Don't send foodstuff in the mail. Yes, authors love tokens of appreciation, but seriously? Don't. Send. Food. (It happens. I am not making this up.)
Don't send authors your manuscript and ask what they think. The only exception is if they personally ask you to. Between writing, editing and promoting, not to mention the day jobs most of them have to toil at to try and keep body and soul together, writers simply do not have the time to critique your manuscript. In addition to that, many of them are prohibited from doing so in their contracts with agents and publishers in order to avoid "You stole my story!" lawsuits down the line.
Don't send anything that's invaluable, irreplaceable, or perishable.
Don't mess up the display in the bookstore to put your pet author's books in a more favourable position. Do not move them to the new release tables. The bookstore managers will be mad at you, and will probably assume you're acting on the instructions of the author. They'll be mad at the author. Authors don't need to be at odds with bookstore managers.
Don't hesitate to borrow the author's books from the library. How do libraries get copies of the books? They buy them! If an author's books are in demand they are more likely to keep on ordering them in the future.
Don't sabotage the author's competition. This includes writing nasty Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Goodreads reviews about their books.
Don't worry if you didn't buy the book directly from the Amazon button on the author's website. While direct sales from the author's site means a commission in her pocket, the amount is so minuscule it really isn't worth sweating over. A sale is a sale, and the big secret is that the actual percentage of books sold by Amazon is shockingly small.
Don't special order copies of the author's books and then not purchase them. If you don't pick them up the bookstore sends them right back to the publisher who then deducts those sales from the author's royalty statement. He will not thank you for that.
Don't bug people to buy the author's books. By all means spread the word, but don't be so persistent and insistent that you begin to annoy people if they're not interested. Everyone's taste is different, and pressure to buy or read will very likely turn your quarry away from the author's work. On the other hand, I've bought books that acquaintances recommended casually years after the pertinent conversations.
The Facebook group How To Help A Starving Author that I impulsively set up two weeks ago while writing the first post on this subject has now reached 74 members. If you're on Facebook please visit us. Begin a discussion, or join in an existing one. Kevin Machin has started a list of review sites on one thread. We'd love to have your input, so come join in the fun as we explore the ways in which readers can assist their favourite starving authors.
On September 23rd I'll be discussing what authors can and should do for their readers.
A few weeks ago my writer friend Tananarive Due posted a great blog on writer’s fear -- on being productive and fearing it’s all crap, or being afraid you can't finish what you started...the whole nine yards. It was a great piece, summed up much of what the writing life was like, and I added a comment that she had really pinned it and gee, I was sure glad I’d gotten over all that...
When I read her blog I was in the middle of a major sorting of every box piled up in my loft and pouring out of the closet after my January renovation, a summer of stripping off old layers. I had decided it was what I had to do to move forward on book three and my new status as a committed novelist, a professional writer who takes his work seriously enough to do every day, in an environment that doesn’t get in the way. I was riding on a pasteurized memory of the year I’d spent writing my second novel, “Blood Pressure”, on the tail of my first, and in remembering had somehow edited out all the long nights of facing down the one year deadline like it was my execution date. Not to mention that really fun period about halfway through when I was convinced that I had leapt off the wrong cliff with no parachute and was headed for the rocks, not the starry skies...
Oh, I could go, on, but why torture myself?
What I thought I could knock out in a few weeks became a two-month project as life demanded equal time while I shredded, donated or trashed much of my past. It was in the middle of that, when I was writing only a little, now and then, on a serial novella I wanted to complete before I went back to the third of the Vampire Testaments, that I felt warm and secure in my writing - when I wasn't doing it. During this process, it was just a side thing to do when I’d gotten through another box, after paying the bills, cleaning, shopping for groceries and all the other endless distractions writers use to procrastinate.
Because my days were so filled with going through the boxes and re-organizing my life, I was able to delude myself that I was still in "process". After all, I’d finished enough of the novella to show it to my writing group, added notes to the novel file, and I was -- well -- thinking, yes, thinking about it a LOT, constantly in fact, why, I might even have one of the characters doing this very thing, clearing out the detritus of his life, which makes this all research, and it works so well in the new book...
Uh huh. A week or two after I posted my comment on Tananarive’s site, I was preparing to go back to work for real. The writing group had liked the novella more than I had expected, and I’d submitted enough material that had come back on a plate as shredded and fried as ropa vieja to know that if they were as complimentary as they were, I might actually have something here and might have to take it seriously.
Then I finished the boxes.
The endless physical labors suddenly ceased and it was done. Oh, I still have two chairs to refinish and reassemble, and a coffee and dining table to clear, but the massive task I had set before myself, taking a brief break from the third novel to prepare myself for a fall of free writing was done. No more excuses.
Writing time was here.
And it all came back -- all my old fears -- the first day I sat down at the keyboard to revisit the novella, to flesh it out and stop taking the shortcuts to characters and depth I had allowed myself on the first draft. I had to buckle down, do research on questions asked, expand moments I‘d danced past after pointing them out, and make the whole damn thing more real. Just leap in, wallow in it, dive under and breathe it in until it was as easy to live on as air and I could move through it like an Olympic swimmer.
I panicked. This sucked, I said to myself, as I reread what I’d written. Did the group really like this? Why had I listened to them? Sure I have a story, but who cares about this guy? How do I fix this? How did I get through two novels in the first place? Aren’t I just doing this to avoid the third one, the big one that pulls the trilogy all together like the last flip of a magician’s wrist as he reveals his last illusion? Wasn’t that all I was anyway, just a cheesy magic act splashing stage blood on a tacky set built by stoner high school kids who didn’t care and were just doing it to get out of detention?
Oh, I could go on. All the things Tananarive had said were true and I was reeling under self-doubt and recrimination, all in a voice so familiar and convincing I couldn’t disbelieve it -- my own. Except that the devil has many faces and this time I recognized that the voice wasn’t really my own, the one I should be listening to, but the one I’d spent ten years in therapy tracking down.
So I pulled aside the curtain, and there he was. I dragged my personal demon into the light and sat him down, stroked his hair and assured him I still loved him, as I do all my monsters. I gave him fresh fruit pie and cookies to quiet him down while I went on with the rewrite, plowed through as if I knew what I was doing, because -- and this is my only secret formula -- no one had to see it again until I was sure I had it right.
I Googled away to add elements of reality to the fantasy, found facts that fascinated and interested me, and made what I’d written already make more sense. I dug deeper into my characters and let them speak until I could hear them well enough to listen. I filled in the blanks of their past and sat at the keyboard more and longer as old mental muscles cramped from limited use stretched out again to carry the weight.
At some point, while I petted my monsters to keep them quiet and pushed ahead as if I wasn't terrified, the wonderful thing happened; I got so lost in the story that I forgot I was afraid of it. It became not just a comfortable place, but someplace I looked forward to visiting each day. I finished the story, went over it again and again, watching it improve, tucked in threads, snipped off loose bits, added more where it was bare and thinned it out in places it was overdone.
I printed it out and am ready to read it one last time and decide how I feel about it, then I send it out to a couple of writer friends from the writing group (who of course I now feel were all GENIUSES for seeing the potential in this thing) for a last look. Despite my terror at facing that blank page again after so long I got it done, enjoyed the trip, love the result, and am looking forward to leaping back into the novel.
So, I apologize to Tananarive for forgetting, when she reminded us all so well that the most successful writers in the world can still have that “Blank Page Moment”, so the rest of us should just accept it and do what the most successful writers in the world do -- keep on keeping on.
And I apologize to myself, for lying to me. I will remember next time not to get too cocky, too sure of myself. Writing is always new, each page the “undiscovered country” and it’s the one journey you can never be sure will end as you expect it to -- but that that’s half the fun.
(To read the post by Tananarive that inspired this, go to: http://tananarivedue.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/writing-through-the-fear/)
Because I've been a copyeditor for a long time, people often ask me whether x or y is "correct."
Sometimes I can give an absolute answer because the question is a matter of grammar. For example, it is always wrong to say "neither x or y." It is always correct to capitalize the first letter of a person's name (although you can make exceptions if you like for e. e. cummings and other people who are widely known by a lowercased name). Sentences should always end with a period or question mark.
Grammar is not always this clear-cut. If someone asks me whether a clause should be preceded by "which or "that," I have to ask some questions before I can give an answer. Ditto if someone asks whether "none" takes a single or plural verb; the answer depends on subtleties of meaning.
Some questions, though, have no correct answer. They are matters of style. That is, different publishers or editors do things differently. My answer to, "Should I spell out the number ten?" is, "Who are you writing for?" In Associated Press style, which is used by many periodicals, the numbers ten and above are given as numerals unless they begin a sentence or are a date or a page number. But The Chicago Manual of Style (used for books) has complex rules, and one rule is that the numbers zero through one hundred are spelled out. Scientific style guides have yet more styles for numbers.
Here are a few of the probably thousands of variants of style in American English. All of the following are correct in some publication or another:
With so many ways possible to write such things, how do you know what to do?
Look at previous issues of the publication you're writing for.
If you write for a publication regularly, ask what stylebook they use.
If you regularly write in a certain academic field, get the stylebooks used in that field, such as those put out by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the American Chemical Society, and the Council of Science Editors.
Google different versions of your word or phrase and see how many hits you get for each. Go with the majority.
If you write often for newspapers or magazines, it makes sense to own the most recent edition of The Association Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law. If you write short stories or books, own the most recent Chicago Manual of Style.
Buy some grammar and general style books so that you can tell whether the question that stumps you is a matter of grammar or a matter of style.
I'll be blogging at Novel Spaces again on September 21. Hope to see you then!
What's in a Title? Hopefully a lot of careful thought.
It is said without a good title your book will never make it off the shelf. But which comes first, the title or the story?
I'm wondering if, in the case of this cover image, the hilarious title came first. Seems it may have been an actual humorous, emotion-based thought that caused a light bulb moment in the writer's head. With a title like "If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?," readers would have an excellent idea of what the book is about, surely without needing to read the back copy. Obviously it is targeting women, and the reader would think self-help, humor, dating, breakups, relationships. Plus the cover itself is an illustration, much like a comic book, so the feeling is that you can expect to laugh. And the publsher made sure to note that the author wrote Sex Tips For Girls. Sold!
With the books I've written thus far, the titles usually come first. I enjoy selecting titles, and have a titles list on my computer, which I sometimes share with author friends. But I admit, I never would have thought of the "If You Can't Live Without Me ...." title. It is long, but it speaks volumes.
There was a time recently when song titles were popular as book titles. The title would hopefully ring a bell or spark memory of a time and place in the reader's mind - A Love of My Own and Basketball Jones by E. Lynn Harris. Some authors put a clever spin on a T.V. show, like instead of using Desperate Housewives, one very successful title was called Desperate Hoodwives. And some reuse a title that has proven to work for them, adding in the volume number, i.e., The Cartel 3, or Little Black Girl Lost 5.
And then, even though using cliches has been a considered a no-no in the story itself, cliches have become popular as book titles. I Second That Emotion, Never Say Never, and Be Careful What You Pray For, among others, come to mind.
It has been recommended that an author give his or her WIP a title as soon as possible, (at least a working title) so that it can be felt and owned and imagined, seeing the title in writing each time you open your document.
A lot of thought goes into deciding upon a final title. Editors and authors ponder whether the title is catchy, marketable, memorable, will it grab the reader's attention, is it too long, too short, difficult to spell, does it relate to the story or theme? Sometimes it's good to use a significant line from the story, maybe even purposefully hiding the title inside of the drama in a way that ties it all together.
It helps to run some final choices by a group of readers to get their opinions. My working title for the sequel to Hot Boyz was The Ladies of Ladera, and then I changed it to Housewives of Ladera, but after taking a reader poll, majority won, and the title is now Hot Girlz.
I think titles and writing go hand in hand. A great title is as important as great writing. I just purchased the book used in the image above. Can't wait to see if the writing lives up to the phenomenal title.
Have you ever decided against a title simply because someone had already used it? Which comes first for you, the title or the story?
September 2 is a birthday I shared with my uncle, Allen Drury. And it was on his 80th birthday, in 1998, that he passed away.
Uncle Al was a writer. And though he never taught me a thing about style or structure or dialog or plot, much of what I know about being a writer I learned from him.
Al's house was a lesson. Al lived in California, in a marvelous little house of only about 1300 square feet high above Tiburon. Every room except his office had a view of Oakland, Angel Island, or San Francisco. Okay, the house was also an ideal to strive for; the lesson was his office. Because his office did have a window that overlooked Angel Island; Uncle Al just put a bookcase in front of it. Other office furniture included another bookcase, six filing cabinets, a utilitarian desk, and one wooden armchair. Items of interest relevant to whatever he was working on -- postcards, photos, maps, menus, -- were tacked to the walls in an ever-changing collage. No luxuries, no creature comforts and no distractions -- nothing irrelevant to his work could be found in his workplace.
If ever we were visiting Uncle Al –- or if Al was visiting us in Florida, particularly the week every summer when we rented an electricity-free cabin on Sanibel Island (try doing that since they built a bridge to the place), or if he was staying with friends in New York, or if he was back in his beloved Washington DC –- none of us saw him before noon. Oh, we'd hear him. Sometime just after five he'd be puttering in the kitchen –- brewing coffee, poaching eggs, toasting toast, and juicing oranges. On the rare mornings I'd cross his path, he'd ignore me –- beyond absent responses to morning greetings. With breakfast done and the dishes washed, he'd disappear into his office at 6AM. And from that moment until noon, the only evidence of his existence was the sound of his typewriter. Six hours a day, six days a week, he was at the keyboard writing. Thirty-six hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year of butt in chair work went into everything he wrote.
Back in the days before internet, Uncle Al had a research assistant who would scour libraries for books he needed. Then Al would go through them, doing all his own research and clipping metal tabs to pages with information of use to whatever he was working on. He avoided digests or encyclopedias, going as near to the source as he could in search of unopinionated facts. When writing a series of novels, he'd use those tabs to mark pages in earlier books that had information he wanted to carry forward –- keeping continuity and developing multi-volume arcs. (I use paper stickies instead of metal tabs, but Uncle Al's system stands me in good stead)
I learned two lessons from Uncle Al about listening to others about your work. First, listen to editors. As Al became established as a writer he became less and less amenable to the criticisms of his editors. His books became longer and heavier as he resisted their input and all his research –- attention to detail that made his work so involvingly real –- became an impediment to storytelling. (His Pentagon is perhaps the most telling example of this. A fascinating story about the inner workings of the political heart of America's military is diluted and buried within an exhaustive textbook about the inner workings of the political heart of America's military.) Second, don't listen to family –- or to nonwriters who mean well. My mother was so upset by the brutal, downbeat ending of Decision that she didn't just cry, she was furious with her brother for doing that to her. For her sake he lightened the ending, blunting its impact.
Which speaks to one last lesson I learned from Uncle Al. Every single one of his novels was about something he cared about. More than just the story, his personal beliefs and passions informed how he told his tale. Everything he wrote was infused with his convictions. And I don't just mean his politics –- which were about 180 degrees from mine and which, due to the lack of editors, came to dominate his later fiction. What made his novels work was his commitment. If you as a writer are not fully invested in what you're writing, the reader will never care enough to be moved by your words.
What about you? What lessons have you learned from writers who have gone before? What lessons would you like to pass on to writers who will follow?
A lot of writers have music playlists for their WIPs to get them in a writing mood.
Me too. Well, kinda…
For each of my books, I’ve had ONE song that I replay over and over (and over) again until the book is done. My guestimate is I play it a bazillion times to get through 300 pages. Less for shorter anthology stories.
The Pros: The song instantly gets me into the mindset of my WIP.
The Cons: It annoys everyone around me – hence, the headphones.
Here’s a quickie list of my books and the songs that helped me write them:
Operation Prince Charming - “Fascination” by Kem
Dreaming of You in the Live, Love, Laugh anthology - “Put Your Hands on Me” by Joss Stone
By New Year’s Day in The Holiday Inn anthology – “Lonely” by Jaheim
A Moment on the Lips – “I Can Change” by John Legend.
Okay, I’ve shared a bit of my writing weirdness with you. Now it’s your turn:
Novel Spaces is a group blog, so I try to stay away from shameless self-promotion as much as I can. But when my debut novel with a brand new publisher is being released on the same day I’m required to post, I just have to talk about it. Today is all about celebrating the release of HUDDLE WITH ME TONIGHT, the first novel in my New York Sabers football series with Kimani Romance.
I’ve experienced several first in this decade or so since I first decided to pursue writing: typing “The End” when I finished my very first novel, receiving my first rejection letter, selling my first book, reading my first review. They were all a reason to celebrate—yes, even that rejection letter. All of those experiences marked a significant stop along this journey that continues every day I step up to the computer and choose to write. But today’s stop is extra special as it marks the first book with my dream publisher.
Harlequin is synonymous with romance novels. My dear aunt Lois, who encouraged my love of reading, had a collection of Harlequin romances that rivaled any I’ve ever seen at a local library. As I celebrate this major milestone in my writing career today, I think about how she must be smiling down on me and beaming with pride that her niece is officially a Harlequin romance author.
HUDDLE WITH ME TONIGHT is available in stores and online, in both print and eFormat. I hope you give my New York Sabers a try! However, because this is a celebration, I'm going to give an autographed copy of the book to one lucky commenter!
And if you have even more time to kill, hop on over to my fellow Austin RWA member, Army Captain Jessica Scott's blog where I talk a bit about how I came up with the idea for my Sabers series and share a short excerpt from the novel. I'm also giving away a copy of HUDDLE WITH ME TONIGHT at Jessica's blog, so leave a comment there to double your chances!
