Insecure Writer's Support Group: No Logic in publishing

If you don’t know what IWSG is all about, hop on over to TheNinja Captain and check it out. Then go say howdy to this month’s cohosts, M. Pax, Tracy Jo, Patricia Lynne, Rachna Chhabria, Feather Stone, and Randi Lee. Jump on the linky and get a hopping!

So how are things going for everyone today? For me, things were, well, it’s hard to say really. I was having all the wishy washy feelings that come with being involved in a contest. Most writers know them by heart:

My writing is crap.

My work is just a gimmick.

I thought this novel would be different.

But I thought I’d gotten so much better! This is so embarrassing, how long have I been writing and I’m not even the top ten percent of a contest???

So, some time back I started writing (it was longer ago than I’d care to admit at this point, but you know, stuff), and for some reason, I thought that we just got better with time. Like I thought that we just climbed the steps and you got better as you went. I also thought that getting better sort of equated to having the IT stuff of contest glory and marketability.

I’m such a fool sometimes.

And then, while I was sulking around the house (wrangling kid and getting ready to go pour my life into my day job again), I realized something: My Super Duper FAVORITE QUERY in the WHOLE CONTEST hadn’t been picked.

O.O

As in, the writer who had what I considered the IT factor, the well written, well polished, AWESOME concept, story that I would have bought based on query and first page in the bookstore (maybe even in hardback!), that writer hadn’t been picked. She was probably having all the same feels as me, and it was absolutely wrong. Like there is no justice in the universe, because I would so buy that book, then go watch the movie adaptation. And I would make ALL MY FRIENDS go with me (I have some powers of persuasion). And that creator was probably having the tough feels about worth and value and how her writing isn’t good and no one wants to read her stories.

Like OMG, What the poor-scientific-method Batman? How is that fair? And there’s nothing else I can do except say “I love your query and first page.” But somehow, the words of a fellow contestant aren’t going to have the same impact as one judge in a contest that ultimately doesn’t actually mean anything. I mean, yes, it is awesome to be picked, and the coaching phase is super awesome, but it’s not any bigger than the regular slush pile.

So yeah, Chin Up my writer buds. If you’re feeling down on your work, and the whole “no one loves my work," try to realize that my absolute favorite out of 195 (yes I read all the queries), that person didn’t get an invitation in the first round. As in she beat out 99.4% of the competition in my eyes and she wasn’t even picked. So, while you’re having the tough feels, just try to remember it could be you I’m talking about.

On subjectivity, contests, and personal taste

Let me start off by saying that I LOVE contests. I’ve met many of my very favorite writer buddies from participating in writing contests.

Second: writing contests give pretty much zero indication of how good your manuscript is, or how far along in your journey you are.

Last week was the big Writer’s Voice blog hop and team picks. A very exciting time for many writers, and I joined in. I went to Every. Single. Entry. And I made notes. I ranked them all as if I were playing agent (by the way, this is a very excellent way to get better at writing, read 150 queries and their corresponding first pages; some writing just zings). And then I watched—and cried!—as the Team Coaches went through and picked. (How did they miss those beautiful gems? Oh, my pretties, I wish all my yes picks had been picked by coaches!)

If you’ve ever wanted a lesson in subjectivity, do this. Read all the entries in a contest, and just pick out your favorites. You’ll be amazed. I picked out almost 20 yeses (as in, yes, I would definitely read on to the next page to see how this one went). I had a bunch of maybes, and a bunch of nos.

And then the coaches made their picks. Out of the 32 picks, only 8 of them were my yeses (leaving 12 of my pretty yeses—one with exclamation points!—riding pine with me). Of the 32 team members, 16 were maybes from me. And the remaining 8 were all Nos in my book.

As in, Nope, there was no way I’d be reading on. None.

The thing is, and this is important when it comes to writers querying agents, it’s not enough to write a story in the genre that the agent represents. The story also has to be something she (or he) would potentially love. I don’t know why, but stuffy sci fi stories that spend too much time being technical bore me (it’s the math, as soon as I’m doing derivatives in my head to figure out if the writer has a clue what he’s talking about, I’m just not in the story anymore). If I were an agent, and someone queried me with a FTL explanation story, I would probably reject it even if the writing were really spectacular—even though I really like science fiction. This is what people mean by personal tastes and subjectivity (also, I’ve read a bazillion FTL explanation stories, so it’d have to be super special).

When an agent is sending a rejection (or a contest host), it’s not a remark on your person or even your writing. I know, that part is hard. We all feel terrible when we get rejected, even when it’s something we legitimately didn’t want. Rejection hurts, but I’m trying to say that there might be more to being rejected than a bar you have to jump over.

The query trenches are a tough place, but it’s about so much more than just having a story in the represented genre that’s “good enough.” I know you guys are probably starting to wonder when I’ll pull out my crystals and do an aura cleansing (totally valid just not my thing), but I can honestly say, there’s no magic mark you have to make like with sports. In fencing, just get more touches than the other guy. In hockey, put the biscuit in the basket more often than the other team. But in writing, you have to hit that magic mark of making someone fall in love with your work and be in a marketable category (whatever that means today!).

So, to my fellows in the query trenches: chin up. You may be closer than you think. You may be farther than you’d hoped, but wherever you are, you are in it. Play the game, and know that what you learn now will be with you longer than your querying attempt. Good luck, and if you're feeling the sting of not making the cut for the Writer's Voice, just remember that 12 people are roaming around feeling sad today, but they had YES!!!! written in my book. It only takes one (from a publishing professional, I'm afraid I'm not very helpful there).  Query widely!

Observations from The Writer's Voice Slush Pile (and an opportunity for feedback!)

Whew! Yeah, it takes a while to read through 159 entries and pass judgment on them, but that’s just what I’ve done.

I know, some of you out there are saying, “But Rena, you’re not a judge.” This is correct. I’m a writer seeking representation, but the last time I dug through a big slush pile, a few things jumped out at me. Two years ago the trends were first person present tense. They were everywhere. Now? Not so much (though many first person present still do the dreaded double verbing, more on that in a bit). (though there were a ton of aliens taking the place that paranormal creatures used to have, so that was interesting)

This time around what struck me most was how some pages DEMANDED my attention, and others just sort of shuffled through the line. What was amazing about the pages that really caught my attention was that they weren’t the usual sort for me. I’ve always called myself an explosion sort of girl, so when something opens with action, I feel like that should grab me. Standing on the edge of a cliff, about to fall to certain doom? That should totally be my wheelhouse, and yet those openings just didn’t do it for me. No idea why (sweet mother of science, I hope I’m not developing a mature palette after all of these years!).

So onto the main event:

I ranked all of the entries: Yes, No, or Maybe. I had grades of maybe (yes maybe, no maybe and maybe), but for this reporting there’s only three flavors.

Yes: 18

Maybe: 77

No: 61

Entries by Men: 19

Entries by Women: 133

Unknown: 7

Genres of the Yes

Adult contemp

Adult Sci Fi 2

Romantic Suspense

YA MR 2

YA contemp 2

YA Historical

YA Thriller 2

YA Sci Fi 3

YA UF

MG contemp 3

So what landed someone in the No pile:

Note: If I’m writing about it here, then there was more than one person who did it. As in more than three. If you think I’ve picked you out specifically in my comments here, just know that’s not the case. There were at least three people who did it.

This time around there were two things that drop an entry into my no pile (As in No, I wouldn’t keep reading this). The biggest reason to land in the no pile was a concept I wasn’t that fond of, coupled with writing bad need of an edit. This is my opinion by the way, but if your first page is sprinkled with double verbs and words like ‘that’ and ‘just’ in your first page (in a first page contest!) then it’s VERY likely the rest of the manuscript is going to be like that. I know, some people don’t understand why I’m so anti double verbing, or what it is that I have against the word that (which I use all the time). In this case, it showed a lack of polish.

Double verbs—I was sitting, or I am running—drive me insane because there are specific uses for this construct. In the past tense, I was sitting, it indicates that the person narrating is in a reminiscent sort of mood. This is the older person reliving their past (e.g. I was sitting on the porch, waiting for the mailman, when the man of my dreams strolled down the lane). That’s fine if you are having a character have a stroll down memory lane, but once you do it every turn, you’re sticking the narrator between the reader and the story not once, but twice (it’s filtered through the narrator who is experiencing it and the older narrator who is telling it). And you’ve given something away: the narrator lives to the end so they can tell the story like this. No bueno. In present tense, the problem is that it’s just lazy. I am running. Why not I run. And this next bit is personal to my tastes, but I am running reminds me of those guys who call sporting events. “Hasek blocks the puck and passes it up to Datsyuk. Datsyuk is carrying the puck. He’s looking to make a pass.” This could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Other reasons for landing in the No pile: I get worried when I read a query for something sounding like one genre and being told it’s another. Paranormal romance was the big culprit here. There were all kinds of genres being listed instead of the obvious one. So, if your MC is abducted by aliens who give her werewolf like powers, but it’s scientifically explained, this does not automatically make it science fiction. If the main plot is about how your MC falls in love with someone despite her mutations, it’s romance. And if your query spends more than half its time talking about the romance, I’m assuming that romance is more than half the book, it should be listed in the genre.

Why does this make me hit the no button? Either, the writer knows they’ve written a paranormal romance, and they know the market for that genre is really REALLY tight, or they don’t. If they know, then the real path isn’t to accentuate the romance in the query letter. Develop other lines, because the surest way to upset a reader is to tell them about how a story is all about space ships and genetic mutations and then make it all about romance. That’s the whole point of genre labeling. I don’t go to the romance section to read about Rockets, and I don’t expect the romance crowd to come to the sci fi section to find true love. Genres are your friend, even if it’s super crowded. If the writer doesn’t know that they’ve written a paranormal romance and dressed it up in super shiny Magic Realism clothing, then I worry about how many other traps they’ve fallen into. This is all about confidence, but if you write, you must read. You need to know what else is out there like yours (this is why I read slush piles whenever they’re available, how else will we know what we’re up against in the slush?).

What got you in the maybe pile:

Okay concept, okay writing. Nothing spectacular. Totally competent. And yet, somehow, my time wasn’t demanded of me (I’m a working mom, you have to demand my time). So there were lots of really good entries that land in the maybe pile because they aren’t for me, they started in the wrong spot (or with something that I really didn’t want to read).

Or really good concept, but very lackluster writing.

Terrible concept with really good writing.

At the end of the day, your creature feature has a ton of competition (and I’ve read a bunch of them!), and even if your writing is really great, I’m not that interested in reading another Interview with a Vampire (or Twilight, or Walking Dead, or Teen Wolf, or Buffy The Vampire Slayer—Unless Joss is writing it, that is, and then yeah, I’m totally reading that one). So yeah, even if the writing is too good to just toss it into the No, sometimes, it’s just not going to be enough to knock one of the Yes entries off their thrones.

And to get a Yes:

The writing had to sing. I don’t know how many of you can see it yet (if you read enough slush, it become apparent), but some manuscripts just sound like the stuff you would pick up in the book store. There is a rhythm, a cadence, to the way they read. The words are the perfect balance of not too many to slow me down, and not so few that I’ve gotten lost along the way.

*Sigh* I wish there were something more to say about that, but trust me, you’ll know it when you see it. But here’s the thing: that perfect balance is DIFFERENT for EVERYONE. Yeah, I know. Like for real. I’ll read something and it will just punch me in the feels. Great writing, lovely concept, brilliant execution, and I hand it to my BFFs don’t like it. Go figure.

The other way to get a Yes was to have a SPECTACULAR concept—one that made me go into fits of apoplexy because I couldn’t read the post RIGHT NOW!!!!—coupled with almost there writing. As in, just a few bits of trouble.

So that’s it from my end. I’m going to post after the 10^th to talk about subjectivity, when I compare my Yes pile to those who get picked for the contest. The last time I did this, I was shocked to discover that an entry that yeses with exclamation points next to it in my book, didn’t make the final (and one where I’d written in capital letters NO) did.

I know people are probably wondering where they landed on my scale of Yes No Maybe, but, I rarely tell the actual rank. I will if you ask nicely, but seeing as how I am just one writer in a sea of other writers, my opinion doesn’t really count for much. However, I do have comments on EACH and EVERY entry (unless it’s locked up under tumblr. Cursed tumblr). If you want to know what I thought of yours, leave me a comment with your entry number and your  email (write the word at instead of using the sign, and you can ask me to delete the comment later if you wish). This isn’t confidential (feel free to post it somewhere else while saying disparaging things about my parents’ marital status if you like), but I prefer for the option of privacy to be yours (this is why I don’t tweet my feedback; there is nothing worse than expecting someone to love your work and hearing in a public venue that it wasn’t the case). But pretty please, don’t come back at me with your hurt feelings. I’ll try to say constructive things, but feedback can really sting. I know what it’s like to write a novel. I know what it’s like to have the core of a novel completely destroyed because it’s basically a retelling of XYZ and there are fifty billion of those on the market right now. Please also keep in mind that I’m just one person. I’m not even an agented writer. All I have is years of experience, and the knowledge of what I do and do not like.

Good luck everyone.

The Writers Voice, the other side

Right, so I haven’t been sleeping. It’s not the stress, or the dissertation, or the revisions, or the new WIP, or anything like that. There just aren’t enough hours in a given week to do all the things that I want and visit with my mom. So I stopped sleeping there for a while.

Yeah, this is not the recipe for success, in case you were wondering.

I spent yesterday bumping around the house like some post apocalyptic zombie. “EEEEhh, work? OHHHH, *shiny*! Wait, what was I doing?” (this may or may not be an actual conversation I had with the wall).

I had a fantastic time at The Writers Voice, and I even got a vote (SQUEEEEEE!). Whenever I enter contests, I always remind myself that there is a very real possibility that I not only won’t win/get picked/whatever—and not in the privacy of my own inbox, but in the bright lights of prime time twitter.

See when I first started in on the query and contest phase of it all, I had this little voice. Maybe you’ve heard it. When I first started, that little voice would say “OMG, my stuff is so incredible that when I enter this contest, it’s going to knock the socks off every agent on the planet. I’ll have to beat them off with a stick!” ::Checks to make sure stick is readily available::

We’ve all been there, I assure you.

But when the use of the stick isn’t necessary, well, that hurts. And let me just say, my stick has been sitting in the corner collecting dust. I’ve never been the beauty queen of a query contest. And that stupid voice turns on me as soon as the contest is over. “Well, your stuff wasn’t any good anyway, why’d you think it was? Because your mom liked it? Oh yeah, that’ll look good, a blurb from your mother in the query, good job. What made you think you could even write? Maybe they know my committee? Oh god, does everyone know how much I suck at this? Great Copernicus, does everyone know how much of an idiot I am?”

Yeah, I think I’ve talked about the stupid voice before.

So my project hasn’t seen prime time yet, but I’ve gotten some good feedback on it. That means for the first time ever, I entered a contest with my eyes open. I knew it wasn’t likely that I’d get picked. And I got picked as an alternate, squeaking into the contest in the very last seconds (Yeah, more on the squeaking in thing for IWSG). I’d already resigned myself to not getting picked, so already, the contest was way more than I’d expected. Also, to be near the top 20 % was just awesome. It gave me some validation (why am I always looking for that on the outside? Someday I’ll purge the dumb from my head). Since I didn’t think I’d get picked, I’d already picked the agents I would start querying. Still, having been picked, I knew something about the market, so I didn’t have my hopes set that high. There are plenty of people who don’t get me, and plenty of people who’ve told me that having a troll for a best friend is a HUGE turnoff. So I already knew my chances were slim. Slim like the width of an obsidian surgical tool.

Which is to say, getting a vote rocked my socks off. I did the happy dance and I didn’t fall asleep for hours because I seriously didn’t think I’d get a vote.

The other side of this is that I’m sure someone from the contest got only one vote and today feels embarrassed by it. If you’re that person, I just want you to know that your feelings are completely valid. It’s all about perspective. I once got an A- in a class that made me rage at the prof. I once got a C+ and sang my professors praises for weeks (I seriously grinned every time I thought about how I passed that class, cause seriously, it was really freakin hard). The difference is all perspective.

And for those of you who got no votes, I have no words that will ease your pain. All I can say is I’ve been there. It hurts. I’ve been passed by. The only thing I can think to tell you is that what we seek isn’t what we think we seek. You’re not looking to have your manuscript loved by every agent who comes by. You’re looking to connect on a profound level with one agent who will shepherd your manuscript from where it is now to the greatness it could be; someone who not only loves this book, but loves your writing so much that they want to see more of it, even the stuff they don’t usually look at. You are looking for that one agent. That one person who gets your work, who will be able to spot things you’d never dreamed of (and no, I’m not talking about a crit partner, those are different). You are looking for the person who is a perfect match for you. That person wasn’t at the contest. That doesn’t mean this book isn’t The One, or that your perfect agent isn’t out there, it just means that those agents aren’t one of them. And that’s hard. Chin up and carry on. Have a song. It’s currently one of my favorites. (not to mention, what an awesome band name!)

Revisions

Funny thing about good feedback, it’s always naggingly similar to what you were already worried about. Okay, well, good feedback is, but not so good feedback lights up the OMG CRAZY alert. So I have this manuscript… Oh, you’ve heard this one before?

And you’ve heard how the intrepid writer says “Krakatoa! How could I have not seen that flaw in my manuscript before????!!!”

Right, well, I’m not here to talk about that, because it’s pretty simple: Either you’ve felt that way, or you haven’t been letting other people read your manuscripts long enough to have had it. I’m not dissing the young writers out there, I’m just letting y’all know about an experience that’s coming your way, whether you’ve just finished your first or your tenth novel, whether you’re unpublished or a NYT bestseller, you are going to have this experience. If you haven't had this feeling, make a note in your calender: it's coming.

Today I’m going to talk about courage.

I don’t have much. In fact, I’ve called myself a coward before (you can read about it here) and I have to say, I haven’t had a single experience to convince me that I qualify for any courage medals. So imagine my surprise when I realized that what I needed to make a particular change in my manuscript was courage.

Yeah, heavy. I had something that was a crutch. It was something that would come out in the first ten pages or so, but I’d stated it—bold as moonlight—in the very first paragraph. The concern: cut it and I’d have readers who didn’t have a clue about what was going on. Keep it, and I’d have every lit. agent rolling their eyes at the demi prologue.

It was when I realized I was using it as a crutch to kick my readers in the gut that I knew it was time to cut it. Sigh, so I took the plunge, held my nose and cut.

So, have you needed to be courageous lately?