Category Archives: The Writing Process

A guest post by Lisa Mangum.

I love words. I love how they work and how they sound and how they look on the page. I’ve been reading since I was three, so perhaps it’s not much of a surprise that I chose a profession that is all about words.

I actually chose two professions: I am both a writer and an editor. I’ve been in the publishing business since 1997, when I was hired by Bookcraft as their Editorial Assistant. Bookcraft merged with Deseret Book in 1999, and I’ve been there ever since. After several years as an Assistant Editor, I recently switched responsibilities to work more in acquisitions and developmental editing. It’s the part of the job I love the most: finding that diamond in the rough and polishing it until it shines. Every time I see a manuscript turn into a book I think it is magic.

And nothing was more magical than seeing my own manuscript turn into a book. I wrote The Hourglass Door in 2007, and it was published by Shadow Mountain in 2009. I finished out the trilogy with The Golden Spiral and The Forgotten Locket. My most recent book is After Hello.

So, having been on both sides of the writing desk for so long, what is the best advice I’ve been given about writing?

Three things:

My first piece of advice comes from my friend Rick Walton who tells this to his students who aspire to be writers:

1. “Quit. But if you can’t—do the work.”

Writing is hard. It’s exhausting and exhilarating at the same time, but it is hard. So, before you get too far down that road of “being a writer,” you should think seriously about just quitting. Because if your heart isn’t in it, then there’s nothing wrong with not being a writer and being something else—with following your true passion.

But if there is something inside of you that won’t let you quit, that says, “No! I am a writer; I do have a story to tell,” then your only choice is to do the work.

Which leads me to Advice #2:

2. “Dream bigger.”

Recently, I was on a panel at SLC Comic-Con about Disneyland and one of the other panelist said that what she wished she’d known earlier in her career was that it was okay to dream bigger.

I love that! I think we as writers work hard to figure out what works for us and how to write a story and how to get published. And then we think, “Whew, I made it.” Well . . . maybe we need to dream bigger. If there is always a bigger dream out there beckoning to us, we’ll never stop reaching for it. And if we never stop reaching, we’ll simply get better and better until we reach that new dream.

So whatever it is you’re dreaming about—dream bigger.

3. “Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. Don’t stop.”

I saw this years ago written on a wall in the Innovations building at Disneyland, and I instantly resonated to it. Writing is a process; don’t hurry. Take time to learn your craft. Take time to enjoy the journey. Publishing is a process. Take time to learn the business. But don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time. Don’t worry if you make mistakes, or if other people don’t understand your vision. Just—don’t stop.

I believe that there is a story inside each of us that only we can tell. Each of us has a valuable and unique voice. Don’t be afraid to use your voice. Don’t be afraid to tell your story.

So dream bigger. Do the work, and don’t hurry, don’t worry, and don’t quit.

Guest Writer Bio:

Lisa Mangum has worked in the publishing department of Deseret Book since 1997. She specializes in editing fiction for the Shadow Mountain imprint and has worked with several New York Times best-selling authors, including Ally Condie, James Dashner, and Jason F. Wright. While fiction is her first love, she also has experience working with nonfiction projects (memoir, educational, cookbooks, etc.) and some children’s picture books. She loves finding that “diamond in the rough” in the slush pile, and she is particularly skilled in the developmental editing part of the process. Lisa is also the author of four national best-selling YA novels (The Hourglass Door trilogy and After Hello). She graduated with honors from the University of Utah, and currently lives in Taylorsville, Utah, with her husband, Tracy.

November is The Business of Writing Month

November 1, 2013

Kristin Luna

Kristin Luna Marketing Publishing Reviews Rewriting Submissions The Writing Life Writing Tools No Comments

Hello, faithful readers and new readers alike!

Ah, November. For most people, it’s just… November. For writers, it can be one of the busiest months of the year. It’s got Thanksgiving in there, it’s the month before some big holidays in December, and it’s National Novel Writing Month. November is a great month for writing, but it’s also good for going a little insane trying to juggle all of these commitments as a writer and still trying to be real live person.

Bear with us, dear readers, as we try to not go insane this November. In fact, we’re keeping our left-brains in check this month by diving into the business side of writing. You’ll read posts about some of the more logical and analytical aspects of being a writer, such as:

Working with an editor
Beta-readers
Hiring a cover artist
Marketing vs. advertising
Networking
And more!

As a special treat, we also have guest posts from the likes of Lisa Mangum, Stephan McLeroy, Nick Ruva, Heidi Wilde, and Sam Sykes.

Help keep us sane by commenting on our posts and sharing them with your friends!

Happy reading!

Kristin

Making Sure Your Ebook is REALLY Ready To Go

October 16, 2013

Frank Morin

Editing Frank Morin Marketing Publishing 1 Comment

These days publishing a book isn’t the roadblock it used to be. Many of us are e-publishing even while often still trying to land a traditional publishing deal. It is so easy to get a book out there – almost too easy.

I’m seeing some pretty wildly differing stats on how many books were published in the past couple of years. Bowker, the company that issues official ISBNs, lists the numbers of books published with those ISBNs, but many authors who only e-publish don’t bother getting an ISBN, so those numbers are woefully short. I saw one statistic that claimed 3,000,000 books were published in 2011, and estimated 15,000,000 in 2012.

Even if those numbers aren’t 100% accurate, I think it’s safe to assume millions of books are flooding the e-book marketplace. It’s so easy to e-publish that there are no quality controls out there. The sad truth is that many of the millions of ebooks flooding the market are terrible. I know several kids in high school and even middle school who proudly proclaim they’re published authors with multiple titles to their name. They look at me funny when I tell them I’ve been writing for years and just released my first ebook and ask what took me so long!

The problem is – if your book is one of the awesome ones, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get noticed and not lost in the flood. That’s why promotion and marketing is becoming more important than ever.

When e-publishing the most important marketing tool you have is your book. If you release a book before it’s really finished, before it’s well edited, without a striking cover, you’re tying an anchor around your own neck.

I’ve read more than one ebook that showed great promise. It was ALMOST great. But the author clearly rushed the process, lacked the discipline to do it right and polish it that last 5% that would have made it shine. And as a result, all that hard work was wasted because the final book was merely decent.

In today’s market, we can’t afford to have a decent book, an okay book. When e-publishing it’s vital to take the time to make sure our books are really ready to go. Here are a few things to keep in mind to help get your book there.

Complete more than one pass.

A good author with a solid plan can write a pretty good book in a single pass, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for immediate release. It needs to be polished, fine-tuned, with each scene carefully reviewed to maximize its potential. David Farland is famous for making up to 10 editing passes for his novels, each one focused on optimizing different aspects of the story.

Take the time to really finish your book.

Get it professionally edited.

Many e-authors hate this step and manage to convince themselves that they don’t need it. Why bother actually investing in our work? Better to just release it and watch the money roll in, right?

Wrong. I can’t stress this one enough. No matter how good you think you are as a writer, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears you’ve already invested in the work, you’re not done. Readers can tell when a book is not professionally edited and they’ll feel cheated and never buy another of your books.

It was a humbling experience for me to see all the marks on a recent manuscript when the editor I hired returned it. I don’t think there was a single page without some kind of mark. I learned a lot, got insights into blind spots I never knew I had, and the resulting manuscript really shines in ways it never could have before. Totally worth the money.

Like anything else, know your editor. Some who claim to be editors aren’t worth your time. You may have to contract with a few editors on different manuscripts to find one you really work well with.

One editor I highly recommend without reservation is our own Joshua Essoe. Check out his website here.

Get a killer cover.

Again, good cover art is an investment, although it doesn’t have to be a ton of money. There are great resources out there for covers at reasonable prices. Michelle Wilber, the woman who painted the cover for my ebook Saving Face is a talented artist who is a personal friend. Many artists are willing to help with covers for ridiculously small fees as a way to help them also break into the market and be noticed. It’s a win-win situation.

Unfortunately many authors just download the first clipart they can find on free sites and slap on a title. Worse, some just download any image they like, even if they don’t have rights to it. Don’t fall into that trap. A good cover needs careful thought to present the right tone and brand, including the right font. This is huge. A good cover draws readers in, while a bad cover kills the deal before the power of your writing has any chance.

Format the book carefully.

Don’t just assume you can take your Word file and convert it into an ebook without more work. Bad formatting marks you an amateur and drives readers away, and Word is notorious for inserting tons of special characters invisible while in that program but glaringly obvious when converted to ebook format.

I learned a ton about that process while prepping Saving Face for release. I found some excellent resources to help. If you are willing to do some simple technical work on your novel, it is definitely possible to produce quality output.

If not, there are great resources out there that will prep your ebook for you for a reasonable fee. I haven’t used them myself, so I can’t recommend one over another, but you can easily get recommendations from other authors. With a little research you can find the one that best fits your needs and budget.

I used two resources primarily in my formatting project:

First was Cheri Lasota’s ebook Design and Upload Your EPUB. The Steps To Your Success. This excellent resource is available for only $0.99 and is well worth the cost. She discusses her approach for formatting an ebook, and walks an author through the steps of prepping a book and uploading it to both Amazon and B&N.

I also followed an excellent series of blog posts by Guido Henkel where he discusses in great detail his process. His is slightly more technical, and if you have some basic HTML ability, is excellent.

There are many other great resources out there, and it doesn’t really matter which one you choose, so long as you make sure you follow one of them and carefully prep your ebook.

Even after utilizing both of these sources and carefully reviewing the final product, I still found a couple of minor errors after releasing Saving Face. Thankfully both Amazon and B&N allow for updating a corrected manuscript. Just don’t use that as a crutch to not doing the work up-front because anyone who’s already purchased your book is stuck with the errors.

If you nail all four of these areas, most likely you’ll have a rock solid ebook ready for release. Coupled with brilliant writing, you’ve covered all the bases to become a player in the game.

Now, just need to figure out how to reach the 10 million readers I know are dying to buy my book . . .

Post 500: Back to Basics

October 10, 2013

David Carrico

Craft & Skills Motivation The Writing Life The Writing Process 4 Comments

This is the 500^th blog post on Fictorians. That’s a pretty amazing statistic, in some ways. I mean, the fact that a sizable group of disparate and diverse people scattered around the globe has hung together for years and remained focused on and dedicated to blogging about the craft and art and business of writing for this long says good things about the vision, commitment, and perseverance of the Fictorians. Kudos to my fellow Fictorians.

So, since I volunteered for this slot, I guess I’d best be about it. As it is a special post, I’m stepping outside the October theme.

What is the one indispensable trait of a writer? What one characteristic does every good writer possess?

He or she writes.

That is, after all, the first of Heinlein’s Rules for Writing:

Rule One: You Must Write.

I can hear the “Duh!” comments as you read that last statement. Yes, it’s kind of self-obvious that you can’t be a writer if you don’t write. And there have been multiple discussions that touched on that thought in the Fictorians pages over the last few years. But tonight I want to take that thought in a slightly different direction.

You may or may not have heard of a book entitled Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. You have probably heard of the premise of the book, though: it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field.

Now I know that there are those who question that statement. For myself, the more I think about it, and the more I encounter other masters of various crafts and arts, the more I think it’s generally valid. But for the purposes of this post, let’s assume it’s a valid statement.

Ten thousand hours to mastery. 10,000 hours.

Have you ever applied that thought to writing—that it might take 10,000 hours of practice to attain mastery over your craft?

Just how long is 10,000 hours? Well, let’s try to quantify it. If you write one hour a day, 10,000 hours would be reached in 27.397 years. Not months—years. (I was so surprised at that answer I did the calculation three times on two different calculators just to verify it. Believe it.)

Staggering, isn’t it?

And who wants to spend twenty-seven years learning how to do something? (Not me.)

So how do you shorten the time frame? Obviously, write more every day. So if you write two hours a day, you drop the required time down to not quite fourteen years. And if you write four hours a day, you’re now down inside seven years. And seven years, my friends, is a manageable number, an attainable goal.

“But that’s so long!” I hear someone mutter.

Is it? To attain your goal of being a professional writer, to reach out and grasp your life’s dream, is it really too long?

Ask Joshua Bell how many hours of practice he had before he became a famous violinist. Ask Emmanuel Ax how many hours of practice he put in before he became a world-famous pianist. Ask Paul McCartney how many hours of performing, how many concerts the Beatles played in their early years in Hamburg’s oblivion before they became an overnight success.

I can’t find a cite for this story, so it may be apocryphal, but knowing what I know about musicians, I believe that something like it happened. As I heard it, after a very well-known pianist gave a concert one evening, a girl walked up to him and said, “That was wonderful. The music was beautiful. I wish I could play like you do.” To which the pianist, after looking at her for a moment, replied with, “No, what you wish is that you could play like I do, without having to practice like I do.”

There is no substitute for practice. There is no substitute for learning the craft, for drilling it into your head and your hands until it evolves into mastery.

Rule One: You Must Write.

Everything else comes after that.