Tag Archives: Writing Process

by

Customer No Service

Embed from Getty Images

It’s the stuff frustration is made of: You have trouble with your internet, and try as you might to troubleshoot the problem, you have to make the inevitable call for service.

So you listen to the all the options because the menu has recently changed. You risk dialing zero in the hopes of talking to a real person, but the phone system kicks you out, and you have to call back and listen to all the menu options again. When someone finally answers, you discover you really need to talk to someone in a different department, and you’re on hold for 20 minutes while you should be cooking supper and washing a load if towels and ten thousand other things. When you finally talk to someone qualified to send a refresh signal to your router, nothing happens. Still no internet. So they schedule a technician to come out between noon and 5:00 P.M. the next day (when you already have a doctor’s appointment, but you also have to have the internet, so what can you do?). You stay home all day. The technician calls at 5:00 to say he’s running late (you could have gone to the doctor after all), and when he finally shows up, he tells you your modem was hooked up in a place that never should have gotten service (even though it worked fine for two years), but he, the almighty technician, can fix it, so he does, and after he leaves, you have spotty service, at best, and – surprise! – you get charged an extra $80 on your next bill.

Granted, it’s not just internet, phone, cable, and satellite providers who suffer from what Clark Howard calls customer no service, although they often seem the biggest culprits. Ever since I’ve been thinking about making this a blog topic, an inordinate number of examples have popped up, from me discovering my cable company misinformed me about the cost of our new service, to a friend missing her flight because the gate was closed 18 minutes early, to another friend visiting a doctor with great hopes of finally figuring out what’s wrong with her body, only for her new doctor to treat her like she’s crazy.

It’s sad that although we dread these customer no service encounters, we’ve come to expect them. It’s almost as if it’s a prerequisite for the big companies – which makes the companies with good service stand out as the exceptions. Companies are so big that there are no individuals anymore. And I would imagine that this can be just as demeaning for the people who work there as the ones who need service.

But since when did this extend to doctors – the people we trust to take care of us? Where will it stop? I could joke and say that one day parents will start ignoring their kids – until they get annoying enough that the parents finally give in and say, “What do you want?” But wait – it’s already like that. Not for everyone, of course, but anywhere you find people, you will see that service and care no longer come first on the list.

Like my friend, I’ve also had a negative experience with a doctor. (Well, I’ve had several, but I’ll just talk about the most recent.) After an annual exam, my physician asked the standard, “Do you have any other concerns?” I have the feeling it’s a question like, “How are you?” – we ask out of politeness, expecting the answer to be, “Just fine” or “Doing great.” If it’s anything that causes concern, we really don’t want to hear it. And this time, I told my doctor that I did have concerns. She couldn’t make sense of any of my symptoms, told me I might be gaining weight while exercising and cutting back on carbs because of my age (I was 31 at the time), and finally dismissed me by ordering bloodwork (make it the lab’s problem). I received a cheerful phone call from a nurse a few weeks later. Wasn’t it great? My bloodwork was totally normal. Then why don’t I feel normal? I wondered. But I knew of a doctor of Oriental medicine from my church, and I had the hope that she would listen, that she wouldn’t just order some bloodwork and send me out of her office.

As soon as I walked in the door for my first appointment, she had my bloodwork in hand and told me that I did, in fact, have a problem. She wanted to hear about all of my symptoms, even the ones that seemed unrelated. When I asked her how my doctor could have missed all the signs, she said that most doctors work within a much larger range. For my particular problem – hypothyroidism – many people who should be treated aren’t because they fall within an artificially wide “normal” range. Most practitioners simply don’t have the time to sit down and discuss symptoms and solutions with their patients. They wait until the symptoms are much more severe, then prescribe whatever pill will solve the problem and get their patients out the door.

This is where I wax nostalgic about the good old days when towns had one doctor who knew everyone by his or her first name and, therefore, actually cared. Now, of course, I know I’m being unfair. Those doctors had hard lives. And so did the merchants and farmers and everyone else, but it seems that they took more pride in what they did. It wasn’t just a paycheck but a calling. They cared about their reputations, yes, but they also cared about the people they served. I think this could be a big reason why the “go local” movement has become popular. We can have one-on-one interactions directly with the people who make the goods or provide the services. They have a stake in their occupations, and they actually care about the end users, not just the profit.

It all comes down, I think, to relationships. There are too many people with problems, whether they be slow internet or a malfunctioning thyroid, and too few people who care about solving them. I think both sides can share some of the blame, but it’s especially sad when we no longer treat each other like humans. It’s called customer service, not customer hassling, right? One of Merriam Webster’s many definitions of “serve” is “to give the service and respect due.” Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all receive just a little respect? Maybe what’s wrong with so many people is that they’ve lived so long without respect that they care more about a paycheck or whatever game they’re playing in their lonely cubicle than the person who just needs help, who maybe also needs a little TLC.

In this digital age, where we keep up with friends via internet or text, and we’ve lost a lot of the human touch, I think that some of these “archaic” values are more important than ever. Instant connectivity is certainly convenient, but it can also isolate us. In my own interactions, it helps to remember that people aren’t just lists of names and phone numbers. They have problems and dreams just like me. It’s a good thing to remember when we interact with complete strangers, especially when we’re tempted to slip and forget what it means to be of service.

Related articles
by

Procrastination (I’m Writing This When I Should Be Writing Something Else)

Anne Tyler Quote

Anne Tyler might just have a point. Take this post, for instance: I’ve been thinking about writing about procrastination for a while. And what’s the best way to do this? Well, to procrastinate, of course. (I find it’s often helpful to write about things that I’ve experienced first-hand.) Granted, I did have other topics to cover first, which I did. Then I even sat down and wrote a few paragraphs. Which I let sit for five days. Then I came back and erased them all.

Sometimes I don’t write because I have other things to do. I am a very structured person, and as such, I cannot allow myself to write a blog post or edit my novel or read for pleasure when I need to pack my son’s lunch or send an important e-mail or wash a load of laundry. But sometimes I don’t write because… well, maybe I’m just wasting time on Facebook. Granted, I don’t do that too often – and I even got rid of all the games on my phone to eliminate those distractions – but there are still plenty of times when I should be writing, but I do things that could easily wait until later instead.

If such a self-disciplined person as me has a hard time staying on task, what hope is there for writers who aren’t nearly as structured to ever start the writing process?

I have a two-part answer, and the first part is that I think it’s a me thing, separate from being self-disciplined.

This isn’t something that’s just happened to me since having kids. It’s something that’s gone on as long as I’ve written. I remember spending afternoons at my parents’ business, pacing through the same four rooms, building scenes in my mind, sometimes even muttering the lines. I would hash over those same scenes ad infinitum. I still do this, although nowadays, I’m not a teenager with a bunch of free time but a mom who squeezes all of her creative thinking into stolen moments in the shower or car or while folding laundry.

The second part of my answer is that thinking is a part of the writing process – or any creative process. Now, the problem is that if you don’t ever move beyond thinking – to the actual doing part – you are not a writer or a painter or an inventor (or whatever) but merely someone who aspires to be one of those things.

Philip Pullman Quote

Thank you for making my point, Mr. Pullman. And my problem is that I don’t always take my ideas to my “desk.”

Sometimes I’ll think over a scene so much that I just assume I’ve written it. And then, as often happens, I’ll move onto something else. Months or even years later, I may look for that scene, only to discover that it was only ever in my head. Other times, I do sit down to write, but the words that were perfected in my mind have all but evaporated. Or they just don’t ring true anymore. Something has changed between the initial thinking and the writing.

Madeleine L'Engle Quote II

Well said, Ms. L’Engle – and the same thing can apply to blogs. But I don’t think it’s a totally bad thing. I think internalizing a scene or some dialogue or just an idea is all a part of the writing process. As long as I do eventually sit down and write (like I’m doing right now), it adds up to the creative whole.

Earlier this week, I discovered an incongruity in my novel. A scene hinged on my protagonist having an opinion based on a conversation she overheard. Unfortunately, I realized this conversation happened when she was three or four and would have been way over her head at the time (if she’d even been paying attention). I had to re-work the scene, keeping the content but changing how it happened. I couldn’t move on until I’d fixed the scene, and I had to think it through first. For several days.

I’ll admit, I was a little intimidated by it. When you realize that you’ve created a problem that you have to write your way out of, sometimes the easy way out is just to give up – set the manuscript aside. And I’ve done that before, but I can’t with this one because I’m shopping literary agents. I had to tackle that scene, and after letting it simmer and then reading a few scenes around it, I figured out a solution.

Madeleine L'Engle Quote

Yet again, I feel like Madeleine L’Engle is talking to me. I am that woman with children and another job – a woman who wants to write, who needs to. After all, I can only procrastinate so long before the creative dam breaks. I have legitimate distractions, but I also have stories to tell. So I will continue to fight myself but understand that sometimes it’s okay to just think – as long as I do carve out that time to take my ideas to my desk-slash-laptop.

Speaking of which, I think it’s about time to wrap this up so I can get back to it.

by

What’s in a Title?

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/88295374

Recently, when speaking with a group of kids about being an author, one of the questions was how to come up with the perfect title. Good lord, I wish I’d been able to give an adequate answer. Instead, I pointed out titles of books I knew they’d read, like John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. It started the conversation, at least, but it didn’t give them a fool-proof formula. Such a thing doesn’t exist.

I used to keep a list of what I considered brilliant titles. The problem, of course, is that they have nothing to do with anything I’ve ever written. And even tougher than coming up with book titles was deciding what to call all those pesky chapters lurking between the covers. (It never occurred to me until recently that I could just use “Chapter One” or simply “1.”)

It’s not just the little people like me who deal with this. I’m re-reading Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, and while the book titles are decent, the chapter titles are inconsistent and often the pits. Yes, this is opinion speaking, but whenever I read some of them, I think, This guy was trying way too hard. Other times it seems like he just gave up. The first couple times I read these books, I didn’t give the chapter titles much thought, but this time around, I’m in a pickier mood. (Recently, I heard of a scholar who criticized the Bible for using subtitles for the various sections. It gives away what’s about to happen, she says. While I discounted her argument at the start, it’s niggled me enough to make me write this post.)

Unless you’re writing cookbooks or some other form of non-fiction, in which you need chapter titles and subtitles for quick reference’s sake, why bother with fiction? At first I thought it might just be a young adult thing, but then I remembered an adult series, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, which uses chapter titles throughout. While these are great books, the chapter titles leave a lot to be desired. Sometimes they’re melodramatic (“I Shall Go Down to the Sea”), and sometimes they kind of act as mini spoilers (“In Which Jamie Smells a Rat”). Other chapter titles read like throw-away lines that simply reminded the author what she was writing about in this particular chunk.

What I find most helpful are chapter titles that place the reader. For instance, in Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus series (great books, by the way), the chapter titles are simply characters’ names. Although narrated completely in third person, this tells the reader whose perspective is represented in each chapter. (The only problem I see with this is when you accidentally open to the last chapter and see that it’s narrated by a character that the author wants you to believe is dead. Whoops.)

Both Stephenie Meyer and Veronica Roth used this character-name approach in books later in their series (Twilight and Divergent, respectively). This is especially helpful, considering these books are both narrated first person. Paolini tries it once in Eldest. It’s the first time he switches to a perspective other than Eragon’s. Instead, it’s his cousin Roran, and the oh-so-imaginative title of Roran’s first chapter? Right, it’s “Roran.” Which I would be fine with if other chapters weren’t titled “Requiem” or “The Beginning of Wisdom.” Like I said, sometimes he tried too hard, and others, he didn’t try hard enough.

I know, for someone who admittedly can’t write a good title unless she just lucks into it, why am I complaining? I guess I’m really not. I’m just wondering aloud (or in print). Chapter titles are convenient if you have a table of contents. And there are some brilliant ones out there. “The Boy Who Lived” comes to mind. (Please tell me you understand that reference – but just in case you don’t, it’s from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. What a great chapter title to pull you right into an amazing series.) So I guess they can’t all be bad. I’d just like some consistency, please.

Until reading Outlander and re-reading Eragon, I never gave chapter titles much thought. Some books have them, and others don’t. But now that I’ve started thinking about them so much, I know I’m going to scrutinize everything I read. Do I make predictions when there are titles, or do I forget the titles as soon as I finish reading them? Out of curiosity, I’ve picked a few books, different genres, different time periods, a diverse range of authors, and here’s what I’ve found:

Books with Chapter Titles:

Books with Only Numbered Chapters:

Books with Part Titles but No Chapter Titles:

There are other books that defy these kinds of categorizations, such as John Green’s Looking for Alaska and Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone. To see their unique chapter distinctions, I guess you’ll just have to check them out.

After looking back at all these books, some of which I’ve enjoyed multiple times, I realize that the chapter titles (or not) aren’t what I usually take away. Only when they get in the way are they problematic, such as with Outlander and Eragon. Yet with The Heroes of Olympus and Harry Potter, they actually helped orient me in the fictional worlds I was visiting – and sometimes even encouraged me to keep turning the pages. (She’s finally going to tell us about horcruxes! Oh wait, she isn’t. Darn, I guess I’ll just have to read another chapter…)

There isn’t a right or wrong way – or even one type of book that must follow one particular format. If I could, this is what I’d tell that middle school girl who asked me about titles: write what feels natural. If coming up with a creative name for each chapter feels contrived, don’t do it. But if titles are your thing, give them a try. At the end of the day, writing your story is the most important thing; fiction titles really should be secondary.

It seems that authors pick what they deem right for whichever books they’re writing at the time. After going over all the different types of chapter designations on my shelves, it’s obvious that I can’t just throw out one or another; there are some pretty awesome books that I don’t want to miss out on just because their chapter titles might put an idea in my head about some possible outcome.

Besides, you never know when an author is trying to trick you. Sometimes they can be pretty sneaky.

by

How Do You Know What to Cut?


http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/138307331

Last year I asked a number of beta readers to read my 120,000-word NaNoWriMo 2013 novel. After receiving an excellent critique from one of these beta readers, I shared with him how annoyed I was that I was somehow supposed to cut my word count in half. “What would you cut?” he asked. He understood that the novel had issues that needed to be fixed, but he didn’t think length was one of them. He couldn’t fathom how I could drastically cut yet keep the same story.

But I’ve done it. (Well, I haven’t cut it in half, but I’ve cut over 40,000 words.) When he recently offered to read the edited version of my novel, the question changed to, “How do you know what to cut?” My friend is simply curious and fascinated about the writing process, but many writers want to know the same thing. Lost, they wonder if they can cut and still keep the integrity of their stories.

It comes down to more than just correcting typos. Typos I can fix all day, and in fact, I was the queen of clean copies back before I took my first fiction workshop. Clean copies that weren’t all that great to read, as it turns out.

After my first story was critiqued, I discovered that I wasn’t the prodigy I’d always imagined myself to be. I assumed, at first, that people just didn’t get what I was trying to say. It was their problem. It was humbling to realize that they didn’t get me because my stories were a mess.

The credit goes to Ari, who led those fiction workshops. Much of how I write and edit today goes all the way back to those seven semester-long workshops that I took from 2002 to 2005.

Reading others’ stories and discussing them brought to light so many issues that are common among many writers, not to mention learning a lot of tough lessons when my own stories were critiqued. Ari has all kinds of pet peeves, and to this day, I don’t think I’ve written a sentence that starts, “As he went to the fridge” or “As she tied her shoes.” That particular type of sentence drove Ari nuts, and I guess it’s because it shows up so often. The point isn’t to avoid that one kind of sentence but to be intentional. Don’t fall into the trap of using the same sentence structure over and over again. You’ll find yourself on the slippery slope to lazy, sloppy writing.

Showing instead of telling was another biggie. (You can read more about that here.) I used to be the type of writer who had to describe the layout of every room and the outfit of every character. Was this necessary? Nope. That’s not to say that all descriptions are bad, but what you write must add to the story.

For instance, Harry Potter’s lightning scar, green eyes, and trademark glasses form a quick mental picture, and the scar and eyes have their own stories. But is it important to know what brand of jeans or what color shirt he wears? Do we need to know every single item he keeps on top of his dresser? Only the ones that may come up later. Why? Chekov explains it so well: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

Eragon and its sequels are popular young adult novels that run to excess when it comes to descriptions and scenes that don’t move the story forward. Each book could easily be cut by tens of thousands of words. Some descriptions are helpful. We’re dealing with a fantasy world, after all. But too much bogs down the text, gives it a plodding pace. I enjoy these books, but I know I have to invest a lot of time when I want to read them. Not because they’re thick books but because there’s a lot of unneeded padding packed into those pages.

You may have heard the phrase, “Kill your darlings” (attributed to just about every well-known writer, and it’s because they all know it’s true). Does this mean that I need to cut every word, every line, every scene that I’m proud of? Well, not quite. But what it does mean is that writers often get attached to bits of prose that ought not be included in the manuscripts where they currently reside.

Ugh. But I worked so hard on that scene. The words flow beautifully. If there’s one thing I won’t cut, it’s that line…

I’ve been there and cut that. My trick to save myself from writer’s remorse is to save all major revisions as separate documents. Then I don’t feel quite as bad about nixing a line or scene when I know I can go back and paste it in again. Which I’ve done.

It takes a certain willingness to cut any- and everything that is not essential to the story. It takes a thick skin when you realize what you cut the first time wasn’t enough (even if it was a lot), and you have to go back and perform major surgery again. It also takes a certain editorial know-how, which may mean that you’ll either have to hire an editor or babysit your favorite reader’s kids for the next five years. Even if you’re a proficient editor, I highly recommend beta readers. (Just be ready to read their stories, too. It’s only fair.)

As Stephen King recommends in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, temporal distance also helps. Take a month off; then come back to a manuscript with fresh eyes. You’ll be surprised at the number of throw away scenes that seemed brilliant at the time but are really just filler – and conversely, the number of excellent scenes you’re surprised you actually wrote. (And while we’re talking about On Writing, which I highly recommend you get, King also gives an excellent example of a block of text before, during, and after editing, so you can see the actual process.)

You may notice, after coming back to your story after a break, that you don’t like your opening chapter. You don’t even need that first scene, in the grand scheme of things. Or maybe it belongs much later. Be open to not just cutting words out of sentences, but restructuring completely. We’re not just talking a face lift or a nose job. We’re talking vivisection. It’s going to be messy, and it’s not going to look like the story you started with, but as I reassure everyone who’s read my beta novel and liked it, I haven’t changed the content, unless I improved it.

Last, please read your text aloud. I know it’s difficult if you have a full house and little privacy, but you really need to do this. You will be surprised how good something sounds in your head but how terrible it sounds when spoken. You’ll notice where you start to bore yourself. Or if you read aloud to another person, you’ll see where you lose your audience.

In all of these ways, you can transform a story, for instance, that opens with a girl thinking about how scared she is and how much she misses her old life (and why) to a story that puts the thing she fears on her doorstep and makes her take action.

Related articles
by

How’s Your Writing Going?


Embed from Getty Images

When I was 25, I met a friend for coffee on one of her infrequent visits home. After being inseparable as kids, we eventually drifted into our different lives. Hers seemed glamorous to me: she’s a debutante who attended an Ivy League school, then traveled abroad to pursue other degrees. She drives the most expensive sports cars and vacations all over the world. When she called and told me she was in town, I couldn’t turn down the chance to catch up with her.

I knew we wouldn’t be able to meet long because my 11-month-old son would be up from his nap soon. I was so happy to see her – and impressed with myself for losing all my baby weight and then some – that I never thought how plain I would look in my jeans and t-shirt next to her designer outfit. I never thought she’d care to know what I’d been up to. What was there to say? I’m a mom. After catching her up on baby news (which doesn’t take long when you’re talking to someone who doesn’t have kids), she asked about my writing.

Writing? What writing? Oh, wait, you mean how I thought getting a degree in English would set me on the path to bestseller-dom? While I kept up with my daily journal, my fiction had gone the way of the dinosaur. I wouldn’t call it a slump. It was just that I was busy and happy not writing. After I missed the “published author” mile marker on the highway of my life, I moved on to “starting a family” and didn’t look back. Yes, I still wrote, but it wasn’t the kind of writing that kept me up at night.

And that was so not how I had envisioned my life – to be unpublished and happy. By the time I was 13, I knew that I wanted to make a living writing novels. I had no inclination to get a regular job and write after hours. I wanted to provide for my family through my books. And I was naive enough to think that I could go to college and get an English degree, and somehow, I would be in that perfect position to fulfill my dream.

Here’s what I often imagined: a home office overlooking a fenced-in backyard, where my future, well-adjusted children would run around and play, allowing me to work in peace. And then we would go out for ice cream and a movie, and we would take vacations whenever we wanted, and if my husband decided to get a job, it would just be because he wanted to, not because we were dependent on his salary.

Obviously, I had no idea what being a parent or an adult is really like, much less how the publishing world works.

But by 25, I was well aware of the perils of the publishing world. I’d already received rejections from literary agents. I’d even gone through a period when I thought maybe I couldn’t write. Maybe I would just be an editor, but I got over that when I realized that I simply hadn’t found my voice yet. After I did, I found joy in writing again. But I still had nothing to show for it, other than the title of “Editor-in-Chief” for a fledgling literary journal.

My entire writing “career” has been full of these ups and downs. I do actually make money as a writer, but it’s certainly not enough to buy us the house with the big yard and to keep my husband from having to work. It’s my lack of steady employment that makes him have to work so hard to pick up my slack. Part of me wishes that I’d gone to work for a newspaper or local magazine or even a small publisher. I would be able to carry more of the financial load, although that’s not at all the kind of writing that feeds my soul.

Yet despite being married to a starving artist, my husband believes in me. That doesn’t mean he thinks I’ll make millions, but he’s always my first reader, and even though he protests that he never knows what to say, I can always trust him for an honest opinion. The book that I’m shopping around right now is the best thing I’ve ever written, but just because it’s the best thing I’ve produced to this point doesn’t mean it’s perfect – or anywhere close to the best thing out there.

Amidst editing and querying and doing a whole lot of work that could amount to a lot of nothing, I finally asked him if I should even bother. I’d been gearing myself up to ask for several days. He loves me, but he’s not afraid to give me the painful truth. He told me it’s a good story, and he wants me to get recognition for it (although that in no way guarantees anything about getting it published).

Then he asked me if I would quit writing, even if it wasn’t any good.

While I would certainly quit wasting both my and the literary agents’ time by querying, I would never quit writing because it’s my outlet.

I still have that dream of making a living as a novelist. I still want to have a positive answer when I meet with a friend for coffee. If she were to ask me this week how my writing is going, my answer is that it’s great. I’m editing a story I love and that I know has potential. It still needs work, but maybe someday…

Here’s a quote from Sylvia Plath that I found earlier this week:

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

I have the guts and the imagination, but I also have self-doubt. It’s what made me ask my husband if all this was worth the effort. It’s what makes me cringe when someone looks at me expectantly, like, “Well, you wrote a novel, why isn’t it in bookstores yet?” I think self-doubt is healthy because it makes us look honestly at ourselves. It’s only harmful when it turns into a loss of confidence; then it’s apparent in your writing and your outlook and can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. What self-doubt should do is help us re-evaluate our goals and adjust them to be realistic.

I think the enemy of creativity is really regret. Getting to a certain point and wishing you hadn’t done what you’d done. While I sometimes wish I’d done something to augment my position, I certainly have never regretted writing. If my stories never see the light of day, at least I was happy creating them.

***

Before you go away thinking that my sweet friend didn’t understand me at all and didn’t care about my life, let me tell you her response to my lack of stellar news. She said, “But you’re a mom.”

She said it with admiration and almost reverence. Yeah, I’m a mom. And quite often a writer mom. Like I said, no regrets.

Related articles
by

Just When I Thought I Was Done…

Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity… edit one more time!           –C.K. Webb

 

English: Manuscript fragment from Chapter 14 o...

Editing (manuscript fragment from chapter 14 of Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man/photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

You guessed it. In the midst of querying, when I’m supposed to be done editing, I’m still editing. As a friend once told me (and I’ve heard it echoed by numerous other writers), you will always find something you want to fix with your manuscript.

I thought I was done; truly, I did. After all, I put my novel through a lot. Before I let anyone lay eyes on it, I edited out the embarrassing first draft kind of garbage that no one needs to see. Then I distributed it to beta readers. The feedback was incredible, allowing me to make more much-needed changes.

Amidst these changes, I signed up for a workshop with a team of literary agents, in which I had the opportunity to really work on the first 10 pages. After all, the first 10 pages may be all anyone ever sees if they don’t compel people to keep reading.

So I got my criticism, swallowed it even though it tasted bad, and I changed my book some more. One comment was that my manuscript was much too long, so I cut over 30,000 words. With a new ending and lots of proofreading under my belt, I figured I should quit procrastinating and start querying.

Nowadays, the majority of literary agents ask for a sample of the manuscript. The most common request I’ve seen is for the first 10 pages, although the odd agent wants 20 or the first three chapters. (Some even ask for the entire manuscript, bless their hearts.) The theme seems to be that they want to see a significant enough chunk to get a good feel for how the rest of the book will (or won’t) flow.

I was a little stumped when I found an agent who only asked for the first chapter. After I cut and pasted that one lonely chapter into my e-mail query, I realized that it wasn’t an adequate representation of my story. Without the next few pages to go with it, the pacing was too slow, and it ended in a bad place. I had edited it down from a much longer first chapter. Also, when I was concentrating on 10 pages, I didn’t pay much attention to how the first chapter ended because the first 10 pages went well into chapter two. I should have made sure that chapter one had an enticing ending. You know what the last word of that chapter was? “Okay.” Which is not okay, unless you’re John Green.

Thus began revision number four.

A couple years ago, while querying a different novel, I decided that I would make absolutely no changes (unless I found a typo) on my manuscript during the querying phase. I sent out 10 at a time, and it wasn’t until after each round of rejections that I looked over my query letter and manuscript for ways to improve.

This time, I’m making corrections as I go. Never have I made so many changes from one query to the next. If an agent happens to like the version of my book with an anticlimactic ending to the first chapter, I have that version saved. But I’m not going with the status quo anymore. I will not sit around and say, “Oh, it can wait.” It could be that the agent who’s right for me is the next one I query, and if that’s the case, I don’t want to send a chunk of my book that I know I can improve.

Painful? Yes. And I love editing. But it’s hard to think, I’ve done all I can do, only to look back and see that you didn’t.

This likely means more drastic cuts for my book. I’ve already come to the realization that I may have to trim it by another 10,000 words-plus in order for anyone to even give it a serious look. Do I think the word count alone should be the deciding factor over whether my manuscript it rejected or accepted? Absolutely not. (And I’ve climbed on that soapbox before.) But I also think that it would be a mistake to grow complacent.

So it’s time to continue cutting, revising, and searching. The right agent is out there, I know it. It will just take a more vigilant search than last time, and I have to be willing to do my part to earn a contract.

Related articles
by

How to Choose Your Future Literary Agent


Embed from Getty Images

I wish it were as easy as reading a list of potential agents and picking out your favorite. Unfortunately, the agent has to pick you back. But if that happy day of acceptance ever does come, you don’t want to have that sinking feeling that of all the agents you queried, this really wasn’t the one you wanted. You want to be excited about everyone you’re querying, and it’s a lot easier to achieve this goal now than ever before.

Back when I first started querying, it was a lot harder to research potential agents because many of the agencies didn’t have websites. I would buy a copy of Writer’s Market and look for the agents that were interested in young adult, juvenile, or children’s lit (middle grade didn’t even exist back then). Some of the well-known agencies listed their big-name clients, although most didn’t. And often the list of agents was far from complete. I would just have to take a stab at it, with no idea if my story was at all appropriate for the person I picked. Those days, I figured that if I stirred up any kind of interest, I would be happy and call it a day with my search.

I think that’s why I was so eager to sign on with my former scammer agent. I never considered that an agent might not be right for me. But after ditching the scammer and looking for legitimate representation again, I decided that I might want to research the next steps. If I were to luck out and land a real agent, what would I expect? What I found kind of surprised me. Not about the publication process but about the courting process.

You see, rarely does an agent send a “Sign on the dotted line – I’ll represent you, and we’ll make millions!” response to a query. I’m not saying it hasn’t happened (although if it does, beware). I’m just saying that an agent may want to see more of your manuscript but then get cold feet. Or – Lord help us – several agents may be interested, and then you’re faced with the daunting job of choosing. Although a positive response is a great alternative to an outright rejection, it doesn’t mean you’re done with the querying process. Only now, the ball’s in your court. It may turn out that only one of these people you thought you liked is really the right fit. It might be that you don’t like any of them and have to keep looking. Kind of depressing, but you don’t want the wrong person representing the fictional world you’ve worked so hard to create.

If you’re building a list of agents to query, the tools are out there to help you find a great match, and I’m going to give you a couple examples of how I’ve used this information to narrow my search. I am strictly giving my opinions of the following agencies. What looks good to me may look horrible to you, but I’ll try to explain as best I can, so you can make an equally informed decision.

First, check out The Bent Agency’s website (click here). Simple but appealing (to me, at least) with bright colors and a stack of books. But the copy is what shines; it certainly sounds as if they’re enthusiastic about their authors. And not only that – enthusiastic for submissions, too. Each agent has her or his own page, and of all the sites I’ve checked out recently, these have the most personable bios. I know exactly which of these agents I would like to have a cup of coffee with. One even has an invitation to her blog. These aren’t people sitting in a tower, looking down on the masses of unpublished wannabes. They’re real people, and they’re not afraid to mingle with us other real folks.

Contrast this with Sterling Lord Literistic (click here). Sterling Lord is the actual name of one of the agents. His parents must have known he would go on to have an agency that would represent the likes of Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey, not to mention famous children’s books, such as Corduroy, The Berenstain Bears, and Fancy Nancy. SLL has a gorgeous website. It screams, “Professional! We know what we’re doing! We’ve spent big bucks on our marketing, and you’ll see why when you read our author list!”, but it can also be a little off-putting. From their submissions page: “Sterling Lord Literistic is highly selective in offering representation to writers. We receive an extraordinarily large number of unsolicited submissions and can seriously consider only those with merit.” Sounds kind of like, “You’d better think twice before you waste our time.”

Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh. Maybe I was also a little bit rejected by them two years ago. (But I do give them props for actually mailing my rejection via SASE rather than making me guess.) That didn’t stop me from looking at them again. After all, they have new agents on staff, and if you’re seriously looking for an agent, then you know that your best bet to get your foot in the door is usually with an agent who is trying to build his or her client list.

The problem is that while The Bent Agency’s list of agents made me feel all cozy and warm and encouraged, the deeper I looked into Sterling Lord Literistic, the more I realized I was out of my league. Sure, to be represented by them would be amazing, but none of their bios really spoke to me. I may be able to put on a good front, but I’ll always feel like a toddler walking in my mom’s big-girl shoes with these kinds of people. Maybe they speak to other authors who will go on to sell millions of books, but not this girl.

I would still love to sell millions of books, by the way, but if I ever do, I want my agent to be someone that I feel I can be myself with. It’s one of those trust your gut instinct kinds of things, and I’m at the point where I don’t want to waste my time querying someone who doesn’t excite me.

So I’m being picky. I’m using the internet as a tool to delve deeper and deeper and find the agents with whom I hope to connect. (I’m also vetting them on Preditors & Editors – don’t worry! Do yourself a favor, and always check reviews of literary agents before querying them.) Instead of looking for agencies that sell big name authors, I’m looking at agents who are enthusiastic about what I write. I’m looking at agents who are maybe a little quirky and have a sense of humor and who don’t know exactly what they want because they’re willing to have their minds blown by something totally unexpected. (Not saying that’ll be my story, but I do like that kind of agent.) I’m looking for agencies who take a chance on new authors that I’ve never heard of before. Who knows – maybe one day I’ll be one of those authors.

It’s liberating to feel that I have this choice. It’s also nerve-wracking and scary to put myself out there and not know if what I’ve done is good enough. But it makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing for my story, which at the end of the day, is finding someone who cares about it as much as I do. For everyone who is looking for representation, I suggest that you settle for nothing less.


Embed from Getty Images

For a great place to start, check out Writer’s Digest‘s Editor Blogs/Guide to Literary Agents (click here). You’ll find all kinds of helpful articles, as well as the bios and submission info for new literary agents.

by

It’s Query Time


Embed from Getty Images

Sometime between 2004 (when I first started querying literary agents) and now, there have been drastic changes in the publishing industry. When I first started, e-queries were a no-no. In fact, they were hardly mentioned on agents’ websites (if they had websites). I snail mailed every query with an SASE, which I wasn’t guaranteed to see for months, if at all (which always drove me nuts – I paid for the stamp, so please send it back). Very few agents accepted simultaneous submissions, and every query how-to that I read stressed the author bio part. Like the more creditability you have, the better your chance of landing an agent. So if you’re unpublished, good luck.

For a while, I didn’t change anything about the way I queried. I took time off to have a baby. Then I wasted almost two years with a scam artist for an agent (read about that here). After that, I didn’t much care for agents for a while and quit looking.

Then I immersed myself in the world of e-publishing – writing articles online for people I’ll never meet in person, publishing e-books that will never be printed. I felt up to braving the sea of rejections again and began researching query letters, figuring that I had to do something different than before.

Lo and behold, many of the “standards” of query submission from ten-plus years ago are now the exception rather than the rule. Most agents prefer e-mail submissions, and only a handful ask for exclusive submissions. In fact, more than one agent I’ve read about has said exclusive submissions are ridiculous because you could easily spend years and never get anywhere. Well, I’ve been there and done that.

With all this talk about querying, you can guess what I’ve been up to lately. Yep, I finished editing my 2013 NaNoWriMo novel (again), and I began looking into agents this week. Querying is one of the most challenging aspects of the writing process. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading about the agents and imagining how great it would be to work with this or that one. Except that imagining is as far as it’s ever gone. (The scammer that I had met exactly zero of my expectations, but I was so enthralled with the idea that I HAVE AN AGENT that I kind of pushed all that aside.)

As I’ve heard various agents say numerous times, it’s not the query that wins the contract but the book. The problem is, of course, that if you bomb on the query, your book may never even get a cursory glance. So I’ve always felt that pressure to write the perfect query letter. I’ve done my best to make them personal. But not only did I have exactly zero positive responses last time I queried (no surprise), I didn’t even get responses from the majority of them. One was an agent with whom I’d worked before. I queried her twice. Nada.

So this time, after stressing more than I should have about what to write and how to write it (and coming up with a great hook but forgetting to write it down), I went online to brush up on Query Writing 101. There are more good resources out there than I can count. Many of them agree on the basics (like the order of the paragraphs doesn’t matter, but when you do talk about your story, it better have a great hook), and they usually give examples of both good and bad queries. The bad ones are great (read one here). Not only will you laugh at the sheer stupidity of some writers, but the number of real, terrible queries gives me hope that one of these days, I may stand out from the masses.

The problem is that it doesn’t matter how many good queries you read, you can’t just switch out the words that apply to your book and call it good. Every writer and every story is different. I remember feeling hopeful when I read Stephen King’s On Writing because he uses a great query example, but I could never make that format work for me.

The absolute best resource I have found for writing queries is in literary agent Mary Kole’s book Writing Irresistible Kidlit. As the title suggests, it’s mostly about the writing process for middle grade and young adult writers. But as an agent herself, Kole does her readers a favor and devotes an entire chapter to query do’s and don’t’s. She also gives an example of a real query letter that worked, with lots of commentary about why.

The part that helped me the most is the section in which she boils down how to write the novel summary by answering five questions. I’ve done this exercise with two novels now, and not only does it show where your story has holes (if you can’t answer the questions easily), but it also gives you an easy way to summarize and not go on for pages and pages. Even if you don’t write kidlit, I would recommend this book just for the query chapter.

So I wrote a basic query for my novel that I will customize according to the agents I choose. I cannot stress enough that reading submission guidelines is an absolute must. Not only do you want to make sure you send exactly what the agent wants, but sometimes one agency may want you to include something in your query that you haven’t used before. This happened on my latest query. The agency wants to know why I’m the best writer for this book. It gave me the opportunity (although a very brief one) to explain how my story came to me.

It also seems that literary agents are less concerned with your credentials (for instance, some say that you should minimize publications that aren’t related to what you’re querying). Of course, if you’ve won an award, that’s always good information to have on your side. What they would rather hear is that you have a good grasp of your market. Although they don’t come out and say it, I believe this is because writers are expected to do more marketing than ever before. And if you don’t know your audience and what they like to read, you have little chance of selling your novel.

At the same time, it’s an absolute no-no to write a wizard book and then send a query saying you’re the J.K. Rowling of the next generation. I scanned my bookshelves and was surprised to find a number of non-Harry Potter books that had elements similar to my own story. My husband even made a great suggestion about a book with a character who shares some of my protagonist’s strengths. More than ever, the idea that you need to read voraciously in order to write is very important.

So that’s what I’m going to do: read, write, edit… and query. Wish me luck!

by

Maybe I Am Meant for This Line of Work

My Books!

My Books!

This week I had two wonderful opportunities to talk to kids about my books and being an author. In all my dreams of making it big and whatnot (ha), I have never really thought much about interacting with my audiences. If I ever think about it at all, it’s usually about book signings and how miserable they are if no one shows up to buy the books.

Despite not having a household name or a bestseller under my belt, I was chosen to speak at two schools. One was a preschool, the other a junior high school – quite a difference. It just so happens that I write for both age groups.

Pre-school, I figured, would be easy. I’m most comfortable with this age because 1. they’re a lot smaller than me; 2. they’re still huggable; and 3. I teach that age all the time. I knew pretty much what to expect when walking in. They might be unruly, and I may not be able to understand everything they say, but at the end of the day, they think people who write books are cool. Plus, I did this event with my co-author and friend Karen Saltmarsh, and we ad-libbed a very over-the-top version of the moment we decided to write a book together. Even the adults loved it.

Karen and I wrote a non-fiction book for ages K through 12. It’s not a sit-down-and-read-it-during-circle-time kind of book; it’s all about encouraging the creative writing spark to thrive and spread. And even though I wasn’t sure if the older preschoolers would get it, the four- and five-year-olds we visited wanted to write their own books right then and there. Then I read my book to them, and they were the perfect audience. Even the little three-year-olds listened and interacted with me. I left feeling energized and wondering why I don’t do more of this kind of thing.

OPJH literacy week cardAs for the junior high, it was their literacy week. They had a book fair and everything, and I was the guest author. Kids who were interested in talking to me spent their lunch period in the library, listening to this nothing author talk about books and the writing/publishing process. I’d had it on my calendar for a couple months, and every time I thought about it, I reminded myself that there was no reason to worry yet. Just save that for the night before, and go about life as normal.

Of course, I was still nervous. Not incapacitated or sick to my stomach, but it was the kind of thing I couldn’t dwell on much because then it would make me sick. Despite writing for this age, I don’t spend all that much time with 12- to 14-year-olds. To be honest, when I was that age, I didn’t want to be that age. I interact with them from afar, usually from the pages of adolescent fiction.

I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised when the kids were very receptive to what I had to say. They loved it when I talked to them about how they can publish books on-demand (and without waiting for a major publishing house to discover them). And when we talked about the books (and books-made-movies) that we like to read, I had a wonderful moment of wow-we-actually-get-each-other. They were even polite enough to listen to me read my children’s book, although the reactions (as expected) were much different than what I get from little kids.

There weren’t many silences at all – and when there were, it was because the kids were nervous about talking to me. Afterward, when we had some one-on-one time, several kids hung around long enough that they were late to their next class; we could’ve talked all day. In fact, I wished that they didn’t have to go so soon.

Two completely different groups of kids, two completely different situations, two great experiences. I still don’t know if my books will ever attract the interest of a so-called “real” publisher or any of those lists that seem to matter so much. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t care. But still, what I found was respect and joy – and gratitude for myself that I haven’t given up, that I keep writing when publishing and promotion are so difficult. I’m doing what I love, and it turns out that part of what this introverted author loves is spending time with her audiences.

Check out my children’s book Hero here.

by

My Gift

Embed from Getty Images

Have you ever had a dream that seems a little silly, but you can’t help but hold onto it anyway? Like driving by a beautiful house every day that you know you’ll never be able to afford but imagining yourself living there anyway?

Well… but who says you won’t live ever there? So many people give up on dreams that aren’t necessarily impossible, just difficult to attain. Sometimes life makes it very difficult to hold onto our dreams. Sometimes we get bitter, assuming that those who do achieve their dreams have some secret inner track that is unavailable for the rest of us “normal” people. Sometimes we give up.

Probably my longest-held unfulfilled dream is that of becoming a published author. Well, let me rephrase: an author who is published in the traditional sense. I do have books under my belt, and I do make a (tiny) income freelance writing, but back in high school, I thought that I could go to college, major in English, improve my writing skills, and somehow earn an annual income as a novelist equal to (or more than) what my husband makes.

Not only did majoring in English do absolutely nothing to further my writing career, but the idea that becoming a novelist can bring a steady income is one that seems less likely every day. It’s harder than ever to find a literary agent and then a publisher, and even they can’t promise positive or lasting results. Books get remaindered all the time, and there go the hopes of more starving artists.

In the face of this and many more discouraging statistics, it would be logical to give up on my dream. And to be honest, this dream does come and go. When my first son was a baby, I wrote very little. It suddenly wasn’t very important to me, both because I was tired and focused on new motherhood. I wrote when I wanted to, and I wrote what moved me, but as far as a career, I almost let go of the dream completely, unless someone reminded me by asking how my writing was going.

Other times, I’ve wanted my dream so much that it almost caused physical pain – and I guess that is possible, if you consider the toll anxiety can take. It’s not fun trying so hard and being rejected over and over and over and over… need I go on?

But most of the time, I live in a cycle of writing with pure joy and energy and plowing on because I know that joy is just around the corner, if only I can stick with it. That’s how this last year has been, starting with my first NaNoWriMo experience in November 2013.

If you follow my blog, you know that last year’s NaNoWriMo was the joy and energy, and this year’s I just had to plow through. Although I won (by writing more than 50,000 words in the month of November), I’m still chipping away at my novel. I would love to finish the first draft by the end of the month, but things really have to change if I want that to happen: I don’t think I’ve ever procrastinated so much when it comes to writing.

This isn’t writer’s block. I’ve had that before, don’t care for it much, but understand that it’s a normal part of the writing process. What this is is writer’s exhaustion. Three days in the past week, I neglected to write at all. I was so busy that I forgot, and I was too tired to even care all that much.

Except.

Except that I realized that I missed it. I make time for all kinds of other things during the day, all of which are important, but why is it that my novel gets shoved to the side? No, it’s not paying the bills, but since when did that become the sole criteria of what’s important to me? If I have to dedicate five minutes at a time to get it done, at least I can go to sleep at night feeling like I haven’t let myself – and my dream – down.

My dream will never have the chance of becoming reality if I don’t do my part. Which means I have to start querying again. Which means editing last year’s novel and finishing this year’s. After all, my books won’t write themselves, and I can’t expect an agent to just stumble across my blog and send me an email – “Hey, Sarah. You sound talented. Do you happen to have a novel I could represent?” Yeah right.

Stranger things have happened, I suppose, but this girl isn’t going to sit around and wait for a miracle to happen. Writing may present a challenge, but it can also fill my tank when it’s empty. I owe myself this gift. The gift of five minutes a day, the gift of keeping my dream alive, the gift of trying to make it become reality.

And if it doesn’t work… well, I’ve always loved dreaming.

Related articles