The other thing I’m not going to blog about

Editing is…tough. Occasionally exciting, especially when trimming the unnecessary bits and tightening up the rest, but tough. And fairly pointless to describe in specifics, since none of y’all have read the novel. (There is a small group of people who have read it, or parts of it, or an earlier draft, but I think the crossover of them + blog readers is zero.)

The annoying thing is that once this is done, I’m onto the querying stage – the query letter is as polished as I can make it, and the synopsis *coughmumble* – and I’m not going to be liveblogging that either, for multiple erudite and thoughtfully considered reasons which can be boiled down to:

1. I am not an idiot.

Seriously, I wouldn’t blog about a job search – ‘hey, this company rejected me with an annoying form letter! To hell with them!’ etc. – and I can’t see this as much different.

Apart from the actual facts, it’s a matter of attitude. Even when I get an agent, I’ll be facing delays, lost e-mails, seemingly incomprehensible requests, and outright rejection from publishers, foreign agents, the marketing department, reviewers, you name it. And I really don’t want to be putting myself out there as the sort of writer who whines in public.

(Private is different. We all get to whine in private. I’m sure it’s in the Constitution or something.)

Also, if all I do is post ‘the Thundercat Agency rejected me in 3.2 picoseconds with a form letter that indicates my true vocation is making macaroni pies for Greggs‘, then wouldn’t you seriously wonder if maybe this is the case?

As La Shark pointed out: you are not invisible on the internet. And as I mentioned over there: I keep intending to put up a Post-It note saying DOES THIS NEED TO BE PERMANENTLY VISIBLE TO YOUR FUTURE AGENT, YOUR MOM, AND EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE? (I always assume permanency, what with the Wayback Machine and Google caching.) The only reason I don’t have such a Post-It note is because I don’t have a computer dedicated to internet use, so I’d have to keep moving the Post-It note, and then the sticky stuff wears off and it falls down and you step on it.

I’ve read a few blogs where the authors post – and eviscerate – the agency form letters they receive. That’s pretty much the opposite of what I hope to accomplish here.

So I guess until I get to start posting ‘ooh la, sold the French rights today’ entries, I’ll largely stick to craft.

…man, editing is tough.

I think I need a macaroni pie.

Do we always rewrite the same stories?

In some sense, yes, I think we all do, because we all have our obsessions and why would you want to write about something you didn’t like? (Money, I guess, or thinking that you can hit a trend in the market. I hope that works for you, if that’s the route you take.)

But it was a bit annoying to draft a story a couple of weeks ago and realize that I’ve pretty much been writing this same two-hander since, oh, HIGH SCHOOL.

Admittedly, I’ve branched out a bit – taking the three examples I can think of, the settings are bookstore -> library -> box office, so I’m getting away from bookish people (though it wasn’t without a struggle that I got the male character into a biker jacket – YES, bikers can be bookish too). And the female character is actually somewhat fictional, and Not Just Me.

So I suppose we’re talking a spiral rather than a circle, to paraphrase Jeanette Winterson’s comments about Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, which is okay.

Have finished up my summer money-earning job – though am still having nightmares about misshelving the books – and it’s now into my autumn money-earning jobs, and getting the novel finished, and oh I figured out my next novel. (I put the Auschwitz one on hold because I cannot bear to face another 2-3 years of Nazis without a break. Not wanting to get anywhere near rewriting THIS particular story.) I’m not sure yet if it’s YA; right now it could slip in either direction. I have to admit I’m a tad worried about what my career arc is going to look like depending on which way this goes, but as right now my career is non-existent, I should just work on writing the damn books.

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.]

Brenda Novak auction almost at an end

The fantastic auction run by writer Brenda Novak ends today, and there are still plenty of items you can get for reasonable prices, and she somehow managed to run a raffle without running afoul of gambling laws, so you can buy raffle tickets ($20) for the next couple of days. The raffle for writers includes an edit of 30 pages, a proposal read by an agent, AND a proposal read by an editor, so theoretically it’s a publication package! Or at least a good few steps down the publication road.

I already picked up a couple of things – a proposal review by an author, and another by an agent – at less than I expected to pay for them, which means that I’m still well under budget for tonight’s finale. Alas, I will not be bidding on either the Donald Maass proposal read (currently at $1014) or the Evil Editor full manuscript read (currently at $3900), nor did I have a shot at the Kristin Nelson proposal read (closed at $1050). But I do have my eye on a few auctions.

In one sense, it’s a bit scary how much money people will pay, but if you look at this as an investment in your career, then $1000+ isn’t all that much. A professional editor who isn’t in the publishing business is going to charge a couple hundred bucks to review part of a manuscript, and that’s not going to include industry knowledge.

Of course, it’s not always clear how much feedback one will receive. Kristin Nelson said over on her blog that her read-and-response will be as in-depth as anything she does for her clients. I don’t know if that holds true across the board (or, more specifically, for the agent whose response I won), but even a decent general response would be a huge help to me.

Or make me dump the project in a fit of pique, whatever.

If you haven’t taken a look yet, please head on over. At the very least, you could buy a raffle ticket!

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?

Why is it that the rejection means more than the acceptance?

Entry title says it all, really. ‘Yay! Poem accepted. WAAAAAAH REJECTION *sob* *is sulky*.’

Didn’t win or place in the Fylde Brighter Writers Writing Write Circle competition; have withdrawn the story from their proposed anthology as I want to keep it in circulation. (It’s currently with a place that records stories, but as they’ve barely updated in months, I’m not sanguine.) ETA a few hours later: turns out the information on the website wasn’t clear, and only the winning stories are being published, which is fine. Apparently I came close to winning a prize. That takes the sting out of it!

Did get a poem accepted – more cheerful than ‘Rats,’ which should make my mom happy, at any rate – so I’ll get info up about that when it’s all public. What pleases me particularly is that I submitted four poems – two written eons ago (one of them completely overhauled) and two written last year – and the accepted one was one of the latter. So I’m not just dragging my old stuff around.

I’m guessing I’m not a Freedom in Fiction finalist, though technically their notification date is Monday, so I’ll save the sulking until then. I haven’t done much, if anything, with the two submitted chapters, and that’s always a tough moment, going back to rejected material and cringing at it. Sally Q has a good entry about the moment you kick yourself for having taken your eye off the ball.

Anniversary

January 11 is the day I consider the start of my professional writing career, as it’s the day that – twenty-three (!!!) years ago – I first submitted a story to a magazine.

It got rejected, alas, so I didn’t get to ’start as you mean to go on’. Still, even if that story had been accepted, eventually something would have fallen at a hurdle. And heaven knows I’ve been persistent enough since 1985; even if there have been some fallow periods, I’ve had at least one publication a year since then. I feel pretty good about that.

At one point, somewhere in the early nineties, I mentioned to my then-boyfriend that my career would always have been with me for longer than anyone I was ever going to be in a relationship with. I suspect it made more sense when I said it at the time, but basically, my writing pre-dates all of my serious romantic relationships. This doesn’t mean they’re second-rate or unimportant – just that in terms of foundations, if you go back far enough, you find an IBM Selectric and a lot of drafts on yellow paper.

(No, I wasn’t deliberately channeling Stevie Smith – it’s just what was around for use as draft typing paper.)