Writing

Submissions: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Author: April 25, 2018 0 Comments

When describing what it’s like to make money from creativity, I often like to refer to the TV show Mad Men because of the way it depicted resident creative genius Don Draper. In a nutshell, Draper was often shown napping in his office, sneaking out to a movie (or a date) in the afternoons, drinking excessively, and otherwise goofing off.

In short, there’s a lot of blank space in a creative life. When 90% of the work is mental, it can be hard for other folks to understand what you’re doing if you’re not madly typing constantly.

If that blank space is mystifying to other people, it can be downright terrifying to a writer; it usually follows months or years of intense effort, and then you send off your project—to a magazine, web site, publisher, agent, or beta reader—and enter into the Blank Space portion of your writing life. In short, one of the most difficult aspects of a writing career (as opposed to actually just doing the writing) is the waiting game that ensues after you submit something. You can drive yourself crazy interpreting silence. The best thing to do, in my experience, is to not think about submissions at all.

Set It and Forget It

I send off a lot of submissions every year, both on my own (short stories and novellas to contests, anthologies, and magazines) and to or via my agent. And it’s always the same: There’s a ton of work that goes into thew writing, revising, and preparation of the story or book, and then there’s a ton of work that goes into preparing the submission itself—cover letters, synopses, proposals, etc.

And then: Nothing. The Blank Space.

The only thing to do is put it out of your mind. Forget all about it. Jump to the next project or take some time off, whatever you prefer, but don’t waste time thinking about what you just sent off. You can’t affect the odds now, what’s done is done. And the universe is not taking note of the amount of mental energy you’re pouring into the submission, so there’s nothing to be gained by going over it in your head, or worrying over what the delay or speed of a response means. Put it out of your mind and move on to the next thing so that the rejection or acceptance that comes down the pike will be a surprise, pleasant or otherwise.

Of course, there’s a downside to this: I often completely forget about submissions altogether, and thirteen months later I suddenly notice an open sub in my records and then realize I’ve accidentally simultaneously-submitted that story a dozen times. Or forgotten to follow up at all. Because when you’ve got a sieve-like memory, sometimes Blank Space is all you have.

career, General, Writing

Curing the End of Book Blues

Author: April 19, 2018 0 Comments

Something that doesn’t get discussed a lot in the conversation about writing (and selling and marketing) stories is what happens when you finish something. Writers put so much energy into a novel, so many months or years of effort, so many restless night worrying over plot points and pondering why a character doesn’t seem to be gelling the story, that finishing a novel is sometimes more of a crawl over the finish line as opposed to a triumphant sprint.

Putting that kind of mental energy into a project means that for many writers there’s a crash after you’re done, a creative hangover of sorts that can knock you off your game for a long time.

Out of the Groove

For me, part of it is that by the time I get to the final act of a novel I’ve become really familiar and comfortable with the universe I’ve created and the characters I’ve filled it with. There’s a great deal of pleasure when you’re totally in control of a story. You’ve solved all your plot problems, you’re so familiar with your characters it’s like they’re real people to you, and everything becomes, at the end, effortless.

Then you finish. And you’re suddenly faced with the monumental task of starting over, from scratch. And the idea is simply exhausting. Even if you have a great idea you want to develop, actually, you know, developing it seems like lifting a building over your head.

Worse, of course, is when you finish a book and realize that it isn’t good. That you screwed it up somehow. All that effort, and your choice now is to either trash what you have and start over from scratch, spend another few months trying to sort out the problems without a total re-write, or start something new and hope it goes better.

Either way, there’s always a hangover after finishing something. My preferred way of dealing with it is to have multiple projects going at once. This overlaps the hangovers a bit, which mitigates them. If for some reason I don’t have something else already in progress, I sometimes find it’s bracing and curative to dash off something short and maybe a little crazy. To just take any crazy idea that pops into my head and write it fast and dirty, without planning or deep thought.

Or, you know, drink heavily until my body turns yellow and I’m confined to bed and having nothing else to do but write. Sometimes that.

General, Writing

Spin Those Plates

Author: April 17, 2018 0 Comments

As you might suspect from a blog tied to a book called Writing Without Rules, I generally don’t believe there is any “correct” way to write. You Do You tends to be my reaction to people’s declarations of process, writer’s block cures, or systems for developing characters or plots. All that matters is that you get words on the page or screen, and that you’re excited about those words. However you get there is immaterial.

I do, however, have opinions based on my own experience. It’s important to note that these are just opinions, personal expressions of personal experience filtered through my own preconceptions and assumptions. Still, it’s useful to see how other people do it. Sometimes finding out that another writer does things the same way you do is heartening. Sometimes seeing another process or an alternative view of the business or craft of writing fiction and/or non-fiction suddenly prompts you to change your approach.

For example: Concurrent projects. Some writers fixate on a single project. They devote themselves to it, doing research, planning and plotting, then writing and re-writing, revising and excising until they’re satisfied. They work in a linear fashion.

Not me. I usually have several projects going at once, usually a few novels, a short story, and any number of other things. And that’s not even counting the freelance work and promotional blogging that I do. What can I say—I think there are distinct advantages to spinning plates.

WIPs All the Way Down

I just completed two novels that I was working on concurrently, and I have a third novel begun while those two were in process, plus a monthly short story, another one-shot short story set in one of my established universes, and two other ideas that will either be novels or … something else, who knows. And I recently stumbled onto another short story that I’d half completed and then forgot about, so I jumped in to finish that.

I like having all these projects going for three main reasons:

  1. Variety. If i get bogged down in one story, uncertain how to proceed, I can just jump over to another one. And while I’m working on the second, I’m subconsciously recharging my batteries for the first. Plus, I get to indulge two genres at once, if I want.
  2. Confirmation. Ideas are funny—they jump into your brain electric and buzzing with potential. Then some of them die off, withering away, while others just get stronger and brighter. Working on a bunch of different things means that if one withers away and goes nowhere it’s not nearly as devastating as it otherwise would be.
  3. Preservation. For me, ideas don’t last too long unless they’re developed. A concept that seemed ingenious last month might turn into ash if I don’t hang some words on it.

I don’t divide my time and attention equally. One project can rise up and claim all of my attention for a time, especially if it’s near the end. I don’t have any rules about this. I just work on whatever I want to, regardless of what else is on my dance card. Including this blog.

General, Writing

Plot Holes: Gaslight ?Em

Author: April 11, 2018 0 Comments

To the outside world, writing probably seems easy. We sit around daydreaming, then spend a few hours typing, and a few weeks later we email a manuscript and receive a million dollars, probably. We writers, of course, know better—most of us are going to end up broke, insane, and working at a local big box store mopping the bathrooms and muttering to ourselves about how hacks stole all of our ideas.

Even worse, the act of writing is rough going sometimes. Ideas that flare into being as bright, perfect creations wither into rotten, saggy lumps when we get our potato hands on them. Characters fail to become real people, Netflix suddenly drops a full season of a new show with the exact same premise as your WIP, and plot holes infest your story until it’s more hole than plot.

A Feature, Not a Bug

I recently had a manuscript reviewed specifically for plot holes; I braced myself, because my mind wanders at the best of times and I am no stranger to the hell of realizing the character who saves the day in Chapter 31 was killed off in Chapter 9. I’m a person who lives very much in the present; I forget things so quickly and utterly I am not kidding when I say that by the time I finish a manuscript there are elements of the early chapters that I have zero memory of. It makes taming a plot into coherency kind of difficult.

This time there were no big plot holes to worry over, thank goodness, but it did prompt me to consider my usual tactics for dealing with plot holes.

Sometimes, of course, the only way to deal with plot holes is to eliminate them even if it means yet another extensive revision to the story. This is only necessary when the plot holes in question make your story a mess. But going back to fix up a plot hole isn’t always necessary—and sometimes causes ripples in the rest of your story, a domino effect of fixes opening up new rifts.

So, sometimes—sometimes—the best thing to do is to take your plot holes and celebrate them. Elevate them from subtle to screaming. To gaslight your reader with them.

This isn’t a technique you can use a lot. The story has to have a certain elasticity to it, a certain loose relationship to realism—if your plot is rooted firmly in the real world, playing around with plot holes like this won’t work. But if you’ve got some leeway with the point-of-view, if your narrator is unreliable or the reality of your fictional universe is a bit skewed, you might be able to take a plot hole and turn it into a feature instead of a bug.

Easier said than done, of course. But then, so is writing a novel in the first place.

plot, Writing

Plot Holes: Gaslight ?Em

Author: April 11, 2018 0 Comments

To the outside world, writing probably seems easy. We sit around daydreaming, then spend a few hours typing, and a few weeks later we email a manuscript and receive a million dollars, probably. We writers, of course, know better—most of us are going to end up broke, insane, and working at a local big box store mopping the bathrooms and muttering to ourselves about how hacks stole all of our ideas.

Even worse, the act of writing is rough going sometimes. Ideas that flare into being as bright, perfect creations wither into rotten, saggy lumps when we get our potato hands on them. Characters fail to become real people, Netflix suddenly drops a full season of a new show with the exact same premise as your WIP, and plot holes infest your story until it’s more hole than plot.

A Feature, Not a Bug

I recently had a manuscript reviewed specifically for plot holes; I braced myself, because my mind wanders at the best of times and I am no stranger to the hell of realizing the character who saves the day in Chapter 31 was killed off in Chapter 9. I’m a person who lives very much in the present; I forget things so quickly and utterly I am not kidding when I say that by the time I finish a manuscript there are elements of the early chapters that I have zero memory of. It makes taming a plot into coherency kind of difficult.

This time there were no big plot holes to worry over, thank goodness, but it did prompt me to consider my usual tactics for dealing with plot holes.

Sometimes, of course, the only way to deal with plot holes is to eliminate them even if it means yet another extensive revision to the story. This is only necessary when the plot holes in question make your story a mess. But going back to fix up a plot hole isn’t always necessary—and sometimes causes ripples in the rest of your story, a domino effect of fixes opening up new rifts.

So, sometimes—sometimes—the best thing to do is to take your plot holes and celebrate them. Elevate them from subtle to screaming. To gaslight your reader with them.

This isn’t a technique you can use a lot. The story has to have a certain elasticity to it, a certain loose relationship to realism—if your plot is rooted firmly in the real world, playing around with plot holes like this won’t work. But if you’ve got some leeway with the point-of-view, if your narrator is unreliable or the reality of your fictional universe is a bit skewed, you might be able to take a plot hole and turn it into a feature instead of a bug.

Easier said than done, of course. But then, so is writing a novel in the first place.

plot, Writing

The Great Compression

Author: April 4, 2018 0 Comments

As a writer, I like to finish things—more than finish them, I like to whip things into marketable shape. On the one hand the psychology of this is obvious; as I’m fond of saying, you sell exactly zero of the books and stories you don’t finish. My legacy on this world is going to be my writing, so the more of it I can publish and get seen, the better.

On the other hand my obsession with finishing things and extracting some sort of publishable value from my writing goes beyond simply practicality, and I’m not sure where it’s rooted in my life. All I know is, once a work gets to a certain bulk, I’m determined to make the effort of writing it worthwhile by finishing it and then polishing it into something that might, conceivably, get published.

One side effect of this obsession is an eagerness to try new techniques or crazy ideas. I get super excited with experiments that might lead to stronger material—experiments that go beyond polish and revision. One example is when I Frankensteined two failed novels together to make one great novel (something I discuss in detail in Writing Without Rules). Another is something I just mentioned on Twitter last week: Boiling a novel down to a short story.

The Great Compression

I’ve been planning to submit a story to an anthology, but wasn’t sure whether I wanted to write a fresh story to match the theme or see if I had something already in the can that would work. I realized that a novel I completed last year was actually a perfect fit, theme-wise. The only problem? The antho had a word count limit of 6,000 words and the novel was 63K+.

This novel has a long history. It started off as a short story I wrote in the early 1990s; I really liked it but could never sell it anywhere, and so a few years ago I started trying to work it into different formats, eventually ending up with an unsatisfactory novel last year. I still thought it had great potential, so the story was still alive in my head, but it wasn’t right.

The idea of trying to cut 90% of the story? Exciting. Like, thrilling. I love stuff like that, extreme challenges. Could I excise most of the novel and still have the core of it?

It was dismaying easy, actually. Dismaying, because it implies that 90% of that novel was just bullshit I poured in there to bulk it up, something I expressly advise people not to do. My only defense is that I didn’t bulk it up on purpose. And I like a lot of the writing I deleted. In practical terms, one reason the story was easy to compress is the structure I used in the novel—it has three timelines, so step one was simply to choose the timeline in which the main, core story occurred, and then delete the others. Just like that, 50% of the words were gone.

Next, I compressed characters. In a novel you can be subtle and granular with your characters. In a short story every character has to be essential. So I eliminated characters whose roles could be passed on to other people. That took care of another chunk of words.

All of this work took me: One day. And I had a story that was still coherent at about 9,000 words. The rest was shaving and shaping, and I really like the story I ended up with at 6K.

Is there a lesson here? The only lesson, I think, is that it’s worth it to push yourself, to try crazy things, to go beyond NaNoWriMo and see what you’re capable of. I can’t swear I’ll sell this story to this anthology or anywhere else. But it was fun to do this, and ultimately successful.

For my next trick, I’m going to try compressing an entire weekend’s worth of drinking into one night. I may not survive. You may not survive. But someone’s got to try, dammit.

General, Writing

Writing in Real Time: Episode 3

Author: April 1, 2018 0 Comments

Video: How to Determine Your Novel’s Word Count | Jeff Somers and the Rough Beast, Episode 3

Jeff Somers takes a moment to contemplate the utility (or lack thereof) of using word count as a progress bar in a book. He discusses the fact that his first published novel was far from oft-cited word counts for viable novels, and the fact that forcing yourself to write words you’re just going to delete later is a waste of time.

Writing, Writing Without Rules

Snatching Failure from the Jaws of Victory

Author: March 30, 2018 0 Comments

Last year I submitted a short story to an anthology, and a few weeks ago I got an email informing me that my story had been selected. This is always great news, and it was made even better by the fact that the antho was kind of prestigious and I could expect a bit of attention, so this was more than just a tidy sum of money and an extra credit on my resume.

The email noted that the although the editors had chosen my story, the publisher had the final say, but I figured, what could go wrong?

You see where this is going.

Thanks but No Thanks

Yup, the publisher pulled my story. They had their reasons, and the editor who contacted me to break the news was very awkwardly embarrassed about it, but hey, shit happens. I sold a story and then it got un-sold, and that sucks, but you move on.

Luckily, stuff like this is rare, and usually it’s me doing the un-selling. I once sold a short story to a magazine, but their contract turned out to be very shitty, so I pulled the story. I’ve been ambushed by vanity publishers and had to pull stories. Usually, once you get the acceptance, though, the rest is just details.

Not much you can do about it. Losing opportunities like this is just part of the game, because there are two sides to every sale: The editorial, and the business. And whenever you get a story past the editorial part, there is always the possibility that the contract will be bad, or the terms not what you expected—or that someone on the bean-counting side will object for bean-countery reasons.

The lesson is simple: Don’t brag on your sales until it’s a done deal. When I was sixteen, I sold a novel to a tiny publisher. I immediately began bragging to everyone about, and was very likely insufferable for a very, very long time. Two years later, as I started college, the tiny publisher had gone out of business and had mailed back my manuscript, half-edited. And I had to start admitting to everyone that I wasn’t getting published after all.

It’s part of the game. The fact that the game’s rules were apparently written by a drunk and vengeful god is beside the point.

career, Writing