Mike Chen's (Brilliant Unpublished) Novel Blog

'Twas The Night Before Christmas...

2011-12-25T00:17:00.000-08:00

...and all through the house, not a creature was stirring.

Except for the writer hell-bent on finishing a first draft. And he did, damn it. 73,079 words in exactly six weeks and one day.

Boom.

Believe The Fortunes

2011-12-18T23:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I needed a pre-dinner snack because my wife and I made the ridiculous decision to go to Target in the evening. And as she went upstairs to get ready, I found two fortune cookies from our take-out earlier in the week.

Fortune 1: Your talents will capture the highest status and prestige.

Fortune 2: Your talents will be rewarded and recognized.

Now, I'd like to think that fate was giving me a reassuring nudge with my progress on The Pause (62k words with eight outlined chapters left to go) instead of just happening to get the "Your talents" batch of mass-produced fortune cookies. In any case, I had been working on The Pause right before I got those cookies and in a moment of "Did I do it all wrong?" self-doubt that I'm sure all writers are familiar with, it was a nice little bit of reassurance.

I'd been going on the pace of 1-2 chapters a day, so it looks like I might obliterate my original goal of a first draft by the end of January. I might finish by Christmas, and outside of an agent and a publishing deal, I can't think of too many better possible gifts than a completed draft.

When NaNo Attacks

2011-12-12T11:07:00.001-08:00

I've been quiet these past few weeks and it's not that I'm ignoring the whole noveling process. In fact, I'm basically devoting all of my free time and energy into it. It's been my version of Nano, starting on November 17 rather than on November 1.

The results so far: 45,000 words. The NaNo goal is 50,000, and I should be able to break that before December 17.

My target word count for a working first draft is 75,000. But at the same time, I have some placeholders which essentially just have "This goes here", so I'm guessing the realistic end of the first-first draft is 70,000 words, then when I fill in the holes, it'll be up to around 75,000.

In my previous attempts to Nano-charge through something, I've often used an outline to get through it. I find that having that structure helps me generate ideas better. Now, I referenced Blake Snyder's Save The Cat in my last post, and what I've found is that this has given appropriate pacing to that structure. Blake Snyder essentially breaks the story up into four parts:

1) The setup
2) The first half of the second half (fun and games)
3) The second half of the second half (bad guys close in)
4) The synthesis, where it all comes together

With a rough story arc done based on the Save The Cat beat sheet, I've found that I've been pacing based on each quarter. That is, I know what beats I have to hit in each quarter, but with an associated word count, I can create a rough map for each scene (assuming each scene averages to 1,000 words). This leaves enough wiggle room for improvisation and random inspiration but enough structure to keep it focused. And by writing the story chronologically this way, each quarter-section map allows me a little bit of time to breath, review what's been done, and incorporate surprise elements into the next quarter.

My original goal was 50,000 words by the end of December, then a finished first draft at the end of January. Screw that, let's aim high and see if I can finish the first draft by the end of 2011.

November To Semi-remember

2011-12-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

Hey, look! November didn’t swallow me whole, as I’ve returned and I’m NaNo-triumphant! Well, at least in the proper context of things.

See, in early November, Sierra Godfrey discovered this miracle book called Save The Cat. We spent many, many, many late night Google Chat sessions deconstructing the storytelling advice in this book and applying it to our own works in progress. At the same time, I was considering the target market and lead POV for A Question Of Lust, and the Save The Cat formula seemed to be a good way to help me restructure things.

And it worked! It worked too well, actually, as some cutting and pasting and editing got me very happy about my first half. The second half…well, structurally, it was a mess because of the shift in lead POV. Everything either happened too fast or too slow and I spent a week pondering all of this.

Now, I had an idea hanging around in my noggin that I’d discussed in brief with Sierra and Christy Finn. The working title was The Pause and it was literally a few major story arcs and rough character outlines, but the idea itself – a mash-up of Nick Hornby-style and genre fiction –really tickled my fancy.

With that in mind – and being frustrated to hell with my second-half structure – I decided to work with the Save The Cat beat sheet and see if I could flesh out a full story for The Pause. It came together quicker than I thought, and it seemed logical to just start writing the darn thing. At least then I could really participate in NaNo.

That was around mid-November. Two weeks and two Thanksgiving dinners later, I’ve pounded out 20,000 words and I feel like I have a very solid outline for pushing this forward. I’ve talked about how much I love outlines in the past, but the beauty of Save The Cat is that provides structure to the outline. An outline itself can only go so far if you don’t know the appropriate length of a section, and having set targets makes pacing much, much easier.

Do I attempt to fix A Question Of Lust? Perhaps later; when you’re on a roll, you might as well ride it out. I’m one to set lofty goals for myself – I’d rather aim high and push myself than set modest targets and not doing as much as I could have. So, it’s December 1 and I’m pretty happy with my outline, so I’m putting the end-of-December goal to have 55,000 words in The Pause done and the full first-draft done by the end of January.

It’s not quite what some of you other NaNo-ers have managed to produce, but all things considered, I feel full-speed-ahead with it. We’ll see if the Save The Cat beat sheet helps dull the usual burnout feeling around the 35k mark.

Failing NaNo, Saving Cats

2011-11-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. It's ten days into NaNoWriMo and I haven't advanced a single word on my new manuscript. I have excuses, of course -- Sierra Godfrey and I are launching a new website design/build business and getting the final site layout and content has taken a lot of time. **SHAMELESS PLUG -- We offer affordable WordPress-based services for authors who want to move off of Blogger or social media and want to move on to their own custom-designed site. And yes, I am totally aware of the irony of this as I post on a Blogger blog.** I've also been swamped with client work, so while my cumulative word count is probably NaNo worthy, it hasn't been applied to fiction.

Thus, EPIC FAIL for NaNo.

However, Sierra did tell me with unbridled enthusiasm about a book that would CHANGE MY LIFE FOREVER. I scoffed at the notion, but I did as she insisted and picked up Save The Cat by Blake Snyder. Apparently, a lot of you have to, and why the hell didn't you tell me before?

If you've made it this far into the whole trying-to-publish realm, chances are you've got your writing chops and it's your storytelling chops that are continuously being refined. Though technically a screenwriting book, Save The Cat can be applied to fiction or narrative non-fiction. Yes, it did change my life. It, as Darth Sidious would say, gave me focus and made my writing stronger.

Since I got the book, I have been applying its lessons to A Question Of Lust by sharpening the focus and restructuring the narrative. I've also decided to shift my 1/1A protaganists, so I have to rebuild the second half of the story. It is a pain in the ass to be sure, but it's probably just as valuable as putting down 10,000 words on an unstructured new manuscript.

Speaking of which, that gets put on the backburner for at least a few weeks, but the Save The Cat tools have at least put me in the direction where I know I can streamline my usual outlining process into something that fits the appropriate storytelling structure.

The second-best part about Save the Cat is when I have it on the couch next to me and my cat Akasha curls up between my butt and the book while I'm typing. She doesn't get irony even though I tried to explain it to her the other night. She does, however, love watching hockey with her dad as seen below.

Seriously, she sits on her little perch and watches games with me. It could be because the white ice and players/puck look like little critters for her to track, but I really think it's because she's subtleties of the game, like a strong down-low cycle.

Will you NaNo?

2011-10-30T21:14:00.001-07:00

Last year, I opted not to participate in NaNoWriMo. I had started a manuscript called A Thousand Words when I got hit with the idea for what would eventually earn the tentative title of A Question Of Lust. (How's that for non-committal?) As I started flushing out the idea, Sierra Godfrey and I had a little informal contest where we saw who could write more by January 1.

Let me tell you, there is NOTHING more motivating than seeing a word count total pop up in your email.

This year is a little different. I'm in the editing process of AQOL, and thanks to some critical feedback, I'm trying to reframe the starting point for one of the leads. I also have a wonderful new idea that I firmly believe will be entertaining and unique; I've done some plotting and a few character-sketch scenes, but no real solid work on it.

So that leaves me with the impending NaNo. Do I focus on editing so I can get that out the door and begin the query process? Or do I try to hammer out 50k words on this new idea? Or maybe a compromise solution for both?

I'll probably stick with the last idea. I figure as long as SOME progress is being made, I should be happy, even if it doesn't come with the official NaNo criteria. It's all done in the name of motivation, after all.

Will you NaNo this year? Or are you going to work on other projects?

Judge, Don't Tell

2011-10-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

When I first saw the commercial for One Day, I dismissed it as some run-of-the-mill Hollywood romantic comedy because, well, that's exactly what it looked like (and apparently, that's what the reviews said). Now, I admit that for a writer, I tend not to pay as much attention to popular novels as I should, so I was a bit surprised when Sierra Godfrey told me that not only was it a book, it was an absolutely fantastic book in the vein of Nick Hornby's best work.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I waited patiently for six weeks while the Palo Alto Library got an available copy for me, but once I picked it up, I knew exactly what Sierra meant. The banter was witty, the characters were vivid, and the pace of the writing was brilliant. And as I contemplated the what just made David Nicholls' writing so crisp and engaging, it took a bit of analysis to figure it out.

Short aside: despite having a ton of creative endeavors, I can be very mathematical about stuff. In fact, I tend to see the foundation of creativity as a bit of an algebraic equation, because you're often trying to properly balance the variables of what's good -- and how often to use them.

How does that apply? I try to look for patterns of what works and remember to implement it. In this case, I looked at Nicholls' descriptions in between the dialog. We've all heard the whole "show, don't tell" thing, but what Nicholls does (and my writing idol Nick Hornby does too) is that the descriptions go further than simply showing in a well-written way -- the characters are often applying their own judgments in this sentences.

Here's an example from the opening chapter:

Gratifyingly his hair was terrible, short at the back and sides, but with an awful little quiff at the front. Whatever gel he used had worn off, and now the quiff looked pert and fluffy, like a silly little hat.

For the above example, I can think of a number of ways to rewrite that to achieve the same descriptive effect, but you wouldn't get Emma's opinion out of it. In these two sentences, Emma's judgments about Dexter's hair are obvious: "terrible" and "awful" and "silly." Because of that, it helps us see what Emma is seeing while getting a little peek into her own character. Using this technique, you accomplish two things at once: first, get a creative description to the reader and second, provide insight into what the character is thinking.

Now, I don't think this will work for all situations, such as neutral narration (I do think it would be funny to sneak this into some of the technical docs I write). However, it's a simple way to infuse character perspective into description, streamlining your prose while making it more powerful. Isn't that always the goal?

Jedi (Publishers) vs. Sith (Self-Publishing)

2011-10-18T13:23:00.001-07:00

Man, I love Star Wars. And judging from the comments in the Pay It Forward post, you do too! (Though no one seems to agree with me that Revenge Of The Sith is a better film than Return Of The Jedi...that sounds like a future post about the tenants of storytelling and conflict to me!) That's fantastic, because I had this next post planned before I got all those comments, but hopefully you'll get a kick out of this.

It dawned on me that, in a really simplified way, the old guard of the publishing industry is an awful lot like the Jedi Order. The ability to self-publish is a bit like being a Sith. The Jedi are all about rules and discipline and work while the Sith are inwardly focused and driven by passion. (If you want to go super-nerdy, I refer you to the Code Of The Sith and the Code Of The Jedi as first introduced in the fantabulous video game Knights Of The Old Republic). Again, I'm dumbing down the whole publishers/self-publishing thing, but after marathoning all six Star Wars films in a weekend with my fellow-geek wife, some quotes stuck out to me. See what you think...and remember, as Palpatine says, "Good is a point of view, Anakin. The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power."

For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.

-Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode 4: A New Hope

How long has the publishing industry been around? Long enough that F. Scott Fitzgerald got asked for revisions prior to publication. Does this make publishing the good guy or bad guy? The way I see it, yes, it's difficult to get published, but the counterpoint to that is that they prevent the market with being purely flooded with crap. The emergence of digital distribution and publish-on-demand technology, though, has created a paradigm shift that the industry failed to properly anticipate.

I think it is time we informed the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.

-Mace Windu in Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

To say publishing has changed is an understatement. And as with many big companies, the Big Six have had varying degrees of success keeping up with changes of the digital revolution -- and with shifting revenue schemes, new market paradigms, and evolving roles in the agent/editor/writer relationship, the individual writer has more power than ever before. How do they handle it?

The Sith rely on their passion for their strength. They think inward, only about themselves.

-Anakin Skywalker in Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith

Self-publishing is a solo effort. Everything, from editorial to marketing, is a self-generated venture. That's why so many self-pubbed novels hit the e-reader market and go nowhere. To really deliver success as a self-publishing venture, you either have to be extremely lucky or you have to essentially have a second job devoted solely to marketing. And even then, it's no guarantee, but your passion must drive it.

The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be...unnatural.

-Chancellor Palpatine in Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith

Some "writers" were never meant to be read by the outside world. Grammar, storytelling, character, and other issues simply aren't their thing -- and perhaps, they rushed into the publishing world without taking the time to really hone their skills or get proper feedback. But without the gateway of the publishing industry, these works are now public, making relatives of poor writers all over the world smile through gritted teeth.

Is the Dark Side stronger?

No. Quicker, easier, more seductive.

-Luke Skywalker and Yoda in Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Let's face it -- even if you've resisted self-publishing, there's a really good chance you've at least thought about it. And why not? There's always that burst of confidence that says, "Just for this moment, I know I can produce and market something people will buy." And some people can, though the whole thing is a bit of a crapshoot. Is it easier? Sure it is -- to start. But...

Once you start the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will.

-Yoda in Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Do you want to do all the marketing, all the publicity, all the design, on top of actually writing? And don't forget the editing and formatting part. Consume you? You don't have a support staff of experienced professionals working a network of contacts and vendors to give your book the very best chance it can get. Writing already consumes all of us, but the actual business of selling an self-pubbed book requires about twice as many hours in the day.

You refer to the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force. You believe it's...this boy?

-Mace Windu in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

At some point, agents and publishing companies will determine what the right balance is to work with, not against, the self-publishing market. You could argue that we're on the verge of this, as some traditionally published authors are now maintaining e-distribution rights and profits. Social media is also allowing publishing companies and agencies new venues for finding talent outside of the same ol' query letter, such as blogs and contests. All entertainment is becoming increasingly targeted and fragmented, and with that, publishing companies have options when engaging audiences -- similarly, writers have a greater opportunity to reach the people who will really enjoy their work. There's a sweet spot somewhere, but where that is, we don't know yet.

Pay It Forward Blogfest

2011-10-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

Howdy, folks. If you're new to this blog and came here by way of the Pay It Forward Blogfest, welcome and here's a little bit more about myself. First off, like you, I'm just a simple writer trying to make my way in the publishing universe. I'm also a published sportswriter on hockey with credits in print and mainstream sites, along with a long-running blog that I dutifully retired earlier this year to concentrate on other writing endeavors. My other non-fiction publishing credits include music magazines and local bar/restaurant guidebooks, and I also write video game reviews for RotoRob; of course, this journey is fiction, so that's not really that relevant. I'm also a freelance business writer, and I build WordPress websites with my Brilliant Writer Pal Sierra Godfrey.

(You get bonus points if you caught my Star Wars reference in there.)

And yes, I know the irony of a WordPress developer using a Blogspot blog. That's an example of sticking with a late-night rash decision, though I do plan on porting over to something more substantial in the near future. Probably should have done that before Blogfest, huh?

Anyway, a few more random facts about me:

I like cats and dogs equally and we have both in our household
I believe male writers can get published without nuclear threats, lawyers, or ancient civilizations in their plots
I'll take under-produced indie rock over mega-produced pop any millisecond of the year
I think the "good" Star Wars movies are episodes 3, 4, and 5 rather than 4, 5, and 6
I have a very low tolerance for jerks of the asshole variety (and I swear a lot)
The last three concerts I went to were Ladytron, U2, and The Raveonettes. Two of those were fantastic, one was surprisingly bad.
And unlike my dad, I think Picard is a far, far better captain than Kirk

If you stick around here long enough, you'll get a taste of all of those points. Also, note that I don't comment nearly as much as I should on other writer blogs, mostly because anything hosted on Blogspot is blocked by my office firewall. In other words, my Google Reader gets a very healthy workout every day.

Now, as to three blogs from Pay It Forward Blogfest worth checking out...well, really, you should check out all of them if you have time. I used some semi-strategy:

1) Selected based on blog title: Brits In The USA -- Because I'm a Anglophile and love the British indie music scene (Jarvis Cocker forever). I also lived in London for two summers, including one summer where I bartended at a gay club.

Recent Post: Reasons to Unfriend -- which is very applicable to me right now, as I've FINALLY opened a Google+ account and have done absolutely nothing on it.

2) Selected using a random number generator (beep boop borp): #191 Cherie Reich

Recent Post: "You people terrify me but I still like you"...words that every writer has to have felt from time to time, right?

3) Selected by randomly pointing somewhere on the screen: #26 Stephanie Loree

Recent Post: Follower Friday & Pay It Forward BlogHop. My inner monologue "Let's see what this blog has to offer, oh crap, did she just make a reference to Star Wars: The Old Republic?"

Go forth -- read, share, and enjoy! (And follow/subscribe too!)

In Which I Argue With Steve Jobs

2011-10-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

The passing of Steve Jobs has brought about tributes from all over the technology world, and this one in particular stuck out from me. It’s from video game design Ron Gilbert, who created one of my favorite things – not just games – of all time: The Secret Of Monkey Island. (How appropriate, you fight like a cow!)

Over at Grumpy Gamer, Gilbert talks about the one time he met Jobs:

I arrived at the meeting and went into the conference room. John Lasseter was there (who I casually knew from when Pixar was part of Lucasfilm) and we chit-chatted.

A few minutes later Steve Jobs came in. He sat right across the table from me and the first words out of his mouth where: "I don't believe you can tell stories in games."

Now...

Steve Jobs could have told me the sky was green, he could have told me that dogs gave birth to cats, he could have said just about anything and I would have nodded thoughtfully and probably been totally convinced, but he had to say the one thing in all of creation that I could not let go.

I spent the next hour arguing with Steve Jobs.

My advice to God: Don't argue with Steve Jobs.

Gilbert doesn't go into details about the discussion beyond the punchline, but I did find Jobs' statement as an odd thing to say. There's been the long-standing debate about whether games could be considered art, but I've never heard an argument about whether stories could be told in a game format, especially these days where many titles are akin to interactive animated films. Back when Gilbert met Jobs, I'm guessing it was the early or mid-90s, and while there wasn't a ton of narrative available on that generation of consoles, PC adventure games -- like Gilbert's own Monkey Island series -- were built on narrative.

Here is a dictionary definition of "story"...

1. a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale.

2. a fictitious tale, shorter and less elaborate than a novel.

3. such narratives or tales as a branch of literature: song and story.

4. the plot or succession of incidents of a novel, poem, drama, etc.: The characterizations were good, but the story was weak.

5. a narration of an incident or a series of events or an example of these that is or may be narrated, as an anecdote, joke, etc.

I suppose the arguments about games-as-storytelling-devices is that the player gets too caught up in the immediate goal to notice the narrative. That is, whether you're shooting, climbing, or solving a puzzle, you're paying attention to the goal rather than the narrative.

However, my argument against that is that lazy game designers segregate out gameplay from plot. Smart game designers do what stories do -- give us character, conflict, environment, and stakes. Similarly, plenty of awful films are light on story but heavy on visuals, but the best ones bring it together.

I think about some of my favorite gaming moments, and they have less to do with how cool the gameplay was and more to do with the impact of the moment given my character's goal. For example, in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots, there's a well-known scene towards the end of the game when your character has to simply get to the end of a hallway -- except the hallway is being blasted with microwaves and seemingly goes on forever. That means that the further you get, the more your character is burned from the inside out, and thus the harder it is to move your character forward -- by the end, you're literally slamming a button repeatedly as fast as you can to get him to crawl a few inches to the goal.

Outside of the context of the narrative, such interaction seems rather pointless and is akin to 8-bit Nintendo Track & Field, where you "ran" your character in a race by tapping the buttons. There's certainly no story in Track & Field, it's just Player A and Player B competing with each other.

In this case, though, the journey of the player, the game world's central conflict, and the ultimate goal of many characters -- both protaganists and antagonists -- comes down to whether or not you make it down that tunnel. The stakes are high, and you're driven forward because you care about what happens to these fictional characters in this fictional world. MGS4 reinforces these points with visual overlays cutting away to the different reactions of characters as you get closer and closer -- the interaction raises the stakes, and in a way, the punishing level of button mashing brings you closer to the moment rather than taking you out of it.

How many of us have felt the emotional swing of urgency and reward while watching/reading a climactic moment in a story? Isn't this the same thing, except your urgency is translated directly into a control pad?

Can games tell stories? In it's simplest form, a game with a story (not, say, a sports game) is analogous to an old-school Choose Your Own Adventure tale. The world, characters, and conflict are defined, but you control -- to varying degrees -- how to get to the end point. A good story in a game will propel you forward because you want to get to that end, even if the controls and gameplay suck.

So, with all due respect to Mr. Jobs, I beg to differ. Games don't just tell stories, the best ones help tell the stories in unique ways that only that particular interactive medium can.

Jacket Copy Or Query Letter?

2011-09-27T22:09:00.001-07:00

I've been in the freelance writing business for seven years now, and during that time, I've been asked to write some very strange copy, all with the goal of making it enticing and exciting without turning it into an infomercial. One of these jobs was to write jacket copy for paperback fiction...but this wasn't obscure small pressers trying to outsource the mar-comm work for a book only 20 people would see. No, this was jacket copy for some of the biggest names in the thriller and mystery genre -- authors who would go way beyond my own meager expectations of a publishing career.

There was a catch, as there always is. This wasn't for the American market. No sir, this wasn't even for the Canadian or British market -- or Australian, for that matter. This was jacket copy, written in English only to be translated to Spanish, then slapped onto the back of mass-market paperbacks in Spain. Tapping into my own query experience, along with research a heck of a lot of Amazon descriptions for that particular genre, I sought to piece together jacket summary after jacket summary, all while keeping within some basic rules that minimized future translation complications.

(To this day, I have no idea why they didn't just hire a Spanish writer to do it. We worked off and on for about a year and on about a dozen books. Hopefully, I helped sell copies rather than lose things in translation.)

When you write query letters, you get advice spouting off just about every piece of advice out there. Write it like jacket copy. No, don't write it like jacket copy -- write with more detail! No, write with less detail -- keep it obscure, just have a hook! And if you look deep enough, there are sound arguments for just about all of these positions, along with successful examples of each floating around the interwebs. I suppose that translates into one horrible truth that none of us unpublished writers want to hear: every agent is different, complete with his/her own opinion and preference! In fact, the only bit of advice you could probably consistently count in is "Don't write something crappy," though there may be some obscure message board thread about why a crappy query is a GOOD idea because it shows that you think out of the box and are avant garde.

Ultimately, I think there are a lot of similarities between jacket copy and query letters. Obviously, query letters have all that writer info below the hook, but the actual purpose of the plot blurb is the same -- grab attention, lure in, and complete with a hook that makes them want more.

With that in mind, I'm staring at the back of Bit Of A Blur by Alex James. James is the bass player of Blur, one of my favorite freakin' bands of all time, and unlike most rock bios, A) James actually penned this one himself and B) it's blissfully funny and self-deprecating with all sorts of witty lines.

Do you want to read it? Let's sample the jacket copy and find out:

For Alex James, music has always been a door to a more eventful life. But as bass player of Blur, his journey was more exciting and extreme than he could ever have predicted. In Bit Of A Blur, he chronicles his journey from a slug-infested flat in Camberwell to a world of screaming fans and private jets -- and his search to find meaning and happiness (and, perhaps most importantly, the perect cheese), in an increasingly surreal world.

Now, let's discount the fact that the word "journey" was used twice in consecutive sentences. Having just read that cold, does this story interest you? If you were a hypothetical agent and had this come across your email, would you ask for a partial? A full? Or would you send a polite form rejection? Ponder that thought while you listen to one of my favorite Blur songs.

Borders' Decomposing Carcass

2011-09-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

My wife and I went to Borders on University Avenue in Palo Alto yesterday to pick over the remaining carcass for book deals -- up to 90% off and EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!?!?!?!$*&!

The upstairs area was no longer accessible; in fact, I'd say only about 25% of shelves still had stuff on them. They were grouped by genre but in no real sensible order. Yes, that means Sarah Palin stood side by side with Barack Obama, and both had a whopping 90% Off sticker on them.

Picking through the various fiction sub-genres, two things dawned on me:

1) Man, there are a shit-ton of books out there. Books with catchy titles, sensible covers, phrases like "From the author of..." on them -- all now available for $1-2 on clearance. There are so many books, in fact, that for anyone who has the ambition of publishing, you can't help but wonder "How many of these are good?" and "How many of these are successful?" Part of me wanted to experiment and just pick one at random, then do a little research to get a sense of if/when it was successful, what kind of online presence the author had, etc.

2) It seemed like about half of the general fiction and YA books involved vampires of some sort, with a few zombie stragglers left about. Since this is a clearance sale, I'm guessing that this is a combination of overstock and stuff people didn't want. Since I'd stayed away from physical bookstores for years, perhaps I didn't quite understand how oversaturated the vampire genre was. I mean, it was seriously ridiculous, and it reminds me of a line from Bit Of A Blur, the autobiography of Blur bassist Alex James -- (paraphrasing) Britpop was two or three good bands and a bunch of mediocre bands ripping them off.

The vampire genre seemed to have been like that, and perhaps I didn't realize the extent of this because I'd ignored it. Part of me is still a "People thought I was weird for reading Anne Rice in high school" snob about it, but the more sensible part of me understands that big corporations jump on trends like there's no tomorrow. It's smart business -- catch the wave on the rise with some inexpensive product and some of it will be a hit.

(Aside on vampires: I'd resisted HBO's True Blood for years because of my "I only like Anne Rice and Bram Stoker vampires" snobbery, but that show/book series has created such an interesting twist with "mainstream" vampires that the universe fascinates me. BBC's Being Human (and its SyFy counterpart) are like this too thanks to a very interesting premise. Just being a vampire ain't enough anymore.)

I suppose in way, the trip was encouraging and discouraging at the same time. I'd forgotten how wonderful it can be to be in a bookstore, to just enjoy browsing (despite the complete chaos of the store). It gave me a sense of "We can do this!"; at the same time, the sheer volume of unwanted books also made me take a step back and go "Holy poop!"

Fun With Junk Mail & Spam Bots

2011-08-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

Not only is Sierra Godfrey a Brilliant Writer pal, business colleague, and fellow Person With Great Taste In Music, she's also an inspiration for time killers. In this case, this post inspired me to take those pesky spam messages -- both automated and not -- and use them as a writing prompt for a little off-the-cuff creativity. What transpired? Let's find out...

Now, let's recall that my business is technical writing and marketing copy. Sometimes, I get inquiries from peers who might have questions about overflow work or simply the business process. It's the reason why things like LinkedIn were invented.

Of course, if you're going to ask about this, you should at least show that you have a firm grasp of, you know, grammar. It's kind of important when writing business copy. Here's a tech writing "firm" straight out of India:

(All names have been removed, but grammar goofs and weird spacing issues have been kept wonderfully in tact.)

For all your technical writing needs Trust someone the world trusts - Trust XXXXXX

If you need:

· Permanent Technical Writers who can quickly join you. And are capable, experienced, and cost effective
· Temporary Technical Writers who can quickly join you when you need them, and leave when you don’t need them. And are capable, experienced, and cost effective

· To improve Technical Writing Skills of your development or technical writing team

· A world class technical writing team that can take full responsibility of doing technical writing work for you. Focus on your core skills and outsource ‘non-core’

Why XXXXXX?

· International award winning company: XXXXXX has won awards of ‘Excellence’ from Society of Technical Communicators(STC) USA, for technical documentation it created for its clients

· Experience of more than 9 years in providing technical writing services to its clients. It has a large team of technical writers

· Talented team. A large and talented team. Its core team includes includes {SNIP} All of them are with XXXXXX – full time.
· Trained organizations such as Deloitte, Accenture, TCS, Virtusa, ADP, and Synopsys in technical writing. Trained more than 1000 technical writers in various technical writing courses that it conducts.

· Did technical writing work for more than more than 100 organizations world-wide. This includes {SNIP}

· Placed experienced Technical writers to a large number of organizations on temporary or permanent basis. Has a large database of technical writers

· Implemented XXXXXX’s own Documentation Solutions to create, edit, and manage technical documentation. For example DITA XML solutions for Azingo Inc

Our Process

Stage 1
· Understand Needs: First we try to understand what exactly you need in terms of the final deliverables. This generally involves a high level understanding of the product, the target audience, the current state of product and documentation(if any).

· Establish Process: Once we know the exact requirements, we define a high level process optimized for your project. This covers main steps involved in completing the project, the quality standards.
· Estimate Effort:. Along with the process, we also calculate the effort involved. We create an effort-breakup table clearly showing effort (in hours) in each step of the process. This effort estimate table is sent to you.

Stage 2
· Once there is an agreement on the cost involved and overall process. We create a draft statement of work (SOW). This SOW contains the complete plan of the project, process involved, and delivery schedules (including intermediate deliverables for review).
· Once this SOW is finalized and signed off. We commission a documentation team for you.

· The project starts as per the plan.

We will be happy to provide you more details, delivery models, references, samples, and cost. Just let us know.

Now, when writing blog posts or other semi-off-the-cuff material, you're bound to make mistakes, since you're not shooting for the level of polish that comes with a business letter or a query letter. But if you're IN the business of writing and you're asking TO GET PAID for your writing, don't you think you'd double-check your first piece of contact?

That being said, here's what I wrote back.

I might have some leads for you. However, I have to trust the skills
of anyone I refer my clients to.

Therefore, please tell me what is grammatically wrong about about the
statements below. They're taken from XXXXXX's process flow:

-Once we know the exact requirements, we define a high level process
optimized for your project. This covers main steps involved in
completing the project, the quality standards.
-Once this SOW is finalized and signed off. We commission a
documentation team for you.

No response. Hmmm, maybe they didn't need my referrals after all. Well, if you're curious, I perused their site, and this lack of Microsoft Word Grammar Check flows on to their blogging as well. Here's a recent post on why technical writing is Da Shiznit career choice for new mothers.

Many technical writing jobs also come with work from home option or flexi hour option.The reason being technical writing job involves writing about "something" once you "konw that something" no other dependecy is necessary.Writing can be done from any place.

And now for the best part of the news-monetary benefits involved in technical writing jobs are equivalent to a software job.

Isnt this then the God send job for all mothers!

Isnt this then the best example of why technical writers doesnt get respekt!

Well, when I'm not being solicited to outsource my writing gigs to other people, I get asked to purchase outside services to help grow my business. Case in point -- here's a fellow who wanted me to sign up for his mailing list service:

My name is XXXXXX, from a Global Database Company with Multi Channel Marketing Services and we help our clients in Demand generations and Lead generations by using our B2B & B2C Email Lists, and Data & Email Appending services.

Our core services include: Email Lists, Data Appending, Email Appending, Telemarketing and Direct Mail marketing, etc

USP’s of our company: Faster Deliverability, Affordability, working based on clients budget, Global coverage, guarantees on services, unlimited usage on our lists, etc.

DATABASES
{SNIP -- BIG BORING LIST}

We have many more email lists.
Or you can also get Customized list where you just define your target audience and give us any of the following data, as per your needs:

{SNIP}

I hope you are the right person to discuss about this in your company? If not please refer me to the right person so that I can discuss more about our services.

If you are the right person I am sure you will be looking for email lists for marketing purpose, if yes let me know what kind of list you are looking for so that I’ll send you more details.

Looking forward to working with you.

Thanks and waiting for your reply.

Yes, he was indeed waiting for my reply. And I was very sincere in my gratitude for his outreach.

This is fantastic. Even though I never asked for information on your

product or advertised that I needed something like it, you took the

time out of your busy day to hunt me down and personally contact me

with this unrequested information. You didn't even ask permission

first! Now that's a pro-active approach! Sure, you could have just

sent a quick note that said, "Hey, I think my mailing list service

could help your business. I don't want to spam you, but would it be ok

if I sent you a little more info?"

No, not for Mr. Pro Active XXXXXX! Instead, you've delivered the

internet's version of an infomercial. And, just like the P90X program,

you've shown me a program...

...that I already manage for myself. And come to think of it, you did

spam me. Which is really annoying. I'm guessing you're an XXXXXX

XXXXXX affiliate -- oh, erm, Business Development Executive. I

have to believe that they frown upon spamming people, seeing that

they're in the business of OPT-IN email marketing, and I didn't opt

nor in.

I'm sure you get some measure of business by trolling ZZZZZZZ

service ads but your approach is, at worst, unethical, and at best,

annoying. I'll be reporting this to XXXXXX XXXXXXX customer

service, and I suggest you re-think your approach.

Ok, maybe I was a little harsh. But damn it, this crap annoys me, especially from the ironic stance of representing an opt-in company. Sweet Jebus.

So, I've been solicited for outsourced work and for direct vendor services...but what about chatroom sex? Look what happened on my IM today:

[14:53] (obvious spammer): hey
[14:53] (Mike's IM): my kitchen is on fire
[14:53] (Mike's IM): and the frogs are everywhere
[14:53] (obvious spammer): how's it going? havent talked to you in awhile.. lol
[14:53] (Mike's IM): i can't put their eyes back
[14:53] (Mike's IM): everything is purple
[14:54] (obvious spammer): do you remember me?.., it's Stephanie.
[14:54] (Mike's IM): after the satellite crashed into my car, i lost all of my coffee
[14:54] (obvious spammer): so what's up?...
[14:54] (Mike's IM): now the tea is leaking into my soul
[14:54] (obvious spammer): not much here just got out of the shower went to the gym today
[14:54] (Mike's IM): don't you get it? it's an emergency
[14:55] (Mike's IM): there is a fire in my kitchen!
[14:55] (obvious spammer): i gotta question do you like a girl with big tits? or do you prefer a girl with a fat ass..
[14:55] (Mike's IM): and the frogs are everywhere!
[14:55] (obvious spammer): okay! well i got alot of both wanna see? im feeling a little naughty@!
[14:55] (Mike's IM): my arm, it's on fire now
[14:55] (Mike's IM): the fingers have melted off
[14:55] (Mike's IM): call the police
[14:55] (obvious spammer): well im gonna show you if its okay
[14:55] (Mike's IM): or the government
[14:55] (obvious spammer): hahaha! call em! and tell them you are reporting a felony... YOUR HAIRSTYLE!! You might wanna get that looked at!
[14:55] (obvious spammer): k.. click [HYPERLINK] once it loads click the green "accept invite" button on the left then fill out your info.. then we can make a private 1on1 chat to play
[14:56] (Mike's IM): the frogs, they're eating the remains of my arm
[14:56] (obvious spammer): ;)
[14:56] (Mike's IM): they have acidic tongues
[14:56] (Mike's IM): it burns, it burns
[14:56] (Mike's IM): i will have to eat my hair to survive
[14:56] (obvious spammer): dont be shy its 100% free babe just gotta make sure you're over 18 before we make a private room and get naughty
[14:57] (obvious spammer): ;)

I showed this to Sierra today and I told her I thought it was a spambot. However, she wasn't sure, since the response to my "Call the police! Or the government!" message was the bizarre hairstyle comment. I still think it's a spambot that's probably designed to recognize certain words and phrases for a specific response.

Of course, I'll say this about the spambot...at least it replied, which is more than I could say about those Technical Writing professionals or Mr. Mailing List.

RWA San Francisco Meeting, Part 2: On Professionalism In Social Media

2011-08-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

While agent Laura Bradford's advice on genre definition was a personal boon for me, her general presentaion on professionalism in social media was a fantastic bit of common-sense wisdom. Unfortunately, we sometimes lack that. In a nutshell (or bullet points), here's what Laura suggested:

-A social-media platform is helpful but not necessary for an unpublished author. Laura said that many, many first-time authors don't have their social-media game even started and HER job as an agent is to help her clients in there. In other words, if blogging and Twittering help you network/let off some steam/learn from others before your novel is released, then more power to you. However, it's not as necessary as writing a good book, revising it to infinity, and crafting a good query letter.

-What you say represents you...forever. The funny thing about the internet is we now have infinite digital archives that will stretch from here until a meteor hits the earth and shatters every hard drive and server on the planet. So, you know, think before you write something. When I regularly blogged about hockey, I knew that the things I said would be noticed by a lot of people, so I taught myself restraint in reacting. I suppose sportsblogging is a little different, because you want your opinion on a hot-button issue out there ASAP, but it doesn't hurt to wait an hour before you hit the Publish button, especially if it's in heated reaction to something. More often than not, when you walk away and come back to it, you'll see things that are silly or petty.

-Stay on target. Yes, Gold Five, we should stay on target. It's important to let your personality come through on your blog. If you want to through in references to things you like (like Star Wars!), or comment on parts of your personal life, that's fine...but remember that your blog is about writing and publishing, and any detours have to quickly come back to that. You're reading Mike Chen's (Brilliant Unpublished) Novel Blog, not Mike Chen's Insane Personal Rants. Laura highlighted this as very important, not only because of the point above but also because agents and editors will probably view your blog and wonder if you know how to draw professional boundaries.

-That being said, don't get too paranoid. Ok, so you've understood the last two points, and now you're worried about what you posted two months ago. In fact, it eats at you everyday, gnawing non-stop at you and invading your conversations at home, work, and life. Relax, everyone makes mistakes, and, as Laura pointed out, a few mis-steps along the way won't hurt anyone.

-Once you get published, everything changes. You've found an agent, found a publisher, and your book has hit the (few remaining) shelves. Now you've entered into another circle, one where published authors are your peers. If you comment on other authors, recently published books, or others in this circle, treat the topics with the same respect you would if you were blogging about your current day job.

RWA San Francisco Meeting, Part 1: Genre Advice

2011-08-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

After several discussions with trusted writer pals, it became clear that yes, I did in fact write women's fiction -- or at least general fiction that would probably appeal more to stereotypical female demographic (books about people) than the stereotypical male demographic (books about things and events). The next logical step for this, then, would be to consider joining the Romance Writer's of America under the Women's Fiction section.

With that in mind, I hauled my butt out of bed nice and early this morning to meet up with Sierra Godfrey and go to the RWA San Francisco meeting. I had no idea what to expect; I figured the worst-case scenario would be similar to Chamber of Commerce networking events I've been to for business.

Fortunately, it was far from that. Instead, it was an education to hear agent Laura Bradford talk about professional courtesy, and even better than that, have her muse on my own genre questions that I've been wrestling with.

During her Q&A session, the topic of trends was brought up. Laura said that editors haven't asked for anything in particular lately, and that offered up some flexibility for writers to write what they want to know. I went one step beyond that and asked if she noticed if the industry was starting to focus on sub-genres or if genres as a whole were starting to blur.

She brought up one of her first attempted sales, a mash-up of genres that involved romance, time travel, historical, alternate history, and mystery all into one. She said that ten years ago, no one wanted to touch it, but if it happened today, she'd be able to sell it.

Tangential to that, I asked if that was something to be concerned with in a query letter. Her basic advice was to think more about the hook of the query rather than defining it into a genre, and that regardless of how you presented the genre, she'd know more about what it was if/when she read it -- and if she liked it, she'd run with it.

After the meeting, I snuck in a quick question for her regarding my own specific situation. It's funny because I've interviewed so many different types of people in my career, and yet, here was this totally approachable, very down-to-earth woman, and I had more angst trying to ask a simple industry-related question than I had interviewing NHL players, business owners, or musicians. Go figure.

I explained that I'd been wrestling with the genre question, and I didn't know if I specifically fit under commercial fiction, women's fiction, or what. Her advice was simple but effective: know who your audience is going to be, then concern yourself more with that rather than genre labels. She also said that I was probably overthinking it.

Of course, that's what we tend to do, isn't it? We overthink the whole thing because we presume that the tiniest of mis-steps will kill our entire potential career in publishing. When you step back from that and apply some measure of rational thought to the whole thing, it's a little less scary and/or paranoid.

Running To Stand Still

2011-08-07T23:19:00.000-07:00

I've worked out regularly for the better part of my life, whether it's weights or hockey or tennis. Over the past six months, I've also discovered the awesomeness of kettlebells, and I consider myslef a convert. I've also started enjoying running -- not just liking it, but loving it and needing it at least once a week.

It's a sick and twisted notion, if you think about it. What's their to enjoy about running? A few weeks back, we got the Back To The Future trilogy on Blu-Ray and there's a scene in Part 3 where Doc is explaining to the old west saloon goers that people in the 1980s run "for fun, for recreation."

One guy responds appropriately: "What the hell kind of fun is that?"

My wife turned to me and immediately agreed. And for a long, long time, I totally felt that way too. I'd rollerblade, bike, or do anything cardio except run. The only reason I would run is when I'd go months in between working out and I needed something quick and easy to get back into shape.

Around February, I bartered some website development work for a month of free kettlebell personal training. Each of the kettlebell sessions started with a one-mile run to warm up. It'd probably been a good six months since I last played hockey, so my legs weren't there. From that point on, I started running a mile, mile and a half around my neighborhood so I wouldn't be terribly winded for the rest of my kettlebell workouts.

A strange thing happened after about two weeks of this -- I started to like it. It hit when I extended my run to about two miles; the last half mile, I felt really good and I wanted to do more. This is probably the endorphins kicking in around the 15-minute mark, AKA the runner's high. Whatever the case, I steadily built myself up to a point where I'm doing five miles at least once a week. It helps that I live by the San Francisco Baylands and Shoreline Lake in Mountain View.

Of course, this is a blog about writing, and here's the connection. Yes, there's the runner's high thing, but I've discovered another thing I really enjoy about running. It's pretty zen being out there, just by yourself, in total control of just your body as you move from A to B. It's a lot like writing, actually -- it's a solitary commitment, and you're alone with your thoughts while you do it. Once I realized this, I've found that going for a run actually helps my creativity. During runs, I've worked out opening lines, a query synopsis, short story plot, scene outlines, and other such things to help get the job done. (I've also turned the computer immediatley on upon getting home to jot all this down.)

After all, it's just you and nature out there. No distractions, no Facebook or TV or sports or annoyingly cute pets to take away your focus, just the words floating around your head and the ground beneath your feet.

I don't know if this is a temporary thing or a cure-all to writer's block. But for the past two months or so, I've set out on each run with a writing problem in my head. By the time I get home, it feels sorted out, or at least the ball's rolling towards a solution. All it took was a lot of sweat and a little zen to get it done.

And now for your listening pleasure, here's where I stole the post title from. The tune's not about exercising, zen, and/or writing; instead, it's about heroin addiction in the industrial parts of Dublin, Ireland. Same difference, right?

Publishing Goes To 11

2011-08-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was thinking about the publishing process -- or, to be more specific, how the hell to actually explain what's involved with publishing to someone who knows nothing about it. I think the stereotype still exists of some joker saying "I wrote a novel, it's in my closet somewhere," so when you tell people that you're working on novels, they don't quite understand what that means.

So, to borrow from This Is Spinal Tap, I've broken down into ten steps that go to eleven. See if this makes sense:

1) Finish your first draft. This could be the longest, most difficult part of the process.

2) Workshop and revise.

3) Edit, edit, edit.

4) Revise, revise, revise.

5) Polish, polish, polish.

6) Put together a query letter.

7) Send the letter to agents that accept your genre.

8) Send them a partial manuscript.

9) Send them a full manuscript.

10) Get accepted and let them submit your manuscript to publishers.

And...this one goes to 11) Start an insane bidding war by publishers that leads to a well-paying lifetime of writing.

(Hey, if you're gonna go there, go there, right?)

Of course, steps 8, 9, and 10 are kind of out of your control. But you can't get there unless you finish the first six steps. And I'm still shocked at the number of writers who think they can query after a first draft -- or the number of writers who feel they can go it alone without outside critiques.

The best way I could explain it to non-writer folks is to compare it to a business and vendors. If you're running a business and going to source from a vendor, would you hire them if they're only kind of ready with the parts, disorganized, or somewhat apathetic about the due-dilligence process? Or would you go with the vendor with the solid track record and time-tested workflow? From the vendor perspective, the only way you can fulfill the latter is if you perfect both your product and your process.

That seemed to make sense with people, but I think the notion of "Wow, that's a lot of work" still floats around. I guess they just don't realize how therapeutic the creative process can be for some people.

And on that note, here's one of my favorite scenes from This Is Spinal Tap...

Spinal Tap - Lick My Love Pump - Free videos are just a click away

On Writing -- And Listening To -- Dialog

2011-07-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

Good dialog gets my blood pumping. It always has; its rhythm is infectious and it carries its own sort of momentum. This was a bit of an acquired taste, as when I was younger, I was all for flowery descriptions, which was possibly due to being a big Anne Rice fan when I was in high school.

I don't know when I exactly turned. I think seeing Pulp Fiction, and understanding the sheer exuberance of a fantastically scripted conversation, that helped. Reading popular British authors (check out some pages of Nick Hornby and you might find some that are just pure dialog, no description), that helped too. Perhaps taking a bunch of theater classes in college tipped me over the edge.

It's funny, because at some points, I wonder if I would have been a better screenwriter than would-be novelist. My early drafts are almost pure dialog because that's what comes best to me. In fact, Sierra Godfrey was telling me about feeling stuck on her work-in-progress and I offered a suggestion that gets me out of a rut: write only the dialog, screw the rest of it, you can fill it in later.

(The flip side to this is that writing action for me in a physical sense is terribly laborious.)

Perhaps the best thing about good dialog is that it can mean so many things, even when it's just printed words on a page as opposed to emoted in front of you on a screen or stage. Everything from the pauses to the emphasis all carry a weight with it. You can tell an entire story in dialog, but it's difficult to tell an entire story based on flowery description alone. This differs slightly from genres, of course, but unless you're going for something avante garde, that human communication needs to happen.

I'm reading David Milche's book on how he wrote and created Deadwood -- and if you haven't seen Deadwood, it's probably the most incredible TV show I've seen in...I don't even know. My wife introduced it to me after she took in the whole series when she had last summer off; we waited until the Blu-Ray came out last fall, so I held off for months while she went on and on about how amazing this show was. And I'd say within ten minutes or so, I totally got it. The level of acting, directing, writing, and cinematography are all worthy of the superlatives you hear about the show, particularly Ian McShane's Al Swearengen.

But back to Milche's book, he writes about the purpose of dialog. If you've seen Deadwood, you know that the dialog is this amalgamation of Shakespearean tempo, modern verbiage, and a whole shit-ton of swearing (a brilliant move on Milche's part, as the swearing was intentionally brutal and over the top to emphasize the chaotic society they were forming). This particular passage from Milche stuck with me:

Whatever appears to be, we redefine it with our voice, however puny and ineffectual it might seem. Language can accommodate illusion and make illusion real for the purposes of the moment.

Maybe that's why I love writing dialog more than anything else -- just for a moment, it makes everything I'm writing real, at least in my head. I can hear the characters, not just saying the words, but the way they ennunciate, pause, mull things over. And if I do my job successfully, that builds a little corner of the world I'm trying to create.

Now, when something happens and I have to move a character from point A to point B...well, that takes a little more effort.

And on that note, I'll leave you with the best clips from the best character from the best show ever.

Follow George Lucas' Advice (And Don't Stumble Like He Did)

2011-07-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

If you're a fellow nerd, I encourage you to pick Simon Pegg's Nerd Do Well; there's this great passage where he finally gets to meet George Lucas and Lucas basically warns him about surrounding himself with yes-men in 30 years. Pegg took it as Lucas knew he created flawed Star Wars prequels but he realized too late that no one wanted to tell him no -- no one wanted to challenge his vision.

I've always felt that if you took an outline of the Star Wars prequels and showed them to a sci-fi fan circa 1985, it'd blow their mind. I never had any problems with the actual story, but the execution as a work of filmmaking was obviously flawed (though I seem to be in the minority where I enjoy them for what they are and still admire the imaginative universe they created). Seems like Lucas was basically admitting to Pegg that things could have been tighter, smoother, or just plain better had people simply said, "What if you tried doing it this way?"

Outside opinion doesn't take the vision away from us, it forces us to make it better by presenting. And if you're taking your craft really seriously, you should want as many opinions as possible. Doesn't mean you have to agree with them. The vision is still yours, but good ideas are good ideas. And really, don't you want your work to culminate in the best ideas possible. Criticism is a good thing, and when done right, it doesn't have to be hokey or apologetic or padded with other stuff -- just a refreshing perspective from someone who respects your work.

When I first learned about the critique process, my teacher made us all start with something positive. It was a rigid discussion, almost like what you'd expect at 12-step meeting or something, except instead of "My name is Mike and I'm a coffee-a-holic" it'd go like "Steve, I really liked BLANK about your story. However, I feel it could be made better by BLANK." You know what's nice about working with critique partners you trust? They bypass the bullshit and tell you what you need to do. Recently, I had Sierra Godfrey, Kristan Hoffman, and Christy Finn take a look at different bits of writing. And while their respective critiques created a lot of work for me, ultimately it made the work better.

No one enjoys being criticized, but when people respect you enough to tell you the truth, there's something very effective in that. From the instant Sierra commented on one of my opening chapters for A Question Of Lust, it really pushed my perspective and created a bit of big-picture thinking I'd totally missed. She'd reinforced this by asking the right questions. I took no offense to it, and instead was kicking myself (figuratively, of course; self-mutilation ain't a hobby of mine) for being so blind to what seemed so obvious now.

Similarly, Kristan had me really rethink how I presented key moments in my short story Staring At The Sun. She just asked me a few questions to consider, and the revisions came naturally. The result was a tighter story with a better use of dialog and flashback, and Finny helped me examine specific moments to really bring it together.

For those cases, the criticims were more than welcome becaue they were necessary to think outside of my normal rhythm.

So the next time you critique someone's work, remember that they're not going to learn or get better if you're too "nice" on it -- in fact, you're doing them a disservice. Treat both the writing and the writer with respect and we'll all come out better in the end.

On The Demise Of Borders

2011-07-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

I don't feel bad for mega-corporations when they fail. Ok, that's not totally true; when Tower Records went under, I seriously felt like crying because so much of my life is tied up to browsing and shopping there, even working there. I didn't feel the same way, though, when video stores went the way of the dodo, despite my impressive stature as a Blockbuster Video alum.

But with Borders closing, it's kind of strange. I can't say that I bought a lot of stuff at Borders because I really didn't, but I certainly spent a lot of time there. There's something comforting about being in a building with a shit-ton of books while the sounds of soft jazz and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee permeate the air.

In college, the then-new Borders in downtown Davis was a lovely place to get away from the madness of campus for an hour or two. After I graduated, I lived about a mile from one in downtown Palo Alto, and many Saturday afternoons were spent there with a cup o' joe and books upon books. In fact, that particular Borders was where I met my ex-roommate/good pal Kavita for the first time, and I saw my favorite local musician Allette Brooks perform an intimate show there.

(And I met some blind dates there too, which were a mix of good and bad. Blah.)

I'm probably like a lot of people, though, where trips to Borders just didn't happen as often over the past few years. It's not that I didn't enjoy it when I went, it's just that the convenience of Amazon (and free 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime) made it unnecessary. Yes, browsing was fun, but that usually happened when I went there to purchase something, even a magazine. With online shopping taking that away from me, I can count the number of times I went to a Borders in the past two years -- it's two, both in early September of the past two years to pick up the newest edition of the pre-season The Hockey News preview magazine.

Other than that? My magazine reading has largely been replaced by online news and blogs. I order my books online at Amazon or, when I'm feeling cheap, I get them at the library. I'll miss Borders for sure, I'll have many fond memories of hours spent there, and I'll always pass the building in downtown Palo Alto (a converted theater) and get warm fuzzies about what used to be.

I guess the easiest thing to say is that I don't need it anymore. I still need music stores, because the ability to find a 99 cent gem in the used racks still lures me in and steals my paycheck from time to time. But a giant store filled with new books? Yes, the benefit of browsing is now gone, but I probably shouldn't have spent that money anyway.

Commercial Fiction Or Women's Fiction?

2011-07-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

Brilliant Writer friends Sierra Godfrey and Christy Finn recently brought up the idea of women's fiction -- that is, could I possibly be writing women's fiction? Better yet, should I be marketing it as such?

Strange, as I never really knew what to classify my writing as. It's not a strict genre, as sci-fi or horror or romance or whatever. I feel like I just write about people who have to deal with some form of adversity in today's modern society. I classified Local Band as Commercial Fiction in queries because I wasn't really quite sure what else to call it.

So when discussing the actual notion of women's fiction with Sierra and Christy, I asked the simple question of "What is women's fiction?" That led me to this fantastic interview with Keith Cronin. Here are some choice quotes:

In my travels I would consistently see more women than men reading on airplanes – and reading a wider variety of authors. So I decided I needed to try to reach them, by writing a book with a strong and compelling emotional focus.

(When asked if men would read his work because he was a male writer) I don’t know – I guess I hope so, but it saddens me that anybody would have more or less interest in a book based on the gender of its author. I just don’t think like that.

(Nick Hornby) frequently uses an approach that I would summarize as “serious things happening to witty people,” which is definitely a model that resonates with me.

Hornby is obviously an inspiration to me, and I'm not surprised with Cronin's revelation. I told Christy that the reason why I feel British authors tend to be more of genre-busters is that, like everything in our American pop culture, we're obsessed with pigeonholing things. The pop music station only plays pop music, the movie studios only produce blockbuster films, TV series are all essentially high-concept pieces designed for specific cable channels and DVD audiences. But if you look at how the Brits distribute their art, they're a little more mish-mashed. Just tune into BBC Radio and you'll hear an indie band, a pop song, and a hip hop song -- maybe not all in the same program, but at least on the same station within a reasonable amount of time.

When Cronin was asked to define women's fiction, he comes up with this gem:

I really like your own definition of women’s fiction, in which the woman is responsible for solving her own problems. Another one I like a lot is that women’s fiction is storytelling that takes the issues women care about seriously. A much more succinct definition – and one that I fear is probably more true than I’d like to admit – is that women’s fiction is fiction that men won’t read. Ouch. In my own attempt to cobble together a definition, I came up with this: In men’s fiction we want the reader to care about what the characters do, but in women’s fiction we also want the readers to care about what the characters feel.

Now, in regards to the "fiction that men won't read," I've been told something similar. Not as blunt, mind you, but the notion was the same -- it went more along the lines of "You're going to be a hard sale as a male writer with a male protaganist but not in military, historical, or sci-fi."

The first time I heard this, it confused the hell out of me. Fiction is fiction, right? Why would gender have anything to do with it? Especially the people I had read Local Band, it crossed all sorts of Nielson demographics and they all loved it.

But we like to categorize and define our art because it's easier to sell that way. So while I like to think I write about people overcoming adversity, maybe it's easier to say I write women's fiction.

Does that mean I have to join RWA now?

Strange Currencies

2011-07-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

My writing worlds rarely overlap. That's why the, oh, five to ten people that follow this little nook of the publishing world probably haven't heard the news that I've retired from hockey blogging. (And the people that read my video game reviews belong in a whole other sector of the Ven diagram.) It's a strange feeling, and a big reason why I stepped away from writing 2,000 or so words on hockey each week is, well, I really wanted to start writing about other stuff. A bit part of that is obviously fiction, and while I've continued to work on that, I haven't blogged about it. Thus, my participation in that community has been email and chat correspondences with other Brilliant Writer Friends, but no blogging.

I've pledged before to come back and post regularly here but, of course, I've failed quite awesomely at that. Time is a nasty thing when you don't have enough of it, so this whole "no more hockey blogging" thing is a way to correct that. The nice thing is I still have hockey editors who are willing to let me chip in when the need arises, and in fact, I'll have a lengthy feature piece in Maple Street Press' upcoming Pittsburgh Penguins season preview magazine. So if you live in the Pittsburgh metro area, be sure to pick one up or at least thumb through it at newsstands.

The bad thing about this? I've just put the kibosh on my entire platform, in a way. I'm going from thousands of daily readers (and contacts to reach that several times over) to absolutely nothing. Platform is king -- well, maybe queen next to the king of creativity -- and it's difficult to be losing such an immediate connection with so many people.

The problem with that platform (and honestly, I could use my contacts with various editors to get some word out if/when something gets published) is that it really has nothing to do with fiction. As I mentioned the other day to Sierra Godfrey during our regular curse-filled chat sessions, my platform would have been absolutely fantastic...if I wrote a book about hockey, especially non-fiction. But because I'm doing fiction that has nothing to do with hockey except perhaps in some passing character interest, what overlap will there be?

The counterargument, though, is that eyeballs are eyeballs. A certain percentage of people will click on the book's site, and a certain percentage of that group will click on the excerpt. And a certain percentage of that group will like it and hopefully spread the word. It's a starting point.

These are the types of debates I considered when I looked back at staying involved with day-to-day hockey blogging. (And since my blog got absorbed by a corporate sports network, the side pay was nice too.) Ultimately, I decided that the time suck was self-defeating, that my daily life had to allow for working on short stories and manuscripts while also allowing enough time to establish myself in the fiction blogging community.

So it goes, right? There's no second-guessing now, and the good thing is that I'll actually be able to post here regularly without any time strain. The last 1/3 of the NHL season and the playoffs were rough for me, as burnout had me really struggling to find stuff to post about. I suppose that was inevitable after writing 1-3 posts weekly for more than a decade on one topic. I'm hoping that a fresh start here in the publishing realm will allow word count to flow more freely -- both on the blog and on the manuscript.

Fingers crossed.

Small Tales And Status Updates

2011-03-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

(That post title reminds me of Stereophonics' song Performance And Cocktails even though there's no similarity outside of the AND in it. Ok, then.)

So, I've been a bit out of touch? Well, no, not really. I've continued to write way too much about hockey and video games, but at the same time, I've maintained some measure of progress with the second revision of A Question Of Lust. Perhaps it's just that the more words I write elsewhere, the fewer I can write on this blog? Or perhaps I don't want to jinx my progress by posting about it?

Or it could just be plain, old darn laziness. Hey, I've been busy -- you should see our top-to-bottom March redecorating project, it's like moving out and moving back into the same house. Yes, it's as tiring as it sounds.

What brings me back (besides guilt) is the announcement of the Small Tales Project, a nifty little short story anthology. I'm part of the editorial board for this, and submissions are now open. Here's the official verbiage which you may or may not have seen around the usual writing forums:

The Small Tales Editorial Board is super excited today to announce the kick off of our project. So what is the project, exactly? Small Tales is a new anthology of cross-genre short stories. And we're open to submissions.

Small Tales is run by writers, for writers. We are Sierra Godfrey, Linda Leszczuk, MC Howe, Vince Ferraro, and Mike Chen.

Small Tales will be published electronically, and will feature short stories up to 5000 words in length (excepting erotica and poetry). The idea is to present good fiction, laid out in easy to read style, in PDF or e-reader format.

Small Tales will be published in August 2011. We're really excited about putting together a collection of good fiction, and would love your submission. See our Submissions page for info on submitting.

When this project was first being kicked around, I started as the only one in the Small Tales circle without a piece of short fiction to use as a gauge. Over the course of four days, I took a starting point (inspired by reading Bruce Campbell's If Chins Could Kill...seriously), created a point of view that challenged a few of the things that I always rely on, and added a few very random story elements. Call it a self-imposed challenge in creativity; the result was a short story that I thought was good but wasn't quite sure. Feedback from my fellow writers has certainly boosted my confidence (and ego), and it's also re-sparked the inevitable burnout I got with editing A Question Of Lust.

Where to from here? Hockey responsibilities certainly come into play with the impending Stanley Cup playoffs, and that whole Work thing still interferes. However, I've met each of the goals I'd set -- a first draft by the end of 2010, chapters out for critiques by the end of February. So I'm shooting for queries in July, right before the publishing industry goes on vacation. It's good to have goals, right?

Oh, and if you want to submit for Short Tales, please do! We anticipate submissions as diverse as our editorial board, so please give it a shot.

Epic failures & milestone successes

2010-12-30T14:05:00.001-08:00

When you last heard from me, I'd posted about how I felt the end was in sight for the first draft of A Question Of Lust. Well, I'm sorry to admit that I totally failed my NaNoWriMo goal of making it to 75k words. However, thanks to a little friendly competition between myself and Brilliant Writer Friend Sierra Godfrey, I've managed to complete my goal of getting the first draft done by the end of the year. The final tally after some clean-up deletes of placeholder text and notes: 82,901 words.

So, where do we go from here? Sierra and I have discussed having an editing competition based on stages, though her whole pregnancy thing (due in April) can complicate things. This is the first full manuscript I've finished besides Local Band; my other two were stuck between 45k and 60k words.

With Local Band, I went through 10 revisions following the first draft. However, that was a learning experience as I transitioned from short stories, professional business writing, articles, and non-fiction into full-length fiction. With this one, I had a solid idea for a beginning, middle, and end, and a very in-depth outline. I made appropriate notes and knew what to look for. In short, I think the learning curve of the first few drafts of Local Band absorbed into this work, making the whole process less painful.

With that in mind, I think my goal is to have A Question Of Lust be query-ready by the time summer rolls around. The good thing is that even during my push to the first draft's finish line, I'd go back and re-read earlier sections and NOT be horrified by what I'd created. In fact, I think the prose and character choices are pretty strong.

Oh, and a while ago, I'd talked about music choices for the inevitable film versions of our manuscripts. (One can dream, right?) For the version of A Question Of Lust in my head, the opening credits and scene use Interpol's Next Exit and the last scenes and end credits use Best Coast's When I'm With You.

Somewhere in between, I'd also throw in Bloc Party's This Modern Love and Ladytron's All The Way. So when a film company pays me a bazillion dollars for the book rights, you heard the soundtrack here first.

Strangely enough, Depeche Mode's A Question Of Lust hasn't worked its way into my theoretical soundtrack.

It's alive!

2010-09-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

Is the finish line in sight for the tentatively titled A Question Of Lust? At 45,000 words, I'd say probably not. However, I do feel in a bit of a groove that I hadn't felt for much of August and September.

I'm a bit of a slacker in that the past month has only produced about 5,000 words. That's really not good pacing. In fact, I've noticed this pattern with my manuscripts:

-0 - 15k words: Unbridled enthusiasm, crazy ideas, lots of volume churning out

-15k - 25k words: Starting to slow down, prose starts focusing on dialog and less on action so I can just get scenes down.

-25k - 40k words: Wishing I could just publish my outline instead of the manuscript.

After that, however, things start to feel formed. I've been working semi-strictly off my outline; while the arc is the same, specific chapters have moved around. More importantly, certains scenes have veered off in different directions, mostly because the characters decided to do so.

And that's the key to this whole thing. I feel energized again, not because I'm about 2/3 of the way to my target first draft word count of 70,000 words (knowing that it's mostly dialog and gaps have to be filled with the final MS target of about 80,000 words). The voices for my main characters now feel strong. Even though they existed in outline form, it's like looking at stills from a movie. You can tell the entire story but you won't feel what's happening.

Now that they've been able to live and breath in the world of my manuscript for 40,000 words, their decisions and motivations aren't just bullet points anymore. Instead, they're the gears that drive their thoughts and responses. It's a beautiful thing to discover, and I remember hitting this part in Local Band's first draft, when it really felt like I wasn't writing the characters as I was interpreting for them.

(The difference here being that I think I'm much better at structure and feature-length plotting/pacing than I was when I first wrote Local Band. Hopefully that'll make the editing process easier.)

About a month ago, I was feeling like, "Another 30,000 words? How am I going to get there, even with this detailed out line?" Now it feels like the final lap even though there's significant distance to go. Let's just hope this enthusiasm carries forward.

How do you feel when you're halfway through your first draft? Do you need your characters becoming three-dimensional beings to get powered through or does the fear of missing a deadline get you going?

The WordPress irony

2010-09-17T19:02:00.001-07:00

While having a completely unrelated discussion about the inner workings of the male mindwith Brilliant Writer Friend Sierra Godfrey, I brought up the fact that I sell WordPress customization services. Sierra stopped the conversation and backed things up a few steps; she did the IM equivalent of a double-take and said, "Your blog is on Blogger."

A-ha. Yes it is. Well, at least this one. My business site is built on WordPress and I've learned to customize the hell out of it and I make a nice bit of side cash doing it for small businesses and individuals. My video game site is a customized WordPress site. But I haven't done it for my writing blog. Which is stupid, if you think about it, because if I'm using this site to market to agents and readers and everyone on the planet, you'd think I'd put my abilities toward something greater than a Blogspot template.

But, like I also told Sierra a few weeks back, I have too many creative ventures to do it all. I seriously need to win the lottery so I can spend all day fulfilling all of them -- including finishing the latest manuscript, which is at 43,000 words right now. Either the lottery or the ability to freeze time; that's my goal to creative happiness.

Space to breathe

2010-09-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite finds of 2010 is Being Human on BBC America. It's a show about a vampire, werewolf and a ghost sharing a flat in Bristol. Yes, it sounds ridiculous but the writing and characterization is sublime (and I have a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge crush on Annie the ghost). You care about these characters and their ongoing struggle to reclaim their humanity in the face of the impossible.

If you watch BBC, you know that their seasons aren't nearly as long as American TV. In fact, some shows can only go on for six or seven episodes, as opposed to the 20+ we get on our series. Because of that, every episode really has to count in terms of overall story arc. And I applaud the BBC's bravado on their dramas; they follow the Joss Whedon philosophy of anything (and anyone) goes, which makes it all the more intense.

However, sometimes all of that is just a bit overwhelming. With Being Human, I find each of the characters so engrossing and charming that this second season has been a bit of a letdown, not because it hasn't been good (it has), but because the characters really haven't had any time to breathe. They're constantly in conflict after conflict leading to the mother of all conflicts in this Saturday's season finale.

I know the first thing you learn in Creative Writing 101 is that conflict drives narrative, but isn't it fair to both the characters and the reader to allow the story to breath and enjoy whatever rewards its reaped? When I was having my MFA contact review Local Band, he noted that every chapter had a definitive conflict driving it. The chapter outline certainly proves it, as that's the way that I bullet-pointed it just to make sure I nailed that aspect down. But sometimes conflict can be quieter, and while the moment can seem happy or calm, the conflict stems from the reader (and sometimes the character) knowing it won't last.

The trick, then, is to keep those an underlying tension around those breathing moments. No one wants to see people happy all the time, but just like our friends and family, we want to see characters we love be at peace, even if it's just for a moment.

Interview: Mega-writer Catherine Durkin Robinson

2010-08-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

Catherine Durkin Robinson is a writer of many talents and voices, from her pieces in the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times to professional speech and copywriting to books. Books -- yeah, that's why she's here. Catherine is in a unique situation, where she's self-published a novel called Olivia's Kiss on Kindle but has an agent who is actively selling her non-fiction manuscript. What happens to the budding novelist when non-fiction gets in the way? Let's find out...

-What was the response when you first queried Olivia's Kiss?

A few agents asked me to say that it was inspired by events in my childhood. I knew immediately that I couldn't do that - my mother would kill me if I lied about my upbringing. So would the rest of my loving and close-knit family.

Mike's note: Uh, that'd be one jacked-up childhood. Here's the Amazon description for Olivia's Kiss:

Olivia discovered a talent for killing men while in her teens, after shooting her abusive father in the head and watching him die. Unapologetic and dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence fight back, she built a wildly successful business. Now, a sophisticated young woman, Olivia travels the world pursuing bad men and making them pay.

When an unexpected vacation leads her home, Olivia reconnects with childhood friends and finds herself envying them. Like so many women approaching their thirties, and despite her most-wanted status, Olivia is startled by the unfamiliar urge and intrigued with the idea of settling down.

-Why did you decide to self-publish on Kindle? What sort of platform did you have for marketing this, and how effective has it been?

I decided to self-publish on Kindle after rewrites, critiques from writing groups, and it seemed like a better idea than just letting the story die on my hard drive. I only did this a few weeks ago, but have marketed on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. I will start on Kindle forums next.

-How did you approach your social media strategy for Olivia's Kiss?

I'm following a lot of good advice from authors who've wound up with publishing deals after a good showing on Kindle. I also write regular columns in two local papers so I have it on my byline. Mentioning it in blogs, and on Facebook and Twitter helps too.

-Is there any chance you'll be re-querying Olivia's Kiss or is that essentially done?

I won't requery Olivia's Kiss - moving on to other projects. But if it blows up, maybe I'll change my mind. It's a fun read and stranger things have happened.

-You have the prologue online. How has that helped the marketing of Olivia's Kiss?

I'm not sure yet, but will let you know after about a month or so.

-You've received representation for your non-fiction manuscript Too Bad About You: How to Raise Kids Worth a Damn. Was your fiction mentioned in the query process?

No, I didn't mention Olivia's Kiss to my agent. The two manuscripts are so different...

-There is a stigma attached to self-publishing regarding querying. Is this part of the reason why Olivia's Kiss wasn't mentioned when querying non-fiction?

That, and they are two totally different projects.

-While your agent is actively shopping your manuscript, has this affected your fiction work at all? Have you discussed Olivia's Kiss or other fiction with your agent?

No, they are just too different: novel, memoir, and non-fiction parenting guide.

-Your fiction and non-fiction work are very, very different. Do you feel that one could be a marketing platform for the other?

I think if people are interested in one, they might be in the other. I believe my non-fiction work is stronger, my voice is more assured in that ms. But I do write with a similar style in all three.

-What's next for you in both fiction and non-fiction?

I will probably self-publish Learning Curves on Kindle as well and then concentrate on non-fiction followups to How Raise Kids...perhaps How to Raise Pre-Teens is next.

-And if/when you query fiction again, will you mention Olivia's Kiss as self-published?

I might mention sales, if the numbers are impressive. Otherwise, I don't think so, because self-publishing in and of itself isn't impressive or worth mentioning.

Big thanks to Catherine for the interview and our mutual pal John Fontana for putting it together!

Interview: Self-Published Author Ann Brandt

2010-08-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

First a bit of administrative news: I've totally slacked on writing the past two weeks as we've ramped up the launch of a new video game site. Please do check out Awesome Video Game News for the latest video game news previews, reviews, and features from around the web (it's an aggregator site with original content coming later).

Ok, now for the main event: Ann Brandt is a self-published author I met through my hockey writing contacts. Her novel Steel Goddesses takes the beach fiction aesthetic and sets in the 1980s heavy metal scene. When she queried agents, she got a lot of responses similar to what I've been getting with Local Band -- namely, the "How do we market this?" question. Instead, Ann decided to go it herself. Here's my Q&A with Ann on the self-publishing journey.

1) What made you want to self-publish?
I spent a year searching for agents and editors who would pick up "Steel Goddesses" but ran into a big wall of rejection. After I entered Amazon's Breakthrough Novel contest and made it to the third round before being eliminated, I was contacted by Create Space about self-publishing and decided to give it a try.

2) What was the common agent response to Steel Goddesses, and do you feel like that has been accurate or were they not seeing the big picture?
The most common response I was given was that the book takes place in the 1980's and they were hesitant to get behind a product that may not be relevant in 18 months time. I understand that they have to try to predict trends and go with what they believe will sell. I feel that 80's metal has seemed "relevant" since the 80's and shows no sign of dying out. I also realize that "Steel Goddesses" is not a literary work of art, but what I consider a fun "beach blanket" read, so while I was disappointed that agents were not willing to take a chance, I was not surprised.

3) Did you try small-press publishers after querying agents?
To be honest, I didn't even consider small-press publishers as options.

4) How did you choose your POD publisher?
I chose Create Space for one reason: they do not charge a fee. I know of other self-publishing companies that will do everything from help you design the cover to market the book for you for a fee. That was not an option for me as my finances were stretched very thin. Create Space is print-on-demand, so authors start receiving royalties right away. BUT-- authors also have to do all the work- from having their novel edited, to creating the cover, to uploading the manuscript, to marketing the finished product.

5) It's widely accepted that fiction is much harder to self-publish than non-fiction. Was that any sort of mental roadblock in your decision?
When I self-published "Steel Goddesses," I didn't even stop to think about how difficult it could or would be. I thought it should be out there now, so I decided to go for it.

6) Since it's just you, how did you go about marketing? What worked and what didn't work?
Marketing "Steel Goddesses" takes a lot of time. I went the usual social-media route (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) with mixed results. I've also researched magazines and radio shows that would be more likely to feature "Steel Goddesses" or have me on for an interview. So far, that experience has gone fairly well. My biggest coup to date was a big mention on Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson's radio show.

7) Knowing what you know now about self-publishing, is there anything you feel you could have done to make it more successful?
I'm still working hard to make it succeed. I think this is a positive side to self-publishing: as long as you're willing to continue working hard to market your product, you increase your chances of success. If a mainstream publisher markets your book and it doesn't succeed in a set amount of time, the publisher must move on to its next product and you're left to pick up the pieces.

8) Will you query agents on your next novel or will you stick with POD publishing?
I want to say that I will query agents for my next novel, but being the impatient person that I am, I may just choose to go with Create Space again, or scrape up enough money to go with another self-publisher, like iUniverse.

9) Have you gotten any placement in review websites or magazines?
I have just received requests from a couple of websites for review copies of "Steel Goddesses." I'm very excited about that.

10) With the convergence of new media, ebooks, and POD publishing, some people believe that writers have more power than ever before. On the other hand, that leads to a lot more bad writing hitting the market. How do you think this will sort itself out?
I believe that readers will gravitate to books that resonate with them, no matter the quality of the writer's work. I mean, take a look at books that regularly make the New York Times bestseller list. Without naming names, I think a good percentage of books on the list are formulaic drivel. What I would love to see is more marketers taking the new media route to help give self-published authors a much bigger voice.

Lyric Snob, That's Me

2010-08-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

I've always been a music snob. I think just about everyone who loves indie music in all of its various sub-categories (punk, new wave, garage, electro, etc.) winds up being a music snob because we see music in a different light than just throwaway pop junk. My friends have given me major grief because I'll dislike good songs because the lyrics are too straightforward or obvious. Hey, lyrics are part of it too.

On my lunch break today, I was listening to the beauty that is satellite radio (two indie stations! a new wave station! a 24/7 hockey station!) and the new Interpol song came on. Interpol is one of my favorite bands, so I was stoked about this new track. Then I heard the chorus lyrics:

"It starts to feel like a barricade / that keep us away / to keep us away, it kind of does..."

You know what the writer in me thought? It yelled, "DON'T USE SIMILES! USE METAPHORS!"

This was a pretty nasty revelation, and as I went back to the office to do "real work," my digital library of tunes was in rotation and the same thought kept going back and forth. It even pointed out a few adverbs.

Sweet Jebus, has writing done this to me? Am I so nitpicky now that even song lyrics can't avoid the slash-and-burn of my adverb red pen? It used to just be that I'd bash lyrics that were straightforward (case in point: pre-2000 U2 is very strong because Bono hadn't gone crazy political yet but post-2000 U2 lyrics are mostly terrible because Bono forgot how to write in metaphor), but now it's that the imagery isn't obtuse enough!

Adverbs! Similes! Argh!

Am I the only writer facing this incredible burden? On the other hand, I though of most of the lyrics I've written for the different bands I've been in and I'm very proud to say that my adverb and simile usage has been fairly low over my musical career. (So why am I not a rock star yet? Jeez!)

Write About Ugly Men

2010-07-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Hey look, I'm back. While I've slacked in the blog posting department, I've kept up with my manuscript push. Haven't got as far as I've liked, but my goal is 50k words by the middle of September. I'm at 34k, which makes this doable if I'm diligent.

In the meantime, two things I wanted to plug: first off, I made an interesting writer friend through my hockey contacts. She's an established writer who self-published her first novel with some degree of success. I'm hoping to interview her on the process so we can all have a happy learning experience. Yay for education!

Secondly, I urge all of you to enter the contest of Brilliant Writer Friend Sierra Godfrey. There's an Amazon gift card involved, plus you can learn from your fellow writer's mis-steps and you get to make fun of a tremendously ugly dude. It's the best of all worlds.

Now it's late and I am going to push forward on my word count. Progress!

20,000

2010-06-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

In an effort to make up for lost time, I've put aside other entertainment distractions and spent most of my free time trying to power through this new manuscript. So far this weekend, I've put up about 6,000 words to break the 20,000 word barrier. More importantly, I've figured out one of the last pieces of this puzzle -- one of the key character's hidden motivation. I knew what she did, I knew there was something driving it, but I've finally nailed what the core of that desire was. It's all a matter of bringing it together now.

This has been one of the times that I've essentially written from start to finish. As I've documented, I'm using a very in-depth chapter outline, and that's helped the process immensely. There've been some slight holes to fill, but I've found that they've come about fairly naturally as I've gotten a better sense of my characters.

I know outlining isn't for everyone, but right now all of the hard work at the beginning is paying off. It's established a very a strong foundation for the actual creative process. It's almost like the difference between driving with a map and a GPS. The map can tell you where to go, but it's very limited in what it can show you whereas the GPS can zoom in, be changed, and give you extra details so that all you have to do is get the vehicle from point A to point B.

My plan was to take this to about 80,000 words, and based on my outline, I'm right on schedule.

What they're saying

2010-06-14T18:56:00.001-07:00

Family stuff has forced me to lose my word count momentum, though the new manuscript is approaching 15k words. It's a far cry from the 30k I'd hoped to be at by this time in June, but sometimes reality gets in the way of creativity.

However, the WEBook PageToFame competition continues. From what I can tell, Local Band is doing very well in the second round. As the second round requires only 30 entries to move on, I've waited to hit that mark before posting results (though it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll make a decision at 30, just that that's the minimum threshold).

With 34 entries, 65% of readers want Local Band elevated to the next round. Now, I can't find any numbers that act as the minimum to advance, but Round 1 was 40%, so I'm taking this as a good thing.

You're allowed to give some multiple-choice feedback when you rate, so here's what people are saying:

10 readers said ' Great writing '
8 readers said ' Engaging plot '
3 readers said ' Love the idea '
5 readers said ' Can't wait to read more '
13 readers said ' Intriguing characters '

If you're neurotic about your writing like I am, this is a welcome pat on the back, especially when agents have told me that the story is "unmarketable". Of course, if 65% want it elevated (a score of either 4 or 5 out of 5), 35% don't deem it as such. I do take some solace in that of that 35%, 29% gave it a 3 and only 6% gave it a 2 with no one giving it a 1.

Here's what the negative feedback said:

4 readers said ' Don't like the idea '
3 readers said ' Writing needs work '
1 reader said ' Not believable '
1 reader said ' Characters aren't strong '
6 readers said ' Weak plot '

Don't like the idea? Ok, I can't do anything about that -- I've rated stuff on PageToFame that way if it's just not a topic I'm interested in. Writing quality? You can't please everyone, but I'll take the 10 positives over the 3 negatives. As for the plot, we've got 6 in the negative while 11 (3 "Love the idea" and 8 "Engaging plot") positive.

I find this pretty encouraging that my "unmarketable" story is at least rating well when given out as a random sample to readers. Will this be a stepping stone towards publication? I'm not sure, but at least I get some vindication that all my work actually means something.

Music for Opening Credits

2010-05-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

If you are totally lame like me, you picture scenes from your fiction playing out like movies, complete with actors, sound effects, lighting, and -- of course -- music. While I haven't scored out all of work, I've got opening songs for Local Band, A Thousand Words, and the new, as-yet-untitled manuscript while the credits roll.

Short aside 1: Local Band is doing very well in the second round of WeBook's Page To Fame contest. This round is based on the first five pages. If the numbers continue this way, I think it'll be on to round 3.

Short aside 2: When creating characters, I pick an actor as a likeness. This isn't just preparation in case the movie versions are made, it also helps me have a mental image to describe when working the prose.

For Local Band, the song is Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, a tune that is referenced several times in the story. For A Thousand Words, the song is Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which lyrically kind of reflects some of the themes in the story. For the unnamed manuscript, it's Next Exit by Interpol. Lyrically, it's not exactly a match-up, but I think the tone of it works for the images I have in my head.

Do you have music picked for your manuscript's soundtrack or am I just nuts? Oh, and as for an update on the new MS, it's hit 10k words, and I think my detailed outline approach is working. Things have shifted here and there, but having such detailed "mini-chapters" to start each chapter from is helping a great deal. I know each chapter's arc and a few key points, and the rest is just filling in the blanks. So far, this experiment is working.

And with the San Jose Sharks knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, my fiction writing time will increase quite a bit. So let's set the goal for 50,000 words by the end of June.

Layers, Not Outlines

2010-05-03T18:35:00.001-07:00

I know it seems like I haven't been writing much, but I actually have been -- it's just not fiction. A bazillion business articles and hockey stories later, and my writing muscles are sharp but I haven't been allowed to focus too much on these stories. Of course, I'm not going to complain about too much work these days.

Anyways, I mentioned in my last post how I've outlined the chapters for my new manuscript. In the past week, I've gone one step further and turned most of those single-line bullet points into a short paragraph. Ok, it's small growth, but I realized that I'm going about this totally differently this time, and I have to say that I'm intrigued.

I've always been a proponent of outlines, but the level of detail always varies. The Drugs Don't Work is the only manuscript I attempted more on an idea rather than an outline. A Thousand Words had a very specific arc but there were big gaps in between the acts, and I found that I lost momentum after getting about 50k words down.

This one, which has a few different running titles, was different. It was originally a vague idea that I chatted about with Brilliant Writer Friends Finny and Sierra. After that, I sat down and came up with basic characterizations. From there, these new characters were given a rough premise for a full arc. From the full arc, I started with the one-sentence chapter purposes, and from that, I've built my paragraph descriptions for each chapter.

When I look at it now, I've got about 45 paragraphs, one for each chapter. There will obviously be changes, but it's a very solid foundation, a complete skeleton for building upon. All I have to do is pick a chapter and bring the prose to life.

It's strange. I feel like I have this story almost written even though I've only actually "written" the first chapter. I know the critical decisions, I know the character arcs, and I know the pivotal moments and how chapters transition from one to another, both big and small.

Brilliant Writer Friends have asked me before about how I work with an outline. Well, this isn't really an outline, but it's more like building layer by layer:

1. Central conflict
2. Main characters
3. Basic arc
4. Basic outline
5. Chapter summaries

Each step built upon the other one until it's now more about filling in the blanks than building from scratch. Some might consider this to be too structured, but I look at it the opposite way -- I almost feel like I've got that first revision out of the way with those chapter summaries.

What do you guys think? Has all this hockey writing put me over the deep end or am I on to something here?

High Five!

2010-04-22T19:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a good week for me when it comes to writing. Not only was Thirsty? San Francisco published, but I officially got elevated to the second round of the WEBook First Page contest. The next step is to submit the first five pages, along with a supplementary 4,000 words for anyone who wants to read past it.

You also have the option of including an “extended sample” of up to 4000 words. Readers will not rate this longer sample, but will have the option of checking it out after they’re done rating your first five pages. PageToFame will track how many people read further, so you can find out how eager your fans are for more of your work.

No word on how long this will take, but since the initial evaluation lasted about two months for 250 ratings, I'm guessing it'll be a while. I don't know who has the patience to read unsolicited first chapters for a contest (besides agents who get paid to do it), but WEBook hasn't determined what their criteria is for elevation. So, who knows?

Also, after hemming and hawing about what I was going to work on once the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs end, I decided to put A Thousand Words on hold and dive into the new idea I had. My goal for this week was to put together a detailed chapter outline so all I'd have to do is, you know, write it rather than create from the ground up. I think that's been my stalling point with ATW, as I left some big gaps in the last act and that left me a little blocked.

More on this next week as I move from outlining to writing. As it stands, I have 45 chapters in sequence from beginning to end with some small gaps to fill in. I'm sure it'll evolve over time, but it's a very strong starting point and should make this process much easier.

I'm published!

2010-04-16T17:01:00.001-07:00

Ok, not THAT kind of published. And technically, I've been published before with my sports stuff and ghostwriting. But now you can go to Borders or Amazon and pick up an honest-to-goodness bound stack of paper with printed words and a nice cover design, and it's got my thoughts inside.

It's not fiction, but I suppose it's the next best thing. For anyone coming out to visit the Bay Area -- or for my fellow dwellers, I'm a contributing reviewer to Thirsty? San Francisco, a guide to the best pubs, bars, and clubs in the Bay Area. I think the entire Palo Alto section is mine, and I've got various reviews here and there. I actually can't remember all of them that I wrote, so I'm sure there will be some surprises for me while I flip through it.

In any case, it's a nice thing to put in the resume, plus I got to write off a bunch of trips to bars and restaurants as "research" for my job. Cool, huh?

Oh, and if you want a copy of it, let me know. They're giving a 50% discount to friends/family of contributors.

On the WEBook Precipice

2010-03-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

Based on results from other WEBook First Page contest entries, I'm pretty sure that Local Band's entry is about to be elevated to the next round. You need a certain percentage of four- and five-star ratings to get there over the course of 100 votes, and I'm pretty close to one that made it. WEBook says they use a continuously updated algorithm, and if it's worth anything, Local Band has far fewer one- and two-star ratings than this other book. Because I'm a math nerd, I've also calculated that Local Band has a higher average rating than other comparable book.

So, I've made it past the first cut (they can strike you from the cause at 30 ratings if the ratings suck) and it looks like I'll approach the second cut positively. What does this all mean?

For starters, it's nice to know that about 75% of people who've read the first page of Local Band rank it from 3/5 to 5/5. After seeing some of the score distributions, that's gratifying. I don't know about you guys, but I still have that paranoid little voice in my head that ponders whether or not I'm a good writer simply because I haven't had any fiction published. Forget the hundreds of clients I've written business copy for or the mainstream sports sites that had me contribute or the freelance magazine articles I've published; none of that matters in my paranoid brain because...well, because fiction is so much more personal than other types of writing. And no matter how much good feedback I get on my writing ability or my story/character creation, it's a constant, constant debate that I have in my head.

So this is a little feather in the cap on that level and I think we all need those from time to time, right?

Now, on a more logistical level, the next round of the First Page challenge involves having an agent review it. Here's an excerpt from the FAQ:

If readers like your short summary and 1st page, it passes to the next round. You will be invited to submit the first chapter for further rating, and your 1st page will be reviewed by a top-notch literary agent. You’ll have up to 6 months to submit a first chapter, and your writing will be shown to more readers. If you continue to get high marks, you will be asked to submit a longer sample—for example, the first 50 pages of a novel or nonfiction book—for further rating. At least one participating literary agent will review your work at the end of each successful round. Submissions that make it to the final round have the endorsement of real readers, which gives them a very good shot at signing with a participating WEbook literary-agent and getting a publishing deal.

Ok...so if I understand the process right, those that make it to the next round submit a first chapter for general reader rating and the first page is also reviewed by an agent. While I think the notion of a First Page challenge is effective, it all lies in the simplicity and efficiency of reading about 250 words. I wonder how many people will actually take the time to read entire first chapters of undiscovered writers. Sure, they'll be filtered for quality, but the time commitment seems pretty lofty. And after that, a 50-page sample is a huge commitment from the reader. Unless I'm helping out a Brilliant Writer Friend, reading 50 pages of an unpublished manuscript seems to be an awful lot to ask.

Of course, this is all a live experiment for WEBook, as they apparently started elevating submissions in early March. So I'm sure they're learning about this at the same time we are.

Well, I suppose it's all moot until I actually get advanced to the next stage. And really, I should be working on A Thousand Words more than fretting about scores on a contest, shouldn't I?

Clarification from WEBook

2010-03-15T18:54:00.000-07:00

Ah, it looks like I got the context of Victoria Marini's quote about WEBook wrong. I received an email today from Brian, who works over at WEBook:

She was actually referring to another service we offer called AgentInbox, which is an electronic author-to-agent query service that she uses on WEbook. In the quote, I believe she is referring to the fact that she was done reviewing queries for the time being, since our system helps save agents time as they review queries. She wasn't suggesting that PageToFame will eliminate the need for queries, or that she is going to stop accepting them due to PageToFame.

Well, there you go. In any case, this is still an example of technology streamlining the process for agents. That has to be a good thing, right?

Note: I updated the part that originally got cut off so I don't look like a moron. :)

The End of Queries?

2010-03-12T22:18:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned a little while ago, I went ahead and entered WEBook's first page contest. I check my score every day, and even though I'm lumped into the "Other" category, I think I'm doing well enough to make it to the next round. I've got past the first stage, anyway, and even though there's a nebulous description of what makes it to the next round, I'm still not sure. Still, I've got a similar score (better, in some ways) than one I know made it to the next round, so we'll see.

In any case, when I was checking my score today, I noticed a testimonial from an agent that caught my eye. Yes, it's self-promotion for WEBook, but if I got a testimonial like this, I'd plug it too. It's from the Twitter of agent Victoria Marini of the Gelfman Schneider Agency:

Can I say I love @webook. Queries of the electronic and hard copy variety ARE DONE!!!!

Now them's strong words...but here's one way to look at it. The WEBook first page contest, which is basically ongoing and promises nothing other than a review by an agent for submissions that qualify. In short, public voting eliminates the weaker entries so that agents only look that meet or exceed a certain score.

Kinda like a first screener, except this is based on public opinion. Instead of wading through however many low-quality first chapter submissions get sent with a query, those are all weeded out; instead, the agent working with WEBook knows that the stuff that gets passed on is deemed interesting and/or good by 50-100 people, if not more.

Can this sort of thing eliminate queries? When I first submitted, I was skeptical, but I have to think that if the entire industry shifted to a system like this, it'd free up a significant portion of an agent's time, and that would be a good thing (assuming they used that time appropriately instead of just playing Freecell on their computer).

Several companies have tried a similar model, such as the Creative Byline publisher-submission service (they act as first-screeners and you have to pay to submit). Of course, the last I heard, Creative Byline had exactly zero published novels, so maybe the current system works just fine for agents/editors.

Still, you have to think that information technology has evolved to a point that the publishing industry can take on a different model in determining what's worth an extended look. What do you guys think?

Damn You, Ideas!

2010-03-07T22:50:00.001-08:00

As I've eased back into the real world after a three-week marathon of pumping out non-stop hockey content, I've looked back over my manuscript for A Thousand Words this weekend. It's always good to take these several-week breaks to kind of remove yourself and re-engage with the material. The good news is that I like what I've done for the most part, the medium news is that I think I want to take a twist further to push the last act, and the bad news is that...well, damn it, I had another full-formed idea creep into my head.

It's not a grab-you-by-the-throat idea like A Thousand Words was. When that happened, it really felt like I just needed to sit down and let stuff just flow out. No, this is more like...well, when I say it's a full-formed idea, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. There's a central conflict, a resolution, a key choice in the final act, and a resolution.

So, the question is: do I stop A Thousand Words and jump on this new idea? This is what happened back when I was working on The Drugs Don't Work, and funny enough, it's around the same spot (50-55k words). If I keep this up, I'm going to have a long list of brilliant ideas and 2/3 done first drafts.

Suggestions? Right now, I think I'm going to make a very detailed outline and put it on the shelf.

Returning Soon

2010-03-03T22:20:00.000-08:00

Wow. I've disappeared for a little bit, huh? If you're one of the rare crossover folks that reads both my hockey writing and my writing on, uh, writing (and I'm guessing there aren't any of those out there), then you'll know why I've been out of sight for about two weeks. If you're NOT one of those folks, well, let's just say that I've pumped out enough word count in the past two weeks on the Olympic hockey tournament and the NHL trade deadline to fill a NANOWriMo requirement.

I'm ready to jump back into the manuscript for A Thousand Words, and I've at least started to re-read the damn thing to get back into the swing of things. I just need to regain my writer's breath, first.

See you in a few days.

A "General" Comment

2010-02-20T09:15:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back, I mentioned the WEBook first-page contest that had a nifty cash prize if you submitted by a deadline. I wound up doing a test run of it as a reader (basically, readers have to vote how they like your first page and based on an algorithm, your page advances) and from the 20 or so pages I read...well, there were a lot of folks out there who must have forgotten to get critiques or edits.

That boosted my confidence as a writer overall. Still, when I got ready to submit, I looked at the categories and, as always, got stuck with the very wide category of "General Fiction."

Now, let's just think about that for a second. Movies have all sorts of categories: comedy, action, drama, thriller -- and they have all sorts of sub-genres, like romantic comedy, sci-fi action, etc. There's no "General Film" genre...so why is fiction so damn hard to classify?

Part of the reason why I was so very freakin' excited about St. Martin's Press's New Adult venture was that it felt like there'd finally be a category to query under rather than just "General Fiction" or "Commercial Fiction". I looked at about ten first-page entries in the "General Fiction" category and they were all over the map in terms of tone, setting, and context. That's not really fair to the writers, is it? I mean, at the very least, a more specific category lets the reader know what to expect.

This isn't sour grapes because from the limited views Local Band has received (16 when I checked), I believe I qualify for the second round and most of the ratings range between "pretty good" and "amazing" with no ratings on the lowest score. I'm not totally sure if that qualifies, though, because WEBook says that they are constantly evaluating their algorithm but they need at least 100 ratings to verify (fair enough)...so I think they don't even know what to expect with this. Hence, the cash prize.

In any case, I'm still a bit confounded at the lack of noted sub-genres for fiction. If other forms of entertainment break things down so well, why can't writers?

Updated Writing (Business) Website

2010-02-13T15:47:00.001-08:00

In case you're interested, I've recently ported over my original business website (designed in 2004) to WordPress. If nothing else, this shows the simplicity and power of WordPress once you know what you're doing.

Here's the new site for my freelance copywriting/technical writing business.

This is what the old one looked like (designed in 2004 by Customer-Centered Design).

And this is the WordPress theme I customized by using assets from my original design.

On Pixie Girls, Characters, and Breaks

2010-02-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

Man. Where the hell have I been? Taking over SB Nation's From The Rink was a little more daunting than I envisioned and it's taking me a little bit of time to NOT think about hockey whenever I try to write something. Combine that with a little bit of fiction burnout from the whole Amazon Breakthrough Novel editing extravaganza and, well, a little bit of a breather was in store.

(And giant apologies to Brilliant Writer Friend Sierra Godfrey...I haven't forgotten about my critique of The Snap, I just got overwhelmed. This is my public apology.)

I did see something that piqued my curiosity, though, and it seemed like the right thing to dive back into. Over at Uncreated Conscience, JJ blogs about Manic Pixie Dream Girl:

Unfortunately, in fiction the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is evolving into another type of Mary Sue. There are many sorts of Mary Sues and many definitions of them, but I define a Mary Sue as a female character whose traits must be contained within qualifying quotes. You know the type: she’s “Spirited!” and “Spunky!” and “Just A Normal Girl!”. In other words, she’s not actually a person.
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is starting to become a Qualifying Quotes character. She’s “Quirky!” and “Free-spirited!” and “Saved By The Love Of A Good Man!” However, The Manic Pixie Dream Girl has a slightly different set of problems that need addressing than the Prototypical Mary Sue. Your typical Mary Sue is generally a vehicle for the reader to enter the story, but the Manic Pixie Dream Girl functions as an object of desire.

How very true, and I'll say that basically Winona Ryder played MPDG in the 90s and Zooey Deschanel played her in the 2000s. I think I spent my entire time in college pining for MPDG to be real -- a quirky, witty hipster girl with incredible taste in film and music. After reading this, I felt a giant wave of embarrassment, not because of my previous hopeless infatuations (I did wind up marrying a version of MPDG, so I shouldn't complain) but because I realized that I had included some form of MPDG in the three manuscripts I've worked on to some degree of completion. Is this a cliche that has ruined my fiction?

Done properly, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a great device. She has existed as a muse for poets, songwriters, and artists throughout the ages. She is the girl behind The Velvet Underground’s “Stephanie Says” and Weezer’s “El Scorcho”. She is Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”, a “Scorpio sphinx in a calico dress”. I love Capote’s BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S and all of John Green’s novels and they both have Manic Pixie Dream Girls. She often comes into Everyman’s life and changes how he sees the world, opening his eyes to spontaneity and laughter before flitting out again.

After giving it some consideration, I came to the conclusion that I haven't forever doomed my work by creating some form of MPDG. Why? Well, even though this is a character archetype (as JJ cites, similar to the brooding hero), none of my versions of MPDG fall directly into a cookie cutter mold. They have unique characteristics that balance the character quirks, and their strongest traits aren't their trademark MPDG-quirkiness. All of that is a facade for the person's conflict and characterization, and they don't necessarily make choices because of MPDG stereotypes.

There's a reason why these character types exist -- they resonate with audiences, be it moviegoers or readers. However, the only way to make these characters real is to leave the "type" on the surface and make sure there's a living, breathing three-dimensional person underneath. I'm sure we were all "types" in high school, but we were all people beneath that. This is illustrated beautifully in The Breakfast Club, a film that will connect with teens until the end of time -- because we can identify with the type, but we can also identify with the struggles beneath the facade.

How can you know if you're writing past "type"? It took me a while to review my characters and come to this, but the thing that seemed to stand out is that the "type" ultimately didn't influence core decisions. These characters made choices because of their upbringing, their fears, their goals, or their environment. The fact that they have a hipster haircut and good taste in music was all window dressing for audiences to connect with, but they aren't limited by this.

So, after a brief moment of terror convinced that I've fallen into a gigantic writer's trap that I can never climb out of, I feel good about what I've created. Now I just have to get back on the writing treadmill and finish the worlds these MPDGs live in.

XML for Publishers

2010-02-01T20:39:00.001-08:00

I'm a writer. I think you guys know that. But you might not know too much about my experience when I preface that with "technical"...and one of the more interesting things I've done as a technical writer is work on single-source projects via different software in XML.

XML, if you don't know, is basically source code for spreading content. RSS, which I'm sure you know, is a form of XML. At my last staff tech writing job, we looked at how we could single-source documents for different product versions by using XML and tagging product-specific information.

Ok, why is that relevant to in a (Brilliant Unpublished) Novel Blog? Well, the publishing world is pretty darn fascinated/scared about the ebook sea change, and this dude envisions XML as a key part of it.

To become lean and robust, publishers have to recognize the shortcomings of undertaking each new publishing challenge from scratch. For example, considering eBook creation as a project at the end of the print publishing lifecycle artificially and exponentially increases production costs. Continuing such practices misses the essential benefits of digitization. It condemns the company to the past, forgoing the future while ignoring consumer demand.

Freeing content from formatting and making it possible to easily deliver content to any device on any platform in any format—print, web, or mobile—is not a new idea. Organizations have been doing it for years through leveraging the power of XML.

It’s time for traditional publishers to follow suit − with a content-centered XML-first publishing approach.

Now, how can publishers use XML effectively?

John Wiley & Sons has re-engineered their approach to publishing with the advent of Wiley Custom Select, an online portal that provides educators with the ability to create their own custom text books. Teachers select content they desire from any of the products in the Wiley library, arrange it in the order they desire, upload their own content (should they desire to do so), and, with a few clicks, automatically format, publish, and deliver the content into a custom eBook. All of this is made possible using XML.

While this may not impact a full novel via ebook, the non-fiction implications could mean a bit of modular delivery. Imagine if a publisher offered the option of Bob Villa's latest fix-it book, or a collection of selectable single-chapter excerpts from different authors if you're just trying to fix your kitchen. In fiction, this could also affect short-story anthologies and bundled collections.

It's a new way to organize and monetize content in our click-on-demand world. Here's a reasonable analogy: it used to be that if you wanted a song, you'd have to buy a whole CD. Now you can just buy a single MP3 for a dollar, or you can buy a bundle, or you can mix-and-match how you spend your gift card. You obviously wouldn't want to mix-and-match chapters from different novels, but in the world of non-fiction and short stories, such a thing might be possible.

Food for thought as we march forward into these strange new worlds.

Yet Another Contest

2010-01-29T16:58:00.001-08:00

I've already passed this on to a few friends, but here's a new contest from WEBook:

PageToFame is like no writing competition you've seen before. It empowers writers to test out the strength of their book idea and first page -- whether they have a complete manuscript or just one page. If you submit before Feb 15, you will be eligible for one of three $1,000 cash prizes, awarded to the top three first pages!

One thing I like about this contest is that the submissions are shown to readers randomly -- it's not a popularity contest between who has the most friends that can hit reload on voting (I only say that because I don't think I'd be able to win something like that). While there is a cash prize for submissions prior to February 15, there really isn't a true prize other than an agent will give you a chance.

A chance? What does that mean?

Writers who make it to Round 3 submit their first 50 pages. In Round 4, the entire manuscript will be considered. At each stage, a top notch literary agent reviews the top writing samples. Submissions that make it to the final round get the full attention of literary agents—especially those who have already reviewed and approved the work—and have a very good shot at being picked up by a literary agent who will help secure a publishing contract.

"Very good shot" is extremely non-committal. Still, I do like how different sites are giving writers new means at exposure. I suppose you couldn't really make a Project Runway-style show about writing, so something like this is the next best thing.

Make It So

2010-01-25T19:27:00.001-08:00

The past three or so weeks of editing and pitching madness can finally come to a close, as I've submitted revision 10 of Local Band to Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Contest. The editing was done in chunks, and I'll go into the useful tidbits from it when my mind settles down. The pitch part was painful, but not extraordinarily so, probably because I'd worked on the query off and on for two years and had the help of some dedicated Brilliant Writer Friends.

In the end, I feel like the manuscript is stronger, especially the all-important first three chapters as sub-plots and story arcs are more clearly defined rather than just hinted at. I think one of the big mistakes I made with Local Band was using the first 10% or so solely as character establishment rather than forcing the action to happen. That's been corrected, and I am cautiously optimistic that I'll have an easier time querying with an improved pitch and manuscript.

Oh, but my life is never simple, is it? I was set on submitting to the contest on the first or second day to ensure that I got in. That meant making sure everything was ready by Monday night. To complicate things, about ten days ago, I got offered the keys to run From The Rink, one of the biggest and most respected hockey blogs around as the original founder was promoted at the Canada's Globe & Mail newspaper. The blog is part of the SB Nation network, which means that it's one of them nifty internet start-ups complete with an ex-AOL guy at the helm and venture capital. No pressure as SBN detailed plans to take it to the next level, right? Surely I could meet the assembled team, come up with assignments, and create a plan to build one of the web's premier hockey sites -- IN ONE WEEK?

Yeah. I think I pulled it off, and the early returns are positive, but stress didn't really leave my side. The last bit of complication (besides feeling under the weather) was that my wife and I went to the San Francisco Star Trek convention yesterday (Sunday) because Patrick Stewart was making an appearance there, both for photo ops and a Q&A session.

There are few people that I aspire to meet. I mean, I've interviewed some of the true legends in hockey, met some of my favorite musicians, and got an autographed book from Nick Hornby. All those are well and good, but I think Patrick Stewart is on a rare plateau above everyone else (I think he shares it with David Bowie). We HAD to go, and this was our Christmas present to ourselves. It was a great, fun time, and Stewart was a combination of witty, eloquent, and reflective as he talked about his life and his career. He also busted William Shatner's balls a bit (the Shat shared the stage with him for about 20 minutes), which was freakin' hilarious.

In any case, this took up any possible editing on Sunday, which meant that things have been very, very chaotic and my cold caught up to me. Still, Local Band has been submitted, From The Rink launched, and we met Patrick Stewart for about 30 seconds. I even had a very short conversation with him during the photo op:

Camera person: We need to re-take that.
Me: I think I blinked.
Patrick Stewart: Oh dear.

Oh dear, indeed. This is my reward (grainy cell-phone version, the real one is obviously a high-res nice print).

Engage!

Who is Awesome?

2010-01-20T20:11:00.001-08:00

Kristan Hoffman is awesome, that's who! Congrats to Kristan for getting a full manuscript request from freakin' St. Martin's Press via their New Adult contest. Morrissey once said, "We hate it when our friends become successful" but not in this case. Kristan, you rock and I hope we'll all be able to buy a St. Martin's-published copy of Twenty-Somewhere in a year or so.

Anyone Can Be A Hero

2010-01-20T18:24:00.000-08:00

The post below is a re-post from the Nathan Bransford's forums, where I did not win the guest blog contest. Ah, c'est la vie, right?

If you made it past high school English (and if you're reading the blog of a literary agent, I'm guessing you did), you probably spent a week or two on the notion of the Hero's Journey in literature and mythology. You know, the one made popular by Joseph Campbell in his book of the same name -- the book that establishes the same basic motif for a story protagonist overcoming a conflict. For those that need a refresher on the Hero's Journey, this is a condensed cheat sheet with Star Wars examples:

Call to adventure: The thing/event that pulls the hero into his journey Luke Skywalker gets the two droids)
The mentor: The spiritual adviser that mentors the hero, often with a gift (Obi-Wan Kenobi and the lightsabre)
Refusal of adventure: The moment that the hero hesitates, unsure of himself (Luke commits to home chores rather than blowing up Imperials)
Point of no return: The moment the hero is sucked in and he can't go back (Luke's aunt/uncle are killed)
Challenges and temptations: Various challenges that test the hero, often overcome with new allies and friends (Han and Chewie help out Luke)
The abyss & transformation: When everything goes wrong but the hero changes into a higher self (Luke's wingmen are shot down in the Death Star trench, but he commits himself to the force)
Atonement: The hero triumphs (Luke uses the force to blow up the Death Star)
Journey home: The hero's resolution (Luke gets an ugly yellow jacket and a snazzy medal -- and doesn't get to kiss his sister...yet.)

This was probably most famously used by George Lucas as his inspiration for the original Star Wars trilogy. Lucas has said the same thing in a billion different interviews about the Hero's Journey and Star Wars: that he examined the structure presented by Campbell, looked at common themes of heroes and triumph throughout various classic and modern myths, then painted over it with a pulp sci-fi veneer. And since George Lucas has more money than God, Zeus, and Vishnu combined, maybe he hit on something.

What does that have to do with you, loyal Nathan Bransford reader? Well, us writers get stuck in so many places: dialog, prose, character, etc. In areas of plot structure and pacing, though, the Hero's Journey can be a spectacular resource for un-blocking the blocked writer. Think about it -- this is THE Supreme Model of Storytelling, a time-tested template that's produced #1 hits dating back to the days of non-Geico cavemen. It works, and it works in just about any context, even for you literary folk out there. Here are some examples, starting off with a personal anecdote.

Back in 1996, Ms. Foncell (my AP English teacher at Leigh High School -- see, I told you it's all about high school English) had us study the Hero's Journey. Our final project that year was to take the Hero's Journey and apply it to something modern. Being a bunch of snarky dorks, we picked Transformers: The Movie. This was the 1985 animated classic that appeared way before Michael Bay destroyed modern cinema. And wouldn't you know it, the darn story fit. The hero was a transformer named Hot Rod, the mentor was a beat-up Autobot truck named Kup, and the point of no return was when the Deceptacons blew up the Autobot base. Hot Rod and his Autobot pals met weird robots and faced challenges, but ultimately a giant planet-eating robot attacked everything in sight (abyss) and only Hot Rod could save things by opening the Matrix of Leadership (transformation -- pun intended) to become a new form that even gave him a little trailer when he turned into a car. Hot Rod rescued everyone, blew up the giant planet-eating robot, and celebrated to a rockin' hair metal version of The Transformers theme (journey home). The end.

(Aside #1: I'm sure that made no sense to 99% of you out there barring anyone who was a child in the 1980s. Sorry 'bout that.)

(Aside #2: We got an A on the presentation for "sheer nerve," even after the school principle walked in while we re-enacted key plot moments with old Transformers toys.)

See how easily this plot structure plays out? Now, we don't always have ass-kicking heroes like Hot Rod; in fact, hero might be too strong of a word here. Instead, let's consider it as the protagonist's journey, and the peaks and valleys are more focused on conflict without the subtext of Good vs. Evil. Consider how it applies to a more dour story like Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire:

Louis is a depressed landowner who comes across the mysterious vampire Lestat (call to adventure, mentor). Lestat turns him into a vampire but Louis refuses to engage in the vampiric lifestyle (refusal). Lestat turns Claudia, a little girl, and Claudia and Louis form a bond (point of no return). They try to kill Lestat and seek out other vampires (challenges and temptations), but eventually Lestat catches up with them and aids other vampires in killing Claudia (abyss). Louis gives in to his dark nature (transformation) and exacts vengeance for Claudia (atonement) before eventually coming back to New Orleans in the 20th century (journey home).

Think about that in terms of the protagonist, not the mythical Hero. If you look at each plot point simply as an event in an outline, you can see how this structure works even though this isn't heroic in the traditions of, say, Superman or Hulk Hogan. Similarly, things like "adventure" and "journey home" shouldn't be taken literally, but more as analogies for plot events.

Let's try one more example -- Charlotte Gilman's classic short story The Yellow Wallpaper:

The narrator is a 19th-century woman confined to bedrest in a room filled with yellow wallpaper due to her post-partum depression (call). The woman notes how ugly and hate-filled the room is (refusal), then starts hallucinating a figure trapped in the wallpaper (mentor). The woman decides to free the figure (point of no return) and begins peeling the wallpaper away (challenges). Upon realizing that the last day of her stay has arrived (abyss), the woman commits to stripping away the rest of the wallpaper by locking herself in the room (transformation). She "frees" the imaginary figure (atonement), and when her husband finds her, she is circling the room in belief that she is now the imaginary figure (journey home -- not literally, but the notion of resolution works here).

The Yellow Wallpaper can be an obtuse piece of literary short fiction but it still hits the Hero/Protagonist notes when it comes to action and conflict. If it can work here, it can work just about anywhere -- including your own manuscript.

I'm the type of writer that works well with outlines and writing out of order, and the Hero's Journey is one of the templates I use to try and look at how to space out that structure. Some of it is square-peg/round-hole forcing, but it generally provides a good skeleton for plot and pace. The challenge, then, is for the writer to adapt the structure and make it his or her own, either through character, prose, or a twist that elevates the story above a simple plot outline.

Pitch/Query Help

2010-01-17T12:19:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past few days refining my pitch for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. It's very similar to writing a query letter, and I found one of the best resources was this thread that had winning pitches from last year's contest. "Winning" doesn't mean they won the contest per se, but they made the first cut (top 50%). The second cut was made based on the manuscript itself, so the pitch only has to show that you have a viable idea with an interesting hook.

You'll find a lot of contradictions in this thread about what goes where and how. I got all scientific about things and just took a sample amount, then weighed the statistics of what worked. Then I combined that info with what I've learned about writing queries, then I sent it to Brilliant Writer Friends for feedback, then I revised it all again.

I have to say, the Brilliant Writer Friends part definitely helped out the most.

Holy Fakkin' Shite

2010-01-13T23:15:00.000-08:00

Man, it's a good thing my wife is currently obsessed with playing Dragon Age: Origins because I have not been a fun person to be around for the past week. With the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest right around the corner, I've putting the final polish on the latest revision of Local Band. This revision comes courtesy of feedback from Brilliant Writer Friends Sierra Godfrey and Kristan Hoffman, who picked up on some stuff that other critiquers didn't.

I think I already knew this before, but I really needed to cut dialog. Every writer has his or her particular strength, and I think mine is writing realistic dialog...but I can get overly enamored with it and I wind up putting in redundant lines for the sake of keeping a conversational rhythm going or just to get that one great witty exchange in there. So, using my most judicious objective editing knife, I slashed and consolidated about 94,000 words to just over 90,000.

I also took a look at the story as a whole, and I realized that I had some character exposition that was redundant because it was demonstrated through action later. It just sucked to kill some of my favorite lines, but if it doesn't serve the plot...off with its head.

I am NOT going to think of any creative writing on Thursday (though I will be writing a corporate article and hockey stuff). On Friday, it's all about the pitch for the Amazon contest.

When I get some better perspective, I'll detail the editing process for this revision because I think I learned a lot about polishing and choosing what to keep and what to kill. For now, I need to sleep.

10 vs. 1

2010-01-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

It's amazing what you discover when you pull your head out of the sand. I'd spent the bulk of 2009's creative-writing energy on two first drafts (The Drugs Don't Work and A Thousand Words, both currently about 60% done). However, since the end of December, I've been revising Local Band for the first time in about a year and a half to polish it for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest.

I know every writer approaches first drafts differently, but I go in with the idea of just getting everything down first, no matter how bad or unpolished it is. My basic philosophy is that you can't decorate a home until you build its foundation, and the first draft is the cement-and-wood foundation of this home. That means that it's bare bones in the exact sense, often times with just dialog shooting back and forth without inner thinking or external descriptions. Sometimes I'll just put in a two-sentence description of what's supposed to happen there because I just don't have the creative juice to do justice to a scene or an incident.

Now I'm revising Local Band, a manuscript that I consider polished enough to be sent to agents. I think four or five people have critiqued it in some iteration, and each writer that helped out with it came from a different background (fantasy, literary, etc.), so they each picked up on something different. I save each revision individually, either if I do a full-sweep edit or if I incorporate a person's feedback. I'm at revision 10 (which means the other two have a looooooooong way to go, though I like to think that I've learned quite a bit in the process and can hopefully do it more efficiently), and as I'm going through this, Brilliant Writer Friend Sierra Godfrey pointed out a very, very, very obvious way to make the first 20% or so brisker and better, especially when it comes to tying together the overall internal/external motivation of the main character.

How could I have missed this before? How could ANYONE have missed this before? Maybe a big part of it is that Sierra's writing style falls into the same range as mine, and that makes it easier to understand. I guess it goes to show that everyone brings a different perspective to the table, and you never know what you might learn. Thanks to Sierra, I feel like I've tightened up the opening act by trimming about 2000 words out of it. I've also stopped just hinting at the main character's central internal conflict and started to put in more tangible references to it.

I've also re-read the whole thing for the first time in probably a year. I usually cringe at reading old material, but I actually feel pretty good about this. The dialog is snappy (though I am on a mission to mercilessly trim it, regardless of how much I might like a particular quip), the prose is pretty strong, and each chapter has a direct purpose. The MFA critiquer (he of award-winning short story fame as well as being a creative writing teacher) actually commented on this fact, that each chapter had its arc, conflict, and contribution to the bigger picture.

I think the biggest lesson this has taught me is that there is a giant, intimidating chasm between the quality of Revision 10 and Revision One. My original goal was to get A Thousand Words up to query-ready by the summer but this gave that idea a polite slap in the face. Not to toot my own horn, but when I re-read Local Band, I was (pleasantly) surprised at some of the prose, mostly because I feel like I haven't come close to that quality on my first drafts.

But I'm trying to keep things in perspective. First drafts are all about foundation. Tenth drafts should be about making sure the interior lighting is absolutely perfect. Nowhere to go but up, right?

Resolutions (Kinda)

2010-01-03T17:50:00.001-08:00

My wife and I talked about New Year's Resolutions, and I wound up kind of dumbfounded at the whole thing. I think I'm more focused on goals than resolutions, though it could be as simple as "Be good, work hard, don't screw up."

It did, however, make me think of a song from probably my favorite musician, Tanya Donelly (she of Throwing Muses, Belly, Breeders, and solo semi-fame). This is from her song This Hungry Life. I suppose it could just be a rally against a mid-life (or quarter-life, or third-life, which is where I'm at) crisis, but I think it also applies to creativity in general.

This hungry life won't let you out whole
But you can change a thing or two
Before you go
This hungry life
Might not leave you with much

Kick up some dust
Earn someone's trust
Leave a few words behind you
If you must

Pick a good fight
And keep someone up all night
Change the story, change the story
And throw a hand up from the mud

2009 Did Not Suck (That Much)

2010-01-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

I think for pretty much everyone other than Sidney Crosby and JJ Abrams, 2009 sucked. The level of suckitude varied from person to person, family to family, but when most people in the world are looking for work, you can pretty much count on things sucking. That's why the pessimist in me has found it difficult to grasp too many positives for one of those grand ol' Year In Review posts.

Between work and fiction and long emails to friends and hockey stuff and blog posts here, I write an ungodly amount, probably a bit on the excessive or unhealthy level. And while this blog is mostly to chronicle my adventures in writing, it's a lot more personal than my hockey blog (and certainly much more so than the press releases or marketing copy I write). So this post doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with writing, but, you know, I think that's ok.

So without further ado, and in no particular order, here is my list of Things That Did Not Suck In 2009.

-Brilliant Writer Friends: I should start off with this, since this is supposed to be a blog about writing. I've had a few Brilliant Writer Friends (you know who you are) that I've trusted for critiques and brainstorming before I started this blog, but now I find myself more immersed in the writer community than ever before. It's something I really should have done a long time ago, and I'm glad that the people who visit regularly stumbled upon my ramblings. You are all a source of inspiration and comfort in this uphill battle to get published, but I know we'll all get there.

-HDTV: After years of resisting -- mostly due to budgetary concerns -- we finally gave in and got an awesome 46" Sony Bravia HDTV. Even after we got the black monster of our living room, we didn't pony up for DirecTV's HD service for about six months. Instead, the TV provided plenty of entertainment via our PS3. When the NHL season started, the dispute between DirecTV and Versus/Comcast led to a lot of message board chatter about how if you called up DirecTV and bitched about the missing Versus channel, you'd get free stuff. I did just that and scored a free HD DVR, movie channels, and a monthly discount.

One of my friends told me that once you see hockey in HD, it's impossible to watch it in standard. I hate to say it, but after about two days, I became an HD hockey snob.

-Mad Men: My wife's been watching Mad Men since Season 1, but it's something that I never sat down and watched with her. When Season 3 started, I caught the first few episodes with her and for whatever reason, it finally clicked with me. Many of my friends gave me grief for missing on two seasons of back story before joining in, and I think that's a reasonable bit of shit-giving. In any case, Sunday nights became about how Don Draper would further mess up his life. Now that we're in between seasons, it's time for me to catch up.

-JJ Abrams respects Star Trek: Oh, I was soooooooooooooooooo ready to mock Star Trek '09. From the instant I saw the trailer with young Jim Kirk stealing a car (WTF) to the fact that they were building the Enterprise on Earth (IT SHOULD BE IN SPACE DOCK), I expected this new Trek film to be the Michael Bay-ification of our beloved nerdy goodness. Even the involvement of Leonard Nimoy bothered me; it just seemed tacky and unnecessary.

Man, was I wrong, and I'm 100% glad for that. Now to clarify, while my dad tried to raise me a Trekkie (I think if my dad could be any fictional character, he'd be James T. Kirk -- and this is a guy that's read every piece of classical literature from The Iliad to Sherlock Holmes to Anna Karenina; that tells you how much he loves Star Trek and is a pretty damn impressive fact considering English is his second language), I thought (and still think) the original series is too campy to watch. TNG, however, is bloody brilliant, and I like DS9 and I tried to like Enterprise because Scott Bakula's a great actor. In any case, Star Trek's been in my life since I was born in one form or another, so for the new film to impress both my Shatner-adoring dad and his Picard-worshipping son, well, that's a hell of a job, JJ Abrams.

-School of Seven Bells: My favorite musical find of the year was actually a late-2008 discovery, but I didn't actually pick up their album until a few weeks into the new year. Mixing dream-pop vocals with an electro groove, School of Seven Bells is what you'd get if you threw Depeche Mode, Enya, and Slowdive into a blender. Here's Half-Asleep off their excellent debut Alpinisms:

-WordPress: I love WordPress. Ironic, huh, that this blog is hosted as a shitty free Blogspot one -- that's what happens when I get lazy and go for a quick fix. WordPress, however, is a fantastic piece of DIY web publishing. Not only have I learned a ton of tricks about customizing it, it's provided a small bit of supplementary income. Yes, this writer is working on the other side of the equation with WordPress configuration and customization services. In a year when many businesses cut their marketing and documentation budgets, the occasional WordPress project is a nice fill-in for that.

And sometime in the next few months, I'll get off my butt and transfer this to a WordPress blog.

-Video game understanding = marital bliss: My wife and I are both pretty obsessive video game players, but the actual overlap in taste is fairly minimal. I don't think I'll ever get into The Sims and I doubt she'll ever appreciate the kung-fu intricacies of Tekken, but this year we took a major step forward in creating a common appreciation for two distinct video game series. I've always been an obsessive follower of Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear series, even dating back to its NES origin. My wife always thought it was just a dumb shooter game, and when I tried to explain the intricate generational plotine, she just laughed and told me that there was no way the story could be as good as any Final Fantasy game. At the same time, my wife made me watch the CG-animated film Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children and I was completely lost and bored.

For whatever reason, my wife decided that she'd give Metal Gear Solid 4 a try (on easy mode, but still). Shortly after, I decided to try out the digital download of Final Fantasy 7. Six months later, she's a true disciple of Metal Gear lore, from the relationship between Big Boss and Ocelot to the awesomeness that is cyborg-ninja Raiden. As for me? Even though I knew Aerith would die 2/3 of the way through Final Fantasy 7, I still felt a giant punch to my gut as Cloud carried her lifeless body through the water; shortly after that, I felt the same thing as Tidus bid farewell to Yuna at the end of Final Fantasy 10.

The lesson here? When you can share an obsession, especially the absurd ones spawned by insanely creative Japanese minds, marriage is better (even though you have to share the PS3).

Published vs. Agented

2009-12-18T11:44:00.000-08:00

Darn you, Nathan Bransford. I keep responding to topics you post about, this time about Amazon's version of American Idol. If you haven't read Bransford's whole post on it, check it out here. The gist of it is that there are pros and cons to being published without an agent via winning the contest (no negotiation, set advance, etc.). Also, an interesting question: if you're good enough to win a publishing contest by a major retailer like Amazon, shouldn't you try to get representation for a better deal instead of locking yourself down?

To each his/her own, but I suppose I'd put myself into the category of seizing the opportunity. Publishing is fickle, and I'd be wary of passing up a publishing deal just to look for something better. I've done the whole querying thing -- and gotten close enough to being agented -- to see several shifts in the marketplace. It's volatile, and with the whole ebook issue bubbling under, I think it'll be a few years before publishing stabilizes into its future business model.

So, if I'm somehow lucky enough to win a contest like that, I think it makes sense to walk away a winner rather than pressing my luck and hoping for no whammies. With that in mind, the opening of the Amazon contest is in late January, so that means that I will continue working on A Thousand Words (almost 50,000 words now) until the end of the calendar year, then I'll focus on revisiting Local Band. Thanks to the help of Brilliant Writer Friend Sierra Godfrey, I'll be working on making the first 10-15% faster and more intense (to quote George Lucas).

Update: Check that, I broke the 50,000 word mark this afternoon. Let's see if I can make it to 60,000 by the end of the month, then take a three week break to polish up for this contest.

More On Digital Distribution

2009-12-14T15:03:00.000-08:00

Not to keep playing off Nathan Bransford's posts, but his latest uses an analogy from a book to show the current dilemma the publishing industry is in. In my last post, I examined how independent musicians can use grass-roots marketing and digital distribution to build a following but it's a difficult thing for authors to do.

Bransford talks about how the solution might be to think outside the box (or the desert, based on his analogy). Now I suppose the traditional argument for brick-and-mortar stores and physical copies is that people still like to go browsing in places like Borders. But I wonder if even that's starting to pass us up. I mean, kids will always want to go to a toy store because there's that immediacy of "I want" but for adults with fewer hours in the day, online shopping is a huge convenience--not just the shop-in-your-pajamas aspect, but things like free shipping, comparative prices, and user reviews.

As a music geek, one of my favorite things is going to a used CD store like Rasputin Music in Berkeley. I could literally spend hours there going through the used racks hoping to find cheap and/or rare gems. This is an experience that you simply can't get shopping online. However, I find myself doing this less and less, and it's not a self-control issue. (I often tell people that I can resist many things, but a used CD store is my one weakness in life. That, and chocolate chip cookies.) It's just becoming more of a hassle than it seems to be worth. Similarly, I used to go to the Borders down the street from me all the time simply to browse. Most of the time, I wouldn't even buy anything; I just like wandering around from section to section and looking at different things while surrounded by the smell of coffee. I hardly do that anymore.

I wouldn't say that there's been a one-to-one replacement with that and digital browsing, but as much as I've resisted the digital marketplace, I've found that web developers are giving us more tools to replicate this experience. For example, when I think of a topic that might interest me, I simply look it up on Amazon, find a list of books, and read sample pages. While there isn't that immediacy of "I'm in a bookstore and I just saw this," that level of impulse browsing actually becomes greater, not less. Why? Because with even my mobile phone, I can browse for books the instant I think of a topic ANYWHERE -- not just when I'm in a bookstore.

For music, I listen to a lot of satellite and online radio. I don't necessarily need to gamble on a used CD from a band I might be interested in because I can listen to samples online as soon as I hear it from another source. I can spend an evening going through a DJ's playlist online, then sampling the artists on there via MySpace.

So without even realizing it, I've succumbed to the way technology has changed our consumer habits. I can't remember the last time I went to a mall other than to go to a movie, and the only reason I go to a store is usually when I need a part to fix the toilet or something. Otherwise, going shopping usually means going to the grocery store.

With that in mind, what is this new form of "outside the box" thinking for the publishing industry? Perhaps it's a greater emphasis on creating an author's web presence and driving traffic there by offering, say, the first fifty chapters for free, then the purchase involves an ebook and an optional hard copy. Maybe the budgets shift from pre-printing umpteen thousands of copies to marketing an author/book's materials online to build awareness that way. One thing's for sure, publishing companies will have to create new ways to monetize their authors' assets outside of the actual book.

Digital Distribution: Books vs. Music

2009-12-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

First off, thanks to Sierra Godfrey for giving me an award. I wasn't prepared and my acceptance speech will be short and awkward. Ahem. "I'm the king of the world!" All righty, then.

(Seriously, though, Sierra and I have found that are fiction styles are similar which makes critiquing a more natural process. She's helped me and I like to think that I've helped her, so we both rule.)

There's been a lot of chatter recently about how 2009 showed a mark trend among readers to move towards Kindle-like devices. I have to admit that I hadn't actually seen one in action until about a week ago, but Nathan Bransford was right when he did a little mythbusting -- those things are easy on the eyes, and not in a pretty facade way.

The whole ebook thing got me to thinking about the digital distribution similarities between music and books. I've been involved with the San Francisco music scene off and on since 2000, so I've seen the natural progression of bands just starting to grasp the web up to a point now where MySpace playlists and Facebook marketing are necessities. For bands, it's pretty simple: record songs, post them on MySpace and the web, plug them on Facebook, and sell physical copies at gigs. You can scale that formula up or down depending on how big the local band is.

The great thing about the magical interwebs is that it's opened up this door to artistic freedom. Pretty much anyone can put their recording somewhere and allow it to be heard. Will it be heard by more people than just friends and family? Well, you still have to put in the grass-roots level marketing: networking with other bands, playing shows, contacting college radio and podcasts, etc. That part of attention getting will never change. However, you're no longer limited to a record label for small levels of success. It helps, obviously, but if you're good enough and dilligent enough, you can build your own following from the ground up that could lead to wider distribution via an indie label or major label.

Now, consider the writer's dilemma. There are some similarities: you can offer chapters (songs) from the entire book (album) for free on a website, you can network with other writers and try to get notice on blogs or writing sites. But the key difference is the main traffic driver. Bands play shows, and since local bands are usually in a lineup with two or three other bands for an evening, there's always some exposure to the uninitiated. That's what builds buzz and brings traffic to websites. If you're at a club to see Band X and Band Y kicks ass too, you'll go to Band Y's website and spend 10 minutes sampling a few tunes. Simple as that.

Is there any equivalent for an independent writer (or just a writer, period)? I'm not sure. For someone like Wil Wheaton (one of my favorite writers and a darn successful independent writer/blogger), his initial fame as an actor brought traffic to his website and his talent as a writer grew that audience to a point where he's got a significant platform for his demographic. He can offer podcast snippets of his books and do readings at sci-fi conventions and that produces sales -- but Wil had the platform before he started selling books.

For most musicians, the key to success is playing live. You do that enough and your music is forced into the ears of whoever is nearby. Since reading is a solitary act that requires a much heftier commitment than listening to a three-minute song, it's just not going to have that immediacy that you can get with music, digital distribution be damned. Until readings by authors become as popular as listening to music over a beer, that avenue just isn't going to be open.

Photographers and artists can easily share their work on the web, and all it takes is a quick glance from web visitors to create a fan. Musicians have live gigs and ease of format -- a few minutes is all it takes to listen to a song. Authors? Well, even short stories require a greater commitment, both in terms of time and intellectual focus.

For the independent author to be successful, you need a platform -- but to build a platform, you need to be successful. It's a catch-22, though, as there's no easy organic way to build one, even in the age of Kindle.

Tangential to this, I stumbled across a musician's blog where he plugged his "new novel" that he completed over Nano. It was a free PDF download and it had some similarities to Local Band, so I took a few minutes to sample it. I won't name the guy, but the writing looked like (and probably was) a first draft put into PDF form with a Photoshopped cover on it. Not only werethere grammar errors, plenty of Writing 101 no-nos peppered the text. I suppose that leads into the next question -- even if you can distribute digitally, should you without the benefit of an agent and an editor perfecting your work?

All these questions and so few answers.

Nano Concludes

2009-11-30T18:49:00.000-08:00

First off, thank you everyone for your thoughts on our beloved Indy's passing. It means a lot, and I think the healing's begun.

With all of the chaos happening in my life, I'd told some of my fellow Nano participants that there was no way I'd hit 50,000 words, but I'd be happy with 35,000 or so. That would put me in a good position to finish a first draft across December if I was disciplined enough.

I'm done writing for the day (a good way to get energy out during periods of grief), and when I checked the word count, it stood at 35,165 for A Thousand Words. Mission accomplished, despite everything that happened over the past few weeks. If anything, this process--both Nano and dealing with Indy--proved to me that I am indeed a writer at heart, and nothing gets my energy out better than creating a world or journey through the written word. It's very similar to the feeling I got when I took my first creative writing class at UC Davis. I remember telling my teacher that I'd never experienced such freedom before, not in music or acting or drawing. She just told me to keep writing. That's been pretty good advice.

Art Imitates Life Imitates Art

2009-11-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

About five years ago, I rediscovered my creative writing voice after letting it sit dormant for several years after college. During that down time, I'd continued writing in a non-fiction way, either for work or for the burgeoning online hockey community. As I sought to re-train my writer's muscle memory, I created a series of random scenes, most of them unconnected through plot or character. Some of these scenes formed the basis of Local Band, and some of them were independent writing experiments.

One of those pieces was a very short story about a pair of newlyweds moving into their first home, and the guy finds a box of stuff he packed away from his dog that passed away. It's not much, just an exercise in description and dialog while trying to remind myself how to trigger a narrator's thoughts.

It's also one of the first things I thought of last night when my wife suggested we put a bunch of Indy's things in a box ("air-tight, so it keeps her smell"). Indy, our lazy and food-stealing 14-year-old greyhound, she of the oft-mentioned broken leg and subsequent amputation, left us about two hours before Thanksgiving dinner due to a seizure that took away most of her cognitive abilities. We'd given her 24 hours at the emergency vet to see if some of her awareness could return post-seizure (the vet mentioned that in a best-case scenario, they return to normal in about 12 hours), but she never did. Indy left this world to go to that great dog park (or perhaps buffet, or maybe it's a combo dog part/buffet with BBQ chicken and cheeseburgers) a little after 5 PM PST the day after Thanksgiving. We'd brought her a blanket from home and one of her favorite stuffed toys, knowing that even if she couldn't think or be aware of her surroundings, maybe the smells would register with some instinctive part of her brain to bring her some measure of comfort. She is to be cremated with her Santa-hat teddy bear, a Christmas gift from 2007.

During the past three months, Indy's post-surgery body needed various levels of extra attention, and that obviously impacted my writing time. Her broken leg occurred on September 5, three days before our wedding anniversary. Up until that point, I'd re-dedicated myself to querying regularly for Local Band and writing the manuscript for The Drugs Don't Work. The month of September was pretty hellish, as she was required to basically be horizontal (knocked out on pain meds) so she wouldn't put too much weight on the broken leg. This basically meant monitoring her 24/7, and I'd try to handle as many of my writing responsibilities by her side so I could do two things at once. As she got to the point where she was able to move, she still had a small pen area and needed both a sling and a leash to get around without hurting herself. When she got up, we'd try to take her out and then settle her down as quickly as possible. This didn't always work; Indy was as stubborn as she was endearing, and when she wanted food, she really, really wanted food. For some reason, she'd always want food when I was writing, meaning that I'd sit down, get about two paragraphs out, then put the laptop aside to try and settle her on to her bed, and the whole thing would repeat until I eventually gave in and gave her an early dinner or late breakfast or just snacks.

October showed some return to normalcy, except the fix for her broken leg hadn't taken, so she required additional surgery -- a pretty hard-core external rod that earned her the nickname RoboDog. During this time, I'd had the idea come for A Thousand Words, and as Indy had started to get back to her normal routine (minus, of course, the giant composite rod supporting her broken femur), I was able to put aside The Drugs Don't Work and run with the new idea. I'd still slept downstairs with Indy for most of the nights, and on some of those, I'd stay up and write on my laptop until I knew she was sufficiently passed out. I don't know if A Thousand Words was a reflexive result of my creativity being squashed for six weeks while we dealt with this, but the ideas came fast and furious, and I took every chance I could get to write or at least jot down chapter notes.

In November, it became clear that Indy's broken leg simply would not heal and she was scheduled for amputation after much debate. Our vet, and a few second-opinions, believed that this would be a blessing in disguise, as her hip was ravaged from her racing years and never properly fixed. He believed that removing the femur completely would eliminate her arthritic pain, and she'd adapt quickly to live out her remaining days in relative peace and mobility. November was obviously NaNo WriMo, and I'd tried to maintain my focus on hitting word count for A Thousand Words as we went through this. Her amputation went exceedingly well, and she even got up and walked around at the vet's office that night. Just a few days after her surgery, she went for her first short walk down the street, and not to long after that, she was pushing the pace alongside our mini-schnauzer. Everything seemed better than normal, and you could see her spirit come through stronger than it had in years. It's not just that she was happy, she was pain-free, and she seemed ecstatic to explore the boundaries of her pain-free life. And yes, that included mastering the art of peeing on three legs.

One week after her surgery, we received the news that the amputated leg bone biopsy showed osteosarcoma, a nasty and aggressive form of bone cancer. This was somewhat of a surprise as her x-rays had been consistently clear of cancer, even the morning of her amputation. We'd considered the pros and cons of chemo, and were pointed to the generous folks at the Ohio State Greyhound Health & Wellness Program -- a program that donates chemo treatments to ex-racers like Indy. Our decision was to try chemo, and if it didn't sit well with her, then just let her live out the rest of her days in peace.

With things being mostly normal (including a return to sleeping in our bed instead of the downstairs couch), that also meant that writing could resume at a normal kick. Of course, Nano WriMo was the primary driver behind this, and I'd sought to hit my word-count marks, if not every day then at least for weekly goals. Indy didn't try to interfere too much; she just seemed to be more at ease without the bad leg, and she'd sleep comfortably until it was time for a walk or for dinner, though her random demands for snacks still managed to interrupt my word count every now and then.

The last week of her life, Indy's remaining stump began too ooze seroma far more than it should have. The week prior to that, her recovery was textbook, as the seroma oozing from the incision had decreased to a nearly non-existent point. Our vet figured her increased activity had triggered the seroma increase, and we dutifully cleaned it up with a closer examination to come at the oncologist's visit the day before Thanksgiving. At the oncologist, an ultrasound showed that the increased seroma had come from a mass in her stump. In a best-case scenario, that meant scar tissue and maybe a blood clot. In a worst-case, it was a recurrent tumor. A culture would tell us early the next week.

Three days after that, it doesn't really matter, though our vet thinks that chances are it was a recurrent tumor and that probably her cancer had spread to her spinal column and brain, causing her seizures. We thought we had at least three or four more months with her, but we only had three weeks. An hour before her seizure, I was cleaning the kitchen area for Thanksgiving dinner. The familiar squeak of the pantry door always caught her attention -- that was the magic area where treats came from. She stood up and hopped over to me. Normally, I'd get her to go lay back down as proof that she couldn't just demand treats from dad, sucker as he was. Tonight, though, I was in a hurry and I grabbed one of her favorites: Check-Ups brand potato bones from Costco. She grabbed the bone and sprinted back to her bed, laying down faster than I could ever get her to, and she happily gnawed away at the bone while I continued to clean the kitchen. I kept going for the next hour while she took her usual post-bone nap, and I like to think she was in a happy place when her seizure hit.

Some people have kids. We have pets, and sometimes I think that's what our purpose. Maybe someday we'll combine the two, but for now, we're known as the nutty animal people in our circle of friends. Because of that, this isn't just the loss of the family dog, it's the permanent farewell to a cornerstone family member, bad breath and all.

This is an excerpt from the aforementioned very-rough and very-incomplete short story:

I pulled my hand out to find it clutching the weathered body of a porcupine. The manufacturers label was still hanging on to its underside with Made In China peaking out at me. Its eyes, sewn into the smiling face of the plush body, offered a warm greeting that said, “Hey there, long time no see.”

I’m surprised it greeted me at all. After all, it had a pretty abusive owner. It’s hard to forgive someone who throws you around and lets you be carried around in the jaws of a clumsy greyhound. The porcupine, which had no name other than It (as in “Go get It!”), was the other best friend of Marty, my greyhound who took his last nap seven years ago. And almost every nap prior to the big long sleep was taken with It.

I squeezed It to see if it still had a voice. Sure enough, a loud squeak started as I pushed into it, and slowly died off when my thumb gradually released its hold on the squeaking mechanism. I squeezed It again a few more quick times. I looked over to the open doorway. Usually, one squeak was all that it took to get Marty’s attention, even after he had lost most of his hearing in his later years. I suppose when your two best friends want your attention, old habits die hard.

Rather than Marty galloping through the door with his usual half-happy/half-confused stare in his eyes, It’s squeaking got the attention of someone much taller and, if I do say so myself, much sexier.

“What was that?” Dana said, a large box marked Fragile in her arms.

“Just an old toy,” I said, showing It to Dana.

In her grief, my wife says that it's not fair that Indy was taken from us on Thanksgiving. I'm trying to remain positive, and look at the symbolism of it all. Greyhounds usually live 10-12 years, and Indy was a very happy 14-year-old girl. That's something to be thankful for. And in her three weeks post-amputation, she was pain free for the first time in a decade. She hopped around, she kept pace with her schnauzer brother, and she was happy up until her last moment. That's something to be thankful for.

When we'd get the pooches ready for bed, we'd always tell them it was time to go night-night. Our mini-schnauzer would spring past us up the stairs and usually be in bed before we got there. Indy always followed her pack leaders, probably due to being raised as a racing dog, and she'd always wait for us. Even after she couldn't do the stairs anymore, we'd settle her into her bed downstairs and tell her to go night-night.

As she drew her last breaths, my wife told her it was time to go night-night, and I followed with my customary, "Get some rest, girl." The emergency vet gave the injection, and Indy went to the "forever sleep" (to quote Yoda) with her Santa-hat bear tucked next to her.

You'll always be daddy's special girl and I miss you already. Get some rest, girl.

Dang...

2009-11-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

Oh, motherfucker.

When I have more time this weekend, I'll go through the successful entries and see how they compared to Local Band. Maybe what that one agent told me is true, it's just impossible to market.

Update 4:43 PM: A big hearty Tofurky Day congratulations to Kristan Hoffman for being selected as a Winner (capital W) of the contest. Her name wasn't on the Ning list linked to above, but it's right here. I'm glad that a writer acquaintance made the cut and best of luck on turning Twenty-Somewhere webisodes into a big freakin' bestseller.

Wednesday at 6 PM

2009-11-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

What will you be doing Wednesday night at 6 PM? Getting ready for Thanksgiving? Taking a nap? Playing Uncharted 2: Among Thieves? (You really should, it's fantastic. Even my wife -- she of RPG and platformer obsession -- wants to try it now that I'm done with it.)

I won't be doing any of the above. I'll be driving down Highway 101 to meet my dad for the Sharks/Blackhawks game. But my head won't be on hockey, it'll be on the results of St. Martin's New Adult contest, to be announced at that time.

What will JJ (the friendly editor) do besides blow her nose and take more cold meds while fighting off her illness? I dunno; there will be Winners with a capital W, of course, and the Ws will take home a prize of a new book. The real winners, though, are the ones who get asked for a partial submission.

What do you think about that, Morrissey?

And, you guys, the bad-asses in Muse, what do you think?

Oh, and the ever-adorable indie movie/music goddess Zoey Deschanel, what do you have to say about this? Other than the fact that you are obviously the coolest person in history ever because you're both a great musician and actress (unlike, say Billy Bob Thornton's singing or Tom Petty "acting" in The Postman).

Well, then, it looks the masses have spoken. JJ, consider this: Morrissey, Muse, and Zoey think you should ask for a partial of Local Band. Actually not even a partial, a full, along with a nice publishing deal. Could you say no to them? It'd break their hearts, and then Morrissey would have to write a song about you. You wouldn't want that, would you?

The (Dollar) Value of Prose, Part 2

2009-11-22T09:13:00.000-08:00

...or "Why I have no right to mock Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown besides the fact that they are way richer than I will ever be."

In my last post, I pointed out what is pretty obvious to most people who've taken any number of English classes -- that Stephanie "Twilight" Meyer and Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown have generally awful prose in their stories, yet still appeal to millions of people. Why is that?

Well, it's probably the same reason why I have, from a little kid up to today, obsessed over Star Wars -- because there's something about the universe they create, the pacing they use, and the big-picture story that triumphs the limited aesthetics of the product.

When I talk about Star Wars, I openly acknowledge that only one of the episodes (The Empire Strikes Back) could be considered a good film. The rest of them fall into a widely varying range of quality when it comes to acting, writing, and directing. Not surprisingly, George Lucas directed the other five Star Wars episodes (technically, Richard Marquand directed Return Of The Jedi, but all accounts have Lucas basically ghost-directing for a variety of reasons), and Lucas has always been about visual aesthetic and plot points, not dialog or acting.

My wife (a fellow geek) and I have spirited debates about the merits of the Star Wars prequels; I like them despite their flaws and she only enjoys one of them (Revenge Of The Sith). However, she agrees with me that she's glad they were made because despite their flaws as films, they've opened up this giant corner of the Star Wars universe we could have never imagined ourselves, both visually and detail-wise. We once had an exchange where I trumpeted the overall story arc of the prequel trilogy and how it cleverly brought one puppet master to power while he deceived all his enemies; I even said, "Besides the directing and the acting and the dialog, don't you think the story is really good?"

Her response: "'Besides the directing and the acting and the dialog'...what else is there in film?"

Well, there is story, and story can, for many people, triumph over flaws in other areas. (The other point of debate in this, if we're just focusing on films, is visceral thrill.) Why did Titanic make a bazillion dollars despite having cheesy dialog and mailed-in performances? Something about the story connected with a lot of people (I wasn't one of them, but hey, here I am defending the Star Wars prequels, so what do I know?). It added up to more than the sum of its parts.

Ultimately, films need dialog and actors, just like writers need prose. Here is the difference, I think; you can be a great writer but a terrible storyteller and you'll go nowhere. In that case, it doesn't matter how pretty your prose is--if the story completely lacks conflict or pacing, people will lose interest.

However, you can be a terrific storyteller and just a mediocre writer. As long as you create plot points and events that whisk the reader from A to B in a gripping fashion, there's a chance you'll succeed. In a perfect world, one would excel at both but we know that doesn't always happen. I'm sure way back in caveman days, Ugh grunted really eloquently around the fire but his tales went nowhere and his buddies rolled their eyes before clubbing him to death. On the other hand, Oogh didn't have a huge grunt vocabulary but he came up with fantastic scenarios of monsters and hunts and maybe even spaceships, and he captivated his audience despite the fact that it didn't always translate that well between his prehistoric brain and his grunts.

Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown may not be the most eloquent at what they do, but they're storytellers; they know how to cater to their audience and deliver what they'd like to keep them turning the page. As writers, that's a trait we could all use, so even if the prose sometimes sounds like banging a head against a brick wall, there's still something all of us can learn from.

(Short aside: So I went with my wife and some of our friends to see New Moon. As much as I rip on the prose in the Twilight books, I'll admit to being entertained by the first movie. This, however, was one of the most disjointed and boring movies I've seen in a long, long time. It's about two hours long and you need to chop out about 45 minutes of gloomy staring to get to the actual meat of the story. Even my wife called it "disappointing" and said that she wouldn't be buying this one on DVD.

And...she did concede the point that the monotone mumblings of "love" dialog wasn't THAT far from the Anakin/Padme romantic disaster of the Star Wars prequels. Point to Mike! She agreed that, as films, at least those movies bookended the awful declarations of affection with crazy lightsaber battles. Lightsabers make everything better.)

The (Dollar) Value of Prose

2009-11-19T18:42:00.000-08:00

Like many men this weekend, I am, erm, invited to go with my wife to see New Moon. When she showed me Twilight on DVD, I was fully prepared to mock the hell out of it. Hey, I had my goth tendencies in high school, but at least Anne Rice books involved a lot of sex, religion, and gore (plus, she knew how to command the written word). Twilight, as it turned out, was a reasonably entertaining movie, and the vampire with the pixie haircut was cute. However, curiosity drove me to open a copy of the book and, well, I'm not too glad I did that.

I'm not the first writer to note that Stephanie Meyer's prose is pretty awful. I'd heard about it quite a bit but I was shocked to see just how many of her pages broke the first rule of writing: show, don't tell. If Stephanie Meyer had ten bucks for every use of passive voice, well, she'd have the same amount of money she has now.

I picked a random passage from New Moon via Amazon's Surprise Me feature:

Edward--still smiling so beautifully that my heart felt like it was going to swell up and burst through my chest--put his arm around my shoulder and turned to face my grandmother. Gran's expression surprised me. Instead of looking horrified, she was staring at me sheepishly, as if waiting for a scolding. And she was standing in such a strange position--one arm held awkwardly away from her body, stretched out and then curled around the air. Like she had her arm around someone I couldn't see, someone invisible...

Yowza, yowza, yowza. Adverbs. Passive voice. Really, really awful foreshadowing. And yes, telling instead of showing. I know many people don't care too much about prose when it comes to their bestsellers, but am I a snob to wonder how this can possibly be successful? Or is it simply the dumbing down of our arts, where everything is blockbuster or bust?

To reinforce this, here's a passage from a Dan Brown book, another popular sinner when it comes to quality prose.

Langdon settled into the plush leather seat and closed his eyes as the noise of the airport faded behind him. The U.S. capitol was a half hour away, and he appreciated the time alone to gather his thoughts. Everything had happened so quickly today that Langdon only now had begun to think in earnest about the incredible evening that lay ahead.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but if you wrote that paragraph in Creative Writing 101, your teacher would saturate it in red ink.

One of my all-time favorite fictional universes is Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear video game series. It's got one of the densest, most involved, and longest-running mythologies I know, and it's delivered in a medium (video games) that absolutely suits it best. My wife saw a novelization of the third canonical game in the series (Metal Gear Solid) at Best Buy and she picked it up for me a while ago. It's written by veteran author Raymond Benson -- a guy who's sold many, many books, though I hadn't read any of them. I figured the story would be in good hands but the pedestrian level of writing was completely shocking. It made the above samples look like works of literary fiction, and the whole thing was incredibly hard to read. Still, Benson's a successful author who's sold more books than I probably ever will, but how does one do that when the quality of writing is just so bad?

Maybe it's as simple as my friend Christy Finn put it -- for many people that buy books, it's not about the prose, it's about the story. This reminds me of an age-old debate I've had with some of my non-music geek friends (or "normals", as my music friends call them), where I prattle on and on about the artistic merits of lyrics and composition in all of the sub-genres of indie music...and, as one of my friends succinctly put it, "Dude. Can't a song just be fun?"

[cue snob rant]No! A song can't just be fun! It must have meaning with a strong composition and a compelling melody! That's why Joy Division is immortal among critics and pop artists quickly become tabloid fodder and running jokes.[end snob rant]

The snob in me thinks that this is the artistic downfall of our society, but (teaser for my next post) I realized that there's a not-too-far-off comparison for something that I spend way, way, way too much time obsessing over.

To be continued...

NaNo WriMo Hurts My Hands

2009-11-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

Seriously. It does. Ever since I started writing both for a living and for fun, I've found that I get this nasty thing called tendinitis in my forearms and wrists. It's more commonly known as carpal tunnel, and if you don't know what that means, it's that the carpal tunnels in your arms are inflamed so that circulation doesn't get through, and then all sorts of bad shit happens.

What's the way to fix this? Whenever this flares up -- and it only happens now on rare occasion, as I manage to not push myself overboard to the point of pain -- I have to wear these awesome robo-braces on both arms. If you've ever worked in an office, you've probably seen at least one person wearing them.

Yeah. I'm That Guy.

The marathon insanity of NaNo WriMo, coupled with the fact that I'm trying to do regular posts on all the hockey stuff I contribute to AND actually get my work done, means that my carpal tunnels are taking a beating. Imagine the Death Star shooting its ginormous laser at the London Underground and that's what's happening in my extremities right now.

Still, I push forward because you can't stop progress, right? They have meds for pain (or in my case, funky uncomfortable braces that hold your hands in a stiff, ergonomic position).

The lesson here? If you try putting down at least 10,000 words a week, four hockey posts a week, and whatever writing and management projects you can do, be good to your hands. They earn you that living -- and eventually, that big publishing deal.

Shameless Plug

2009-11-17T18:01:00.001-08:00

How many agents have you queried for your manuscript? If you've gone through this sometimes soul-crushing process, then you've probably seen a book called Guide To Literary Agents. It is, not surprisingly, an annual guide to literary agents. Editor Chuck Sambuchino also has a blog and I got to contribute a post talking about the seven things I've learned as a writer. Check it out and let him know how awesome I am...please!

"New Adult"

2009-11-14T13:02:00.000-08:00

There's Young Adult, and now there's "New Adult"...or at least St. Martin's Press is trying to push that. New Adult covers that awesome period in life when you're legally an adult but emotionally you're, well, you're trying to figure your stuff out.

We are actively looking for great, new, cutting edge fiction with protagonists who are slightly older than YA and can appeal to an adult audience. Since twenty-somethings are devouring YA, St. Martin’s Press is seeking fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult—a sort of an “older YA” or “new adult.”

Hmm. Coming of age as a twenty-something? I think I know of a story that involves a guy in a small-time rock band who's confronted with trying to figure out what to do with his life. I believe it's called Local Band and it's written by some brilliant unpublished fellow.

Now, here's the kicker: St. Martin's Press isn't just pushing this notion forward, they're actively seeking new writers via a contest on the link above. You're allowed to submit a short pitch and a first paragraph. Sounds like it's right up my alley, especially since I've totally let the whole query process fall off the map with our dog's broken leg/amputation.

(Which, by the way, is going exceedingly well. She's a little speed demon out there, which is great except she's still oozing post-op goo, which leaves a little trail wherever she goes. Nice, huh?)

Submissions are open until the 20th, so I'll be fine-tuning my pitch until then. In the meantime, work continues on A Thousand Words, and while there's no way in hell I'll meet the NANO WRIMO goal of 50,000 words, I'm at a hair under 18,000 and I'm finding progress to be going quite smoothly. All I need is time, damn it!

Nano WriMo

2009-11-03T19:06:00.001-08:00

Dog update: Her big amputation surgery is on Thursday. Please send along all good karma!

I was originally going to bypass the insanity of Nano WriMo but a little bout of inspiration today reminded me that I was making good progress on A Thousand Words until other things (recording demos for my band, playing the awe-inspiring Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on my PS3) got in the way. Not to mention the whole dog issue, but still, that can be worked around since she's a lazy pooch who sleeps all day even when she was healthy, let along when she's on pain meds.

So since I sat down and worked on A Thousand Words for the first time in about two weeks, I figured I might as well chart my progress on the NanoWriMo site. If you want to add me as a buddy, my account is BSWB97. I put in about 1200 words today on a pretty critical chapter, and I still feel the fun of the story. Structurally, each time I write seems to create more nuances, which means that I should have no problem filling in my target word count, especially since I have the bulk of the story outlined and the end in mind.

I'm just a hair under 10,000 words -- 9,816 to be exact. If I'm going to spend long nights watching our dog rest over the next week or so, I might as well be writing, right?

8,700 words and counting

2009-10-19T19:51:00.001-07:00

Inspiration's a funny thing; it can come out of nowhere to offer a deluge of creativity and ideas, and suddenly you've got nearly 9,000 words in about two weeks. Now that's some marathon writing. All of this is happening while we're going through the rollercoaster of our dog's surgery and her ensuing complications (prognosis: it may or may not be very, very bad...but there's still hope). Between emergency vet visits and trying to keep an eye on her, free time is at a premium. The good thing about this new manuscript is that so far, it feels like I don't even have to try. The writing process has been swift and efficient. I'm not sure whom to thank for this love-tap from my muse, but it's been a hell of a ride.

The new manuscript, tentatively titled A Thousand Words, is at about 8,700 words. I've got chapter summaries for about 25 chapters that will carry the story to about 2/3 of the way through. I know the main character epiphany, the big story climax, the twist that throws everything into hell...it's almost like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, where you have all the pieces and you just have to assemble them the right way.

Of course, that's just for the first draft. There will surely be monster amounts of editing going on after that, but I'm trying to ride this wave of creativity for whatever I can. As any good writer knows, you never know when this fountain of inspiration will disappear, so even when issues prevent me from getting everything down, I can at least through out a bullet list of notes to make sure the ideas stick.

Maybe it's just a little bit of good karma coming back after six weeks of hell with our poor dog, though I'd gladly trade all this inspiration for her just to be healthy again.

Changing Gears

2009-10-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

When inspiration hits, you have to run with it. So while I've hit a pretty solid milestone with The Drugs Don't Work (45,000 words), I've had an idea running around in my head for the past few weeks. It came from countless conversations I've had with friends about how life works, and the very concept, at least a real-world application of it, has been part of my vernacular for years. I think working on the Real Simple Life Lessons essay contest made it a little more tangible, and since then, I've just had this repeated thought running through my head.

So at the risk of losing momentum on The Drugs Don't Work, I'm taking the advice of Cindy and Finny and running with this as much as I can. I jotted down a rough outline with different character and plot notes, then talked things over a bit with Finny, which just created a whole bunch of new ideas. It's funny how quickly the basic plot arc came together considering that I had struggled with bits and pieces of how to take The Drugs Don't Work past the first half. Maybe it's because that story is more personal and dark, and this one just seems to have a plot device that writes itself. In fact, in the past 24 hours I've managed to put down 2500 words and if time allows, I feel like I can easily double that this weekend.

The best thing about this is that not only does the idea feel very real and palpable, but it's got a great pitch lines. I told it to Finny and I intrigued her right away; properly polished, and I think it's got a great hook with an easy sell (or at least an easy foot in the door).

I know if I gave the plot hook by itself, some people might find it to be sappy, but I'm determined NOT to turn this into bad romantic drama territory. I'm still going to keep my voice and style because that's what I do. There are plenty of ways to package a plot based on voice, pacing, and tone, and while something like this could have approached sappy levels depending on whoever wrote it, I'm writing the damn thing, so the pseudo-Lad Lit voice is staying.

Character and plot details just seem to be falling into place, and little decisions and quirks that will make everything just more damn interesting seem to be appearing out of nowhere. I'm excited.

Fiction From Non-Fiction

2009-10-01T18:48:00.001-07:00

When work, health, and a dog's broken leg all get lost in a traffic jam, creativity can get shuffled lower on the priority. However, I did read a non-fiction book that offered some inspiring moments, or at least new ways to look at things.

During much of the time our dog's been healing, we've had to monitor her to keep off her broken leg. In fact, up until the last week, we basically had to oversee her or sedate her so she wouldn't put too much weight on the repaired bone. So for two weeks, my wife and I would take turns sleeping downstairs by our makeshift patient area, waiting until our pooch's meds took effect so she could get a quiet night's sleep.

For me, that meant some time to read, and I picked up Juliana Hatfield's memoir When I Grow Up. If you don't know who Juliana Hatfield is, she's a Boston-area singer songwriter who's been in and around the indie rock world for about 20 years. Her memoir's narrative is an interesting weaving of two tales -- her present-day tour with her new band and her rise to brief 90s stardom and subsequent dismissal from her record label.

Juliana's tone is self-deprecating and wry, and she has a number of road trip scenes as she discusses being in a tour van going cross-country. At first, I was just enjoying the real-life peek at a working musician's touring life (it ain't glamorous), but I realized that I could take some inspiration from those specific scenes. The Drugs Don't Work, my current manuscript, is built around a road trip, and while I have a big list of dialogue I want to play out, I've needed to find the right way to frame it. Part of it is taking the characters into random locations that you might do on a road trip, but part of it's going to be in the car. And, of course, there's not a lot to describe in the car other than the dialogue. Seeing how Juliana worked this in different ways -- focusing on a specific point of contention, focusing solely on the dialogue, or integrating a flashback/other background -- helped me break open a few scenes I've been struggling with.

I now have more that I want to write, and I'm at 43,000 words in the first draft. Next week should be returning to normal, as I'm done with all of the NHL previews I had to write, work is stabilizing, our dog is healing, and I'm getting over this death cold that my wife passed on to me. If I'm ambitious, a good writing binge could help me break 47,000 words.

That Whole Agents & Publishers Thing

2009-09-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to say that my dog's leg is on the mend, which means life was a little more normal this week. However, because it's the start of the NHL pre-season, that means that I owe little bits of previews and analysis all over the place, so I haven't been nearly as productive in terms of creative writing as I'd like to be. Hell, I haven't even had time to update my own hockey blog in the past week, but things should begin to swing into a regular rhythm next week (it makes a HUGE difference once said dog is given medical clearance to do some light walking and normal eating). Maybe my wife and I will even get to go out together next week -- though we'll have to call in a babysitter of some sort on Thursday night as I am NOT missing the Manic Street Preachers at the Fillmore.

In fact, today I actually managed to bang out two new scenes for The Drugs Don't Work, which in turn created a new character with her own backstory. So that's another way to help fill up space. The good news is I'm at 41,000 words now, and I feel like I've finally settled down the main characters' arcs and epiphanes. Now it's all about the journey.

Anyways, I've kept up on my blog reading this whole time (glad the non-chronological method sparked some creativity, Angela) and I caught two interesting pieces on getting an agent. First, super agent/blogger (or is that super blogger/agent?) Nathan Bransford wrote about whether authors will eventually need publishers due to digital distribution. I've been skeptical of ebooks despite having written two business-related ones, but apparently they are actually getting some clout in the marketplace. I've never used Kindle, but I've seen a bazillion PDF files and it just ain't the same as holding a book in your hand (and it's much harder on the eyes).

You don't need infrastructure to distribute e-books: you just need an Internet connection. An unknown, unpublished Author of the Future could do deals with the Amazons and B&Ns and Sonys of the world (or possible a single e-book distributor) and simply upload their book from Wasilla and voila, the book will be instantaneously available just as readily as the new book by Dan Brown of the Future. No warehouses, no catalogs, no print runs. Online vendors, as we've seen, will sell anything.

So, in this scenario, does the Author of the Future, especially one with a built-in audience, really need a publisher?

Well... yes. Maybe.

That's because there are a whole lot of tasks that Author of the Future may not care to deal with, such as editing and copyediting, designing the cover, dealing with all of the zillions of different e-book vendors and their preferred file types, and, of course, marketing. Surely there will also be Co-op of the Future to reckon with - front page placement on an e-book store, for instance.

But most importantly, for the first time basically ever, Author of the Future is going to have a choice: work with a publisher, who takes care of a lot of the dirty work, or tackle the dirty work themselves, possibly with the help of ahem an agent who can help negotiate the e-distribution deals and work on selling the author's subrights and help the author find freelancers to handle aspects they can't tackle on their own.

Self-publishing. Digital distribution. I'd be lying if I didn't say I hadn't thought about it, especially because self-publishing is easy and, through the right service, affordable and professional for both print and ebook formats. Bransford mentions real-world logistics, such as copyediting, cover design, etc., and of course, that comes into play, and that's part of the reason why I dismissed self-publishing.

My friend Cindy Speer is published on a small press, and she's discussed the whole self-publishing vs. small press thing with me before. She noted that small presses still help you with cover design, manuscript format, and marketing, just like the big publishing houses. They just don't have the same reach or power. Do you trust yourself to copyedit your entire 90,000-word manuscript? Are you skilled enough to design your own cover? Do you know how to promote a book?

For most of us, the answer is no for all three questions. I've been stubborn with Local Band, because I feel it's a strong piece of writing and I've been told as such by publishing professionals and writers. So does that mean I could epublish it, stick it on Amazon, and just have a go? Well, no, of course not. A finished manuscript isn't necessarily a publish-ready manuscript; agents and editors help you nuance little things to polish it more than you can do yourself. To me, self-publishing signals defeat, a sign that you're just not good enough to be taken so that you're stuck on your own.

But then I read (and I can't recall on whose blog it was on) about the economic realities of the publishing business as it's 1) hit by the craptastic economy and 2) caught in a print-vs-digital evolution, and the agent's point was that it's really difficult to gamble on a new writer, especially in fiction, because money's so tight. In other words, if you thought getting an agent was difficult a few years ago, it's way more difficult now.

So then the self-publishing thing suddenly becomes more viable. And as Bransford points out, it's not quite the black hole of losers that it was a decade ago.

To self-publish or not? If you do, then you better know what the hell you're doing when it comes to marketing creatively.

Tangential to this, I saw that WEBook is now offering the new Agent Inbox service. It's very similar to Creative Byline (which I tried and found...disappointing, but that's a different blog post. Their customer service was nice, though.) except it's going to agents instead of editors. They've got some heavy hitters on their agent roster, but I imagine that it'll take some time to work the kinks out. I'm pretty sure I'll give it a go because, well, why the hell not?

How To Kill Your Productivity...

2009-09-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

...deal with a senior dog with a broken leg. Need sleep. Must finish working. Have to write a bazillion pieces for the new NHL season. No time for creativity in the near future.

(The worst appears to be over, though. Hopefully next week will see some semblance of normalcy.)

On Dog Injuries & Inspiration

2009-09-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

My dog broke her leg on Saturday. Freak accident type of thing, and she's a bit of a clumsy beast as it is. We picked her up on Monday morning and I've been back to the vet twice after that because she is not working well with the pain.

Of course, it's better than the alternative, but it also killed what was set to be a productive holiday weekend of yard work, video games, and writing. Oh, and something called my anniversary. That's today (the 8th), and that is getting shoved to the side for now.

So, when it's all about changing peed-on blankets and administering pain drugs, where does the inspiration part of this come in?

Well, since we knew that we were picking up our dog from the vet Monday morning and our anniversary (two years!) was on Tuesday (today), we went out for a modest date night on Sunday night. Modest is the key word here, as fixing a broken bone on a dog is bloody expensive, especially when said dog is crazy nervous and freaks out about anything, require 24/7 sedation when kept overnight at the vet.

(As I write this, I've been up since 5:30. She took a powerful sedative around midnight, which finally calmed her down, and it's 7:00 right now, which means she's starting to come down from it. So instead of just being so knocked out that she pees on her blanket in her sleep, she's looking at me with half-open eyes and giving a small whimper with each breath. I asked my wife, "Is this what it's like to have a newborn?" but then I noted that newborns don't weigh 50 lbs and are covered by insurance.)

In any case, we went to go see (500) Days of Summer, a movie I've been looking forward to ever since I saw the preview because really, when a movie directly references There Is A Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths in the trailer, you know it's going to be good. (That was the final song at our wedding...because our taste in music is awesome).

As for the actual film itself, it was a Good Indie Film -- strong performances, witty writing, some cliches, and some originality. What sparked my creative thinking was the combination of dialog and scene, how the writers turned everyday scenarios into fodder for great dialog and how they used unique settings (like IKEA) to have creative character moments. Since I spent the past two weeks working on my Real Simple essay contest submission, I'd kind of fallen out of step with my goals for my second manuscript -- which, by the way, has the tentative title of either Spontaneous or The Drugs Don't Work. I'm leaning towards the latter, because I think it's more striking and the name of a good Verve song.

In any case, during the time I worked on my essay, I limited my progress on the manuscript simply out of time and responsibility. Instead of writing scenes, I had created a list of critical moments that needed to happen in between the scenes that were already written. When I sat down to work on one of them during a rare moment of quiet last week, it was like my head couldn't get out of essay mode. I kept trying to find "the moment" in each scene but the flow just didn't seem right.

I suppose I was trying to force it, like I was building from the top down instead of from the ground up. Or maybe it was more like shoving a square peg in a round hole type of thing. In any case, I did feel a bit of inspiration after seeing the film, and I tried a different strategy. Since I knew what the scene would be about, I identified a turning point for it, then looked at building the dialog organically there (dialog, rather than action, has always been my strong suit).

In some ways, I'm not doing anything particularly different but I just needed that little kick start. Some people read for inspiration, and that totally makes sense but that doesn't work for me. However, if I see a good film or TV show with strong dialog and inventive choices/development, it gets my creative brain crackling.

Did I just have a small bout of writer's block? I don't want to label it as such!

An Epiphany About Epiphanies

2009-09-03T18:48:00.000-07:00

It's another week of slacking off for me, though most of my creative energies have been focused on refining my essay for the Real Simple Life Lessons contest (big thanks to Finny and others for their input on that). I like to think that it's ok to miss out on my weekly goals if that focus is being used on a different writing project. In any case, the contest theme is "How Did You Know You Were A Grown-Up?" and my original draft focused on all of the terrible life things that start happening to your friends and family from your mid-20s onward. Things like divorce, depression, addiction, we don't plan for these things for ourselves or our friends, and yet they creep in and do some nasty things to so many lives.

In any case, I first reviewed the draft with my wife and she goes, "It's kind of a downer."

Shocked that my doting wife wasn't marveled by my amazing vocabulary and vivid imagery, I took a step back and looked at the arc that the essay took and I realized that it basically went from "I was young and idealistic" to "Terrible things started happening" to "Real life sucks."

Since most of the readership of Real Simple are people looking for practical and healthy solutions to life, it probably wasn't the right way to end a winning essay. As my wife put it, "It's not a literary journal."

I had to re-evaluate the lessons I'd learned during the "Real life sucks" portion of my life and I found the missing element to my essay: there was no epiphany.

Oh, my college creative writing teacher would be so disappointed. I remember early on in that class, she beat in the notion of epiphany as such a critical element of a story. I'd been writing for so long in so many different ways, how could I have missed it?

Simple. I got too close to my essay, and in short turnarounds, it's sometimes difficult to take that necessary step back and look at all of the elements. Character, conflict, resolution, epiphany; those were the elements she stressed over and over, and even in non-fiction, they apply. After all, you're still telling a story, whether it's about an incident in your life or characters in a made-up world. The funny thing is that when I write articles or longer hockey blog posts (or at least the ones I treat like an essay or an article, like my Fever Pitch-ing of Jeremy Roenick's career), I try to carry an arc forward to its resolution and epiphany.

Consider it a dual lesson here: 1) never underestimate the value of feedback, from writers and non-writers alike and 2) don't forget to give your characters that critical epiphany!

On Dialog & Star Wars

2009-08-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

For those that have known me a while, it's no secret that I'm a fan of genre entertainment. Want to become an instant friend to me? Bring up Star Wars and watch as several hours pass.

For anyone brave enough to wade knee-deep into geek conversation with me (I'm pleased to say that when my wife and I bicker, Star Trek or Star Wars references often end up in there), one constant point of debate is the three Star Wars prequels. I often maintain that as flawed as they are, I enjoy them to various degrees. When asked why, I usually cite two things: the story and the expansion of the universe/mythos.

(And I think Ewan McGregor was spot-on as Obi-Wan Kenobi. And lightsabers. I love me some lightsabers.)

The latter point is, well, message board fodor. The first point, however, is relevant to writing.

Notice I said story, not dialogue. I think that if you took an outline of all three prequels and gave them to sci-fi geeks in 1983 and said, "This is what the prequel trilogy will be," their head probably would have exploded out of joy. Throw in stilted, unbelievable dialog and things change.

(Short aside -- when filming the original Star Wars, Carrie Fisher told George Lucas, "Who talks like this?" I know people complained about the prequel's dialog and much of it deservedly so, but if you watch the original trilogy, you'll find that the two trilogies share many of the same flaws.)

The problem -- and this problem seemed to diminish somewhat with each film as Lucas brought in outside screenwriters to script doctor or co-write -- is that expository dialog can sound like, well, expository dialog. Even for intergalactic monks with laser swords, they should sound like people rather than declarative statements.

Good dialog, as a Tarantino film can prove, can create its own rhythm and tension regardless of situation. It can make a scene go from mildly interesting to vivid and alive; on the other hand, bad dialog can destroy any momentum you have. See the "love" scenes in Star Wars: Episode 2, Attack of the Clones, a film that I've come to really enjoy as long as I fast-forward past any ill-advised attempts at "romantic" dialog.

How do you write good dialog? I think the key is to give each character a distinct voice and to include the little details that slip into our oral communication. People don't use perfect grammar when speaking and they don't always use complete sentences. They'll pause or insert throwaway "like" or "you know" or they'll stay within their own vocabulary and rhythm.

On the flip-side example of this, I'm currently playing through Final Fantasy X, and while the creators did a fantastic job of creating a deep story arc for its principle characters, the dialog tries too hard to sound real. In each cut-scene, about half of the sentences end with the phrase "you know." I'm sure a big part of that was the Japanese-to-English transition team, but there are moments where it reminds me of senior citizens trying to talk like teenagers.

I recall workshopping one writer's mangled attempt at historical drama. In addition to going overboard with passive sentences and telling-not-showing, every one of his characters -- regardless of age or gender -- sounded the same: formal, stilted declarations of stuff. It was simply painful to read, and even more painful when he asked for constructive criticism but wasn't receptive to any of it.

So how do you know if you've written good dialog? Here's a trick: read it out loud. If you have any theater training, even if it's just high school drama, that helps quite a bit. Or have someone read it out loud to you and try to think about if you were hearing that on TV -- would you think it sounded good or would you find it stilted and unrealistic.

Excuses, Excuses

2009-08-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

I admit it. I set goals for myself, and while I had a strong few weeks, I haven't come close to meeting my goals for this week. Haven't queried any agents, haven't come anywhere close to it.

But...I think I've got a reasonable excuse. I've decided to enter Real Simple's 2nd annual Life Lessons essay contest. It's a 1500-word essay detailing the moment you knew you were a grown up. 1500 words, well, that's pretty close to my 2000 word weekly goal. Plus, that involves a full critique/revision process (hat tip to all my writer pals that were willing to review it on short notice) rather than just dashing out a rough draft. So I think it's ok that I slack off for one week.

However, progress was made. One of the nice things about my critical-scenes writing technique is that it allows you to see the tentpole moments of the story. Rather than work on any single chapter, I've focused my actual writing on the essay contest. For my new manuscript, I've gone through the written chapters, then created a short descriptive placeholder for all of the obvious holes that have to take place. Right now, I've got a list of about 15 key-moment chapters. With my current word count of about 37,000 words and my rough final goal of about 80,000 for this manuscript, I think it should be able to come together easily between revising/expanding existing chapters, creating those new key-moment chapters, and adding in further character pieces or transitional moments.

But the week's not over yet. Let's see if I can hammer out at least a few hundred words before Monday rolls around.

Character Sacrifice

2009-08-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

My wife likes Twilight. Me? I found the movie reasonably entertaining (and the pixie-haired vampire was really cute). As for the book, I recall a Stephen King column where he said some pretty bad stuff about Stephenie Meyer as a writer. I've read a small sampling of Twilight and from that piece, I'd have to agree. Sure, it's a YA book, but that doesn't mean that the prose has to be stiff.

That's a rant for another time. For now, I wanted to talk about character arc and sacrifice. My wife told me that she thought the ending sucked because it sewed up everything neatly without any real emotional sacrifice by any of the characters.

The whole point of the character arc is for them to have a significant emotional change, where they sacrifice something of value for meaningful epiphany. It could be a physical sacrifice, financial, emotional, whatever, but it's got to put something at stake. You can tie things up neatly while still maintaining this character change as long as the character evolves.

I think I had some understanding of that, even when I was young. In fifth grade, we had a writing assignment to create a sequel story to something we'd read. I wrote the very uncreatively titled "Matt & His Family", a continuation of the children's classic The Sign of the Beaver. I don't remember all of the specifics of the story, but I remember that at the very end, a bear attacks the family cabin and his father sacrifices himself to save the family, leaving Matt as the caretaker of the family.

I remember when I wrote it -- and this is through the mind of a fifth grader -- that it seemed like a good way to force Matt into taking on a new role in his family, and that he would honor his father's sacrifice. My teacher hated it, saying that I wrote a "bloody Freddy Kreuger story." (Really? It's a bear in the woods. They attack people.) I think she wanted something more simplistic, more uplifting for my age group, but even back then, I remember thinking that it'd be a natural progression for how Matt learned to survive on his own in the original story. In this case, Matt's father sacrificed himself for his family's physical safety, and Matt overcame his insecurities and doubts to become the family caretaker.

(Take that, Ms. Kronk.)

What is at stake for the character? Stories don't feel fulfilling if the characters become chess pieces moving around the board. Otherwise, they act as generic canvases without any real emotional movement. As a Star Wars geek, I often debate with my friends about the merits of Return of the Jedi. One of my main arguments about why the movie wasn't that good is because Han Solo doesn't do anything -- he's just an action figure, and his role could have been fulfilled by Generic Rebel General #4. Harrison Ford originally pushed for Solo to die, saying that it would fulfill his character arc, going from arrogant space pirate to someone who sacrifices himself for the good of the Rebel Alliance. For kids, this probably would have been too much to deal with (and it would have sold less action figures) but if you looked at the story from an adult perspective, it would have given it much more weight and depth.

Of course, physical self-sacrifice is the extreme end of this. While trying to craft all of my characters -- and though I try to keep the stakes high, they remain in the context of the book; my commercial fiction stories don't really involve a civil war between Rebels and an Empire -- the main protaganists need to have that emotional change that evolves them from being not being able to handle a situation (or reluctantly doing it) to understanding that they have a choice and they choose to do this. The trick, then, is to create the situation where these extreme emotions come out, with the potential outcome being really high or really low.

"What's the worst that could happen?"

2009-08-17T17:59:00.001-07:00

In an earlier post, I talked about a non-chronological method I like to use that involves writing key scenes first (you need a rough story arc outline), then filling in transition/less-critical scenes later. Over the past weekend, I re-read the first 75 pages or so of my new manuscript. Besides doing a general edit before sending it to a friend for critiquing, I tried to notice some of the inconsistencies in character and personality.

However, this produced some unexpected results. Because I've done scenes in the middle and latter portions of the story, I have a better sense of how it's all connected, of how fatal flaws are involved, and how characters make decisions. As I was reviewing one chapter, I realized that an entire scene that had taken place off the page really deserved to be brought to life.

One of the first -- and most important -- things I've learned about writing a chapter is that it has to be a story in itself. There has to be conflict, some form of resolution, and something -- whether a cliffhanger or an opening -- to move the story forward. In editing Local Band, I feel like I honed this skill pretty well to trim the fat from a scene. Once I really learned how to work with this chapter model, I felt confident enough to really push and pull scenes in different ways. This could heighten conflict, take it in a different direction, or introduce an unknown element -- and that's when the creative fun really happens.

Back to the chapter at hand -- so I felt inspired to create a new aftermath scene (it's really difficult keeping these references specific-yet-vague in a blog, isn't it?) following a critical conflict. There's some misdirection of identity and motivation, and I kept pushing the characters to trust and pull back, trust and pull back, until the not-so-pretty truth was revealed.

I realized that what I was doing was simply looking at each decision point in the scene and asking the question, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" After roughly playing it out in my head, I'd run with it (assuming it felt appropriate; obviously, the worst thing that could happen anywhere is if a nuclear bomb dropped on the characters but that's a bit much in my little tale).

Every time one of the characters had to make a choice, I pushed them further with this. The goal is simply to heighten the conflict, and while the tension may only be in the head of one character, the reader can empathize with it as well, making the final release all the more valuable.

"What's the worst that could happen?" It's a valuable question when creating a scene, so dare to go there -- you'll be surprised at how your characters react.

Characters Under Pressure

2009-08-12T17:17:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday, which means the week is halfway over. How have I fared on meeting my weekly goals?

Agent queries sent: 1
Manuscript words written: ~2000
Blog posts (including this one): 1

So, not bad, though I've got to attack the query letter thing more. Part of the problem is that I'm now on this creative bent, and when I'm done with work, I really just want to write and write and write. I find that I'm pushing and pulling my characters in different ways, and -- while this sounds a tad schizophrenic -- their voices are simply coming to me, in surprising ways.

I remember when I really got into a groove with Local Band. It was about 1/3 of the way through the initial draft, and at that point, I'd had a rough outline of what was going to happen. I picked up a great piece of advice in manuscript building that really helped me establish the character. I wish I could remember the name of the book now, but its methodology was this: get your basic story arc, pinpoint the most critical and emotional scenes, then write those first.

I have some writer friends who try to write chronologically and they get stuck after a while. What I like about this method is that it puts your characters in extreme situations and forces them to make choices that really demonstrate their motivation and emotion. Sure, you could go back and revise it later -- hell, you could scrap the whole thing completely. You know that notion a person's character is revealed under stressful situations? For me, writing a character works the same way.

The difference with an approach like this, as opposed to starting from the beginning, is that you bypass all that introductory/exposition stuff and dive into the meat of your story. In essence, it's working backwards. Rather than building something up to figure out how characters will react when the stakes are high, you establish their core sensibilities, then you can build the hum-drum moments around that central core. Plus, you can add in little bits of foreshadowing here and there.

As I've worked this process with my current manuscript, one nice byproduct is that it unintentionally creates new scenes and new characters. By taking something set 2/3 of the way through the story and depicting the most visceral of emotions for all involved characters, I can create other memories, motivations, or feelings that come together in past or future scenes.

The twist that I've added to this, which just makes the creative process more fun and all-consuming, is when I have the characters in the middle of a critical scene and I ask myself, "How can I heighten the conflict?" Just like real life, people will get the impulse to say or do something stupid in the heat of the moment, and that creates all sorts of delightfully regretable and uncomfortable circumstances. All of this tests the character's limits, and when you know their limits, it's much easier to fill in the blanks.

Ahem. But I still have my goals, and while this current kick has powered me to 6,000 words in about two weeks so far, I really have to keep it up with the whole query letter thing.

Setting Goals

2009-08-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

My goal with this blog is, well, to not let this blog slide into oblivion. Pretty good goal, huh?

That got me to thinking, though, about keeping pace with the practical side of things. Creativity comes in spurts (and fortunately, I've managed to get over a six-month bout of writer's block for manuscript #2), but I find that once I got the ball rolling again, ideas just started popping out of my head. It could be a random flash of dialogue that explodes into a new scene, or just a what-if scenario based on something I saw or heard.

Here's a good analogy. If you ever played adventure computer/video games like Monkey Island or The Longest Journey, you know that you really have to think things through from a problem solving perspective. If you get an item like, say, a pepper shaker, suddenly your mind has to consider all of the possibilities of what you can do with that pepper shaker, from opening it to pouring it in someone's food to god knows what else. It's a different mindset, and I found that after NOT playing these types of games have several years, it was really difficult to try a new one. I had to re-learn to think that way, but once I did, the creative problem solving was there again.

Writing, at least for me, is the same way. It's like a muscle that needs to be used, and once you use, it gets stronger and things come easier. For writer's block, the worst thing to do is just to let it sit.

My writing pal Jenny (who, in some ways, prompted the creation of this blog) had this to say about setting goals:

Set small, achievable, regular goals. When I started with this new novel, I decided I would write 2500 words a week. 2500 words is an easy goal for me. It's 500 words a day, with weekends off. Or if I don't have a lot of time during the week, I could do it in one determined sitting. I could do a lot more--and later towards the end, I found myself sometimes writing 10,000 words per week or so. But in the beginning, it was very important to me to set small goals that I could live up to.

That seems reasonable, right? And I do set goals with my hockey writing about output, so why can't I do that with other things?

So, here's my goal for all things creative writing. At least one post per week on this blog (but hopefully two), 2000 words per week on the new manuscript (but hopefully 3000), and three agent queries a week for Local Band. If done systematically, it shouldn't be too difficult.

And for anyone reading this (which, by my estimation, consists of nothing but search engine spiders), you can hold me to it.

Oh, Bloody Hell -- Where To Begin?

2009-08-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

How does one start these things? I've been blogging semi-professionally (meaning I get paid but not a lot) and writing professionally for a while now, yet it's hard to remember the very beginnings. Shall we begin like David Copperfield (sort of)? I am born, I grew up?

Nah, that's too melodramatic. And too Interview With The Vampire.

Ok, so this blog isn't exactly a huge departure for me. I'd had a brief Brilliant Unpublished Novel blog called The Manuscript Journey, which lasted about two weeks before I got lazy. When you're writing business stuff every day and you're putting up 5-7 hockey blog posts up a week while contributing articles to other sites, it gets difficult.

Still, one has to get one's word out there. It's been about a year and a half since I started querying agents for my (brilliant unpublished) novel Local Band. I've got a gi-normous Google Spreadsheet with every agent I've queried, including why I chose them and any sort of random info I could find that just might give me an edge.

Man, I was dedicated to the process. For months, I'd spend my free time scoping out Agent Query, carefully sculpting my query letter, prepping my synopsis. I tried to 2-3 agents a week, and I sent out probably a good 30-40 queries. I had about a 10% success rate in getting requests for partials, and of those partials, I had one request for a full.

Oh, that full. That brilliantly tantalizing full request. That was the ultimate tease, especially when the agent is asking questions about marketing ideas and target demographics. Ultimately, she turned it down; it wasn't the right fit for her experience, and since she was a new agency, she wanted to stick with what she knew best (fantasy and horror, not the quirky commercial fiction I wrote).

Still, she promised me that she really enjoyed the manuscript, thought that the writing and characters were strong, and believed that I'd find a good home for it. I asked if she was just letting me down easy, and she vehemently denied it. That's a nice ego boost.

Unfortunately, the anticipation of the whole thing, and the gut-punching let-down just sucked. It kind of kicked the life out of my drive to query, and the whole thing stayed dormant for close to a year while I worked on other fiction.

In a roundabout way, that leads to today. Yes, this very moment as I prepare the first post in my (Brilliant Unpublished) Novel Blog, where I promise to heaven and hell that I'll chronicle my writing life, or at least the part that doesn't write marketing copy or hockey articles. I suppose it's part marketing tool (thanks Jenny), part online diary, part idea archive, and part sanity tool.

The writing world is immense. It's not just about sending queries to agents and crossing your fingers. That's kind of where my last attempt at a (Brilliant Unpublished) Novel Blog died. That, and I was overwhelmed with other writing, but I've scaled back just a tad on the extra hockey responsibilities and I feel a great creative drive for writing in general.

We'll see what happens.