Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Today's post is prompted by agent Jennifer Jackson's latest post on livejournal . Someone wrote to her, "If only you would read my book (not just the five pages), you would see what a great work it is. After all what do you have to waste but a few hours of your precious time?" But Ms. Jackson read nearly three hundred queries last week. Obviously, she doesn't have a few hours to spare on each of them.

The last few days, I've been gushing over Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. When amazon first told me I wanted the book, I informed amazon the notion of The Running Man, but with kids, didn't really appeal to me. Furthermore, the reviews sounded somewhat literary and I don't like literary. But then a bunch of folks whose opinions I respect started tweeting about how awesome a book it is, so I gave in and ordered it. The first five pages were okay. At the end of the first chapter, I wasn't thinking, "Gee, everyone on Twitter's insane." But I wasn't in love. I can't say for sure when I fell for the book. I can say that I was up most of the night finishing it.

So, basically, given a query letter and five pages, I would have passed on what turned out to be an incredible book that I absolutely adore.

I could use that to argue publishing types need to learn to read even faster, invent ways to avoid sleep, and hire larger staffs so they can read everything sent to them rather than just glancing at queries, but that would be ridiculous. Instead, I'm going to use it to launch an observation on the effect of burden of proof on reading.

When an industry professional receives a query letter, no matter how fair he tries to be, on some level there's an assumption the book isn't for him. Sure, he'd be thrilled if the book was something he wanted, but the odds simply aren't in favor of it. There are hundreds of other messages in the in-box wanting attention and even if the books represented in each query are outstanding and destined for great success, a single agent or editor can't possibly handle a fraction of them. He wants you to hand him a reason to love this book. He'll give you a chance, he'll work with your letter to try to want your book. But even if you do nothing wrong, the query's getting rejected if you haven't done something very right. Doing anything else simply wouldn't be practical, or fair to the five hundred ninety-nine writers in the queue.

In school, most kids aren't exactly fond of the books required in English class. Hand a book out to a whole room of high schoolers and you'll be treated to a massive groan of teen angst from the assumption the book sucks. Even if it's wrapped so no one can see the cover and nobody knows what book it is. The book might be perfectly enjoyable if encountered in the wild, but in the confines of the classroom it's going to have to be amazingly awesome to possess any hope of winning over anyone other than the future English majors. Even being on a "pick one of the following hundred" list doesn't give it much of a shot.

When a reader buys a book of their own free will, the burden is reversed. Even if we come across a book we've never seen reviews of, we assume it has value or it wouldn't have been printed, particularly if it was printed by a house we're fond of or carried by a store we feel in-tune with. We feel invested in enjoying it because we've paid money for the book, or at least bothered to borrow it. We chose to select the book and want that decision vindicated. So we take it as given that even if it's not immediately obvious, it's a good book, and if we wind up not liking it we feel a need to justify that.

There's a reason the burden of proof is referred to as a burden. It's harder to win a debate when you have it. Books you buy, books your best friend gives you, books the writers of your favorite book blog loved, are all good until proven bad. Required reading is boring until proven entertaining. And a random query is "Sorry, not for me" until proven otherwise.

What's the point, really? When you get down to it?

Yesterday, Michael Stearns over at Upstart Crow ended a blog entry with, "Do you all feel that without immediate rewards for blogging that it isn’t worthwhile?" (see here.)

I responded that I'm a writer, I'm used to not having instant rewards.

Yet today has nevertheless found me battling a massive infection of Why-Bother-itis.

Why bother blogging today? It's not like I've made my Mon-Wed-Fri goal the first two weeks. It's not like the comments are fixed. It's not like I'm happy with the way the site looks. It's not like anyone could possibly care anyway.

But, worse than that, why bother writing anything? It goes beyond the common I'm-never-getting-published blues and into a realm where I can't see why there'd be a point even if I were someone so brilliantly wonderful that people would be studying my stories two thousand years from now.

I don't write for external reward. But days like today, I'm not sure what the motive is.

Keywords: depression,motives

Write What You Grock

Once upon a time, someone introduced my grandmother to the trite writerly advice, “Write what you know.” I don't know who this person was, but I've long yearned to smack him up the side of the head with something really heavy. A rusty iron skillet pops to mind.

My grandmother has wasted countless breaths urging me to adhere to this axiom.

It's not bad advice, in my opinion, but it's value lies in how it's applied. To my grandmother's reckoning, it appears to mean one should write about events one has experienced. I think that misses the point. To me, the true meaning would be better expressed as, “Write what you understand.”

Even in memoir, where one is writing things that happened to oneself, what makes a writing work isn't that the writer experienced things but the writer's observations, conclusions, and voice. An autobiography of someone who hasn't done anything to make themselves known before writing the book isn't going to succeed in captivating the interest of anyone, save maybe the author's grandmother, if there isn't some major hook. The hook can be a simple as humor or insight, but it had better be interesting.  Personally, I don't have such a hook.

My grandmother would find fault with the last paragraph, claiming I've done loads of fascinating things, but I'm of the opinion that everyone has. Every single human being on this planet has an interesting story. Yes, even a toothless cashier at a rural Wal-Mart, a kid working the fryer at Burger King in some random suburb, an illerate factory hand, an overworked farmer, and a middle-aged accountant who insists on wearing knee-high socks with sandals at the beach.  No matter how dull we may appear on the surface, everyone has something that would make others go, “Oh...” if only they knew. The problem is, even people who have more obvious draw can rarely write about themselves in a way that doesn't make other people roll their eyes, fall asleep, or fling the text as far as they can.

Of course, my granny is perfectly fine with me writing fiction rather than memoir. She just doesn't see why I'd write about ghosts and Weres and faeries rather than about a Navy brat who grows up to be a Navy wife and has done the exact same things with her life as I have. Except maybe not skip college.

The thing is, I believe I do write about what I know. No, I don't know what it's like to be dead or to have another form or to wield the sort of magic you find in fantasy. But I do know what it's like to be an outsider, to have people look through you and try to deny your very presence. I know what it's like to struggle coming to terms with being different. I know what it's like to hide just how different you are. And how to reach through all that to connect to others. That is what I really write about, growing into yourself, accepting youerself, finding people who can accept you, and learning to accept other people even though they're different from you.  These are things I'm not always good at doing, but the struggle for them is most deffinately something I know.

Keywords: motives,writing

My Socks Have Ghosts On Them.

Rachelle Gardner posted today to let us know Two Things That Don't Help a Query.

The first is telling her what kind of socks we're wearing.  I think you can tell a lot about a person by their socks, but Ms. Gardner is of the opinion you can't tell a lot about a book by the author's socks and she may well have a point there.

The second item is the one I imagine most agents are sick of people mentioning, which is how long you've been writing.  Unless you've been published and/or been handed awards while writing, it doesn't make a statement about the novel, just about you.  (And even then, I'm not sold that it means much about the present book.)

Since she doesn't want to see the information in our queries, she asked her readship to post in comments how long we've been spinning tales and I figured I'd repeat myself here.

The first book I remember writing was a picture book I authored somewhere around the age of eight.  It was about Penny the Pineapple and her first story featured Penny traveling to Scotland, where I had just moved.  So it was sort of autobiographical, except I wasn't really a pineapple.  I sent the book back to the States for my grandmother, who claims she still has it somewhere.  There were other Penny tales, but I don't know what happened to them.

My first novel-length book was written when I was fifteen.  It was a fantasy about a girl sucked from our world into a realm of magic, only to find that's were she was from in the first place and she'd just had amnesia about her old life when she was in Florida.  It was supposed to be a short story, but wasn't.

My son has a headstart on me.  He dictated his first children's story to me when he was six.  It was a fan-fic piece about Sonic the Hedgehog.  Prior to that, he also co-authored several tales about the adventures of Llama and Spyro the Dragon.  I'll let you know when he pens his first novel.

I'd ask you to post your "It all started when..." tales here, but my comments are still broken.  Feel free to write it up elsewhere though. =)

UPDATE:  Comments work now!  Yay!

Keywords: bio,queries

"Never."

I skipped blogging on Friday because I was ill. When my body temperature goes over 100F, I start having trouble forming sensible thoughts. But somehow I found myself sitting on Amazon rating books I've read. Just rating them with stars, not trying to say anything about them since my brain was mushy, but I quickly noticed there would have been one recurring comment had I been making them.

Some books I gave fours and I can't say what would have bumped them to fives. One I gave two stars because I was too nice to give it one and nothing could have saved the book for me short of completely rewriting it as something else. But there was a passel of three star “It's okay” books. And in almost every case, the reason the book failed to get a fourth star out of me was... It needed at least one more revision. To flesh it out.

The writers and the non-writers probably differed by their reaction to what I just wrote. The non-writers started thinking of books they thought would have been better with more actions around dialog or if the author had bothered describing anything anywhere in the text or if there were a few more scenes adding depth to the relationships portrayed. The writers winced. Because writers in the modern world are obsessed with cutting their word counts. Google writing tips and you're going to get a ton of suggestions for shortening a story. Read agent blogs and you'll find hordes of complaints about queries for books that are just too long -- a few people mention folks seeking representation for books that are too short, but in general the hate is on length.

Sometimes less is more. I get that. But sometimes it's just less.

Let's go back to that raven, shall we? With the Internet's help, we already rewrote his line "Never," said the raven. There's no adverb to cut, so we don't have to worry about the raven being allowed to say something mysteriously or ominously or mockingly. But why do we need a dialogue tag at all? Let's trim that. And remove the nonsense about the statue he's perched on, it just makes people wonder who the heck Pallas is and causes them to make jokes about busts. When it's the bird's turn to speak from his bust-less seat over the door, all we need is "Never."

I wonder about our fixation with brevity and who we're doing it for. I cannot count the number of times I've been told to aim for sixty thousand words in my YA or how many times I've seen someone write that he or she won't even look at a YA novel that's over eighty or ninety. Yet, what's the most popular teen novel out there right now?

Yes, writers, I'm offending my entire species again by invoking the T-word. Twilight.

Twilight runs one hundred and thirty thousand words. And whether you like the book or not, you can't argue that it isn't popular. Not only can people read something that long, they will. They may even go on to write fan-fic about it because they want more time with the characters.

When Stephenie Meyer started trying to find an agent for Twilight (then named 'Forks' ::shudder::), she says she had no idea her book was twice as long as it was supposed to be. Getting someone to look at a writing sample rather than laughing, saying yet again that authors need to learn what acceptable word counts are in their genres, and happily sending a rejection without ever reading a word of the actual book was a miracle.

Now I'm not trying to say that everyone who has written a longer-than-average novel is Stephenie Meyer. Most of us authors probably can stand to cut a lot of our words. BUT, when I read a book that was published as something I'd classify as an outline but it could have been one of my favorite books had it not been so skimpy, it makes me want to weep.

Keywords: writing

"Never," said the raven.

Saturday was in many ways a massive disappointment for me. My family and I went up into the mountains in search of cooler temperatures and found that while it wasn't as unbearably hot as where we live, that was relative. Additionally, the hike that my husband remembered as mostly in shade wasn't. It was filled with sun, which is very bad for me as I have PMLE, a condition that makes me feel very ill when exposed to sunlight. The long sleeves the PMLE compels me to wear weren't fantastic when the temperature hit 90F either. I was somewhat fortunate to make it back to the car without passing out.

But there was one redeeming thing about the weekend. When we walked into the Ranger Station to renew our parking permit, my eyes fell on the most wonderful raven puppet. It was love at first sight and I left with the raven clutched in my arms.

As we drove off, I thought about what to name my new friend. “I think I'll call him Always.”

My husband shrugged. “What's wrong with Quoth?”

“Quoth is a good name.” At least I liked it when Terry Pratchett used it for the raven in his Discworld series. “But I keep being told that saidisms are bad. So Quoth should be Said.”

“Said the Raven?”

“Yeah. Not as dramatic, is it?”

I did decide to go with Said, mostly to remind myself that while it's good to be aware of your writing and to seek out advice on improve it, following with blind fervor is bad. If I applied the net's advice to Poe's most famous line, Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!” would wind up reading ”Never,” said the raven. And that would be a massive pity.

On a related topic of being careful how much weight one gives to external influence, Jessica Faust made a post on Monday titled Be True to You. It was about writing what it's in your heart to write, not what people tell you is hot. As Polonius said, “Above all, to thine own self be true.” Everyone and their cousin is clamoring for steam punk right now. It makes me sigh and wish like anything I had a steam punk story anywhere in my soul, or better yet in my Documents folder. But while I enjoy steam punk, it's just not something I'm drawn to write. Trying to force it would at best result in a lifeless lump of a manuscript and a depressed author.

If you want to write high fantasy, don't force yourself to write something you think has a better chance of selling if it's not a genre you love. And if your ravens go about quothing, “Nevermore,” I say let 'em.

The main problem I personally have with taking the above advice is one of belief in my instincts and myself in general. A week ago, Nathan Bransford asked readers Tell Me: How Do You Deal With the “Am I Crazies?” How do you keep from drowning in uncertainty while pouring so much of yourself into something that may never garner recognition or respect, let alone income? Well... Maybe it's by being stubborn. Or maybe it's by answering the question with a proud, “Why, yes, of course I'm crazy. Who'd want to be sane?”

Keywords: writing

Why are you doing this to yourself?

A friend of mine recently asked why I'm not self-publishing.  It was a reasonable question; it doesn't take a genius to see that the process of querying agents is doing horrible things not just to my self-esteem but to my mental and even physical health.  And that's just trying to find an agent who wants to work with me.  After that comes trying to find an editor who wants to print my book and then a whole passel of new stresses over which I will have very little control.  Why not self-publish and skip most of that?

The notion has certainly occurred to me.  I could self-publish.  Or I could subsidiary publish.  My husband's novel, Waiting for War, was printed through a subsidiary press and all parties were pleased.  (What's the difference between subsidiary publishing and self-publishing?  A subsidiary press is sort of a cross between a small traditional press and a self-publishing one.  The author is expected to put up money, but the costs are shared by the press.  Since the author is helping to fund the venture, a subsidiary press can afford to be less picky about what they print than a traditional house, although they still have quality control standards.  By contrast, a true self-publishing company will print anything they're asked to regardless of content.)

The answer of why I'm trying to go the traditional route isn't as simple as my friend may have suspected.

Over the weekend, I started Donald Maass's The Fire in Fiction.  In the introduction, he states that he's seen two types of writers, Status Seekers and Storytellers.  I think the fact that this is the first of his books I've read says which group I primarily fall into.  My library has a copy of Writing the Break-Out Novel, but I never bothered to check it out because the title really turned me off.  I'm not trying to hit the NYT Bestseller List.  I just want to tell my story as best I can, and hopefully have other people share it.  The sharing part is important to me, but not for status or money.  I just happen to think stories should not only be told but heard.  If a story sits on a hard-drive and no one reads its words, was it really told?

That could be read as a reason for me to self-publish.  It would the the fastest way to toss my book out to the world so that I can stop being so distracted from the other stories I'm trying to tell.  But...  That would mean my book would be released as is.  There would be no professional help to point out lines to cut and objects to add descriptions of.  There would be no one to tell me which plot arc needs buffing up.  There'd be no one to notice extraneous uses of 'that' or misuse of metaphor.  In short, there would be no one whose job it is to help me make the story better.  Because it's not perfect, it's merely as good as I can get it without professional help.

This is only part of the answer, though.  Just after getting my friend's question, I came across an entry in The Green Apple's blog; entitled Self-Published Authors; in which it was stated, “pushy and self-promoting is the only way to get it done if you want to get your book into a store.”  Note that the writer, whose job it is to stock a local bookstore, wasn't trying to attack self-publishers with that.  She was simply pointing out that a self-published author is a salesman.  Has to be.  All authors are to some degree, but the self-published author has no one helping him.  One of the reasons I'm finding the query process so heinous is that I'm not a salesperson.  If I were a marketer, I'd be trying to get a job in marketing.  I'm a writer.  I want to write.  But like I already said, I also want what I write to be read.  Which means someone is going to have to market it and while I recognize the sad fact that even traditionally published authors are expected to do extensive self-promotion, I'd at minimum like for someone who knows what they're talking about to be available to advise me on if I'm doing things in a way that approaches right and to help me figure out what I could be doing better.

All of which is the long version of what I initially wrote back to my friend with.  Which was, “I don't want to be alone.”

UPDATES:  It has come to my attention that Donald Maass's book The Career Novelist is available as a free pdf on his agency's website.  Find it here.

Keywords: career_choices,motives,publishing