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Take A Break

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I’m getting ready to re-vision my blog. By that I mean I’m going to take a short break to brainstorm some great ideas for future posts. I want to make this a place you can stop by to pick up handy tips and inspirational messages to help you in your day-to-day life, as well as catch a weekly laugh.

That being said, I don’t want to just leave you high and dry while I work up a new plan, so I’ll be re-posting some of the best from the last year. Enjoy!

Maybe it’s just a “man thing,” but both my husband and my father will run themselves into the ground to get a project completed. Given half the chance they’ll drag anyone helping them down, too.

 

Case in point: the guys chose a very hot day to put posts under our front porch roof to keep it from sagging, figuring the job would only take about 2 hours. It took most of the morning and the entire afternoon. Getting them to stop, even for a few moments to take a drink, meant needing to become an overbearing, stubborn commander with a voice that would ring across a parade ground.

Not a happy experience for any of us.

The reason I was given for driving themselves like that was they “wanted to get the job done.” Not an unreasonable response, but it wasn’t a very wise decision.

What’s the real problem?

It’s a combination between wanting to achieve a goal and having little respect for yourself and your body — that thing called a temple in the Bible.*

Accomplishing something you’ve set out to do is a great high. Finishing a goal takes away, at least for a time, those feelings of inadequacy, of fear, of anything that holds us back from being happy. It’s something like a “runner’s high” where endorphins are released.

The problem shows up in not respecting the body’s needs. Just like an athlete on a “runner’s high” can injure themselves, anyone driven to achieve a goal can harm themselves by ignoring the need to rest.

That goes as much for mental labor as physical labor because staying up late to complete a task, like meeting your daily writing quota (guilty!), when you know you can’t sleep in is as bad as pushing through physical exhaustion to finish building a porch.

Taking a break is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of wisdom.

Breaks do prolong the time it takes to accomplish a task. There’s no getting around that. However, not taking a break risks injury.

In the case of my husband and father, it meant possible dehydration and heat stroke. For that sleepy writer it might mean making poor decisions at the day job or saying something to a loved one that you’ll regret later.

A better solution is to plan ahead. Make sure you add in time to take a few breaks. Expect whatever you’re about to do to take at least twice the time you think it should. If necessary, break it up over several days. There is nothing wrong with taking your time.

If you have a deadline, planning far enough ahead means no need to “pull an all nighter.” The other positive outcome is that you might come in ahead of your deadline. That feels even better because, not only are you ahead of schedule, but you’re not too tired to enjoy it.

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s blog.

Neil Gaiman Advises on Writer's Block

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From Neil Gaiman‘s Tumblr – Reposted as something that can be reblogged. ON WRITER’S BLOCK.

I’ve seem to be hitting writer’s block far too often now. My grade in my creative writing class is suffering because i don’t turn in anything because i’m never really satisfied with anything i do. all my good ideas seem to turn into bad ones once i write it down. How do you get pass writers block? 

You turn off your inner critic. You do not listen to your inner police force. You ignore the little voices that tell you that it’s all stupid, and you keep going.

Your grade isn’t suffering because your writing is bad, it’s suffering because you aren’t finishing things and handing them in.

So, finish them and hand them in. Even if a story’s lousy, you’ll learn something from it that will be useful as a writer, even if it’s just “don’t do that again”.

You’re always going to be dissatisfied with what you write. That’s part of being human. In our heads, stories are perfect, flawless, glittering, magical. Then we start to put them down on paper, one unsatisfactory word at a time. And each time our inner critics tell us that it’s a rotten idea and we should abandon it.

If you’re going to write, ignore your inner critic, while you’re writing. Do whatever you can to finish. Know that anything can be fixed later.

Remember: you don’t have to brilliant when you start out. You just have to write. Every story you finish puts you closer to being a writer, and makes you a better writer.

Blaming “Writer’s Block” is wonderful. It removes any responsibility from the person with the “block”. It gives you something to blame, and it sounds fancy.

But it’s probably more honest to think of it as a combination of laziness, perfectionism and Getting Stuck. If you’re being lazy, don’t be. If you’re being a perfectionist, don’t be. And if you’re stuck, figure out where the story went off the rails, or what you got wrong, or where you need to go deeper, or what you need to add to make it work, and then start writing again.
 

How Do You Know If Your Writing Is Getting Better?

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This post, by Janice Hardy, originally appeared on her The Other Side of the Story blog on 1/20/11.

A reader asked…
For writers who, like me, have yet to publish anything (For pay) it’d be nice to better gauge where we’re improving, and what weaknesses are still holding us back, are there some exercises or self-study things we can do to figure it out, so we know where to go from there?
Oh boy, this one’s a toughie. There really are no checklists that will say if you’re improving or not. And it’s something that’s really hard to tell on our own, because it’s hard to be subjective about our own work. But I know how frustrated I was by this very same thing, so I’ll do my best to try to provide some way to help here.

 
 
I did do a post on the tour that gave guidelines for some general level ranges, and that could help some to see where you might be and what skills you might focus on to get to the next level.You can also look at old critiques to see what comments you regularly got, and check new crits to see if you’re still getting those comments. If the feedback is the same, that’s a good indication that you’re still making the same mistakes and might have stalled. But if you’re making all new mistakes, that’s an indication that you’re improving. You can also look at your old and new work and try to be objective, and review it as if you were critiquing someone else.

 
To give examples on how you might go about this, I went through old files and found some of my writing from as far back as college. It might help to share some of those and crit myself to see where I improved and where I needed work. Hopefully it’ll give you ideas for things to look for in your own work, and questions to ask, like, are you still telling emotions through adverbs or are you dramatizing scenes? Is there a solid POV or is the narrator floating about somehow? Are you giving the reader reasons to care about your characters?
 
1992-ish:This is from an idea I had that became my training novel. This draft was handwritten in pencil, so that shows you how long ago I wrote it. Eventually I wrote it "for real" with the intent to sell, but these pages aren’t there yet. This is the opening of the first chapter.
The Griff Inn was a dark, dreary little tavern that sat on the end of an equally dark and dreary street. Its windows were dirty, its floors unswept and its customers were an accurate cross-reference of the riff raff of Kintari. It drew the thieves as easily as the murderers, and that naturally brought in the charlatans, the highwaymen and the local scum.
 
Let’s just say it was not the moral backbone of the city and leave it at that, shall we?

It was, however, Aradelle’s destination and she walked through the darkened streets with none of the fear the average person would feel in the same situation.

I cringe reading this. It’s all told, there’s this weird omniscient first person-esque narrator, there’s no hook. Now, it’s not horrific, as it has a bit of a voice that’s kinda nice, and I can see the beginnings of my style starting to come through. There’s storytelling, weak as it is, and it’s going somewhere (eventually). To crit myself, I’d say I need to work on POV in a big way and work on showing, not telling. Get deeper in the head of my POV (and pick a real POV) and show the world through their eyes. Since I’m following Aradelle here, she’d be my choice. (And a decade later she was).
 
1995-ish: Same story a few years later. Again, the opening chapter.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Other Side of the Story.

Writing in the Digital Age: Connecting with Readers: The Stephen King Problem

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This post, by Kelly McClymer, originally appeared on the Book View Cafe blog on 2/10/12.

I’ve been a writer for a long time. In high school, I was co-editor of our newspaper, but even before that I wrote plays for my sisters and me to perform. I’ve been an avid reader for even longer (does it bother anyone else that the Verso survey defines avid readers as reading 10 books a year…a YEAR?…I used to read 10 books a week when I was a kid). I love readers because they are my first tribe, outside of the immediate family (which did not include a lot of avid readers, to be honest). Readers are my peeps. I like to hang with them in the book hood…okay, that’s sounds creepy and wrong, but if you are an avid reader, you know what I mean. Libraries rule, bookstores smell like Heaven, and bookshelves hold the nectar of the gods.

As any writer knows, however, when you begin to be published, your relationship to readers changes. It is similar to when someone begins to sell Tupperware or Avon or Mary Kay and her friends start warding off sales attempts with fake smiles and glazed eyes. Readers learn to be wary of the writer’s pitch. I tried to get around this by never making a pitch. But it doesn’t work. Readers know that all writers are neurotic about their work. A casual, “Not my favorite,” by a reader translates in a writer’s brain to “I hate her and and her books and will immediately commence a write-in campaign to destroy her chance to ever sell a book again.”

A decade ago, writers did not cross paths with readers on a regular basis. The reader-writer connection was made through a library talk, a book signing, a class at a university or adult ed program. The readers self-selected to attend those events, and thus tended to be in the group we call fans. You know, people who like a certain writer’s style, genre, and back cover headshot. Avid readers, in other words. You could go to the grocery store and be fairly sure that your checkout clerk had no idea that you’d just spent two hours murdering someone in Chapter 2. Unless you were Stephen King (he is a beloved and well-recognized figure in Maine).

When my husband was interviewed for his job, one of the tours of the area included a trip to see King’s home. He has an interesting fence around his beautiful Victorian paper baron home. And he is (still) the most famous resident of the area — one that is rife with writers I may add. Can’t swing a stick without hitting a writer around here. But King had a problem, even back 25 years ago, when we moved to the area. People knew him by sight. Most, of course, said nice things to him (he and his wife Tabitha — she is also a writer — have been very generous to the local communities, especially the libraries). But his avid readers? They offered their opinions on his latest work. As you may imagine, those opinions were not always complimentary. Some may even have been termed complaints (why did you kill her? do you hate dogs? what do you have against vampires? etc.).

 

Read the rest of the post on the Book View Cafe blog.

Publetariat Observes Presidents' Day

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CORRECTION:

Publetariat staff are off in observance of Presidents’ Day. No new content will be posted to the site until the evening of TUESDAY, 2/21, but all areas of the site will remain accessible and members can stll post to their Publetariat blogs.

[No need to click through, this is the end of the post]

You Are What You Love: A Numerical List of Loosely-Connected Thoughts on Writing (Part 1)

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This post, by Cat Valente, originally appeared on Charlie’s Diary on 2/10/12.

I’m teaching a lot this year, and thus having to think more about that old question: do you have any advice for young/aspiring writers? Since I’m still usually the youngest person on any given panel and not too long ago I couldn’t sell a book to save my life, in many ways I still see myself as a young/aspiring writer. I wrote my first book when I was 22; it came out when I was 25. And I’ll tell you, when it came out? I knew jacks**t about writing.

I did it because I wanted to and because I didn’t know I couldn’t. And I hit the ground running. But the result is that I’m kind of like a sitcom kid–I grew up in front of everyone. All my (ongoing) efforts to figure out life, the universe, and fiction have happened on paper, widely published, in more or less equal measure torn apart and loved. It’s a harrowing, amazing, nailbiting way to spend your twenties.

You can find lists of rules for writers and advice and top ten dos and don’ts just about anywhere you care to look online. They’re mostly of a kind: write what you love, follow submission guidelines, don’t quit. Market yourself aggressively but not too aggressively. Write every day. There, I’ve saved you at least the cost of two books on writing. I’ve always been uncomfortable with telling people how to do these things we do, in part because I don’t really see myself as an authority–why would anyone want to do it my way? And in part because good writing is a moving target, and what’s more, no one agrees on where the target lies. But it is Friday and I am almost over my cold and I have students this weekend, so I’m going to drop some knowledge–which you should pick up, brush off, squint at dubiously, and only take home with you if you really like it and are willing to feed it, walk it, and pick up after it. Since I don’t believe in soundbites and even two entries on the list is bordering on the epic, this is going to take a little while, so I’m splitting up the entries over the weekend and hopefully some of you won’t vanish into the pre-Valentine’s Day thrill ride.

Let’s all repeat the holy refrain: Your Mileage May Vary. I am assuming here a level of desire to write interesting, chewy, risky fiction that is awesome after the fashion of the submission guidelines I wrote when I was editing Apex Magazine. Those who aren’t into that sort of thing will find many other bloggers to guide them on their way. I can only attest to what I’ve learned, I can’t mama bear every kind of writer there is.

Readysetgo.

1. Write What You Love

Read the rest of the post on Charlie’s Diary, and also see parts two, three and four in the series.

A Capital Idea! Knowing What to Capitalize

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This post, by Janice Hardy, originally appeared on her The Other Side of the Story blog on 2/6/12.

Capitalization might seem like a no-brainer, but if you happen to write science fiction or fantasy (and possibly historical), odds are you’ve found yourself wondering if something should be capitalized or not. All those made up names feel like they ought to be capitalized, but then you end up with a bit of a mess.

Grundark made his way through the Emporium, carrying his Pouchblade and three bags of Elbonquin wine for the Regent’s Flowering Ceremony. Crowds of Hillmen bumped into him, but the shy Filmori stayed at the edges of the street.

While this paragraph is also a good example why you shouldn’t name everything (do you have any idea what most of those things even are ?), all those capital letters feel off, calling too much attention to things that shouldn’t be focused on so much. It’s just awkward.  

One trick I use is to replace the made up words with their real counterparts. It makes it a lot easier to see what’s actually a proper noun (a specific thing vs a type of thing) and what’s just a noun. 

George made his way through the Mall, carrying his Pocketknife and three bags of Chardonnay wine for the King’s Birthday Celebration. Crowds of Humans bumped into him, but the shy Dutch stayed at the edges of the street.

Some of those capitals look pretty silly now, don’t they? Let’s look at the pieces individually.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Other Side of the Story.

Dealing With Chronological Breaks In Your Story

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This post, by Juliette Wade, originally appeared on her TalkToYoUniverse blog on 2/2/12.

Do time-breaks in your story ever drive you mad?

They do me. My current novel is on a very strict schedule – this event has to happen on one day, then this other event has to happen at a three-day delay, and then the next one at the same three-day interval, etc. etc. I get to a certain point and I realize, "I’m on the wrong day. More time has to pass than this. How can I get more time to pass?"

If I were using a more external narrator, this might be easier. I might just say, "The next day…" or "Three hours later…" and there we go. Well, okay, it wouldn’t be that simple. The real problem with chronological breaks is that you have to maintain the story drive in spite of them, which means you have to create a sort of bridging effect across them.

So what kind of continuity links can make this work? There’s quite a range. You can make an explicit reference to the amount of time passing, but this works more easily with a distant narrator; with a deep point of view, there would have to be a specific reason why the character was aware that this much time was passing. Besides which, I don’t prefer to make direct reference to the amount of time if I can help it. I much prefer to use a topic link, or a psychological link.

A topic link means that you leave a cue in the last piece before your time break that you can then pick up again on the other side. I had a case where I was struggling with a break that looked something like this:


Read the rest of the post on TalkToYoUniverse.

Blog Comments: What To Do When They Just Don't Like You

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This post, by Alice Bradley, originally appeared on the Babble Voices blog on 2/3/12.

Having addressed reader reviews in the last post, I now move on, AS PROMISED, to blog comments. I am nothing if not trustworthy! You can let me hold your bag when you go to the ladies’ room! Or men’s room! Whichever!

Why do you have so many pens in your bag? And why do none of them work?

Now. Blog comments on your blog (that part is important*) are an entirely different animal from reader reviews, in that 1) they are meant for you, and therefore 2) it is appropriate, and often necessary, for you to respond to them. If you’ve enabled comments, it means you want feedback and discussion among your readers. You’re part of your community, so you should get in there as well.

You can’t control what your readers think, and this is both unfortunate and fortunate. Unfortunate in that sometimes a reader will dislike what you said or simply dislike you, and that can sting. Fortunate in that if you could control your reader’s thoughts we’d all be living in some creepy dystopia where you control everything, and you’d probably like that, LITTLE MS. CONTROL FREAK. God! What’s your blog? I’m going to go write an angry comment on it.

It’s pretty obvious what to do when your commenters love you or at least respect you and want you to respond to their comments: you respond, right? (Unless they’re demanding your home address and/or your blood type. You might want to demur in that case.) It’s all quite simple, until that day, the one where you finally get it: the unhappy commenter. The reader who thinks you suck. The person who knows you are an utter fraud and liar and kitten-kicker and calls you on it.

Congratulations!

Listen, if no one cared you wouldn’t have received a comment like this. Either the commenter is annoyed (but cares enough to share his or her annoyance) OR either people care about you and that really gets this commenter’s goat, so he/she had to lash out. Pretty much every blogger who’s read by more people than her immediate family will deal with criticism, in one form or another. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. There, there.

Now that you’ve gone for a walk and maybe petted a cat for a while (if you like cats), ask yourself a few questions. Like so:

1. Does the reader have a valid point?

 

Read the rest of the post on Babble Voices.

The New World of Publishing: Pen Names

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This post, by Dean Wesley Smith, originally appeared on his site on 1/29/12.

I get the “pen name” question more than any other question. Period. And that’s because I am very open about writing under different names and I have varied reasons for doing so. And weirdly enough, I have written under pen names since I started writing.

So after a few more varied questions this last week about pen names in indie publishing, I figured it’s about time I give a full and complete opinion on the topic. But let me be clear here once again.  Ready?

 

NO WRITER IS THE SAME AS ANOTHER WRITER.

Or as a sign in our workshops say, “You are responsible for your own career.”

Take my opinion on this topic as opinion. Nothing more. Then do what you damn well please because… well, because you can. And should.

History

Pen names have been with fiction writing since the beginning. And the reasons for writers to take pen names is as varied as the writers doing the writing. I’m sure some of you English majors out there could even tell me a bunch of pen names of major literary writers through the centuries. But honestly, please don’t. (grin)

The pulp era of popular fiction brought in thousands and thousands of pen names. There are entire books that have been done trying to track the pen names of the pulp writers, from Max Brand to Kenneth Robison to all the hundreds of pen names of Edward Stratemeyer and his “Syndicate” of writers. (You remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and so on.)

Many of today’s major writers wrote under pen names, sometimes many, many pen names over their careers. And almost always for different reasons. I don’t think Robert Silverberg can even count all his pen names. Lawrence Block wrote under many, many names as well, sometimes in the erotic markets of their day. I was at Harlan Ellison’s house one day and asked him off-handedly that if next trip I brought down a copy of Adam Magazine that he had a story in, would he sign it. He laughed and said sure, and he would sign two of the articles in the same issue as well, since he had written those under pen names. I was impressed he remembered.

In fact, in the high peak of science fiction magazines, there were often only one or two writers per issue, even though the magazine showed six or seven authors.

So pen names are nothing new. And the reasons for using a pen name or not using one are varied depending on the author, the time, the publication location, and so much more.

Major Reasons to Use Pen Names

Again, there are thousands of reasons to use pen names, each depending on the author’s situation at the moment.  But let me give you a few of the main ones that have lasted over history.

Top Reason: Writer is too “fast” for traditional publishing.

In other words, the writer has a work ethic and has trained himself to sit at a typewriter or computer for more hours per day. And by doing that, the writer will just produce more work than someone who spends two years writing a novel. Just nature of the beast.

In the pulp era, it was fine to write fast and hard and long under one name. The writers had other reasons to switch names back then that I will get to in a moment.

But with the advent of the influence of the university system and editors coming out of that university myth-filled system, the belief started to sink into the traditional publishing offices that writing more than one or two books per year was a bad thing (except in a few genres like romance). And besides, the big machines of modern traditional publishing just couldn’t keep up with a fast writer. In fact, fast writers just scare hell out of them.

So those of us who have a work ethic and can sit at a computer for a regular work day, we flat had to have more outlets. So instead of putting novels into drawers, we came up with pen names and started many writing careers, often with numbers of them going at once.

At one point, Kris and I were joking around at a conference and actually counted the career income streams coming into our home at that moment in time. We had nine writers’ incomes coming into the house. That was more than we had cats at that point.

Today we have about that many, maybe a few more, but some are not making much, at least not enough to live on. Luckily the pen-name writers don’t eat much.

The key is the same with all aspects of the publishing industry: Diversity and a lot of product. If you have three or four writer’s incomes hitting your house, it’s a ton better and safer than only one. And nine or ten incomes just makes things much easier.

The idea of multiple income streams from different names is not something most writers think of until they happen into it by overwhelming their own publisher and deciding to not slow down (meaning spend less time at the computer or playing Angry Birds) as their agent wants them to do.

However, now with indie publishing, fast writers have far, far more outlets and the idea of being a “fast” writer, meaning spending more hours writing, is once again becoming a good thing. At least outside of traditional publishing. Inside of traditional publishing being fast still scares hell out of people and they will do everything in their power to get you to spend less time being a writer and more time being an author.

Second Major Reason: Help Your Readers While Writing What You Want To Write

 

Read the rest of the post to learn about more major/historical reasons for using a pen name, as well as for a discussion of plenty of other valid reasons, on Dean Wesley Smith’s site.

Is Amazon Select Really The Big, Bad Wolf?

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This post, by Andrew E. Kaufman, originally appeared on The Crime Fiction Collective blog on 1/27/12 and is reprinted in its entirety with that site’s permission.

I woke up Wednesday morning to a barrage of emails. It appeared an independent author’s sample anthology, to which I belong, was being taken down. The reason was that it violated the terms of Amazon’s new Select program (several of the authors are enrolled in it). The anthology offers excerpts from our books, and according to the exclusivity agreement, enrolled work cannot be distributed digitally elsewhere. This includes excerpts shown on websites (that’s right folks, if you’re a Select author and running excerpts from your book on a website or anywhere else, you may want to take them down).

Word of this sent the emails a flyin’.

Very quickly, the discussion turned hostile with lots of anger aimed at Amazon and its Select program, as well as the authors enrolled in it. Some complained that they were being punished because of the actions of a few. Others insinuated that Amazon is underhanded, manipulative, and self-serving. One person even went as far as calling them an “evil empire.” There was even talk of staging an indie author boycott of Amazon. For my part, I chose to stay out of it. I didn’t agree with much of what was being said and felt the facts were being skewed.

Now I realize I’m going to take some flack for this, but I’m having a hard time understanding all the anger directed at Amazon. I mean, let’s face it–we wouldn’t even be here having this discussion if it weren’t for them. There would be no indie movement, no platform to showcase our work, no audience to read our books. Many of us would still be on the outside looking in, trying to break through those iron-clad gates, the ones kept locked up for years by the mainstream publishing industry.

Amazon helped us find our audience much more than any traditional publisher ever did. They gave us a platform, then they gave us the tools necessary to make money at it, offering an unprecedented seventy percent royalty for our books, something previously unheard of with traditional publishers.

In short, they let us in and put the power where it belongs: with the readers.

As for  the Select program, I don’t understand the anger there, either. Amazon isn’t forcing anyone to enter exclusive deals; they’re offering them an opportunity. The program is completely voluntary. Those who wish to enroll are free to do so; those who don’t, can go on with business as usual, selling their books wherever and however they wish. For those who do choose to go that route, they’re being compensated with cash which Amazon has taken out of their own pocket.  Many authors would still jump at the chance for an exclusive deal with a publisher, and yet they’re balking at the idea of doing the same thing with Amazon.

Amazon isn’t evil; it’s a business just like any other. Lest we forget, they invented the e-reader. Everyone else jumped on board after that with their own versions. Is anyone faulting them for trying to cash in on the craze? Of course not—it’s business. So what’s so wrong with Amazon trying to stay competitive in a market they created? I say, nothing.

Are they forcing a monopoly?  I doubt it. Even if Barnes & Noble goes under, the Nook will likely live on under another name, and there is this other company called Apple, who, when I last checked, is getting ready to launch their own digital publishing platform. And I’d say they have the muscle to be a formidable competitor.

Editors Passed on Same Book Critique Group Loved: 6 Reasons Why

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This post, by Lynette Labelle, originally appeared on her website on 1/4/12.

You have a critique group and the members love, love, love your work. They’ve been nagging at you for months to send it out. You finally got up enough courage to submit and even received requests for partials and fulls, but in the end, nobody liked the manuscript enough to take it on. What gives?

Let’s take a look at six reasons agents and editors may not love your work as much as your critique group does.

1) The Relationship: This can mean different things depending on the group. For some, they’ve developed a friendship with the members of their group and can confuse “she’s a great person” with “she’s a great writer.” Some members may realize you’re not such a hot writer but don’t want to hurt your feelings, so they tell you what you want to hear instead. Others aren’t in the same league as you. Beginners will love stories written by intermediate writers and might even believe the book should be published, when in reality, it still needs a lot of work.

Lesson: Use a combination of your judgment, that of your critique group members, and feedback you get from agents and editors. If the rejections you’re getting are all canned, you really need to take another look at the book or start something fresh. If you’re getting personalized letters with specific notes on what’s wrong with the work or how to improve it, then you’re on the right track. Just remember, it’s your story. Only make changes if they feel right.

2) Super Premise: Your critique group loves your premise and thinks this is the next bestseller. They may be right. However, they don’t have the inside information agents and editors have. In this case, the industry experts may love your premise but if it’s too similar to something they’ve recently bought or something that’s currently on the market, they won’t want to touch it no matter how good it is.

Lesson: It’s not always about the writing or the idea. Sometimes it’s about who gets their idea out first.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes four more reasons a publishing house editor might pass, on Lynette Labelle’s site.

What Writers Need to Know About Formatting

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This post, by Brian A. Klems, originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest site on 1/23/12.

When writing your future bestseller you don’t want to have to waste too much time wondering if you should be leaving one space or two between sentences or worried that you’re committing other style faux pas. Here I’ve collected a writer’s set of FAQs about formatting (and formatting-related) issues that will help you navigate the basics.

 

What Are the Guidelines for Formatting a Manuscript?

One Space or Two Between Sentences?

When to Use a Prologue

Where Should You List Your Manuscript’s Word Count?

How Long Should Novel Chapters Be?

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes many more links to helpful articles and tips, on the Writer’s Digest site.

An Indie Author’s Manifesto

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This post, by Martin Lastrapes, originally appeared on his Inside Martin site on 1/17/12.

(This is an extended and revised version of the article “A Self-Publisher’s Manifesto,” which was previously published in Self-Publishing Review on 7/27/11)

I am an indie author and this is my manifesto.

 

If you’re a reader, a simple lover of books, someone with no aspirations of ever writing or publishing, then there is a very good chance you’re unaware of the culture war that has been going on within the world of publishing for what feels like forever.  The war is between the large publishing houses, primarily found in New York, and indie authors.  For almost as long as the publishing industry has been a relevant cog in the entertainment machine, publishing houses have served the purpose of finding, publishing and, essentially delivering to the literary world the best authors they could find.  But they didn’t do this alone.  Literary agents—who not only represent authors, but also serve as gatekeepers for the large publishing houses—helped them.

Most any writer who has ever aspired to get published has learned the hard way that finding a literary agent to represent you is, arguably,  harder than actually getting your manuscript accepted for publication by a large publishing house.  And this is not by accident.  As gatekeepers, the literary agents weed out the “bad” talent and wrangle in the “good” talent, making it easier for the large publishing houses to pick which handful of writers they’ll be publishing during any given year.  As someone who has been rejected by more agents than I care to count, I have a pretty good grasp on how the system is intended to work.

First, the author writes a manuscript (i.e. a novel, a memoir, a collection of short stories, etc.).  Once they finish, the author writes a query letter, which is, essentially, a one-page pitch to a literary agent.  In the query letter, the writer should not only tell the literary agent what their book is about, but also why anybody would bother reading it or, more importantly, buying it.  This last part is important, because agents earn money on commission, which means they only get paid if they can sell your book.  So, even if they personally love the book, but don’t think they can sell it, they aren’t going to represent it.

If the agent likes what you’re pitching in the query letter, then they’ll likely ask you to send them the first 10-15 pages.  If they like those pages, then they’ll likely ask for a partial, which are the first 50 pages.  If they’re still satisfied with what they’re reading, then they’ll ask to see the full manuscript.  After looking at it, they will either decide to represent your book or reject it.  There is also the possible middle ground where they might ask you to make revisions to the book that will, in their estimation, make it more attractive to publishers.  And even if you’ve gotten this far and the literary agent decides to represent you, it’s going to take nearly a year (sometimes longer) before you come to that agreement.

Of course, getting a literary agent is no guarantee of getting published.  They still have to try and sell your manuscript to a publishing house.  There are plenty of authors who have secured literary agents, only to find out that the agent couldn’t sell their books.  But if you are one of those rare authors who have cleared all the hurdles and have had your book published by a large publishing house, one of the first things you will learn is that you’re going to be on your own when it comes to promoting and marketing the book.  Publishing houses have limited budgets for marketing their authors and first-time authors aren’t likely to get much support.  Ironically, if your book doesn’t sell, then the publisher will be less likely to buy your next book.

 

Read the rest of the post on Inside Martin.

Amazon: "Primed" to Disrupt Apple's Textbook Plans?

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This article, by Jason Perlow, originally appeared on the ZDNet Tech Broiler blog on 1/21/12.

Summary: Apple may have thrown down the gauntlet for the iPad in education, but don’t count Amazon out.

So. Apple. A huge library of textbooks for $14.99 each and a free authoring program for rich textbook content.

That about sums up this last week’s events.

Oh wait. You can only sell that content produced with iBooks Author on the App Store and of course all of those texts are stuck in Apple’s “Walled Garden”.

 

Are we supposed to be surprised that this is the way Cupertino wants to do business? No, of course not.

It does bring up the issue however that if Apple becomes successful in making iBooks electronic textbooks a successful enterprise and an educational standard, a “digital underclass” might be created for those who cannot afford to purchase electronic texts if paper texts become no longer economically feasible to produce.

While I projected that this is probably more likely to happen faster to our public library system than our educational system, it does bring up the disturbing thought that iBooks textbooks might not be an affordable solution for most public school systems and only privileged, wealthy school systems will benefit from them.

 

Read the rest of the article on the ZDNet Tech Broiler blog. Also see How Apple is Sabotaging An Open Standard For Digital Books, by Ed Bott, on The Ed Bott Report on the same site.