Category Archives: The Writing Process

A guest post by Sherry Peters.

Mabel cover This was not my plan. A part of me still wants to be rescued from this and put back on the track that was supposed to be. But the more I learn about the business of self-publishing, the more I realize that even authors on the track-that-was-supposed-to-be have to go through much of the same. And I’m a bit of a control freak at times, so being in control of every aspect of publishing my book is fabulous and terrifying at the same time.

Making the decision to self-publish Mabel the Lovelorn Dwarf (arriving August 9, 2014) wasn’t an easy one. I waffled on it for months. A number of factors played into my decision, most of them personal. I’d first seriously considered the self-publishing route at When Words Collide in 2013. I was chatting with my friends Adria Laycraft and Gerald Brandt, discussing the industry, when I declared that I would be launching Mabel at When Words Collide 2014. I didn’t finalize that decision until the end of February 2014.

What were the decisions? Most of them were personal, and I firmly believe that everyone needs to decide for themselves whether it’s the right route for them, and their particular book. But here’s what went into my decision-making process:

At When Words Collide, I had taken a workshop with one of the Acquisitions Editors from Penguin Canada. She was very clear in saying that a lot of publishers now look at what is rising on the indie publishing bestseller charts. Those are the manuscripts they’re picking up, not necessarily agented ones. Why? Because the writer already has a readership—a platform—that has been proven. Guaranteed sales.

I had an agent who doesn’t represent YA. I’d seriously considered revising the novel and giving her first dibs on representing it or allowing me to find a YA agent. That process is glacial, but I was willing to consider it. Until I remembered the seventy-five or so agents who had already rejected it (it is a much better novel now than when they read it), and most of those were YA agents, so what was the point? Of the agents who bothered to respond to my query, even asking for partials, fulls, and revisions, it seemed to come down to “it isn’t marketable.” This was before The Hobbit movie had come out. Perhaps I should have mentioned that Peter Jackson was working on making the movie in my query letter. Ooops.

In March, due to serious health issues, my agent had to let me go. Yes, I’d already decided to self-pub at this point, but I was concerned about the six-month window to put out Book 2. As sad as it was for me to lose my agent, and I continue to hope and pray that her health improves, it freed me up to work on Book 2 rather than try and fail to get another manuscript to her. (She had another one, unrelated to Mabel, that she was shopping around).

The Hugh Howey reports on Author Earnings were somewhat eye-opening. Sure, they aren’t perfect reports, and there are probably a million ways to question the data—people have done so on Facebook—but the bottom line is this: self-published books sell. It takes a whole lot of work, but they sell. It isn’t like the old days when you had to print a thousand copies and have boxes in your apartment taking up room and wondering why you weren’t on the bestsellers list or on Oprah’s Book Club.

I have a decent-paying day job, and income from my coaching business. Printing books on demand is inexpensive, creating e-books is free, and I could afford a decent artist and a copyeditor without having to mortgage my home. I am by no means well off, but I do need to be economical in my grocery shopping, and I don’t have as much money for extras like going to a movie, but I’m easily willing to make that sacrifice for a beautiful, professional product that I can be proud of.

This is probably the most personal part of the decision. I was tired of waiting. I can be really impatient about a lot of things, but when it comes to the publishing industry, as frustrating as it is, I accept the glaciality. Mabel has been a character in my head for almost nine years (as of the time of writing). She started as a joke, but she wouldn’t let go. I wrote stories about her. She became my Master’s Thesis, becoming a novel. Since grad school, I’ve had former classmates of mine ask about Mabel, wondering what was happening with the novel. I’d put it in cryogenics, likely to never see the light of day again. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let her go. And neither, apparently, could my classmates. So I had some of them read it. I also contacted a few teens to read it, to see if it was worth putting out there, if it was, indeed, marketable. Their feedback was phenomenal, and a resounding “Yes.”

Between August 2013 and February 2014, I wrote a first draft of another novel, editing Mabel from what had been my M.A. Thesis at Seton Hill University, and researched self-publishing—not a lot, but enough to make the decision and feel that it was the right one.

Publishing has always been a career choice for me. That is to say, I have always wanted a career as a published novelist and I strive daily to be as knowledgeable and professional about it as I can. That’s why I attended Odyssey and Seton Hill. Have I made missteps? Absolutely. For one, I really wish I’d learned how to write short stories better. But that was a somewhat conscious decision on my part, not to focus on short stories.

I have always done my best to be disciplined in my writing, because I truly believe that while I can take all the time I want to write my first book, once I sign that contract, I don’t have the same freedom, and all my excuses for not writing won’t play with an editor and a deadline. The sooner I eliminate those excuses, the better shape I’ll be in when that contract comes along. But that contract isn’t coming, and so I’m self-publishing.

Now I need to be more disciplined than ever.

Come back tomorrow and join Sherry as she dives headlong into the myriad everyday goals and decisions she now faces as a self-published author.

Guest Writer Bio:
Hailing from Winnipeg, Sherry Peters is a writer and a certified Success Coach for writers specializing in the areas of goal-setting and eliminating writer’s block. She has taught her “Silencing Your Inner Saboteur” workshop online through Savvy Authors, and several Romance Writers of America chapters, and in person at When Words Collide in Calgary and Word on the Water in Kenora. Her book, Silencing Your Inner Saboteur, has sold internationally and has been recommended to graduate students at the University of North Carolina and the University of Winnipeg. Her first novel, a YA fantasy, Mabel the Lovelorn Dwarf, will be available August 2014. She attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop and earned her M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. For more information on Sherry, her workshops, and her coaching, visit her coaching website or her author website.

Some of My Best Friends Are Editors

April 18, 2014

fictorians

Author's Perspective Craft & Skills Editing Goals Guest Posts Publishing Submissions The Fictorians No Comments

A guest post by Joseph Thompson, publisher of IF magazine.

IF_poster Let’s be frank. Writers are sympathetic characters, editors are not. Writers toil in romanticized isolation but get invited to the coolest parties. They create and share every moment of joy and sorrow experienced by not just one character, but by an entire world of their creation. They brainstorm and draft, rewrite and polish, and then one day they mass submit that perfect story to the editorial altars.

And it gets rejected. Again. And again. And again. A few of these rejections will come with well-intended but cryptic comments like “We just didn’t feel this story had enough meat on its bones for how it had been designed,” or “Your story is like a tree with really beautiful branches but no trunk.” An extremely lucky few may come back with a request for a rewrite. The majority, however, will come with nothing but a form letter: We loved (insert story title here), but it’s not for us. Good luck placing it elsewhere.

The editors themselves don’t do much good for their public image. The ubiquitous rejection form letter is on par with a break up text message. It makes editors come across as anonymous, insensitive jerks. Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against editors. Some of my best friends are editors. As the publisher of Isotropic Fiction, I work closely with an editorial team whose skills I respect and admire. IF06_100 As a writer, I’ve worked with a variety of editors, good and bad, from newspapers and books to literary and genre magazines. And as an editor, I’ve worked with sci-fi writers and romance novelists, journalists, and poets. There are countless essays about what editors are looking for, what their major peeves are, and how you can improve or kill your chances of getting published. Some of my favorite can be found right here on The Fictorians. After you’re done reading my essay, make it a point to check out Joshua Essoe’s “The Editing Hit List” and “Editing FAQ.” But first, I’d like to take a moment to present the contradictory image of the sympathetic magazine editor.

Believe it or not, editors are a lot like writers. They smell the same, hang out at similar cafes, and many editors start off as writers. They may have gotten into editing to help pay the bills or a friend with a managerial bent may have suckered them into the job by saying “let’s start a magazine.” No matter what drew them to the editing, they continue because they want to read what you wrote. Seriously! Editors don’t just read what writers submit. They want to read it.

TheBoneTree If you’re a writer reading this, think about the last time you asked your friend, husband, wife, or dog to read the latest draft of your story. Did you notice how their eyes darted toward the door in a desperate attempt to escape? Did they sigh? Did they take your pages only to not have read them a month later? Did they say it was nice? Editors will never treat you like that. This bears repeating: editors want to read your work. You are their raison d’être.

Editors see themselves as midwives in the creative process. When magazine editors open a file, they aren’t looking for perfection, but for some crowning creation that just needs a bit of a push. Like the midwife, the editor is there to help and guide the process, but it’s the writer who has to go through the labor. Unlike midwives who can limit the number of patients they see, editors must deal with dozens of new submissions each day.

Due to the realities of time management, editors match their efforts to the writers’. Form letters are a necessity for many submissions, and what’s written in them is true. Editors are glad to read the work even if the work is not ready for publication. And they do truly wish writers the best of luck in placing it. What the form letter doesn’t say is just as important. Print When a form letter goes out, the work that came in most likely was riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, displayed a total disregard of the publication’s submission guidelines, and/or wasn’t even a complete story. The form letter allows the editor to exemplify a level of professionalism with which the writer may not have treated his or her work.

When a work comes across the slush pile that’s well written but not quite finished, editors begin leaving comments. This is scary ground for both writers and editors. From the writers’ perspective, it can look like editors are trying to justify the rejection. Let’s face it: to a degree the writers are right. Acceptances and rejections are subjective, and the comments are an attempt to let writers know their story was looked at by an editor who gave it serious thought. There’s another side to this, however. When works are good enough to comment on, it means editors want to see that writer improve, and they want to see more by that writer.

When dealing with an endless slush pile of submissions, time is always a factor. The need for brevity frequently trumps clarity and civility, leading to the aforementioned cryptic comments. It can make editors seem gruff and unapproachable when they are actually trying to cultivate the craft of a fellow artist. And when comments include a rewrite request, writers should know that request is made in all sincerity. It means the editor wants to spend more time with the writer and the story.

It’s that word, “wants,” that is the key to the sympathetic editor. Regardless of their backgrounds, the majority of editors are there because they want to be. They love their work, which means they love the opportunity to see your work. Editors are very similar to writers in terms of their passion and dedication. They just don’t get invited to the cool parties.

Humbly submitted to The Fictorians editorial team.

Joseph Thompson Bio:
Joseph Thompson has published short fiction and poetry, and worked as a journalist, ghost writer, editor, and reviewer. He currently publishes and occasionally edits Isotropic Fiction Magazine.

Setting the Scene with POV and Two Aliens in a Bar

April 4, 2014

Leigh Galbreath

Character Craft & Skills First Drafts Leigh Galbreath Narrative Voice POV Rewriting Setting and Milieu No Comments

Ah, the bane of writers everywhere—the joys of “setting the scene”. For the longest time, I admit, I had only the vaguest, unformed idea what that meant. I mean, I knew it was describing a setting or situation in which your characters are placed, but I kind of missed the important part. It’s the describing of a setting or situation where something is about to happen. It is a description that implies conflict and tension.

That critical bit about things getting ready to happen is the hard part, and in my opinion, viewpoint is probably one of the best tools for setting the scene when telling a story. Over and above word choice and setting and dialogue and all those other things we like to harp about when talking about technique and storytelling. Why’s that? Because, in my opinion, all those things come from your point of view.

It may be obvious, but point of view is one of the very first decisions on how to tell a story, so, for completeness sake, lets run down the differences real quick. We’ll keep to 1^st and 3^rd here as 2^nd person is so little and specialized in use that it deserves it’s own post (which you’ll get from Tracy Hickman, so stick around for that!).

With 3^rd person, we have the external narrator with varying levels of distance, from omniscient (furthest) to limited (closest) viewpoints. With omniscient, you get the “god” perspective. Objective is through an impartial observer, and limited traps us in the head of one character at a time.

With 1^st person, we have an extremely close narration that allows the reader to take on the experiences and personality of the narrator. The constant use of “I” reinforces this aspect, which makes empathy with the narrator an almost given.

Each has its uses and can be very effective in particular genres and situations.

To be honest, most of us will be doing 3^rd person limited or 1^st person these days. While omniscient viewpoint works for milieu tales, like Lord of the Rings or Dune where the setting and culture take precedence, it’s gone out of favor over the last few decades. Objective can work, too, but my favorites are when you’re in it with the person your supposed to sympathize with rather than hearing about it from someone else.

The real issue is: the further from the character’s personal viewpoint you get, the less the reader tends to care about them. If your story is about a the setting, like with Dune, distance works. Not so much for a character piece.

So, let’s take our prompt—two aliens walking into a bar.

With a 1^st person narrative, obviously, we have to pick a character. For simplicity’s sake, lets pick the human guy sitting alone in the corner who sees our aliens come in together. Say, our human is a drifter with a snarky personality, who’s had dealings with this particular species and tells us right off, they don’t get along. Instant tension. Our drifter gets uncomfortable, keeps his eyes on the newcomers, pushes his glass away and asks for the bill right quick. All the while, we’re getting the narrator’s snarky version of what’s going on. The scene is being set just by having the narrator get antsy in his own personal way. With 1^stperson, personality is key, and we’ve only got our narrator to tell us how to interpret what’s happening.

Third person gives us a little more leeway. What if the first alien, Bob, is from a culture where public inebriation only happens when someone dies, and there’s a birthday party going on. When he gets into the bar, he starts thinking about the funerals he’s been to. Suddenly, you’ve got tension with what’s actually happening around him and the somber mood he’s now in. Bob gives us information about his people and their ways by how he handles the situation. Maybe he’s upset that he’s mood got soured by the joviality. Maybe he finds humans obscene for using alcohol to celebrate a life rather than a death. Maybe Bob picks our drifter in the corner because of his uncomfortableness, thinking this lone human might agree with him.

Depending on the distance with 3^rd person, we could get as particular in limited perspective as with 1^st person—Bob’s been dying for a certain beverage, but it’s too sweet for the somber mood he’s now in—or more generalized with Bob’s recount of how his friend accidentally picked a fight with the drifter, if you want go more of an objective viewpoint. Both of these, of course, keep us in Bob’s head, so we open the scene up a bit to things that our drifter might have missed while we were so focused on his pithy turns of phrase. At the same time, we’re not buried under exposition as to why Bob’s people think parties are for the dead, because we’re right with Bob as he experiences things.

With 3^rd person omniscient, all bets are off. We can get information from Bob, his friend, the drifter, the bartender, the birthday party-goers. We can learn the history of Bob’s people, the trouble the drifter had with them, probably even a few facts about the bar even the owner didn’t know. We’re also often supplied with what it all means and why its important. We lose much of the detailed personal impressions that our characters might have for more of an overarching view of the point of the scene.

Setting the scene isn’t easy, but picking the right viewpoint from the start, can make it a lot easier in the end. Pick carefully, my friend.

The Gift of Scorched Earth

December 16, 2013

Gregory D. Little

Character Craft & Skills Editing First Drafts Gregory D. Little Motivation Rewriting Storyline The Writing Life 4 Comments

Today’s post is going to cover two gifts for the price of one, both intangible and tangible.

I began my first novel manuscript in January of 1999. There were three of us then, and during our winter break from college, we set out to write the greatest epic fantasy novel known to man. I probably don’t have to tell you our plans didn’t quite pan out. But flash forward four or five years, and that book, the first thing I ever tried to write with a serious intention of publishing it, was nearly the reason I quit writing for good.

My co-authors dropped out early in the process. We enjoyed talking about our story’s awesomeness more than actually working on it together. But I’d continued plugging slowly along on the book throughout college. And by the time I was graduated and then married, I had a couple of hundred draft pages. That seems like a tiny amount to Present Day Greg, but at the time it was by far the longest thing I’d ever written. The trouble was, I’d basically stopped working on it.

I told myself I was just busy. Working at a full-time job and commuting three hours daily left me very tired by the end of each week. But that wasn’t it. In truth I no longer believed in the story I was writing. I was no longer excited by it, because there was a dissonance between the plot and the protagonist. I didn’t believe that this protagonist would be responsible for the acts of his recent past that formed the foundation of the plot.

I’d be willing to bet a lot of writers don’t consciously decide to give up writing. It just sort of happens bit by bit, day by day until they look back and realize it’s been months or years since they’ve written. The point of no return is when this thought no longer bothers them. I came pretty close to that point. A more experienced writer would have just tossed the idea and started on a new one, but that wasn’t how I looked at it. The germ for this story had been in my head for a decade. If I couldn’t even see it through, what hope did I ever have of being a writer? But the Sunk Cost Fallacy had me in its claws. For those unfamiliar, the Sunk Cost Fallacy is the human tendency to “throw good money after bad” and continue investing in something that isn’t working just because you’ve invested so much into it already.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but I gradually gave myself permission to scrap what needed scrapping in order to the save the story. It started with rewriting the protagonist into the antagonist, but by the end I trashed every single word of text and started over. Some of the characters’ relationships to one another and some of my original world-building concepts would survive, but every bit of the prose was fed into the furnace of reigniting my excitement for the project. It was total scorched earth, and as much as I’d dreaded the concept, it was surprisingly liberating once I’d committed myself to it.

Eventually I finished my monster of a first manuscript, An End to Gods. The final product is infinitely better than the project was originally shaping up to be. I’ve gotten much faster and trimmer as a writer since then, and the book is still too big and too Byzantine to publish as a novice writer, but I love it for all its messy complexity. My cousins even collaborated to get it printed and bound in leather for me several Christmases ago, complete with custom chapter icon artwork (Ben and Duncan, you guys still rock!) and it is still the coolest gift I’ve ever been given. It’s sitting on my shelf behind me as I type this (and in the picture at the top of this post). I don’t mind telling you I got teary-eyed when I first laid eyes on it, and I still plan on publishing it one day, however many rewrites that takes. I’ve already done it once, after all.

So there you have it. Two greatest gifts for the price of one. Kevin J. Anderson likes to use the phrase “dare to be bad (at first)” and that’s excellent advice. But if that first draft is so bad it’s discouraging you from continuing to write, it may be time to tear it down and start again.