When an experienced writer offers advice, novice writers would do well to listen. So when in 2011 I found myself sitting with a number of other writing hopefuls getting writing advice from Brandon Sanderson at the SLC edition of Superstars Writing Seminar, I was all focus. I listened as Brandon laid out his guidelines for what writers should avoid when writing their first novel. With a growing hollow in my gut I coupled with a kind of hilarity, I realized I had violated every one of them.

You see, about six months prior I had finished my first novel manuscript, An End to Gods. I’ve written a little about it before on this site. I love the book, and while now I see how much work and polish it still needs, I still believe that the bones of the story are strong. But it is a shining testament of everything not to do with a first book. It’s as if I one day decided to take up mountain climbing and turned my naive, untrained eyes to Mount Everest. “That,” Metaphorical Greg said, “looks like a good place to start.”

Brandon advised sticking to a single POV. I had over a dozen. He advised keeping the number of plot lines small. I had at least as many plot lines as POVs. At least. He said one of the greatest pitfalls of new writers is trying to put every idea in their head into one perfect, magical, glorious book and then focusing all their efforts on publishing that book and never moving onto anything else. For that reason, he recommended new writers avoid fixating on writing the story of their heart in their first attempt. Yeah… guilty.

So did I do anything right? Well, I finished! Granted, it took me either seven or eleven years, depending on how you count. But in a way that makes it more impressive. Right?

Past Self, your future self agrees with EVERYTHING Brandon Sanderson said to me/will say to you. Your ambition, while admirable, will delay your serious pursuit of writing by a number of years and lead to immense frustration along the way. You will turn aside from other, easier projects in your need to finish the first, enormous one.

But that ambition will also teach you to learn to write around the time you have and the value of dogged persistence in the face of said immense frustration. It will teach you to be willing to trash hundreds of pages of work on a project and start over when something at a fundamental level isn’t working. And it will make the structure of every novel you write thereafter feel simple by comparison.

So all right, maybe it wasn’t the worst mistake in the world, Past Self. But still, if there’s a parallel universe version of us somewhere out there getting ready to embark on his first serious attempt at novel writing, let’s see if we can convince him to keep it down to like six POVs. You’re right, I don’t think it will work either.

Golf doesn’t look that hard, right? I mean, you zoom around in a little battery powered cart across somebody else’s gorgeously manicured lawn. You swing a club at a stationary ball in a direction which will advance it toward a hole in the ground. Unlike other sports, no one is trying to get in your way, steal the ball from you or make it move in such a way that you miss it when you swing. So how hard could it really be?

You may well believe those things until you actually try golfing. Those fun golf carts are expensive to rent, and if you elect to walk, those bags can get mighty heavy on a summer day. Tell yourself that ball is just sitting there all you like. It doesn’t make it any easier to hit straight.

Golf looks easy only to those who haven’t tried it. Golf is hard.

My dad has a saying about amateur golfers. He says for every hundred slices, hooks and divots there will come that one sublimely perfect swing that keeps the vast majority of golfers going through the rough (pun intended) patches. Sure, the beauty, peace and quiet of the course may get you out there, but unless you have no sense of self-improvement, every so often you have to have some success to keep yourself going.

The same thing is true with writing.

Writing looks easy until you sit down and actually do it. Rebecca Moesta points out during every Superstars that people love to say how they plan to sit down and write a novel one day, the implication being that’s just something you sit down and bang out, no problem. I’m willing to bet most of our readers here know better.

Now, obviously with both golf and writing, there is enjoyment to be had in the experience itself. Most writers I know (myself included) would keep writing even their stories never made them a dime or won them any accolades. But if you do want to take your writing past the hobby phase, you end up plunging headlong into the grueling world of submitting your work. Whether it be it short stories to magazines or novels to agents and editors, it can sometimes (often) feel like beating your head against a brick wall.

You really need that one sublimely perfect swing every now and then to keep you going through the rough patches.  The bad news is that you have to force yourself to keep putting your work out there even when it’s getting zero traction. The good news is as long as you keep doing so, your perfect swing can happen at literally any moment.

This time last year I’d allowed my short story submissions to trickle down to almost nothing. I’d had a run of misfortune with a couple of near-misses that had left me feeling disheartened with short story publication and I was focusing on a novel instead. Then on a whim, right before Christmas I submitted a story I’d left languishing for years. It was a particular favorite of mine, but too long to publish most places and one that had never garnered any positive feedback at a professional level. I didn’t think anything would come of it, but on Christmas Eve I got an email from the editor praising the story’s writing and characters and asking to hold it for further review.

The story would go on to be published several months later, but it was that initial show of interest that was my sublimely perfect swing. It was such a small thing, basically a note from a stranger effectively saying “I enjoyed this story enough to care about what happens to it.” It jazzed me up and gave me the drive to submit again. Now I keep my stable of stories on a constant submission rotation. As soon as one is rejected, I find another market and send away. In the process I’ve gotten better about identifying which markets might be good fits for which stories, which only helps matters. And you know what? The positive feedback on my submissions has increased as a result. It’s only a matter of time before I hit the next perfect swing, and who knows, this one might be a hole-in-one.

During the month of May we’ve had a number of writers weigh in on their favorite unheralded books. I think we’ve all learned a lot, haven’t we? I know I have. My own posts aside, I count one, just one single book that I had heard of (heard of, not read) prior to reading the posts for this month. Let’s take a look back in bullet-point form so that you can all make sure to update your reading lists:

–Into that Forest by Louis Nowra

–Birth of the Firebringer by Meredith Ann Pierce

–The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree by Louis Slobodkin

–The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett

–Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

–The Pleasure Master by Nina Bangs

–The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

–Waylander by David Gemmell

–The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham

–Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright

–To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

–The Macdonald Hall Series by Gordon Korman

–Four Lords of the Diamond by Jack L. Chalker

–The Last of the Renshai by Mickey Zucker Reichert

–They Do Things Differently There by Jan Mark

–S by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

–The Acts of Caine by Matthew Woodring Stover

–Lion’s Blood and Zulu Heart by Steven Barnes

–The Silver Crown by Robert C. O’Brien

–Scriber by Ben Dobson

I’m sure many of you have reading lists that are already cluttered so, yeah, sorry about that. Next month Clancy will herd the Fictorians into the summer months with tips on how to stay on task and keep our goals in sight as warm weather and vacations loom. A big thanks to all the Fictorians who made May a success, a HUGE thanks to the many guest bloggers who took time out of their busy schedules to help contribute and as always, our heartiest thanks to the readers of our humble little writing blog.

A guest post by Moses Siregar III.

Hi, my name is Moses Siregar III, author of THE BLACK GOD’S WAR. I’m an indie author, and I have a confession to make. Lots of books by indie authors are … pretty bad. I know you’re shocked, so I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself, to put the shattered pieces of your former paradigm back into a working perspective. Yes, it’s true. Most indie books … well, they often suck. But not all of them.

And definitely not Scriber by Ben S. Dobson. This one is actually one of my favorite fantasy novels of all time. You can usually find the ebook available for a great price, which is great because I think it’s as good as just about any new fantasy novel I’ve come across in the last five years or so. It’s a great read.

Told in first person, Scriber’s narrator is, on the surface, a difficult character. Dennon Lark is incredibly flawed. We might even call him a self-hating wimp. But he works. Brilliantly. His first person narrative doesn’t feel artificial because he’s a historian, and because Dennon is somehow easy to root for.

Scriber also features a band of female soldiers. The leader of the company of female soldiers is an inspiring figure and a powerful warrior named Bryndine. She’s a wonderfully noble character, and (fun fact) after reading Scriber I started playing a female paladin in a D&D campaign. I really had to fight the urge to name my character Bryndine.

What have I learned from Scriber? The problem is that I enjoyed the book so thoroughly on my first read through it that my critical mind practically turned off. I knew as I read it that I would need to read the book again someday to attempt to unlock its secrets. How did Ben S. Dobson write such a compelling, enjoyable (stand-alone) first person novel with such an incredibly flawed major character? Well, I wish I knew. Someday I need to figure that out. In the meantime, you can read Scriber for yourself. I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Guest Writer Bio:
Moses Siregar III is the author of THE BLACK GOD’S WAR and the upcoming Splendor and Ruin trilogy. Book #1, THE NINTH WIND is scheduled for release on July 27^th, 2014. He’s a co-host of two popular podcasts, Adventures in Scifi Publishing and Hide and Create. Find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MosesSiregar3 or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MosesSiregar.