I’m today’s interview subject on Cynthia Leitich Smith’s absolutely fantastic blog, Cynsations. Please check it out. What a wonderful early birthday present. 
Tags: About Me
I love my blog and I love my readers. But whenever I post on something with wider implications to the publishing landscape, I always get new readers who come and rabble-rouse in the comments. Don’t get me wrong. I love getting new readers. And new readers can agree with me or not. In fact, I love it when they bring intelligent dispute into the comments. But if I post on anything contentious, I can guarantee that I’ll get some new readers who just want to vent their spleens. This happened in the comments for yesterday’s post. I would usually let it go, but the pro-self-publishing argument some of them are saying is just ridiculous, so allow me a quick rebuttal.
These people are citing the literary geniuses of old who self-published their books in a completely different era, as if it had any bearing on what is going on right now. (As Thomas pointed out in comments. Thanks!)
I really hope that my readers, who I know are savvy about today’s publishing realities, can tell the difference between self-publishing, readership, distribution, and publicity then, when self-publishing was one of the only options available to writers (and called for a large money and time investment, as it still does), and those same elements of the book trade now.
It’s a totally irrelevant argument because the industry of publishing and technology in general have changed so much. Sure, Walt Whitman self-published. But I bet he didn’t code his poetry into an interactive iPhone app that he tried to hawk for $2.99 per download. In fact, if I delve into Walt Whitman’s history of self-publishing Leaves of Grass (on Wikipedia…I have a lot of stuff to do this morning), it says, “The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and stirred up significant interest.”
So that’s where, already, the story of self-publishing in the old days is different from self-publishing in the 21st century. On two very crucial points: distribution, and significant interest. Back then, books were more difficult to come by than they are now. Most people could become a visible competitor on the playing field just by showing up. And the printed word was usually the only way for people to express themselves publicly. Now, anyone can start a blog (hi there!) and rant. Back then, you had to get up on an actual soapbox and shout or you had to self-publish a pamphlet, book, or article. Whole towns could start a lively discussion based on one pamphlet that got read, passed on, distributed widely. People would clutch books and pamphlets to their chests and duel about them in the town square, for crying out loud! If only today’s self-published, or traditionally published, for that matter (more on this on Monday), books could stir such passion!
It’s interesting that self-publishing used to be the norm and, now that traditional publishing is in flux, the curve is arcing back toward self-publishing again, but, other than that, all the sarcasm about literature’s greatest voices self-publishing is really just silly. These people are acting like I’m personally trying to silence Virginia Woolf. Puh-lease.
And, guess what? Who publishes the greats of yore now so that they they can enjoy a mass audience? You can bet it’s not Lulu.com. That’s right. Traditional publishers. I’m sure that James Joyce and Charles Dickens aren’t rolling over in their graves when they see their work on shelves around the world.
Also, to the guy who made the huge list of classic books that got rejected…that’s not an argument for self-publishing. That’s a fact of life. EVERY SINGLE BOOK AND AUTHOR THAT IS PUBLISHED TODAY HAS GOTTEN REJECTED AT LEAST ONCE. Stephenie Meyer. Jo Rowling. Stephen King. James Patterson. For every publisher who buys a project, there are at least five or six who pass on it (either because they reject it outright or they get outbid and miss their chance).
Which only goes to prove perhaps my biggest point about publishing in general, one I’ve made many times on this blog: publishing and writing and literature are subjective. Some people love self-publishing. Others don’t. To each his or her own.
But as I’ve alluded a few times in this post and in comments, I’m going to talk a little bit more about self-publishing on Monday, and then I will leave this be and get back to other posts.
Tags: Self-publishing
I have never talked about self-publishing on this blog. Why? Because some people who self-publish usually use gatekeepers like agents and editors as an excuse, like we’ve literally driven them to Lulu.com with our cruelty. We are The Man. We keep literary geniuses down. So they circumvent The Man and self-publish. Since I’m The Man, what do you really expect me to say?
What finally got me to articulate myself on the topic is a fantastic Salon article. This is the closest I’ve come to reading my own thoughts about self-publishing.
The average person has no idea what lurks in slush. The writers querying agents obviously think their stuff is up to snuff, or they wouldn’t be querying. Even so, most slush is not ready for human consumption. Why? Because writers are notoriously erroneous judges of their own work. A lot of them think they’re ready for “prime time,” and that is often not the case. It is my informed opinion — having read what most people call their polished work — that most self-published books, unless professionally edited beforehand, will read like my slush pile, not like the New American Literature.
Most of the time, when you get a rejection, it is really saying, “This isn’t ready for publication yet.” The questions going through my head when I evaluate submissions are: Is this saleable? Can I sell it? If the answer to one or both questions is “no,” I reject. If the answer to both is “yes,” I’ll pursue the project. It’s really no more complicated than that.
I do have to say one thing in defense of self-publishing: it is a very useful tool for people who have a niche audience or their own book sales channels. Ideally, both. Most traditional publishers may not do “niche” projects (not a large enough target market to justify general trade publication). If you have a book about a very specific subject, say, a kid with heart disease, and you also have access to the American Heart Association’s mailing list, for example…you might be successful at zeroing in on your target readers through direct sales.
But most people who self-publish don’t have a niche book or a good marketing strategy: they want to target the mass market. They have a project that would appeal, in their opinion, to everyone and anyone. And self-publishing a book intended for a trade audience is where these would-be authors get in trouble. Because reaching a mass audience — casual readers — with a self-published fiction project is nearly impossible.
From now on, I’ll be talking about these people self-publishing. The people who don’t believe what editors and agents keep telling them: their work isn’t ready. Just because a shortcut and a loophole exist, doesn’t mean you need to use them. And just because you use them, doesn’t mean you’ll get the same results as people who publish traditionally (your book distributed in stores…readers for your work…reviews…sales…any kind of profit).
The Internet disproves a simple, old-fashioned idea: “If you build it, (throw it up on Lulu or Amazon or any of these other websites) they will come.” Readers will not come. They have too much other stuff on their browser. It’s just like trying to get your band discovered by putting up an mp3 on MySpace. Every other band is putting up their mp3, too. (Not that MySpace is relevant anymore, of course.)
The Internet is flooded with content. As a reader, my time and psychic space are limited. I seek only the things I’m looking for or already know about. I don’t go trolling for complete unknowns just to check out a new ebook, and I certainly would never pay money to try random self-published wares.
But it’s not my job to sway anybody from wanting to self-publish. All the people who want to self-publish, should. We clearly disagree on a few key issues and I, as The Man, have better things to do than argue. When folks actually self-publish, they’ll figure out firsthand how difficult it is to get their books in the hands of readers. It’s also one thing to self-publish once you already have a reader base, like Kindle evangelist Joe Konrath, who now has Amazon releasing his books, but quite another to rustle up some hungry eyes as a rank debut.
The decision, in my opinion, is this: do you work through the rejection, finesse your writing craft, earn traditional publication and make the dream come true in a big way, or do you find a loophole and “publish” your work to a very limited audience? It all depends on what will make you really feel like you’ve accomplished your goal. I’m a writer in my spare (ha!) time. And I want to target the mass market. I would never, personally, self-publish. To me, a self-published version of my work wouldn’t be an achievement. It would just be a printout of my manuscript bound between two thicker pieces of cardboard, and about as fulfilling as my pile of scratch paper. Blogger Christoper Keelty goes as far as calling self-publishing, “selling your failures.” (Thanks to Colleen Lindsay for the link.) There are agents who will consider self-published projects, if they have gone on to sell big (like, thousands or hundreds of thousands of copies). But I’m not one of them. I prefer to focus on bringing something to market for the very first time.
The writers who self-publish because they’re sick of rejection aren’t writers I’d like to work with, anyway. I’m only interested in people who grow, learn, polish, adapt, and set their sights on the difficult goal of traditional publication. It’s hard for a reason. Not everybody gets to do it.
I went to one camp as a kid and, at the end of summer, the counselors held a lavish award ceremony for our families. Every camper got a ribbon for being special. Parents cried. Camcorders hummed. Kids tried not to embarrass themselves on stage. The counselors had to write something nice to everyone, so campers got contrived ribbons for “Best hair” and “Funniest laugh.” Anything, really, that the adults could think of at the last minute. Did that make everyone feel more special in the end? No. It cheapened something that is supposed to reward an extraordinary achievement. Call me a snob if you like. But I have read lots and lots of slush. And I wouldn’t wish most of it on the reading public. America has enough problems with declining literacy, as it is. We don’t want to scare people away from reading altogether by unleashing a tide of bad writing.
Sure, there are exceptions. Joe Konrath’s success with bringing his existing readers to a new format has been noteworthy. And there are self-published books for the mass market that have sold huge. Two things come to mind: the work of Christopher Paolini and an adult book called THE LACE READER. And you know what happened to them? Both moved on to traditional publication. You know why? Because that was probably the writers’ goal in the first place, and they took a circuitous route.
And you know why I know about these exceptions? Because they’re news. They’re rare. The other hundreds of thousands of self-published books? They’re unvisited websites and unopened boxes in somebody’s garage that I don’t really need to know about. I’d rather work with the writers who are approaching me to pursue traditional publishers, and focus my attentions there. There is a lot of talent in the world that’s worth being found and developed. I wouldn’t be an agent if I didn’t think so.
But like I said, I’m The Man. You’re either with me, or you wish you were with me. (And I’m a cheeky Man, at that.)
Tags: Slush
A reader wrote in last week to ask me about family dynamics and wholeness in fiction. Mary said:
Can a manuscript be sold if the main character lives in a traditional nuclear family? Everything I’ve read has either a parent who left or disappeared, went to jail, or died–even in so-called humor novels. Being a single adoptive mother, I don’t object to a single parent household. But EVERY book?
This is a good point, and steals one of my jokes about MG or YA, which is: The parents (often mother) in a middle-grade or YA novel have the highest mortality rate in all of fiction.
And from reading what’s on offer these days, you really do get a sense that it’s true. Parents are always dead or missing or in jail or abusive or otherwise highly dysfunctional. Almost too much so.
Personally, I feel like there’s room for a more peaceful or normal family unit in MG or YA novels. However, fiction thrives on tension and conflict (not melodrama, mind you, or hysterics, but real conflict). Fiction can never be static, or your readers will put the book down (if you even get as far as having a book in the first place).
So you can feature a close-knit, whole or loving family in your novel. And nobody has to die or go on a drug binge or murder anybody. However, you can’t have a whole manuscript of Pollyanna love and family moments. The conflict has to come from somewhere.
There’s one good reason that families usually explode in MG or YA novels, I think. It’s during your teen years that you start to look around and realize that your parents aren’t perfect, as you originally thought when you were a kid. You start to see them as flawed human beings instead of superheroes. You also start to get to know them in new and different ways. Family members are also especially high stakes because they’re people you’ve known the longest and are the closest to, for better or for worse. And since the best fiction reflects universal truths of being alive, writers tend to hone in on family relationships as especially dramatic since…let’s face it…they often are.
A successful novel manuscript has to have two sources of tension: internal and external. Internal tension is the character’s struggle with being themselves and existing in the world around them. (Feeling alone, like a loser, feeling like they have no friends, wanting something really badly, etc.) External conflict is the conflict of a character and their relationships or with a situation in the outside world. (Parents divorcing, sibling rivalry, betrayal by a friend, an impending apocalypse, etc.)
So, even if things are hunky-dory at home, your character must have both external and internal conflict to be a compelling fictional person. Nobody wants to read a book that’s 300 pages of, “Everything is great and awesome!” But the conflict doesn’t 100% have to come from a dysfunctional family, either. In fact, in this market, having a functional family might actually set you apart, as long as there is enough tension and the stakes are high enough elsewhere in the story.
ETA: Of course, as is hinted at in the comments, having a family with missing members in it makes it easier for characters to break out of the house and get into shenanigans! One common complaint about MG and YA is: “How in the sam hill did these kids get into so much trouble? Who was watching them?” That’s easy to get around when you off mom and pop. Of course, murther most foul is not the only way to let your fictional kids have more room to roam.
Tags: Character, Dramatic Arc
Fantastic agent Colleen Lindsay asked a really interesting question on Twitter a few days ago. You can find the conversation, including a few of my comments, if you scroll that far, here, or on your own by searching Twitter for the hashtag #agentpay.
The conversation was triggered by a hypothetical question that Colleen posed: What if we paid agents by billable hours instead of by a percentage of the sale?
I won’t lie. I sometimes wish that I was getting paid by the hour instead of by the sales percentage. Why? Well, as I’m getting started, I am spending a lot of time developing projects. It’s a learning experience for me, as well as for the writer. And some of those projects have not gone on to sell. In fact, throughout my career, there will be projects that don’t end up selling. There might not be as much of a market for them as I originally thought, or it might not be the right time for them to cross the transom. For whatever reason, there will be unsold projects in my career…just as there are for any agent.
And, sure, it would be nice to see some cash for the billable hours I’ve spent on these projects. But you know what? I place a very high value on a learning experience. It’s almost impossible for me to be disappointed or bitter about something if I’ve learned from it. I try to seek out like-minded writers for clients, those who want to learn and grow and turn into publishing success machines, as much through their touchdowns as their fumbles (I know nothing about football, can you tell?). Of course, I’d much rather sell a project than sit around singing “Kum ba yah” and learning, because I have responsibilities to my clients, but still. These experiences are really important. I’d feel strange charging for them.
I think the sales percentage system works. Especially at the beginning of an agent’s career. Not only does this weed out the agents who are not hungry, not passionate, not crazy enough to work for, basically, free for a few years just to launch themselves, but it breeds a drive and determination that is an asset to any client. And it armors newer agents for the long haul, it gets us into the right mindset so that we doggedly serve our authors long after cash starts coming in.
If publishing were to, for some crazy reason, start the precedent of agents charging by the hour, here are the pros and cons, in my opinion. Remember, this is purely hypothetical.
Newer agents, in the short term, would be able to feed and clothe themselves. They’d still make a pretty decent salary and get rewarded for all their editing, counseling, advising and development work. The short-term benefits would be great for the agent. (Benefits? What’s that?) However, the barrier to entry for using an agent, for a writer, especially a debut writer, would be very high. They’d have to invest thousands of dollars into launching their writing career — and that project might not sell, after all, so those costly hours would be for nothing.
Except, of course, learning experience, but I doubt someone who has sunk years or their life and thousands into it would feel as peaceful as I do, with my hypothetical by-the-hour wage.
I predict there would be huge backlash against the system of literary agents. If big houses persisted in only accepting agented submissions, there would be great unrest among writers. Loyalty between agent and writer would also decrease. Writers would begrudgingly pay their agents to “break into the business” and then might dump them once they have an “in” with a publisher, to avoid the agent’s steep hourly fees.
The problems would only get worse for established agents with established clients. These clients would have a reputation. They’d be able to make income off of subrights or foreign sales, they’d be able to sell subsequent books in a series, they’d be able to sell books on proposal. They’d need their agents more for negotiation than matchmaking and introductions. Their agents, then, would be doing much less of that really hardcore developmental, editing, and counseling work. That’s really what eats up the hours, folks.
Of course, established agents would have many more clients and much more of the business-end work of negotiation, contracts, selling subrights (A movie contract, by the way, can weigh in at about 300 pages! That’s a lot of pleasure reading!), so they wouldn’t suffer necessarily, but getting the deals and selling books would take less time for their established writers. They wouldn’t get as much reward from the sale itself.
With billable hours, unless the established agent raised their rates, they’d also have less opportunity for that out-of-control growth that every percentage-based worker dreams of. They could find the next Jo Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, but they wouldn’t have a right to a percent of that runaway success…they’d still be plodding along at whatever dollars per hour.
So in the short term, billable hours could benefit rookie agents. But it could also make them lazy and never instill in them that marvelous drive and hunger. I’d take my passion any day over silly things like shelter from the elements or job security. Some jobs, you draw a salary just by showing up every day and doing whatever someone tells you. (There are some agents who receive a salary for office duties or subrights work, depending on their agency, but they also get a percentage of sales, so this is not meant to disrespect my colleagues at other agencies.)
Other jobs, where you’re getting paid only based on your successes, you either have a mental breakdown or you become more invested. Me? I like the challenge. I like the risk. I like working my butt off. It makes me a better asset to you than if I was getting paid, sale or no. It makes me more determined to sell.
Tags: About Me
Sometimes it’s better to tell instead of show. Yes, yes, I know. Everyone has heard of, “Show, don’t tell.”
I think I’ll get into this subject more in future posts, but let’s just say that a lot of convoluted, cliche stuff happens when a writer desperately tries to avoid telling (like hammering hearts and foot-tapping gestures, instead of just saying, “She was nervous,” or “He hated when she was late,” or whatever). For now, though, I want to give you a fantastic introduction to why (and when) telling can work.
I never pretended to know everything about writing, but I’ve never posted in-depth thoughts from a reader, either. Today’s the day. A few months ago, a reader sent in a very thought-provoking, well-written essay on just this very issue. Here are some of Melissa Koosmann’s thoughts on Good Telling, as she sees it after reading some HARRY POTTER and the thoughts of Scholastic editor Cheryl Klein. This is brilliant stuff. I could’ve talked about it, but she just did it much better.
***
I’ve been looking for, and finding, Good Telling in books for some time, but I couldn’t find a pattern in it until a week or two ago, when I stumbled on a transcript of Cheryl Klein’s speech “A Few Things Writers Can Learn from Harry Potter.” In this speech, Klein discusses J.K. Rowling’s use of showing and telling–including the Good Telling I’m so curious about.
Good Telling, according to Klein, often appears in topic sentences–like the ones we all learned how to write in fifth grade. Klein makes a great example of a topic sentence from a descriptive paragraph and claims that there’s a pattern of that sort of sentence throughout the book. I’ve been going through a copy of HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE, and she’s right.
There’s a Good Telling sentence at the beginning of most descriptive paragraphs. Consider this one in chapter two, when Harry is thrilled he gets to go to the zoo: “Harry had the best morning he’d had in a long time.” Kind of bland, eh? But it’s followed by a neat couple of sentences that show Harry keeping out of Dudley’s punching range and eating a dessert Dudley doesn’t want. This does a double job of showing: it makes Harry’s life seem pretty dismal, and it makes him seem like a nice kid. Without the Good Telling topic sentence, those neat details wouldn’t pack as much punch. As Klein puts it, “Sometimes readers need the plain straightforward direction of telling to elucidate the point of all that showing.”
So far so good–but that’s description, and I’m most interested in how Good Telling works in action and dialogue. So I stepped back and looked at the telling that happens in those areas, and I found that Klein’s topic sentence observation applies there, too. It’s just that the Good Telling sentence directs the reader through a whole beat of text–a bunch of paragraphs rather than a single one. When a Good Telling sentence shows up, it usually marks a change: either a physical jump in time or space, or a subtle shift in mood or focus. Check out these Good Telling sentences from Harry’s trip to the zoo, still in chapter 2 of PHILOSOPHER’S STONE:
1. “But today, nothing was going to go wrong.” Something immediately goes wrong. Harry makes the mistake of saying he dreamed about a flying motorcycle, and Uncle Vernon gets mad.
2. “But he [Harry] wished he hadn’t said anything.” The narrative shifts to internal thoughts as Harry reflects that his aunt and uncle hate him talking about things acting in ways they shouldn’t. This segment is part showing and part telling, but it ends with a Good Telling sentence, too. More on that later.
3. “Harry felt, afterward, that he should have known it was all too good to last.” Gulp! There’s a small place shift to the reptile house as well as a big mood shift because the reader is prepared for something truly terrible to happen. Not long later, Harry makes the glass on the snake cage vanish.
After I started to see this pattern, I could detect it more often in places where a lot of dialogue and action were happening, where the Good Telling sentences weren’t so eye-catching. And guess what? There’s a web of Good Telling working its way through the whole novel, supporting the narrative shifts that carry the reader from one emotional beat to the next. Rowling dispenses with these sentences at times when crisp, clear action and dialogue can carry the story forward on their own, but it’s rare for her to go more than a couple of pages without an instance of Good Telling.
I like the way Klein calls these types of sentences “topic sentences,” but it’s normally only in the descriptive paragraphs that they actually state a topic. Otherwise they act as invitations to the reader. It’s as if J.K. Rowling is saying, “Hey, over here! Harry’s stepping into a new room now, so why don’t you come on in with him?” or “Hi again! I just wanted to let you know Harry’s disappointment is about to shift to full-fledged anger” or “Watch out! New character stepping in!” Obviously the actual writing is far more subtle than that, but the Good Telling is instrumental in carrying readers along with the flow of change in the story.
Good Telling doesn’t always show up at the beginning of a beat. Rowling varies it on occasion, usually by beginning with a few flashy lines of dialogue–followed by a straightforward Good Telling sentence. Good Telling also leads out of an emotional beat of the text almost as often as it leads in. After showing a whole string of actions, along with punchy details that illuminate how Harry feels about them, she often makes use of a pause in pacing to state that Harry does indeed feel the way we think he’s feeling. Klein calls this “a confirmation for the reader, directing the emotional takeaway from whatever happened.”
Once you’re looking for it, this lead-in, lead-out pattern of Good Telling pops up in many books. And thinking about it makes writing easier. It doesn’t make for a very pretty writing rule, though: Show and Good Tell, don’t Bad Tell.
***
Can you find any examples of Good Telling? Talk about them in the comments. I’ve been wanting to mine my theatre/actor training and how it relates to writing for a while, and Melissa’s discussion of beats, above, is just one more reason for me to put on my thinking cap. I’m so happy that Melissa took the time to share her thoughts with me, and now I can share them with you.
Tags: Character, Description
When I’m editing manuscripts, I often notice that I fall into trends and phases. There are things I pick up on more than others these days, and those things haven’t always been the same. The more I read, the more I notice, and the deeper I get into my own understanding of novel craft. That’s why it’s always interesting to me to analyze the kinds of notes I give across manuscripts, the things that a lot of writers are doing and why they work, or don’t.
Here’s a note I’ve found myself giving very often in recent months: Stimulus first, then reaction.
Here’s an example of what I currently see in manuscripts, something random that I’ve written:
“Jeez! You scared me,” Anne said. Howard was standing in the kitchen, holding a butcher knife.
In this snippet, we get Anne’s reaction to Howard first, then we finally figure out what the reaction means: Howard is standing in the kitchen with a butcher knife.
The effect is jarring for the reader, but not in a good, suspenseful way (which I think is what the author intended). We get something that doesn’t seem to fit (reaction) and, instead of reading, we are now scrambling to figure out where the reaction belongs (to the stimulus). It takes the reader out of the story.
Now, I know that some people like to build suspense by giving a reader the reaction, then making them wait for the big reveal of what the stimulus is. This fails more often than it works because of the aforementioned confusion. And you’re likely going to reveal what caused the reaction within a sentence or two anyway, so is the payoff of withholding really worth it?
The same goes for introducing a character with dialogue instead of putting them in the scene first. Here’s an example:
“What’s going on, party people?”
I looked up. John was going around the room with a beer in one hand, slapping sloppy high-fives with the other. What a tool.
Once again, we’re left to play catch-up and try to figure out who uttered the phantom dialogue. It would be much more effective to say:
John barreled into the room and slapped a round of sloppy high-fives, spilling beer in his wake. “What’s going on, party people?” he yelled.
What a tool.
We know exactly what’s going on, the stage is set, all the players are in place. When it comes time for John to speak, we know the who and the why and the how of the situation.
When you plunk a new character into the scene or when you’re building a moment of surprise, remember that clarity is king. Give us a linear progression that goes from the stimulus to the narrator/main character’s interpretation and reaction.
That’s what we do as human beings. We see, interpret and react. Why should our characters or our storytellers be any different?
Tags: Character, Revision Trick
Something an agent (Scott Tremeil) said at the NJ SCBWI agent panel really put a point on something I’d been thinking for a long time and hadn’t quite gotten around to articulating. We were asked to give listeners one parting piece of advice. Mine, perhaps selfishly, was about the wonderful benefits of revision and getting a good critique group (since I want to see very, very polished manuscripts, of course).
Scott said that, sometimes, if he hears that a writer has been working on a manuscript for 10 years or so, that’s a red flag for him. I have to completely agree. Writers who are emotionally tied up in their story to an extreme degree are also a red flag. These issues make me worry: Is the writer too close to the manuscript to be able to see it objectively and revise it accordingly? Is it too precious for them? Are they so emotionally involved with the piece that getting it rejected by a publisher will be damaging? Are they so invested in a particular story or can they move on from it to write something else? Will it also take them 10 years to craft the next book?
Writers who belabor something for years are problematic. I know some mad geniuses like Harper Lee only have one great book in them. In today’s market, though, the ideal writer (to an agent or publisher, that is) can turn out consistent, quality manuscripts about once a year. This way you can always have a next book coming out and you can start building your readership. You’ll have a brand and, twice a year, readers can look for you on shelves — once in hardcover for this year’s book, once in paperback for last year’s.
Writers who are writing about a personal subject that is very close to their hearts make me anxious, too. If you are writing a story, for example, about the death of a character’s sister to, Heaven forbid, work through that tragedy happening in your own life, how will you deal with an editor rejecting that story? Or with an editor coming in and wanting you to make changes? Is your subject matter too close to home? Is an experience in the novel too precious and too reflective of your own life?
In no way am I saying “Don’t write about something painful or personal.” Do. That way, your story will have great emotional resonance. And it will be cathartic for you. But do realize which part of that story is yours and which part of that story is fiction. Which part belongs to you, privately, and which part belongs to readers, publicly.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: writing is extremely personal, but publishing is a business. If you don’t think you can walk this fine line with a manuscript that’s on your plate — whether it’s because you’ve been working on the manuscript for so long or because you’re dealing with deeply personal subject matter — it may be better not to pursue publication with it.
The point I wish I’d made, after hearing Scott’s advice, is this: there are many times in a writer’s journey where a manuscript is just a manuscript. Every single thing you write is a learning experience…but, sometimes, that’s all it is. Glean what you can from a manuscript or an essay or a paragraph, and move on. Start something new. You’ll be better and stronger and wiser for it. I like hearing that a writer has a lot of drawer novels, actually, because it tells me one very important thing: they know how to learn from an experience and move on.
This advice obviously doesn’t apply to everyone. Some people love mining their emotional past an others take longer to write a manuscript. But if these things are starting to feel like obstacles to you, the best solution may be putting that particular manuscript aside and starting something else.
Also, I am in Utah for a week-long conference that’s wrapping up today. I fly home tomorrow. If you have asked a question in the comments, emailed me, needed me for anything this week, I’ve been a bad, bad responder. It turns out it’s really hard to keep up while teaching at a conference for 5 days straight. Please be patient with me!
Tags: Conferences, Kill Your Babies, Writing
Some writers send me (and other agents) messages I like to call “prequeries.” They go something like this:
Hi! I have a project and it seems just like something you might like. It’s about… (brief description) and I’m all done with it. I’d love to submit. Are you accepting submissions? Should I go ahead and submit?
This is a useless email and one I’m not fond of answering. If I wasn’t accepting submissions, my email address wouldn’t be plastered all over the Internet. And I can’t tell anything about the project until I read the writing, so I don’t know if I’ll like it or not just for a few lines of description.
The Andrea Brown submission guidelines are quite easy to find online. We request the query letter and the first 10 pages of prose (or the full picture book manuscript) copied and pasted into the body of an email message. It’s very easy stuff.
So if you’re on the fence about submitting, maybe go back and revise a few times. If you don’t know whether or not I’ll like something, you really can’t tell that for sure without showing me your submission.
All I’m ever going to say in response to a prequery is: “Sure, send it along and follow our submission guidelines!” So let’s cut out the needless back and forth. Submit away!
Tags: Slush
Hey all, Robert recently wrote in to ask the following:
Is it ever possible for an author and illustrator to collaborate and then submit to agents/publishers? I know it’s not the norm and I know having my best friend illustrate my books makes me look amateur. Here’s the thing: we are true collaborators from the beginning of the project to the end. He helps me invent the characters and even comes up with plot elements and I dictate to him exactly how a picture should look at times. I know publishers have their own in-house illustrators and that it is unconventional to say the least. But I couldn’t ever publish without him. Do you have any advice as to how we should proceed?
I get this question a lot at conferences.
Here’s how the picture book pipeline usually works for authors:
- Get representation for a text or an offer from a publisher.
- Sell text to publisher.
- Have publisher match your text to an illustrator.
- See illustrations, have varying levels on input.
- Publish.
Here’s how it usually works for illustrators:
- Get representation for your illustrations or get interest from a publisher.
- Wait until a publishers has the right project for you.
- Sign a contract to work on the project and turn in sketches and finishes.
- Do revisions.
- Publish.
Now, Robert wants to know what happens if a publisher is approached with a project that has both text and illustrations already in place, but from two people. (If a project with both text and illustrations came from one person, that person would be called an author/illustrator, and, in my opinion, art and text from a single creator would be a more compelling sale if both the art and text were really strong. Most of my picture book sales have been for author/illustrators.)
Note one inaccuracy about Robert’s question: major publishing houses (and even small ones) hire out illustrators, they do not have in-house artists. Most have in-house designers and art directors, but designers do not do illustration work. They work on putting together a book’s cover and packaging (unless it’s a picture book, in which case the illustrator usually provides the cover image).
I say you run one big risk with this situation, whether you’re approaching an agent or a publisher: what if one component is better than the other? And since you have a close relationship with your co-creator and love the project as is, you may have trouble seeing that.
If you give somebody a package of text and art, that person will assume that this is how you want the book produced. They’ll see how you’ve executed the project and will have a bit more trouble imagining it any other way. So if you give an agent or an editor a complete picture book dummy with both text and art, and one or the other isn’t working, the agent or editor will think, “Gosh, I really wish the text (or art) was stronger, but I guess this is how the creators envision it, so I think I’ll reject.”
Of course, both text and art could be perfect, could work harmoniously together, etc., in which case the agent could offer representation to either or both of you and the publisher would issue each of you a publishing contract. And, of course, the project may not work as a whole, but a wonderful agent or editor with lots of vision could see each component part and imagine how it might work independently.
But I find, more often than not, that the situation Robert describes involves two people who may not be well-matched in terms of talent. And that’s the risk. If you’re dead set on publishing this project with your collaborator, that’s fine. But you could be cutting yourself off from the possibility of either selling the art or text separately — if you happened to be flexible. If you don’t happen to be flexible, it could mean not selling at all.
When I submit, I prefer to submit just text, just art, or an author/illustrator package by an author/illustrator client who has a great grasp of how their two mediums (art and text) play together. I would be reluctant, for the above reasons, to consider an author and illustrator team if the combination wasn’t perfect. I’d also be reluctant — again, unless I had a great match in mind — to pair a text with, say, one of my illustrators, and present both to the publisher.
The publisher has the final say in terms of which illustrator and which writer will compose a picture book. That decision has to do with the publisher’s own relationships, with the prestige of either creator, with how the publisher’s sales and marketing people react to either component, etc. In a market where picture books are not doing well and most titles are not getting picked up for distribution by the major chains, publishers often find themselves pairing a debut author with a name illustrator or vice versa to make the project viable. If you’re insisting on a debut text paired with a debut illustrator…you may not have the most compelling case.
My biggest bit of advice is: be flexible. If an agent or editor wants either text or illustrations from you, consider it. How willing you are to entertain other illustrators (or authors) for this project really could mean the difference between published and not.
Tags: Illustration, Picturebook
Great News!
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