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Hey, guys!
The Politics and Prose event was huge fun. Unfortunately, I went a little late, due to both of the dogs in my house being real you-know-whats at various times (Big dog stole bone from little dog, wouldn’t give it back, and then woudln’t even give it to me, which was shocking because she’s usually such a sweetheart but I think she realized that as I was not her master, I woudln’t punish her the way my best friend would under similar circumstances, and I didn’t really want to stick my hand in her mouth at that moment.
Anyway, long story short, I got to P&P a half hour late, so I missed Jodi Lynn Anderson reading from her latest Peaches book, Love and Peaches (sad face). However, I did get to participate in a fascinating roundtable discussion about the store’s brand new YA section for older teens with the store managers, employees, and a bunch of teenagers. Politics & Prose is doing something very innovative with their teen section. They separate new books out from old books, and they have an older teen section as well as one for younger teens (like middle schoolers). I was fascinated by what they were choosing to put in each section. In the older teen section they had classic and adult novels as well (such as REBECCA). Must do some more investigating. I loved meeting all the booksellers, and I was so impressed by their dedication to YA and teen reading. They’ve got some exciting stuff planned for that section!
Today I’m going down to Richmond for a baby shower for my soon-to-be new nephew. I’ve never been an aunt before, so this is all very exciting. I may, possibly, have gone overboard in preparing for this event. Last night, my mother in law and I were stirring up big batches of M&Ms in the babyshower-theme colors for treat bags and peeling the labels off baby food jars to prepare for baby shower games. I guess this is how it works. A few years ago, it was all weddings, all the time. Now it’s all babies.
Tomorrow — tomorrow! — I’m going to New York City to meet Carrie Ryan, who is kicking off her pre-publication tour for her book, THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH (March). We plan to: visit book stores, drink wine, and plot world domination. You know, girl stuff.
And then on Monday, I’m meeting with my Harper Collins editor and the publicity team to discuss the release of Rampant which is, oh, not too many days away. Two hundred and twenty, to be exact. (Which means Tap & Gown is 213). I’m sure I’ll have all sorts of exciting news to share when I return. Maybe even a cover and blurb of the book! (I’ve seen them both and I love them!)
My pal Justine Larbalestier has a very different list of writing goals than most folks I know. Where most writers I know want to “make the New York Times bestseller list” or “sell a multi book contract,” or “land a six-figure deal” or “be lead title” (Mine, by the way, is “be professional writer for 40 years”), Justine’s writing goals are much more, well, writing focused. She wants to write a book in each of a list of genres. She wants to write a book in every POV. She wants to write a trilogy, a standalone, and a series (we’ll have to get her over here so she can tell me exactly what the difference is between a series and a trilogy, unless she means a series with anything other than three books). And now, with only four books on the shelf, she’s already crossed a great many of these items off her to do list. Having read her fifth (as of yet unpublished) book, I’ll tell you she’s accomplished a few more.
This is probably a far more reasonable way to set goals for one’s career. After all, what kinds of books you writer are completely under your control; all that other stuff is not. My smaller writing goals are usually predicated on production. A few years ago, I said “I want to write more than one book a year” and “I want to sell into a different genre. I’ve now done both.
As for things like genre and POV and such, I don’t know if I can set that kind of goal. Those are, I think more based on what kind of ideas I have. For instance, I had an idea for a book about killer unicorns and unicorn hunters. As the story developed in my head, I realized that it could only be done justice in a YA manner. So it’s YA. (The fact that I’d been dying to write YA for years probably helped me in my decision to write that book.) I know I’d like to write an SF novel one day, but a big part of that is that I’ve always had SF ideas. Which ever one “lands” in my brain, however — that’s another story.
I’ve been doing a lot of goal setting recently. By 2010, I’ll have 6 books (at least) on the shelves, but there will only be two stories: Amy’s and Astrid’s. Is it any wonder that almost every one of my new ideas are for standalone books? Clearly my creative mind wants to try something new.
The thing I find so amazing about Justine’s goal lists are that she can say, “today I’m writing a historical, today a crime novel. today a fantasy.” In some genres. that would be impossible. In romance, for instance, the branding has gotten completely out of hand. Not only are you a historical writer, but you’re a Victorian paranormal historical writer. You’re a sexy regency-set historical writer. You’re XYZ, and you’d better not try to do anything different. When my first book came out, I remember attending an RWA conference and being told that I’d already killed my career, because I’d branded myself so specifically to “Ivy League chick lit.” Um, excuse me? That’s a brand? No, that’s the topic of my four-book series. Lauren Baratz-Logsted just did an excellent post about this.
My industry goals are ones I have no control over. My writing goals are more story based. I don’t usually approach it as “I want to write a story in X genre.” But if the X genre story appears, I am dying to write THAT story. (With YA, I’d already been thwarted, as SSG didn’t end up being YA.)
As far as reading goals go, I’ve got heaps at the moment! I haven’t read anything at all in the past few months, so I’m going through withdrawal. This is what I’ve read since August: Living Dead Girl (Scott, not Goldberg), Ella Minnow Pea, and Cycler.
I’ve got on my bedstand table: The Thief (Attolia), Graceling, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, Impossible, The Hunger Games, Skinned, A Winter’s Tale, Stolen, Razor Girl, The Magic Thief, The Goose Girl, The Invention of Hugo Cabret….and on my computer, the new book by Carrie Ryan. Yes, a LOT of YA. I shall probably be sick to death of YA before I’m finished. I’m probably not helping the situation any by going to the YA party at Politics and Prose tonight.
…another tiresome discussion about POV. Seriously, guys, when will people get over this myth that first person point of view narration is the refuge of amateur writers or, alternately and just as falsely, a recent invention signalling the rise of chick lit and the end of humanity as we know it.
It’s not. You know who writes in first person? Melville, Nabokov, Twain, Poe, Faulkner. You want older? Fine. Dante. Are these guys hacks? Amateurs? Chick lit writers? Recent? This argument bugs me to no end. All it does is reveal the ignorance of the person making it. What really bothers me is when it is writing teachers supposedly telling students this crap. WTF, guys? You can prefer a different POV, but don’t act like it just popped out of nowhere.
On the other side of the coin, we now have arguments that “multiple narrators” is a sign of amateurism. (Please note, I am not talking about the original post, but about a statement that came up in the comments thread. I want to know who these writing coaches are!) The idea is laughable, as ludicrous as the folks who say that FPPOV is amateurish. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the majority of fiction published in this country is told from the perspective of multiple narrators. All romance novels (with a few, incredibly rare, exceptions), have at least the POV of the hero and the heroine. That’s 26% of fiction right there. It’s easy to imagine that a third of all other fiction published (at least!) has multiple points of view. It’s a common trope in thrillers to have a few scenes from the villain’s or victim’s perspective, and many science fiction, fantasy (esp. high fantasy), and literary novels are also multiply-narrated.
So… we’ve got here that multiple narrators are signs of the hack, that FPPOV is a sign of the hack… What’s left for the poor writer? Omniscient? How very 19th century of you. (In passing, reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks right now, which is omniscient. Loving it!)
Guys, POV is one more weapon in the writer’s arsenal. It’s as simple as that. You may choose to write in 3rd person because it’s the marketable choice in the genre (such as romance). You may choose first person because you’re attempting an unreliable narrator. You may choose a POV becuase that is where your strength as an author lies, or because you have a gut feeling about the correct voice for the book in question. There’s no right. There’s no wrong. It all depends on the story.
A question in the comment thread of my post on Four Act Structure:
Anne asks:
“I’m looking for thoughts on this…do you think it destroys the structure to include a “mini” four-act structure after the main conflict of the story has been resolved? In the story I’m working on, following the characters initially resolving their main issue, additional complications arise that lead to a second “mini” crisis/climax/resolution. Both parts of the plot fall so neatly into the 4-act structure, I can’t see how to re-organize into just ONE 4-act structure. Does this destroy the idea of the 4-act entirely, or is it acceptable?”
Well, let me begin by saying that ANYTHING is acceptable if it works. Seriously, any rule you’ve ever heard about writing in your whole entire life is proved by an exception that works. Also, there’s no rule that says you have to use four act structure. As I said in the original post:
I am a fan of the four act structure. I think envisioning your story like that is one of the easiest ways to avoid the “sagging middle.” Even if you do it naturally, going back and making sure that this is what you have done can often help you avoid later complications from bad planning.
So: if it works for you, great. If not, toss it. This is what I do with things like “character sheets,” “morning pages,” and other writing techniques that I find worthless for my own personal process. They may work for other people, but not me. And that’s fine.
Okay, back to the question. It’s pretty much impossible for me to get a grasp of exactly what Anne is talking about without more detail about the story, however, I will take a stab, because I have also been a situation I think may be similar. In fact, I was in it last year while I was writing Rampant. Around that time, I attended a workshop with Hollywood script doctor Michael Hauge (Great workshop, btw. I highly recommend it.) Hauge advocates a three-act structure which is basically my four act structure using different terminology. (That’s another hint about taking writing advice. Sometimes you actually do believe in what the person is telling you, you just haven’t had it explained to you in a way that you can understand. I didn’t get three act structure for years until I saw it explained as four act structure instead.)
Anyway, like Anne, I was worried that I had two stories going on. but then I realized I wasn’t actually analyzing my story correctly.
Standard Four Act Structure:
Act One: Ordinary world and inciting incident
Act Two: Complications leading to a crisis.
Act Three: Consequences of that crisis leading to a climax.
Act Four: Climax and resolution.
But maybe something more like this looks familiar:
Acts One and Two: Inciting incident produces complications leading to a crisis/climax in which the characters think they have resolved the issue.
Acts Three and Four: The consequences of that crisis leads to a greater complications and crisis/climax, which is then resolved.
It’s basically the same thing presented in a slightly different fashion, and it may occasionally look like two stories. The reason I think this is what might be happening to Anne is because she said the following: “ following the characters initially resolving their main issue, additional complications arise that lead to a second “mini” crisis/climax/resolution.”
What’s happening there at the end of act two can go by several different names. Some writing instructors call it the “monkey wrench” or the “point of no return.” What it all boils down to is that’s the point where the characters make choices that they think will resolve their problems, but only further serve to complicate the issue. In a romance, this may be the point where the two character sleep together, thinking that this will get their attraction “out of their system.” (Alternately, they may think that sleeping together is a symbol that they no longer have any issues and they can live happily ever after.) The point is, they are wrong. This “initial resolution” is not going to work. It’s a finger in the dam. Additional complications/consequences will arise and they are going to have to make even bigger sacrifices to resolve them. (In passing, there’s a wee bit of concern here about calling the second one a “mini” climax, but that’s a whole different post.)
So that’s option one.
Option two is that you just aren’t thinking of the right events as the core of the story. This happened to me with the last book I wrote. I was convinced that I wasn’t using the four act structure for this book, as none of the events I’d planned out in the synopsis were lining up, structurally. But after I’d completed the book, I went back and looked at what was happening at the 25%, 50%, 75% marks, and as it turned out, I was doing just fine. I was just looking at the wrong events as being turning points (physical events, in this case, when the emotional events were what really mattered –and yes, sometimes these happen in the same scene (cf. description of love scenes, above.) So what seems to you to be two discrete stories may actually be one, you just aren’t looking at it through the right set of lenses.
One important thing to keep in mind is just because the “climax” of your book happens at the end, it doesn’t mean there can’t be thrilling, high stakes stuff happening all over.
Option three is what is sometimes called a double climax. And example of this would be the movie TRUE LIES. After Arnold’s spy-slash-family-man character saves his wife (but not Key West, which is buried under a cloud of radioactive fallout that is NEVER ONCE DEALT WITH IN THE FILM — ahem, sorry, a little peeved about that), you think everything is going to be all hunky dory. Until you discover that the terrorist villain, angry about being thwarted by Arnold and wife, has somehow managed to travel to where ever it is his family lives (which is not Miami, or any Florida suburb I recognize, but man, he gets there fast) to kidnap Arnold’s daughter, a young Eliza Dushku. Then there’s a second climax of Arnold saving his girl.
Eh. I’m not such a big fan of this method. I think Cameron shoved it in there because he wanted to have the rescue on a jetplane scene. It’s not necessary for the story, as Arnold already proved his character’s growth arc of “family first” when he risked (or *failed*, poor Key West) his mission to save his wife. And we know very well that Cameron is an utter EXPERT on weaving together the physical and emotional climaxes of his films (cf. Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic, Terminators 1 *and* 2). SO really it was either laziness or he wanted that jetplane scene. Or maybe just to give Dushku more screentime (in passing, when is DOLLHOUSE airing?).
I think if at all possible it’s best to make all the climaxes of the various story threads work in tandem (reader who have attended my subplot and plotting board workshops know how I feel about this). As Vinny Gambini says in the excellent MY COUSIN VINNY: “…my career, your life, our marriage, and let me see, what else can we pile on? Is there any more shit we can pile on to the top of the outcome of this case? Is it possible?”
That’s the perfect climax, IMO, when everything, but everything, hangs in the balance.
Option four is that you aren’t writing a book with four act structure. This could be because the structure is flawed or because it just doesn’t fit that paradigm. Which is fine.
Hope that helps!
As it happens, a few of the question week questions involve more preparation than I’m able to make right now. Stay tuned, I’ll answer those presently.
In the meantime, some great news: You can now preorder BOTH of my 2009 books:
TAP & GOWN: An Ivy League Novel
- ISBN-10: 0385341946
- ISBN-13: 978-0385341943
RAMPANT
- ISBN-10: 0061490008
- ISBN-13: 978-0061490002
(Also, I have it on good authority that the page count for Rampant, at least, is correct. 416 pages. )
Yay! Up next: covers, cover copy, and more! What are you waiting for?
TOP SECRET NEWS: I’ve just seen early versions of both of my 2009 covers and I’m in AWE! So gorgeous!
Anonymous asks: “who is your agent? I thought you were with deidre knight but she is an author now.”
She is an author (with a new book, RED FIRE, on the shelves now). She’s also my agent. In fact, she’s been an author the entire time she has been my agent, as she sold her first book a month or two before we began working together. She’s sold six books for me since April of 2005.
Patrick asks: “How’s the new house and how are you finding the joys of homeownership?”
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t gotten a chance to really do anything with it yet, as I’ve been super busy with the new puppy and deadlines. We have maybe three rooms in the entire house furnished/unpacked (keep in mind that we’ve moved from a tiny apartment, so we don’t have much int eh way of furniture) and all my little “oh, we certainly have to do X” projects (like hanging pot racks, painting, putting up curtains) are not done. I’m really going to start digging into the home ownership thing soon. It may not have been the smartest idea, getting a puppy the same week we moved into a house. Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be Rio
Vicki asks: “Do you write your synopsis before you start each book? And if so, do you find the book changes a lot from the synopsis or do you stay pretty close to it?”
I always write a synopsis or outline before writing the book. It usually comes before the book is begun, but certainly not later than a few chapters in. I have a very hard time writing anything without a road map. I also find that it’s far easier for me to write a synopsis before I write the story and get bogged down in all the details of individual scenes. It’s much easier to say, “Plot development X occurs, which ties into character arc Y just so” than to sit there and think, “Okay, character A goes to lunch and had a burrito, but she doesn’t want the avocado so she scrapes that part out, all the while reflecting on character arc Y just as plot development X comes into the room to interrupt her.” The latter is probably what would happen to me if I tried to write the synopsis after writing the book. I’d get bogged down in avocado.
I always recommend people write the synopsis first. Most people disagree with me. Some claim that when they write the synopsis, it feels like they already wrote the book and then the “fire” goes out. Some say they don’t know what the story is about until they write it. My brain doesn’t work that way. If I don’t know what the story is about, I *can’t* write it. And believe me, I’ve tried. I honestly do not understand the brains that do work that way. I’ve tried to understand them, too, since two of my critique partners are in this camp. I think they are both barking mad (and I’m sure they feel the same about me), but they write good books, so there you go.
The other reason that I write my synopsis first is because that’s how I have sold every one of my books: I wrote a proposal, which usually contains a few sample chapters and a synopsis, I contracted the novel, and then I wrote the novel. many authors do this (though some–those people who claim they can’t write synopses first–have already secretly written the entire book, even if they are only marketing a proposal).
As for the synopsis differing from the final book — I guess it depends upon who you ask. My synopses tend to focus more on plot and character development, so if things change, I look at them as minor details. A character makes a revelation in a classroom rather than while scraping avocado from her burrito. Or maybe event X ends up happening before event Y. However, though I don’t view these as significant changes, other people may. People who work for my publishers, for example.
One of the reasons synopses are important is because most people who work for your publisher are not going to read your book. They may just read a synopsis. For instance, the copywriter who is in charge of crafting back cover copy may read your synopsis, draw certain inferences from it, and use it in the back cover copy even though it actually has nothing to do with the final form of the book. Or perhaps, if your synopsis does not make entirely clear that event Z is a major plot twist, they might mention it on the cover copy. This happened to me once. Luckily, I was able to offer suggestions before the book came out. Two of my biggest pet peeves are incorrect and spoilery back cover copy, so I’ll pretty much do anything to avoid that.
When I sold RAMPANT in 2007, I already had half the book written. Along with my contract came a revision suggestion so comprehensive in its nature (a POV change) that I decided to start the book over again from scratch. Almost every scene was completely different as I realized that a scene that seemed interesting or that had a point in one POV was not dynamic from another, as a piece of information that was clear in one POV needed a scene to reveal it in another — perhaps even in a different place in the book, and if that was the case, an earlier scene where that information is assumed knowledge had to go — and so forth in a ripple effect. But when I finished the book, I discovered that the first half of my synopsis, the half that described the book I’d written two completely different ways, didn’t need to be changed at all. It still described the same story! The second half needed a bit of adjustment in the third act, but it still ended up in the same place, with the same climax and resolution, and even the same last line! (I have a habit of quoting last lines in my synopses, which I read somewhere you aren’t supposed to do, to which I say to the Supposeda Police: “Bite me.”)
Usually when changes occur between my synopsis and my finished manuscript, they’re in the third act of the book. This is because as I’m writing the book, I realize that the premise I’ve concocted does not fold into the conclusion I’ve planned as neatly as I make it sound in the synopsis. Synopses are EASY. You can make anything sound good for five pages. “And then there was an epic battle, a moving love scene, an insurmountable conflict.” Actually making that stuff appear on the page is the tricky part.
Cary asked: “Can you tell us anything more about the killer unicorn book?”
Yes…and no. The book is entitled RAMPANT, and it will be on shelves in June of 2009. The book is a contemporary, Rome set fantasy about killer unicorns and the virgin descendants of Alexander the Great who are charged with hunting them. It incorporates real unicorn myths and legends from around the world, which you can read about by going to the “unicorn research” page on this site, Greek mythology, Alexander romances, and lots of European and Christian history. It’s a fast-paced fantasy adventure in the vein of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy or Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series. The heroine’s name is Astrid and the bulk of the action takes place in a ancient monastery called The Cloisters of Ctesias, which is modeled after real churches and cloisters in the neighborhood of Rome in which its set.
I received an early take on cover copy, but I don’t yet have permission to share. I saw some outtakes from the cover shoot recently, and they are to-die-for gorgeous. I also have heard descriptions of the actual cover and the interior design and I cannot wait to get my hands on them for real. I also can’t wait until this book is on the shelves. It’s been a real labor of love and I’m bursting with excitement about this project!
Brenna K asks: “I know you are writing the books about unicorns for kids. Do you have any more adult books coming out, or non-paranormal?”
Next year will also mark the release of the last book in the Secret Society Girl series, Tap & Gown. After that, we’ll see! I definitely want to write more books in that vein, and I have a few projects in the works.
As for the unicorn book, it’s written for teenagers and I think fans of the Secret Society Girl series will love it. It’s more action-oriented, and somewhat darker than SSG, which are comedies, but it’s still a Peterfreund book, so all the trademarks will be there.
Lauren asked: What kind of book deal (advance, royalties, etc.) can a first-time chick-lit author expect? Also, what do you think about hiring a copyeditor to look over your manuscript before submitting it to an agent? Thanks!
That first question is actually a pretty complex one, so let me break it down into parts.
Royalty rates have very little to do with genre or how many books you’ve sold (unless you are one of those huge, huge authors like Stephen King or Michael Crichton who write tent pole books and can negotiate accordingly — if you are underwriting your publisher, you can probably get higher royalty rates. There are maybe a dozen authors in the world who do that). So, royalty rates vary VERY little by genre. Mostly by the format in which your book is published.
Most chick lit books come out in trade paperback. Standard royalty rates for trade paperback is 7-8% of the cover price. Sometimes (rarely) chick lit books are printed in mass market paperback, and more commonly, they are reprinted in mass market. Mass market royalty rates can be anywhere from 6-10% but standard is 8-10%. In many cases, contracts come with escalation clauses, which sound like this: “8% to X copies, 10% thereafter.” If your publisher puts your book out in hardcover, your royalty rate will vary between 10-15% based on said escalation clauses. If your book is published in electronic format, royalty rates vary WIDELY depending on publisher.
Okay, now that we’ve got that behind us, let’s talk about advances. An average advance for a first time author publishing in adult trade paperback chick lit with a large NY publisher, last time I checked, was somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000. HOWEVER (and this is a biggie), the last time I checked was 2004. Before the chick lit market crashed. Because I don’t know very many people who have sold chick lit for the first time since sometime in 2005, which is when I sold mine. The market crashed that summer. And most of the people I know who were writing chick lit are writing something else (YA, romance, urban fantasy, mysteries) or not writing at all. And most of the publishers publishing chick lit have stopped, or at the very least, stopped or cut back immensely on their chick lit publishing programs . I wasn’t at RWA this year, but it’s been several years since I’ve heard any editor or agent not at a YA house (most publishers of chick lit publish it through a program connected to their romance editors) say they were looking for chick lit. (People who were at RWA this year: has it changed?)
The market crash basically has two effects: the subsequent advance is either pretty big, because the author is bringing something to the table that is NOT the “average” chick lit (i.e. a platform of celebrity, etc.), or the advance is miniscule, because the publisher feels there is no market for the book and therefore, it won’t sell many copies. More likely, the advance is $0, because there is no offer for the book at all.
I hate to sound so discouraging, but the numbers aren’t pretty. Since April of 2005, when I sold my book, I know of about four non-celebrity, non-platform (in the “I’ve got a weekly column in the New York Post” sense) authors who have sold first time chick lit. In contrast, I know at least a dozen published chick lit authors who have been unable to get back under contract, and more than a dozen more who are now writing in a different genre (occasionally under a pseudonym). That means I know six times as many established chick lit authors who are unable to hold the market as I know people who have been introduced to it. Look on the bookstore shelves. Whose chick lit do you see? Candace Bushnell, Emily Giffin, Lauren Weisberger. The midlist is mostly gone. From a market perspective, if I were a first time author, the last genre I’d be trying to publish in is chick lit.
But maybe you’ve got the special book, and you’re the next Emily Giffin who will burst on the scene and hit the NYT bestseller list. Think big, I say! And if you have a chick lit book, there’s nothing to lose by trying to market it. But I don’t know what the market is for that kind of book at the moment, and I think the advances, even if you can sell it, will likely be far lower than they were a few years ago. Markets are cyclical, though, and I keep hoping they will uptick again in chick lit, because I love reading it!
As for your second question about hiring a copyeditor before you submit your manuscript….um, I guess so? I don’t see anything wrong with it, but I have never done it and I don’t know anyone else who has either. The job of a copyeditor is to check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes, as well as continuity or logic errors (e.g., “she was wearing a green shirt on page six and a blue dress on page twelve” or “how can he have one hand on her face, one hand on her breast, and one hand on her back?”). I don’t think the occasional little mistake like that is a dealbreaker for acquiring editors, though of course if you have a ton of them, it is a symptom of a sloppy author and the editor might not be able to tolerate them long enough to see your story. (I know of at least one writer who never got anywhere with her great ideas because her grammar was so bad that the writing was unreadable.) You do need to attain a certain level of professionalism in your writing before your submissions will be taken seriously. Basically, the response you’re going for is “this is a typo,” not “this is an author who isn’t acquainted with standard English.” So I’m not really sure what the point is of hiring a copyeditor at that stage of the game, since no doubt your manuscript is as clean and spell checked and typo-free as it can be by your own hand.
Please note: this is what a COPYEDITOR does. A much more common question is, “should I hire a freelance editor?” (i.e., a book doctor). Jury’s out on that one. Personally, I’m against it, especially for a first time author. I think freelance editors have their uses under the following situations:
1) You are a celebrity, professional, or other non-writer who, because of their platform or profession, has a need to write a book despite their lack of writing skills. Therefore, you hire a book doctor to smooth over the rough edges.
2) You are a contracted author whose overworked publisher is not editing your books (yes, this happens) and you know this, and you need to substitute this. (Please note: this all starts to get very sticky when you get into the realm of vanity publishing, etc., so unless you’re a long established author with dozens of books under your belt, this will likely not apply to you.)
If you are a writer (i.e., your job is to make words fit together coherently), then the words you present to publishers for acquisition should be yours. Not the ones you hired someone to make for you. Especially as a first time author. What happens when your book doctored book gets bought, and then your second book comes in and the editor is like, “Um, did she forget how to write?” Or maybe the changes the freelance editor wants you to make will destroy the very thing an aqcquiring editor likes about the book? I’ve heard too many stories about ham-handed book doctors or scam book doctors or etc. I’m very very wary about the idea, even though I know there are well-respected book doctors out there.
That’s my (likely controversial) feeling on the matter. Far better than HIRING someone, I think, is to work (for free) with a critique group of other authors.
Lord, I’m really little mary sunshine today, aren’t I? “Chick lit is dead” “don’t hire freelance editors” “wah wah wah.” Sorry to be such a downer! The bottom line is that you need to follow your gut. If you feel your manuscript has a better chance if it has a professional eye on it, do what you need to do. Research THOROUGHLY. Get recommendations. make sure you aren’t being gouged. Editors can get PRICEY. I saw manuscript critique quotes recently in the $3k range. That’s going to be a huge chunk of your advance check right there. So it’s something to think about very very carefully.
This weekend, I was the happy recipient of my very first fan art, thanks to reader and talented artist MJ Massey.
Isn’t it fabulous? I’m amazed by the details she managed to capture. This is so like the image in my head from that scene!
Thank you, MJ!
In other news, we’re having a “question week” on my blog. Ask me anything (you can even do it anonymously) by leaving a comment here. I’ll answer in subsequent posts.
Rio six weeks ago, when we brought her home:
Rio yesterday:
Is at Romancing the Blog, all about my love of putting things in books that are not narrative.
Also, keeping commenting in the post below to win a copy of The King of Sword and Sky!
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