"I Can Do Better Than That"

I consider myself a writer.  I know some prefer the term "aspiring writer", but I write.  That makes me a writer.  What I aspire to is to be an author, which I see as a person who makes their living from their writing.

In my quest to be an author, I have already written four complete novels (okay, two drafted and revised [and revised, and revised...] and two with full rough drafts).  The four books are all part of a series, so I've been submitting the first to agents for a couple of years now.  Still waiting to sell it, though.

Which brings me to the title of my post.  Best writing advice I ever got was from an article I wish I still had so I could properly site it.  (anyone that recognizes it, please leave a post in the Comments section)  The advice went something like this:

"The real writer's mantra is 'I can do better than that'.  When the writer looks at another work, even one of the great classics, they think 'I can do better than that'.  And when the writer look at their own work they should shake their head sheepishly and say 'I can do better than that'."

I've tried to keep that in mind, especially when doing my revisions, to think "I can do better than this."  So when I finished the rough draft of my first novel I set it aside for a bit and knocked around on some short stories.  When I came back to it, I knew I could do better, and I did.

Once I had it as good as I could get it on my own, I took it to my writer's group.  After over a year of reading chapters there, I went back and did another full revision.  Then I gave that full version to a few beta readers and did another revision based on their input.

At each stage, it was amazing what I missed, what I saw anew through fresh eyes.  And each time I could see the novel getting so much better.

So I sent it out into the world, trying to find an agent to love it as I did.  On my first round of queries, I actually got a request for a partial (50 pages) from a Dream Agent.  She rejected it, but I got a very encouraging letter (not just email) from her assistant.

So I revised again.  And, since I'd only gotten one request, I revised my query letter, too.  Actually, I ended up studying how to write query letters.  I found Query Shark very, very helpful (follow her advice and read the full archives from the beginning.  It really helps).

Since then I started to get at least one request for a full on each round of queries.  All of them said similar things: they liked the book, they just didn't love it, or at least not enough to rep it.

So I revised and revised my query letters.  I even looked for trends in who was requesting fulls.  The answers shouldn't have been surprising.  I found that all the ones who requested fulls had two things in common: 1) they were all very personalized queries, 2) they requested pages along with the query.

By very personalized I mean I did serious research and found one thing I could put in for why I wanted them in particular to rep me, or at least this book.  Something other than a stellar track record, or best selling clients or even a big agency.  Something unusual, probably not in their standard bio, or at least a new spin on it.  In  one case, it was something the agent had mentioned in one blog interview five years earlier when the interviewer asked for one thing about her that would surprise most people that knew her. 

I was happy to see my research paying off and figured that meant I could probably ditch the generic queries.  If I couldn't come up with one really good reason I wanted that particular agent, then maybe they weren't right for me.  (Okay, I do still send out some anyway when I really like the agent but can't find a way to say exactly why.)

And since pages seemed important, I figured I might need to revise my query a bit more.  But in the meantime, agents that wanted pages too went to the top of my list.


But what finally got to me was all those full requests that ended up still not loving it.  And they all liked it.  Some even seemed to love it, just "not enough" or "didn't love it as much as I'd hoped".  And all of them were very encouraging, not just to keep looking for the right agent for the work, but also to send them anything else I wrote.  Two were actually were almost insistent on seeing anything else I wrote.

Finally it dawned on me that maybe I needed to go back and look at the manuscript itself.  It's been over a year, maybe year and a half since I actually read through this thing.  Since I finished it, I've written the next three volumes in the series, expanding greatly on the overall story and getting much deeper into the characters.

That's why about a week ago I sat down with a hard copy of my novel and started reading it.  It took my until about page 20 to see why they were rejecting it.  By page 30 or so I knew where my central problem was: I'd made my MCs life too easy.  I let him get away with too much, too easily.  There just wasn't enough conflict, enough tension to really keep the story going.  The writing was generally pretty good, but it could be so much better.

I shook my head and said "I can do better than this".

But I'm not, yet.  I'm going through the whole book first, finding all the scenes that don''t work and marking them for revision.  Finding all the scenes that, no matter how beautifully written or whatever, add nothing to the story or bore me.  If they bore the writer, they must be hell on a reader.

I'm especially horrified at all the times I let my character drift into Mary Sue-land (though technically Marty Stu, since it's male, but I still prefer the Mary Sue label).  Things are unrealistically easy for him, he can do no wrong.  He overcomes obstacles too easily.  It just gets boring.

Now don't get me wrong, I still love the book.  Everyone that's read it likes it, feels there's some solid writing there.  And I agree.  But having this much distance from it, and all these other books written, I can see it as the promising amateur work it is.

So now I need to make it look like the polished professional work I used to think it was.  Maybe then the next agent will finally love it enough.

Anyone else out there with their own humorous or horror stories to share?  Feel free to share in the Comments.  I think the writing life is lonely and frustrating, but it's better when we know we're far from alone.

What Is The Right Amount Of Moral Outrage?

For those who haven't been paying attention to the news, Dan Cathy, President and COO of  the fast food restaurant Chick-Fil-A, made some comments during an interview that showed his opposition to same-sex marriage. 

This has caused a great hue and cry from both sides of the debate.  It has lead to opponents calling for protests and even boycotts of the chain.  Supports have called for rallies of people to buy massive amounts at the chain to show their support.  In at least two major cities (Boston and Chicago) there have been moves to bar new Chick-Fil-A restaurants from being opened.

Because of all this, several Chick-Fil-A restaurant owners have come out in favor of same-sex marriage.  The one here in Chicago tried to defend her store from politicians by claiming they have several gays working for the store and that she has no problems with gays or lesbians.  Other store owners have come out in  defense of Mr. Cathy's views.

I'm not going to bother discussing the whole same-sex marriage debate at this point.  That could easily take up a couple blog posts on it's own.

For now I'd like to address how one should respond to the remarks of one person who may be highly placed in an organization.   

As an example, I'd like to point to Marge Schott.  For those too young to remember (or too opposed to sports to have noticed the story at the time), she used to be the majority owner, managing partner and CEO of the Cincinnati Reds MLB team from '84-'99.  She was a very controversial figure for much of this.

In 1992, she was sued, in part, over her alleged racism.  That suit was lost, but the allegations kept up.  Aside from claims of using the "N-word", she was also accused of antisemitism when she said she felt that Hitler had been good for Germany in the beginning, but went too far.     

Many people were very offended by her.  In  the end, the league commission  would suspend her from her day-to-day managing duties twice (apparently it was almost three times, but she sold her majority share before anything materialized).

Now without speaking on the validity of the claims against her, I can at least appreciate the appropriateness of the response the commission took.  They penalized her, not the team, since she was the one that had offended them.

So in a case like the current Chick-Fil-A debacle what would be a reasonable response?  I think taking out one's outrage, or support, of the COO's comments on the individual restaurants of the chain  is unreasonable.  If I was upset enough about his comments, I'd call him an idiot, maybe send him a letter or something expressing my disagreement.  If I agreed, I might send him a letter of support, maybe speak out in  his defense.

What I wouldn't do was buy or not buy their food based on his opinions.  If I'm going to patronize or boycott a business on moral grounds, it will be based on their corporate policies and practices.  If Chick-Fil-A was like the Boy Scouts, with a stated policy banning hiring of homosexuals, I could see taking direct actions towards the restaurants. 

There are businesses I like to patronize and others I avoid at all costs because of their policies and practices.  Personally, I've never eaten at a Chick-Fil-A, mainly because I've never lived near one, and I'm not a huge fan of fast food chicken anyway.  So boycotting it would be pointless for me anyway. 

Let me put this another way: I really hate many of the policies and practices of the American recording industry, from their outrageous punitive lawsuits against illegal downloaders (with penalties far in excess of any actual damages done to the company in individual lost sales, that don't even go to the artists they claim to be protecting) to their contracts that often treat the artists (especially songwriters) as work-for-hire (so the company owns the copyright, not the creator).  However, if I follow the model of the Chick-Fil-A protesters, I should boycott buying anything from these major labels.  So how do I support my favorite bands?  How do I get their music, other than hoping it comes on the radio or illegally downloading it (even using a service like Spotify is indirectly supporting the record companies)?

Why should I penalize these bands by not buying their records just because I think they're getting screwed by their label?

And that's when I do object to a corporate policy.  It makes even less sense when I'm just objecting to something some idiot at the top is spewing.  If the CEO of Wendy's made some outrageously offensive comment in an interview, would I stop eating at my local restaurant?  Probably not.

Does that make me a moral coward?  I don't think so.  I think it means I'm making a measured response, directed at the person that offended me, not waging total moral war with a complete disregard for casualties.

So, anyone out there disagree?  Or maybe even someone agree?  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.  But let's keep to the issue of response, and not fall into arguing the same-sex marriage debate.  Maybe I'll address that later on.
   

Finally Going eBooks

I've fought it for a while now, but I finally went ebook.

I still love physical books, especially since they are way more convenient to lug around (especially paperbacks) than my laptop.  Though to be fair, some of that would probably go away if I was willing to put out the cash for a real ereader, but that's not really an option, at the moment.  

But I've read so much about ebooks as the way of the future and so on, so I figured I should look into it.  I wanted to get a feel for the medium, since if my books will eventually be published in it, I better understand it.

So I downloaded the free apps for my laptop and now have Kindle, Kobo, and whatever others I could find for free.  I've tried them all, and have to admit I keep going back to the Kindle app.  I think part of that is because I have more books for Kindle than anything else.  And that (I hate to admit) is because Amazon seems to have the best shopping interface of any online bookstore I've found.

Okay, sometimes I hate their list of recommended titles.  I often find ones there that are WTF?-inspiring.  Other times the recommends are based on stuff I looked at more from  morbid curiosity than actual desire to purchase.  But otherwise, it is a very intuitive set-up, very easy to find a book I'm looking for, or even a book I didn't know I was looking for.  It is by far the most browse-able site I've found.

Anyway, for the first few months, I stuck to free ebooks, since I couldn't/ didn't want to invest any  real money in this.  After all, I've lost so much data (documents/ files/ pictures/ etc.) over the years due to crashes, power surges, or just advancing technology, I am leery of investing much in a book that I can't hold in my hand.

But during our recent move, I found some of the old hardcovers we'd packed away were in boxes that had gotten wet at some point without our realizing it, and had to be pitched because they were moldy, had large chunks of pages stuck together, or both.  It made me realize that not even physical books were really all that permanent.  Also, having to haul all those boxes and boxes of books, even the paperbacks, was back-breaking.  And it occurred to me I could have carried all those books and a lot more on just my laptop, if they were ebooks.

Yeah, sometimes it's the visceral lessons that stick with us.   

So I finally took the plunge and actually bought an ebook the other day, one that is only on ebook format.  And it turned out to be pretty good.  I even reviewed it on Amazon.  Gave it 4 of 5 stars, mainly because it's a first novel from the author and everyone starts off a little rough.  I may copy my review over here and expand on  it as a later post.

Anyway, looks like even I can learn something new.  But than that's part of the joy of being a writer, learning new things and getting share them with others.

Reboot

Okay, my apologies to anyone that was actually following (or at least trying to follow) this blog.  It was something of an experiment for me, my first attempt at really keeping a blog.  And it was pretty damn erratic.  

And that was before I just up and abandoned it.

So I'm going to try this again.  Think of this as A Walk in the Shadows 2.0.  This time I hope to get some regular posting done.  I want to shoot for at least weekly posts, though I'd like to get them more often.  I know myself well enough that daily probably won't be sustainable long term.  In fact, I figure I'll still be pretty erratic, but I want to keep to at least once a week.

I think this blog is important for many reasons.  The biggest, I feel, has to do with a remark I once read by Piers Anthony.  He said that, unlike many other writers, he responded to every piece of fanmail he received, and he knew only one other writer (can't remember who now) that did that.  He also noticed that they were the only two writer's he knew that never suffered from writer's block.  He felt these facts were related. 

I think he may have had a point.  I think it has to do with keeping to writing goals.  So I want to make this blog one of my writing goals, to make at least one worthwhile post a week.  That shouldn't be that hard.  And maybe keeping this writing goal will help me to work on keeping more discipline in my writing in general. 


For anyone's still stopping by, thanks for your faith in me, and I will make it worth your time to keep coming back.  And please feel to comment on what you like, what could use improving, or what just flat out sucks, whether it's the posting style, the content itself, or just the layout of the page.  I'd like you to keep me honest here, call me out if I can't keep my promise to make the trip here worth your while.

Thanks again, and see you around the interwebs.


 

A Lesson For Writers and Other Storytellers

For those few who may have missed it, there's a video going around the internet by a group called Invisible Children.  It seeks to expose a warlord named Joseph Kony and his habit of abducting children and using them as sex slaves or child soldiers.  If you haven't seen it, go watch it.  It's interesting, and not just for the content.

Now, I'm not going to talk about Kony or how horrible what he's doing is.  Lot of people are talking about it, many of them way more qualified than I.  Besides, I think the video makes those points all on it's own.

What I found really fascinating was the response to it from the mainstream media, as shown here by Jon Stewart.  What I found fascinating is the complaints, not about the factual errors in the video but about how popular it is.  Kony has been doing this for 26 years.  Some of these media personalities said they'd been reporting on him for 8 years or more.  People had asked President Obama last year to address the issue with Kony.  And no one cared.

Now, some nobody makes an internet video and everyone cares.  This leaves the mainstream media scratching their heads.  But why? 

To me, it shows first what Jon Stewart points out, that most people stopped watching the mainstream media a long time ago.  I'll admit I watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report more faithfully than any real news source.  Mostly I watch the news for the weather reports, when I don't feel like looking it up online. 

Mainly, I hate that the news is usually just about murders and other spectacular deaths, with a bit of scandal and corruption thrown in for good measure.  I'd have to watch hours of news to find any topics I'm actually interested in, and I can find that information faster online. 

However, the second point is what I really want to talk about --the way the video tells it's story.  It does an amazing job, which I think is the big lesson the media, and writers like myself, should learn from. 

The video doesn't jump straight into non-stop images of death and atrocities.  In fact, it starts off addressing the viewer, with images they should all be familiar with, things that make them feel comfortable.  Then it moves to introducing the narrator and making him someone you want to trust and listen to. 

When it does move to the real point, it does so on a personal level.  The narrator introduces one person, one child, named Jacob.  And he introduces Jacob, not as the destitute refugee child, but as the happy man he has become.  We see Jacob smiling, petting a dolphin for the first time, and other short clips.  We like this guy. 

Then we meet him as the refugee child, we get to see his pain, his hopelessness.  So when he talks about wanting to die, just to end the horrible life he's going through, the viewer wants to say "No!" because we've already seen that, for him, it really does get better.

These are the lessons I think the media needs to learn, and anyone trying to tell a good story can learn.  To really bring your viewer or reader into a story, we need to trust our narrator and we need to care about the hero.  That way, when you introduce the villain, we really hate them.

True, some writers break these rules very successfully.  There are unreliable narrators, and main characters you hate, who you read or watch just to see them fall (though at least you do still care, you just care to see them get what's coming to them).   But these are more the exceptions.  And when done successfully, it's because the people doing it are very good at what they do. 

So that's my contribution to all this furor, it doesn't matter what your topic is, how shocking or moving you feel it should be.  If you can't tell it in a way that others can relate to and care about, it's all for nothing.  No matter how long the media reported on and complained about Joseph Kony, people outside of Africa just didn't relate.  Those ideas are so foreign to our daily lives, we just don't connect.  It feels unreal. 

But when it's told in a way they can relate to, people get it, they care.  So if you have something you want people to care about, make sure you earn their trust and draw them in.  Make it personal.  Give it a face, a name.  Let them see themselves in the Other.  That is what we as storytellers really need to excel at. 

Too Busy To Get Anything Done

Sorry it's been a while since my last post.  Surprisingly, being laid-off seems to have eaten up all my time.  I thought not having a job to go to would leave me with a whole ton of free time to finally do all those things I've been putting off.

Turns out I seem to spend most of my day busy, but with little to show for it at the end of the day.  And I always find the things I really wanted to get done still waiting.  When I think back on my days, I think my single biggest time-suck has to be the television.  Worst drug ever.  The bad part is the only spot I really have to sit with my computer at home is on the living room couch.  So if the TV is on, I find myself sucked in.  Worse, if I'm not interested in what's on, I pick up the remote and scroll through the stupid guide, convinced there has to be something on worth watching. 

And I hate commercials, so I always mute them.  But then I have to pay attention to unmute it when the program comes back on.  Or if I'm watching a DVRed show, I fast-forward through them.  Either way, it turns TV watching into an active pastime, rather than a passive one. 

In addition, there's the packing and other things related to moving.  And the looking for a job stuff (calling recruiters I'm working with, searching job sites, etc.).  Plus, since many of the jobs I'm looking at are different (some are R&D, some QA, some QC, and a variety of product types) I really need to tailor my resume for each job I submit to, and should come up with custom cover letters for each, though I often don't. 

I know, I should learn to multi-task.  I try, really.  I just suck at it.  The best I can do is with rote mechanical tasks that require no real thought.  Then I can at least get in some good thinking time at the same time.  Otherwise, I really need to focus on things one at a time to get anything done right. 

So I think maybe I should go back to the advice I was given before.  When I got laid-off, they had someone come in and do a day-long workshop on career management.  I think one of the better pieces of advice I got from that (and there really were a lot) was to make a list of things you need to do, then check them off as you do them.  Make the list either daily or weekly, as needed.  Also, he suggested to actually make two lists, one for personal stuff and one for work-related stuff, especially for job-search stuff. 

Great, now I need to figure out how to set-up the list, where to post it so I'll see it everyday, how to update it...  Should it be physical or digital?  Should I make it a list or a spreadsheet?  Do I need to print up some cool forms?  Should I make a weekly calender?  *sigh*  See, this is another reason I don't get anything done. :) 

Of course, the thing that's suffered the most is my writing.  I don't think I've written a word on any of my books since I was laid-off.  I haven't even really been submitting to agents lately either.  I really need to get back to that.  It'd be nice to at least sell one book.  Honestly, I do still dream of making enough from my writing to give up the day job, but I'd settle for making at least some supplemental income from it. 

So I guess I'd better stop wasting time posting here and get back to work.  ;)  Best of luck to all of you out there.  Let me know if you also find yourself too busy to get anything done and how you deal with it.  I'm always open to suggestions.

A Writer's Responsiblities

I recently came across an interesting article Science fiction needs more scientist heroes.  First, the article gets a big thumbs up from me just for using Agatha Heterodyne as it's lead picture.  If you haven't experienced the Foglio's Girl Genius, you are depriving yourself. 

However, what really struck me was the writer's call for more scientists who can write to try writing SciFi with scientist protagonists. 

It's a nice idea, really.  And as a scientist who writes, I see the merit in that request.  In fact, I am working on selling my own novel right now.  So if that works out, I could be just the sort of person they're looking for.  Of course, my books are YA, so none of the MCs are professional scientists.  To be fair, most of them are geeks of one type or another, and a few have interests in science or technology.  However, I'm not sure it's where the writer was going.

But it got me thinking, can a writer change society that much?  Could a well-written book with a scientist hero really help turn the tide against all those scientist villains? 

Well, I think the article has a point; certainly the prevalence of evil scientists in fiction does seem to correlate to the negative view many people hold of scientists and science in general.  But of course, any good scientists knows correlation does not mean causation.  It could as easily be the other way around - the fact that there is a general bias against scientists could cause the poor portrayals of scientists in fiction. 

And even if it is possible for a writer to turn around the world's view of scientists with one brilliant book, maybe that's the wrong way to look at it.  Because I've found that books that have a message, the ones that are "about" something, usually suck.  If the writer is too busy hitting the reader over the head with a moral or lesson, then the reader usually gets bored or insulted and stops reading. 

If the writer really wants to connect to the reader, they need to start with telling an interesting story.  They need to make the reader care -- about the characters, about the story, about where this is all going.  And maybe somewhere along the line, if the MC is an interesting character that the reader can connect to and root for, who happens to also be a scientist, maybe that will help achieve the article's goal. 

Because in the end, I think the writer's real responsibility is to the story.  They need to tell the whole story, and just the story.  They need to be true to their characters and to their world.  If they do that, then the reader will want to be drawn in, taken along for the ride.  And if somewhere along that ride they learn a thing or two of some real world value, so much the better.

Even the great theologians of the past knew that a good story will stay in the memory a lot longer than any lecture.  So tell them a good story, make it involve people doing things, making hard choices and following the sorts of paths you feel people should, and your readers will remember it. 

As the old saying goes, you can get anyone to do anything, you just have to get their attention first.  Sometimes it takes a gentle word, sometimes a two-by-four upside the head.  And sometimes it takes a really great story.

So what do you think?  Is a writer's responsibility to what the story can do, or to the story itself?  Or is it just about writing something that will sell?  Or something else completely?