Making Mistakes Before They Matter

Sometimes gremlins sneak into your computer.

Really, how else can it be explained that I duplicated the first chapter of DNP, pasted in the next three chapters, saved it, copied it onto my USB key, moved to the internet-able computer, attached it to an e-mail, sent it, and then received an e-mail back saying ‘this seems really short for four chapters’? Because in fact there was only one chapter in the document? And when I go back to my USB key the document has four chapters?

Gremlins, I tells ya. Of the techy variety. (As opposed to the Trekky variety, because they’re all out watching the new movie.)

Thankfully, I didn’t make this mistake to Dream Agent. I made it to a most excellent friend who sent an insightful critique on chapter 1 and now wants to read more. Which means that the ramification of my error is that I might have to wait until she’s free to comment on the next three chapters, instead of getting a response this weekend – but that’s a hell of a lot better than a ramification of ‘the agent thinks I’m a moron who can’t follow instructions and/or a computer ninny, and I have to write a pleading e-mail saying “oops, here’s the rest”.’

And now you can be damn sure that I will triple-check every document that gets e-mailed out under my name.

Editing and publicizing: part of the writing process?

Bookslut (all hail) posted a link to an interview with Helen DeWitt, who’s selling her most recent book in e-form through her own website.

The problem is, though, that seeing a book into print takes up a lot of time and energy that could be spent writing other books. Normally an advance gives one something to live on while one writes the next book; if one doesn’t have that, one is using up one’s own money, that could otherwise be used to buy time to finish a new book, to see one already written into print.

What’s confusing me here is the perspective. If we’re looking book-by-book, then yes, book B is going to take longer if you have to edit and publicize book A. (See Bookends’ post about not futzing and getting on with the next book, by the way. Very useful.)

But in order to sell book A and build your career, surely you have to take the time to edit it – sometimes drastically – and go through all your proofs to make sure no typos slipped in, and make sure your copyeditor hasn’t boofed up, and do publicity-related stuff. Otherwise, the audience for book B isn’t going to be much bigger than that for book A, and if book A isn’t edited well you might lose otherwise loyal readers.

Also, without an advance, most of us only have ‘our own money’ from non-writing jobs. And those take up an annoying amount of time, don’t you think? (I just got a call from my temp agency this morning, as it happens.) But if book A sells, then in a perfect world you not only have your advance – possibly a bigger one, since the sales numbers are increasing – but, if you get really lucky, royalties.

We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds, of course, and I know more than one author who’s gone the e-publishing route in large part because of frustration at traditional publishing channels. But if my book needs editing – which means, suggested edits that I believe will help improve the book (as opposed to ‘rewrite it in the way someone else would prefer to see the story’) – then that’s not only going to improve book A, but improve books B and beyond.

And for me, that’s time and energy worth spending.

[ETA: Helen DeWitt left a comment which clarifies what she meant when she discussed advances.]

How to make an entire and mostly unnecessary scene go away

1. Change the timing of the previous scene from lunch to dinner. Then you don’t need to worry about how everyone spends their time between afternoon and evening.

2. Make a list of all the useful information that scene conveyed, and integrate it where possible in the earlier scene.

2a. Ditch the bit of dialogue that never really worked anyway.

Polyphony is hard!

Otherwise known as, multiple characters can be really confusing.

I regret having to ditch some, but when I went through three chapters and removed all but two characters, I found that I only needed to rewrite one scene to keep the plot moving – in other words, out of 2500 deleted words, I only had one necessary scene. There were a few observations I want to work back in, but that should be easy enough to do in dialogue format. It’s always a wake-up call when you cut things and the novel doesn’t suffer for it – and in fact, improves, as you clear out the underbrush. Phyllis Eisenstein once mentioned something about having deleted some thousands of words, then joining the two ends together and finding they came together seamlessly.

My theory is that if I reread it and don’t notice anything’s missing, then it really doesn’t need to be there.

So I’m effectively left with two narrative voices, emphasis on voices, because if they sound alike there’s no point in splitting it at all, and I still feel that’s where the book needs to go.

Meanwhile, getting critical responses to my first chapter has been an eye-opener, not least of which in the sense of ‘everyone’s going to think differently.’ One reader had primarily minor suggestions with some advice about structure, one felt the writing was good but that major structural changes are required, and one – well, ‘they misread the draft!’ sounds like a knee-jerk response, but I can’t think of any other way to interpret the most important part of the feedback. The reader’s belief that the book is fatally flawed and unpublishable (even by a small press) seems to be based on the assumption that the character flaws in the opening chapter are continued all the way through the end of the novel. I didn’t include a synopsis, which (hopefully) would have clarified things. It’s a reminder to me to make the reader aware that the character – who’s a young Nazi – is capable of breaking out of that mindset, and to weave that in from the beginning, because I don’t want the reader to think ‘this is all played out on a single emotional level,’ but I refuse to believe the book is unpublishable.

Well, my next reader is an agent rather than an author, so it will be interesting to see which of the readers they agree with – or, more likely, they’ll have yet another response….

No excuse!

Given the amount of time and effort some agents put into giving advice about query letters, it’s really the responsibility of Us Who Query to pay attention. Now, obviously, the details will vary between agencies – if they want pages, if they don’t like e-queries, whether it’s okay to write a single letter to the agency or query each agent individually – but the basic rules are consistent. Here are some links to good advice.

Nathan Bransford has an entire series of entries (‘The Essentials’), which you can find in the sidebar, but you can start with the basic query letter formula.

And he also came up with the query points system, which came out of the whole whether-you-can-break-the-rules discussion. Basically, you can break the rules if you’re Michael Chabon; otherwise, refrain from using purple ink.

Lucienne Diver has a useful list of query dos and don’ts, which includes the ever-useful ‘don’t try to get too cutesy with your queries’ – apparently plastic fish (!) were involved. Incredibly useful is her first statement: ‘The query letter is basically an introduction to the writer; the synopsis is the introduction to the story.’ I shall keep that in mind.

And Kristin Nelson has a multi-entry pitch workshop.

Now, everyone will still make mistakes, but really, there is enough information out there – in these blogs and others – to prevent you from making the egregious ones that get your query deleted before the agent even reaches the ‘I look forward to hearing from you’ part.

Computer-related links (and one book)

Michael Agger at Slate questions how we read online. I definitely structure my blog entries differently – shorter paragraphs, mainly – and I have always adhered to the ‘avoid MySpace’ philosophy, but I tend not to use bold that often. Maybe I should.

I did once meet someone who thought that perhaps humans were going to adapt to read things that were written on vertical surfaces, rather than horizontal ones, but I think that’s stretching it.

As for blogs not having sustainable value – well, I do this primarily for my own amusement, and most of my hits are a) a few friends who regularly read this or b) random web searches.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Carr at the Atlantic wonders whether Google is making us stupid, but I didn’t read it ’cause he used long paragraphs and no bolded words. *grin*

Oh, and a book – namely, Passing the Word: Writers on their Mentors, edited by Jeffrey Skinner and Lee Martin. The book is a hybrid in that it’s partly a series of essays by writers talking about their mentors, and partly examples of their writing. I’m not sure that worked for me, because while it was interesting to see the writing if it had been mentioned in the essay (or was about the mentor), in other cases, random pieces of writing didn’t seem to have much relationship to anything else.

But I very much appreciated the advice given by John L’Heureux, in Erin McGraw’s essay ‘Complicate. Simplify.’ As she puts it:

“Every scene needs to build, to move the action forward,” he said, and then added advice he often gave in class: “Complicate the motive. Simplify the action.”

I suspect my actions are pretty simple already (and not always in a good way), but that first bit really made me want to reread my manuscript and see how I can add depth.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, McGraw’s story was my favorite piece in the collection.

Things we say that are not really what we mean

What we say to editors, workshop leaders, critique partners, or anyone (other than Mom) who is reading our work and giving feedback:

Of course I want honest criticism. I can’t improve if I don’t learn what isn’t working on the page, or find out that something which makes sense in my head isn’t necessarily clear to the reader. Given that I can trust you not to be criticizing me in order to try and boost your own self-esteem, I know that my work is very likely to be better after your feedback – and even if I end up not editing much at all, I’ll have been forced to think carefully about some of the choices I’ve made, so that will still give me a more confident, solid approach to the work. And of course if I take your suggestions on board, I am going to have a much better piece of writing!

What we actually mean:

1. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
2. Please don’t say anything bad! Please!
3. *hides under bed*
4. Please just say ‘it’s perfect! Might want to run spell-check.’
5. No, don’t tell me to run spell-check! I can’t bear the criticism!
6. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

(I have a piece with a professional editor and something else nearly ready to go out for critique. So, yes, I’ve been thinking about this.)

But of course, number 7 (or beyond, depending on how much screaming and hiding under the bed occurs) is ‘goes and edits the damn thing.’

Rules lawyering, agent edition

Alas, I wasn’t one of the five finalists in the Nathan Bransford 250-words-of-dialogue competition. (I wasn’t even in the top seven, as he said the two runner-up entries were previous contest winners.) My entry wasn’t perfect; after I submitted it, I cringed when I realized that I made the speaker use the word ‘flat’ instead of ‘apartment’ even though she clearly didn’t know British terminology. But exercises on such a small scale are incredibly useful – and who knows, maybe next time I will win!

One of the contest rules caused some controversy – namely, the fact that the entries were supposed to be 250 words, but many entrants (and at least one finalist) exceeded that limit – and this got me thinking about rules in general, with regard to submitting to agents.

I want to make it clear that nothing I am about to say is a criticism of Mr. Bransford, his competition, or his decisions. He is undeniably awesome for being willing to spend more than a working day’s worth of time on this and to donate even more time to the finalists/winner. If he chooses to set or break rules for his own contest, that’s his decision. (Especially given that he pointed out that said rules ‘may be amended with zesty randomness and are subject to my own interpretations and opinions, which are known to be both feckless and strongly held.’ Hard to get more zesty than that.)

I mean, if you follow a religion, there are rules to follow, but it would be pretty weird to argue that God is mandated to follow his own sacraments.

(NB I am not comparing Nathan Bransford to God.)

(Although if doing so means he’ll represent me….)

Anyway, the point of this entry: rules, and should we follow them with regard to querying agents? (I need to keep it limited or else it will get into the ‘committing murder versus parking on yellow lines’ arguments.)

One side of the argument goes: yes, absolutely. Agents, as has been noted elsewhere in this blog, receive hundreds of query letters a month. Each agency has slightly different requirements, and it is your responsibility to know them. You don’t want to be treated as a generic writer, and the agents don’t like being treated that way any more than you do, so don’t send out the equivalent of ‘Dear Author’ letters. (Unless that’s what the agency wants! – say, if queries are going to be passed around and given to whichever agent seems the best fit. Although it’s best to be sure; the Donald Maass agency will do this but you should still address the letter to Mr. Maass.)

If you send an attachment to the SuperBob Literary Agency when they said ‘no attachments,’ you’ll be lucky to get an auto-reject from their system, because that’s likely to be your only indication that they spiked your letter. It’s your responsibility to know and follow the rules, and the agency has no responsibility to read your query if you can’t be bothered to take the time to double-check.

Why should they care? Well, for a start, if you submit a picture book query when they explicitly say they don’t represent those, you are wasting their time. Moreover, if you cannot follow the simple instructions on how to submit a query letter (including taking the 0.4 seconds to double-check that you spelled the agent’s name right), why should they expect you to follow any other directions? How can they be sure you’ll make changes to your manuscript? Submit the final version on time? (‘Oh, well, they said May 1, but I’m going to take until June 13 and that’s fine.’) Turn up for interviews and photocalls? They’re thinking ahead, even if you aren’t. They want a client who is dependable.

‘BUT!’ I hear you wail. ‘It’s the quality of the writing that counts! I am a unique snowflake and my writing is brilliant. These pesky restrictions don’t REALLY matter. When the agent reads my brilliant writing she is hardly going to be hitting the word count button; she is going to be demanding a partial.’

I’m not going to deny that this happens occasionally. But when it doesn’t happen, you’ve just shot yourself in the partial. You’ve shut down the possibility of the agent accepting your work, because there are 400 other hopefuls clamoring in their inbox – and one of those 400 might have just as good a query AND be able to follow instructions.

Yes, there are people who succeed in spite – or because – of the fact that they color outside the lines. But how many people fail for those reasons? You never see them, do you, except as bitter anonymous commenters muttering in forums that the only way to make it in this business is to Know The Right People or Go To The Right MFA Program and how everyone is Against The Real Creative People And It’s A Conspiracy.

It isn’t a conspiracy. It’s you thinking you’re better than the rules and no one else believing it. Maybe you are – so prove you can jump through the hoops to get people to listen to you. THEN, when you are breaking the NYT bestseller list, you can do what you like, because you’ll have proved that you can bring in the money. (And given how some of the top authors seem to leave line editors by the wayside after book 5, I have no doubt that you will do what you like.)

Now, there are times when the rules are – by their very nature – a bit fluid. If you’re asked to paste the first five pages of the manuscript into our query letter, then that means five double-spaced pages. Not five single-spaced, not seven double-spaced. Obviously you have to use common sense – you shouldn’t cut off a sentence off mid-word simply because that where the five pages ends, and given that even standard 12-point fonts vary in spacing, no one is going to demand that you prove you didn’t include 5.3 pages. But they mean five pages for a reason.

(If you want to submit the last five pages of the chapter, say, because your first five pages aren’t compelling, you might need to revise them. That’s as much as any casual browser in a bookstore is going to give you, after all. Think of it as an exercise.)

Bottom line: following the agent’s rules means you can prove that you’re both a brilliant writer AND a solid professional. Isn’t that a reputation worth pursuing?

Chapter 2 is sagging

Boy it’s tough to keep up the tension when everyone is waiting for something to happen. At least they can complain to each other that things aren’t happening. Which means I’m getting lots of practice battling the old ‘not every sentence needs a tag’ problem, she said hopefully. (That was one of my few annoyances with one of the Stephenie Meyer books – at one point there were five in a row.)

Meanwhile, a bit of advice: don’t research war before bedtime unless you’re aiming for really disturbing dreams. I’ve had nothing (yet) that requires either therapy or trepanning, but I’m going to start keeping a Georgette Heyer novel by the side of the bed. I’ve always been fond of dreams that seem to open a door into the past, but waking up to realize that my dream alter-ego just hugged a senior Nazi is not the best use of REM sleep. *shudder*

Why agents get really annoyed

So you’ll remember that back in this post I noted that an agent (or editor) who doesn’t comment on your attempt to rewrite Jane Austen verbatim doesn’t necessarily not recognize it, but that perhaps they don’t want you being weepy/vindictive/really annoying at them.

Agent Colleen Lindsay’s blog has an example of just exactly the sort of thing I meant.

There are many constructive and fun things you can do when an agent does a We Thank You For Your Application on your query letter. You can give them a number of fingers (depending on whether you’re American or British). You can use a photograph of their face as a dartboard. You can rewrite your query and send it to the next agent who WILL respect your genius, and plot the cutting things you will say to the evil agent when you run into them at the Frankfurt Book Fair and they fall to their knees weeping for you to forgive them (NB this is not actually going to happen so enjoy the fantasy while it lasts).

A response that is neither constructive nor fun is writing a TWENTY-THREE PARAGRAPH letter detailing to the agent just what they missed out on.

Admittedly, it is informative for the agent, because they now know to put your e-mail address on auto-reject, fumigate any snail mail with Raid, and maybe inform the feds.