day. By the end of a week (with both weekends) that's nine chapters - about 35,000 words or one third of a novel. (Yes, I'm a twitchy wreck by the end of the week, but I'm thrilled with what I got accomplished.) I used to gorge on junk food during Marathon, but now I find that I need to be even more cautious about what I eat - too much junk, and I'm ready to do Sleeping Marathon, or Television Marathon, or Contemplate the Universe Marathon instead of the Writing one.

Mindy, contemplating whether she'll need *two* Writing Marathons to complete the sequel to GIRL'S GUIDE on time.

I've received email from several people, asking me how I write. We're talking physically, not "where do I get my ideas" or "do I work from an outline." I figured I'd answer the questions here - probably in an ongoing series, an FAQ of writing.

So. Physically. I sit in a completely luxurious CXO brand office chair that I thought cost way too much but has proven to be worth every penny (especially when I was able to negotiate the "Healthy Back Store" highway robbery price down to the "Sit 4 Less" turnpike petty theft price). It has more adjustments than an Aeron, and more padding as well. When I sit in it, my entire body gives me a grateful little sigh of relief.

I pull the chair up to a computer desk that looks like excess space shuttle siding; I bought it at IKEA about fifteen years ago. I assembled it by guessing at the right heights for the desk surface, the monitor surface, and the storage shelf at the top, and all my guesses were correct. The desk is in front of two tall, thin windows; I have blinds that open at the top, so that I get a little bit of outside light, but no curious stares from folks walking by on the sidewalk. (Our townhouse is a few blocks from the subway; there are lots of pedestrians in the neighborhood, and our windows are about six feet from the sidewalk.)

I use WordPerfect 10, running it on a Dell Dimension 4550 desktop, with a standard Dell keyboard and a Samsung 19" monitor (my newest purchase, and one that I am fast falling in love with.) I use a Kensington Orbit mouse, which my husband insisted I needed. (I didn't believe him at the time, but he was right.)

I usually have a small grey cat sitting on my lap.

In short, there's nothing particularly special about my writing area, nothing unique (except the small grey cat), nothing that couldn't be replicated by everyone out there. And yet, I suspect that no one reading this has the same set-up at home. I'm fascinated by the different ways that we all get to the same end-point - creating published or publishable books. I've taken several classes at the Smithsonian, where they interview mystery writers, or historical novelists, or whatever writers. Inevitably, I find the "how do you make your work" questions the most interesting.

Mindy, ready to shove the cat off her lap and head out to the day-job