Tag Archives: writer’s inspiration

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ROW80 Check-In 10: Garth Nix on Parting Company with Your Book

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Hello gentle reader,

And… it’s time for another ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows: Write or edit every day.

So this week was again quite stressful at work and I didn’t manage to write every day. However, I did write. I wrote 5115 words in 3 days! Yes, that’s a big number for me. *Cue happy dance* I also added a post on my blog about Originality and Writing a book that doesn’t already exist. Feel free to join the conversation here.

Now, here is an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m sharing Garth Nix’s Nine Stages of a Novel. In this post published on his website, the Australian author explains the creative lifecycle of his books. For those of you who don’t know him, Garth Nix is a Young Adult Fantasy writer, author of the Old Kingdom series, The Seventh Tower series, and The Keys to the Kingdom series.

Nix--Garth

Here I’m only sharing Stage Nine: Parting Company with Your Book, because this is where I am now with my novel The Last Queen, which I am currently querying.

“Stage Nine: Parting Company

Responding to the structural edit and then later checking the copy-edit (which is where the prose is smoothed and minor inconsistencies are corrected) always feels like a strange afterthought to me. Emotionally I have already moved on to the next book, and the editing is purely a craft process, done with the head not the heart.

I think you need to let a book go when all the work is done, and it’s important to move on. In my years in publishing I often met authors whose whole self was entirely bound up in a single book, usually their first. Their lives would rise or fall depending solely on that book’s fate, and in this business, that’s an incredibly foolhardy and dangerous gamble to make.

I’m all for investing all your passion and self into the writing of a book, indeed, you need to put a lot of your soul into the story. But when the writing and editing is all done, I think you need to withdraw somewhat. It’s likely there will be many months before the book hits the shelves. It may even be a year away, and thinking about it and wondering how it will do and obsessing over it for that entire time is not healthy.

You need to say ‘goodbye and good luck, my friend’ and start on the next book. (…)

I’m always really pleased to see one of my finished books. I get a great feeling of accomplishment when I hold that first copy in my hand, a feeling that is undiminished from the very first time, way back in 1990.

But I also feel detached, and I think that is a good thing. I probably already have a new book partly written, or at least the outline is there and the prologue. I look at this finished book and I flick through the pages, and even though I can remember every part of writing it, sometimes I read a bit and I feel like I’m reading someone else’s story. A real book, not one of my own. I like that feeling, because it means I’ve succeeded in my ultimate ambition: writing the sort of book that I like to read.”

How are you other ROWers doing? Here is the Linky to support each other!

Garth Nix

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On originality and writing a book that doesn’t already exist

shakespeare-in-love

Hello gentle reader,

Today is Thursday and I thought a post about the writing process was in order.

 I was actually inspired by this post written by YA author Aimee L. Salter on 19th November 2012. In her post, Aimee made a list of all the good reasons we writers have to read other people’s books. Among other things, she mentioned the importance of knowing the competition and of understanding what works (or doesn’t work) in other books.

On that same day, Epic Fantasy writer Jeff Hargett published a blog post in which he admitted to having just realised his book (which he has been working on for ten years) was very similar to the TV show/movie Airbender and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time book series.

It reminded me of another blog post I read in February 2012. Back then, YA author Elizabeth May published a great post entitled The Unfortunate Case of the Book that Looked Just Like Someone Else’s, in which she confessed having written, edited and queried a manuscript that was extremely similar to a published book that she bought later on Amazon. When she found out about it, she felt embarrassed and she shelved her manuscript, feeling that she had somewhat wasted her time and the agents’ time.

So what’s the moral of these stories? Listen to Aimee’s advice and READ. If your story is derivative of other works, you need to be aware of it and it needs to be intentional. Being derivative by accident is the worst thing that could happen to you as a writer.

Secret Window

Let’s face it. If you live in the US, Europe or Down Under, chances are you are influenced by the same things that other writers are. We all watch the same movies and TV shows, we all hear about the news from around the world and we have all read the same books as children. This means that it is likely we will write stories that remind us of other stories.

And it’s fine, AS LONG AS YOU ARE AWARE OF IT.

Discovering that the book you’ve worked so hard on already exists is crushing. To avoid it, read the books that are already out there. Read books in your genre and category. Read publishing news and newly published books. Agents do. Publishers do. You won’t have the excuse of not knowing once you try to get your own story published.

I’ll finish this post with my own little experience in the matter: I finished writing the first draft of THE LAST QUEEN in the summer of 2011. Then I heard about a series of books entitled THE SEVEN REALMS (by Cinda Williams Chima). The blurb goes like this: “Times are hard in the mountain city of Fellsmarch. Reformed thief Han Alister will do almost anything to eke out a living for for his family. Meanwhile, Raisa ana’Marianna, princess heir of the Fells, has her own battles to fight. Her mother’s plans for her include marriage to a suitor who goes against everything the queendom stands for.” My heart dropped. This sounded A LOT like THE LAST QUEEN. Especially the Princess Heir part. So I bought the book, read it (loved it) and realised that this book had nothing in common with mine. Cue sigh of relief.

But I keep reading YA High Fantasy books. For my pleasure, to know the competition, and to make sure no one has already written and published a book similar to mine.

What about you? Have you had that kind of experience? Have you written a book then found out it was similar to another book? What did you do? I’d love to read your comments!

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The Next Big Thing – Week 27 (#2)

Forest-EMCastellan

Hello gentle reader,

So if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ve already read what follows. Back in early October, I was tagged for The Next Big Thing blog hop and I answered questions about my Work In Progress. But since then, this blog has gained new followers and I keep getting tagged for this blog hop. I have actually lost track of who tagged me and when, but last week I was tagged again by Craig Schmidt and I decided it was time to repost my answers to the Next Big Thing questions…

What is the working title of your book?

THE LAST QUEEN (Book I in THE DARKLANDS trilogy)

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I started thinking about this story ten years ago. I wanted to write a story where the main character would be a teenage girl (like I was at the time). I also liked the idea of a fantasy land where humans were the lesser people. Finally I wanted to write a love story that would be as realistic as possible, although set in an imaginary land.

What genre does your book fall under?

YA high fantasy.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In the dangerous Darklands, a power struggle between Elves, Wolfmen and Humans is igniting, shattering the lives of a young princess, a warrior and a slave boy whose destinies seem meant to intertwine.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I’m going to cheat for that one 😉 I have no idea who would play my characters on screen, but I can tell you who inspired me while I was writing The Last Queen. I need to have a clear picture of my characters in my head in order to bring them to life, and I’m usually inspired by actors. With that in mind, here goes:

Elian is my main character. He is a 16-year-old slave whose life has been quite traumatic until he meets Araminta. He was directly based on English actor Eddie Redmayne, who was in countless historical movies between 2007 and 2010. Every time I saw him on screen I thought “This is Elian!” So here it is: Elian.

Araminta is 14 years old. She is an Elf, and a Queen. She is strong-willed, smart and quiet. When I described her in my WIP, I thought of English actress Lucy Griffiths.

Theron is 19 years old and he is Araminta’s husband. He is a Wolfman and the son of a lord, who loses all at the beginning of my WIP. He is a short-tempered warrior who happens to be very good-looking. Since I have had a crush on British actor Henry Cavill since, well, forever, I pictured Theron looking like him.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Call me crazy, but I’m going for the traditional route.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Seven months for the first draft. Then six months for the first round of revision. I have battled with a high word count, instances of telling instead of showing, repetitions, adverbs, passive form and everything you shouldn’t do when you write. I’m still working on this manuscript, hoping one day I will get it in shape for the query process.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

That’s a tough one. If you don’t know what High or Epic Fantasy is, think Game of Thrones and The Lord Of The Rings. But I can’t compare my WIP to those masterpieces. Since it’s YA, I guess it could be compared to The Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

My favourite character in the book (beside Elian) is Araminta’s bodyguard/slave/assassin Jerod. I actually wrote a short story about him entitled The First Guardian, because I felt he deserved his own story since he is, you know, awesome.

Thanks to all who nominated me!

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ROW80 Check-In 9: Marie Lu on dealing with Writer’s Insecurities

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Hello gentle reader,

I can’t believe it’s already time for another ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows: Write or edit every day.

So this week was crazy. I think I wrote every day but I have been doing so many different things I can’t be sure. What I did do was launch a blog alongside some lovely ladies (Raewyn Hewitt, Jessica Montgomery, Mara Valderran, K.L. Schwengel and Rachel Horwitz). Our blog is called There And Draft Again: A Fellowship of Fantasy Writers and I hope you’ll be willing to hop over there and support us. There’s a giveaway for our first blog followers. Alternatively, you can follow us on Twitter.

Now, on to an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m sharing Marie Lu’s take on Insecurities. She published the following post on her blog in February 2011, back when her best-selling dystopian novel Legend was still unpublished. I found this post especially fitting this week because I’m querying The Last Queen and I’m not feeling very confident about my writing at this time…

 Marie Lu-Legend

“Artists and writers tend to be fragile creatures by nature. Our work is a piece of our passion cut out and put on public display for the world to see, and we wait with our hearts in our throats as others analyze that work. Sometimes we achieve the ultimate goal: entertaining our public by making them react in an emotional way (joy, sadness, anger, enlightenment, even disgust–depending on what we’re aiming for). More times than not, we’re greeted with our greatest fear: the public’s disappointment, the public’s accusations that our work is a ripoff of something else, or the worst of them all…..the public’s silence.

I have to admit: I’ve never been a very secure person. I wish I could say that I’m confident in the quality of what I do, that I don’t care what others think as long as I’m happy with what I’ve created. But I can’t. I care very much what others think of both my artwork and my writing, and when I’ve disappointed viewers and/or readers, I feel ashamed that I let them down. And as the clock ticks gradually down to Legend’s November launch, I’ve learned something else: a book deal does not cure insecurity. In some ways, it makes it worse. Am I capable of pulling off three consecutive books all featuring the same characters and the same world? Am I smart enough to create prodigiously intelligent characters? Will I be able to make my readers fall in love with my hero and heroine? Some days I can answer these questions with an upbeat “yes, like Obama, I can!”. Other days, I will re-read my words-in-progress and think, “This is trash. This is drivel. Reviewers are going to eat me alive when this comes out.”

In the end, all I can do is put everything into my writing/art and hope that what comes out is something that the public will like. I do know one thing: Legend is the best story I’ve ever written. Which is nerve-wracking. I remember telling myself as it first went out on submission that if Legend couldn’t make it, then there was a good chance that nothing I write would ever make it. It’s my best effort (up until this point, at least). Whether or not that effort is good enough will remain to be seen.”

How are other ROWers doing? Here is the Linky to support each other!

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ROW80 Check-In 8: 5 Writing Tips from Laini Taylor

Hello gentle reader,

It is already time for another ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows: Write or edit every day

This week I was waiting to hear from my beta readers on The Last Queen after my latest round of edits, so in the meantime I did something which has nothing to do with my Darklands trilogy. I dug up an unfinished first draft and added some 5000 words to it, and it was a lot of fun. I also worked on my query and researched agents. Finally I worked on a Super Secret and Super Exciting Project (code name TADA): you’ll find out all about it on 1st December!

Now, on to an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m sharing Laini Taylor’s writing tips. The following article was published on the Publishers Weekly website on 16 November 2012. In case you’ve missed it, here it is:

“Laini Taylor‘s Days of Blood & Starlight (the follow-up to Daughter of Smoke & Bone) is filled with dazzling writing, not to mention fantasy, suspense, and a page-turning story. Take notes, because Taylor’s sharing her 5 writing tips.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a small child, but I was thirty-five before I finished my first novel, because I have issues with perfectionism. It took me a long time to learn to finish what I start, and I’ve developed a lot of tools and tricks for keeping myself moving forward through a story when a big slice of my brain wants nothing so much as to stop and rewrite everything I’ve already written. It can be exhausting, but the upside is that I love to revise. The main thing I’ve learned is that we all have to learn to work with—and appreciate—the brain we’ve been given, and not waste time wishing things were easier.

1. Know what you love. Try imagining the book that would light your heart and mind on fire if you came across it in a bookstore—the one that would quicken your pulse and keep you up all night reading. What would it be? Details, details: when, where, what, who? Think it up, imagine it fully, then bring it forth. That’s the book you should be writing.

2. Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you’re trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in. You could try listing ten things that might happen next, or do a timed freewrite—fast, non-precious forward momentum; you don’t even have to read it afterward, but it might give you ideas. Try anything and everything. Never fall still, and don’t be lazy.

3. Eliminate distractions. Eliminate Internet access. Find/create a place and time where you won’t be bothered. Noise-canceling headphones are great. Hotel-writing-sprees are even better if you can make that happen every once and a while: total dedicated writing time. During my second draft pass on my last book I made 20,000 words happen in a week, which is practically supernatural for me, and it would never have been possible without three nights in a hotel in my own city. It’s an incredible splurge, and a huge liberation, and you might just deserve it!

4. Get your characters talking. Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real. Get them talking. Don’t be precious. Write dialogues. Cultivate the attitude that every word you write need not end up in the book. Some things are just exercises, part of the process of discovery. Be willing to do more work than will show. The end result is all that matters. Be huge and generous and fearless.

5. Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It’s who you want to be, your most powerful self. Write your books. Finish them, then make them better. Find the way. No one will make this dream come true for you but you.”

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ROW80 Check-In 7: Tamora Pierce on finding ideas & dealing with writer’s block

 

Hello gentle reader,

It is already time for another ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows: Write or edit every day 4/7

This week I finished my current round of editing for The Last Queen. Unfortunately I didn’t do this every day but I did get a lot more done than last week. I’m hoping to get back to writing every day next week. Also this week my blog reached 200 followers and I have a giveaway to celebrate. Feel free to enter to win YA books!

Now, on to an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m sharing Tamora Pierce’s tips to find ideas and fight writer’s block. When it comes to YA fantasy, one doesn’t really get more successful than Tamora Pierce. She has been writing since the 1980s and she is most famous for her Song of the Lioness quartet.

“Where do you get your ideas?

Some I stumble across: watching his nature programs, I decided British naturalist Sir David Attenborough would make a cool bio-mage. Watching my mother and sister produce blankets from balls of yarn and crochet hooks, I thought of it as a kind of magic, and wondered what all could be done with thread magic. Wrestling with my best friend’s dove gave me the ideas for Kel’s relationship with the baby griffin in SQUIRE. Pictures in magazines also give me ideas, as do stories in the news.

Other ideas come from my past obsessions. From the time I was six or seven until I was ten, I read anything and everything I could find about knights, the Crusades, and the Middle Ages. My next area of interest in knighthood was in the fantasy novels and Arthurian legends I read in middle school.

Another way I get ideas is from people: my Random House editor, Mallory Loehr, my agent Craig Tenney, my husband Tim, my friend Raquel…

Current events and history are also fertile ground for ideas. Keep a file of events and figures that interest you; it might prove useful one day.

The best way to prepare to have ideas when you need them is to listen to and encourage your obsessions. Watch and re-watch all the TV programs and movies you have a need to; read and re-read all the books, magazines and comic books; visit all the museums, zoos, galleries, concerts and wilderness areas; and listen to all the kinds of music that interest you. If you get a sudden passion for anything and everything to do with, say, gang warfare, starling behavior, painting frescoes, or jousting, go with the urge. Find out all you can. Even if you can’t use it right away, it’ll go into some holding zone deep in your brain, and surface when you need it. All creative people–not just writers!–expose themselves to as much information, in as many forms, as possible, in the hopes that it will be useful down the road, or even right now. You never know what will spark something new!

 

How do you deal with writer’s block? Here are some fixes I use when I get stuck:

  • Introduce a new character, a strong one with an individual style in speech, dress and behavior–one who will cause the other characters to review their own actions and motives to decide where they stand with regard to the new character.
  • Have something dramatic happen. As Raymond Chandler put it, “Have someone come through the door with a gun in his hand.” (My husband translates this as “Have a troll come through the door with a spear in his hand.”) Machinery or vehicles (cars, wagons, horses, camels) can break down; your characters can be attacked by robbers or pirates; a flood or tornado sweeps through. Stage a war or an elopement or a financial crash. New, hard circumstances force characters to sink or swim, and the way you show how they do either will move things along.
  • Change the point of view from which you tell the story. If you’re doing it from inside one character’s head, try switching to another character’s point of view. If you’re telling the story from an all-seeing, third person (“he/she thought”) point of view, try narrowing your focus down to one character telling the story in first person. If down the road in the world you’ve created someone has written a book or encyclopedia about these events, insert a nonfiction-like segment (that doesn’t give the important stuff away) as a change of pace. Try telling it as a poem, or a play (you can convert it to story form later).
  • Put this story aside, and start something else: letters, an article, a poem, a play, an art project. Look at the story in a day, or a week, or a couple of months. It may be fresh for you then; it may spark new ideas.
  • If you have an intelligent friend who’s into the things you’re writing about, talk it out with him/her. My husband often supplies wonderful new ideas so I can get past whatever hangs me up, and my family and friends are used to mysterious phone calls asking about things seemingly out of the blue, like what gems would you wear with a scarlet gown, or how tall are pole beans in late June?
  • Most important of all, know when it’s time to quit. Sometimes you take an idea as far as it will go, then run out of steam. This is completely normal. When I began to write, I must have started 25 things for each one I completed. Whether you finish something or not, you’ll still have learned as you wrote. The things you learn and ideas you developed, even in a project you don’t finish, can be brought to your next project, and the next, and the next. Sooner or later you’ll have a story which you can carry to a finish.”

How are other ROWers doing? Here is the Linky to support each other!

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A Writer in the Spotlight – Anna Carey

This week again I was lucky enough to have a YA author give me an exclusive interview! The idea behind the “Writer in the Spotlight” feature is that published (and bestselling) authors are the best source of advice for us, would-be-published writers. Today’s interview is with the amazing Anna Carey. Between her busy schedule and emails lost in spam folders, there were times when I thought I would never get this interview, but Anna was SUPER kind and I’m very happy that you can read her answers to my questions today!

Author : Anna Carey

Genre : Young Adult, Dystopian, Contemporary

Location: Los Angeles, USA

Contact: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Books : The Sloan Sisters series (2009), the Eve trilogy: Eve (2011), Once (2012), Rise (2013)

Bio: Anna Carey has been a gift wrapper, face painter, nanny, horrific cocktail waitress, sofa saleswoman and children’s book editor. She graduated from New York University and has an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she can be found writing, reading, and doodling on the giant chalkboard in her kitchen.

My interview (08/11/2012)

On writing:

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

I always knew I wanted to be a writer, though it took me nearly a decade to say those words out loud. Growing up I didn’t know any authors, had never been to a book talk or had a writer visit my school. That life seemed like an impossible dream.

When and where do you write?

As much as I try to keep a set schedule, this changes from book to book. My preference is to write at home, on my couch, in yoga pants. It usually takes me eight hours to get five solid hours of work done. I’ve gone through periods where things are different, where I work predominantly in coffee shops or only at night, but the eight hour rule has always proved true.

What do you say to people who want to be writers?

First off, read as much as you can. You learn so much about characters, story, and plot just from reading well crafted books. We’re lucky that there are so many books on writing out there (On Writing by Stephen King, The Faith of a Writer by Joyce Carol Oates, Burning Down the House by Charles Baxter). Add these to your reading list.

Secondly, write as much as you can and finish whatever you start. Strangely, this is the hardest part. Try not to get discouraged by unwieldy first drafts. Try not to judge. Once you finish there will be time to cut, add, rewrite and perfect. Until then…it’s impossible to revise a blank page.

Lastly: Find a few readers you trust. Share your work and learn how to listen to criticism. A useful comment feels like an arrow hitting it’s mark.

On the “Eve” trilogy:

To write these books, where did you get your inspiration from? Were you aware of the coming dystopian trend in YA literature when you wrote “Eve”?

Eve started with a question: What happens when you discover everything you learned is a lie? Would you have the courage to relearn your life?

Publishing is a slow industry. It can take over a year (sometimes two) for a book to go from finished manuscript to published work. That said, once you’re aware of a trend it’s generally too late to write with it. I’m like most of the authors who are writing dystopian now. When I started Eve dystopian wasn’t a huge trend. The first book of The Hunger Games was out, but it wasn’t what it is now. I wrote the story I was interested in, and fortunately the timing was right.

On reading:

Which authors inspire you now?

I just read The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith, which is creepy and magnificent. If I Stay by Gayle Forman is one of my favorite YA reads, my go-to “if you haven’t read this READ THIS”. Right now I’m on a bit of a Gillian Flynn kick. I finished Gone Girl and am now reading Sharp Objects, one of her earlier books.

Thanks, Anna, for an awesome interview!

Anna’s books are available from Amazon here.

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ROW80 Check-In 5 : Claire Legrand on How To Come To Terms With Your Writing

Hello gentle reader,

And it is time for another ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows:

Write or edit every day DONE

Editing – Finish my current round of editing for The Last Queen, get my manuscript critiqued and beat-read, then edit some more.

DONE: This week again I have been editing every day.

Writing – Write a short story, and continue writing the first draft of The Cursed King

I didn’t do any writing this week since I was focused on editing The Last Queen.

So this was another good writing week for me and I’m still happy with my goals. This week I also posted on my blog two posts you might enjoy: my Halloween reads recommendations and a discussion on the popularity of YA High Fantasy novels.

Now, on to an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m sharing YA author Claire Legrand’s tips for writers. Claire’s debut novel THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS came out in August 2012.

“When I first started writing, I spent a lot of time online researching what writers should and should not do. There are many rules floating around out there dictating what supposedly makes for a good writing process and a bad writing process, a good writer and a bad writer, a book that will sell and a book that won’t.

Some I have encountered are:

  • You must write every day.
  • You should NOT write every day.
  • You should write [insert number of choice] words per day.
  • You should make a writing schedule and stick to it, absolutely no excuses.
  • You should be writing [insert number of choice] books per year if you ever hope to make a living in this business.
  • You must write at this pace.
  • No, this pace.
  • No way, THIS pace. Slackers.
  • You should write at least one million words before even thinking of querying an agent with a manuscript; before then, you’re not ready.
  • You should create an account for THIS social media service, and THIS one, and THIS one too, and post THIS many times a week.
  • You should blog regularly, on a set schedule, and stick to it. If you blog irregularly, you’re a bad blogger/writer/human being.
  • You should use Scrivener.
  • No, you shouldn’t.
  • You MUST outline, in detail.
  • You MUST outline, but only the main plot points.
  • Eh, you don’t need to outline.
  • You should plan your book around this method of story structure.
  • No, this one.
  • No, those suck, THIS one.
  • You should query one agent at a time.
  • You should query five agents at a time.
  • You should query ten agents at a time.
  • Your book should be between [number] and [number] words long, and anything else won’t fly.
  • You must use critique partners.
  • Your first drafts should look like this.
  • You should only have to do [insert number] rounds of revisions; anything more, and something’s wrong with you/your book/your soul.

Frankly, these shoulds and shouldn’ts start contradicting each other pretty quickly, and it can make a fledgling writer feel pretty lost. Heck, I’m all fancy and published now (and I say that tongue-in-cheek because there’s not much that’s fancy about it, and also, I still don’t feel like I know what I’m doing), and reading these kinds of statements STILL makes me feel pretty lost. They also, if I focus too hard on them, make me feel like I’m doing everything wrong when I can look at what I’m producing and rationally know that I’m not.

Rules can be a good thing. As Victoria Wright might say, rules help the world run just so.

But writing is not always a quantifiable activity. Much of it is instinct, luck, and plain old dogged persistence, whether that’s rigidly scheduled in a spreadsheet or just crammed into whatever spare thirty minutes you can find as your day allows it. And much of what works and what doesn’t for one person’s writing doesn’t translate to the next person. Therefore, I would say that many of the so-called universal writing rules we might see in blog posts, online articles, and tweets are really just what the author has found to work for herself, or for her friends, or for the majority of people within her peer group.

But that doesn’t mean it has to–or will–work for you (or for your book).

Such a statement seems elementary enough (everyone’s different! we’re all unique snowflakes!), but I still have a hard time accepting it. I’m a person very influenced by others, for good or for ill. This means some of my most productive writing days are when I’m “sprinting” online in the company of friends; this also means that other’s successes, failures, methods, and “musts” all have a way of affecting me deeply. I start to think I’m not doing enough or that I’m not doing it right, and then I lose confidence, and then I sit there staring at a blank Word document while scarfing down a box of Cheezits.

The thing is, I don’t do half the things on that list up there above.

I don’t use Scrivener; I have a notebook in which I scribble random thoughts. The rest is done in plain old Microsoft Word, with a lot of world-building and character notes jotted down in Notepad.

I don’t use critique partners. There is one good writer friend whom I trust to look at my unpolished work, but beyond that, no one looks at my books before my editor except for me and my agent.

I outline in detail, but I don’t have a set writing schedule every day, nor do I log my word counts or have micro-goals of any kind. I tried doing that, but it didn’t work for me because if I didn’t meet a goal for the day (or the week) I felt like a failure, and my work suffered for it. Instead, I shoot for big goals (finishing the book by this date) and as long as I meet that big goal, what happens until then doesn’t matter.

I write long what I call “zero drafts” (that is, the first ever draft of the book, before I make preliminary cuts, before I send to abovementioned good writer friend, before I send to agent). And when I say long, I mean long. And even beyond that, once a book has gone through revisions, it’s still on the longer side. I’m just plain wordy (as you can tell by reading this post and really my blog in general). (…)

What does this say about me and my writing?

Absolutely nothing. Except that I write long and then cut back during revisions. It does not reflect on the quality of my writing, the effectiveness of my methods, or how I measure up against the writing and methods of others.

Likewise, my method of outlining, my writing schedules, the fact that I only have one beta reader, etc. etc., means nothing except that this system is what works for me and my books. End of story.

You hear that, brain??

So I’m going to tell you this, in hopes that myself, through writing it, will soak in the reminder (and because I know there are others out there who, like me, doubt and compare and wonder if they’re nuts or stupid or somehow wrong for writing like they do):

The way you write is not necessarily how others write.

Your books are not going to be as [insert adjective of choice] as others’ are.

Your writing will be just that: how you write.

Your books will be just that: your books (and no one else’s.)

Know this, accept this. The sooner you do, the sooner you will come to terms with your writing. And the sooner you do that, the sooner you can get to writing that next book (and the next one, and the next . . . ), no matter how long/short/bracketed/messy/outlined/pantsed/critiqued/Scrivenered/Worded/slowly written/quickly written/ it ends up being.”

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ROW80 Check-In 4 : Jay Kristoff’s Query tips

Hello gentle reader,

And it is time for another ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows:

Write or edit every day DONE!

Editing – Finish my current round of editing for The Last Queen, get my manuscript critiqued and beat-read, then edit some more.

DONE: I heard back from my CPs and beta readers at the beginning of the week and I have been editing all week.

Writing – Write a short story, and continue writing the first draft of The Cursed King

I didn’t do any writing per se this week since I was focused on editing The Last Queen.

So this was again a good writing week for me and I’m still happy with my goals. However I was so focused on my editing that I neglected my inbox and blog comments. I apologise if you’re waiting to hear back from me, I’ll get to this today. I didn’t have the time for any reading either. The only thing I did manage to do this week beside editing was keeping my blog alive with a Halloween book giveaway (you can enter here to win THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman if you wish). Also my blog received the Liebster Award!

Now, on to an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m sharing SF/F author Jay Kristoff’s 13 Steps to Getting an Agent. Jay’s first trilogy, THE LOTUS WAR, was purchased in a three-way auction by US publishing houses in 2011. The first installment, STORMDANCER, is out now. It is “a dystopian Japanese-inspired Steampunk Fantasy”. I have found the following tips on the Adventures in YA & Children’s Publishing blog.

“The agent search. You pick up your manuscript, nurtured from a tiny seed, and send it out into the world. It’s perfect. You love it. Surely, everyone else will too.

And then you watch agents curbstomp it, or worse, ignore it, months on end, until you look at this thing you once loved and question whether it has any redeeming features at all.

That pretty much sums up what it was like for me. Brief periods of giddy excitement. Disappointment. Intense self-doubt. Feigned apathy. Resentment. Months on end. Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to representation. And nothing anybody says makes it easier. You can have your betas say your MS is the next Harry Potter, you can repeat the absolute, perfect truth “It only takes one yes” until your voice fails, but ultimately, you’re still getting rejected. And rejection is a fun as funerals.

The thing that made it easier for me was mechanizing the process. Routine and ritual. I don’t claim to be any kind of expert. But I share my thirteen steps here, in the hope it might help somebody else out on that long hard road.

Step 1 – Write a book. Make it the best you can possibly make it. This is kinda the easy part, and I’m not kidding when I say that. By no means is it easy. But it’s easier than what comes after.

Step 2 – Finish the book. Really finish it. Don’t just finish your third edit and say “done!”. Scour the pages until they bleed. No truer words were ever spoken to me than this – “Your first chapter better be stonkingly awesome. Because that’s all most agents are ever gonna read.”

Step 3 – Stop finishing the book. You’re just ruining it now. There comes a time when you need to say “Enough, this thing is ready to go out”. Some people spend years polishing, and never get around to actually querying. That’s fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Say it with me and Muad’dib and send that puppy out to slaughter.

Step 4 – Do your homework – Go to Querytracker. Go to Agentquery. Subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace. Visit agent websites, read interviews. Learn everything you can about them. Check outPreditors and Editors. Pay no money to an agent upfront, EVER. Do not let your desire to get published blind you to the realities. Do not let your hard work go to waste at the hands of a hustler. Do not be a sucker.

Do. Your. Homework.

Note – there’s a fine line between research and stalking. If you find yourself rifling through an agent’s trash or standing outside their apartment in the rain, you’re doing it wrong.

Step 5 – Prioritize your list. Who’s your dream agent? Do you put them top of list or midlist? Do you acknowledge your query is going to suck at first (because it will), or do you think it’s as awesome as it’s ever going to be (it isn’t) and blow your shots at your dream agents by using them as guinea pigs?

Step 6 – Forge a prescription for some quality painkillers, then write your query letter. There are entire websites devoted to this (writing the query, not forging a prescription). I won’t elaborate on it, but there are faaaaaaaabulous resources online, darling, and you should take advantage.

You can find my query on my blog if you’re interested. The version you’ll be reading was my third iteration. The first one blew more goat than wow I don’t even want to finish that thought…

Step 7 – Read the submission guidelines. This can’t be stressed enough. The brownie points I’m racking up by mentioning this fact will be enough to get me repped in my next seventeen lives.

Every agent is different. Some like you to send your query solo (which is why your letter needs to sing like Amanda Palmer). Some like a synopsis. Some like a sample. Some like watching episodes of House wearing only an old “Spice Girls” T-shirt and bunny slippers, but you don’t know that because you’re not standing outside her apartment in the rain, are you?

Are you?

Step 8 – Send it. Cross your fingers. Pray to whatever flavor of Flying Spaghetti Monster you prefer. Sacrifice a cat to the blood god. Seriously, cats are vermin, the less we have of them, the better.

I had around 15 queries in the air at any given moment. As soon as a rejection came in, I’d send out another. Some folks will tell you this is too many queries to run at the one time. Some will say it’s not enough. There are no absolutes here. You are stepping beyond the rim.

Step 9 – Wait.

Then wait some more.

You can choose to spend your waiting time however you wish. Writing your next book is a good way to go. Whatever you do, it had best be something you enjoy, because you’re going to doing a lot of it.

STORMDANCER is a rulebreaker –it really only took three months for me to land an agent on it, which is nothing. To put it in perspective, I waited three months for replies on some queries for my first ms. I spent five months waiting to hear back on a full (which incidentally, was a rejection).

So writing your next book while you wait? Probably a good idea.

Step 10 – Wait.

I realize I said this already, but it’s worth mentioning twice.

Step 11 – Learn from your rejections. My wife used to say to me “Stephanie Meyer got rejected nine times before Twilight got bought. J.K Rowling got canned a dozen times too”. I will say this now – those ladies had it easy. I took twenty two kicks to the baby maker on STORMDANCER. I took seventy on my previous MS. I had it easy. I know writers who got rejected over three hundred times before they got repped. Three. Hundred.

Most of your rejections will be forms. An automated, boiler-plate “thanks but no thanks”. If you’re lucky enough to receive feedback from an agent with your rejection, treat this like a nugget of gold. It’s a true rarity, and that agent is taking time out of an unimaginably busy schedule to offer it. Say “thank you” and be on your way.

When you get rejected, don’t ask why. You’ll be sorely tempted to. But sadly, it’s not the agent’s job to tell you what’s wrong with your ms. It’s your job to be telepathic. Yay!

Step 12 – Revise.

My query letter got better as I went along (hence you should consider the order in which you query your “dream picks” very seriously). If you’re getting lots of rejections, something is wrong. Of course, trying to fix it when you’re getting nothing but boiler-plate is difficult unless you have mutant powers. It’s maddening, but this is the status-quo.

Step 13 – Believe

I’ll depart from my wise-cracking, tall dark and scary routine long enough to give a little group hug now. Everyone needs a hug once in a while, especially querying writers. Here it is:

The only belief that matters in this equation is your own. It’s nice to have the support of betas or trusted friends, but it’s not necessary (the only person who had any idea that I was writing a book until I got repped was my wife). The only person who needs to believe you can do this is you. Everything else is window dressing. If you’re meant to be doing this, you can, and you will.

Believe in yourself. Keep the faith. At the end of the day, it’s all any of us have.”

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ROW80 Check-In 3: Bree Despain’s Writing Tips

 

Hello gentle reader,

And it is time for a third ROW80 check-in! My goals for this fourth round are as follows:

Write or edit every day

Editing – Finish my current round of editing for The Last Queen, get my manuscript critiqued and beat-read, then edit some more.

I haven’t done any editing this week since I’m waiting to hear back from my CPs and beta readers.

Writing – Write a short story, and continue writing the first draft of The Cursed King

DONE : I worked on The Cursed King but progress was slow this week, although I did write every day except for Wednesday.

So this was again a good writing week for me and I don’t feel that I need to adjust my goals. This week I also managed to read one book and I kept my blog alive by taking part in The Next Big Thing blog hop: feel free to have a look if you want to know more about my WIP.

Now, on to an inspiring story to keep us going this coming week. Today I’m quoting bestselling YA author Bree Despain. I found the following on her website. Bree is an American author who has a degree in creative writing. She started writing full-time after being involved in a car accident and she has written three novels in her DARK DIVINE series.

Writing Tips

  1. Be a sponge. The more knowledge you can soak up, the better your writing will become. Take writing classes, attend writing conferences, and read as much as you can. There are plenty of online resources for writing classes, but if you can, take an in-person class at a local university or writing conference. There is something very energizing about sitting in a room with a bunch of other writers. And you will probably learn more from in-class debates, and critiquing other writer’s stuff, than you will from reading a computer screen filled with writing tips . . . hey, wait a second . . .hehe. Keep reading anyway 😀
  2. Don’t forget to write. Okay, that sounds silly . . . but really, it happens. Sometimes we get so absorbed in the task of learning about our craft, that we don’t actually ever sit down and do the writing. Or sometimes, we experience “information overload” and we get so overwhelmed we just need to unplug from the world in order to start writing. Remember—no amount of reading, class taking, networking, or schmoozing, etc. is going to get you anywhere if you don’t actually write. Write every day if you can. Carry a notebook to capture ideas when they strike you. I actually wrote the prologue for The Dark Divine on the back of a program during church.
  3. Join a critique group. Like I said, there is something magical about being in a room with other writers. And a critique group is a fun, inexpensive way to get feedback, advice, and brainstorming help. Plus, some of my favorite people in the world are my writing chicas.
  4. Let your writing sit for a bit. Like a good piece of cheese, let your writing “age” for a while before you send it out. Stick your manuscript in a drawer for a couple of weeks and then come back to it with fresh eyes. Let your critique group read it over and offer feedback. Sometimes, you may even need to put something away for a long time before you can really see the kinks that need to be worked out. After sending out the original version of The Dark Divine (unsuccessfully) to a few agents back in 2006, I realized that the manuscript needed a major overhaul—but I didn’t know how to do it. I ended up putting that book in a drawer (figuratively speaking) for over a year. I moved on to other projects, and then one day, the answers to my problems with The Dark Divine just started to work themselves out in my mind. I pulled the manuscript out again and spent the next year overhauling it, let it sit for a month, and then sent it out to agents again . . . and a few weeks later I landed the fabulous Agent Ted!
  5. Don’t be unwilling to revise. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: GREAT BOOKS AREN’T WRITTEN—THEY’RE REVISED! Revising is just part of writing, and a major part at that. Hardly anything you write will be golden the first time you put it down on paper. You will tweak and revise on your own, with your critique group, in writing classes, at writing conferences, then take your stuff home and revise, revise, and revise it again. And then you’ll send it out to agents, and more likely than not, you’ll end up tweaking and revising your book even more based on the rejections you get. Then you’ll send it out again, and when you land an agent—guess what? He/she’s going to make you revise it some more before it goes out on submissions. And then when you sell your novel . . . well, that’s when the REAL revising starts. And then when you think you can’t possibly revise that darn freaking manuscript one more time . . . they’ll send it to copy editing where you’ll find out that apparently the language you’ve been speaking all your life isn’t actually English . . .Okay, okay, you get my point? Sorry to say it, but you won’t make it anywhere in the publishing biz if you aren’t willing to revise your writing.
  6. Don’t do all of the revisions people suggest to you. I know, I know, I’m such a hypocrite. I just went on telling you that you MUST revise your book, and now I’m saying not to? Okay, before you kick me in the pants, let me explain. You will get a lot of advice on your book, and a lot of critique suggestions—a lot of them will be good suggestions, some . . . well . . . not so much. Or some suggestions might work well for someone else’s story, but don’t jive with your vision for your book. You will even run into a few people who will pretty much want to write your book for you. But remember, you are the author. This is your baby. Take every revision suggestion with a grain of salt. At first, some revision suggestions seem impossible, or highly improbable, or just plain not right for your story. I always sit on revision notes for a few days (sometimes a few weeks) before I implement them. With a little time and perspective, you will be able to sift out the good suggestions from the bad. And sometimes, an impossible suggestion will suddenly click in your head and it will make a huge difference in the quality of your book. But, if after a little time, a revision suggestion still seems off to you—well then, it probably is. Go with your gut, and do what’s right for your story. But always consider WHY a certain suggestion was made. Did a critiquer want you to change Z into X, but that doesn’t sit well with you? Well, then maybe the reason for Z happening is just not clear enough to your reader. Or perhaps after evaluating the suggestion you will realize that Z actually needs to be changed into Y rather than X. I often find that many revisions are a matter of making things clearer. Does that make any sense?
  7. Accept the fact that becoming an author takes time—and a lot of it. Yes, there are those fluke cases where someone writes a book and then has a multi-million-dollar debut book deal six months later. But for the other 99.9% of us, it takes several years to become an author. Ask just about any published author (including Sara Zarr and Laurie Halse Anderson) and they’ll tell you that it takes about 10 years to make a name for yourself in this biz. And most of us are better off because of the time it took to strengthen our writing. I thank my lucky stars that my first novel never sold. I’m extremely grateful that the original version of The Dark Divine was rejected by every agent I sent it to. Your writing may not be ready for publication right now, but if you keep working, and learning, and reading, and writing, it WILL get there someday. Good Luck!
  8. Remember that authors are real people too! I loved telling stories and writing when I was kid. But I seriously thought that authors were this special breed of people, and someone ordinary like me could never become one. I wish I would have figured out a long time ago that anyone—with enough drive and hard work—can become an author. Even a mild mannered citizen like myself :D.

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