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There have been several interesting posts on the topic of writing advice in the past few weeks on my blog roll.1 I like Justine’s (first link), and it’s a good thing to keep in mind.
She says:
I occasionally get letters from beginning writers and newly published authors who are confused by some of my writing advice and observations about the publishing industry. Confused, because they have read exactly the opposite information elsewhere.
I get that too. I’m not particularly bothered by it, probably because my main bit of writing advice to all beginning writers is “FINISH THE BOOK!” and I say that knowing that, yes, indeed, I sold my first book on proposal, and a large percentage of the time, anyone to whom I suggest finishing the book will remind me of this.2 So I’m used to it.3
Conflicting advice is normal. Advice that conflicts with the advice-giver’s own M.O. is no less normal, otherwise we wouldn’t have that lovely adage, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Several years back, I got a bunch of “Nuh-UH! So-and-so says never use such-and-such!” comments after posting about my love for a certain writing convention a prominent writer and writing instructor abhorred. I actually knew of her distaste for it, having recently sat through a workshop in which she decried it early and often. I survived. She survived. We both went on to write more books, some of which were actually read by the same people. The world paused not in its orbit, and the general happiness of the universe increased.
So I don’t consider that when I disagree or conflict with someone else’s advice, I may be inadvertently starting some kind of writing-advice-giving grudge match.4 Because I can sound a bit — ahem — passionate about my particular passions.5 So while I’ll happily comment on other advice (and have, see the WGAGB series at left), give my own, and generally talk about the wonders of writing advice (because it’s my job, yo), I have no real interest in a smackdown competition of advice. Of course I think you should take my advice — because why else would I bother to give it? — but I don’t think I should win and the other advice should lose. And I wouldn’t want you to take it in lieu of something that feels right to you. Because, as Justine also says:
All writing advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe it’ll work for you, maybe not. There are no hard and fast rules, only guidelines. Do what works, chuck what doesn’t, but stay open to it maybe working for you at a different time or for a different novel.
Good point. And I think that last bit is particularly useful. Never say never. You may start doing collages, like me. I was a bit surprised to learn the other day that someone thought my process was clockwork. Dude, I’ve only written seven books. And every book is different.
I have a friend who refers to certain books she’s written as “gift novels.” Everything was in the right place at the right time, she never had to go in and do major surgery, etc., the characters behaved as they ought, it was a joy to sit down at the computer and write everyday, blah blah blah… It was a gift. Bully for her, huh? Now, there are other novels that, clearly, were not gifts, where maybe she had to go back and retrench, or rewrite, or rip out entire subplots or start the second half of the book from scratch — and to do so, she had to revisit her stores of writing advice. Don’t think she had to do that with the gifts.
Thus, not every bit of advice applies to every novel. Processes aren’t going to be the same for every novel. And it’s not going to be a steady situation, either. The process that works for novels 1, 2, and 3, may not work for 4 or 5, but kicks in at 6 then fails again at 7.
And another point to keep in mind is the source of the advice. On one hand, the experience a source has had is valuable in determining the worth of the advice. As a baby writer myself, I am always looking to those who have been in the industry longer, and have the scars to prove it. On the other hand, you’re going to see lots of sources with conflicting advice AND a ton of experience. Alternately, you can get great advice from people with no experience at all. I got some amazing advice from someone who hasn’t written more than three pages in a row since college. I used to get so frustrated on writing sites and loops where the advice of the published author was treated as The Word On High, and The End of the Discussion. Which always vexed me greatly, since I like discussion. And I don’t mind disagreeing and still going on with my life.
For instance, one of my critique partners, Carrie, can’t start a book until she has her first sentence. (At least, this was so with her last book.) I think she’s nuts. And still, we manage to work together just fine.
Find me a published author who says one thing, I’ll find you one with just as much experience, plaudits, acclaim, etc. who says exactly the opposite. They both survive. They both write books that often, the same people read. The world pauses not in its orbit and general happiness in the universe increases.
You can even get great advice from people whose books you think suck. But that’s a secret between you and me.
But the one rule is: don’t follow advice that’s not working for you. Even if it’s advice from the bestselling author of seventy-five of your most favoritist books in the entire history of the written word, even if it worked for the last forty-two books you wrote, even if everyone else seems to agree…. if it’s not working, ditch it. For serious.
I’m off to a writer’s conference this weekend with my fabulous friends, advice-givers, critique partners, and mentors from the Tampa Area Romance Authors. (I only listen to them sometimes.) Blog posts may be thin on the ground ’til I return.
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1. New term Alison Kent taught me. Yes, I’m always the last to know these things.
2. The people most fond of such reminders have usually not finished any book. Writing your first book is a big deal.
3. I don’t care. Finish the book. It will make you so much happier. It will make the publishers who want to buy it and rush it right into production so much happier. The happiness level of the universe will increase. Yays all ’round. (Oops, sorry. I’ll add: your mileage may vary.)
4. Which honestly, would be a pretty pathetic spectator sport. Here’s how you win in a fight with a writer: Pull her finger back. She’ll cry uncle or risk being in finger casts until after her deadline.
5. It’s popular in internet circles to couch everything in “YMMV” and “IMHO” and “I think” and other qualifiers. But it should be pretty obvious that the things I post on my blog are the things that I think. Do I really need to spell it out?
6. Yes, I’m jealous. She also lives on the beach in Florida, and it’s 23 degrees and raining here.
How Many Five Year Olds Can You Take In a Fight?
Why does this exist? I don’t know, and I don’t care.
24
Sailor Boy, apparently, can be responsible for 34. Together, we could take out a kindergarten.
Before After
I’m off to the first WRW meeting of the new year today. Emilie Richards is talking about how to save your novel from sinking, which sounds like a fabulous topic. I can’t wait!
Meanwhile, to entertain you, listen to this fascinating podcast by prolific and talented author Lauren Baratz-Logsted, whose latest book, Secrets of My Suburban Life, is out now. I loved her last YA, Angel’s Choice, and I’m really looking forward to this one!
Secrets of My Suburban Life (Simon & Schuster, January, 2008)
And you thought your life had a dark side….
Everything changed for Lauren (“Ren”) after Harry Potter killed her mom. No, it’s not what you think—Harry Potter didn’t come to life and stab her or anything. A stack of those thick books crushed her. Now Ren is stuck out in the suburbs of Connecticut, dragged out there because her father is too grief stricken to continue living in New York.
Ren tries to fit in at her new school, but the most popular girl, Farrin, keeps icing her out. Then Ren discovers that Farrin has a secret: She’s been communicating online with an older man, and they are actually planning to meet! Ren can’t let Farrin go through with it—she’s witnessed enough tragic events as it is. So she comes up with the perfect plan to stop the perv. But then she finds out who he is…
A few facts you may not know about me:
1. I love the show How I Met Your Mother and am probably missing it more than anything else on TV right now.
2. Primarily because of Barney, the character played by Neil Patrick Harris.
3. In fact, I started watching HIMYM again because I was watching my much beloved DVD of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and was reminded, again, of how hard NPH rocked his role.
4. The first time I saw Harold and Kumar, Sailor Boy actually had to drag me to it, because I was convinced it would be “dumb and exploitive.”
5. Which is was, but geniusly, and he almost had to drag me out of it in the middle because I was laughing so hard.
6. I bought the DVD the day it came out, and proceeded to show it to a friend of mine who almost had an anyeurism watching it, as he too is a Princeton grad of Asian descent who briefly worked in the trenches of finance after graduation.
7. I have been waiting for Harold & Kumar, The Sequel, for EVER.
8. And though I have no dorm room in which to hang this precious, precious thing, the person who helps me get my hands on one of these gets a big prize:
Words cannot express how much I love this. LOVE.
That would like me to “partner” with them in their blogging endeavors, who have invited me to become a “contributor” to their blog, who would like me to “collaborate with them” to sell their product, and who wish for me to take “unique advantage” of their “very special offer” to get in on “the hottest new trend-setting” scheme, all because they so love my blog, attention:
No.
And you know what? I don’t believe you that you really like my blog, either. Liars.
Here’s a few guidelines, in case you are questioning whether or not I’d be interested in contributing/partnering/what-have-you-ing to your website or blog:
*If I have never before visited your website or blog, the chances are very, very slim that I wish to contribute to it. I can understand you wanting to make sure, however, because, hey, there are lurkers out there, and there is no way, for instance, for the nice girls at Go Fug Yourself to know if I’ve been there, since they don’t have comments.
* If I never before heard of your website or blog, nor any of the people involved in it, the chances are exactly zero.
* If the purpose of your website or blog is to sell scam publishing techniques, then the chances are get the hell out of my office. You clearly haven’t been reading my blog at all, though you supposedly love it so.
* If the reason given that I would be so fascinated to contribute/partner with your website or blog is that it “draws people from every level of the book publishing industry, drawing “hundreds or even thousands” of visitors daily who will “see your articles on a regular basis and enjoy your style and the substance of your expertise … become familiar with your writing, your expert reputation, and your marketing platform,” for the purpose of somehow inducing an agent or publisher to pick me up, then doubly no. Especially if I’ve never heard of your website, nor any of the current contributors, who are, as far as I can tell, micro or self-published.
This particular entreaty came with enormous, several-megabyte graphics, as well as an sales pitch that sounded to me like Martin Landau’s character’s catchphrase on Entourage:
Wouldn’t it be great if you sent a manuscript to a publisher or an agent and they responded with, “I’m familiar with your work on [Website Redacted], so I took the time to go over your manuscript. Let’s talk.” Wow! Your articles on [Website Redacted] DO have the PR potential to do that for you! Doesn’t that sound like something you’re interested in?
I don’t get it. They went on and on about what a great blog I had, and somehow missed the fact that I already have an agent, and, should I be in the market for a new agent or publisher, I think they’d probably be more interested in the content and sales figures of my actual books, the ones that are in bookstores I’ve heard of, rather than an article on a website I’ve never heard of.
* If the purpose of your website or blog is to sell a product (especially one that has no connection to my work or blog), then I’m not interested. Sorry. I’m sure your sex toys are top-rate. Still not interested. This blog is not an advertising tool. Do you see Google AdWords on here? When I talk about a product on this blog, it’s because I love the product, not because someone paid me to do it. And that still wouldn’t be about sex toys, because, guys, my mom reads this. And my mother-in-law. I’ve got parents coming out of the woodwork here. Cut it out.
Does that clear things up? Good. As you were.
One of my favorite pictures from our trip. There we are, strolling down Rome’s most fashionable shopping strip, and we come across the following window display:
The Belstaff website also has the movie poster up, which I guess means they are the official outfitters of survivors of the zombie apocalypse.
At least we know what to wear.
So I got my RITA books in the mail, which of course, I’m not allowed to talk about.
In passing, why do we capitalize the word RITA? The award is not an acronym. It’s named for Rita Clay Estrada. Why don’t we just call it the Rita, like the Norton, or the Hugo, two literary awards named after genre luminaries? Inquiring minds would LOVE to know.
I’ve got one friend with fabulous RITA judge luck. Two years in a row she has gotten book she either planned to buy or had already read. Me, I tend to get books I would never dream of picking up on my own. But I’ve learned to be open-minded about this. Last year, I got a book I never would have dreamed of picking up on my own. It was a genre I don’t read, and more than that, it was a type of book in a genre that I REALLY wouldn’t read, and it was also a subsequent book in a series. Three strikes against it. It languished at the bottom of the pile.
And when I finally read it…. wowsa. I laughed, I cried…. Actually, I mostly cried. It was a tearjerker. I was so hoping that it would final, but alas.
Goes to show you, I guess.
I heard a great RITA judging story once. There was a multi-pubbed author judging the RITAs who got a small-press book that blew her away. She had previously been very skeptical about “these small press books.” Well, she obviously couldn’t contact the author, but later, she met her at a conference, and introduced the author to her editor. I don’t know if the author ever found out that the judge had read her book, but it both changed her mind about the small press system and let her find a great new author. I think the author writes for the judge’s publisher now.
I like that kind of sneak attack. I have recommended several authors I read through contests to agents, but I the authors in question knew where I was coming from…
I have a nice, healthy obsession with character names. I need to get them right, or they don’t work on the page. In the past, I’ve started writing a character as one name and he’s changed his mind mid-sentence, started referring to himself as a different name, and it was a couple of pages before I noticed! (At which point, I proceeded, calling him by the new name, and he turned into a slightly different character I like much better. So I’ve learned to go with the character’s gut instinct about themselves.)
Most times I’ve ever changed a character’s name mid-stream: three. I’m writing this chameleon now.
Stephanie Hale discusses the naming of characters, and several other authors weigh in, here. Check it out.
I used to be a journalist. I wrote for several years for an alternative weekly paper in Tampa Florida. Most of my articles were food reviews, which made them opinion pieces. When I wrote those pieces, I went to the restaurant, ate the food, and then formed an opinion upon which to base my article.
That style seems to be out of fashion. Exhibit A: A letter that was sent from a journalist at the Washington Post to local area romance writers (including yours truly, a board member of Washington Romance Writers). It was signed, no joke, “Breathlessly Yours.”
Much mockery is being made of this solicitation on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books site, but then, that is what they do there. When I originally got this email, I didn’t even blink. This was par for the course at newspapers when I worked for them. Every Valentine’s Day, without fail, they’d decide to humor the local romance writers by publicizing some facet of their sex lives, complete with the requisite digs, stereotypes, and insults.
Many years ago, I got my first big break as a journalist, to write a feature story about a romance novelist who set a lot of her books in our home town of Tampa. I found this novelist, pitched the story, and had it accepted. I also got in many arguments with my editor, who, among other things, refused to let me use the term “New York Times Bestselling Author” to refer to certain other local authors who were, in fact, New York Times Bestselling Authors, because he “hadn’t heard of them”; wanted me to ask the author about her favorite sexual positions (in an article where I interviewed her parents, the principle of the Catholic school where she’d once taught English, and her priest!); changed the title of the piece to “My Randy Valentine”; and added all kinds of little “bodice ripping” phrases in here and there to show that our paper didn’t actually countenance “these kinds” of books. The photographer sent to shoot her apparently asked her to pose in a boa with bon bons. She refused.
(It was pretty frustrating. However, I feel triumphant that several of the other editors there then now work for Ellora’s Cave. Countenance that.)
I was a little baby writer at the time, so I agreed to a lot of things that I may have argued against now. (Of course, now I’d just look up the archives of the NYT list.) There was one in particular that makes me grimace every time I see it (which is often, considering that the piece is framed and hanging on my wall — my first byline). My editor was also a music critic, and was unused to the construction used when discussing book imprint releases. One usually writes something to the effect of, “Rites of Spring (Break), due out from Bantam Dell in June,” but in music, something comes out on a given label. Thus, throughout the piece, the author’s books are released on Harlequin Blaze, etc.
All in all though, I think the piece turned out pretty well, and certainly the author in question wasn’t so offended that she never spoke to me again! (Right, Jules?) It also had an adorable graphic — a cartoon of a little Cupid reading a romance novel. My favorite cover.
But because of that experience, I tend to give these young journalists a little leeway when I get the idea that they’re getting the screws applied by their editors. I did an interview not long ago where the writer seemed desperate to get me in a grudge match with Curtis Sittenfeld, and when I didn’t bite, her editor sent her back to me to try again. This was the one that, re: my posing for a few small press romance covers, asked if my “mother had forced me into modeling at a young age.” My mother, dear heart, had nothing to do with it. I was 25, and I had a friend who was a photographer…
And I honestly think the journalist who sent out that bedroom solicitation (though not young or inexperienced) was trying to be funny. But I wonder why romance writers are the Valentine’s Day go-to gals. Why don’t we get interviews of thriller or horror writers every Halloween?
As my friend Susan Kearney (USA Today Bestselling Author, look it up) likes to say, “They always ask me how I ‘research’ the sex scenes. They never ask how I research the murders.”
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