“What Momma Ne’er Told Me” or… “Mistakes We Knew We Were Making.”*
[ 6 Comments ] Posted on 05.08.08 under Craft Thursday
I’ve been thinking a lot about this particular Craft post. A lot. I was going to write a long series on “Essential Stuff I Have Learned.” I figured that would be a good way to recap and restate many of the Craft lessons which I worked through in the past five years. I still might do it, but not today.
Today’s post is about “Stuff I Learned Which I Never Read in Any Book on Craft.” School of Hard Knocks stuff. I’d say I’d learned it all organically, through mistakes, but some of it has come from another source, (some of them dubious in the grand “sensai” scheme of things) but exchanged on an interpersonal level.
Enough with the wind up. Here’s the pitch.
- A wannabe writer lives in a continuum of duality. One end of that continuum is labeled “Find a supportive community.” On the other end: “Surround yourself with people who will be honest with you.” You can’t live at either extreme and succeed. You have to give yourself up to the Zen gravitational pulls of this Yin and Yang and embrace the point where the dime stands on edge. You can’t find this balance. There is no map. You just have to give yourself up and let it find you.
- In the same vein, a beta reader is not a critique partner and vice versa. Your critique partners’ job is to find everything wrong with your story. Your beta readers job is to find everything right with your story. You need both. Given my obsession with the critique group process, I overlooked the importance of beta readers to my detriment.
- If your protag is a kid, then you are writing YA. Not my rule, folks. I fought it. I lost. It’s true. Yes, list a dozen good exceptions to the rule. Then assimilate to the Borg.
- Write YA like you were writing for adults. Then leave it to the editors to sand it back to acceptable YA content standards.
- You don’t REALLY have to write two bad novels before you write a good one, but you will anyway.
- Edit the art into your story, not out of it.
- YA or Commercial, try to keep gratuitous profanity off the first five pages. Even if it “establishes the narrative voice,” you can euphemize or write around profanity for the first five pages.
- I’ve been internalizing agent Elizabeth Jote’s advice against First Person for anything except YA. Deep down I think she’s dead on, even if I’ve never heard this advice anywhere else. First person writes fast, but it’s emotionally constipated… Like me.
- Social media will be the downfall of jerk agents. When most writers plug into social media sites and see real data on the gatekeepers, they will learn to query the responsible agents first and the jerk agents last. When jerk agents get tired of seeing the queries the rest of the industry has already passed on, they will evolve.
- Don’t send out more than six queries a week. Buy yourself some time to evolve as your understanding of the process evolves.
- Unless it’s a huge agency (a la Trident Media) most agents use “intern1″ to process their snail mail slushpiles and they read email queries themselves. If you have a choice, email. Intern1 is a female, 20 year old Columbia College Junior, and always less likely to request a partial than the agent.
- Being as you can only send to one agent at any agency, make it count. Check the social media sites to see which of the agents handling your genre are actively reading pages and aren’t likely to throw away your SASE. The attitude and skill level of the individual agents within an agency can vary widely.
- Plenty of agents think hanging a shingle in the 212 absolves them of basic human courtesy. 18% of agents I queried threw away my SASE in lieu of stuffing it with a form rejection. It’s not “one or two bad apple agents.” It’s fricking endemic. And no, you really aren’t obligated to put up with it. (See item 12).
- It’s a female industry, run by females, catering to females, and predisposed to buy, sell, and trade stories with a female-centric themes. Writing for guys is an uphill proposition, folks. You’ve got enough friction working against you. Don’t add more.
- Most midlist authors are really cool and will patiently answer newbie questions.
- Most freshly published authors are twitchy and assume noobs want to sponge access and reputation from them.
- Landing an agent is the equivalent of Base Camp Level II. You are exhausted. You are excited. You are proud. But when you wake up tomorrow, you have the truly treacherous Kumbah Ice Falls ahead of you… followed by the steep part of the slope.
- The supportive and helpful karma you give other writers will eventually come back to you. When you are knee-deep in bipolar blog trolls and competitive, sniping personalities this truth seems silly. But it’s true. Emphasis on the “eventually” part.
I’m sure there are more small scale lessons I’ve learned, but I’d rather hear yours. Smarties? Whatchagot?
*Props to Dave Eggers
Genre Field Guide to Knowing Your Punks
[ 5 Comments ] Posted on 05.07.08 under Literati Wednesday
The term Cyberpunk comes from a Bruce Bethke short story published in 1983. But the concept as a sci-fi genre had been around longer than that. Some folks credit Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) as the first cyberpunk novel. You can’t argue that there was a real explosion of the cyberpunk genre in the early 80s, including William Gibson’s seminal Johnny Mnemonic in 1981 and Burning Chrome in 1982.
What is cyberpunk? In short, cyberpunk is The Matrix. Wikipedia defines cyberpunk as “a science fiction genre noted for its focus on ‘high tech and low life.’ … The name is derived from cybernetics and punk.”
The cyberpunk genre is generally dystopian and downbeat. Its characters are surrounded by technology and - to a certain extent - are enslaved by it. The heroes and (ironically) the villains are the ones who best understand how to navigate the technological prison in which they live.
Steampunk is an offshoot of the cyberpunk genre, and - in many respects - its diametric opposite. Steampunk is an alternate universe in which the toolbox of technology never advanced beyond the industrial revolution but human ingenuity never stopped. It’s not as if humans stopped inventing things like computers or weaponery. They merely accomplished the same thing using the a smallar pallet of available technology. Steampunk is a world fixated in Victorian England, 1895. No combustion engines, just steam running the city power plant, the automobiles, and the ol’ family dirigible.
Unlike cyberpunk, steampunk is optimistic, forward-looking. Citizens of the steampunk world are masters of their technology, not imprisoned by it.
The unwitting father of steampunk was H.G. Wells, with his Martian tripods striding over the bucolic landscapes of turn-of-the-century England, and Time Machines crafted of springs and centrifuges and counter-pulleys. Consider that, in Wells day, science was a romantic concept. It represented a world getting better: Cures, easy travel and exploration; the steep ramp of the learning curve. This is why, IMHO, steampunk is upbeat while cyberpunk is not.
Cyberpunk and steampunk are bookends for a wide continuum of speculative prose. What are your favorite examples of the genre, and were do they fit into the cyber-steam scale?
Just When You Thought It Was Safe…
[ 4 Comments ] Posted on 05.06.08 under Zeitgeist Tuesday
Agent Janet Reid has opened up a first page/query letter critique site, Query Shnark. No surprise, it’s gore pr0n, unsuspecting literary wannabe Bambis, liquefied by the merciless gravity of Godzilla’s foot.
I’m conflicted. I foster the patented belief there are different standards for critiquing newbies and seasoned writers. But Ms. Reid is certainly providing a much needed service, free of charge. I can’t do anything but laud the philanthropic aspect of her new project.
What would possess an agent to spend the time reaching out to the wannabe community? (Even if the hand also happens to be holding a chainsaw at the time.) I know why Nathan Bransford does it. He want’s first look at everything destined to be tossed over agent transoms, even if he rarely takes clients from the slushpile. But Ms. Reid? Her genre interest is so narrow, I can’t begin to guess what reward she expects to derive.
I’m sure there will be the inevitable backlash. There are some people like my ex wife you could hand a $100 bill and they’ll complain it’s wrinkled. But it was MLK Jr. who said “When I’m gone, when I leave this earth, let it be said of me, ‘He was a man who helped a brother.’ ” Ms. Reid is trying to help a brother out.
Good luck. That’s one aspect of my pre-agented days I don’t miss at all; the trials we writers will put ourselves through to determine “Am I good enough?” Just remember: maybe you are, or maybe you aren’t “good enough” … yet. But if you let yourself be demoralized into quitting, you’ll never know what you could become. Don’t quit.
“Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.”
Room to Breath
[ 7 Comments ] Posted on 05.05.08 under Self-flagellation
The deadline crunch is over. I lived to tell the tale. Cap’n Ed is back where he belongs (goofing off in the hometown) and I’m where I belong (goofing off on an expense report).
For some reason I cannot fully explain, My Beautiful Wife and I fought virtually every waking minute I was home. I can honestly say that for the first time ever I found myself looking forward to getting on the plane. Of course, I missed her the minute I slid into the rental car and headed for my lonely ol’ hotel. Here’s hoping whatever lunar/chemical conspiracy creating the tension has evaporated by next weekend.
I did my little song and dance presentation in front of the hometown Writer’s Guild. I used to be a competent public speaker, back in my days as a standup trainer. But unused skills get rusty. As the president-elect was introducing me, my heart was trying to crawl out of my mouth. It went okay. For as nervous as I was, it went by in the blink of an eye. Nobody threw tomatoes. ‘Sall good.
Took Dwight Junior to the gun range this weekend. Just two more kids and the entire fam will be ready to defend our relocated mall fortress against zombie attack, should the clumsy scientist drop her Erlenmeyer flask of Viral Agent 2663-B, launching the airborne phase of the outbreak.
Oh. Speaking of which… (WARNING: Tense Shift Ahead)
I’m standing in line for the TSA checkpoint yesterday. I’m holding my shoes in a one- handed pinch. I have my laptop out (as per TSA requirements) and balanced atop the leather laptop bag. I’m holding the bag underhanded at chest level. I’m waiting to get close enough to the long, stainless steel staging table to start setting my stuff in the bins that roll through the scanning machine. For some inexplicable reason, the woman behind me feels that she doesn’t have to wait in line like everybody else, so she steps around me just as I’m approaching the table. In my indignity I carelessly let the leather laptop bag tilt. My work laptop slides into freefall. I have the instantaneous realization that I’m standing on a tile floor. My Scottish ninja instincts take over. I drop the laptop bag. I drop my shoes. My hand shoots out for the falling laptop.
Do I catch it? No. I somehow slap the edge, splitting my thumbnail, managing to launch it into a pizza parlor spiral even higher. It spins over my head, a steering wheel engaged in a frantic left turn.
I scream. Yes, scream. Not a girly “eeek!” scream, but a guy’s throaty, jihadish “auuurauauauagh!” scream. This would draw attention under the best of circumstances but, while standing stocking-footed in a TSA line, everyone is thinking about the real reason we’re going through this charade. Both my hands shoot out in time to catch the falling laptop. Unfortunately my scream triggers a latent scream from the grandmother standing behind me. I flinch. The corner of the laptop bounces off the back of my right hand, removing a plug of skin and plasma.
Somehow, my left hand ends up in the right place at the right time and closes around the swirling grey clamshell.
The entire incident takes less than three seconds, but somehow my hair has turned white and two more election cycles have elapsed in the interim. The monitor displaying CNN Headline News is showing the final debate between Chelsea and Jenna.
(Reversing back to Past Tense)
As I walked through the metal detector, the TSA agent said, “Hey, nice catch back there.”
“Thanks.”
“Now step over here and raise your arms for the wand, please.”
It’s never a good thing to stand out.
A Sudden and Abiding Empathy for Coal
[ 6 Comments ] Posted on 04.27.08 under Self-flagellation, Uncategorized
Last week was pretty much hell. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced such unrelenting job pressure. Cap’n Ed and I were caught in the prickbasket all week. This week will be worse. I’ve finished all my deliverables and half of Cap’n Ed’s. But next week is short and the last manual we have to tag team is sizable. I can feel my pulse throbbing in my earlobes as I think about the week ahead. I leave for the airport in an hour and the stress of the week ahead is closing in on me like claustrophobia.
I had a week’s worth of posts in my head and no time to blog. I was even working late at the hotel.
My missus and I went to the Conservation Department gun range this afternoon. She lost her pistol virginity. Turns out she’s a darn good shot. Better than me. Also turns out that with one person constantly shooting and one person constantly reloading the clip, a couple can go through A LOT of ammo in one hour. Sheesh! We burned through 250 rounds in 45 minutes.
As of today I’m down 14 pounds on Weight Watchers. Now I’m wishing I had let them take the “Before” picture. I’m not really suffering. So far it’s kind of fun. Living in the hotel gives me an advantage, getting me away from all the crap in the house. It also means I don’t have to coordinate meals with My Beautiful Wife. She’s doing very well, too. Seeing each other after a week apart, we surprise each other with every reunion.
I gotta get in the air. Any posting this week will be an unexpected bonus. Sorry about that.
I miss all you guys.