Two sides of the same coin

But have you ever tried to look at both sides at once?  Go ahead, I'll wait.

No, I can't either.  I can carry that coin in my pocket, wear it on a chain around my neck, pull it out and contemplate it as often as I like, I can still only actually SEE one side at a time.  The other side is always there, I always know it, but...  All I can do is flip it over regularly.

And when you think about it, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I pulled out the manuscript of my first novel the other day to get an idea of how hard I would have to work to bring it up to publishable standards.  And I fell in love with the darn thing all over again.  I kept saying, "I wrote that?" And glowing a bit. For a while I believed I actually had some talent.

Then I tried to work at my current manuscript.  And I felt like it stunk.  Granted, it's still at first draft stage and the first manuscript has been through several rounds of editing.  And there you have it, the two sides of the coin.  When I feel like I can't produce anything worth reading, I need to flip the coin and remember the proof that I can.  When I feel like a genius, I need to flip the coin and remember how hard I struggled to produce something worth reading.

And this applies to a lot more than writing or even evaluating our own capacities.  I'll bet you can think of two or three ways you can apply this in the real world, in your creative endeavours, wherever.  Tell me about it.

Shortlisted

Well, well, well. I was one of the six winners at the Novel Matters Audience With an Agent contest. The six lovely ladies who write for that blog (and who are all with the Books & Such Literary Agency) sifted through a slush pile of applicants and selected six to be forwarded to agent Wendy Lawton.

OK, you might be saying, why do you need a contest to query an agent? And the answer is: you don't, of course. But I suspect an agent is going to take a closer, harder, longer look at queries (complete with synopses and first chapters) that come with a recommendation from six people whose taste in writing she respects. She is also promising feedback, something you don't normally get with a query. So I am well-pleased, and very grateful to have been selected.

And, as any writer knows, a shot of affirmation now and then is a wonderful thing. Especially when it comes from professionals.

Further thoughts on writers' conferences

Ah, if Janna says jump, we jump. What is it about that girl?

So here are my thoughts on writers' conferences, as far as they go. Please keep in mind that this is based on my very limited experience, so feel entirely free to correct me or expand on what I've said.

If you are well-informed on the publishing industry and how it works, if you read the blogs of editors and agents, frequent online writers' forums that include experienced professionals, read books on writing and participate in some form of critique groups, chances are you won't get a whole lot out of the scheduled workshops, or at least not most of them. Aspiring writers are the bread and butter of these conferences, and much of it caters to them and is therefore at a pretty basic level. But not all of it. I found Jeff Gerke's continuing workshop for novelists to be thought-provoking. I bought his book The Art and Craft of Writing Christian Fiction and will probably buy his interactive DVD The Writer's Foundation. I found the exercises he had us do in the workshop (which were taken from the DVD) quite useful.

Actually meeting an editor was also useful, if only to hear the near-surprise in her voice when she said that I had an interesting premise. She also gave me the distinct impression that it was not right for her publishing house, despite her favourable impression. Oh well. There are other publishing houses.

The main value of most conferences is the opportunity to network, both with fellow writers and with industry professionals. To get the most out of a conference in that regard, you need to choose a conference at which the participating professionals are ones who are most likely to be interested in and knowledgeable about the kind of book you are writing. And you probably need to go for the duration of the conference. The one-day, in-and-out kind of thing that I did is really not the best way to go about this. I did manage to make some connections, but I think it would have worked much better if I'd had more time to develop them.

So there you go. Any wisdom to add?

Looking for a literary agent

I've been answering a lot of the same questions lately from aspiring writers wanting to know how to find an agent. Finding I'm not much of an expert on, but I can help with the looking part.

To start building a list of agents, two really great resources are AgentQuery and QueryTracker. Both are searchable databases, enabling you to find out quickly who represents what.

QueryTracker, as you might guess from the name, also allows you to make up a personalized list and keep track of the status of your query. The data from all users are compiled to provide statistics on how quickly agents reply, how often they request material, and so on.

After making a tentative list, you should research each agent individually. Check their agency websites and make sure they represent the kind of book you've written, who their clients are, what they've sold. This information is usually, although not always, more up-to-date than other sources.

Check to see if they're a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives. This isn't essential, but members adhere to a set of ethical guidelines and have a record of sales, so it is generally a good sign.

And scurry over to Preditors and Editors (yes, the misspelling is intentional - think about it) to find out if the agent you covet is known as a scam artist. They're classified alphabetically by first names, in case you're having trouble finding your way around.

If you're looking to get a Christian book published, Michael Hyatt of Thomas Nelson has posted a very useful list of agents they have dealt with.

Last but not least, head over to the Absolute Write forums and check out the Bewares and Background Check section to get additional information on specific agents and agencies. You'll get lots of useful information, including comments from writers who have dealt with them.

You can also find out some pretty incredible information by Googling. Like which agent is a belly dancer, who writes about jazz as a hobby, and who they hang out with on MySpace.

Have fun looking, and feel free to add your favourite resources or ask questions in the comment section.

I'm baaack

OK, so nobody knew I was gone. Fair enough.

I spent Friday at the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers' Conference, which was a first for me. Saturday, as predicted, I crashed. Not surprising, seeing as I attended two panel discussions, skipped a third in favour of a serendipitous encounter, attended a two-hour "boot camp" with editor Shannon Marchese, two teaching sessions with Jeff Gerke, and of course, two meals and various hobnobbing sessions. A lot for someone with fatigue issues.

I'd never been to a writers' conference before and I'm still absorbing it. And I'm wondering if it was a good use of my time.

The panels were so-so. The questions posed to the editors were very basic, things the participants should have known if they'd done any research. Google is your friend, people.

On the other hand, Jeff Gerke's continuing session on advanced fiction writing was great. Really. He's a good teacher and makes things very clear. I'm working my way through his The Art and Craft of Writing Christian Fiction right now. The boot camp with editor Shannon Marchese was also very interesting, if somewhat less organized. I took a lot of notes, so I'll be able to review that one.

What conferences are about more than anything, of course, is networking. It was nice to meet in the flesh people I'd only known online, even if the meeting was all too brief. I also met new people, several of whom were insanely nice. You know, the kind of people you don't feel you deserve to meet, they're so nice. Three in one day has to be some kind of record.

As for concrete results, that remains to be seen. I don't need them to consider the conference a success though.

Anybody want to share with me what kind of benefits (or not) you've reaped from conferences?

The power of story

My son's band was auditioning for the right to play the main stage at a local festival. American Idol-style, these second-round auditions were open to the public. My son's band was playing the last set of the evening.

There was just one problem. One of their guitarists had already committed to playing a nursing home (yes, you read that right) earlier that evening. But they figured he'd be able to turn up on time. It would be tight, but he'd make it. When set-up time came, he still wasn't there. They set up as slowly as they possibly could, and the MC was as helpful as he could be, hamming it up and even singing a song of his own to keep the audience engaged. Still no guitarist, and there was just no way to delay any longer. So they picked a song in which his contribution wasn't too central, improvised a bit to fill in the holes, and performed the song.

Still no guitarist. This is only a four-man band, so it matters.

They looked at each other, picked another song, and started in. What else could they do? And then, partway in, the missing guitarist came sprinting up the aisle, bounded onto the stage, plugged in his guitar... just in time for his solo. It could not have been better timed if they had deliberately staged it.

And they won the competition. One of the organizers told them afterwards that they were serious contenders from the outset, but once their performance turned into a story, and one with a happy ending at that, they were a shoo-in. This despite the fact they were not a local band, and the audience vote counted for 50% of the final outcome.

And that, my friends, illustrates the power of story about as well as anything could.

Contest for science fiction/fantasy writers

Tor UK, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, is holding a contest, War of the Words, to find the next big thing in SFF. That's science fiction and fantasy, for the uninitiated, but if you didn't know that, this blog post probably isn't for you anyway. ;o)



You need to have a completed manuscript in the 80-150K range, plus a full synopsis (they still haven't defined what they mean by that, but I'm guessing that 1-2 page deal isn't going to cut it). You have until August 20 to submit the synopsis and the first three chapters.

We had a rather lengthy discussion on the contract terms over at A Dribble of Ink and have more or less come to the conclusion that it would be a decent contract. Victoria Strauss of Writers Beware has given it her Imprimatur in a private email too, so go ahead, send in your opus. There's no entry fee, so what have you got to lose?

From first to last

Noveldoctor has a contest going on. He provides a choice of first lines and a choice of last lines, you provide the words in between, to a maximum of 400. And he's actually got real prizes.

It's all for the fun of it more than anything else, as well as learning how to get from Point A to Point B, but it looks like fun. Entries have to be in by the 31st so sharpen your cyberpencils and start typing.

And subscribe to his blog while you're at it. It's fun and useful. Well, sometimes it's useful.

Writing a sequel

It's trickier than it looks. Or at the very least, trickier than I expected.

Finding the right place to begin a story is always a bit difficult for me. And I'm discovering that it's even harder when I have a previous story to build on. I have such a sense of who these characters are and what they've been through that I leave out information that new readers are going to need. And I throw too many characters into the mix too soon.

After thoroughly confusing my crit group with my opening chapters, it was clear that a simple tweak wasn't going to fix the problems. I had to start over, to a point where I could introduce the characters and situations in small doses. In my case, that meant actually overlapping with the end of Disenchanted, the first book.

Technically speaking, Suffer a Witch is not really a sequel. It is another story, set in the same world, following on the heels of the events of Disenchanted, but with no single story arc.

Can you think of any sequels where this kind of transition was handled gracefully? Or have you written one? What did you learn?

When reviewers hand you a lemon

You can choose to get bitter and downright nasty, as Alice Hoffman recently did. She got so incensed about a mildly critical review that she fired off no fewer than 27 nasty tweets, including one that revealed the reviewer's address and phone number so that Hoffman's fans could protest directly. Um yeah. If you believe that no publicity is bad publicity, that was quite the stunt. Publicity it got her. Respect, not so much.

Or you could, like Brad Meltzer, make lemonade. His soon-to-be-released novel, The Book of Lies, got panned by a number of influential critics. And this was his hilarious response.



I don't know about you, but I know which book I am more tempted to read.

This story reeks

How often do you look for themes when you're reading stories? Or watching movies? Not very often, I'll bet, unless advanced studies in literature permanently warped your ability to enjoy a story. I was already an avid reader before I got a degree in languages and literature (which I enjoyed immensely, I might add) so I never lost the ability to just roll around in a story for the sheer joy of it.

But one thing they were right about in those classes, every story around is just reeking with themes.

"What is a theme?" you might ask. (One thing I love about readers of this blog is that they always ask the right questions at the right time.)

The theme is the other answer to "what is the story about?"

Last night we sat and watched Back to the Future yet again and I suddenly was struck by it.

"This isn't a movie about time travel," I said to my long-suffering husband, "this is a movie about learning to have self-confidence." All I had to do was say it. It was like waving a magic wand. Self-confidence issues suddenly sprang up all over the movie like dandelions in spring. Both Marty and George had fears of being rejected, fears they expressed in identical language, in case you were tempted to miss it. Doc Brown gains the confidence necessary to push his research to a successful conclusion by the revelations of a visitor from the future. When George McFly reaches deep within himself to find a courage he didn't know he had, his whole future changes. The bad-guy vice-principal is a bad guy because he specializes in destroying self-confidence.

See what I mean about stories reeking with theme? Did the writers of the script sit down and say "Let's do a movie about finding self-confidence"? I sincerely doubt it. But it was obviously something that mattered to them a great deal, because it was everywhere in the story.

The Incredibles is, on the face of it, a story about super-heroes. But it's also a movie about finding your place in the world. The list of characters struggling with this issue comprises most of the main characters: everyone in the Incredible family (excepting the baby), the villain, the father's best friend... (Sorry, I forget the names. I'm bad for that.) If you've watched the special features, you know that even in the scenes that never made the movie this is an issue, as the mother becomes infuriated by the snooty neighbours who despise her decision to stay home with her family. When the main characters resolve their issues and assume their proper roles, the story is over.

Or take Harry Potter. A recurring theme in all seven books is the value of marginalized people, from Harry's band of misfit followers to Severus Snape to Harry himself. The despised ones become the means of salvation. You can hardly turn a page without finding echoes of this theme. (Ironically, this is a theme you'll find all over the Bible too.)

The plot is the mechanics of a story, its bones. The theme is its beating heart. As a writer, you don't have to go looking for themes to "insert" into your story. It will be there, beating under the surface, whether you notice it or not. You'd be hard-pressed to keep it out.

Any other themes you've noticed in other well-known stories? Have you ever been put off by a theme?

Ever been surprised by the themes in your own work? Have you ever consciously tried to write a theme story?

Hm, I just noticed that ever single one of the stories I've cited fall under the banner of speculative fiction. I don't think this qualifies as a theme, but it's certainly a recurring motif. Make of that what you will.

Personal update

I have had all kinds of wonderful ideas for blog posts this week, but my head has been elsewhere, I'm afraid. I know that it severely disrupted your lives. I'm sorry.

After a lot of thinking and mulling and praying, I've decided to accept an offer of representation from Jan Dennis of Dennis Literary. Jan is the man who, as an editor, first published Frank Peretti and Stephen Lawhead, and who, as an agent, first represented Ted Dekker and Donita K. Paul. In other words, he is a huge figure in the world of Christian speculative fiction. I am deeply honoured that he has been willing to place his confidence in me and my writing. And still having a little trouble believing that he did.

OK, next major hurdle to overcome is to win the heart of an editor. But before I get there, I'll probably have some more revising and polishing to do. Jan will be bringing the first set of professional eyes to this manuscript and I imagine he'll have a good number of things to say.

In the meanwhile, I am going to celebrate Easter and the supreme mystery of the Incarnation.

Overcome the first marketing hurdle

Beyond the enormous hurdle of actually writing a complete novel and then revising and polishing it till it shines, there comes a series of hurdles between the manuscript and the market.

I've now jumped the first hurdle. A literary agent thought my premise was interesting enough to ask to see the entire manuscript or, in the industry jargon, "request the full".

This is akin to making it through the first round at American Idol. I haven't won anything yet, but at least I'm in the competition. Unlike AI, it would be much better for me if I could get waved through this round more than once, by having several agents express an interest. If I'm extremely fortunate, more than one of them will offer representation, and I'll have a choice between agents rather than a choice between one and none. Or no choice at all.

I'm not going to bore you with all the details of this as I go along, but I will post the occasional update. Feel free to chime in with questions, comments, or stories of your own.

What do you think of self-publishing?

As you may or may not know, the publishing industry is in convulsions. A business model forged in the fires of the Great Depression is now hopelessly out-of-date, but is so entrenched that it will take dynamite to move it.

And dynamite is what it's getting. The digital revolution combined with the economic situation is a pretty formidable double-whammy. While the music industry got blasted into the air a number of years ago (the dust is still falling from the skies and its new shape is starting to be visible), the book industry managed to duck most of the impact, primarily because very few people wanted to read book-length text on a computer screen. It's hard on the eyes and there are too many distractions. Amazon and mega-bookstores did change the rules a bit, but mainly for retailers and publishers.

But the recent successes of the Kindle and the Sony Reader are starting to shake things up for readers as well. And if they follow the well-worn path of electronic innovations and drop their prices significantly over the next few years, the impact will be seismic.

So what has this got to do with self-publishing?

Simple. The rules are changing. Self-publishing is looking ever more attractive. The traditional advantages of traditional publishers are eroding.

The first advantage was distribution. The publisher - not the author - did the hard work of trying to get the book into actual stores. This is still true. But the advent of new technologies makes it a less wonderful advantage. Print-on-demand technology and digital distribution are making a physical presence in a physical store less necessary than it has been in the past. And if present trends continue, this advantage will continue to shrink.

The second advantage was marketing. A publisher would - in theory - take on the publicity responsibilities and do everything in its power to make sure the book sold. (Is that the sound of cynical laughter I hear?) In actual fact, that is now rarely true. Blogs and social networks have become the most effective way of marketing books and authors are generally expected to work these angles on their own. They are often exhorted to plow their advances back into their own publicity: publishers are too busy with the spaghetti strategy: throw a whole bunch of books at the wall and see what sticks. More and more writers are wondering what the point of signing with a publishing house is if so much of the hard work is left to the writer anyway. If you're not one of your publisher's A-list authors, this advantage has pretty much ceased to exist. (Some of the agents I am querying want to know my marketing vision right in the query letter. What does that tell you?)

The third advantage is editing. This one really matters too. But so many editors have been laid off, the survivors are dizzy with fatigue, trying to handle the workload of two or three people. How much time and energy are they really able to put into a book nowadays? A self-published author can also hire a free-lance editor to do the work, although that obviously means a financial outlay.

The fourth advantage is credibility. This one is a doozy. What if every kid that auditioned for American Idol set up a page on iTunes and released their basement-recorded singles? That's pretty much what you're facing as a reader in the self-published world. How much dreck do you want to wade through to find the rare voice worth listening to? How many dreadful books do you want to read before you find a good one?

Yet even that is not an insurmountable problem. A savvy author who knows how to generate word-of-mouth publicity and who posts an excerpt or two online might be able to do an end-run around the credibility issue. And with a good-looking website selling digital downloads, it could be done without the financial risks of publishing hardcopy books.

I'm still thinking finding a publisher is preferable, but to be honest, I'm going to be looking very hard at what they're offering in terms of editing and publicity. Because if they don't offer much in that department, it's hard to see the advantage to me of signing up with them.

What do you think? If you're a writer, under what circumstances would you self-publish? If you're a reader, under what circumstances would you buy a self-published book? If you're an industry insider, is there something important I'm missing here?

Technorati tags: Self-publishing

I totally forgot to mention

I entered about 250 words in this end of chapter contest, hosted by Miss Snark's first victim. No prizes offered, just the opportunity for feedback.

Take a gander, if you feel so inclined. We were supposed to post 250 words from the end of a chapter, to see if readers would feel inclined to continue. Would you?

How to design an author website?

It's never too early to start thinking about it. I am considering what I want my eventual author website to look like (yes, I'm being optimistic) and what it should incorporate. What are the best author websites you've seen? And what do you think is essential to have on them?

I'm thinking blog, media page, book page(s), short bio, and ordering/buying information. Anything else? Any designers you would recommmend?

Technorati tags: Author websites

Confidence and the writer, continued

I am not the only person that has confidence on her mind right now. (Click here for my recent post on this subject.)

J.A. Konrath, author of police thrillers, has a somewhat provocative post on this subject, called "I'm Better Than You". You might enjoy the comment trail, as there's a bit of dissension among the ranks. While I do get his point, I also think he's overstating the issue. I don't have to think I'm the best to feel confident enough to persevere. I do have to think that I'm pretty good, mind you, but I can sincerely think that somebody else writes better than I do, and still feel I can produce quality work. There's a lot of room out there, and I don't have to feel that I'm at the top of the heap to believe I have a place on that heap. Mind you, I want to get as high as I possibly can, not for bragging rights, but just because I love good work. My second response to a really good book, after "wow", is "what can I learn from this?"

J.A. does believe in a lot of hard work, both to improve your craft and to market your work, so he's not one of these starry-eyed types who thinks that merely believing will make it so. He just thinks that believing will help keep you motivated to put in the necessary work.

Editor Alan Rinzler also addresses the question of how authors can keep their confidence up, but in his case he is proposing concrete measures to take to keep your morale afloat.

Most of this has applications to a lot of people other than writers. But since writers work mainly in solitude, with no physical audience to provide immediate feedback, they have to be a lot more pro-active in maintaining a positive mindset.


Technorati tags: Confidence, J.A. Konrath, Alan Rinzler

Confidence vs. humility

Almost everybody struggles to some degree with achieving the balance between confidence and humility (although the latter is less fashionable than it used to be). Confidence tips so easily into into arrogance, presumption, and even delusion. If you doubt this, watch the early episodes of American Idol, any season. We all know how charming an arrogant jerk with an over-developed sense of entitlement is. There are few things more satisfying in life than watching him do a face-plant in the muck.

On the other hand, humility can tilt into discouragement, self-abasement, and even self-loathing. Misguided religious types have often failed to make this distinction and presented such unpretty things as an ideal to aspire to. Well, no. There is a world of difference between unworthy and worthless. Whiny self-hatred is not only unattractive, it's pretty much a guarantee of uselessness.

The sweet point in the middle of all this is evaluating yourself realistically, which is admittedly rather difficult. It's particularly difficult if you want to be a writer.

Why is that, you ask? (OK, so you didn't ask, but humour me a minute. I appreciate it.)

Because for every open spot on a publisher's list, there are probably at least 100 completed manuscripts out there, trying to elbow their way into position. Those are intimidating odds. That means if you're writing, and you have any serious hopes at all of being published, you have to believe somewhere deep inside you, that you are better than 99% of your fellow aspirants (all of whom believe the same thing). That's got to be something close to hubris. And in most cases, delusional hubris.

Of course, a lot of them are unaware of the odds, so if they're talented, they toil in blissful ignorance, and if not, they live in a fool's paradise. The rest of us, well, we keep teeter-tottering between the feeling that we can actually do this and the opposite feeling that we are out of our minds. We can easily go through the cycle from elation to despair and back again several times in one day.

It gets better. Almost every successful author went through a string of rejections before hitting paydirt. So even if publishing professionals keep saying "thanks, but no thanks" that doesn't necessarily mean you don't have what it takes. Perseverance becomes a necessary part of the equation. But wait a minute, isn't the definition of insanity repeating an action and expecting a different result?

Maybe you have to be insane to aspire to authordom.

So, writer or not, how do you find the sweet spot where confidence and humility are in perfect balance?


Technorati tags: Confidence, Humility, Balance

Stick a fork in it

It's done.

In a Dry and Weary Land weighs in at just under 102,000 words. Now I get to write a query letter and a synopsis and start trying to sell it all to literary agents.

I have a bad case of stage fright, but I'm determined to put myself under the lights anyway.

Wish me luck. Better yet, pray for me.


Technorati tags: Writing

For women writers or men in search of inspiration

Mslexia, a British publication featuring female writers, is sponsoring a short-story contest (and in case you're in lack of inspiration, kickstarts your imagination with a number of interesting prompts.

CHANGE A MEMORY
Think of a true but unusual incident that once happened to you (or to someone you know) involving either: a stranger, a relative, a lover, a child, an animal (or pet), clothes, or money. Write notes about the incident answering these questions: Who? (Characters involved) What? (The action) When? (Time of year) Where? (Landscape) Background? (The news at the time.) Now ask yourself why it happened. This is the essence of the story. Now re-envision the incident, changing one element: the main character; his/her reaction; the climate; the outcome. Or simply transfer your memory to a time in the past (or future) that interests you.

CHANGE PERSPECTIVE
Write in first person but from the point of view of a character very different to yourself: an old woman; a child; a pregnant woman; a new bride; a new groom; a jilted lover; a blind man. Choose one of the following titles: I Got Drunk in an Empty House or I Dug a Hole in the Back Garden. Don’t reveal who you are, but let your (new) identity inform your thoughts and actions as you explore this scenario and its possibilities for a short story.

WRITE A MONOLOGUE
Choose a seemingly minor reason to produce anxiety: an invitation to a party; running out of milk; a thunderstorm. Write in first person from the point of view of someone who is obsessing about this concern. As the writing progresses, see if you can raise your anxiety levels. Can this monologue build to a revelation? Is there a story emerging?

USE NEWSPAPERS FOR INSPIRATION
Find a news item that interests you. Identify a minor character in that story whose point of view you’d like to develop. (It could be someone very peripheral to the events, or someone not even mentioned but suggested by the events.) You might also like to adapt this technique by taking a minor character from a novel and making that person the main character of a new story.

FIND INSPIRATION IN THE OBITUARIES
Collect obits that interest you. Cut them up into discrete segments and combine segments from different lives into a single life story. Don’t worry about gender. Just combine the various incidents and achievements and then shape the character and decide on a gender.

There are even more prompts on the contest page. Even if you're not interested in entering the contest, the prompts are unusually good ones, at least in my opinion.


Technorati tags: Mslexia, Writing contest, Writing prompts