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Wow, busy day yesterday. I wrote about 4,000 words. Unfortunately, not a single one was for my book. No, I’m in high gear promotion-wise. I’m working on a bunch of content for my website, because content is king. (Question: is it totally bad form to re-appropriate a few archived blog entries for website fodder? I think it’s cool, brings the stuff out of storage, right? Agree or Disagree?) I also put together an enormous package of info and dumped it all on my publicist to see what she could make of it. Ordered some promo schtuff (I’m keeping well away from the gizmos, no matter how tempting they may look) and, most importantly, listened to my radio ad a few half dozen times.
I also made plans. I have a very very busy schedule ahead of me for the next few weeks. I’m shocked that we’re already halfway through May! This weekend of course, is BEA. For those of you not in the know:
Diana will be signing ARC copies of Secret Society Girl at the Bantam Dell Booth at BEA from noon-1 p.m. on Sunday, May 21st.
Okay. Then I’m going on a bunch of trips, including my college reunion (all hail the conquering novelist! Hey, let me be a little smug; my 5 year high school reunion I had lost my job, was broke and living with my parents. This is an improvment) and a research and gabfest whirwind rendezvous in Manhattan with a hot hot hot debut author. It’ll be July before I settle down again. Oh, except for not, because that’s when my book is coming out, and also, hello RWA. If I go. Still up in air. And somewhere in there, I have to write SSG2.
So I’m totally busy, y’all. I haven’t even done any reading in the past week. I’ve got this ARC copy of Gena Showalter’s Enslave Me Sweetly that’s totally calling to me. It’s not fair. And I’m definitely reading it this week, lest she pyre-gun me into oblivion when I show up at her booth on Saturday (she’s signing at BEA too).
Okay, another little poll: what should Diana wear to her first booksigning?
a) skirt
b) pants
I’m thinking pants, but you have no idea how hard it’s been for me to actually find pants. Not even “pants that fit,” which is a whole other rant. Pants, full stop. I was in a department store last week, and in the entire store, they had the following non-underwear, pajama, or workout wear items for women to wear on the lower half of their bodies:
1) jeans (got ‘em)
2) suit bottoms (which are part of a whole suit ensemble)
3) one pair of stone colored khaki pants that were too long, plus had an annoying built on belt that tied in a big bow on the side, plus could not be hemmed to fit because of the embroidery on leg.
4) wrinkled cargo clamdiggers, in every size, color, and material. If they were wrinkled, cargo, and calf-length, they had them.
5) peasant skirts
Now, I know you think I’m exaggerating, but I assure you that I am not. In fact, as I began to suspect this phenomenon, I made it a point to search the entire store to see if there was anything else. Anything at all. And there wasn’t. This fact was confirmed by independent observation this weekend, when I remarked upon this strange occurrence to a friend at a party. She said she’d had a hell of a time shopping as well. We’d both, independently, ended up at Anne Taylor Loft, and bought skirts on sale. Which is great, but I don’t wanna wear this particular skirt to my signing.
I’m thinking of wearing the outfit I wore to my lunch with my editor last June, which is great, and would be perfect, but if there’s ever a time that I deserve a pretty new outfit, it’s my first booksigning, don’t you think?
Maybe I’ll get new shoes instead.
I feel almost positive I’ve posted on this topic before, but I can’t seem to find it in the archives (some day, I shall create and index of this stuff…), and besides, it’a really important topic to me, so let’s go ahead and talk about it again. About a moon and a half ago, Kristen Painter posted on this topic over at her blog, and I somehow missed it, which is too bad, becuase it’s one of my favoritest topics of all time.
I once attended this lecture by this famous Dickens scholar, and he said that Dickens had four rules of writing that he’d picked up from his childhood nurse who used to tell him scary bedtime stories about a pirate named Captain Murderer. I really can’t remember the other rules, but one stuck with me, lo, these many years hence. (Which is actually quite impressive, given that I did this in high school.) The rule is: give your character a name that helps to reveal his personality.
And, goodness gracious, but was Dickens a master at this. Little Nell and Scrooge and Tiny Tim and Pip and Betsey Trotworth and Oliver Twist and on and on and on… I think JK Rowling does similarly well with her character-naming. I like Mr. Olivander and Professor Sprout, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin especially.
I find that I think about names more and more with every work. With my first two books, I picked names that I thought sounded good. Looking back, it’s kind of obvious to me that I wasn’t doing so well in the realm of last names. I was just using first names. Only later did I realize that if I made a hero’s last name “Connor”I was keeping myself from using Connor in future books. Ooch.
My first book, the main characters were Jill Jensen and Nathaniel (Nate) Harvey. He called her J.J., and there was a whole running “giant rabbit” joke going on with the Harvey name.
In my second book, the main characters were Ethan Connor and Margaret (Garet) Ross. Again with the first name-as-last name thing. I was also going in weird directions with nicknames. I still think it worked well in the story (Garet was a tomboy, so her masculine nickname looked cute on her), but I hadn’t yet realized what an overused device that was, and how every amateur writer and network sitcom developer on the face of the planet thought it as fun to give their characters cutesy and unusual nicknames. A few years on the contest judging circuit cured me of this particular ailment.
Book number three (unfinished) starred Tai Leavengood and Dylan Morrow. I was getting better with the last names, and had managed to even get a little meaning in there. Tai was a good time girl, and Dylan was the one who was going to make her settle down. It worked well. Wish the booked has worked as well.
Finished book three wasn’t a romance, and it had a lot of characters with very complex names, all of which had multilayered meanings. My heroine was Kathryn (Kix) Hamlin, and there’s a nickname I’m still happy with. She had a de facto parental group, Bernie and Bianca, and even a family of nemeses, who had the last name Gudrun. She also had a love interest by the name of Vincent Voronin, who was one of my more interesting naming stories.
His name was originally Victor Voronin, and he had an attitude like Vin Diesel. But as I was writing the first scene in which he appeared, his name suddenly switched, of its own accord, to Vincent, his character clicked into place, and he became very unlike Victor. He became much more suave, urbane, walk-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick, tender, and had a much better sense of humor, making him the perfect foil to my embittered, tough, by-the-book heroine. I didn’t even realize his name had changed until the end of the scene, but by then, I knew it was perfect. So Victor got the ax, replaced (occasionally, find-and-replaced) by Vincent — kind of like when movie starts recasting mid-shoot. It was awesome.
This book is probably the unsold book of mine that have the most interest in selling some day, not least because of the cool story told by the names, which are major clues to the plotline. Unfortunately, the one market I sent the book to did not share my vision, and wanted me to not only change all the characters, but change their names as well. I’m still mystified as to how the editor in question could have taken offense from the origin but not have picked up on the homage. However, I shall put it on the list of things that mystified me about breaking into that market. The list is long.
My next book had some fun names as well. The heroine, Cristina Yanes, was a spinoff character from the unfinished book, and taught me never to give my secondaries throw-away names, in case they eventually became main characters. But, more importantly, it taught me that I didn’t need to give my characters bizarre names to make them interesting. And despite her rather every day name, it did reveal soemthing about her character — namely, her heritage. (Later, I had a conversation with a multi-pubbed friend who said that she thought my chances of selling a book with a Latina heroine if I was not Latina were pretty slim — but that’s a post for a whole other time.) Cristina’s costar was Jonathan (Jonah) Gallow, another name that I’m particularly fond of. Jonah means “unlucky” in carnie-speak, and Gallow has an awesome resonance with “gallows” — especially appropriate given not only his family’s rather public character assasination but also the fact that the man hunted ghosts for a living.
The next book was Secret Society Girl, and there’s going to be a whole section on my (soon-to-be-live) website about the character names and why I chose them. Stay tuned…
I read a lot blogs by (sometimes anonymous) industry people. Often, these folks, out of the goodness of their hearts (no matter how snarky their critiques get), volunteer to read query letters. And every single time, without fail, there are a bunch of writers who completely misunderstand the purpose of a query letter. In a query letter, you’re supposed to describe what your book is about. And by that, I mean, you’re supposed to say what happens in your book. Theme, or allegory, or motif, or meme, or anything else? Not so much. Sure, stick it in if you think it helps, but that part should be the part that comes across in the actual reading. If you have to tell people the theme of your book, well, you’re not really getting it done, now are you?
Now, for those of you who have grasped the wrong end of the stick when it comes to this “description” nonsense, allow me to clue you in. Your book is not about any of the following things:
Darkness
Good vs. Evil
A Search for Answers
Destiny
Finding One’s True Self
Escaping Ones Demons (unless they are literal)
The Power of Hate, Love, Fate, whatever…
Revenge
True Love Conquers All
The Persistence of Memory (unless this is some sort of Dali Da Vinci Code kinda thing)
Longing
Truth
Justice
The American Way, Dream, Ideal, or the Futility of Any of the Above
This is what your book is about:
A type of character (or characters) shaped by this or that force or forces, gets into this or that situation, which may or may not include this or that character (or characters) shaped by this or that force, and therefore must do such and such or become this or that in order to achieve this or that goal that they may or may not have realized they wanted and overcome whatever conflict the situation or other character brought about. In the end, they do or they don’t because of a, b, c, and (or maybe “but”) they learn this, that, and the other.
Vary as needed. Your book can deal with any of the deep, dark, whatever themes in the list above, and that’s fabulous! More power to you! People can write lots of essays about it when your book comes out. But it doesn’t belong in your query letter. It belongs in the subtext of your book, so that it can bowl over the agent or editor who actually reads the thing. It is not, not, not what your book is about. Your book is about a person(s), a situation, and what happens to that person(s) in that situation.
Capisce?
For instance, my book, Secret Society Girl, is about an Ivy League co-ed who joins one of the most notorious and powerful secret societies in the world and learns to balance classes, friendships, and vast conspiracies bent on wrecking her life.
It’s also (and this is the part that doesn’t make it onto the query letter) about growing up, the nature of love, secrets, self-reliance, feminism, revolution, independence, self-assurance, blah blah blah blah blah. Boring, right? If I said I wrote a book about feminism and secrets, you would have no clue if I wrote Secret Society Girl or The Bell Jar.
Hence, not really what my book is about. Carry on, and happy querying…
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Oh, while I’m in a ranty mood, can I once again beg people to Stop The Misuse of “Beg the Question?”
Pretty pretty pretty please? It makes my teeth hurt. It makes poor Aristotle, who invented the term for this logical fallacy back in the 4th century BC, turn over in his grave. It kills baby pandas. For the love of Butterstick, please stop!
Begs the question means to base a conclusion on a premise that needs proving as well. It comes from the greek: “o en archei aiteisthai,” which means “at the beginning to assume.” “Aiteisthai” also means “to beg.”
When it is used incorrectly, what the person really means is “raises the question.”
 Today’s Girlfriend’s Cyber Circuit tour brings us Alana Morales, author of Domestically Challenged, a sort of guidebook for career women turned stay-at-home moms.
Says Alana: ““When I first started out as an at home mom, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My house was messier, I was more stressed out and I quickly realized that I needed help. I turned to books, but I couldn’t find anything that offered practical advice, so I wrote my own.”
From the back cover blurb:
When you decided to stay at home, you probably thought about the quality time you’d spend with your kids and the wonderful meals you would cook. Maybe you even thought you would do some decorating or take up yoga.
Later you realized things would be different. Your house is messier. You still have days where the kids drive you crazy. And then you wonder – what did I get myself into?
See, I know what that’s like, and I’m not even a mom. I’m just a stay at home writer, and I feel like *I* need a guidebook. We’re now going on week three of stay-at-homeyness, I still haven’t
signed up for yoga or tap lessons or vegetarian cooking classes, or any of the other things I said I’d do when I started writing full time, I haven’t made a *real* dinner in weeks, I haven’t started jogging in the mornings, my house is a disaster, and I’m nowhere near my 10-a-day goal.
In short, I’m a mess. Maybe I need to get my hands on Domestically Challenged. After all, I think Alana must have a lot of stuff figured out. She’d a mom, a writer, and plus, she’s got this radio show to boot! I’m barely managing the writer part…
In other news, I’m trying (yeah, it’s on my To Do List, along with everything else) to formulate a standard list of questions for my GCC tours. You guys want to help me come up with some? A lot of the girlfriends have questions that have something to do with their own releases, such as Tanya Lee Stone’s “bad boy” questions or etc. But I can’t really see myself asking “What is your deepest darkest secret and why don’t you tell my blog readers about it?” Ya know?
So anyway, off to work, today, and to try to get my life in some semblance of order…
Wonderful News #1: Scott Westerfeld, of whom I’m a humongous fan, just made #6 on the New York Times Bestseller list for his newest book, Specials. It’s the third and final volume in the Uglies series, which is the series through which I first discovered Westerfeld and how awesomely he writes. Congratulations, Scott! This is so well-deserved!
Wonderful News #2: Someone I know got an agent… and again, talk about just deserts! This is perfect timing for this person and I expect to hear sales news very very very soon!
Wonderful News #3: I thought for sure this would be my biggest piece of news yet, but I don’t know…. NYT list… nah, this is still pretty honking huge!
Residents of Nassau County, Wilmington, Delaware, Ocean, New Jersey, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: Keep your ears peeled this July, and you may just hear the radio spot for Secret Society Girl! Unfortunately, I can’t post the clip, but it’s adorable and involves “Pomp and Circumstance.”
As you were, folks. Back to work.
Anyone who knows me at all has perhaps gandered that I have this tendency to be a bit of a Hermione-esque insufferable know it all. In school, I was the one doing that “ooh ooh, call on me!” thing in class, with my hand in the air.
My lovely agent has opened her blog for questions, which she does from time to time, and whenever she does, my little keyboarding fingers start getting itchy. I wanna participate in the worst way. But, uh, I can’t really perform a coup at her blog, so what we’re going to do is sit here and quietly debate the question and answer session ourselves. Shhh…. don’t tell. (Elaine, I’m warning you…)
So I’m going to pontificate my answers, which should not be in any way construed as an endorsement by Deidre or TKA or indeed, any industry official capable of repping or buying a manuscript. Just like everything else on my blog, it’s me, all me, all the time. I may accidentally come up with the same answer as Deidre, because we agree on a few things– mainly that I’m this brilliant young writer and she’s this hotshot agent and together we make beautiful industry music– and we may vehemently disagree on others. And maybe the good readers of Diana’s Diversions will also disagree. Should be fun, huh?
Okay, let’s go. (The questions are all from her comments section.)
With paranormal romance and fantasy/romance crossovers selling so well, do you think we’ll see a rise in fantasy romance? (Romances set in a fantasy setting, not crossovers, which are usually 50/50 plot/romance.) While the fantasy and fantasy/romance crossover market seems to be open to them (Tor Paranormals and LUNA), I’m not aware of any traditional romance publishers that will take them.
See, and I’m seeing a ton of these kind of books. The whole “urban fantasy” thing is huge now and there are a lot of fantasy markets that are publishing stories with strong romances in them. I think what might be going on here is that the publishers listed have dedicated lines for these fantasy-cum-romance stories (like LUNA) but many other publishers just roll thos stories into their established fantasy or just plain old commercial fiction lines. Bantam Spectra, for example, who does Kelley Armstrong. And there are definitely romantic fantasies that are published by traditional romance lines. I would say that PC Cast’s books for Berkley, and Robin D. Owen’s books are like that as well. And what about the series like Liz Maverick and Co.’s Crimson City for Dorchester? I think people are willing to open their boundaries a lot these days, in terms of fantasy and otherworldly stuff, even if it means bending the rules about what “romance” really is. Even if you look at Deidre Knight’s books, which have their romance stories but also this huge alien war going on and a plotline hat spans several books, but is coming out of NAL’s romance line. I know a lot of people who are selling things these days that are not by any means what you would call traditional.
So I think if you have an agent, and she sees that your book could go in a romance direction or in a fantasy direction (and now I’m going to cite the approach used by someone like Miriam Kriss in selling Rachel Vincent) then they’ll send it out both ways and see who it is that makes the best offer.
Do you see the YA market becoming more open to slightly older heroines, in the 18-19 year old range, as opposed to the more traditional 15-16 year olds? Or do books with that age heroine tend to get bumped up to the adult side of things? (Just in case it makes difference, the book is a dark, slightly edgy, urban fantasy.)
Judging from my own experience, it really does depend on the content of the book, however, I see a ton of 18 year olds in YA. To name a few: Serena Robar’s debut has a senior, and in the next one, she’s in college. Similarly, we’ve got Sticky Fingers, byy Nikki Burnham, Newly Wed (another Simon Pulse release) as well as Plan B, by Jenny O’Connell. The Traveling Pants series also spans that gap. I think that now is a time where there is a lot of leeway between adult and children’s reading lists. You see a lot of adults reading YA, whereas you used to just see kids “reading up.” But, as before (and also, I can speak from experience on this) what you do is you write the book, and then, if you agent thinks it has potentail in both places, he or she can shop it to both and see what happens. I think there’s a great market for what is described either way, and I think, if you do have something that can be cross marketed, then the publisher is going to try it. I see teen books being heavily cross marketed to adults (Twilight is an example, as well as Bad Kitty and, before the scandal, Opal Mehta) as well as adult books that would be teen freindly being marketed to teens as well (Shanna Swendson’s Enchanted Inc. books). My book is being cross marketed to teens and adults. So being between, whether you go child or adult *officially*, is proabbaly a fine place to be right now.
(Update: Make sure you read Marley Gibson’s comments about this, below, Gibson is another TKA client who just sold a four book YA deal to Penguin Puffin starring college girls.)
There seems to be plenty of outlets for romances about 100,000 words, but is there much of a print market for romances under 90,000 words?
90k is about right. I heard a publisher (I think it was Pocket) say at a conference that they didn’t want anything OVER 90k, so you sound like you’re in good shape. If it’s much lower, like below 75k, the you’re looking at category length, and below 60k, novellas.
Deidre, have you heard that editors are looking for “chick lit suspense”? I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around that one and can see it has lots of possibilites.
The great thing about chick lit suspense, especially in this dwindling chick lit market, is that you can cross market it to mystery readers, and your AGENT can cross market it to mystery publishers. Check out the releases from Berkley’s Prime Crime line. There’s a lot of chick litty stuff going on there. I think there’s still potential in that market.
(Are we sensing a theme here? Cross genre/marketing seems to be the name of the game these days!)
I have a few questions revolving around a single element: contemporary romance; I hope you’ll treat them as one. First of all, does contemporary romance (such as in your guidelines) encompass the category romances such as Harlequin Superromance, Blaze and the like? And with all the attention on paranormals and the like, what’s the value in the contemporary market? I know that Dorchester Publishing is running a contest that includes contemporaries, but is that market still strong?
There are TKA clients who write category romances. Just check the client list. I don’t know, however, if they are looking to consider unpublished clients with only category romances. We’ll have to wait for the verdict from DK on that one. I think the straight contemporary single title category is really tight right now. I have a few friends working in it and I think that if you don’t have an established name from category, or are offering something with a really strong hook, and it’s not super erotic (which is selling amazingly well right now), then it’s tight. And I think Dorchester picks a new topic for their contest every year, so I wouldn’t use that as a yardstick for trends.
When it comes to style, how is a memoir different from a novel? I’ve decided to take a book I am working on and change it from memoir to fiction and am wondering if there is anything I need to do besides the obvious changing of names and identifying characteristics. My plan is to leave the story as is, true, but give certain people reasonable deniability by going fiction. Are there other conventions to the memoir genre of which I need to be aware?
I’m just going to paraphrase Mark Twain here: the difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has got to be believable. The things that you oculd get away with in your memoir — characters not having arcs, plot threads being dropped, etc. — are not things that are acceptable in fiction. Yes, things in real life don’t have neat endings. Stories do, though. Remember James Frey? He tried to make his book a novel. No one wanted anything to do with it. People judge fiction much more harshly because they know the writer can change it, make it better, if he or she wants. Memoirs you’re supposedly stuck with what actually happened. I don’t think it’s a one-to-one ratio, but it depends on the story.
Tonight, for instance, a friend told me this story that even as she was telling it, I thought, if I put this in a book, no one will believe me. There is a part in Secret Society Girl that really happened that my eidtor wanted me to take out because she thought it was ridiculous. See? Fiction has to be believable.
What do you see as the future for Mom Lit? Is it the next big thing since Chick Lit, since many of us who’ve loved Chick Lit all these years are now moms?
I have a friend who is trying to shop an amazing mom lit and isn’t having any luck. But I also see stuff coming out in that arena — however, it tends to be high concept, cross genre stuff, like Confessions of a Supermom and Carpe Demon. I’m interested to see what others have to say about this trend (?) though.
My question: do you think the present boom in YA will follow the same “boom/bust/what next?” sales pattern as chick lit?
Man, I hope not! I think that the important thing to remember here is that though the romance/chick lit community may have just jumped on the YA bandwagon, there’s a lot outside that market that has existed and will exist long after people have hopped on the next trend. YA is hugely strong right now. A lot of people think it’s because the popularity of Harry Potter has gotten kids reading. Woo hoo, I say! Like the boom of chick lit, there are right now a lot of lines being opened specifically targetting the young adult female reader, to capitalize on the success of Meg Cabot and certain recent Alloy properties. But there are also a TON of publishers that have been devoted to YA for ages, and I think they aren’t going anywhere, trend or not. I think that the best of those books and writers and lines will survive. I think that some of them will not. I think some of the writers who are writing YA right now aren’t really interested in YA, they are interested in shortcuts. I think they’ll be gone. But I think that YA is not some new genre that’s just been discovered. It’s a booming market right now, but it’s been a steady market for years.
(Next are a lot of very agency-specific questions. I’m not going to deal with those. Just industry questions here.)
What sorts of YA novels do you see as “hot” right now? I’ve been hearing conflicting things.
I was at a conference in February, and the industry folks there said that paranormal was hot, and edgy was hot. They weren’t looking for sweet stories in YA (try the tween market).
What might this pitch gain me vs. a mail query? If so, what is the best way to pitch without trying to tell the whole plot and sound like an idiot? Just strike up a conversation about the genre or market?
Personally? I don’t know if I put much value in a face-to-face pitch over a finely-crafted query letter. Either one is just a means to an end — get your book in front of them. It’s the book that makes the difference. If you’re meeting for a pitch, that’s great, though! As for what to say in the pitch, just start from the premise. Premise and character. Look at book flap copy and back cover copy. Try to make it a dialgoue if at all possible.
My question is in regards to contemporary romantic suspense. Crime dramas seem to be all the rage on TV these days – CSI, Law & Order, etc. Several of my author friends who have recently sold in RS are selling “cop” books – either crime scene investigations or books that center around cops, serial killers, etc. My question then is whether or not there’s a market for non-cop RS…books about everyday people who find themselves in suspenseful situations. Authors like Roxanne St. Claire and Nora Roberts can get away with these type of stories, but they’re well-established authors. What about newbies trying to break into RS?
I have no answer for this. I just wanted to point out that this questioner has my honey Rocki lumped into the same category as Queen Nora. Woo hoo, Rock! Check it, babe! But I don’t know that much about RS. Allison? Alison? Julie? Rocki? (Or we could all wait to hear what TKA has to say.)
I’m also curious as to Deidre’s take on “romantic adventure.”
(Update: Read Roxanne St. Claire’s comments about this below. Roxanne, of course, is an expert in both types of romantic suspense, having written “women getting caught up in extraordinary circumstances” RS in books like Tropical Getaway as well as professional/cop style RS in her new Bullet Catchers series.)
I’m trying to interest agents in a genre that doesn’t really exist: what I call “chicklit memoir”. Should I just “fictionalize” it and call it just plain old chicklit?
Well, memoir, like most non-fiction, needs an intense platform, and chick lit is not doing well right now, so I think my instinctive answer, without knowing anything about the project, and with no desire to offend anyone involved, would probably be c) None of the Above. I know that sounds harsh, but this is a difficult business. I sympathize, because I myself have some truly rocking travel tales, but I keep them on my blog, or bore people with them once I’ve had a few martinis. I know it’s not a book. I suppose you could try caling it a novel (keeping in mind the advice for memoir-to-novel, above) and give that a whirl, but if nothing happens, put it under the bed and write something totally new. the other thing to keep in mind is that most agents want to launch career writers in fiction, not people with one book. People who write memoirs don’t usually write many books (most not more than one). So before you fictionalize your memoir, make sure you want to be a novelist and write other stuff after you’re done with that.
Okay, I think I’m caught up. Phew, I feel better.
So, what do you all think? Agree or disagree?
(Sorry about the delay, folks. Blogger hates me.)
The other day, I wrote a perfect scene. It was beautiful. It was funny. It was fast-paced. The beats were all in the right place, the point came across the way I wanted it to, and there was even some fabulous subtext that flew in out of nowhere. And it happened the first time out, without any of this foolish revision or editing or polishing nonsense.
I loved it. I sat there, admiring it. I re-read it several times. I giggled over it until Sailor Boy took the hint and asked me what I was so enthralled by. I read it to him. He didn’t seem to appreciate it as much as I did so I read it to him again. Then I read it over a few more times, and patted myself on the back profusely.
Suffice to say, I didn’t get much more work done that night.
And that’s not the only danger of writing a perfect scene. The other problem is that, when writing the next scene, you are bound to begin comparing it to the prior, perfect scene, and it will almost always compare unfavorably. Never mind that, in time and with revision, you might eventually make said scene just as perfect. It’s not that way now; hence, it sucks; hence, you suck, and are a hack, and should never again be putting fingers to keyboard.
And then, after a little bit of that, you give yourself a right good bitchslap, and settle back down to work. Sometimes you tell yourself that, as punishment for all the whingeing (thank God for Australians, who give us such fabulous words to work with) that you are not allowed to re-read the perfect scene and bask in its utter perfection and your own genius until you’ve written X pages/another chapter/another perfect scene, depending on how ambitious you’ve been feeling.
I think there are two perfect scenes in Secret Society Girl. Two scenes that appear exactly the way I originally wrote them, first draft, not a word changed, boom boom boom. One of them is my favorite scene in the whole book. It’s probably not any scene that would strike a reader as being particularly interesting. there are probably scenes that they like a lot better, but if you really want to analyze the plot of SSG one day (and really, be my guest) you’ll realize that the entire story hinges upon what happens in that scene, and had it not been perfect, the storyline, the plot that Kirkus calls “impressive” would not have worked at all.
So perfect scenes have their place, especially in the writerly psyche. I was feeling pretty down about my progress with SSG2, until I wrote the scene, and then all of a sudden I was all, “this book is going to ROCK!” Sometimes we need that little boost.
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In other news, eagle-eyed watchdog and pajama Connoisseur Kristen Painter has noted that there is an ARC of Secret Society Girl available on eBay. I checked out the listing, and it’s being sold by someone who appears to regularly sell ARCs and only ARCs. Other writers have told me that I should be pissed about this, because ARCs are not for sale, selling ARCs rips off the author, and my publisher sent an ARC to this person in good faith and not so they could pirate it out on eBay. (Can you pirate something if you’re selling it? What’s another good word? Pimp?)
Anyway, I thought about it, and I guess that I am pissed. I’m pissed that it’s only going for $6.50. WTF? This is some prime summer reading folks, and what’s more, it’s got the super cool *original cover* on it. That thing is a collector’s item. It should be going for six hundred and fifty. Also, anyone reading the ARC and thinking that’s the actual book is going to be very disappointed. There are whole paragraphs missing from the ARC.
I really don’t get eBay sometimes. How can someone sell something that says “not for sale” in huge letters across the top?
I’d advocate driving up the bidding price, but I don’t want to put money in this person’s pockets.
Wow, how did it get to be 12:30 already? This day just flew by. I think I woke up late to start, like maybe 9 a.m., and then I just had to read the furor over whether or not an author wore her wedding rings in a picture where you can’t even see her hands (some people, I swear, have too much time –and jewelry –on their hands), then I checked some email, and then my good friend and sometime-CP Cheryl called and we had a long conversation about anything and everything in the book industry, including the nature of critiquing and accepting critiques and giving critiques and etc. inspired by the TARA chapter meeting that cheryl put together this weekend where you were separated into groups according to genre and then critiqued another person’s synopsis. It apparently went over fabulously and hearing about it made me miss the TARA chapter so much.
I’ve been thinking about critiquing a lot recently, as I do whenever I send out work to new readers, and I think that the style of what I look for in a critique has changed dramatically over the years. I used to like the kind of in-line commenting and “track changes” style of critiquing, where the CP would be line editing, or commenting on each line, saying “this is funny” and “this doesn’t work” and etc. This is what I’ve come to think of as “contest critiquing” because it’s the kind of critiquing that you give to someone who has entered a contest. You reward them when they amuse, entertain, or move you, and you point out when they confuse, bore, or disturb you. It’s a good critiquing style for writers early in their career, when they need encouragement, need to be shown what it is that’s right when what they are doing is right, and vice versa.
However, in the past year, my style of critiquing has changed, and the style of critiquing I’m looking for has changed as well. Naturally, I can attribute this to working with an editor for the first time. I’m lucky enough to be with a publisher and an editor who value the editing process and devote a lot of energy to working with an author to make the book the best it can be. I’ve also grown more confident in myself as a writer. My CP Marley and I even have a long running joke about how your ability to evaluate books changes as you progress in your career.
Now, though I am still concerned baout part sof my book that don’t work, I’m less interested in every comment being balanced by a smiley face or an “LOL!” And I don’t need you to correct my typos. If you catch ‘em, fine, if not, I will on one of my many editing passes.
But more importantly, what I’m really looking for in a critque is not just to fix the bad stuff, but to make the good stuff better. I’ve been thinking a lot about that old critiquing maxim, “Don’t just say everything’s good.” I used to think that meant pointing out the bad stuff, even if it may hurt the artist’s sensitive feelings about her baby. Now I’m thinking it means that you shouldn’t just let good rest on its laurels. You should point it out when there’s good stuff that can be great.
I remember, last year, getting into debates with other writers who talked about their work being as good as such and such book, or good enough to be published, or good enough to compare with such and such. I don’t think good enough is what we’re striving for. This isn’t government work.
Recently, on an Amazon “plog” I read a great post about this by author Holly Black.
It got me thinking about how we, as critiquers, we often look for what is wrong with a piece of fiction. Now, that’s certainly useful. It’s important to know when something’s confusing or dull or structurally unsound. But what I find that I need more and more–and need to learn how to do–is a critique that pushes fiction to that next level, that wow level. Like Cecil’s admonishment to “look for your inner rage and inner perv,” critiquing a competant story is all about seeing its cracktastic potential and about having standards that are higher than good. And it’s about finding the great parts of a story and pushing the rest of the it toward those parts. It is a whole mental shift for me in terms of thinking about fiction and it is hard.
Holly is much further down along this path than I am. She has heaps of books out and has won lots of awards and is a New York Times bestseller and all kinds of wonderful things. And she still believes that thinking about pushing fiction in this manner is hard. With italics even! And that means I have a long way to go.
But I’m committed to doing that. I’ve had friends tell me that I’m being too hard on myself and expecting too much of myself when it comes to critiquing my story and wanting it to be better, but “good enough” is not going to cut it. I’m only being too hard on myself when it’s preventing me from getting work done. Up until that point, I’m being as hard as I need to be. Because I don’t think “good enough” is going to get you anywhere. “Good enough” is the same as the
other people who are trying for the same reader dollars or publishing slots. “Good enough” means you stagnate as a writer, as an artist. Good enough is never good enough. You want to try for great.
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Speaking of getting work done, I got a lot of work done this weekend, and am really excited about SSG2. I’m fascinated to see what it is like to write a sequel to a book just as people are discovering my world for the first time.
15: Days until my first book signing
85: Increase, in dollars, in Sailor Boy’s and my rent.
204: fab bookplates Ally Carter turned me onto I can get for $43.20.
72: Days until Secret Society Girl is released
116: Days until Secret Society Girl 2 is due.
250: pages left to write of Secret Society Girl 2, not including the notebook full of a whole chapter of pages that I have somehow misplaced since leaving my job.
2: Hours spent this morning looking for said notebook
4: Cabinets rifled through
2: Closets plundered
3: Purses and other bags emptied onto floor
1: Notebook found.
Priceless.
Author Jo Leigh recently sent me a copy of her new Novella, “Time After Time,” which appears in the collection, Perfect Timing. While reading it, the following things occurred to me:
1) Why aren’t there more World War II-set historical romances out there? Wowsa, that’s an era with serious romantic potential. All those brave, desperate, good-hearted men, all those courageous, patient, hard-working women, all those uniforms, all those fashions, all that great music, all that good-vs.-evil stuff going on… Leigh made me cry thinking about everything that her hero, John, had been through.
2) A good romantic novella is a hard thing to write!
There was a time when I went through a lot of novellas. They were quick reads and stories in manageable chunks have always appealed to me. But novellas, especially romantic novellas, in which a writer has the responsibility of cramming a believable love story into a short amount of space — well, that’s a tough one. I’ve read a lot that just don’t work — where I don’t get that romantic “awww” moment where I truly believe that the couple was meant to be together and MUST figure out a way to be together against all odds!
I’ve been lucky enough to read some really fabulous novellas this year. Aside from “Time After Time” I’ve also read “The Disciplinarian,” which is Leigh Court’s debut in Red Sage’s Secrets Volume 15. Talk about your gut punch moments. The black moment in that story was appallingly romantic. One of those things where you sit up in bed, hand clutched to your heart, wondering how ever are they going to make this work?
Aside from having a drop-dead cover (::cough, cough::) Volume 15 might be one of the strongest collections Secrets has ever put out. “Simon Says” by Jane Thompson is even a RITA finalist this year, and you RWA readers know how rare it is for anything erotic to be up for a RITA. And from a small press, too! I am rooting SO HARD for Red Sage and Jane Thompson to win this year. And I’m so excited that I will be, in some form, up on the screen that night. Anyway, go read that collection if you haven’t already. It’s amazing.
Also this year, I read Sylvia Day’s collection, Bad Boys Ahoy. My favorite story of those was “Lucien’s Gamble,” about a gentlemen’s club owner (in the fine Derek Craven tradition) and the noble lady he falls for. One of my favorite “keeper” romances of all time is the Loretta Chase novella “The Mad Earl’s Bride” in the Kathleen Woodiwiss-helmed Three Weddings and a Kiss. (The early Lisa Kleypas in there is a good one too.)
Novellas are a popular way for romance publishers to introduce new writers. I’ve noticed that Berkley does this a lot — if a writer is coming our with a new paranormal series, they stick ‘em in an anthology with one of their biggies in order to introduce the world. A lot of the Berkley “novellas” are actually the first few chapters of a writer’s book. And many a writer has seen their name on the bestseller list when they are included in antho with a star. Kensington Brava, of course, has made its name with novellas. Kate Duffy says she likes to start her writers off in there. (I think it was Rachel who said yesterday that one of her life goals is to be in an antho.)
A lot of my favorite anthology stories feature characters who already know each other. It makes the romance that much easier to compress if you can figure the characters are already half in love (or even all the way in love). If not a prior connection, then at least put them in the kind of life-and-death circumstances that force a swift intimacy. I tried to write a romantic novella once. I was very proud of it, and it got some great responses (one Harlequin author called dibs on being in an anthology with me once I was published there) but I had a tough time making the romance work in the end.
(It’s the romance part of romance writing that usually trips me up. Anyone who tells you writing romance is easy is lying through their rotten teeth.)
In general, I think writing short is infinitely more difficult than writing long. Voltaire once said, “I’m writing you a long letter because I don’t have time to write a short one.” Every word, every line, every scene has to count for so much more. You don’t have time for tangents or mistakes.
This is a lot on my mind right now as I try to keep my current book within the established length. I just wrote a scene the point of which, looking back, doesn’t seem particularly worthy of the six pages I devoted to it. Two pages, maybe. But if you’re going to spend six pages on something, it should be something more important. And, once again, it’s the romance tripping me up. 
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