Various studies have shown that something on the order of 80-90% of American adults wish to write a book.
 
Which is perfectly fine, except…
 
Surveys also show that 27% of American adults didn’t read a book at all in the past year. And 40% of them didn’t read a fiction book in the past year. And of those who did, many only read a handful.
 
So in essence, significantly more people want to write than want to read. Which is analogous to someone saying they want to be a musician but they don’t want to listen to music.
 
I think this hubris comes from the fact that the vast majority of adults can write, in the functional sense—they can compose a work memo or social media post or email, and for the most part it’ll be comprehensible. Most of us can do this by middle school. (Which, not coincidentally, seems to be where reading peaks out for a lot of us. An issue definitely worth discussing at some point.)
 
So there may be some sense of, I already know how to write—I learned that in school. In full denial of the fact that there is a craft to writing which goes way beyond obvious things like spelling and punctuation and being able to diagram a sentence. (Similar to how being able to operate the basic controls of a car doesn’t automatically qualify one to enter a NASCAR event.)
 
Note I’m not suggesting we need an English degree or MFA or anything along those lines in order to write. (But if so, fine. You do you.)
 
I’m simply saying we need the recognition that there is a craft to be learned. The good news is, much of the pertinent info is available right in front of our eyes, for minimal cost. The amazing learning devices containing this information are called books. There are of course non-fiction ones specifically written to help aspiring writers better learn the fundamentals of writing. (See this post for a round-up of some of our favorites.) But beyond that, the best teachers of all may simply be well-written books in our chosen genre.
 
Because with books (as opposed to some other art forms) we can literally see the smaller components the artist combined to create the entire work. Sure, there are behind-the-scenes things that influenced the finished work, like early drafts and editing and revisions. But when it comes to the actual words the writer used to craft the final story—how they were chosen and arranged and punctuated and emphasized and ordered into sentences and paragraphs and chapters and sections, well… it’s all there in front of us, in black and white.
 
So we should read. But not like a reader… like a writer.
 
Read well. Read deeply. Read widely.
 
Good books don’t happen by accident. (Just like overnight successes don’t happen overnight.) They’re created by talented writers working to the best of their abilities for significant periods of time, writing and revising and polishing until it’s as good as they can make it. Then further tightened and smoothed via the editing process prior to publication.
 
Well:
 
First: What’s a good book? That’s an endless discussion, but in this admittedly narrow context a working definition might be: the type of book we’d like to write. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if the book were somewhat successful on some level (critically acclaimed or sold well or award winning or considered exemplary of its genre or whatever) but beyond those third-party accolades, perhaps the most important quality is simply that we like it.
 
Deeply:
 
Next: We should find these books within our desired writing area and immerse ourselves, reading wheelbarrows full of them, paying attention to the how as much as the what. (What they have to say is important, and—for many readers—it’s paramount. But how they say it—for writers—can be a masterclass.) At first we’ll learn what the common tropes of our chosen area are, then as we delve deeper we’ll notice how good writers either avoid them altogether or turn them on their heads and use them in fresh ways. Also, we’ll learn what’s possible, where the boundaries are, and when they can be broken. (When I see someone saying, “I want to write a YA but I have a problem because I want my characters to [have sex / swear / smoke weed / whatever] but I don’t want to turn publishers off with mature content…” I think, Dude, you clearly have not read a single YA novel published in this century… show some respect for the field, por favor.)
 
Widely:
 
Then: We should broaden our stylistic view and read outside our genre. Not just slightly off the chosen path—like going from mysteries to thrillers—but completely different, like going from contemporary romance to biographies of nineteenth century innovators. Read authors from different cultural and geographic backgrounds… covering different subject matter… with different points of view. My dad used to go to our local library and find a loaded returns cart, then grab the first five books on it and take them home. Not all were wonderful, of course, but it forced him to read broadly without a lot of selection bias (other than that someone, somewhere, recently thought the book in question was worth looking at). We could do worse.
 
All the above will feed into our writing, improving and deepening and broadening it. I’ve heard people say they don’t read because they don’t want any outside influence on their writing. If nothing else, being aware of previous work in our genre will help us avoid overused tropes, clichés, and devices that would otherwise be a flaming “keep away!” sign to editors and agents. (Fresh work is wonderful, but work that implies we have no knowledge of our field… not so much. It’s important to learn the difference.)
 
But besides the practical reasons we’ve discussed, probably the most important reason writers need to be readers is that, almost universally, good art is done by people with a deep love for the art form. (And conversely, almost never by people looking for a quick buck.) Reading will help us discover what we love about literature… not just what genre or style, but which aspects of the written word resonate with us. Are we drawn to well-rounded characters? Quirky dialog? A detailed, well-conceived plot? Realistic, slice-of-life writing? Interesting descriptions of new-to-us locations? Lush prose that sings like poetry? Or maybe an economic turn of phrase that contains volumes within a single sentence?
 
And this romance with reading, of course, will help us discover what we’d love to write.
 
It’s all there, right in front of us, in black and white.
 
Happy reading!

 
Perhaps the most common question at signings or when talking to writing groups (right up there next to “Where do you get your ideas?”) is “What about self-publishing?” Sometimes asked with optimism, but often trepidation or even outright hostility. (The funniest was when I called on this older guy somewhere in the Midwest and he just barked “Self-publishing!” and sat there, arms folded and grumpy look on his face, ready to do verbal battle.)
 
I’m guessing the more confrontational attitudes are due to the fact that I’m traditionally published, so maybe they expect me to be the enemy? Sometimes there’s almost a trolling vibe to the question. Which usually makes me smile more than get upset. Usually followed by me shrugging and saying, “I’m pretty agnostic about the whole thing.” Usually followed by a huh? look on the questioner’s part. Like, how can I not have a firm, didactic position on the issue?
 
Well, I certainly have a personal preference—for me and for my writing—but that’s another issue entirely.
 
In the broader aspect, virtually everything’s over-polarized today (duh) and the ‘us against them’ mentality seems to have trickled all the way down to publishing.
 
Unnecessarily so, in my opinion.
 
You may occasionally see/hear trad authors looking askance at indie authors. (No one I know personally, but a quick perusal of social will show you this attitude can exist. Although tellingly enough, almost never from ‘successful’ authors. I guess some people feel better when they think they have someone they can look down upon.)
 
And I’ve also seen self-pub’d authors deride trad authors, stating traditionally published writers have given up control over their work, sold their souls to the corporate devil, etc., etc., etc. (Again, looking at the involved parties, it seems like the same mindset as above. How’re those grapes tasting?)
 
When in reality…
 
It would be pretty rare to find a self-pub’d author who would honestly pass on a mainstream publishing offer, were one made. (Assuming a typical contract for a first-time novel: five-figure advance, sliding 10-15% of hardback list price in royalties, totally pro editing, copy editing, and art direction, along with the sort of publicity, sales, marketing, and distribution a mainstream house can provide.) And of course, along with this would likely come the benefits of agent representation (which is a whole post unto itself, but for now let’s just say the benefits are many), as serious interest from a legit house will net you entrée to a legit agency.
 
But on the other hand…
 
It’s also true that there may be times when some traditionally published authors might wish they had more autonomy with regard to their publishing destiny. And I suppose a new author with an unexpected massive hit might wish they could somehow go back and reap 85% of it instead of 15%. And so on.
 
However…
 
This circular firing squad mentality is largely built on the same false values that drive most of the toxic dead-ends on social media: FOMO, virtue-signifying, self-validation, and living in an echo chamber.
 
The operative word here being “false.” Because, as I usually reply when asked, whether your goal is large publisher, small press, or self-publication, the difference is (or should be) zero, as far as the work itself is concerned.
 
In other words, any book which is offered to the reading public in exchange for the reader’s time, attention, and money should be competently written (and rewritten/revised/polished) to the very best of the author’s ability. And it should be edited (which has almost nothing to do with spelling/grammar/punctuation--see this post) by a professional editor. And it should likewise be copy-edited to the same quality level. And the design and cover should be done by a talented artist who will do the text justice. Same with interior illustrations, if any.
 
All of the above applies whether the publisher is big, small, or the author herself.
 
So really, we—as writers—all have the same fundamental goals, desires, and quality benchmarks for our writing. We all want to put our very best work forward, written and edited and packaged to provide the very best reading experience for our readers.
 
Regardless of our genre, style, age-range, price-point, etc.
 
And regardless of the size of our publisher.
 
 
Write on!

 
Sometimes determining what you really like in other writers’ works can help you with your own story creation. Especially if you dig beyond the What? to get to the all-important Why?
 
For example, it took me a little while to figure out that most books I really enjoy have a certain ‘realistic-yet-hopeful’ relationship aspect. It doesn’t necessarily have to be romantic, although it frequently is. I just need to be able to believe the characters in the relationship would actually, organically be interested in one another, as opposed to: Of course they’re made for each other… he has the smiliest smile and she has the hairiest hair! Beyond that, pretty much anything goes—as long as I can buy into it on an emotional level.
 
We’re all a ‘study of one,’ of course, but it was really helpful to me—and my work—to explore what resonated with me, and why.
 
I invite you to do likewise. Feel free to put your responses in the comments…
 
The below was my response to an author question I was asked on Goodreads (Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?) and I thought it might be a good conversation starter here also, for the reasons given above.

*     *     *     *     *

My initial response is to say Bryce & Julie, from Flipped. I love them! Although I suppose they can’t be my official answer because they’re never really a couple during the period covered by the book—one is always zigging (emotionally) while the other is zagging, and they’re never on the same page until the end. And even then, the resolution is more about the potential for them to become a couple than about them becoming an actual item. But definitely, one of the greatest first-love books ever.

Then there is the pair from my all-time childhood fave: Kip & Peewee from Have Spacesuit—Will Travel. (Perhaps the original “teens save the planet” book, half a century before Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent, etc. And perhaps the best of them all.) But again, they’re not really a couple during the book (she’s too young for one thing, even if she is the smarter half of the team). But, as with Flipped, you can definitely see them being together in the future.

And not that I would ever list my own characters as “my favorites,” but I do have a special place in my heart for Zach & Kimber, and GT & Jamie (and Rocky & Rann, and J & Assi, and…).

Then there are all the iconic pairings from TV: Let’s see… Buffy & Angel… Buffy & Spike… Angel & Cordelia… Willow & Tara… Xander & Anya… (Okay, let’s pass on TV.)

But before leaving human/vampire pairings, is there any better than Tana & Gavriel in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown? Not that I can recall. Even you-know-who & what’s-his-name. (To say nothing of the best fantasy couple that never was: H&H. Damn.)

And of course there are contemporary couples from adult fiction, like the interesting-but-not-quite-believable on again/off again/on again ’ship between Lisbeth and Blomkvist of Dragon Tattoo fame. My credibility isn’t stretched by the waif-like/multi-millionaire/psychologically-damaged/mathematical genius who still needs a legal guardian at twenty-something, but by the supposedly mature, intelligent, middle-aged reporter who’s so emotionally near-sighted he can’t see what’s right in front of him. Even with all that, they’re a memorable pairing. (And full disclosure—I actually liked that bastard-child of a fourth book in the trilogy. Partly for the resolution.)

Back in what is ostensibly kidlit land, the story of Liesel & Rudy in The Book Thief may be the saddest of them all, because—unlike in Flipped—the potential for them to become a couple is forever destroyed by the realities of living in wartime Germany. They’re both truly heroes at an age far too young to have to be heroic. And although neither of them know it until it’s too late, they’re in love from beginning. The final scene with the two of them just broke my heart.

So, to what may be my actual favorite fictional couple… at least for now. Puck & Sean from The Scorpio Races. (Don’t you just love the way he calls her by her first and last name?) Everything about that book is so understated… whispered, instead of shouting in your face. But really, I think they’re my favorite literary couple simply because they actually, really, truly belong together.

So... who is YOUR favorite fictional couple???
 

 
You’ll sometimes hear—in person and all over social media—people talking derisively about the “Big Five” as though they were the devil incarnate. There are several accusations that typically go along with the tirade, but the most common seem to be “They’re a monopoly!” and “They’re gatekeepers!”
 
I’m not here to defend the Big Five (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan) because (a) they certainly don’t need any help from me, and (b) they’re all large, world-wide media corporations, with all the complexity—good & bad—that goes along with that. Saying the Big Five are all wonderful would be as shortsighted as saying they’re all bad.  (However, I will venture that among the broad classes of entertainment/media industries*—film, music, and books—the publishing industry as a whole probably gets the highest marks when it comes to fundamental honesty and idealism. Which, again, isn’t to say they’re perfect.)
 
*Hunter S. Thompson reportedly said, “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.” And while he did say it, his original quote was actually about the TV business. Which only strengthens the overall point.
 
I’m more here to address some commonly held beliefs (including the two mentioned above… both of which I’ve heard frequently on book tour and seen countless times online). Because holding outdated or incorrect beliefs—especially those that cast you in the role of hapless victim—can only hold you back as you strive for success in your chosen arena.
 
Let’s start with the first one because it’s pretty cut and dried—the numbers are right there for anyone who wishes to look. The first sentence of PRH’s ‘Imprints’ page reads: “Penguin Random House is the international home to nearly 275 editorially and creatively independent publishing imprints.” Obviously there’s no way any given project is going to fit all—or even most—of these, as each imprint has its own focus and flavor. But still, there’s a lot of choice here. (There are around thirty separate kidlit imprints alone just within PRH.)
 
Not all of the Big Five have 275 imprints (PRH being the biggest of the big) but it’s probably fair to say that between the five of them there are on the order of 500 separate imprints. And don’t forget about all the other large publishers. The “Next Five”—Scholastic, Disney/Hyperion, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Workman, and Sterling—are each significant enterprises with multiple imprints. And the “many under one roof” paradigm doesn’t end there. Sourcebooks—a Chicago-based independently owned publisher which recently cracked the Top 20—has ten or so imprints of its own.
 
And beyond all this, many of your favorite independent publishers have distribution deals with one of the Big Five, leveraging the bigger publisher’s ability to get the indie’s books into bookstores, schools, and libraries nationwide. I mean, why not? That’s obviously one of the benefits to the author of being affiliated with a Big Five imprint. Why shouldn’t a smaller indie avail itself of some of that same bookish horsepower? Win-win.
 
So, the “Monopoly of Big Publishing” in actuality may be on the order of 1000 separate publishing imprints, all things considered. Hardly a paucity of choice, editorially or otherwise. And although it’s probably a subject for another post, the short take is that most of these imprints really do function as independent publishers, as least as far as editorial choices (i.e. which books they choose to acquire, etc.), and rely on the parent company for the bigger admin tasks like publicity, sales, marketing, etc.
 
Regarding the concept of gatekeeping… I suppose it depends on your definition of the term. If you mean there’s an evil troll at the bridge keeping you out because he simply doesn’t like you, or because he simply doesn’t recognize brilliant writing when he sees it, well… we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
 
But if you mean that the company that: (1) pays the author for the rights to the book, (2) pays for the editorial staff, and (3) art direction, and (4) copyediting, and (5,6,7) publicity and sales and marketing, along with (8) paying to have the books themselves physically printed and (9) distributed to the point of sale… if you mean those people actually deign to choose which products they buy and market, well, then yes, I suppose you could say they’re gatekeeping.
 
Although to me this seems akin to accusing Costco of gatekeeping when they choose which brands of ice cream they wish to sell in their stores. I mean yes, they do make a choice. As does everyone in every business where the goal is keeping customers happy and keeping the lights on.
 
(I’d say if a publisher doesn’t do any gatekeeping*, they may be a printer, not a publisher, and you may be paying them instead of the other way around. In violation of Yog’s Law.)
*Check this list from SFWA (paying particular attention to #5).
 
Well, as authors, we have the power of business choices too.
 
Our choices include either creating a product that’s targeted at a specific business, or creating the best work we can and then finding a good fit for it within the marketplace. (And as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the latter may be the better path in the long run.) Or, you have the option of bypassing any sort of middleman and taking your work directly to the market yourself. All valid choices, and all can lead to success… whatever that means for you. The only choice I’d recommend against is choosing to believe that someone out there is somehow keeping you down. That’s a no-win belief… especially these days, when there are so many options available to us.
 
Including the Big Five Hundred… and beyond.
 
It’s up to you to discover where you—and your work—might best fit.
 
Happy writing!

 
One of the hardest things about being a writer (assuming aspirations of publishing success and all the baggage around that) has little to do with the writing itself. It has everything to do with the difficulties of pushing forward with your writing efforts when you’re emotionally drained from the sustained lack of success. (Notice I didn’t call this “failure.” There’s an important distinction which we’ll get to.)
 
There’s a story (having every earmark of being apocryphal, except that it’s true) told by the famous collegiate running coach, Jack Daniels. He was coaching a talented distance runner, whom he took to an international track meet in South America. (IIRC the event in question was the men’s 5000 meter race.) Shortly after the start it became clear Jack’s student was outclassed by the international field. He fell further and further behind, until he was half a lap or more behind the rest of the pack. Totally disheartened, as he passed his coach he asked if he could drop out. Coach Daniels told him that as long as he ran up and caught the leader first, he could drop out. The runner then sprinted to catch up to the pack, knowing that once he reached them he could bail out and rest. However, it took him so long to catch up that by the time he passed the leader the race was almost over, so he hung in there and won the whole thing.
 
Wow. There are a lot of lessons in this story.
 
In distance running, the mind usually gives up long before the runner actually has to. (It’s thought this is a “governor” effect built into the brain, to keep us from hurting ourselves, and that one of the reasons elite runners are successful is that they’ve learned to override this governor.) I’ve experienced both sides of this (which is another post) but there’s also an interesting complementary phenomenon I call the “finish line effect.” This manifests when you’re totally fatigued and out of gas near the end of a long effort (like, say, 26 miles into a 26.2 mile marathon), and suddenly you see the finish line up ahead – finally! – and the fatigue magically lifts and you find you actually have something left in the tank after all and you’re able to finish strong.
 
The overarching lesson for us here is that fatigue is largely a mental construct. That doesn’t mean the effects of it aren’t real. They certainly are. But maybe—armed with this information—when we feel fatigued after a long effort without the results we hoped for, we can realize we don’t necessarily have to follow that little voice telling us to give up… to give in… to quit.
 
The “effort vs. results” equation isn’t fixed, it’s a continuum. Occasionally (very rarely, in my experience) someone actually hits the jackpot on their very first effort (whether first manuscript, first query, or first submission). But for the vast majority of us, it’s a long uphill slog. Probably multiple manuscripts (some abandoned mid-stream, some unpolished first drafts, some finished but in need of further revision & editing, and a few driven all the way to submittal-worthy completion). Probably multiple queries for each finished manuscript. And unless the manuscript in question falls into the “fully baked” category, you may go through multiple submissions without a positive response from an agent (or editor, as the case may be). And once you do get representation, the whole query/sub process starts over, trying to find that editor who is looking for exactly what you’re offering, at the time you’re offering it.
 
So yeah… perhaps multiple manuscripts, perhaps over multiple years, without a “yes.”
 
Some things to keep in mind along the way…
 
1. This isn’t failure. This is what success looks like… from the middle of the process.
 
2. This is absolutely the norm. I’ve heard tons of ‘author origin stories,’ and they’re almost all some version of this.
 
3. “Success” is probably not the best choice of immediate goal, as you will very likely become very discouraged very quickly. Instead, the initial goals should be to:
(a) improve your craft, to the point where you are able to…
(b) draft/revise/edit/polish a really strong manuscript.
(I’ve said before that in my opinion probably 90% of success hinges on this—having a really strong manuscript before you take any further steps.)
 
4. Somewhere along the way, this process may begin to look like failure to you. It’s not. (See #1.) But if you let the process discourage you to the point of quitting, then—and only then—does it become failure.
 
5. Realize there’s a finish line out there somewhere, waiting for you. You just don’t know how far away it is. Guess what? No one else does, either. What you do know—and what you should keep top-of-mind when you feel “failure fatigue”—is that the only way anyone ever got to the finish line was through sustained, incremental forward movement. (Remember, the best remedy for rejection is writing.)
 
6. And of course, once you get there, the finish line is really just another starting line. That’s the way it works. For everyone. So…
 
7. Enjoy the process! If you don’t love the actual act of sitting down at your desk—alone, for hours—and crafting the story in your mind into words on the page, then you may be in the wrong line of work. Because, really, all we have 100% control over is the work itself.
 
Happy writing!
 

 
I had a gig last night (as I write this) that was fun and a bit different. It was a semi-unplugged thing at a nice restaurant, and in the interest of space and volume and simplicity I only brought a cajon (plus some smaller hand and foot percussion, etc.) instead of a full drumset. Which I’ve done before, many times. But due to some of the specifics of the gig we also played some tunes I hadn’t played before (including some I’d never heard before), and a lot of tunes I’d never played on cajon before.
 
All of which was fine, and actually enjoyable. (The venue had a fun, forgiving crowd, which helps. There may have been wine involved.)
 
The interesting part was that I had to figure out how I was going to best replicate the drumset part on the cajon--while playing the song on cajon—and then modify it as I went along, trying to optimize the groove without causing any undue musical bumps along the way. Again, this is fun and the right side of my brain enjoys the challenge. The not-so-fun part was when I’d arrive at a pattern that seemed to work well, playing something new to me, and then I’d sort of look down at my limbs to see what I was doing… and it would start to fall apart. I had to laugh—it was the tale of the centipede stopping to think about moving all those feet and then suddenly not being able to walk.
 
The writing lesson for me here was the benefits of not being over-analytical during the creative phase. (And by “over-analytical,” you know we really mean “critical.”)
 
Because if there’s one thing writers do that most others don’t, it’s stopping to critique our own work in the middle of producing it, frequently to the point of abject discouragement where we no longer even want to produce it.
 
Imagine someone building a concrete block wall like a writer: He sets the first block in mud. Fine. Then he sets the second one and immediately stops everything to take detailed measurements. Oops—the second block is 1/16th of an inch out of alignment. Dang! He pulls it, scrapes the mud, and re-sets it repeatedly until it’s perfect. But by then the rest of the mud in the wheelbarrow has set so he throws it all away and quits for the day.
 
Contrasted with how a builder would approach it: She builds the wall, realizing there are small imperfections along the way but continuing working because she knows she won’t have a smooth wall until she has a rough one. Then she cleans the joints. Then she puts on a rough coat, getting it somewhat level. Then a second, finer coat, to even out any little imperfections, followed by a smooth color coat to get it the way she imagined it at the beginning.
 
The process is iterative, not monolithic. We probably don’t want to worry about the final little polish when we’re in the middle of laying the first course of blocks. Thinking that way can drive us crazy, and distract us to the point where the writing comes to a standstill.
 
Thinking and doing are both important parts of the process, but generally not simultaneously. Everyone’s creative methodology is different, of course, but it usually helps when I try to follow some approximation of the following six-step process:
 
 
1. Think (about what you might want to do), then…
 
2. Do (until you don’t feel like doing any more at the moment), then…
 
3. Think (until you’re happy with what you previously did), then…
 
4. Do (some more), then…
 
5. Repeat thinking/doing until “the end.”
 
    Then…
 
6. Go back and think/do/think/do until you think you’ve done as well as you can do.
 
 
So… if you’re at the desk (metaphorical or literal) creating output of any quantity and quality, consider not getting analytical in that moment and just continuing to create until the flow subsides. No matter how rough or raw or downright flawed the work may be. Because you can always smooth out rough work, but it’s hard to improve something that doesn’t exist.
 
So, first build the wall… then plaster it.
 
Happy story-building!
 

 
In a recent post I briefly mentioned this and I want to expand on it here, as I think it applies to all areas of writing (fiction, nonfiction, short works, book-length works) as well as several aspects of the industry itself.
 
In the middle of my nonfiction workshop I usually throw up a slide with a couple different mastheads on it, one from a healthy, mid-sized national magazine (50,000 – 100,000 monthly readers) and one from a big one (closing in on a million). The mid-sized mag (which I’ve written for quite a bit) has maybe a dozen in-house people on staff. I point to the person at the top of the masthead—the publisher, in this case—and look at the class. “Do I send it to her?” I shake my head. “No way. Her job is the big picture of keeping the whole business afloat.” I go down a bit further, to the editorial staff, then zip past positions like Editorial Director and Editor-in-Chief until I get to Managing Editor. “This is the guy I send my stuff to.” (And when I started my relationship with him, IIRC, he was an Associate Editor.) Then I look at the big masthead (close to a hundred people in all) and we play the same game, after going through a bunch of people just to get to the editorial dept. “Her? No chance in France. Him? Not even close. This guy? Probably not. Her? Maybe, if I had a strong resume and was pitching a feature. This woman?” I ask when we’ve gone down a dozen editorial positions to Assistant Managing Editor. “Yeah, I’d probably go with her if I was pitching a piece to them for the first time.”
 
Why? Because those people are in the sweet spot, where they have the horsepower to make decisions (or at least recommendations) about article acquisitions, but not so far up that they don’t care about smaller (single article) editorial decisions. They may also give your query a little more attention. I once sent a story to a small magazine with a small staff, basically consisting of the editor (who I think was also the publisher), an assistant editor, and an admin assist. I sent it to the junior editor on a hunch. She read it/liked it/bought it (not sure if she got the concurrence of her boss first, and I didn’t really care). She also told me this was the first time someone had sent a piece directly to her.
 
Moving beyond periodicals, this methodology can also work as you get into the broader book publishing arena. New agents, for example, are typically looking to build their roster (hard to place books if you don’t represent any authors). This doesn’t mean they’ll automatically sign anything that comes across their desk—all the usual criteria of quality saleable fiction still apply. And they may not have the clout (and industry relationships) of established, successful agents. But on the other hand, newer agents are more likely to be actively seeking out new stuff, as opposed to well-established agents who may already have their hands relatively full with existing clients.
 
Similarly, when an editorial assistant becomes an assistant editor, they will be looking for manuscripts to acquire. As with new agents, most newly acquiring editors don’t already have a group of existing authors to work with and must build their list from the ground up, so they may be more willing to read your work. (Again, this doesn’t mean their standards are lower than established editors—they may in fact be very picky about their “first” books. And they will almost certainly need the concurrence of senior editors within their imprint before they can give you a “yes.”) But in general, they may be more open to at least taking a look at any given submission.
 
And I’ve seen several instances of a newer agent or editor posting on social media about the types of projects they’re looking for… sometimes with a general wish list and sometimes with fairly specific criteria. (Please note that if an editor muses on twitter that she’d love to see a near-future SF version of Gone With The Wind featuring an LGBT cast with global warming filling in for the Civil War, this doesn’t mean you should necessarily sit down and write that novel. These sorts of posts are really aimed at writers who may already have an existing work which somehow fits into the general gestalt of the request. And if you happen to have one that does… fire that query off right damn now!)
 
The real lesson here is that while most aspiring authors would love to be working with a rock-star agent or editor, the odds are mathematically against that happening—at least right away—for the majority of new writers. (As discussed in this post, an editor at a big house may work on a dozen or so books a year, and most of those will be from existing authors.) So consider increasing your chances of representation and/or publication by keeping your eyes and ears open for newer/junior editors and agents who are looking for a foothold in the industry just as you’re looking for yours.
 
Who knows? Maybe you can team up and make it to the top together...
 

 
I’ve gotten pretty good at skunk abatement. Just ask my wife/partner-in-stink. If you can get her to stop laughing, that is. The first time we had a skunk problem I called the county and asked if they could come trap it. They could, but it turns out they have to kill them after they trap them. (Something about the law… yada, yada.) Heck, anyone can kill a skunk. I wanted to move them. Unharmed. (After all, they’re just doing what skunks do. And they were here first.) So after a little trial and error we hit on a fairly successful process for safely/humanely relocating skunks. It’s better for the skunk, it’s better for us, and—believe it or not—it’s actually kind of fun. In a goofy, semi-thrilling, Tom Sawyer-ish way.
 
There’s invariably some trepidation, it sometimes takes longer than planned, and yeah, it’s occasionally downright smelly. But every time we manage to relocate one of the little stinkers to greener pastures, we’re always glad we went through the effort.
 
Guess what? The same thing applies to our “literary skunks.” You know—those scenes (or chapters or sections or maybe even entire books) that, while perhaps well-plotted or well-written when considered alone, don’t really work in the larger context. We sometimes like our stinky little darlings too much to kill them dead, so we tend to hem-and-haw and lightly edit and rationalize, trying to find some way to justify leaving them in the work at hand. Which we often do… to the detriment of the larger work.
 
There’s another way. One that’ll allow you to remove these favorite-but-ill-fitting scenes without the trauma of killing them dead: Excise them (and artfully re-connect the remaining loose ends in the ms), re-label as appropriate, and save them in a folder of “favorite unused scenes” or similar.
 
Some real-world examples…
 
The original draft of Road Rash had a scene in the middle that ended up not working, plot-wise—due to downstream events—so I rewrote the chapter without that scene, but filed the original chapter away because it had things I liked. (Primarily descriptions of onstage connection and communication.) And sure enough, in the penultimate chapter two friends are onstage again (after some time apart) and—with a little revision—I used maybe a page of the original material (split into two separate scenes) and I was really happy with the result. (It’s not that it saved me a bit of work. It’s that the writing captured a vibe I wanted to portray, and I didn’t want to lose that when I excised the original scene.)
 
A while back I wrote a short story featuring a middle-aged woman who had a rather harrowing day on the job. I wasn’t real happy with the resolution but I really liked the character/setting and the opening adventure. So I ended up taking the basic scenario (rewritten with the protagonist being younger) and used it as the opening of a novel. (Which is now out on sub, so light a candle for me…)
 
I know someone whose OBFN was an adult thriller that wasn’t acquired, but he hung onto the original plot concept and later used it as the basis for a successful YA novel. Likewise, another author friend had a short story that didn’t really gain traction, but they expanded it into a novel (which did gain traction).
 
I recently revised a WIP which had a book-within-a-book as part of it. And during revisions (you guessed it) the “book-in-book” sections had to go… they broke the flow and perhaps confused things for the reader. The revised manuscript is tighter and better for it. But I also saved those sections—because, in the micro, they were some of my favorite parts—and I may write a book based on that character later. (So light another candle, please.)
 
So yes, retaining selected sections you’ve trimmed can give you potential seedlings that might grow into something interesting later.
 
But (and this may be the more important part) the act of excising the scenes and carefully storing them away as a separate document for possible later use makes it far easier to cut them. Because in your mind you’re not really killing them… you’re putting them in the deep freeze for later, which is a lot easier to stomach than simply highlighting and deleting.
 
I’m certainly not suggesting we do this with all our trimmed passages… that’s crazy talk. By all means, when you see something that clearly needs to go, the best path is almost always to cut it and move on. But on the occasion you find something superfluous which you also happen to love, try the following: Cut and save it, continue on with whatever editing you’re doing, then go back afterward and read the passage without the extra text. Assuming it’s better, mollify yourself with the thought that your favorite passage is safely in the vault, then move on. The manuscript at hand will almost certainly be stronger for it, and who knows… you might even find fertile ground for the excised text to spring to life in the future.
 
Sure, skunks are cute little critters. But that doesn’t mean they belong in your basement or backyard or under your porch. But it also doesn’t mean you have to kill them dead. Make the effort to move them safely and you’ll find you can live skunk-free and guilt-free.
 
Win-win.
 

 
We all get stuck at times. With a capital S. I don’t mean small-scale stuck (you’re in the middle of a manuscript and chapter fourteen still doesn’t feel quite right). I mean big-scale stuck, like when a project you’ve spent a couple of years on seems like a total failure. Or maybe career-size stuck, or even life-size stuck.
 
So let’s get the platitudes out of the way first…
 
Yes, you should be thankful for whatever you do have, whether that’s health or family or friends or a dog that loves you or that you live in a first-world locale instead of a poverty-stricken third-world country.
 
Yes, it will probably feel better in the morning… or in a week or a month or a year. So give it time.
 
Yes, a long run (or hike or ride or dogwalk or whatever) along a remote trail will probably add some badly needed endorphins to your brain chemistry and some perspective to your situation.
 
And yes, a glass of wine with a sympathetic friend is almost certainly in order.
 
And I would recommend all of the above, as an attitude adjustment technique if nothing else.
 
But none of these is going to solve the root problem (unless your definition of ‘solution’ is: feeling slightly better while continuing to live with the same ongoing issue, with no hope of real change).
 
Part of the issue is usually that we’re unsure of the steps to take to mitigate the situation. Hence the word, stuck. We don’t know what to do, so we do nothing. Other than feel bad. Or complain. Which leads to feeling even worse.
 
Everyone is different, but for me, one of the main factors in feeling better about a bad situation is the idea that there’s something—however small—that I can actually do about it. It doesn’t necessarily fix the situation—at least not right away—but frequently it fixes my brain to the point where I stand a fighting chance of fixing the situation eventually.
 
Sometimes we get stuck in a do-loop, centered around the issue of, “How the heck can I get where I want to be? What are my first steps? And the next? And then…?” We spin our wheels because there are an almost unlimited number of possible actions, and there’s no way to see which will lead to success. If only we could see ahead as clearly as we can look back, right?
 
I don’t have a time machine, but there's an exercise that might get us close. Basically, it involves looking “back” from an imagined future and figuring out the likely steps that got us there. Which may sound goofy on the face of it, so let’s move away from the theory and consider a practical example…
 
Let’s say you’ve worked hard on a project for a good bit of time. It could be any number of things—creative, educational, career-related, artistic—but for the sake of the example we’ll assume it’s a writing project… let’s say a novel. You’ve written, revised, edited, and polished it to a point where you’re really happy with it. So you spend another big chunk of time and energy shopping it around… only to eventually strike out. Maybe none of the agents you contacted bit on your query at all. Or perhaps a few responded with a request for a partial, but it didn’t go beyond that. Or maybe one or two requested the full manuscript—but in the end none of them offered representation. Or maybe you shopped directly to editors, with similar results. Or maybe you had some nibbles and close calls (heartbreaking, to say the least!) but in the end it was a pass.
 
You’re naturally disheartened, doing all this work only to get skunked. When you’re ready to deal with it (after the appropriate mood elevation techniques, as discussed above) the first decision is to determine whether or not you think the project is worth further effort. If not, that’s an easy one—set it aside and get on to your next project., whatever that may be. (Hopefully with some hard-won wisdom in your toolkit which will increase the odds of success with your next WIP.)
 
But if you really feel the project has value and means a lot to you and it’d break your heart to give up on it—yet are unclear about exactly what to do next—this is where the “looking back from an imagined future” process can help get you motivated and back in the saddle. As follows…
 
1. Decide what success would look like for the project under discussion.
 
2. Relax, close your eyes, and imagine it’s a year or two down the road and you’ve finally achieved success with the project. (Not that you might achieve it, or that you will achieve it, but that you have achieved it, in some realistic, non-magical, believable way.)
 
3. Now imagine you’re being interviewed in the wake of the success and someone asks you to delineate the steps you took to reach this point.
 
4. List those steps, being as realistic and detailed as you can. (Break down the process into manageable chunks and place them in a logical sequence.)
 
5. Follow through on those steps.
 
So to re-boot our novel, for example, the process might look like this…
 
You decide that ‘success’ for this project would be your novel getting published. Determine if this means Trad/Big-5 (which should really be called “Big-500,” but that’s another post) or small press or indie, as this will affect the subsequent process. For the sake of the example, you choose traditional publishing.
 
You imagine this as though it’s a string of established facts: Query, submittal, agent representation, publisher acquisition, editorial back-and-forth, copyediting, ARCs, publicity, book birthday, reviews, signings at your fave bookstores, and your book on the shelves of stores and libraries across the country.
 
Now: What steps had to be taken for all this to happen? Be realistic—no hand-waving allowed here. (FYI, “I ran into David Levithan at Starbucks and he asked about the pages under my arm and I handed him my first chapter and before he finished his latte he offered me a contract with a six-figure advance...” is not realistic.) A realistic list might include the following:
 
1. Make the manuscript as strong as possible. Read it as though you didn’t write it. (The literary equivalent of “Drive it like you stole it!”) Be merciless when it comes to cutting or revising favorite parts if you know in your gut they don’t further the story. And do all the other things—large and small—that can tighten the prose, improve the flow, and not take the reader out of the story mid-passage. (Many of which we’ve discussed over the previous 35 posts.)
 
2. Review any critical feedback you got from people whose opinions matter in this context. (Agents and editors, primarily.) Even though it may be a lot of work, address any feedback that makes you think (even reluctantly), “Okay, okay… I guess they have a point.” And if you get the same feedback from multiple sources, you definitely want to take a long, hard look at it.
 
3. Draft a new query that’s short, to-the-point, and non-sociopathic. Remember, you can’t talk someone into liking your manuscript… you can only write them into liking it by virtue of the actual writing. But you can easily talk them out of wanting to read it.  In other words, don’t be cute or clever with your query. Be professional. Besides a brief description of your work, mention only the things that will actually matter to the recipient (previous publishing credits, perhaps a realistic comp or two if applicable, a mention if you’ve met them/heard them speak at a conference, and your appreciation for other works they’ve represented or edited if this applies) and none of the things that don’t matter (pretty much everything else). There are approximately 17 zillion examples of successful queries around. Read a couple dozen current ones to get a sense of what they should and shouldn’t do, then draft the best version you can for your book.
 
4. Do the necessary research to find agents and/or editors who’ve represented and/or edited works similar to yours. Several agents and/or editors… but only those who work in your particular field or genre, and only one per agency or imprint. (There are so many resources available for this—several book’s worth—that I’m not going to list them here, but also keep in mind that many authors thank their agent and editor in the afterward of their books. But always double check regardless, because things in publishing can change rapidly.)
 
5. Choose carefully, as once someone at a given agency or imprint has passed, it’s less likely that another in the same office will accept (because—with editors especially—they generally share among co-workers and look for concurrence). In my nonfiction/periodical workshops I advocate not shooting for the top of the masthead. You may have better luck with someone newer/younger/lower on the food chain. (New agents are typically looking for clients to start their roster, and once an associate editor is allowed to acquire, they likewise start reading in earnest. Some will even post on social about their wish list.)
 
6. Tailor the query for the particular recipient, with all of the above in mind. Not just changing the name at the top, but actually drafting the letter for them specifically… who they are, where they work, the position they hold (there’s a difference between associate editor, editor, and editorial director) and—most important—what they’ve done in the field, either with representation or editing, and where your work fits into this.
 
7. Submit the queries, keeping careful records of where and when each query was sent. And as soon as you’ve sent queries for all the potential agents or editors on your list, start a new round of research, generate more possible leads, and sent out another wave of queries.
 
8. Follow up. Obviously send any requested partial/full samples right away with a brief note saying, “Thanks, here’s what you requested,” but also follow up on any rejections that incorporate specific manuscript suggestions or changes. (With a brief note: "If I made the suggested changes, would you be willing to take a look at it again?")
 
9. When you get representation or manuscript acquisition, be open to revision. (See this post where editors state the number one thing they look for in a new writer is the willingness to revise.) Virtually no initial submission—no matter how brilliant—is perfect as-is. And editors (and agents) know this. So if you think your manuscript is untouchable, this is a serious roadblock to publication. And if an editor wants to do back-and-forthing before official acceptance, I would absolutely be open to that also. Maybe they’re trying to get a promising manuscript to a point where they think they can sell it to their boss, or maybe they’re assessing how easy you are to work with. Or likely both. Regardless, this is definitely a success path. Don’t be precious—work with her.
 
10. Be a team player at every step. Meet your deadlines. Be professional. Don’t be difficult. Help out with publicity (via social, email lists, book signings, author presentations, etc.) when the time comes.
 
So… looking back from an imagined future success, the above is what a likely success path looks like to me. Obviously the latter parts aren’t completely within your control, but luckily the most important parts (the first six or so) are all you. And ninety percent of the whole damn thing is the very first step: make sure your work is as strong as possible, in all regards. Everything else is mostly common sense and professionalism, tied to a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck. (But the harder you work, the luckier you get, right…?)
 
It’s not easy. If you want easy, you’re in the wrong line of work. But it’s the best way I know of to get back in the game after you strike out with a project you really believe in.
 
TL; DR:  We can lick our wounds for a while, but sooner or later we have to ask ourselves, “If this were to succeed, what steps would’ve had to have been taken in order to get there?” And—if we’re serious about succeeding with this particular project—we need to get back in the ring and take those steps.
 

 
Last time we discussed how, prior to becoming a writer, one has to ‘acquire the desire’ to actually buckle down and write. (TL;DR: You do it, with regularity, such that you actually make a little progress at it and thus feel a little better about it—and yourself—and thus continue to do it, with regularity, until your desire to write eventually outpaces your available time, thus rendering the question of “making oneself write” forever moot.)
 
For now, let’s talk about that word, regularity (whatever that means for you and your life), and how to achieve it. As mentioned, you don’t make time, you allot it. (Making time is like printing your own money—basically magical thinking. However, allotting time is like budgeting the money you actually earn—much more realistic, and much more likely to succeed.)
 
And here’s the big secret to allotting time: to do it successfully, do it well before you plan on using it. If you do the hit-and-miss thing where you tell yourself, I’ll just see how my day goes and try to find time to write at some point, you’ll find this is more often than not a failure path. To the point where you may become discouraged with your lack of progress and pretty much stop trying.
 
However, there’s a proven success path for allotting time (or money, or any other resource): remove the variables. Remove the element of chance (will I find time today?), the element of choice (do I want to write today or not?), and the element of making determinations (how much should I write today?). You still employ these elements (the last two, at least) but you do it ahead of time—and only once—when you make the initial choice (I choose to follow this schedule to the end) and the initial determination of the schedule (I will allot this much time, on these days, to writing). Then, once that’s done and you’ve committed to it, it’s simple. Not necessarily easy, but certainly easier than if you had to constantly fight to convince yourself to “make time” to write on a daily basis.
 
Writing, for experienced writers, is simply doing what we enjoy, being who we are, and doing our job. But for aspiring writers—at least at first—it’s training. Not on how to write, but simply to write. And the first rule of training is: have a reasonable plan, and stick to it.
 
If you can do that, there are few limits on what you can accomplish…
 
Once upon a time I put out an open invite to a large group of people, asking if they’d like to run a marathon. (Because it’s almost universal that people will hear someone mention running a marathon and they’ll say, “You know, I always wanted to do one of those… someday.” Very similar to someone finding out you’re a writer and then replying, “You know, I always wanted to write a novel… someday.”) And that was my basic pitch to them: You want to do one “someday?” Well, someday can be this year. Let’s do this!
 
And of course there were lots of questions…
 
“How do I know if I can do it?”
“I’ve never done one—how hard is it?”
“How in the world do I get ready for something like that?”
 
And my answers were basically:
 
1. You can’t do it. Not yet, NFW. But if you do the training, you will absolutely be able to do it.
 
2. That’s up to you. If you follow the training plan, it will be challenging but do-able, even fun. If you don’t, it will be virtually impossible.
 
3. No worries. There is a plan for that. And we’re going to follow it, all the way to the finish line.
 
I ended up with seven or eight serious takers, which was a pleasant surprise. (I would have been happy with half that many.) I sent out the training plan, and we all started training. Occasionally together, mostly individually. But we communicated and checked up on each other via email frequently. One of the guys—probably the youngest & fittest of the bunch—exceeded the training plan very early on… he went out and ran ten miles when the plan only called for an easy three-miler that day, and he ended up injured and had to drop out.
 
Everyone else stuck to the plan—or a very close approximation of it—and our mantra during the eighteen weeks of training was “Respect the Distance.” We knew if we respected it—by doing the required training and not taking those 26.2 miles for granted—we’d likely succeed. And we also knew if we blew off the training—like skipping studying for a big exam—we’d likely end up as roadkill halfway through.
 
The punchline is everyone made it to the finish. Happy, healthy, and very proud of what they’d accomplished. (This was Big Sur, hardly a walk in the park.) And no one was prouder of them than I was. One of them—who’d struggled during the final miles but overcame and made it—told me afterward he’d learned something vital about himself: He had more willpower than he’d ever imagined, and if he could do this, he could do anything. (I’m not crying… you’re crying.)
 
And really, it all started with making a commitment to following a reasonable, rational, do-able training plan, and then following through on it. Some writing-related lessons here…
 
* It’s not a race. The goal is TO FINISH, feeling good about yourself and what you’ve accomplished. Period. As we’ve said before, writing a book faster—or slower—than someone else doesn’t make it better. Or worse.
 
* Having friends can make a huge difference in keeping you going. These can be fellow writers, beta readers, or just supportive friends/family/spouse. Either IRL or as part of an online community. You don’t have to go it alone. (Unless you want to, of course. You do you.)
 
* It can be good to have a coach—someone who’s been there before—to ask questions of, or bounce ideas off. A brilliant teacher, who was teaching me how to teach (Col. Jeff Cooper, for those who may know of him), once told me that the primary attribute of a good teacher is that the success of the student takes precedence over the success of the instructor. Find someone who feels this way… who will help you write your story as best you can, instead of telling you how he would write it. If you can’t connect with someone like this—either locally or virtually—there are plenty of writers who put their thoughts about writing on the internet, via social media, blogs, forums, etc. And of course, there are actual books, by actual authors, showing you their way. (As discussed here.) As always, YMMV, so pick what works for you and feel free to ignore what doesn’t. There is no one right way.
 
* Have a plan, commit to the plan, and remove as many decisions as possible. But don’t beat yourself up if life occasionally intrudes. You missed this week’s scheduled Tuesday night writing session? Try to make it up Wednesday afternoon or Saturday morning, if you can. Or just let it go and move on. It’s what you do the majority of the time that matters, not the occasional exceptions.
 
* And finally, respect the distance. A novel is like a marathon. You’re going to need more than just a burst of enthusiasm at the start to carry you to the finish. It’s going to take a while, there’ll be times in the middle when the going is a little rough, and you can’t really hold the whole thing in your head at one time. But you don’t have to. You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, working on the part at hand, and you’ll get to the finish line sooner or later. But don’t worry about the finish line when you’re in the middle of it. Just keep moving, and try to enjoy the process. Why else do it?
 
So, how do you “get in the habit” of writing? First off, don’t rely on habit. Rely on commitment to schedule. At least in the beginning. Then, once you start getting the intrinsic rewards of writing, you won’t need to follow a schedule to make yourself write, any more than most of us need to follow a schedule to remind ourselves to eat. You will want to do it. Maybe even too much. (The good news is, excess writing won’t result in excess calories…)
 
So, for those of us having difficulty getting started or maintaining a head of steam when it comes to writing, here’s a three-step plan:
 
One – Create a writing schedule that you believe you can reasonably achieve. (The specifics are of course up to you, but it should have you writing on a regular basis.)
 
Two – Write the plan down, post it where you can see it every day, and make a commitment to follow it.
 
Three – Follow it. All the way to the finish line.
 

 
When talking with aspiring writers, you inevitably get questions about “getting on a schedule” or “sticking to a schedule” or “making time to write” or “getting in the habit” of writing. Boiled down, the question is basically, “How do I make myself write?”
 
But if you listen beyond the noise and get to the question behind the question, it’s actually more like, “How do I make myself want to write?”
 
(And some so-called experienced writer will inevitably answer the first question with, “It’s easy. If you really want to write, you’ll make time.” Which, besides being rude and dismissive, is also not helpful. And as we’ll eventually see, it’s also kind of bullshit.)
 
If you’ve been writing for a while, it’s easy to forget what it was like when we first decided we wanted to try writing. It’s like trying most other new skills: we’re not sure if it’s for us, we’re not good at it yet, and we probably don’t automatically enjoy it. We just know we want to give it a try. So we attempt to get in the habit of writing. And this is where a lot of aspiring writers flounder.
 
There are lots of books and theories and videos on the science of developing habits, with lots of different ideas on what it takes. Sometimes I think we’re focusing on the wrong aspect – it’s not just the number of repetitions, it’s the feedback we get for doing it… the intrinsic feedback. In other words, if you approach writing in a way that works for you (i.e. gives you results that make you feel good about writing, and about yourself) then you’ll want to continue this behavior. And vice versa, of course.
 
Just wanting (even wanting really really badly) to be a writer won’t necessarily lead to you becoming a writer. We all know people who have “wanted to write” for years, yet never really do. And I don’t think this is necessarily some moral failing on their part. I just think they didn’t approach it with the right mindset, and consequently didn’t follow an adequate training routine.
 
Once upon a time—as an adjunct part of my main gig—I would take squad-sized groups of people and help turn them into runners. The basic goal was to have them able to run five miles or so, including up and down hills, as a means of increasing their overall CV fitness. This training happened over a period of 12 to 16 weeks. There’d usually be a few who were already pretty fit and active, and then there would be a good sized group who were of average fitness but hadn’t run since their school days. We’d start pretty low and slow, but even so, right after the first run I’d always get the question: How the hell do you ever learn to actually enjoy this?
 
And I’d say, running is like smoking. Really.
 
Let’s say you’re a teenager and you want to smoke (because your friends all smoke and you want to be cool like them, of course). And the first time you smoke you feel pretty much like you do after your first run—your lungs hurt, you’re nauseated, and you feel like you might puke at any moment. And if you only smoked once every couple of weeks, you’d feel crappy every single time you smoked. But instead you do it pretty regularly. And after a while you can smoke in front of your homies and not cough like a dweeb. Then pretty soon you don’t really mind it that much. Then you find yourself sort of looking forward to it. And—if you hang in there and continue to smoke regularly—after a while you really enjoy it and then you discover you have to do it.
 
And then the punchline: Well, running is exactly like that.
 
And it is. But guess what? So is writing.
 
Which is why my most fundamental advice to aspiring writers is always: Try to write regularly. For whatever value of “regular” works for you and your life. I’m the last person to tell someone when and how much they should write—you know better than anyone what your life-load can handle. However, I think I can safely say if you write for 45 minutes and then not again for two or three weeks—when you write for half an hour—and then you don’t write again for a month or so, when you manage to squeeze in an hour, and so on… you’ll be like the intermittent smoker, continually starting over from ground zero.
 
Because here’s the big secret... the thing that the smug “you just gotta make time” pundits don’t tell you...  You don’t make time. You allot it.
 
And there’s also a secret (which of course is just a marketing word for technique) to successfully allotting time.
 
Which we’ll talk about next time when we discuss the hidden value of scheduling.
 
Until then, happy writing!

 
In talking with young musicians, one teachable point seems to come up repeatedly—the benefits of being about to “get outside yourself.”
 
Working on an art form isn’t always a smooth learning curve. There are definite peaks, with plateaus  - and even valleys - in between. With music, one of the leveling-up accomplishments is being able to get outside yourself as a creator. Typically, we learn how to play our chosen instrument somewhat, then we start a band. With many young bands, you watch them play and realize they’re a bunch of musicians playing in the same room at the same time, but they’re not really a band yet. You can tell they’re each thinking only about what they’re doing as they’re doing it (the epitome of this is looking at your hands as you play, with no regard for what anyone else is doing). Then, as the next step, they start to think about what they’re going to play, with little concern for how it’s going to fit into the song. (The example here is the young drummer who’s determined to play that flashy fill he just learned—no matter what—even though it doesn’t fit the mood of the music. Ask me how I know…)
 
A big leap forward is finally getting to a place where you aren’t thinking about your own playing in the moment at all; you’re listening to the music as a whole and adjusting to the others, trying to make it sound like a cohesive unit. Then, ultimately, you want to be able to interact with the band almost without conscious thought and really get some distance from it, so you can step back and hear the music as it appears to the audience. Because—unless you’re just playing by yourself for the fun of it—one of the primary goals is to have the audience feel what you’re attempting to convey. It doesn’t really help if you’re working away but your creative ideas aren’t coming through due to a disconnect between intention and execution.
 
It’s the same with writing—it really helps to be able to step back and look at it from the outside. You know what you want to say with your story, but is it getting across to the readers? Imagine you’ve designed a cool piece of office furniture, with the goal being that other people might buy and assemble it so they, too, can enjoy it. If the overall design is good but the instructions aren’t clear and concise, it’s going to be a frustrating experience for the customer. I think this is a not-uncommon weak spot for many of us: we have a good story idea, but our implementation may lack the perspective to get our story across to the reader the way we intend.
 
I saw a manuscript recently containing something like: He hung his head. “I did a poor job,” he said dejectedly. I’ve done this myself. It comes from us (as writers) being really intent on making sure the reader knows exactly how the character feels. So we overdo it and veer into territory that we (as readers) might find less-than-transparent while reading. (When you read a line like this, you can almost see the writer looking at his hands as he plays.) But if we get outside of our good writing intentions and view it from the other side, we can see that simplifying it might make the writing itself less intrusive on the story.
 
Looking at the above snippet as a reader, if the description of the character’s mood is clear enough through his actions (i.e. showing) we don’t need the “dejectedly” (i.e. telling). So, He hung his head. “I did a poor job,” he said. reads smoother and is less clunky. (“ly” adverbs used as dialog descriptors are often clunky sounding to readers, and our inclination to use one should be taken as a sign that we may need to show more of the character’s mood vs. telling the reader about it.) And since the author is already talking about “him,” the reader doesn’t need an attribution at all. So, He hung his head. “I did a poor job.” is even tighter and smoother, and every bit as clear. (And as I’ve heard from my editor more than once, tighter is usually better. Especially from the reader’s point of view.)
 
I’m as guilty as anyone of creating this sort of prose during initial draft. One way to mitigate it is to write it, then take off the writing hat and put on the editing hat while you do what you can to make sure everything’s consistent, tight, believable, engaging, etc. Then go yet a step further in getting outside yourself—take off the editing hat and put on the reader’s hat. While letting some time pass in the interim, if possible. And while you read, try to stay in the mindset of: I’m a new reader to this work… I didn’t write it, I didn’t edit it, and I have no idea where it’s going. I’m simply going along for the ride. Then, as you read, try to stay attuned to your enjoyment level. If it wanes, look for and note any nearby plot drift or inconsistent characterization or over-explained motivation—even down to the sentence level as in our example above. Then, when you’ve finished reading it, you can put your writing hat back on and revise to those notes, then back to the editing hat, and so on.
 
Writing is interactive, but not just between author and editor. It’s also between writer and reader. But before you get to a real editor—or to real readers—you may have to assume both roles along the way. So don’t look at your hands as you play, don’t place cleverness above clarity, and don’t try to shoehorn that brilliant riff you just thought of into chapter two if it doesn’t fit.
 
And most important, occasionally get outside yourself and listen from a distance to make sure your ideas are getting across as intended and your audience is along for the ride.
 

 
I recently came across an old post by one of my favorite online writing resources: Mary Kole, whose site kidlit.com has some great overall writing advice and inspiration. In brief, she’d talked with a bunch of editors about writers and writing, in search of an answer to the question: What’s the #1 thing an editor wants from a new writer? And the answer wasn’t something obvious like writing ability or superior story-telling skills (not that these aren’t important). No, the most important quality to an editor when considering a new writer (assuming the writing and story are up to par, of course) is a willingness to revise.
 
I recently drafted a lengthy, semi-autographical blog post about the importance of being willing to listen to qualified feedback. (Consisting partly of stories about me—and other writers I know—learning this lesson. Frequently the hard way. Which of course is much more entertaining to an outside observer than the easy way.)
 
But I’m saving that one for another day because I realized there’s something that has to come before the willingness to do meaningful revision… the desire to do meaningful revision. And I also realized this is where the real problem lies for some of us.
 
On first glance, the idea of revision seems like the polar opposite of fun. Which is understandable. Especially when the process is generally thought of as: Take something you’ve been working very hard on for a very long time, which you thought you’d finished. And with which you’re intimate, and maybe even a little bit in love… because it likely contains a piece of your heart. Now, take that precious thing which has occupied your life for the past year and tear it apart and rebuild it. Take some of the bricks down from the walls and replace them with other, different bricks, or even change the floor plan and rebuild some of the walls entirely with all new bricks, in a new configuration.
 
No, thanks.
 
Hardly seems like something anyone would actually want to do. And besides the whole “kill your darlings” aspect, there’s also the fact that it just looks like a ton of hard work. Like a homework assignment you have zero interest in, but which you need to complete in order to pass the course. So is it any wonder a lot of writers seem to avoid it as much as possible?
 
(And here’s a little observation, entirely personal and anecdotal and which by no means should be taken as a general rule but… I’ve noticed some reverse correlation between writers who state they don’t do much—if any—revision, and my enjoyment of their work. Typically the writing itself is fine, but sometimes I notice a lack of the weaving together of thematic elements throughout the story, which only makes sense as the more subtle aspects of doing that seem to come from close, careful  rereading and revision of the manuscript. However I can also think of a famously non-revising author whose work I really like, so again, more of an observation—and a subjective one at that—than an overall rule. But still…)
 
So yes, writers sometimes avoid the hard work of revision. Yet writers (pretty much by definition) don’t avoid the hard work of writing the manuscript in the first place. Because, while it is hard work, it’s writing. And (again, almost by definition) writers love writing.
 
SO…
 
Part of the solution is the emotional realization that revision is in fact writing. You know… that difficult, painful, vein-opening thing we all love.
 
I said “emotional” because most adult writers intellectually realize revision is part of the writing process. (And not coincidentally, one of the hardest tasks for middle school and high school writing teachers is conveying the importance of revision to young writers, who typically just want to write it, turn it in, and move on. At almost every school visit ever, the teachers at the back of the auditorium will stand on their little metal folding chairs and cheer like drunken football fans when you mention the importance of revision to the writing process.)
 
But getting that concept in our gut—to the point where we actively look forward to revisions—is another thing. The solution can be a carrot-and-stick thing…
 
The Stick: Editors really value the willingness to revise (see above). This is because they believe that revision almost universally improves the end result. (For whatever value of “improve” you choose: sales; critical acclaim; awards; or simply artistic merit.) And from that, we can deduce that your odds of creating a manuscript which might attract said editor (or agent, as the case may be) will be greatly improved by judicious revision prior to submission. Not to oversimplify, but in many cases the choice may come down to revision or rejection.
 
The Carrot: Approached correctly, revision can be big fun. Writing (as in initial drafting) is certainly enjoyable, but it also comes with stressors: First off, will we even make it to the end (or perhaps quit halfway due to frustration, procrastination, or distraction)…? Will our plot ideas (as incomplete as they may be at the outset) contain enough elements to comprise an interesting novel without padding? And, assuming we make it to the end, will it “work” as a story? But with typical revision (as opposed to those rare, worst-case, throw-it-away-and-start-over situations) we already know the answers: Yes, we made it to the end, and on some level it likely qualifies as a story. Now, we get to go back into that world we love, with those characters we love, and play around even more, and make it even better. At this point much of the hard work is done, and we can focus on “Oh wait… wouldn’t it be cool if we did this instead of that?” (It’s important to internally characterize it as “get to” vs. “have to,” and “play” vs. “work.” Because fun, right?)
 
And all of this can work even better if we can get some distance from the manuscript first, either through letting it sit for a while or writing something else in the interim. Or, ideally, both. Then we can approach it almost as if someone else was the responsible party and we’re just there to play around and see what we can do with it. Sort of like the paradigm where the grandparents get to pick up the grandkids from the stressed-out parents (who do the hard work of actually raising them) and enjoy spoiling them for an afternoon.
 
When I was a kid I hated vegetables, almost by doctrine. And I suppose it’s possible I could still dislike them as an adult yet recognize their nutritional value, and thus occasionally choke them down. But somewhere along the line I learned to appreciate them and, finally, actually really like them. To the point where I voluntarily choose to prepare and eat them. Frequently.
 
What we enjoy, we tend to do more of, and better. So we shouldn’t “suffer through the necessary pain of revision.” We should try to view it as a fun day spent playing in the sandbox instead of a day in the salt mines.
 
We’ll be happier. And our writing might even be better for it.
 

 
Roger Sutton (Hornbook editor and all-around curmudgeonly kidlit pundit) has stated words to the effect that one of the issues he frequently sees with manuscripts from aspiring writers is adults thinking children’s literature is a vehicle for telling kids how they should behave.
 
I have to agree. You often see the above in the guise of the wise adult character sagely giving advice to the teen protagonist, or—if the teen won’t listen to the wise adult—as a cautionary tale. (Quick survey: Did you ever read a so-called cautionary tale as a teenager and think, “Wow, I’d better never do that!”…?  Me neither. For most kids, those things are double-dog dares.) This mindset also implies that the adult is somehow automatically more intelligent than the kid. In my experience, this is unlikely.
 
Because kids are smart.
 
And sometimes, those same aspiring writers (if they happen to be among your friends or in your critter group) may offer critiques of your MG or YA project based on what they think kids “need to hear.”
 
Which may be the worst reason ever to write a book.
 
Because the only kids you really have license to tell what to do are your own kids. (And even then, that stuff can totally backfire on you. Trust me.)
 
Because none of us have been tapped on the shoulder by the universe with a clear message along the lines of: “Go forth and tell kids they should practice chastity, clean their room, and not do drugs…” Nope… your readers will smell that bullshit a mile away and run for the hills. And then they’ll cease to be your readers.
 
Because kids are smart.
 
Because telling someone to do something—and I include myself in the definition of “someone”—is the least best way of motivating them to do it.
 
Because fundamentally, all that kids really need in their literature are truth and hope.
 
The truth is there are as many different types of kids as there are kids. The truth is we are all individuals. The truth is there is no single “right” way. The truth is that fitting into the norm is not—nor should it ever be—the overriding goal of growing up.
 
There are other truths about life—hard truths—which you may or may not decide to include in your work, depending on the age and experience of the intended reader. That’s up to you. But even if your work does contain some seriously dark, hard truths, kids still need the small hope that if they’re true to themselves and what they believe in, there’s at least the possibility… the potential… that things might work out eventually.
 
So give them the truth, sure. At least, some of it. And give them at least a glimmer of hope.
 
And it’s fine to challenge them to think about difficult issues.
 
But don’t tell them what to think about them. That’s the easy way out. And it never works.
 
Because kids are smart.

 
I recently put something out into the universe which is a real longshot. (What we call “putting hope in the mail” around here, dating all the way back to when we’d put actual stuff in the actual mailbox.) It’s not a manuscript. Or even a query. It’s more like a query to a query. And as I said, it’s a very low-probability thing… maybe a half-percent prospect. At best.
 
And I’m perfectly okay with that. Because once in a while, taking a flyer on something can lift you up a little. Give you a different vantage point. Increase your perspective.
 
In life there are the sure things, the reasonable opportunities, and the longshots. We need to engage with all three of these, for different reasons.
 
And, of course, there are the failures.
 
Like most of us, I’ve experienced approximately seventeen zillion failures. But the funny thing is, I don’t really remember them. But I DO remember the miniscule percentage of longshots which I’ve actually made. Including the literal ones…
 
Once, when our younger son was maybe seven or eight, he and I were casually shooting baskets in our driveway when it turned into a “Hey Dad, can you do THAT?” game. At some point he had me shoot with my back against the railing which separates our driveway from the hillside (preventing someone from accidentally going off the driveway and ending up at the bottom of the hill, hundreds of feet below). It was a longshot—definite three-point territory—but I got lucky and made it. Was this enough for him to call it good? Not even. He had me move further away along the railing—to half-court territory—then added some serious spice: he wanted me to balance on top of the railing and make a jump shot as I was leaping off. Now, just standing on the top rail for more than a second or two—with my back to the hillside below—was difficult. Sinking a half-court shot jumper from there? Forget about it. But I dutifully climbed up on the railing and flailed around as I tried not to fall backwards and break my ass, then jumped off and heaved the ball at the top of my arc. And made it. He immediately made a beeline for the house, yelling all the way. “Hey Mom… Mom! You won’t believe what Dad just did…!”
 
I’ve missed thousands of basketball shots. But who cares? I’ll always remember that one.
 
None of which means we shouldn’t focus primarily on the more realistic opportunities. (After all, buying lottery tickets is a really bad way to pay the rent.) And I certainly do. Along with that longshot, I also queried on a non-fiction piece I felt I had at least a realistic possibility of getting.
 
And—the hardest part of all—after I sent those queries, I did my best to forget about them and get to work on something else.
 
It’s a cliché, yet completely true: You will miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. And yes, you might miss most of the ones you do take, but at least you’re out there, trying, and you have a non-zero possibility of success.
 
And what keeps me going is my corollary to the above: If you take enough longshots, sooner or later you’re going to make one.
 
And when you make one, all the misses just fade away.
 
But beyond all that, once in a while you just need to swing for the fences for reasons having nothing to do with actual success or failure. It’s deeper than that, verging on the topic of mental health. Artistic health. Maybe even spiritual health.
 
Because we need to occasionally remind ourselves that there’s a big world out there—bigger than you, bigger than me, and bigger than our usual day-to-day achievements.
 
Because everyone has dreams. But not everyone takes the steps necessary to explore even the possibility of those dreams coming true. And taking those steps pays off for everyone who does it, not just those who succeed.
 
Because putting your work—your art—your self—out there is the prime generator of one of the most important things in our world. Yup, the h-word.
 
So today—an hour or so ago, as I write this—I got a couple of email replies. One was from the editor I’d queried about the article, basically saying Sure, sounds good, let’s do it! And I thought, Cool—this’ll keep me in coffee and drumsticks for a while. And the other email was from the person I’d queried about the query. And she basically said, Sure, let’s give this a shot. It’s a longshot, but let’s try! And I thought, Cool, that half-percent chance is now a one-percent chance.
 
And then I pushed it out of my mind and got back to the revisions I’m doing on a manuscript. But now, riding on my shoulder as I work—so small I don’t dare even look at it lest it disappear entirely—is a tiny speck.
 
Of hope.
 

 
[NOTE: we touched on this phenomenon briefly last time, but it’s worth exploring more because (1) it’s so prevalent, and (2) this stuff can drive you crazy if you experience it without understanding it.]
 
At one time or another (or, as the line from Casablanca goes, “Soon… and for the rest of your life.”) you’ll come across a book—a published book—that seems to be, umm… perhaps not of the best quality. To put it politely. Maybe even downright bad. And—in your opinion—almost certainly worse than the manuscript you submitted and had rejected… maybe even by the same publisher. And to make things worse, occasionally said book will become a bestseller. Or critically acclaimed. Or—more rarely but not unheard of—both.
 
What’s up with this? Let’s look at some possible reasons why…
 
1. Business is business. If an author’s previous work sold really well, their next one is going to get published. No matter what. Even if everyone—including the editor—realizes it’s not so hot. Simply because it’s likely to sell well, too. (Because that’s what fans do—they buy stuff put out by their favorite author/band/actor/singer/director/etc.) It may not sell as well as the previous one, but even half as big as a big hit is still, well… a big hit. This can continue for a long time, as long as the author’s books are selling well enough to justify publishing them.
 
2. Perhaps someone at the house thought this particular book could be a big seller, even if the author doesn’t have a best seller in their backlist. Maybe the book is following on a recent popular topic, maybe it seems appealing to a specific (and non-trivial) readership, maybe it seems award-worthy. Publishing is a gamble—for the publisher, as well as the author. And frequently a few big sellers help keep the rest of the list afloat. So if they think there’s a small-but-plausible chance that a book might break out, it may be deemed worth publishing on the hopes that the relatively modest initial investment might yield millions.
 
3. Maybe the editor simply loves it. If an editor with enough clout happens to find a manuscript that really resonates with her, there’s a good chance the book’s going to get bought and published, regardless of what you may see as “issues.” And they don’t have to ask our opinion first.
 
4. Politics are everywhere. Maybe more so now than ever, and the astute observer might see a certain amount of box-checking going on with some popular works, on either side of the aisle. This is understandable. Editors are people too, and it can be hard to become attached enough to a manuscript to acquire it if you have disagreements with some of the overall philosophies espoused within. The same can apply to publishing houses on a bigger scale. There are two well-known SF houses, for example, ­where one leans a little progressive in their offerings and the other’s known for having a more conservative bent. Not that there’s a strict litmus test for either one, but if you submit the wrong work to the wrong house, you may end up wondering what happened.
 
Interestingly enough, we just read a book that relates to all of the above. It was a novel written by an author whose previous effort was an unqualified success. And it—and the previous work—were acquired and edited by one of the most successful editors in the business. And it name-checks several issues de jour. And, in our opinion… it wasn’t very good. The type of book you can’t really imagine getting published on its own merits if it were the work of an unknown.

But maybe that’s just me, because…
 
5. Maybe the book is actually good (whatever that means) and it’s our assessment that’s not-so-hot. In other words, don’t write off the possibility that maybe we’re missing something. Or perhaps we’re simply looking for something in a book that’s vastly different than what most of the reading public is looking for. Regardless, if something we think is bad happens to really catch on, we’re missing an opportunity if our assessment stops at, “This sucks! I don’t know why anyone would love it…” I’m not saying you should try to like it. I’m saying you might learn something by trying to figure out why others like it.
 
There’s a very popular book that’s widely regarded as poorly written, so much so that it’s frequently used as the poster child for the “Hey, they published XYZ so they’ll publish anything” argument (usually made by other writers deriding publishers). But that might not be the most helpful way to view it. Sure, the book may be written in a style that not many writers wish to emulate, but something about it has reached—and connected with—its intended readership better than almost anything else in recent history. There are lots of lessons here. (The first and most important of which is: For many readers, the literary quality of the writing itself is meaningless compared to—wait for it--the story. Followed closely by: Know your readership, and what they desire… not just in their books, but in their lives.)
 
And finally…
 
6. It’s amazing how often people conflate “I don’t like it” with “It’s bad.” There are works which definitely aren’t my cup of tea but which, if I’m being honest, may be very well crafted in the conventional sense: evocative prose, well-drawn characters, believable dialog, tightly plotted, and having an ending which resonates. And conversely, there may be works which, in the middle of reading or watching, I fully realize have predictable plots or inconsistent characters or overwrought dialog behind all the shiny action/adventure/romance. But which I also really enjoy. (Sort of like being a kid and realizing, intellectually, that Steely Dan were much more musically skilled than, say, Humble Pie. But, on an emotional level, liking Humble Pie way more.)
 
So when we observe something getting more attention or acclaim than we think justified, we might want to temper our initial impulse to simply proclaim the grapes way too tart. Maybe we should take it as a challenge to determine why this particular work is getting more kudos than something we deem of superior quality.
 
Life is a school. Let’s go to class.

 
I heard a podcast the other day aimed at musicians, and the host made the point that the musicians he knew who were successful were almost always professional in their demeanor, and the ones full of “high school drama” were almost universally not where they wanted to be, career-wise. And he posited that these people had these respective personality traits long before they’d either made it or hadn’t made it.
 
In other words, success didn’t make them act professional; acting professional aided them in their success.
 
I’m a big believer that this paradigm applies to every line of work, including writing.
 
Once upon a time, it was pretty easy for a writer to appear professional to the general public (even if they weren’t always that way IRL) because their exposure was so much more limited. There were fewer authors, and their interaction with the public was through more filtered means: interviews, press releases, and maybe the occasional book signing or radio/TV appearance. (And for some of these events—for bigger authors—there was a certain amount of hand-holding by their publisher’s publicity dept.)
 
Now—with the internet in general and social media specifically—it’s so easy for a writer to show their ass in public. Below are some things I’ve seen recently. To put it mildly, none of these will make potential readers want to run out and buy your book.
 
Dissing the (perceived) competition. Yes, at one time or another we’ll all see a book become wildly popular and maybe wonder why. Maybe even think our work is better. (Which is a whole other post in itself.) Beyond the fact that perhaps we’re missing something with our analysis, even if it were true, publicly complaining about it makes you look, well… unprofessional. Insecure. Petty. Sour grape-ish. Etc. (I once witnessed a local writer/reviewer talking to a best-selling author about the author’s popular book series. His very first words to the author were, “Oh yeah, you write such-and-such, don’t you? Personally I don’t get it, but…” Ever since, I discount everything the guy says in print. Deeply.) I occasionally post on social media about books I’ve recently read, but I only talk about books I think are exceptional. I recently told a writer’s group I thought it was bad form for an author to publicly criticize another author’s work. Someone asked why and I basically said, “That’d be like the owner of a restaurant also being the food critic for the local paper. There’s an obvious conflict. Plus it makes you seem like less of a writer because the general perception is that writers write, and they leave the critiquing to others.”
 
Responding to a negative review. You’d think we wouldn’t have to mention this in 2018, but you still see it all the time. (Hint: it NEVER goes well for the writer. Never. Ever. Ever.) Just… don’t. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion of your work, and you’re not going to change anyone’s mind with your witty repartee. Other than to make them think you’re not just a bad writer, but a miserable person in general. (Yeah, that’ll help your career.) Repeat after me: Do not engage. Do not engage. Do not…
 
Bad-mouthing publishers in general. Has an effect similar to #1, above. I’ve seen a lot of this on book tour, and it’s typically done by people who would glom on to a trad publishing contract in a New York nanosecond if one came their way. Usually followed by wildly inaccurate tales of how publishers will screw you blind and steal your firstborn and—worst of all—entirely change your manuscript and then publish it without your permission. Again, this doesn’t do much to raise your perceived posture as someone people should pay to read.
 
Complaining about the publisher who passed on you. Hey, I get it. I’ve been passed on. So have you. And so has virtually every author you see on the shelves of your local book store. And sometimes it might not seem fair. (In all actuality, it usually comes down to a business decision: some version of, “Will the perceived sales of this manuscript—in today’s market—exceed the perceived outlay?” This is really just an educated guess on their part, and not infrequently they guess wrong. But it’s their money, so they get to make that decision. And artistically, the editor should really love the work they acquire. And that’s their decision. We don’t get a vote.) But to come out and complain, “Publisher XYZ passed on my brilliant manuscript but they published that piece of crap?” not only makes you look small-time and petty, it also indicates you don’t really understand how publishing works. Neither of which increases your stock.
 
Crapping on the publisher who actually published you. Yup. Saw this once again a couple weeks back, and so did those of you who follow the industry on social media. Hard to believe, but even some published authors seem to forget that behind those large, corporate, Big-5-type companies are people. Real people. Who work hard and have feelings and are trying to do their best in a fickle business, and who take it personally when you crap on their efforts. Which could reasonably be seen as crapping on them. Yes, sometimes an author might not agree with their publisher’s actions regarding the handling of their work. And yes, sometimes the best move is to make your feelings known. Politely. And privately. (It’s just Business 101—praise in public, criticize in private, right?) Sort of like authors who’ve publicly responded to bad reviews, authors who’ve publicly bashed their publisher (or agent or editor or art director or publicist or…) usually end up wishing they hadn’t. (The obvious exception here is when your publisher does something so egregious—regarding an issue so important to you—that you’d rather not work with them anymore. But if you intend to continue working with them, you owe them the common courtesy of acting professional.)
 
That’s a lot of “thou shalt nots.” How about a “shall”? Sure, sometimes things seem unfair, or something in the publishing world really pisses us off. What to do? This business is tough enough on its own, so for starters maybe don’t make things any harder than they already are. The professional response is to get back in the ring.
 
Just as the best revenge is trying to live as well as possible, sometimes the best response is simply trying to write as well as possible.
 

 
This morning my wife and I went for a run, taking a slightly different route than usual. (She thought I needed more hill work. Go figure.) As I ran by one house, I was struck by the trash building up in the front yard. Actually, what I was most struck by were the empty trash dumpsters near the pile of trash. I mean, the universe couldn’t send a clearer sign if it tried: Trash… meet Dumpster.
 
My brain tried to figure this out—as brains are wont to do—and finally settled on something they continually preach about in the nuclear industry: the danger of “off normal” becoming “normal.” (I used to teach a Human Performance class about the sinking of the cruiseferry Estonia in the Baltic Sea. The root cause was the sequential failure—over time—of multiple mechanisms that held the bow door closed, but this was made fatal by the crew becoming inured to it, ignoring the banging noises as the bow door slammed against the ship due to wave action and telling complaining passengers this was “normal.” The bow door finally came open at speed—in the middle of the night in the middle of a very cold ocean—and in no time, eight hundred and fifty souls ended up at the bottom of the sea.)
 
The real lesson is that humans are world-class experts at “getting used to stuff.” Around here we’ve done a bit of building, remodeling, and general spiffing up. And we have an overall rule: Don’t use the room until it’s finished. Because we know of several instances where people have moved into a place before all the finish work was done, and almost invariably it remains un-finished. Sometimes forever. Because after a while you stop noticing that the wall doesn’t have baseboard or the door is missing its trim or the outlet doesn’t have a proper cover. Especially if it’s never had it. Pretty soon it just looks “normal” and you can’t really imagine it any other way.
 
The same with writing.
 
After we’ve lived with a story for a while, it can seem like, well… like that’s the way it is. Period. But in reality, until it’s published and sitting on the shelves of your local bookstore, it’s all fair game. This should be obvious. Sort of like the fact that garbage can be put into a garbage can and they will magically take it away.
 
The problem—in both cases—is seeing it.
 
My first published fiction—an SF story—had a short scene I considered pivotal. It was one of the few action-y bits in the story, and it was the event that had popped into my mind when I first got the idea for the story. Yes, the action taken by the protagonist in that scene was important to the story. But what I couldn’t see was that since the action was self-evident after the fact, the reader didn’t need to actually see it in real time on the page. The reader just needed to get that the hero had indeed taken the clever action, then we needed to quickly move to the final climactic scene.
 
But I couldn’t see that. Because that scene had been there from the very beginning. And because at the time I didn’t really get that every word was up for grabs. So throughout revisions, that scene wasn’t even considered a potential target for tightening or trimming.
 
So I sent the “finished” story to my favorite SF magazine, and soon received a rejection from the mag’s editor. But it was a good rejection, something along the lines of, “We don’t need to see [the beloved scene]. It hurts the pacing. Cut it and artfully tape the ends together and I’ll publish it.”
 
Privately I still had doubts, but I tried it. And—wait for it—it worked. No, not just worked, but improved the story. Trimmer. Tighter. Less boring. (Thanks, Charlie!)
 
The big lesson for me was to learn to see things as though you’re an outsider, seeing it for the first time. Easier said than done, of course, but there are a few tips that help. The first is, assume there is trash in your yard. You can’t always see it right away, but it’s there. Keep looking until you find it, and when you do, put it in the dumpster! The second is, don’t assume the way it’s always been is the best way. Maybe comparison shop, and not defensively. When you see outlet covers in someone else’s house, don’t say, “Well, fine for them, but I don’t need them!” Instead imagine what your house might be like if you actually took the time to install covers on all your outlets. Maybe try a few and see what you think. And finally, don’t move in until it’s done. Done-done. (Submitting too soon may be the most prevalent mistake writers make.) When you think your manuscript’s finished, if at all possible, wait… work on something else for a while… maybe get a beta read or two… then go over it again with the “What’s wrong with this picture?” mindset, actively looking for trash to take out.
 
We can’t see what we don’t look for. But when we seek—and find, and remove—the trash that’s been there so long it looks “normal,” it really increases the curb appeal of our work.
 
Happy hunting!
 

 
Sometimes aspiring writers think having an author read their manuscript will give them a head-start on getting published. They may be setting themselves up for disappointment, for several possible reasons…
 
1. Just because someone is published doesn’t mean they have any special knowledge about what “the industry” is looking for. They submitted a specific manuscript which caught the attention of a specific editor. Good on them, but this doesn’t necessarily imbue them with special inside information regarding “who’s looking for what.”
 
2. It also doesn’t necessarily make them a reliable judge of good writing in general (whatever that means). Secret hint: writers frequently like writing similar to their own. Thus, asking one to read and respond to your manuscript can result in them critiquing your work into a junior version of theirs. (As discussed earlier.)
 
3. There may be a misconception that an author can somehow fast-pass your manuscript by giving it directly to her editor. Sorry, but 99% of the time it just doesn’t work that way. The few times I’ve seen an author pass a friend’s manuscript along to her editor, in every single case the friend was left waiting around for a response for as long—or longer—than if she’d submitted via the usual channels. Editors aren’t just sitting around waiting for good manuscripts to drop in. They’re inundated with them, receiving them daily from professional agents who actually know what a solid, commercial manuscript looks like. And of course they also receive manuscripts from their existing authors, who likely already have a track record regarding quality and/or sales. All of which isn’t to say “The odds are long so give up now.” Not at all. I believe a great manuscript will eventually see the light of day, with enough hard work and persistence. My point is, having an author say, “Here’s a manuscript from my friend,” is not a direct path to publication. (TL; DR: An actual agent who’s putting her professional reputation behind your manuscript will carry much more weight with an editor than a pass-along from “a friend.”)
 
4. If said author “doesn’t like” your work, what’s your course forward from there? Are you supposed to revise it to be more like their work? Are you supposed to throw it away and start over? Are you supposed to get depressed and quit writing altogether? (The real answer, of course, is: D, none of the above. You should probably let it go and move on. Unless their critique rings true with you, in which case revise accordingly and then move on.)
 
5. However, even if said author “loves” your writing, unless their last name is Patterson or Rowling or King they’re probably not in a position to offer you representation and/or a publishing contract. The people who can do this—whose opinions matter to you in the first degree—are agents and editors. These are the people you should be trying to get to read your manuscript. And the best way to make this happen, in short, is: (1) Have a great manuscript—finished, re-written, revised, polished, and totally-ready-for-primetime. Then, (2) contact an agent who’s represented published works similar to yours, using a brief, intelligent, non-sociopathic query letter letting her know what you’ve written and why she might be a good fit for it. Repeat until you achieve the desired result.
 
Note that this will require a little research on your part, but not an impossible amount. And don’t get too cute with the query. Remember, you cannot talk someone into liking your manuscript. You can only write them into liking it, by doing a bang-up job of actually writing it, and by not submitting it until it’s as good as it can possibly be. But you can easily talk them into not liking it. Hence not getting too clever with the query.
 
There is something an author can do which may be more useful to the aspiring writer than simply reading their work, which is to pass along whatever small bits of wisdom they may have about writing and the publishing industry. I’m happy to speak with writers’ groups (and have done a bit of it, both on book tour and locally) and of course I also try to throw out helpful tips here, FWIW. More than once aspiring writers have contacted me and basically said, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee and pick your brains?” And—if schedules align such that this can actually happen—it can be beneficial to the aspiring writer, likely much more so than simply having someone read and comment on their manuscript. I recall one smart young guy who lined out the basics of his just-completed book, then asked, “What would you do next, if you were me?”, which led into a good discussion about how to (and how not to) go about acquiring an agent within his specific genre. When we were done he thanked me for my time and I thanked him for not asking me to read his manuscript.
 
He laughed and said this was a way better use of his time.
 

 
Last time we discussed counting words, and whether it helps or hinders or has no real effect at all. (Short answer: All of the above. Depending on you, your project, and your goals. And, of course, the KUWTJ factor*. But under no circumstances is it unconditionally required.)
            (*Keeping Up With The Joneses.)
 
And as I mentioned, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious correlation between counting and quality, either way. But there is a related factor that actually does seem to affect quality.
 
And that’s pace.
 
In endurance running, there are two ways to screw up a marathon. (Well, there are actually about two million, but we’re only looking at two here.) One is to try and run faster than your optimum pace. And the other is to run well below it. Both will leave you feeling not-so-good, in different ways. And—interestingly enough—both will almost certainly result in a longer finish time than if you’d just found your sweet spot and maintained it.
 
And both result from the same thing: fear.
 
Fear of not keeping up with someone else (or maybe with someone else’s perception of you) which leads to exceeding your optimum pace and blowing up before the finish line.
            or…
Fear that maybe you can’t really do what you actually can (aka fear of failure) which leads to self-doubt and dropping back to “protect yourself.”
 
Guess what? Both of these can apply to writing, too.
 
With this in mind, there are some fundamental concepts regarding pace that might be useful for writers to consider, especially with book-length projects:
 
1. Your pace is your pace, and no one else’s. It’s not a race (even if others think it is). When you let your pace be dictated by someone else, you’re playing their game. Your goal isn’t to “beat” anyone. It’s to do the best job you can while writing, and feel good about the result after you’re done. (In other words, pace affects both process and result, so no matter which is more important to you, it matters.)
 
2. Know your pace. This doesn’t come from adopting someone else’s pace or from reading about it on the internet or from what an instructor thinks it should be. This comes from experience. Real, practical, empirical experience. But maybe you haven’t written a novel yet? That’s okay. After you’ve written a bit of it (say 10,000 words or maybe three or four chapters), you’ll have a pretty good idea of what works for you if you’re paying attention.
 
3. Try to maintain your average pace, within reason. What you’re really looking for is the macro of overall time (as measured in months or years, which we’ll talk about in a minute) as opposed to the micro of words-per-day. And keep in mind: faster is not necessarily better. Better is better.
 
4. But be flexible about it. Pace is a tool, nothing more. And it’s your friend, not your master. Some days, writing just may not be in the cards for you. Or maybe some weeks, or some months. I’m not talking about making excuses for why you haven’t touched base with your story in forever. I’m talking about those times when life legitimately intrudes, and you either can’t write, or writing might not be the best use of your time at the moment. Don’t beat yourself up—we’re humans, not machines. And even your favorite authors have times when writing is the last thing on their mind.
 
My overall hypothesis about the macro of writing pace for book-length projects: Each of us has an “optimum overall writing time” for the completion of a novel. (This can apply to any big project, but we’re going with novel as the desired outcome here for simplicity’s sake.)
And this time can and will vary—greatly—between different writers.
And this time can also vary between different types of projects.
And this time is not a specific value, but a range—a broad range.
And it’s actually more important to know the dangers of being too fast or too slow than knowing your exact optimum writing time. As follows…
 
Too fast:
Ideas are like seeds. They can grow into wonderful plants or trees. But before they grow, they have to germinate. And occasionally we’ll get an idea we’re excited about, and without really playing it out in our minds and considering different iterations, we just jump right in and start writing. (I’m guilty here, too… I’m about 60/40 pantser, which doesn’t excuse a lack of basic pondering before committing words to paper.) This can result in one of the more painful aspects of writing: going back to the beginning and starting over. Or—almost as painful—a major structural rewrite. Either way… ouch.
 
Also, sometimes when a writer has an idea and a basic outline and then just cranks the book out, there can be a lack of interesting subplots or three-dimensional characters or maybe just the subtle literary subtext that can give a work more depth. And more often than not, this seems to occur when the author is pushing for speed and maybe writing faster than usual, whether due to internal pressure or external deadline.
 
Too slow:
When talking to writers groups, questions about writing schedule invariably come up. And my usual response is, “Everyone is different, with different lives and different priorities. I think you should determine what works best for you and do that.” Because I’m the last person to tell someone else exactly what they should do. The writers - online or at conferences - who stand up and pontificate things like [insert deep announcer voice], “You need to write for an hour every day before work,” are basically talking to themselves.
 
However, I’ll sometimes add, “My only recommendation is that I think it can be helpful to write regularly… for whatever value of regular works for you.” This has nothing to do with the speed at which you crank out words, but everything to do with keeping your subconscious engaged.
 
I’ve said before I think it’s pretty clear the subconscious does a lot of the creative heavy lifting when it comes to story creation. (Which is why it’s almost universal for writers to get ideas while showering or running or driving or washing the dishes or some low-concentration activity that distracts us just enough to let the subconscious come out and play.)
 
But for this to happen, that part of our brain needs to be engaged on a regular basis so it continues to “work” on the problem even when we’re not consciously thinking about it (similar to thinking about a problem before going to sleep and having a solution upon waking). And the way you feed your “creative problem-solving mechanism” (i.e. your subconscious) is to connect with your story regularly. Ideally this involves actually writing on it. But even if you can’t write, then editing or plotting or just re-reading the last few chapters will keep the story in your head and encourage your subconscious to keep working on it behind the scenes. This really seems to increase the odds that next time you sit down to write, you’ll have something worth writing about.
 
This is harder to accomplish if you only touch base with your story once a month or whatever. For me, whenever there’s been a long gap between writing sessions I have to spend quite a bit of time just getting the vibe of the story back in my head. (This seems especially true when it comes to getting the voice right.) So besides basic production issues, there seem to be some real creative benefits to working on your story regularly.
 
The Sweet Spot:
If you graphed my writing with “Overall Writing Time” on the X axis and “Subjective Quality” on the Y axis, the result would look pretty much like a standard bell curve. The curve would first start to sweep up at around the six month mark and taper back down near the eighteen month mark, with the sweet spot for overall writing time (everything from initial conception to plotting to writing to revising to polishing to final copy edits) hovering around the twelve month mark. The actual values are meaningless for anyone but me (and you’re missing everything I’ve ever said if you think you should somehow try and approximate them) but the concept remains:
 
Our creative minds seem to have a natural cruising speed they like to function at… thinking and digesting and regurgitating and writing and thinking some more and writing some more then re-thinking and subsequently rewriting, etc. We can certainly work faster than our natural pace (just ask anyone who’s ever had a demanding supervisor) but the results are rarely optimum. And it’s all too easy to work slower (just ask, well… anyone) but here, too, you’re probably not thrilled with the final result, let alone the lowered productivity.
 
Your sweet spot may be six weeks or six months or six years. (And it may vary with your experience level and mood.) The specifics aren’t important. What is important is to be aware of it and—as much as possible—honor it. But don’t over-think it. After all, the goals are pretty simple:
 
1. Get to the finish line.
2. Be happy with the result.
 

 
I’ve read so much recently—on blogs and forums and social media—about how many words per day people write... or think they should write... or wanted to write but didn’t. (Followed by the inevitable self-flagellation if they wrote less than their friends or less than their predetermined goal or whatever. There is definitely a certain amount of FOMO going on here—there’s even an online business seemingly dedicated to nothing but selling a program guaranteed to up your daily word count well into five figures.)
 
Personally, I never think about my daily word count one way or the other. I write until I run out of time or juice, then I move on to something else (maybe cogitating on my story while doing other tasks). And more to the point, I know authors with dozens of books to their name (award-winning, best-selling books) who feel—and do—likewise. I’m not saying don’t try to hit a predetermined word count each day. If that somehow motivates you to do quality work, then by all means, count away. But please don’t think it’s required that one count words in order to be a writer*.
 
Imagine the following: An agent or editor receives your manuscript. She reads it, and her overall impression is, “Not bad, but not really what I’m looking for.” She gets ready to send the usual boilerplate “thanks but no thanks” response, but then she sees your small, handwritten note at the bottom of the last page: By the way, I wrote this in a month. Does she (1) scream “Stop the presses!” and instruct her assistant to offer you a contract post haste, since anyone who wrote even a mediocre manuscript in 30 days must be a hell of a writer? Or does she (2) give a bemused WTF? shrug and send the “no thanks” response anyway? (If you live in a universe where you believe there’s even a remote chance that #1 is a plausible response, please remove yourself to a soft room with padded corners.)
 
Obviously if/when you get to the point where you have contracted work under deadline, you need to work diligently and make your deadlines. But even then, you’re not going to be required to write anything like several thousand words per day for several weeks or months straight. I recently read an interview with a very popular and beloved children’s author where she said she’s only good for about one decent page (approx. 250 words) per day. Any more and she feels her quality suffers. Even at this relaxed pace, she finishes a middle grade manuscript in seven or eight months. (Typically a best-selling, award-winning manuscript, so we can assume her publisher is just fine with her current word count.)
 
The lesson here isn’t “only write a page a day.” (Which makes no more sense than saying, “You must write ten thousand words per day.”) The lesson is that steady, sustained work, over time is what leads to the completion of a manuscript. Regardless of your words-per-day pace. And if a page-per-day is enough to complete a million-seller in less than a year, then your actual daily word count is likely not an issue.
 
So when might we want to count words? It can be helpful if you need external motivation to keep writing. If you find yourself regularly stopping after twenty or thirty minutes, for example, it might be useful to make a deal with yourself on the order of, “I’ll write until I hit (insert magic number here), then I’ll let myself stop for the day and do something else.” Do this every day for a couple of weeks and it should condition your brain to want to create during your writing time (which is the actual goal, of course). If this still doesn’t solve the motivational issue, you might want to look elsewhere. (Regarding that “elsewhere”… Your mileage may vary, of course, but I’ve learned that when I don’t want to sit down and write, it’s usually because I’m unclear as to where I want to go with the story and I need to do some more planning/plotting/pondering before actually writing. If I forced myself to write another couple thousand words in these cases, they would almost certainly get deleted next session. When I know—at least roughly—where I want to go, I find myself wanting to write, and need no other motivation than to want to see the story unfold before me.)
 
Again, I’m not saying don’t count your words. I’m saying no one else (no one who matters, at least) cares how many words you wrote today. What they care about is the end result—did you create a wonderful manuscript they love and enjoy and want to represent or publish? If yes, then they offer you representation or publication. If not, then they don’t. Period. So yes, absolutely count words if doing so leads to you creating the sort of work that will garner you representation or publication or critical acclaim or best-selling status or whatever particular gold ticket you have in your sights.
 
Then, of course, there’s the issue of doing writing work that doesn’t involve initial draft creation. In other words, rewriting. (Or revising or polishing or any other level of self-editing.) This often accounts for a substantial amount of the actual work involved in creating a strong manuscript, yet how do you quantify your progress when you’ve spent several hours immersed in the manuscript with a net result (word count-wise) of zero, or maybe even the loss of several hundred words? Does this mean you didn’t have a productive day? On the contrary, these can be the days that do the most to improve your manuscript, yet you’d never know it if all you go by is the total number of words generated.
 
In studying this phenomenon I haven’t noticed much of a direct correlation between word count and writing quality, but I have stumbled onto something interesting with regards to the whole quantity/quality issue which I’ll dive into next time.
 
In the meantime, count—or don’t count—as you see fit.
 
But either way, don’t worry.
Be happy.
Write.
 
*WRITER: One who writes. (Notice there’s a period after that definition, not a comma.)

 
We’re going to continue our last post but dive a little deeper into the writing process itself instead of the whole publishing aspect.
 
There’s a lot of information out there about the specifics of writing a novel, both in print and online. And even that term--specifics—should give you a clue that such info might be more theoretical than practical. Not that it might not also be valid. For some books, and for some writers, it may be great. The trouble comes from the aspiring writer blindly assuming that whatever writing formula they’re reading is the one true way.
 
The problem isn’t that there’s no ‘true way.’ It’s that there are infinite ‘true ways.’ This is pretty obvious in hindsight, but when we’re starting out we tend to look to someone who seems further along in the process as possessing special knowledge, and we tend to give it more weight than we otherwise might.

Case in point: Way back when I set out to write my OBFN (Obligatory Bad First Novel, discussed earlier) I followed whatever writing wisdom I could find in the pre-internet age. I’d read a book on ‘how to write a novel’ which basically laid out the one true path to success as something like the following…
 
Take a piece of paper and number it down the side from one to twenty. After each number write one sentence describing what that chapter will be about. Number twenty pieces of paper and place the respective descriptive sentence at the top of the top of each. Fill each page with more detailed descriptions of the events in that particular chapter. Then—finally—take each page and expand your notes to ten-plus pages of text for each.
 
Voila—novel achieved!
 
I followed that basic template fairly closely, and I had a detailed forty-page outline completed before I’d written even one word of the actual book. So yeah, I knew exactly where I was going. The beginning, the middle, and the end. In detail. And every stop in between. Also in detail.
 
With no chance in hell of getting lost.
 
Which--for me—was definitely a bug, not a feature.
 
To be fair, it worked. Sort of. I mean, I got a coherent novel out of it. But by the time I got around to the actual writing of it—which basically consisted of me transcribing and expanding whichever chapter outline was next on the list—it seemed closer to doing homework than creating an inspired work of fiction. The creative part of my brain felt boxed in by the overly-prescriptive outline, unable to wander and ramble and follow those magical hunches and impulses and “aha!” moments that can occur when the borders of your playground are a more suggestions than walls.
 
I also followed other conventional wisdom (for this type of book, at least). I wrote in third person, for the theoretical benefit of a higher/broader vantage point (plus it allows the reader to know things the viewpoint character may not). For similar reasons (having a broader palette) I had multiple viewpoint characters. And I would occasionally explain stuff to the reader in an expository aside, as was the convention in this subgenre (techno-thriller).
 
All of which may be perfectly fine advice for some writers out there, but not for me. The writing of that thing was grueling, and if all novel writing was like that, I wanted nothing to do with it. Seriously, it was more fun writing how-to pieces and product reviews and articles for magazines.
 
So the next time I went to write book-length fiction, I tossed all the stuff I should do “in theory” and went with what felt right—for me—in reality.
 
I had an idea for a story that resonated with me, regardless of where the pundits thought the market was going. As far as I knew there were no agents or editors clamoring for my particular type of story, but I didn’t care—I really wanted to write it. I saw the opening scene unfold in my mind’s eye—and a vague glimmer of where it might go afterward—and that was enough. I just jumped in and started writing. In first person, with a fair amount of internal monolog. I wanted the reader to be in the protagonist’s head… maybe even feel like they were the protagonist…and I felt the best way to do that was to put myself there. I gave up the breadth of third person and multiple POVs for the narrower but deeper viewpoint of close first. I didn’t spoon feed the reader every little plot point… some things were left a little under-explained, leaving it to the reader to figure it out from context, or perhaps from later events.
 
There was no specific “inciting incident within the first 15 pages of the manuscript,” there was no specific “antagonist” for our “hero” to plot against and defeat, there was no specific “unfilled desire laid out in the first thirty percent of the book.” (The damn thing wasn’t even in three discrete acts… it had four.) During the writing of it I probably broke at least a dozen of the Seventeen Magic Rules to Writing Success. But it worked. At least for me. And—as near as one can ever tell—maybe even for some of the readers. But more important, I can think of numerous other books (more successful/well-loved/best-selling/award-winning than mine) that don’t follow any of the above “rules” either.
 
So my primary takeaway from the experience was this: Yes, there are lots of books and websites that will tell you—in theory—exactly how you should go about writing your book. And while they may work for you, they also may not. Because…
 
Because in reality, you aren’t them. You’re you. And the story you have to tell—the one that comes from inside you—can’t possibly come from anyone else. So why would you avoid the unique, wonderful thing you have within—the thing no one else can do—just because someone, somewhere, says “do it like this”…?
 
In reality, most editors aren’t looking for “the latest and greatest.” (Because, among other reasons, the latest things you see on the shelves were acquired a couple of years ago and written a couple of years before that.) They’re looking for a good story. And one of the components of a good story is that it feels new. (Another is that it feels inevitable, which sounds contradictory but isn’t. But that’s another topic.) Even a classic boy-meets-girl story can feel unique and wonderful and fresh if the author has a different take on it… and doesn’t forsake her idiosyncratic vision for some theoretical/conventional wisdom about how it should be done.
 
In reality everyone has a different workflow, and the proclamations about when and where you should write and which POV and how much per day, etc., matter to exactly one person—the person making them, because we can assume those standards probably work… for them. Yes, there may be benefits to having some structure to your writing schedule. In theory. But in reality we write when we can, where we can. Which may vary greatly, not only between writers but for the same writer, depending on the vagaries of life.
 
And that’s the big point: Regardless of anyone’s theories, there really are no rules. No must-follow formulas. No one true way. Try out various methods and workflows, dump the non-starters, and go with whatever works for you. Being aware that that may change between projects, or even during them. (Heck, the absolute anarchy and uncertainty around this are half the fun. If you wanted predictable, you’re in the wrong line of work.)
 
Because in reality, anything that gets you to “The End” is the right process… for you, for that particular work, at that particular time. That’s all we can ask for. And that’s enough.
 

 
The following is often attributed to Yogi Berra, but probably first said by Jan van de Snepscheut:
 
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.”
 
Truer words were never spoken.
 
When I was a youngster, an otherwise-intelligent adult told me that when running you should breathe through your nose, as this accomplished two things: the small hairs would filter out dirt/bugs/whatever, and the nasal passages—with their proximity to blood vessels—would warm the air on its way to your lungs. As a scientifically-minded kid this all made sense to me, and it wasn’t until much later when I began to run in earnest that I realized that while all of the above may theoretically be true… in reality it turns out to be complete bullshit. Because in reality, when running, the #1 goal of your respiratory system is to supply enough oxygen to fuel the activity.  Period.  And running with your mouth closed is in direct opposition to this overarching goal.
 
Had the adult been a runner, none of this would have come about. But instead he was a scientific guy who read a lot—about a lot of things—and therefore had theoretical knowledge about any number of subjects. Which is not the same thing.
 
Theory is great. Necessary, even. But ultimately it’s nothing but a tool on the road to reality.
 
In our writing life—especially as aspiring writers—we’ll hear tons of well-meaning advice on how to approach things.  Much of it from people who are coming to it from a theoretical perspective rather than a practical one. Or perhaps from a scholarly one. And some of it may be from people who perhaps aren’t where we desire to be, publishing-wise. And—maybe not so well-meaning—occasionally from people who may be more interested in separating us from our money than in actually helping us get where we want to go, publishing-wise.
 
To this latter point, I recently saw an online ad with the following phrases…
 
                                    *     *     *
 
WRITERS: Want to UPGRADE to AUTHOR?
…I know you're tired of watching your friends publish.
…be the one holding the sharpie at the book signing, asking how to spell names.
…you ARE good enough and you can get the unfair advantage: the INSIDE SCOOP.
…I sit down with top publishing pros every week… to get YOU not only the best tips, but CURRENT tips.
Want to know what's trending in publishing NOW?
What the hottest agents are seeking TODAY?
Step-by-step guides on how best-selling authors made it to the top?
 
                                    *     *     *
 
I honestly can’t imagine worse writing advice. The above implies the writing itself doesn’t matter and it’s simply about knowing what those editors and agents are looking for RIGHT NOW. And if you could only turn in a manuscript with the right subject matter—the CURRENT, HOT subject matter, TRENDING NOW—then you’d be the one all your friends were jealous of instead of the other way around, and you’d be holding the sharpie of doom at the signing instead of standing in line, pissing your pants with envy.
 
Regardless of the actual quality of said manuscript.
 
(And also: Wow, way to try and capitalize on people’s self-doubt, jealousy and FOMO.)
 
In reality, every writing success story I know of is unique, with unique twists and turns along the way to the finish line.
 
So in reality, trying to copy someone else’s specific path is an exercise in futility.
 
In reality, the only commonality between publishing pathways I’ve noticed is persistence, a willingness to work hard, and a desire to continually improve one’s craft.
 
And in reality—let’s be honest here—there can also be an element of luck involved. Yes, we can influence the odds by applying the above traits (“the harder you work, the luckier you get”) but to ignore the element of randomness is like going to Vegas and betting the farm because you “really deserve to win.” Being deserving doesn’t always have a lot to do with when the ball drops.
 
But also in reality—mitigating the above—it’s also true that “it only takes one YES to wipe out all the NOs.”
 
Because in reality, you don’t need to convince every “Big Time Editor” or “Hot Agent in New York City” that your work is worthy.
 
Only one. And that’s enough.
 
Or maybe none, for the intrepid indies among us.
 
Because in reality, what matters are the words that end up on the page. The words you chose… the words you wrote… the words you rearranged and rewrote and revised and polished, until they said what you wanted to say, in the way you wanted to say it, to the very best of your ability.
 
And that’s no theory.
 

 
There are lots of great tools available today to help us with revisions.
 
The dictionary is an obvious one, although I’d argue the thesaurus is even better. Spellcheck, of course. (“F-7 is your friend,” was one of my most common phrases when I was an instructor.) And as I’ve mentioned in another post, using the “find” function can really help with replacing overused words and phrases, as well as give you the minor-league superpower of viewing your work out of context.
 
And having others look at your work can be very useful—almost mandatory—before submitting. Not only will a good beta catch stuff you’ve missed (because you’ve seen it too much to even see it anymore), but they can point out where things may be unclear to the reader (again, because you’re so close to it that you know things about the story that may not actually be on the page).
 
However, the best tool of all may simply be your gut.
 
Another term for this might be: your attention span. Or: your sense of boredom. Or probably most accurate of all: that vague feeling of “less-than-perfect-but-good-enough.” But those terms are clunky (my personal name for when I think my writing may be technically “ok” but doesn’t read smoothly and is inelegant at best) so we’re going with gut.
 
But how do we employ our gut? Is there a shortcut command? Maybe “Shift-Alt-G”?
 
Nope. We listen. It’s not analysis, it’s awareness. Feeling, rather than thought. To the point where if we overthink it, it goes away. Like most things having to do with creativity.
 
Let’s define our default emotional state when reading writing that “works” (whatever that means to you) as engaged. You’re in the story, to one degree or another. But as you read through your story (i.e. going through your manuscript as a reader) you may come across some areas where you find your attention momentarily drifting away from the story. Or you find yourself suddenly reading at a pace that’s higher than usual, perhaps even full-on skimming. Or you might get the thought: yeah, yeah, I know what happens here, let’s just get to the next part, then jump ahead to the next significant scene.
 
When any of this happens, stop.
 
Go back. Right to the spot where you first noticed your engagement with the story lessening or your attention drifting or your reading becoming more shallow. Something there was not right. Not necessarily wrong, just not quite right. Which makes it all the more difficult, because when something’s definitely wrong, we recognize it and we fix it, from a poorly worded run-on sentence to a mix of tenses so confusing even we don’t know what happened when, all the way to technical glitches like spelling/grammar/punctuation. (I’m talking about basic copyedit stuff here. Which, as I’ve mentioned previously, really has nothing to do with why we revise, or what an editor does to a manuscript.)
 
No, what we’re concerned about here aren’t the obvious blunders, but those areas where the writing just doesn’t float. Or run. Or even walk briskly. Instead it just kind of lays there, blatantly disengaging us. Boring us. Or even confusing us. So go back, carefully re-read the part you wanted to skip, and re-phrase it. Or tighten it. Or maybe cut it entirely. I think the key here is to be willing to try different iterations of the same basic concept until it not only says what you want to say, but does so in a way that continues the tone you want the story to have. And when you’re trying on these variations of the offending sentence, do your best to have your “reader” hat on, not your “writer” hat, maybe backing up a paragraph or two to get a running start at it, in context, and see how it flows with the text immediately before and after the passage in question.
 
It seems like 90% of the time the final (“improved”) wording is shorter than the original. So first consider what you can trim and still have the sentence make sense. Try reading the overall passage without the questionable sentence at all, then add back just enough to convey your meaning. When someone (which includes “Mark” for values of someone) is really stuck on a wordy, clunky-yet-necessary sentence, sometimes I’ll say, “Look away from the manuscript. Now, just put it in your own words. What are you trying to say?” And often a completely new phrasing of the idea—rather than a variation on the original text—flows better, and is tighter and more direct and/or less confusing.
 
So yes, we definitely use technical writing craft to improve things once we’ve identified less-than-stellar writing in our work. But for the important part—the actual act of identifying the passages where things are “okay” but could absolutely be better--we need to be in tune with our most valuable revision tool. Our gut.
 

 
When I was a kid—probably in fourth or fifth grade—I got in some sort of minor trouble at school, something to do with my snarky reply to a teacher’s comments on a paper I’d written. (Apparently I was pretty defensive as an early writer. Or I was a mouthy kid. Or—upon reflection—likely both.)
 
I don’t remember the exact details but as I recall, my view was that the teacher knew what I meant, so why was he being such a butthead over my specific word choice? The actual words didn’t really matter as long as I got the point across, right? Sheesh!
 
A note was sent home explaining the teacher’s interpretation of the, er… discussion.
 
My dad’s response was to put me in the car, drive me to our local library, and prop me in front of the huge dictionary they kept on a stand. Then he made me look up the word “run,” and had me stand there and read the entire entry for that single, simple word. There was at least a page of entries (in teeny tiny dictionary font) on run as a verb. Then another page on run as a noun. Then more on it as an adjective. Then all the different variations and phrases involving this supposedly-simple little word. It took me half an hour. I got the point. (Well, the real point is that my dad was an exceptional man, but it took me a while longer to understand that particular truth.)
 
The point: words matter.
 
Meaning, inflection, and the intangible yet oh-so-important quality best described as ‘voice’ are all greatly affected by the specific words we choose to use in any given piece of writing. In fiction, words tell us much more than the objective information they’re conveying. In narrative (i.e. in a viewpoint character’s voice, whether directly in 1st person or less directly in 3rd), word choice fleshes out the character and can give clues as to their regional background, age, education, upbringing, etc., but more important, it speaks to their personality—to who they are as a person—beyond just imparting basic facts. As a character’s possible response to a situation, (1) a simple shrug, (2) saying, “I don’t know,” or (3) stating, “I’m unclear on this particular concept” all imply the same thing. But they also paint three different types of personalities, from taciturn to direct to… well, perhaps either honestly erudite or maybe just a smartass. And in dialog, of course, we can do the same with all our characters, even the otherwise-unnoticed bit players who can stand out with a unique turn of phrase.
 
This also applies to non-fiction: even with something as routine as technical writing, word choice can have a big impact…
 
Fast forward thirty years from my stint as a mouthy fifth-grader: I’ve traveled to a nuclear facility in another state to help them with some training issues. I’m part of a panel that’s interviewed a number of employees over several days, and we’re tasked with writing a report outlining their challenges and recommending solutions. There are a handful of us writing the report as a committee (which is exactly as painful as you might imagine). Some of the panel are trying to appear “writerly,” and are suggesting revisions for virtually every sentence that up the syllable count and lower the clarity. Words like delineate and mitigate and optimization and methodology are flowing like water. Very muddy water.
 
The facilitator of the group—who has up until then remained in the background—interrupts the proceedings. “For clarity’s sake,” she says, “why don’t we consider avoiding a longer word whenever a shorter one will work? Why say ‘utilize’ when ‘use’ will be just as clear?” I give a silent cheer and volunteer to revise the draft, and it feels like taking a shower in cool, clear water to replace the above words with more direct terms like say and fix and better and way. More important, the final result seems to have more impact, and—most important of all—gets through to its intended audience.
 
I never forgot that lesson. Maybe the final draft didn’t come off as “intellectual” or “writerly,” but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was (and is, and forever will be) to convey the ideas in a way that will best reach the reader.
 
The larger point here is not that all writing should use common, simple words. (Somewhere above I used the term erudite, because that single word conveys my meaning better than any other.) The point is that specific words have specific meanings, and a change in word choice can slant the entire tone of the piece you’re writing, whether that’s an article about when to plant begonias or a business report on corporate culture or the fictional dialog of a seventeen-year-old girl from San Diego.
 
For any single concept we wish to convey, there are lots of words that probably come close. We shouldn’t be lazy and automatically go with the first one to come to mind, and we shouldn’t use words that are out-of-character with the goals of the work just to try and make ourselves look like more of a “writer.” I think the best advice here is simply to not be afraid to try on different words until you find the ones that make you think, aha! (My unscientific term for the gut feeling we get when the words finally yield the tone and meaning we’ve been trying to get across.)
 
Words are often referred to as tools, but they can also be seen as toys. Don’t be afraid to get in there and play around.
 
And maybe crack open that huge dictionary if it helps.