Welcome.
To get things started, I’m going to propose two topics, but don’t feel you need to stick to them, I just wanted to give us a place to begin.
jacy provided a great suggestion in the last writers post. With your first comment, introduce yourself, tell us a bit about what you’re writing, what experience you have and what you’re interested in. And remember my golden rules: kind, supportive and informative comments only, leave your snarky, critical, discouraging voice for another time and place.
First topic, by popular request: How to begin and how to stay focused. Hillary R has some very helpful advice over at her place and I’m going to start with this piece:
(1) Show it! Often we procrastinate because we’re afraid to show our work to anyone. (“Afraid” is probably putting it lightly—we’re often terrified.) So stop hoarding your work and start showing it. But be judicious: there’s no point in showing to clueless or callous people. Show only to kind supporters who “get” what you’re trying to do.
Start now! Show bits and pieces, or the whole thing. Invite any feedback, or certain kinds of feedback, or no feedback at all. (Tell your audience what you want!) The showing, not the feedback, is the important part.
(2) Finish small stuff. Finishing is a skill you can practice. If you’re a fiction writer, write anecdotes and vignettes. (Bring them to completion, and then show them.) If you write nonfiction, write up (and show) one small point instead of several big ones. If you’re stuck on a complex email, write (and send) several small ones instead. (Here’s how to overcome email overload.)
Click on over to the entire article to read the rest. She’s going to try and stop by to answer questions today. What helpful tricks do you have for starting and staying on your writing task?
Second topic, for those who are farther along, or who have actually published and can offer advice. What to do when it’s time to start the editing process. I’ve spent my life in theatre, film and television, so I understand collaborative art, the whole process is a group effort. But I am stymied when it comes to novels and short stories. How do you go about editing – finding a good editor, incorporating their input in what is a highly personal work, what boundaries to set, etc. So I would love to hear your thoughts and struggles in the editing process.
Okay that’s it, have at it…
FYI, to read all our group posts, just click on the Writing Group tag and it will pop all of them up in a window.
PaulW
Give me twenty minutes to find a better wifi this Barnes and Noble socks for connecting BRB and oh GO NANOWRIMO
Iowa Old Lady
I write middle-grade and young adult fantasy novels. I have one of each out with small presses. Before I started doing this, I wrote academic articles and monographs on the communication practices of engineers, and a literal million words of Tolkien fanfiction.
My favorite part of writing is revising. My least favorite part is getting the first draft down.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
Hello, all! Thanks, TaMara, for setting this up.
I recently sold my first novel (a mystery) to a publisher. I won’t reveal any particulars, such as title and my actual non-pseudonymous name until instructed to do so.
It has been a long, hard slog to get to this point, and I hope I can offer some encouragement for those who are still struggling down that road.
Iowa Old Lady
@PaulW: Last year about this time, PaulW’s writers group self-published a collection of holiday themed short stories which I read. I enjoyed Paul’s the most, though I could have been prejudiced. I think the group has taken it down and is doing something else with it now, but I’m not sure.
I didn’t review the collection on Amazon or Goodreads. Do you all write reviews? I would never write less than a 5-star one because I don’t want to hurt another writer. Plus, sometimes people take revenge. So I just don’t do any. I’m thinking that makes me a bad writer buddy.
Greg
I’m Greg. I finished what I consider my first publishable work last December. I’ve been bounced from a few open calls by publishers. The six month wait for rejection from Angry Robot was particularly trying. I’m at 22/200 agent rejections. Once I hit 200 I’ll shelve that one.
It’s an Urban Fantasy with one main character who keeps reincarnating as a new person with clear recall of his past lives. He’s been doing that for 20000 years. The other protagonist is his adopted daughter, in the afterlife, starting with no memories of being human and under attack by lampreys on steroids.
It’s the first of three planned novels with those two characters. I have the second half outlined but I’m not working on it any further until I get some action on the first one. The query process is going about how I expected it to. I sent out the first wave and then did a rework of the query, another rework. Then another. I let myself get caught in the hope trap with the Angry Robot thing when everyone I knew submitted in the same genre and timeframe got bounced three months before me.
There are pieces of the story on my blog and there will be a short story from what I’m currently working on there soon. I’m going to stop typing now because this is getting long.
Iowa Old Lady
@Greg: Submission and especially querying are just soul-sucking. But that slow rejection is a good sign. You’re close.
I should say that I belong to a locked online writers group, which is a really good place to blow off steam about editors and agents and get sympathy and support. Rejection is just such an integral part of a writer’s life.
Mary G
I have the “can’t show it” syndrome. Just a big chicken. I got over it for nonfiction, but still working on the fiction.
Greg
@Iowa Old Lady: I actually want a brutal rejection. The soul sucking part is the vanilla rejections. I may be weird.
I’ve not done Amazon reviews mostly because I don’t buy books from Amazon. I have posted some on my blog and don’t seen any reason not to review on a store site. I want honest feedback. I can’t be angry if someone provides it.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mary G: I don’t show a first draft, or what Jane Smiley calls a zero draft. That’s just for me. One of the ways I get through it is to tell myself that I may be writing crap but no one will see it unless I let them.
But after that, I love sharing. I want critique. Accepting feedback and using it fruitfully is one of the few skills I learned in academic writing that had transferred well.
What do you write, Mary?
TaMara (HFG)
I love you all, thanks for showing up.
Iowa Old Lady
If anyone is looking for a place to submit a short story in any genre, The Binge-Watching Cure anthology is taking submissions until the end of December, so your wait to hear back wouldn’t be long. The only stipulation is that the story has to meet a specific word count. See the link.
hitchhiker
I’m Kate. I write narrative science — meaning, I translate current academic papers & projects about neuroscience into language lay people can deal with. I’ve done this on a series of live blogs, a kickstarter-funded book, and most recently a full, beautifully illustrated book that was commissioned by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
I also write as a volunteer for a local organization that nurtures people living with mental health challenges and/or addiction.
And I have most of a first novel finished … it’s literary fiction in the style of Alice Munro or Anne Patchett.
Woooooo! Glad we’re doing this.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Howdy. I have written two YA novels, a screenplay (horror with comic elements), two children’s books, and multiple essays. I have not, however, tried to publish them or have them produced. I pretty much hate the business of writing (composing cover letters and such).
I am making 2017 the year I face that business though. I’ve split the last 25 years working as a community college comp and lit instructor and evidence technician/CSI. I’ve been a contributing coeditor for two esoteric news letters. I grew disheartened reading so many articles by mainstream editors and agents about how they’re so busy and can hardly be bothered to spend their time working with new or unpublished writers. (Anyone else find those folks in mainstream publishing to be rather off-putting?)
Anyway, it’s time to give it a serious go.
MarkP
Hi. Long-time BJ reader, first ever comment.
I write science fiction and fantasy. I have one published story from 1989. The thing is, in the 90s I got into politics and eventually got into the state legislature. In the 2014 election, the voters elected me to go back to writing SF and fantasy, and here I am again. I enjoy writing. I haven’t sold anything this century, but I keep getting “This is good, but not quite my/our thing” kind of rejections, which by now just make me want to scream.
Anyway, nice to meet all of you.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Iowa Old Lady:
Hi, yeah, our group had a schism over that book, and it was pulled from the market so it’s a collectible now. /sigh
To answer the second question, the publication process involves a lot of sharing your work with a critique group. Any reasonable metro market, small city, college town, or place of people should have a writers’ group that meets regularly to share works and receive evaluations.
If you’re looking for a writers’ group near you, places to check in the real world are 1) libraries, 2) colleges, 3) bookstores and cafes. Libraries in particular are eager to host literary events and encourage writing groups to form and use their resources. Colleges with a solid English department or creative arts program will have a literary publication or support group of some kind (English professors love to sponsor that sort of thing).
The purpose of a critique group should be to provide positive evaluations: recognize the writer has a reason to tell this tale, and it’s merely the mechanics and storytelling efforts that need to be tweaked (by the author him/herself). No negativity, no “oh god that socked”, and try to avoid “I’D write it this way” when criticizing. Some people are better at critiquing than others, and remember YOU are the one who has final say. If you want that car chase with exploding penguins in your plot, then dammit keep that bit in.
From those critique groups you can find someone who will agree to 1) be a beta reader, someone who just scans the work for readability, or 2) an editor who can delve into the meat of the work and parse/clean the work down to a more polished form. Some people will charge to be an editor, so budget accordingly. Also be aware some people are more comfortable editing in certain genres than others: DO NOT ASK someone who’s an expert on romance novels to edit your Western.
Be patient with the critiquing process, and be aware you will be asked to critique along with everyone else in the group. If you’re uncomfortable reviewing other people’s stuff, try to find a way to provide SOME input and support to your fellow writers.
As an example, I live in the Lakeland Polk County area. there are a slew of writers group at the larger city libraries here, as well as some independent writers groups surrounding the area. they meet on a bi-weekly or monthly schedule that helps contribute to their effectiveness as reviewers.
If you’re having problems finding real-world critique groups, check out social media sites like Facebook and Meetup. They should direct you to pages of local writers groups that can tell you schedules and meeting places.
You can also check if there are professional writers organizations. There is a Florida Writers’ Association that hosts miniconfererences almost every month as well as an annual conference that provides direct access to AGENTS AND PUBLISHERS who can advise you how to sell yourself to get published. There’s also Genre writers groups like the Mystery Writers of America and so on.
Look for a reference called the Writers’ Market, most libraries will carry current editions.
Anything else?
Mnemosyne
After about a decade away from it, I’m getting back to writing romance, and this time I’ve gone all in: not only have I joined the RWA, my local chapter of the RWA, and an online chapter, I signed up for a regional romance writer’s conference in March where I will be pitching to either an agent or a publisher, and getting a critique from a different agent or publisher. I’m trying to get a critique group started, but the holidays is probably the absolute worst time possible to do it.
I have a craft question for the genre writers: how do you tell the difference between a trope and a cliche? I just realized that I need a new character in the second half of my book who can become my heroine’s mentor/confidante so she has someone to talk to other than the hero. My first instinct is to make the character an aunt (or, as I’m thinking of it right now “step-aunt once removed”) but then I freak myself out that it’s a cliche and I should come up with something, yanno, creative, like a werewolf ghost. (Okay, I’m kidding about the werewolf ghost.)
Right now, one of my biggest problems as a novice writer with a day job is getting into the habit of sitting down every day to write. It’s partly an ADHD thing — if I don’t have a specific plan to do something, it doesn’t get done. I’m liking one website’s idea of having a daily goal, but making it very low so you’ll be sure to accomplish it every day. Again with the ADHD, one of the worst things you can do is set yourself up for failure, so the idea of setting the daily goal at, say, 250 words is very appealing because it’s hard to imagine a situation where I wouldn’t be able to do that.
Greg
@PaulWartenberg2016: Oh sweet FSM finding beta readers has been a nightmare. I really do need to find a group because non-writers are too distracted by shiny things.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian:
CONGRATULATIONS on getting your sock published.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Greg:
Just Facebook or Meetup search for any writers group within 25 miles of you. Check the local colleges. Kidnap Stephen King. The options ARE ENDLESS.
Applejinx
The most helpful thing I know is that I will always write, sooner or later. I run on weekly deadlines and do a chapter per week while I’m writing fiction, and a chapter’s between 5000 and 9000 words, so that’s roughly 1000 words a day every day.
Do I sit down and write 1000 words every day? FUCK NO :D
The way my schedule operates, Wednesday is a decent chance for getting a start on the week, perhaps scouting out ahead and making notes for what’s to come (just as important). What was written last week is more or less set in stone and people have read it and taken it as the weekly update, so barring typos and things (which I’m not very prone to) it’s done. If it’s gone wrong in some way, that might force FUTURE chapters to make adjustments.
Thursday, Friday, also opportunities for getting writing done. It’s increasingly likely that I’ll get a lot of words out, if I haven’t already. Saturday, I refuse to write or do other work. I’m not Jewish but I picked that day anyway, as the one day a week I don’t stress (with a penchant for writing and a ‘day job’ of creative DSP coding, almost every waking hour is spent thinking consciously or subconsciously about what happens next, and it’s been that way for years and years, exhaustingly, and will continue until I die.)
On Sunday, I WILL finish the chapter for the week. Doesn’t matter if I’ve been completely blocked or doing stuff the whole week. It can be the easy way (7000 words already! Polish and come up with a good cliffhanger) or the hard way (stay up until the entire chapter is done, at all costs) but no matter what, it will happen. The only variable is how much it hurts while it happens.
So that’s pretty much how it works: the question is not whether I’ll do the writing, but how. It can be dispersed throughout the week, it can be well in advance for a sense of expansiveness and control, or it can be a knotted, fretful spasm of super-high pressure. Because I’m completely ready to face the worst-case scenario, I generally don’t have to.
:)
PaulWartenberg2016
@Mnemosyne:
The rule is simple: a cliche is lazy and just sits there filling a spot. A trope is something that helps define a character/scene in a way that makes it easily recognizable by readers.
MarkP
@Mnemosyne: Regarding the difference between a trope and a cliche. I don’t think that the fact that the heroine’s mentor is an aunt is and of itself a cliche. I think where you run the risk of cliche is when you take the concept “aunt” and make her into a generic older lady who, I don’t know, bakes cookies and ties her gray hair in a bun or something.
An aunt who is passionate about skateboarding, on the other hand, is definitely not a cliche.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
I want to read about Paul Wartenberg2016’s exploding penguins under attack by Greg’s lampreys on steroids.
Mnemosyne
@hitchhiker:
I’m reading an interesting nonfiction book right now that probably fits into that genre: Year Without Summer: 1816. It’s a combination of scientifically explaining the weather patterns that were created by a massive volcano explosion in Indonesia in 1815 and looking at the historical record of how people reacted to those bizarre weather patterns. Among other things, Frankenstein might never have been written if that volcano had not exploded.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: Mnem, I once heard Cory Doctorow talk about writing with a full time job. He aimed for a page a day, which is about 250 words. He does it first thing in the morning. Sometimes he writes more, but never less. He probably thinks about it during the day too. But regular writing like that trained his muse to show up every morning.
I don’t know about trope vs cliché. I wouldn’t object to an aunt, but you’re in a genre I don’t read much so for all I know aunties appear in every book. You could brainstorm a list of possibilities and see if you find one you like better. A male character would be interesting because that might also complicate your story.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@PaulWartenberg2016: Thank you!
Summer
Hey all, I’m writing too and am grateful for this group and thread. I’ve finished four picture book stories that no one so far has wanted to rep or buy, and about three romance novels started and abandoned. I also just adapted the script of a dated play for a recent production. This NaNoWriMo I started a romantic comedy screenplay with a friend and we’re plugging along at about 1/4 the way finished. I’ve written as a reporter and as an academic and want to go back to writing what people will read. Or watch. I don’t seem to have any problem showing my early work to people; I do have a problem getting all the way to the end where it’s ready to go.
Greg
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: The penguins would win until one of the big one’s that grew arms showed up.
jacy
I write mystery/crime/horror/fantasy — I’ve published two mysteries, one horror novel, and a collection of short fiction, as well as having stories in several anthologies. For 20 years I was a fiction editor, and now I design book covers and marketing materials for authors as my day job, as well as advising authors on independent publishing. I’m working on several writing projects — although right now they take an almost complete backseat to everyday work and life. I’m struggling to find the time and energy to write, because I for me it takes a lot of space to write — I’m slow and methodical and was never able to just spew out a first draft like I want to.
Advice — you have to find the time. And there’s no one-size-fits-all for doing that.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
There is no one more pretentious than a Goodreads reviewer. I only write why I did or didn’t like the book, mostly to remind myself in the future.
PaulWartenberg2016
If I had to answer the first question, I write mostly as a pantser – someone with a vague outline, sometimes observations and notes on major characters, and then just write depending on my mood and focus. I end up jumping about between chapters, trying to get the key scenes written first and then filling gaps later.
Finding time and finding motivation are two separate yet equally important facets of writing.
Also, giving myself goals/incentives helps. I love NaNo for precisely that: it gives me daily objectives and final goals to reach. It’s when NaNo’s over and I’m floating by myself that I can’t get my novels outright finished. :/
Applejinx
@PaulWartenberg2016:
This is a great, great point. I’ve done a bunch of writer coaching and can’t agree with this enough: it’s the difference between a good critic/teacher and a weak one.
John Gardner, in ‘On Becoming A Novelist’, touches on this as well. As a critic or helper, our first duty is to try and find out what the writer is attempting. My opinion on the matter means basically nothing: they could be trying to do something I hate, and unless I can grok that, my advice will be useless or even damaging. This holds for style as well. If somebody’s looking to be purple, my noir terseness won’t help them create what’s in their heart.
And although it may be possible to turn a buck in various markets by letting critics direct you to more popular pursuits, to my mind (and Gardner’s) if you’re not trying to create what’s in your heart, however soft or tainted or bitter or secretly yearning, then you could be aspiring to more and setting your sights higher.
This can lead us to strange places (trust me there) but it’s important, for all that :)
PaulWartenberg2016
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian:
Let’s not get distracted by the exploding penguins. I’m only using them as an allegory.
Not every story can make an exploding penguin work.
PaulWartenberg2016
I gotta get back to Saturnalia shopping. If you have any questions, my Facebook Author’s page is https://www.facebook.com/paulwstories/
PaulWartenberg2016
@Applejinx:
Agreeing with Applejinx 100 percent. Positivity in the process helps.
Josie
You are all so much more accomplished than I am. I have always written research and/or educational papers (mostly on teaching rhetoric to second language learners), but I want desperately to write a historical novel about the Mexican Revolution. It has been an interest of mine for many years. I am not a very creative writer at this point, although I am determined to give it a shot. I am in the middle of my research and outlining at this point, and I did get some of the Red Shoes series on my Kindle to help me with plot, dialogue and such. Although I won’t be ready to show anything for a while, I will be sponging up any ideas on writing in general. Thanks for doing this.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I’m kind of a pantser, too, like Paul.
I’d be happy to offer my professional perspective to crime/mystery writers as far as police/CSI procedural stuff goes.
Diana
I’ve always loved this advice from Lee Child:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/a-simple-way-to-create-suspense/?_r=0
Mnemosyne
@PaulWartenberg2016:
I also suspect that, at least with historical romance, a trope happens because you need a reasonably plausible character, and there’s a fairly limited number of those available depending on the period. Unless I go with the werewolf ghost. ;-)
@Iowa Old Lady:
The character arc issue I’m dealing with is that the heroine needs to learn to trust other people, because she comes from a horrible family where her whole life has been subsumed into doing what’s best for the family, not what she wants to do. She needs a character in addition to the hero to tell her it’s okay to ignore what her family wants her to do (which is a specific plot point I don’t want to go into online) and that it’s okay to put her relationship with the hero above her family. An older, wiser woman is the most logical one for that role, but that’s where I freak myself out and wonder if I’m taking the easy route. I’ve seen that role taken by a male character in other books, but I don’t think that would work with my specific heroine and story. She would be more likely to be willing to trust an older woman than a man.
Applejinx
@PaulWartenberg2016: The Python who could make exploding penguins work best was, I think, Graham Chapman. He teamed up with Cleese, who brought discipline and logic to the equation, but Chapman was always the one who’d come up with completely unforced nonsense out of nowhere.
There’s a million ways to do anything, that’s what makes this pursuit so interesting :)
Also:
Throw away the gaps and figure out how to use only the key scenes. If it’s madness and doesn’t connect at all, you may be missing other key scenes for accomplishing stuff, and that could give you other key scenes where you know exactly what must be done. I would never be able to write if I had to fill in scenes that were still good but didn’t fulfill a structural purpose. It’s all structure with me; if that’s too sparse then I figure I don’t have enough subplots and character intentions for a book yet.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: I once read that it can be useful to make the words of wisdom come from an unlikeable character or even the antagonist.
hitchhiker
I’ve been in a critiquing group since the early 90s & seen more than a dozen of our projects become books over that time, including 3 of mine. I couldn’t do without it at this point … one reason it works is that we’re eclectic. We write poetry, history, memoir, literary fiction, science, and essays. Meetings are once a month for a few hours, rotating between our houses.
Knowing that they’re going to expect another 10 or 12 pages from me every month is one of the things that pushes me into writing them.
Greg
I started with a broad outline and a rough idea of what I wanted to do. Then I realized I needed an audience surrogate. Then I realized I had two protagonists. Then I realized she wasn’t convincing. Then I realized I would have to do some POV from the bad guy. Then I re-outlined from about the 40% point. Then I just started writing huge chunks from each POV character until I had to start tying it together. Scrivener is great for that. Writing each scene out without worrying about the chapter order at that point let my flow a little better.
Applejinx
@Josie:
Settle down! I am not. I write stories about ponies. Gave up on ‘real’ writing years ago, and now I get my ‘real’ theme and deeper-meaning purposes done in this hilarious, unrespectable way :D
This is as good a time as any to post my most recent video, Good Dialogue and Bad, Bad Dialogue, which was recorded at Bronycon (yup! Bronies!). That’s me on the left (appropriate, no?) and a kid who goes by Lunatone on the right. The panel’s his idea but he needed an experienced panelist, and I have a lot of content on dialogue writing and a lot of experience public speaking and thinking on my feet (okay, ‘hooves’).
So always remember, there’s at least ONE poster in these threads who is ‘worse’ and ‘less real’ than you. But for all that, I am certain I can help, and nothing would please me more :)
Mary G
@Greg: I would love to be a beta reader. I’ve been in a bunch of writers groups and loved the critiquing part and got good reviews for mine. I was on the path to a second career as an editor when my RA flared up so badly I had to break down and file for disability. Now that speech recognition is so much better I hope to get into some type of online group, maybe through Balloon Juice?
Kathleen
Oh my gosh, Tamara, such a timely topic as I am as I type procrastinating on a writing project I have to have finished by today! I am submitting an application to my local Fringe Festival which entails 10 pages of sample script (I have about 8 pages done) plus a 3 page marketing proposal. Like Mnemosyne, I have a problem with writing every day and have ADHD (look – squirrels wearing rhinestone collars!)
I had one play produced at Fringe Festival 5 years ago. My goal is to use both plays as a basis for a comedy pod cast. I love writing comedy and satire. The problem is that in these times it’s very difficult to get a handle on what is the source of the satire. For this play I’m satirizing the acceptance of mainstreaming evil while offering way to find the power to defeat it. As Keenan Ivory Wayans told his brothers, be as angry as you want just make sure that first it’s funny.
Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy and antidepressants can cause weight gain otherwise I’d take them so here I am.
I am fortunate because I have an informal Writers’ Group I’ve participated in for 13 years. They’ve provided support and great feedback.
I believe that claiming and using our powers to create are the ultimate acts of rebellion, so I applaud everyone here and the impressive levels of talent, discipline and accomplishment!
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Wow, that would be such a help! I write mysteries, and I’m guilty of tiptoeing around scenes involving actual law enforcement because I know it’s not my strength. I’m afraid if I’m too detailed, I’ll make mistakes and people will laugh.
Mnemosyne
@Iowa Old Lady:
Yeah, but what my poor heroine needs is a therapist. In 1816. Even more abuse from her abusive family isn’t going to turn the tide for her.
@Greg:
I’m definitely more of a planner, but I love Scrivener because, if I get stuck on a scene, I can jump out and write a different one rather than abandoning the manuscript because I can’t figure out how to get from A to C.
TaMara (HFG)
@Mary G: Can I send you an email, I have a question…
Felanius Kootea
I write short stories in my spare time and don’t expect to publish more than one or two books – I love my full time job as a researcher as much as I love writing short stories. I’ve almost completed a collection of short stories – 9 story drafts written, six revised to my satisfaction thus far and two of those published in litmags. It’s hard to get a short story collection published, so my strategy is to get four more individual stories published and then reach out to publishers. I have four stories out right now and the worst thing is the “we really love your writing but it just doesn’t meet our needs rejection.” I’ve had loads of those. It’s so bad that I actually got excited (I danced for joy) about a personalized rejection from the New Yorker – my first submission there was met with complete silence, my second with a form rejection and my third with a personalized, we admire your writing rejection. One of the four stories is shortlisted with a magazine – editor likes it, guest editor who makes final selection might not. It’s such a slog. One hundred submissions and fifty rejections thus far but I’m not giving up :).
ETA: I use Duotrope to keep track of my submissions and have it to be extremely useful/worth it.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian:
If be more than happy to offer my thoughts!
Greg
@Mary G: I’m always willing to let people see my work. But upfront, I have to say there’s some stuff in it that will be triggery. The antagonist likes what he does. It’s made him strong and next to immortal. One of the protagonists has done things in his past lives that aren’t much better. I don’t think I wrote anything that is gratuitous and doesn’t move the story forward but that’s also why I’m looking for beta readers. What feedback I’ve gotten didn’t mention anything about those scenes but did say a fight scene went too long. But yes, I’ll take any help I can get.
Mnemosyne
@Kathleen:
I know you’re snarking, but … unless you have a history of seizures (or conditions that can make you prone to seizures, like alcoholism or an eating disorder), Wellbutrin (buproprion) is the best antidepressant for people with ADHD. It’s not an SSRI, so it doesn’t cause weight gain, either. I was very lucky that they gave it to me long before my ADHD diagnosis because it also helps with ADHD (though not as well as stimulants do).
Kathleen
@Mnemosyne: Actually, I did take a generic of that when I quit smoking back in 1997 and it really did help take the edge off.
Joyce H
I think one thing we have to recognize is that all writers are different. I know writers who write their stuff out of order, do three different versions of a scene and churn out this enormous shambolic mess, confident that it will all sort out in the rewrite. All the writers advice gurus talk about the importance of the rewrite, and how critical it is to the finished product. I SUCK at the rewrite and edit, and I know that about myself. So what I do is start at the beginning and write through to the end, rewriting and editing as I go. When I reach ‘the end’ for the first time, the product I have is a couple polishes away from the finished product. If I went by conventional wisdom, I would say I’m doing it all wrong, but it works for me, and trying it the way the gurus advise DOESN’T. So bottom line – if doing it the way ‘everyone’ says you’re supposed to do it isn’t working, try something else.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Thanks! I won’t get to those scenes until sometime next year, but I’d love to have an email for you. I’m janplan at the aol place.
Marina
I’m an editor of academic papers and a volunteer dog walker for my local shelter. Around three years ago I started writing a Damon Runyon-esque upmarket literary women’s fiction novel (there’s a mouthful!) about a teen runaway in the early ’70s. Over time Runyon gave way to something intensely personal: writing was painful, and I had to make myself do it. Fortunately the teen loved to dance and bake, and also fell in love, so along with the lurid violence there was fun stuff, including various caramel-based recipes and doggerel (she didn’t fancy herself a poet, she just liked writing goofy and occasionally obscene little songs for herself). I guess Sebastian Dangerfield, Freddy the Pig, and Winnie the Pooh changed me for life. Not to mention Elmore Leonard, whose Rules of Writing are my equivalent of the bible.
I finished my novel. I edited it myself; I was ruthless and detached. The novel got even more personal. I feel embarrassed by what I wrote: some of it is real, and all of it is real in my head. I’ve never showed it to any body. I wouldn’t want to show it to anyone I knew, because then I’d be staring at them waiting for their assessment, and they’d know things about me, things that happened to me, that I don’t necessarily want them to know. I’ve written God only knows how many variations of a query letter, and have pored over the website of literary agent and apparent goddess Janet Reid, the Query Shark: http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-query-shark-works.html She critiques queries and sets out detailed guidelines; the site’s immensely helpful.
But I haven’t sent it out. I’m 100% certain of rejection. What I’ve done is too eccentric, too anti-spiritual uplift, too dirty, too disgusting, set too long ago with music nobody’s ever heard of… etc., etc. I know this self-sabotaging self-talk isn’t productive, but it also isn’t wrong. Plus I feel that the people who find good agents are referred to them by celebrities, or are celebrities, or are related to celebrities. They have MFAs from fancy universities, and have spent $$$$ going to writers’ conferences to hob-nob with agents face-to-face and charm them with their radiant beauty, trendy youth, and millions of Twitter followers. Plus they’re writing in genres agents like, because they sell, like fantasy and science fiction trilogies, mystery, magical realism, kid lit, religion, self-help, or how to lose weight, or how to gain weight through butter-loaded recipes in glamorously illustrated cookbooks where the fat pretty much drips off the page… I’m turning into a self-pitying whiner, and I’m worry.
How do people force themselves to query?
Despite all my searches, I haven’t even been able to identify agents with whom I feel any sort of kinship. Anybody know of agents that are actually open to oddball writing? Or of sites that do a decent job of explaining self-publishing? When I think of the latter, I think of throwing a pebble containing all the meaning in my soul and flinging it into an ocean, and then watching it disappear forever under the waves. This is perhaps not the best approach…
Thanks for reading.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Joyce H:
Good thoughts!
I am very big on reading one’s work aloud; our ears catch stuff that eyes-alone reading maybe doesn’t, such as repetitive wording.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian:
I’ve never dug into the internal workings here at BJ. Can we private message? Can I just post my email address and trust I won’t get spammed by a troll or malevolent sitebot? I’ve belonged to a forum where posting personal info was a boot-worthy infraction.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
BTW, I feel perfectly confident that no one on this thread is trollish in the least.
Joyce H
@Mnemosyne:
How to tell the difference between a trope and a cliche? Easy. Forget about it. Cliches often exist because they reflect how life really works. Just look at the situation and see what works in context. Your heroine needs a confidante, older to give good advice. Aunts work well for your time period. (I’m thinking Mrs. Gardner in P&P.) Sounds like you have a dysfunctional family, so the confidante ought to be from the ‘sane’ side of the family. Some other possibilities are godmother or maid. Or the vicar’s wife. Emma used the former governess.
Actually, cliches can be fun. When I was writing The World’s A Stage, it occurred to me that traditional Regency (the sort I write, light-hearted comedy of manners) is actually historical chick-lit. Said to myself, “If this is chick-lit, there ought to be the Gay Best Friend.” Well, the setting was the theater, making it more likely that an 1817 young miss would even know that gay was a thing, I decided to go for it, and gave my heroine a Gay Best Friend.
Kathleen
@Joyce H: Thank you for that reminder! I think we all put enough pressure on ourselves without forcing ourselves to add someone else’s magic formula which may work well for them but not for us.
Iowa Old Lady
There are a lot of good beta readers on BJ.
Greg
@Marina: If you think your work is similar to any author’s at all, find their agent and see if they’re open to queries. If they aren’t see if anyone at their agency is. Everything I’ve seen, read, and am currently experiencing says finding an agent is a long slog. I think it’s worth it. I think my work is saleable.
I write fantasy and scifi. We aren’t necessarily looking for the same agents so I don’t have any names to look for. That said, if you’re looking for inisght, check out http://www.kameronhurley.com. She writes genre fiction, mainly, but it’s far from conventional or traditional. She has a lot of excellent posts about the business of writing in general, as well as other subjects. You may be able to user her experience to help you.
Major Major Major Major
Hello, everybody.
My name is [my name] and I’m an information scientist. Sorry I’m late, I’m on the west coast and was up late working on a project. I’m writing two things right now, a book about a world where all the fish disappear, and a book(?) about a wizard named Dennis who works as an insurance actuary in Seattle. My writing tends towards something like a real-world version of Terry Pratchett, where the ‘different’ mixes in with the mundane for something that’s about seventy percent lighthearted. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, the first thing I have a strong memory of I was ten. In college I studied among other things creative writing and creative nonfiction. I’ve worked in the nonfiction side of publishing and ghostwrote some things there. Fiction is a hobby that I’d love to get paid for.
As for starting and staying focused, here are some thoughts:
I’ve been in software development for the last several years, and they use a set of tools for project management that I find can provide a very useful way to think about writing. Software engineering is in my opinion somewhere between ‘actual’ engineering and writing and I could go on about the comparison. But one of the things that you can do, because you have to, is to break an ambitious project into a series of ‘shippable products’ that you work on in short iterative cycles. So before we have this, we must have that, and before we have that, etc. It’s a process by which you develop an understanding of how everything fits together, so that even if you’re working on some small dark corner, you can tell yourself it’s in the service of this big project. I like to think of writing like this too.
Software development is collaborative and your work will undergo a lot of criticism. This can be hard to take, because programming is creative, but the best learn how to give and take it in a helpful way. You also know that you’re all in this together trying to make the best product you can, so you know that making your part as good as it can be is in service of the greater good. Coding is also necessarily an enterprise where you share your code. (I’m not suggesting that everybody go out and learn how to code (I do suggest that, but that’s another story), but I think there are a lot of parallels and that the two processes can inform each other.)
Here are some things I’ve learned.
1. If there’s something that you wrote that you really like, but it doesn’t fit in with what you’re doing now, squirrel it away somewhere. You can always use it later.
2. Limit your scope. A good piece of software will do only what it’s supposed to, and it will do those things well. Once you start to expand what it’s supposed to do or make it all things to all people, it will suck. It’s OK to cut things out; see point 1.
3. Don’t be clever. Very few people actually have the capacity to be clever all the time. Nine times out of ten, when you try to do something clever, it ends up breaking the code because it’s either the wrong way to solve this particular problem or you aren’t ready yet.
4. But do be clever. A creative approach to what you thought was a known problem can yield unexpected insights.
5. As they say, kill your darlings. Writing and coding are tools in the service of communicating ideas and making tools to solve problems people have. Parts of your work that don’t do this can be great, but they might not belong to the work. Again, see point 1.
6. There is a saying in some Zen circles: start where you are. This is like write what you know, which I have some words about.
7. Share! You have to share. For this current project I actually just started posting chapters on my blog. Not just any chapters, all of them through the first act. I mostly got positive and helpful feedback; folks aren’t really motivated to provide nasty, negative feedback on a small-time blog.
If you’d like me to read something you wrote, email me at theworldbeyondeels [at] gmail /dot/ com
TaMara (HFG)
@West of the Rockies (been a while) If you want to exchange emails and don’t want to post here, you can use the drop down menu and send your emails to me and pass them along as long as both of you want to do that.
Summer
@Iowa Old Lady: I think using what may be considered character cliches is fine. Hip hop uses standard tropes and language as a call to community; I think the familiar can be deeply pleasurable to readers for the same reason. The wise but feisty old lady; the preternaturally thoughtful child: why not?
Mnemosyne
@Joyce H:
And that’s probably why The World’s A Stage is my favorite of that series, because you were also able to use that same idea to fuel the Romantic Misunderstanding trope between the hero and heroine. (I’m trying to say that I saw what you did without spoiling it for those who haven’t had a chance to read it yet.)
The confidante is going to be a member of the hero’s family who turns out to be staying at their new home in Scotland when they’re not entirely sure that they’re actually legally married (because I LOVE the trope of irregular Scottish marriages) but now have to fake it in front of the whole staff, plus this new surprise relative.
She was talking to me when I was on a walk yesterday, so I think I have a decent idea who she is.
Elmo
Wow. You guys actually write.
Me, I write for my day job (lawyer) and I have had an idea for a series of novels since about 1992, but haven’t managed to do more than write a few scenes. I have the world and the characters in my head, along with some of the plot; but getting it all together to tell a *story* has been challenging.
Should sound familiar: It’s about the resistance to a galactic government that keeps its tyranny confined to the outlying worlds, so that even its own citizens have no idea why they have cheap food and raw materials.
The chief protagonist is a military officer who discovers the truth mid-story and realizes – in a series of flashbacks – that she has been the villain all along.
How do you do that “shrug” ASCII that all the cool kids on Twitter are using?
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: Oh that sounds so good!
Major Major Major Major
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Obviously it’s meant to refer to any Spheniscid undergoing extreme decompression.
cosima
I’ve pointed my daughter to this thread in hopes that she’d come by for some editing support, but honestly, I don’t know if she’ll show up.
She’s got an agent, and is in the process of editing with said agent. She’s getting very frustrated with the editing process. Sending off 100 pages and waiting (2-3 months) for those pages to come back, then re-submitting them… Anyway, now I think it’s been about 8 months, and she is still going over the first 100 pages (that have gone back & forth a couple of times). Is this usual? My daughter’s frustration with this process is off the charts. I tell her over & over that the editing takes a long time, you want it to be done well, etc., but I also don’t really have a frame of reference for this, so don’t know if this is something that’s normal, the waiting 2-3 months for 100 pages to come back.
She was recently home for a month, and we did a LOT of editing (she’d have had me at it 24/7 if I’d have been willing) to make it through those first 100 pages that she’d got back from her agent. Now she’s going through them again to capture the suggested changes that came following the edits that she & I did. Supposedly the agent is now tackling 101-200 while she does that. Is this how it usually goes.
I’m sure that she is on different author pages/groups/? to get support — but she also messages me on a regular basis expressing her frustration, asking questions, getting editing help, so I don’t know how constructive the pages/groups/? that she is following actually are. Suggestions for good online author groups, how to find them? Help?
Ruckus
I learned to edit my own stuff first. It’s an art that a managing editor of a monthly glossy mag taught me.
1. It’s not your writing. Your job is editing, read it that way. This requires you to let go of the ownership of it for a while. Depending on how much you have invested in the effort, this may be difficult to impossible.
2. Make at least 2 runs through the work. First to get the overall feel and direction and then specifics, does it actually make sense for example. Second would be the red pencil run.
3. Be brutal your first red pencil run through. If it’s a long work you may need to make more than one run.
4. Let someone else (another writer or editor) take a crack at it.
My writing improved dramatically after learning this. (Stop laughing!)
Frankensteinbeck
I have… holy crap, 7 published books now, and a few short stories in anthologies. Can that be true? I keep recounting, and I guess it is. I consider it all YA, although some of it is very dark and intellectual. The most consistently selling books are the lighthearted Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Supervillain, but the highest sales rank I’ve gotten was with the very dark Quite Contrary. I have a small press publisher, and I make enough to live off of, if not much more.
On the editing issue, I have two pieces of advice. First, that you absolutely need one, and preferably a professional. No matter how good you are, the editor will catch things you didn’t see. Second, your relationship with the editor and the editing process is scary and counterintuitive for a lot of new authors. You are both probably a better writer than the editor, and yet you must take it as assumed that there are blind spots and mistakes in your writing style, no matter your skill level. So, keep these things in mind: You have the final say. The editor does not give you orders, unless the publisher is leaning on you strongly for story changes. (Alas, I’m told that’s common in some genres, like romance.) The editor gives you suggestions. Do take them seriously. There is a lot of luck in life, but the better your book, the less luck you need. The words I fear are ‘I see what you were trying to do. It didn’t work.’
Finally, this was a big discovery for me with editors. There are two general styles. Some editors are very friendly and gentle. Some are harsh and sarcastic. These are… styles. Different writers prefer a different one. I lean strongly to the former, and found it shocking to learn that a lot of authors find the sarcastic approach both makes the process fun, and makes those authors feel like the editor is being honest. Think about whether it’s important to you to find out which style your editor is before you walk into a relationship.
@Mnemosyne:
You don’t have to. The question is a distraction, very subtly missing the issue. The key is to make the character your own, a reflection of your creative identity and tastes. Even if they fit a cliche, even if they were originally a copy of some other character, once you personalize them they will work.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@cosima:
Not sure, but that setup sounds highly irregular.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ve found that for the fish book at least, a good friend of mine who has absolutely no writing background has been my best reader and editor. He’s a deplorable writer but he’s so fantastic in an advisory role.
Mnemosyne
@Marina:
FWIW, I think all writers are nervous about those exact same things, because we all know that we are accidentally or subconsciously revealing very deep things about ourselves through our writing, so it’s kind of like walking down a busy street in one’s underwear, hoping that no one will say anything rude.
And, yes, it will get rejected the first few times. Probably even a lot of times. And that’s going to suck. Every successful author has been rejected many, many, many times — I think it was Stephen King who said that he got so many rejection letters at one point that he contemplated using them as Kleenex to save money.
Myself, I’m going to write under a pseudonym, partly because my real name is kind of a pain in the ass (difficult to spell/pronounce first name AND last name) and partly to put that little bit of emotional distance between myself and the book so that it’s my pseudonym getting rejected, not me. No idea if it will work, but I’m hoping it will.
Ruckus
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Wouldn’t that be a cliche at that point?
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Not knowing the details makes giving suggestions harder but would/could a younger woman work? A plot twist that few others have used. No cliche or troupe at all.
Mnemosyne
@Iowa Old Lady:
Thanks! It’s also at a point in the book where I think some lightness is going to be desperately needed, so I think an unexpected aunt is going to be the solution.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
I ended up sneaking details into #68. However, there is also a younger woman (her 14 year old niece-in-law) who is going to be a pivotal character.
Helen
Just joined a Book Club here in Dublin. They meet every 3rd Tuesday IN A BAR, Are there BJ writers in Ireland?
Peter
Sorry I’m late. I have a book coming out in March, the result of two years spent embedded at a restaurant in Hudson, NY. We planned to self-publish so we could have creative control, but ended up selling the almost-finished book (fully designed, etc.) to UT Press in Austin who bought it essentially as-is so we still got final cut.
Because we were doing it ourselves, I ended up editing the whole thing. People told me that it’s a bad idea to edit your own work, and I agree in general but with the following caveats: 1. I have serious OCD when it comes to language and I hate it when editors wrong-foot the rhythm of my sentences or insert things that I would never say. 2, a corollary of sorts to #1, the passage of some meaningful time between writing and editing is essential. If possible, it helps to forget what you wrote completely. Because of our long time frame (when the book finally arrives it will be just over four years since I first met the chefs) I had the luxury of returning to each section a number of times. Each pass improved the result. For the final push, especially in some of the longer profiles (of shellfish farmers and winemakers, for example) I cut each piece back by 25-30 percent. It’s amazing how much fat can be trimmed when you’re ruthless and committed to making the prose sing.
nastybrutishntall
Hi y’all. I finished a book in 2011, literary fiction, set in a near future America veering toward authoritarianism, foreign influence, and automation. The protagonist is a 30-something Brooklyn music critic losing his mind in the midst of America losing its shit. Super Sad True Love Story came out the same year, and mine is a little like that book, to give you an idea.
Had an agent in NYC, friend of a friend, then he had a family tragedy and disappeared. When he emerged, he dropped me. Don’t know why. I spent another year waiting for reconnection to no avail. By then I was in the midst of other projects — music mostly — and had the choice of either abandoning them and using all my creative time to find another publishing avenue, or punting. So I split the difference in a half-assed way. Tried a bunch of cold submissions, queries to agents and small pubs. Contests, the works. Zilch from all that. I began to doubt the praise my writer friends had heaped upon the book, and rather than banging my head against the wall, decided to create a little closure and put it out on Amazon this fall instead.
It’s priced at $2.99, if anyone is interested in reading something topical, darkly funny, and somewhat either depressing or hopeful, depending on how you feel about the whole process of coming to grips with tragedy. (Also available on Smashwords, iTunes, etc.)
The New Now, on Amazon.
If anyone has two cents to throw at me rather than $2.99, I’ll take that too!
Ruckus
@Applejinx:
As we are all different in temperament, style and what we are trying to accomplish, abet using the same tools and building blocks, all of us are going to find ways to get where we are going.
I’ve been working on a novel (for years!) that has bits and pieces from different times and places. The story does not have to be and really can’t be one style or in chronological order. That defeats the concept but makes writing a bit more…. interesting. It also means that I take off large blocks of time to walk away and not even think about it.
IOW we all work different and on different subjects. For me the concept of writing every day becomes like a job and I already have one of those. I suppose if I was looking to make money at it I would see it differently.
Alex
I’m working on revising the draft of a Regency romance novel, lesbian variety. There are only 2 small publishers in this genre, so I’m not sure I need an agent. (Thoughts?) I do appreciate the tips on how to find beta readers. I’ve done quite a bit of academic writing and also political writing, but this would be my first completed novel.
Peter
@Ruckus: Yes, this. I had a painting professor in grad school who would invariably point to the sexiest part of all my paintings and say “You’re just entertaining yourself here. Lose this part” That one clever passage or luminous metaphor only works if it fits seamlessly into the larger work.
JanieM
I’m JanieM and I write a lot (nothing published) and edit a lot.
This is just a placeholder to confirm my interest in this community. I’m buried in something else today and will be lucky to get time to *read* this thread, much less contribute anything of substance.
@Major Major Major Major: I have a programming-related question that I’d like to run by you once I get time to formulate it coherently. Would you be open to that? Hopefully it will have a quick answer…..
Miunira
I have five books published – three poetry (bilingual), one novel for youngish people and one memoir. Lately I’ve been writing haiku, haibun and tanka, which I’ve gotten published in various journals. I like the writing part – and the revising – I don’t like marketing my books and at my rather advanced age now find it almost impossible to make myself do it. The books are all available on Amazon and various other places, including my website: http://www.munirabooks.com.
Gemina13
I write fantasy and historical fiction. I have one manuscript under contract with a small press, and am knee-deep in the revision process. The historical manuscripts are taking longer due to the sheer amount of research I’m doing. I also have written short anecdotal pieces for The Great Orange Satan, with an emphasis on my cultural background. cooking, and coping with grief. All that has given me the idea to work on a contemporary piece that I can only describe as half Farley Mowat, half “Hard Times.”
Iowa Old Lady
@cosima: My former agent didn’t edit at all, and I finally concluded that was a problem. Publishing is being squeezed by a variety of factors, so editors want the book to be more or less publishable when it gets to them. Does your daughter feel like the book is getting better? Does she like the results?
OTOH, that long wait is insane even though it is in what my writer friends call Publishing Time.
Woodrowfan
I write academic history and my second book comes out in the spring. My biggest weakness is that I am a horrible editor. My wife used to have to edit a lot in her former position so she helps me. As for focus, I find that starting by editing what I wrote the day before gets me going and once I have that momentum it carries me through.
Major Major Major Major
@JanieM: by all means.
cosima
@Iowa Old Lady: I think that the editing is productive/constructive 90% of the time. There were some suggested edits that daughter & I didn’t really agree with, and daughter argued her case &/or edited in a different way.
The main thing, in my mind, is that this seems to be taking an unbearably long time. Agent/editor had a story about a computer that died to explain the most recent time lapse…
Another thing, though, is my daughter’s age (26) and the general angst & insecurities inherent in that stage of life, and also the fact that any creative process opens a person up in a way that makes them even more insecure — editing (no matter how well presented) is sometimes taken as criticism. I do talk her off of that ledge now & then.
It just seems like this agent is taking a reallllllly long time to complete these edits. How can it possibly take that long? One page each day? That just doesn’t seem reasonable. My daughter actually knows (well) someone with connections to a large publishing house, and they keep asking about the book, whether it’s ready to be sent. While I do think that it could use plenty of editing still, I wonder how long that person will keep asking before they finally give up and decide it’s never going to happen, or that it’s taking so long that it must be a horrible book.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m SiubhanDuinne — hi, everyone! — and mostly, like JanieM, I’m just stopping by right now to express my interest and possible future participation. I have two writing projects underway, both nonfiction. One is really more of an annotated reference work; the other is part memoir/tribute to my father interwoven with meditations on the three big gifts he gave me.
So, again taking my cue from JanieM, please consider this a placeholder.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Editing and writing are two different skills using the same tools. A few have both, most do not. Knowing how to put words down in an informative, thrilling, funny, thought provoking, scary way is not an easy task for most. Neither is seeing the story unfold and catching the oddball or out of place structure or words.
Iowa Old Lady
@cosima: The problem is it’s hard to think of what your daughter can do to change her agent’s actions. Has she expressed her concern to the agent?
I’ve found that working on the next story is the only thing that takes my mind off the waiting.
Joyce H
@cosima: My concern about this situation of yours is that from what you’ve said, your daughter and the agent keep going over and over the same 100 pages. Progress does not appear to be being made. You might advise your daughter to send some chapters to the connection at the large publishing house. The agent might just be an indecisive person.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: I actually do my best work in pairs like this. I wonder how common it is. Nobody talks about it, which leads me to suspect “not very”.
cosima
@Iowa Old Lady: I’ve talked to her about that, about phoning her, rather than relying on emails, so that she cannot be avoided (as easily) and can attempt to express her frustration in a constructive way, sort of nail the agent down on some issues.
She has started working on another book, totally different, even though the one with the agent is meant to be part of a trilogy. Her thought is that the book being edited may end up very different at the end of it all, so why finalise the second/third books.
Original Lee
Hi, I’m Original Lee, and I’m more or less setting things up so I can write full-time when I get laid off, since I don’t really want to freelance in my current occupation (indexing). I have published two academic papers, plus I have indexes in things that other people have published, but I haven’t published anything long enough to be called a book. I’m working on two novels at the moment. One is a fantasy-ish YA novel, and the other is an alt-hist New Adult novel. I write in my copious spare time, which means I’m barely halfway through one and and have about three chapters of the other. I’m mostly lurking in writers’ forums and figuring out how this writing thing will work for me.
The hardest part for me is writing prose. I know that sounds weird, but almost everything I write for work has to be in fragments shorter than 140 characters. Stringing together sentences that relate to each other smoothly and carry a narrative forward can be very difficult for me. (And yes, I am toying with the idea of a novel where the narrative voice is like my typical work product over the course of the day. I think I need to be better at this before I try it.)
Iowa Old Lady
@cosima: If you like, I can ask for opinions in my locked writers group, naming no names of course. There are a lot of experienced people there.
Major Major Major Major
@Original Lee: indexing! A lost art! Awesome!
Halfway through is a lot!
What about trying a short story in that style first? For formats like that that are ‘different’ sometimes those are better, and it would let you feel out whether you even want to do it without the psychological overhead of “writing a novel”.
ETA: an index on a novel would be cool. Didn’t Dave Eggers do that?
cosima
@Iowa Old Lady: That would be very nice of you (I do wish that my daughter had shown up here on this thread herself!), and much appreciated. Shall I send TaMara an email asking her to give you my contact email so that you can update me on the feedback you receive re: editing timeframes?
something fabulous
Hi Y’All; I wrote and then performed a solo show this summer in the Hollywood Fringe Festival and then once again last month. Prior to that, though, it was literally 10 years between initially writing it as a one act play and the dusting it off & reworking it and finally doing it. So clearly I have issues both with completing *and* sharing! Longtime mostly-lurker here; am looking forward to this group as i try to getinto a cadence of turning out new stuff in addition to figuring out how to get this show out more places! Now off to read the thread…
Peter
@Original Lee: The comedian Steven Wright, famous for one-liners, is using his Twitter account to write a novel.
Ruckus
I started my project a few yrs ago and found a program called Freemind that I use to keep track of all the elements. It is basically a freeform outline program that is known as mind-mapping. You have to build the structure and that can link to actual content. Or you can put the content in the outline if you desire. It works well for projects that look unstructured intentionally because you can actually keep track of your work. You can build layer upon layer of information so you could actually have separate drafts in sub layers till you get to where you want to go.
I wouldn’t suggest it for everyone, Scivener is better for traditional writing or writing styles (I’ve tried both) but it is a way to keep a lot of elements in one place so they can be ordered in any way you desire at another time. Just checked and the makers of Scivener have Scapple which is a similar product but I think not quite as detailed.
Iowa Old Lady
@cosima: Sure. I’ll go post there, but folks will take a couple of days to check in.
Martha
I spent most of my business career writing–technical work, marketing and communications pieces, etc. I led both a marketing department and managed client projects and it seemed my ability to write clearly always seemed to set me apart. Over the decades, I wrote several draft novels and stories and shared them with no one.
Three years ago, I took a “novel in a year” class. It was a formal writing group led by a published author. We critiqued each other’s chapters every month and discussed many technical aspects of the craft. It was incredibly helpful because it forced me into the public with my “creative” writing. I didn’t quite finish my book (a historical novel) then thanks to work and a big move. But I am finally working on the final two chapters now.
My biggest challenge, like others, is getting the first draft down on paper. I have no issues editing my work. I can be ruthless because I’ve had to be for 35 years. Work-related or creative, I’ve learned my words are not golden, treasured things.
I have to have a deadline! I’ve learned that, for my personal projects, I have to make something up. That’s the only thing that keeps me writing. Otherwise, I can find a thousand other things to do! Also, it helps if I write at the same time every day…a routine of sorts, even if it’s only an hour.
Peter
@cosima: I haven’t been 26 for quite some time, but if I were in that position (and I don’t know of many agents who edit like you describe) I would have a serious conversation about the schedule. Landing an agent can be hard, but being stuck with a bad one is worse than not having one.
Mnemosyne
@cosima:
A bit of (paraphrased) wisdom from writer/director Billy Wilder that may or may not help: if the editor complains about a problem in the third act, you probably need to fix the first act. IOW, an editor (or producer, in Wilder’s case) can sometimes correctly identify a problem with the story but not correctly identify where the fix needs to be done.
Also, it’s hard to type when the cat insists on laying on my left arm, but she has claws and isn’t afraid to use them.
cosima
@Iowa Old Lady: Thanks! Now I’ve got to figure out how to email TaMara!
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Martha: You’ve probably seen this:
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
–Douglas Adams
Mnemosyne
@something fabulous:
Hello you! I was getting a little worried about your long absence. I saw ruemara a couple of weeks ago when I was in SF.
(Also Major^4 and Darkrose, but you haven’t met them before.)
Iowa Old Lady
@cosima: You can email me directly at dawinsor (at) mchsi (dot) com
cosima
@Iowa Old Lady: Okay, will do.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@cosima:
Go to “Quick Links” at the top of the page. You can send a message to any of the front-pagers.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: and Samwise!
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
If nothing else I’d suggest that it is a lot more uncommon that one might imagine. Look at the comments on this one thread.
I think the hardest part is #1 of my list, separating oneself from the work. Mems suggested using a pseudonym for other reasons but it might be a good idea for those who have a hard time separating themselves from the work. Or if like me you have/had a job that involved the public in some way. I wouldn’t have written a book under my real name when I did. I started posting under ruckus because of that. Now it matters not but then it actually did.
cosima
@Peter: I’ve been tempted to point that out, but I think there would be paralysing fear on my daughter’s part around — a) getting a reputation amongst other agents (she didn’t really have dozens of them coming out of the woodwork to rep her), b) signed contract (she does have one), and c) going back to the crushing & demoralising query process.
Ruckus
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian:
I think I just found my new mantra.
I’ve worked my whole life with deadlines. Metalworking projects that take from one day to some that take up to six months and have to be done in the right order and precisely or the project fails miserably. And for over a decade, public events. You knew the dates a yr in advance but every thing had to go off by clockwork on that specific day, with around a 100 people involved, all doing their parts in front of crowds of up to 100,000 with live TV. No pressure, none at all.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Many people in the San Fernando Valley now agree that Samwise is a handsome and noble feline.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: I know Pratchett did a lot of pair writing but can’t think of anybody else off the top of my head except TV people.
Incidentally, TV is a big inspiration for me.
Peter
@cosima: I understand. It is daunting. I’m not sure that politely but firmly requesting a timeline would earn her a bad reputation. Everybody (worthwhile) appreciates professionalism and a desire to finish projects. I had a contract with my agent; it stipulated that I could terminate the relationship effective 30 days from written notice of same. So I did, as soon as it became clear that he wasn’t interested in helping me (let alone even responding to emails).
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: There’s a YA novel called “Sorcery and Cecelia” that started with the two authors writing to one another in character just to practice voice and to amuse themselves. Eventually they turned it into a book that sold pretty well.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Yeah, another reason I’ll probably use a pseudonym is that the Giant Evil Corporation (mostly) makes family entertainment, and my book will have Teh Sex in it. And, as you know, my name is distinctive enough that anyone who Googled it would immediately know where I work and for whom.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Ruckus: Adams’ deadline joke is amusing, but it actually doesn’t apply to me. I began my writing journey as a newspaper reporter, and reporters Don’t. Miss. Deadlines. To this day, among my numerous character flaws, missing deadlines is not one of them.
Your public events work has some elements in common: The show is going to go on whether you’re ready or not. So be ready.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: All of my noms de plume became character names. I need new ones.
Iowa Old Lady
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: That’s why I’ve always thought reporters make good fiction writers. They don’t angst around about writers block. They just get on with their work.
Major Major Major Major
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: There’s a reason Adams only wrote like six novels. (The other reason is, he smoked.)
Hillary Rettig
@Iowa Old Lady: I love revision, too!
Have you read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and her famous point that every piece of writing begins with a shitty first draft, and a reluctance to write a shitty draft is one of the main obstacles to getting started?
I would refine her point a bit by saying every piece of writing begins with dozens of shitty drafts and then, at some point during the editing, the piece magically becomes less shitty and more coherent. (I define a draft as a quick pass through the piece or section correcting only the most obvious errors.)
Hillary Rettig
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: Congratulations! That’s wonderful. Please let us know when it comes out. (Maybe we can start announcing reader publications a la Scalzi.)
Iowa Old Lady
@Hillary Rettig:
That is so true.
Hillary Rettig
@Iowa Old Lady: I try to write reviews for people I know and occasional strangers who request it, if the book is something I would read anyway. Like you, I only post 4-5 stars.
I work really hard to get people to review my book, though – esp. on Amazon. I ask people on emails and several times a year on social media. Because I’m a non-famous indie author, I think reviews have really helped sales.
Here’s a “funny” review story, tho: a couple of years back I did a Bookbub campaign (direct mail advertising to self-described self-help / productivity readers). Sent out 70,000 free copies, and while it boosted sales (temporarily) it also resulted in a handful of 2-star reviews – my first. And they were dumb reviews, too – e.g., very short and unspecific. (My favorite”: “She thinks she knows everything.” Hello! You indicated you like advice books!) They teach in marketing classes that people don’t appreciate things they get for free, and that certainly seemed to apply in those cases.
Ruckus
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian:
It’s just that after 50+ yrs of absolute deadlines, I don’t want to have to produce things at a set pace, usually determined by someone with little idea of the effort/detail involved. IOW I’m ready to retire to a life of sitting around and doing squat. I can’t afford that but I’m ready.
Hillary Rettig
@Greg: Hi! Honestly experiences like yours are one reason I indie publish – I know it’s not for everyone but I can’t stomach traditional publishing. Waiting six months for a rejection stinks – although in 7 Secrets I quote an article by an author who got a rejection after two years.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Hillary Rettig: Thanks!
Hillary Rettig
@Mary G: Show it in little bits and pieces at first and only to sympatico readers – it really helps and it gets easier!
Here’s an article I wrote on that.
Ruckus
@Hillary Rettig:
In my current work (and a past life) we move metal to make things. You have to start with a chunk of material that looks nothing like what you want to end up with. The key to getting started is to decide where to start and then move metal. Sort of like a sculptor, you start with a hunk of something and take away everything that isn’t what you want it to be. Writing is like that except that you don’t have to worry about scraping a chunk of expensive metal or stone. And of course you start with a blank page and add to it. OK it’s the concept that is the same, you have an idea and have to flesh it out. Hopefully with some skill and polish. The skill needs to be learned and practiced and the polish is always applied after the building is done.
Martha
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: Wait! You know me? LOL… but without them I’ve discovered I’m hopeless.
Hillary Rettig
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Have you considered indie publishing? You still have to do the work of promoting your work, but you pretty much have to do that even if you get a traditional publisher.
Hillary Rettig
@hitchhiker: What wonderful projects. If you’d care to provide links I’d be interested.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: Good metaphor.
Hillary Rettig
@PaulWartenberg2016: Great tips! (And btw I also published a sf story in the wayback – also attended Clarion, where I was personally scolded by Ursula K. LeGuin for misusing the word “sentient.” An honor, I guess, but a scary one!)
I think the genre writing groups you mentioned are some of the best – Romance Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, etc. The ones I’ve visited/spoken at tend to be equally focused on support and publication, which is a nice combo.
Also, don’t forget online support. It can be a nice supplement to an in-person group or the primary group for someone located remotely. I teach at SavvyAuthors and recommend it.
Hillary Rettig
@Mnemosyne: I encounter this question (working on a book while holding ft employment) frequently in workshops. Here are some suggestions:
1) ruthlessly pare inessentials, chores, etc. from your schedule. You don’t just want the bare time and energy for writing but lavish time and energy – as much as possible.
2) shift your job hours so your freshest times (mornings or whatever) are reserved for writing. this sounds radical but many more people have this option (flextime or whatever) than actually use it – per Arlie Ross Hochschild in The Time Bind.
3) A nifty technique from Eric Maisel: train yourself to ask yourself at regular intervals (every couple of hours) “What’s my work doing now?” Or, “What’s my character doing now?” That when, when it’s time to write, you are coming to your work warm instead of cold.
4) Work on being as nonperfectionist as possible and then you can just drop into your work pretty much at will and effortlessly (much of the time).
Hillary Rettig
@Iowa Old Lady: “Writing Comes First” is a mantra that many people with busy lives use to make sure the writing gets done.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Hillary Rettig:
Hi, Hillary… I think I will go that route for some of the YA projects. For the essays and children’s books, probably not. I am not an illustrator, so children’s books without pictures I’m guessing would not have much of a market–traditional publishing for those. I just have to gear up for the process.
I’m so glad you’ve joined us!
Hillary Rettig
@Applejinx:
>John Gardner, in ‘On Becoming A Novelist’,
One of my favorite books.
I was also impressed with your weekly schedule and plan for getting your chapter done.
something fabulous
@Mnemosyne: Hey there! Yes, got sort of out of the habit of commenting, since I seem to be catching up in the wee smalls of the night shift these days. But its nice to be back! Thanks for saying howdy. Even sharing via commenting can feel daunting!
Hillary Rettig
@Joyce H: I agree with this 100%!
Hillary Rettig
@Ruckus: I think Elie Wiesel and others have compared writing to sculpting. I feel that way myself.
I love analogies between writing and other processes and find them useful. When metalworking do you find that you have a lot of potential places you can begin, or just a few?
Hillary Rettig
@cosima: We’ve listed some suggestions in the thread.
Please tell your daughter that I think she’s *entirely* justified in being frustrated over that process. As I’ve already mentioned a few times, stories like that (including my own experiences) are what drove me over to indie publishing.
Hillary Rettig
Great conversation, everyone. I have to leave the thread now – I will do my best to show up more on time for future ones!
Major Major Major Major
@Hillary Rettig: And I thought I was late :P
Applejinx
@Frankensteinbeck: (re: an editor)
Just heading to dinner but I saw this on my way out :) I’ve got an interesting sidelight on this which rather confirms it.
I’m writing for a fanfiction audience and tend to be able to outperform most editors (certainly fanfic editors, which can be a really mixed bag of deplorables ;) ) plus I’m very clear on what I’m intending. As such, I don’t work with an editor before publication. Instead, what do I have?
Trolls :)
Not just any trolls, either. There’s this one very weird fellow who goes by reversalmushroom. He has a knack for loudly demanding story changes when he doesn’t understand, or language changes when he’s not familiar with idiom or the reference, and it took years for me to learn he was actually a enthusiastic fan and this was just the way he communicated with writers and creators of all kinds.
BUT, the guy is a proofreader such as I’ve never, ever seen. I’ve gotten really good at catching errors and typos before making a new chapter public. I had a first book (in a series that now numbers 8 with a 9th coming for Xmas) and had been over everything in the book, over and over, with lots of people either loving it or being enraged and trying to find fault. When anyone found a real mistake, I’d fix it. Finally, I said that with the help of my critical audience, I was able to do perfect self-editing, and I defied anyone to find a single mistake in the thing.
This guy found a doubled space in the first page.
Trolls are your friend if you’re into polishing, and if you’re working in public. They don’t even have to be trying to destroy you. This guy turned out to actually be a fan, but MY GOD his eye is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t believe you can get any better in the commercial world, and your trolls will do it for free! :)
And no matter how good you are, the editor or troll will catch stuff you didn’t see. Even when it’s a doubled space where a single space belongs. Some people just have that brain-demon. Consider them a resource, and rejoice.
(which doesn’t mean you have to be pushed around. I’ll always take typo corrections from this guy, but a fair amount of the time if he demands grammatical or language changes, it’s because I failed to explain something else, or sometimes he just wants something rephrased in a more stilted, logical manner. Beware turning your authorial voice over to the ultimate accountant/bookkeeper, lest you start writing like a bookkeeper and not a book-AUTHOR ;) )
RSA
@Major Major Major Major: This is all great advice–at least, it strikes a chord with me.
I’m a computer science professor, and I once started to write a programming manual for… English. That is, I thought it might be useful and fun to write a short how-to book, in the style of an introductory programming textbook, on how to construct a coherent essay. I didn’t make it past the first few paragraphs, though.
Otherwise, if anyone’s curious about the process of (a) writing a Ph.D. dissertation, (b) writing an academic conference paper or journal article, (c) writing a popular science book, or (d) writing an essay for a newspaper column that accepts reader submissions, I can talk about that. Unfortunately, it’s harder for me to to explain how to do it successfully, because it kind of just happens or it doesn’t.
Major Major Major Major
@RSA: “How To Become A Writer” by Lorrie Moore
B in the D
Hi, I’m Bill. Longtime reading / first time posting
I’m a retired guy who spends his time writing lurid murder mysteries (it beats cutting the grass). I was a Naval Flight Officer for six-and-a-half years, so, on the theory of writing what you know, my first two books (one is out on Amazon as an ebook, the other is coming in a couple months) have a navy theme. I was also an auditor for a large auto supplier and spent a lot of time at the company’s facilities in Paris and Juarez, so I’m sketching out a suspense story set in both of those cities.
I belong to a local (suburban Detroit) writers’ group, which has proven very useful. I tried the agent route with my first book – the agent and I went back and forth for about four months, including an interlude where I had an editor review the book and suggest changes, but the agent passed on it in the end. I know that people can do well with ebooks and no agents, but so far that hasn’t included me. But hope springs, right?
Adam L Silverman
@B in the D: Bill, I’ve got you out of moderation, which happens to all first time posters. You should be good to go from here out, but don’t be surprised if every so often something gets stuck in moderation. Its just part of the wonders of WordPress.
Marina
Thanks, Greg. I appreciate the suggestions.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@B in the D:
Welcome aboard, Bill (even if you are a Motor City Kitty fan).
What an intriguing combo of cities… sounds like you have some solid setting ideas to play with!
Ruckus
@Hillary Rettig:
A starting point depends on the ending point. Nice and vague there.
Really it depends on the project. Some you can start any number of places, many have to be accomplished in a certain order or you won’t be able to accomplish the tasks necessary. Some have to be sent to specialists for work that just doesn’t make sense or is impossible with the equipment/processes you have. Heat treating for example. Steel sometimes needs to be made much harder and more wear resistant and requires hugely expensive furnaces for that. No one buys them them to do the work in house, there are specialists for that.
EBT
I am me and I am doing a slightly different sort of writing project, from a slightly different direction. The last thing I wrote (besides internet comments) was my technical research project a decade ago. I’ve had the idea for a low magic fantasy story for years in my head, and have bounced around if I could actually realize it. I finally decided that if I could ever do anything with it, it would be to make an interactive fiction. So I plopped down and drew out the first arc and every branch the narrative could take via a (100 page) flow chart. That flow chart gave me a 60 000 word first arc, and I have been adding to it from there. All of the interactive part of it took only a few months to flesh out surprisingly. A month and a half to learn enough scripting to run it and casual bits of debugging, really the hard part any given day is *starting* the writing. If I can start writing I can make meaningful additions, but crossing that knee voltage is such a difficult thing still.
Blue Galangal
I’ve been writing for about 16 years, including the typical bricklike “first novel” of a million words (no, not really). I definitely have “can’t show it” syndrome and yet I value feedback immensely. I will say, however, that I know what I write’s not for everyone – a friend describes it as “dense” – so I’m often reluctant to inflict it on anyone. About the most “marketable” [yes, those are air quotes – I realise it’s not at all marketable] thing I’ve got right now is a no-longer-impossible-to-imagine repeal of the 19th Amendment short story.
Professionally, I write academic papers, technical reports, etc., and edit same.
With that said: I’m a hell of a beta, and I don’t know if we’re trying to set up some kind of beta type support herein but I’m volunteering.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
This is what Billy Wilder was saying that you have also figured out — with your pet troll, you know that if he questions something, there’s A problem, but he can’t necessarily tell you what THE problem is or how to fix it. Still, it’s very valuable to have that editor to point out the problem areas even if the fix turns out to be changing other things in the story.
Mnemosyne
@B in the D:
I think the general rule I’ve seen from self-published authors here is that you don’t start to make any significant income through e-publishing until you have at least 5 books published and available to readers. That number seems to give you just enough of a “backlist” that readers can find you and start to seek you out.
Blue Galangal
@Josie: I love that you are researching this. And it sounds fascinating. For a novel I’m currently writing, I spent 6 months researching it before I even started writing. Of course, I also know that I use research for procrastination… although that’s not being entirely fair to me, because sometimes if I don’t know something, I absolutely can’t just move on and fill it in later, although sometimes I can.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
That sounds somewhere about right.
Any new business takes time and exposure to get traction. Most retail figures at least 3 yrs before turning a profit, some of that is exposure, some is trust, some is momentum to change. I’d bet that there is a similar process as an author. If you have something really good or that fits real well into a niche that may do better but probably because you may be able to get a bigger publisher, even as an unknown.
Josie
@Blue Galangal: Thanks. In my case, the research is vital, because I have to line up the fictional story with the actual historical timeline of events. I wouldn’t be satisfied if it didn’t fit properly. Can you say what you are researching or are you not ready to talk about that yet? I was a librarian in my former life, so the research is as much fun as the writing.
msdc
Sorry to join the thread so late, but apparently it’s still going, so…
I’ve written a ton of unpublished short stories, exactly one published story, and a couple more out that I’m waiting (and waiting… and waiting…) to hear back on. All of it science fiction, mostly superhero, so I’m interested to hear from Frankensteinbeck! I’ve also finished a manuscript for my first novel, which I’ve been shopping around to agents, so far without much luck. Right now the biggest problem I face is the lack of a writer’s group to give feedback or just talk process, so I’m glad you’re doing this. Now to dive back into the comments!
Miss Bianca
Hi, everybody – I know I was one of the ones who wanted Tamara to do this writers groups so I feel like kind of a doofus that I ended up having other stuff to do today…but I look forward to reading all your posts!
I wrote something for NaNoWriMo which may be promising (oh, gods…that came out “prosing” at first), so I’m going to forge ahead with it and see if I like it well enough to revise it. I’m still getting used to this “writing in drafts” concept….
catbirdman
I’ve published two books on bird distribution, made close to $0 on each, but didn’t write them for the $$$. My experience is, allow 11 years per project and be very careful about who you allow to be part of the project when it comes down to actually publishing. That’s when people who have put close to zero time and effort into YOUR project will shamelessly attempt to exert their influence over the final product. Unless you’re very careful and a little lucky, that will be to the project’s detriment.
Original Lee
@Major Major Major Major: Good idea on trying the fragment voice in a short story. I’ll try to keep it in mind. Yes, I think Mr. Eggers did do indexes for his novels.
The coolest indexer I know of was Julia Child. She spoke at an ASI meeting about 20 years ago and was awesome. She learned how to index because cookbook indexes (generally) suck. Similarly to how she learned how to make mayonnaise, she went at it systematically and thoroughly and her indexes are very very good.
Original Lee
@Peter: That is very cool! I’ll have to follow him now.
Blue Galangal
@Josie: This is the novel I decided to work on for NaNo; it’s the Roman campaign in Scotland. Although they weren’t yet called Picts (this is the time period between the construction of Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall), it’s that group I’m trying to get my head around as much as possible (given the SCANT information available), as well as how indigenous peoples might have seen Rome’s colonialism and imperialism. (It is much more fun than it sounds; but these are the big concepts I had to research before I could start, as you probably are quite familiar with!).
I have always, always wanted to be a librarian. I used to play card catalog with my own books when I was little. :D Instead… I’m a historian. Ha.
I don’t know much about the Mexican Revolution in general but I read a couple of books in grad school that definitely left me wanting to know more. (One, The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hämäläinen, pre-dates your time period but was a fascinating overview on how that whole area was politically and culturally constructed.)
B in the D
@Mnemosyne: Dang, I was afraid of that. Wonder if I can just change the titles and the characters’ names.
B in the D
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks Adam. I’ve been reading the Juice long enough to realize that moderation is part of the initiation process. At least it didn’t give me a wedgie!
B in the D
@West of the Rockies (been a while): WotR, glad to be onboard! Yeah, those two cities are quite a contrast. I got to wondering how I could include both of them in the same story and came up with the idea of an auditor from Paris being sent to Juarez and, working late at night, seeing something she shouldn’t. And the bad guys figuring out she saw it. With any luck, I should be able to get 80,000 words out of this.
And the Kitties aren’t doing so bad this year, either.