Why my writing rule is "No rules"

Literary agent Chip MacGregor on submissions:

I'd like to see more writing with a strong voice. I probably see too many things that aren't bad -- they're just not outstanding. They don't have a particular personality that stands out and demands to be read. There's a lot of flatness in writing (conferences have a tendency to foster that, by telling prospective authors there is a "right" way to do things), and I'm always interested in the clear, quirky, outstanding voice coming out on the page.

I couldn't agree more that workshops at writers' conferences foster "flatness" in writing by teaching that there is one correct way to write.

I have published only four books, but many people would say I'm qualified to call myself "multi-published" and write articles or teach conference workshops on how to plot, how to write interesting dialogue, how to create believable characters, and so on. But I say I am not qualified to teach those things. I might be able to offer a useful tip here and there, but I'm no authority on what it takes to write a great inspirational romance novel and get it published. Perhaps because I write in a very "organic" way, I couldn't begin to teach anyone how to do what I do. Even if I could, wouldn't you rather write like yourself than like me?

Conferences like RWA and ACFW allow far too many inexperienced, mediocre authors to dispense advice to gullible unpublished writers. Online writers' forums and e-mail loops exacerbate the problem when newbies who have latched onto certain "writing rules" share them with their even-newbier pals and everyone gets caught up in unimportant details. Here are just four of the silly things some writers have come to believe are keys to getting published:

Don't use any dialogue tag but "said", which is invisible to the reader. Other dialogue tags intrude.

Never use adverbs with your dialogue tags.

After you've written the first five chapters, throw Chapter One out and begin your story with Chapter Two. You can't possibly write a good first chapter--you will always put too much backstory in it.

Never use italics. That's weak writing.

There are many more, of course. And as Chip suggests, the more of these rules we all take to heart, the less distinct our individual writing voices will become. That's doubly unfortunate, because you can follow every rule and still not get published.

The real secret to getting published is: Write a ripping good story. Even if you're a little lavish with your adverbs, and if you get silly (as I do) about italicizing words, and if you occasionally write "he opined" or "he sputtered" instead of "he said," and if you break just about every other Writing Rule you so eagerly recorded in your conference notebook while sitting through all those workshops, chances are good that a publishing professional won't care because those are small things, fixable things, and they'll be well worth correcting in order to publish your amazing story.

So if anyone wants some free advice from yet another "multi-published" romance writer, here you go:

No rules.
Just write.

Be yourself. Tell your story. And have fun!

Getting published: Why agents and editors don't owe you a thorough read

Last week on his blog, literary agent Nathan Bransford quoted Benjamin LeRoy, the publisher of Bleak House books:

"As soon as I see awkward prose on page one, I reject a book. You wouldn’t trust a clumsy surgeon with a scalpel. I don’t trust authors who aren’t in complete control of their environment. Sloppy work is sloppy work. Doesn’t matter the profession, I don’t want it."

[Mr. Bransford continues] This is very true, and perhaps the number one reason I reject queries and partials: awkward prose.

As a reader, I do the same thing. If page one of a novel rubs me the wrong way, I'm done. There may be a great story coming, but that's immaterial if the author is incapable of putting clear, graceful sentences together. I don't have the patience to wade through bad writing in the hope of finding a good story. Not when there are so many good novels waiting to be read.

Here's more from Nathan Bransford:

I'm skeptical when people tell me they can write a compelling novel but not a query letter. Do you have a command of words or not? What if you need to craft a short, wonderful scene in your novel? You can't marshal the words to write it because it's too short of a space? You can't convey a great deal of information with an economy of words?

A successful novelist possesses much more than a lively imagination and a talent for constructing compelling stories; she is able to communicate clearly and effectively via the written word. Some novelists are better than others when it comes to writing query letters and synopses, but all publishable writers should be adept enough at handling words to write effective queries and synopses. (If you aspire to publish romance novels, check my website for advice on writing query letters and synopses.)

I'm sure many of us would be surprised to know just how often editors and agents toss aside query letters and manuscripts after reading only a couple of paragraphs. But why should they read further? If a writer has failed to prove her publication-worthiness on page one, what are the chances that she's going to be able to do it by page twenty-five?

There's a classic submitting writers' trick designed to prove whether an editor or agent has given a manuscript a "fair read" before rejecting it: the writer puts in one of the middle pages pside-down. If the manuscript is returned that way, the writer grumbles that she's been cheated by the insensitive, unprofessional editor or agent. But no publishing professional--even one who has requested a partial or full manuscript--owes those writers anything. Form-letter rejections are not insults. Any writer who thinks otherwise should examine her own responses to people who try to sell products to her. When we turn down a telephone solicitor, do we say "no, thanks" or do we offer a detailed critique of his product and then explain why it just doesn't suit our needs at this particular time?

Writers who bellyache in online forums and at writers' conferences about how nobody's giving them a chance don't seem to understand that editors and agents do not exist to dispense free manuscript critiques--even of the one-line variety--to uncontracted authors. The job of an editor or agent is to spot talent, contract that talented writer, and then help her craft a wonderful book so that everyone can make money and get famous.

So if a publishing professional actually reads your entire manuscript before rejecting it, or if she offers you any response beyond a simple "no, thank you" (and that does happen), she has done more than her job; she has done you a favor.

Advice to unpublished writers: Learn how to wait

From the blog of literary agent Nathan Bransford:

1) I've been receiving way more queries than usual.

2) The quality of these queries, on average, is WAY below normal.

Obviously there have been some pleasant exceptions and, if you read this or other agent blogs, even if I passed on your project the overwhelming odds (because you're awesome and doing your research) are that yours was one of the good ones. But on average, these queries I've been receiving lately are way way way worse than normal, like a train wreck on top of a volcanic explosion of cow dung (yay similes!)

What's going on out there?

I'll venture a guess.

If I were an editor or a literary agent and if I generously began dispensing free writing advice via a blog and if the people who discovered that blog liked it and told their friends, I believe I would expect to start getting a lot more queries than usual. And I would assume that many, many of those queries would not be carefully executed, but would come from clueless individuals who got excited and fired off pages and pages of garbage after asking themselves, "Why not? What have I got to lose?"

The internet has been a boon to writers. These days, if a wannabe writer can't afford to buy an armload of books on writing and can't attend writers' workshops, she can find all kinds of free advice--much of it very good--right here on the internet.

That's a wonderful thing--for the writers. Unfortunatley, this easy access to information means that nice, helpful professionals like Nathan Bransford are setting themselves up to be ambushed by writers with far more enthusiasm than talent and common sense. He seems to realize that, but who can blame him for grumbling a little:

...e-queries, because of their relative ease of use, have an unfortunate tendency to inspire some people to spend less time perfecting their query, somehow leads them to think it's a good idea to blast the entire industry with one e-mail, and/or prompts them to write a five hundred page query letter (I guess because they don't have to pay for the paper).

He continues:

...I'm getting exhausted spending the first several hours of my day wading through a morass of bad query letters. I'm still going to adhere to my policy of responding to everyone who queries me, but anyone who complains about agents not responding to queries should really spend several hours reading through 100+ queries every Monday morning.

I would advise unpublished writers to do their homework and polish their queries before approaching Mr. Bransford and his colleagues, but unfortunately, the people who most need to hear that advice are the people least likely to accept it. So to you smart cookies who have done your homework: be patient. If it takes a few months for an agent or editor to respond to your short, well-written query letter, bear in mind that before they get to yours, they must wade through hundreds or even thousands of long, badly-written ones.

Just keep writing and keep submitting. There's no way to hurry up the responses from editors and agents, so the best use of your time while waiting is to improve your writing skills and get more projects ready for submission.

Getting published the quick and easy way

More and more aspiring authors are abandoning the rocky path to winning contracts from publishers and are hopping on the bus to self-publication. If you haven't heard traditionally-published authors grumbling about that, you just haven't been paying attention. "That's not publication," one of my fellow Harlequin authors sniffed after learning that our mutual acquaintence had paid to have her novel made into a softcover book. "All she did was have her manuscript printed and bound."

But that is publication, albeit of the do-it-yourself variety. And what's wrong with that?

Plenty, according to many of my traditionally-published friends. "She's self-published," they'll sneer, implying that the writer in question is unworthy to call herself a published author. "Real" authors will scratch out the upstarts' eyes sooner than they'll make room on their pedestals for those who have "cheated" in the publication game and declared themselves winners.

Maybe we traditionally-published authors should get over ourselves. It makes our profession look ridiculous when we preen and all but beg to be adored. Our attempts to elevate ourselves in the eyes of the world by pointing out the unworthiness of self-published authors to share our pedestal is mean, and few things are as pathetic as our childish insistence on receiving the full measure of adulation we believe we have earned by selling books to traditional publishing houses.

So what if "just anybody" can call herself an author these days? How does that hurt those of us who get published the hard way? It's not as though self-published romance novels are going to knock our books off the shelves at Target and WalMart.

I am not endorsing self-published books. Self-published books are notorious for being poorly written and badly (or completely un-) edited. My neighbor's cat could write a novel tonight and publish it tomorrow--which is, in a nutshell, the reason I don't read self-published books. But I'll defend Fluffy's right to find her own way into print, and I won't bristle when she calls herself a published author. My self-esteem does not hinge on anybody's work but my own.

Maybe I'm sensitive to this issue because even before I started writing, I never put authors on pedestals. To me, they were professionals not terribly unlike dentists or schoolteachers. Yes, getting published the old-fashioned way requires talent, dedication and hard work. But aren't those the essential ingredients for success in most other careers? Being a traditionally-published author may not be as common an occupation as being an accountant, but in my experience, the only people who view authors as a higher order of humankind are authors.

I wish traditionally-published authors would stop lording it over the rest of the world--and by the rest of the world I mean those who aspire to be published and those who are self-published. If Fluffy the cat wants to print ten copies of her novel and call herself published, so what? I submit that any traditionally-published author who has a problem with Fluffy trying to horn in on our "glory" has an ego sorely in need of a little healthy deflation.

Nobody's keeping you from being published

Spend fifteen minutes on any given day perusing literary or writers' blogs and you're sure to find someone yammering about commercial fiction being "safe" and literary fiction being exciting and edgy. In a powerful post over at Galleycat, Ron Hogan neatly sweeps up those tired assumptions and puts them out with the trash. He then offers this challenge to whiney writers who believe "literary" writers face dismal odds of getting published because books by hacks and sellouts who write what the masses are clamoring to read* are hogging all the shelf space:

...any number of independent presses abound, catering to all points on the aesthetic and ideological spectrum. And, frankly, the ease with which anybody can self-publish these days means that no author can use a lack of interest from publishers as an excuse any more. If getting your uncomfortable message out to the world and forcing it to think and react means that much to you, stop waiting for somebody else to do you a favor and publish the book yourself.

Is that a hard path? Yes. And the odds are good that you won't make a lot of money at it, especially if you're a quitter. So you have to ask yourself: Is your message so important that you'd be willing to give over a huge chunk of your life to getting it out? And if you can't say "yes," then why should you expect anybody else to care about your book either?

Go read the whole post. It's brief and very much to the point. Good stuff.


* The smart-alecky romance novelist in me insisted on italicizing those words

Are you ready to quit writing?

"You haven't blogged in several days," my sister said last night when she called to find out what was wrong with me. I've been a little under the weather. I did sit down a couple of times to post something here, but I was tired and distracted and not sufficiently interested in my subjects, so I ended up deleting what I'd written. Please excuse my absence.

This morning I stumbled across this at Grumpy Old Bookman:

...selling books is not like selling fish or buttons. Everything depends on personal judgement and personal interaction. A writer offers a manuscript to an agent, and the personal reaction of that agent is central to whether the agent takes the book or not. And ditto when an agent approaches a publisher. And then again when the press agent seeks to place the author on a chat show.

It is tempting to grumble bitterly about this, and to complain about the old-boy network and the public-school mafia and the literary cliques, and so forth. But it has been shown, time and time again, that it is easy to overlook books which could, properly handled, be enormously successful....

We often hear about how certain now-beloved novels were rejected by agents or publishers X -number of times before the author's genius was finally recognized and rewarded. I squirm a bit when I see those examples trotted out to prove that Perseverence Pays Off because I've lived long enough to know that sometimes perseverence doesn't pay off. If Blockbuster X was rejected 27 times before it was finally published, that doesn't mean every book we submit will ultimately be published if only we believe hard enough and hang on long enough and send it to just the right editor or agent. Some books just aren't going to sell. Ever.

What's the average number of years a writer should expect to invest before she makes her first sale? What's the average number of submissions required before a book is accepted by a publisher? Some unpublished writers ask those questions out of simple curiosity; others inquire with pathetic desperation. They'll latch on to anything that sounds even vaguely like a promise. But there are no promises in this business, so maybe some of those writers who are thinking about quitting should quit.

The unpublished writers I understand and admire are the ones who write because they must. They hope for publication and they strive toward it, but they're already finding deep satisfaction in the process of writing. Sure, they'd love to have some icing on their cake, but they're darn glad to have that cake. That isn't to say they aren't disappointed when they receive rejection letters. But they don't snivel and wonder if they should give up. At least, they don't do that for any longer than a couple of days before they allow their setbacks to stoke the fires of their ambition. Then they pour even more of themselves into their writing and their writing improves, maximizing their odds of publication.

If you're one of those people, I hope you make it. I have a feeling that you will. But even if you don't, you'll have a marvelous time trying.

Getting published: treasure from the slush pile?

I saw this a couple of days ago at The Guardian Book Blog, but didn't link to it because it looked like one of those items everyone else would link to. But I haven't seen anyone pick it up, so here's a snipet from an eye-opening article called, "The shocking truth about the slush pile":

If your typescript comes back to you in your self-addressed stamped envelope and it looks like the whole thing hasn't been read, it probably hasn't, because it isn't very good. If your reader doesn't feel compelled to turn the first page, she's not going to read to the end.

But before you start sticking knives in your publishing assistant voodoo doll consider this: when someone tells you that your sample chapters don't set her heart and mind on fire, it doesn't mean that your work won't sparkle for someone else. A couple of months ago, a photographer friend of mine took the jacket photo of an author for a forthcoming title from a major house. I had rejected the book. Twice.

I get in trouble every time I suggest to my romance-writing friends that editors probably don't read every word of every submission--not even the query letters. "That's not very supportive," someone will always say, causing me to wonder yet again how warm fuzzies could be more important to some writers than actually learning how this industry works.

Publishing is a business. Editors don't read manuscripts to encourage writers, but to find books they can make money on. Facing that reality is the first little bump on the road to publication. Get over it and get on with your journey.

On the unfathomable mysteries of book-publishing

There are writers out there who know their novels are good enough to sell, but who find the publishers aren't biting. They twist their brains into knots trying to figure out why so many poorly-written, predictable novels are snaped up by acquiring editors when their manuscripts don't even get a full read. Those people and many others will find some eye-opening quotes in yesterday's New York Times article about the shocking cluelessness of the book-publishing industry. The article pretty much spells out that deciding which books to buy (or not) is no more exact a science than picking winning ponies at the race track.

There are quite a few eyebrow-raisers in the article. I'll quote some of them:

Publishers...put up Web sites where, in some cases, readers can sign up for announcements of new titles. But information rarely flows the other way — from readers back to the editors.

“We need much more of a direct relationship with our readers,” said Susan Rabiner, an agent and a former editorial director. Bloggers have a much more interactive relationship with their readers than publishers do, she said. “Before Amazon, we didn’t even know what people thought of the books,” she said.

Why not? How hard would it be to ask?

Most in the industry seem to see consumer taste as a mystery that is inevitable and even appealing, akin to the uncontrollable highs and lows of falling in love or gambling. Publishing employees tend to be liberal arts graduates who enter the field with a starting salary around $30,000. Compensation is not tied to sales performance. “The people who go into it don’t do it for the money, which might explain why it’s such a bad business,” Mr. Strachan said.

That's an interesting observation. But it's a "bad business" all around, as few published authors are able to make a good living, either. I lay that at the door of publishers, who make money purely by accident and who lose it by sheer stupidity. That's some business model you've got there, friends!

Eric Simonoff, a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, said that whenever he discusses the book industry with people in other industries, “they’re stunned because it’s so unpredictable, because the profit margins are so small, the cycles are so incredibly long, and because of the almost total lack of market research.”

Why haven't publishers made any discernable effort to get a handle on what makes readers buy some books and not others? How is selling books different from selling potato chips or running shoes? Can't somebody interview a few bookbuyers and find out why certain books are bestsellers and others aren't?

They could, but they don't. I mean, they really don't. There is no business in the world like publishing. Here's more:

The industry does follow trends to pursue growth, but when it comes to acquisitions, methods have not changed much in hundreds of years, says Al Greco, a professor of marketing at Fordham University.

IT’S the way this business has run since 1640,” he says. That is when 1,700 copies of the Bay Psalm Book were published in the colonies. “It was a gamble, and they guessed right because it sold out of the print run. And ever since then, it has been a crap shoot,” Professor Greco said.

“It’s guesswork,” says Bill Thomas, editor in chief of Doubleday Broadway. “The whole thing is educated guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. You just try to make sure your upside mistakes make up for your downside mistakes.”

Yet publishers still stubbornly avoid doing even the most basic market research.

Some experts wonder if book publishers might uncover more [successful] books...if they tried harder to find out more about their buyers and what they want.

“The Newspaper Association of America has a staggering amount of data on people who read newspapers. The book business has, basically, nothing,” said Professor Greco. “They’re not going into the marketplace and doing mall intercepts and asking people, as they leave the bookstore, ‘What did you buy? Did you find what you’re looking for? What motivated you to choose that book?’”

An exception is the consumer research gathered by the Romance Writers of America, a writers’ association that publishes a regular market study of romance readers. It reports survey information on, for example, demographics, what respondents are reading, where they are getting the books and how often, and what kind of covers attract them. Romance authors and publicists use the information to create promotional campaigns.

Most publishers, though, continue to gather data on sales and not much else, though past performance is certainly no guarantee of future results, even from the same author.

I've always found the RWA stats interesting but not particularly helpful, as the depth and breadth of the surveys is limited by financial considerations. But at least the romance writers are trying to figure out what people enjoy reading and why. The publishers are doing nothing at all.

Unless gazing into crystal balls counts as market research.

Getting published: Live your own writing life

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a woman who expressed her frustration over the fact that she has been writing for twenty years and her work has yet to receive an interested nibble from a publisher. She said she keeps asking, "Why, God?" She mentioned having read about my success, which she appears to believe came easily--and perhaps faster than was fair to other hopeful writers. It was clear that she believes her own success to be long overdue.

I get a lot of e-mails from people who are working towards publication, and I'm continually amazed by the number of writers who imply that their success is "overdue." They seem to think that after writing for a number of years and completing several manuscripts, the average writer deserves to be published.

Getting published isn't achieved by taking a number and then working hard while you patiently wait your turn. Getting published isn't about averages; it's about you. If Author A sells her first manuscript and Author B sells her twentieth, that means nothing to you. Getting published has nothing to do with how long you've been writing or how hard you've been trying or how badly you want it. It's not even about how good you are. It's about finding a publisher who wants to buy what you're written.

We've all seen books that didn't deserve to be published. And we all know wildly talented writers who just can't find buyers for their novels. It's tempting for a very good but unpublished writer to look at an untalented but published writer and think: unfair. But publishers aren't concerned about being "fair" to everyone on the playground. Writing may be an art, but publishing is definitely a business. So unless you can make an editor believe your novel will make money for her publishing house, you won't sell it, no matter how brilliant it is.

No, I'm not saying that getting published is a crap shoot. If you start with some talent, learn all you can, work hard, and write to a specific market, you'll probably sell at some point. In the meantime, while positive thinking and having a fire in your belly aren't necessary for publication, they will keep you writing, so go ahead and get yourself stirred up. Just forget about calculating the odds and stop studying the timelines of other writers' careers. This is your writing life, and it's as unique as your own fingerprints. Celebrate that.