The Weekend Writer: Rethinking A Traditional Piece Of Writing Advice

Earlier this month, I attended another excellent Zoom program sponsored by the Off Campus Writers' Workshop in Chicago. If you're available on Thursday mornings, this is a great source for inexpensive and short workshops with accomplished writers, editors, and writing teachers.

Editor Panel: Which Literary Magazines and Journals Are Looking For Your Work with Joshua Bohnsack  (editor of TriQuarterly) Sue Cho (multiple editorial positions), Hattie Fletcher (former managing editor of Creative Nonfiction), and Aram Mrjoian (an editor-at-large at the Chicago Review of Books and an associate editor at Guernica) is a case in point. The panelists were better prepared than the members of other panels I've seen. Many panels, in my experience, end up being some people shooting the breeze. These particular panelists also prepared sophisticated handouts that I have not had time to dig into but am looking forward to.

The Takeaway For Us This Weekend

One of these panelists, and I am sad to say I cannot recall which one and my notes are failing me on this, made a very interesting point regarding some traditional writing/publishing advice. Usually, he said, writers are advised to keep submitting a rejected manuscript. As soon as one place says, "No," send it out to another. He suggested we do something else.

If five to seven editors have rejected a manuscript without offering any kind of feedback, it's time, he said, to consider doing some revising. 

I actually have revised rejected work between submissions, but I had always considered that to be an anxiety-related issue and not good writing practice. So someone is feeling good about herself today.

The Weekend Writer: Direct From The Editors' Mouths

Yesterday I attended The Third Annual New England SCBWI Agent/Editor Day, and now, Weekend Writers, you will get the benefit of my experience there.

Holly & Julie are there somewhere

These events are set up so that participants select two of the agents or editors in attendance and become part of small groups meeting with them. The writers have around fifteen minutes to do a short reading and receive feedback from the agent/editor and sometimes other group members. It's actually beneficial to hear critiquing of other writers' work, as well as your own. All knowledge has value, as my father-in-law once said.

What To Do With Your First Pages

You could sense a theme in Holly West's (Feiwel & Friends and Swoon Reads, both imprints of Macmillan) comments. While you often hear about "hooks" being needed in first pages, Holly talked about something different.

• Readers need to get a sense of what a book is about right away.
• The main character's goal should be clear up front. 
• Character first in early pages. Add backstory later. 
• The first words and lines of a story are a contract with readers, through which the writer explains what kind of book is about to read and who the main character is so readers know what they are getting.

An interesting bit I learned about Holly last night on-line--She edited These Vicious Masks by Tarun Shanker and Kelly Zekas, which I described as Georgette Heyer Meets Agents of SHIELD. And having talked with Holly West, I can see her working on that book.

How To Move A Story Along And A Great Definition Of Voice

I took away two thought-provoking points from Julie Bliven from Charlesbridge.

1. Embed description and narration within dialogue and action, because dialogue and action are what move stories forward. Description, not so much. I'm thinking of a well known adult novel from years ago in which a character is making his way through Paris. Over and over again the action stopped so the author could describe a building. Evidently I don't care that much about Paris.
2. Voice is the narrator's attitude toward what is going on around him or her. This is huge. Voice, I think is like art. People can't define it but know when they see it. Julie can define it, and it's a definition that is functional. This is a definition that should help help authors create voice. I think this definition also explains why I find writing so much easier once I have a voice for my main character. Once I have a voice, I know how characters will feel about what's happening. What's more, once I know their voice and attitude, I can also often determine what they'll do, not just how they'll feel about what others are doing.

Why Editors Matter

Both Holly West and Julie Bliven were very impressive yesterday. They were presented with fourteen to sixteen readings of four to five pages they'd never seen or heard before and had to respond to them on the spot. They functioned in classic critique mode, beginning with something positive and then moving on to analysis of where the manuscript needed work. They were able to do both those things for every single manuscript. If you haven't been part of a writers' group, you may not recognize how difficult that is. In which case, take my word for it.

Both women illustrated what editors do. It's not unusual for me to read about prepublished writers thinking that editing is just correcting grammar and usage. I've also read about self-published authors thinking they can take care of editing with their writers' group or with alpha readers. What the editors yesterday were doing was far more than that. They were pointing out things like:

• humor should not just be relatable, it should illustrate character
• characters' efforts should be focused 
• what you tell about characters must be illustrated by what you show about them; telling and showing can't contradict one another 

What I'm trying to say, Weekend Writers, is that whether you end up working with a traditional publishing house or publish yourself, you need an editor. A real one.

An Agents/Editors/Writers' Day Next Month In Maine

Maine Lakes Resource Center

As of this morning, five spaces were left in the one-day Agents/Editors/Writers' Conference on Saturday, September 10 at the Maine Lakes Resource Center in Belgrade Lakes, Maine. While this is not a SCBWI sponsored event, SCBWI member Cathy McKelway organized it. She has recruited agents you may recognize from SCBWI functions this past year and editors from two New England publishers. Most of the spots she still has open are for YA critiques. However, one is for picture books.

Agents Attending:

Kaylee Davis, Dee Mura Literary
Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary
Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary
Rebecca Podos, Rees Agency

Editors Attending:

Melissa Kim, Islandport Press
Audrey Maynard, Tilbury House Publishers

The Weekend Writer: An Editor On Editing

In December  I posted about working with illustrators, referring you to Marlo Garnsworthy, an editor and illustrator. More recently, she has done a two-part piece on working with freelance editors.

In Part One she discusses pre-editing issues, among them, what to look for in an editor and the difference between developmental and copy editing. In Part Two she writes about what happens while an editor is at work.

I can't say enough about the importance of developmental editing. Many people outside writing don't know what it is. (Read Marlo.) Many very new writers don't know what it is or understand why they need it.

Quality illustration and editing are the hallmarks of professional publishing. When self-publishing began, it took a big hit as a whole because of lack of attention to these two things. The self-publishing community recognizes that. Editing is something all writers, self-published and traditional, need to understand.

What Publishers Have That Writers Should Want

Do Publishers Need to Offer More Value to Authors? by Jane Friedman is full, full, full of interesting material. The comments are juicy, too.

There's an awful lot of information there, but two bits of info that were striking to me:

"If you sign a traditional deal with a Big Six house, you’ll receive an advance. But most authors (up to 80%) never see royalties; their books never earn out."  I was aware that it was not at all unusual, and maybe even common, for writers to never make more on a book than their original advance. But for this to be happening with "up to 80%" (what does "up to" mean?) of writers is significant.

" It boils down to three desirables that publishers offer.

1. Money
2. Service
3. Status"

Friedman pretty much writes off money (we've just seen that most writers don't make much beyond their advance) and service and dwells on the status that publishing with a traditional publisher brings an author. Yes, it's true that publishing with one of the Big Six publishers "can open doors and lead to other types of paychecks." It opens doors to literary blogs, review journals, and conferences, though, in my experience, not necessarily to bookstores.  But as Friedman points out in one of her comments to her own article, readers rarely know the publishers of the books they read. I have definitely found that to be true. So the status we're talking about here is status within the publishing industry, not status within the greater culture. How long and how much are you going to care what the cool kids in your cliche think about you? Cripe, we're grown-ups.

I think the major desirable publishers offer is service. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that marketing and promotion are the big devils on everybody's backs. But publishers also offer editing. I do not mean copy editing, though they do offer that (mine always did) and that is definitely important. But more significantly, they offer content editing. This is crucial. It is a rare manuscript that will not benefit from a second mind helping to look for inconsistencies, meanderings, unnecessary characters, and a long list of other things.
At a publishing house, your manuscript was acquired by an editor who has some kind of interest in it, presumably "gets" it and "gets" you, at least in relationship to this one particular piece of work. Because they are being paid by a third party (the publisher, not you) they they are free to go back and forth with you to help you shape your book into something more polished and finished than your (first) final draft.
The money might not be great with a traditional publishing company and your neighbors and family may be totally unaware of your elevated status because you're publishing with one. But so long as the traditional publishing companies have content editors, they'll have one very big desirable to offer.

Some Self-Publishing Thoughts From Others. Okay, And From Me.

You all know that I'm self-publishing an e-book version of Saving the Planet & Stuff in order to give it a life as a back list title. You know because I keep mentioning it here. You can see the cover over to the left. I have done very little since the beginning of July except work on the marketing plans for this thing and copyediting. When you have text scanned to create a digital file, a lot of errors occur. Who knew?

So, I have self-publishing on the mind. Self-publishing was on my mind when I saw Some Hard Numbers at Janet Reid, Literary Agent. Reid writes about writers who self-publish believing they'll catch a traditional publisher's eye. As she points out, they may not be aware of what catches a publisher's eye. It's sales. Big ones. By big, she's talking 20,000 books. Doesn't sound like a big number to you? Many traditionally published authors don't sell 20,000 copies of an individual title. The commenter who pointed out that a self-published e-book can continue slowly selling for years is correct. That's why traditionally published authors like myself are self-publishing out-of-print titles. E-books function as the back list that publishers can no longer maintain. But slow, low sales over many years aren't helpful for publishers. If they were, they'd keep much larger back lists than they do.

Self-publishing was also on my mind when I read A Day in the Life of a Children's Book Editor. What I kept thinking was that all those things that editor talked about doing are things self-published authors have to do for themselves. Proofing, cover copy, cover concepts, cover illustrations, promotion, deadlines, events...And, as this editor said, she didn't do any editing that day.

One of my Facebook friends said she was surprised to hear that self-publishing was a lot of work. She isn't a writer.