Everything I needed to know about the business of publishing, I learned at Superstars Writing Seminar

Three years ago my life changed.

Before dismissing that statement as being melodramatic, just hear me out.

It was 2010 and I was thinking that I might actually be interested in maybe someday pursing a writing career. I was receiving Dave Farland's Daily Kicks, and he mentioned he was putting together this seminar-thing (okay, he was far more eloquent than that) with a bunch of other top-notched and top-selling fantasy writers about everything you needed to know about the publishing industry but no one was willing to tell you. The other instructors - Kevin J. Anderson, Eric Flint, Rebecca Moesta and Brandon Sanderson - all had equally impressive resumes. The seminar-thingy was the Superstars Writing Seminar. I figured what the heck, I'd been going to "skills" seminars for about 5 years now, maybe it was time to get an insider's look at the industry I wanted to be part of.

Best (professional) decision of my life.

Why? 

The information and insight into the publishing market, including the self-publish v. traditional publishing debate, was invaluable. Knowing the risks inherent for a publisher in taking on a new writer, I understood (and could work to circumvent) the barriers to publishing.

The time with the instructors was unprecedented. Remember that I said I'd been attending seminars for 5 years. Even with instructor intense workshops, there wasn't a whole lot of out of class time with the instructors. Superstars blew that distance out of the water. We went to lunch with the instructors. We went out drinking with Kevin Anderson. If you wanted a few minutes of their time, all of them where happy to oblige.

The instructor time ties in with a very important point. Brandon, Dave, Eric, Kevin and Rebecca are some of the nicest and most open people you could every want to meet. They genuinely want to help other writers succeed. They are invested in helping them do so. They are a wealth of information on many disparate topics and are more than happy to share that knowledge whether its publishing, queries, hiking, micro brew beers, mafia, European history or whatever.  For the price of asking, they've given us hours of their time to help the Superstars attendees move their careers forward.  The picture above is Brandon Sanderson talking to a group of Superstars alum at the 2012 World Fantasy Con. He gave us three and a half hours of his time to talk about anything and everything. I could spend many posts talking about the other instructors and how they've helped my career as well, and probably will in future posts. And the guest speakers are just as open and wonderful as the regular instructors.

Then, of course, there's the connections you form with the other attendees. The Superstars attendees are as amazing as the instructors. A group of the 2010 Superstars alums formed the a writing group We blog about writing and the writing life at Fictorians. The picture to the right is of some of us at World Fantasy 2012. In addition to Fictorians, Superstars alums have an active Facebook group. We encourage and commiserate with each other. We are our own best cheerleaders. That network of people going through exactly what you are is invaluable. It's also how I found my publisher.

Most of all, what Superstars did for me was give me the confidence to say, "I am going to be a professional writer." It's not a crazy dream. It's a goal. Superstars gave me an understanding of the business side of the industry that I couldn't get anywhere else.

So, I'm a repeat offender for Superstars. The 2013 session (May 14-16, 2013) will mark my fourth attendance. If you are interested in a career as a writer (or even if your just curious), I highly recommend you attend Superstars Writing Seminar, which will be held in Colorado Springs, Colorado this year. Prices go up on 12-21-12, so sign up now.

Feel free to e-mail me off-line if you have any questions about Superstars. And I hope to see you there.

Kill Your Darlings

I have a long post at Fictorians today about what to do with your novel in the aftermath of NaNoWriMo so I'm going to try to keep this post short. Yea, I know. My chances aren't high. Still, I'm going to make the attempt.

There's something I said at Fictorians that I wanted to spend a bit more time with here. For the full story, check out the Fictorians post here. The short version is I've seen stories where the writer's unwillingness to trim out the fat i.e. his "darlings" (those bits that while the writer loves them don't advance plot or character) have poisoned the entire story and made it unpalatable. I've seen this tendency to keep "darlings" in stories I've rejected at Flash Fiction Online as well.

Stephen King coined the phrase "kill your darlings" in On Writing. For this we all owe him a debt. But, killing our darlings isn't easy. The first step in the process is identifying a "darling."

So, how do you know when something is a "darling" to be killed rather than a bit that needs reworking?

For me, there are three ways I know a section, or an entire story, is a "darling."

1. The section doesn't advance plot or character, or is misplaced.

These are the "darlings" you hope to discovery on your first editing pass. Sometimes they are hard to pick out though.  You may have a scene characters walking around a bazaar to set the place. If that's all the characters are doing though, the scene may really be a darling. The scene could be saved by showing character - what the point of view character notices - or somehow advances the plot by giving the reader a hint he might not realize at the time. I find my "darlings" tend to be more like "in jokes", funny to those who know, but incomprehensible to the rest of your readers.

In the play I mentioned in my Fictorian's post, I remember a "darling" where the main character's (a writer) characters were trying to figure out what an item was. The payoff for the scene was a bad pun. From a technical stand point, the scene is a good example of how point of view affects a story. From a storytelling point, the scene was a disaster as the joke didn't advance the arc in the play. It needed to be deleted even though more than 20 years later, I can still remember it.

Clever turns of phrases also fall into this slot. The image might be vivid, but if it's in the wrong spot, it's a "darling" that needs to be killed. As an example the phrase "threw it away from her like last week's rotten fish" is evocative but it doesn't belong in a love scene where the main character rips off her boyfriend's shirt and hurls it across the room.


2.  The section doesn't fit into any plot box.

I've written about the Hollywood formula, but in essence, the "formula" states that to bring the viewer a satisfying story, that story must hit certain "beats" and turning points. Some of these points are the "bad guys close in" and "all is lost" moments. If I can't name the beat the scene is serving, it is probably a "darling."


3. My readers' feedback is "hu?" or many people note a problem with the section.

Beta readers are invaluable. Sometimes the best feedback a reader can give you is "hu?" A "hu" means either your writing wasn't clear or the reader doesn't understand why the scene is in the story. The second is a "darling" that must be killed.

If a number of your readers are calling your attention to a particular section, you have a problem there. While the reader might not be able to articulate the problem, those sections need to be scrutinize. If the problem is that the section is a "darling" you may need to kill it. 

I had several of these "darlings" in Kalypso's Song, published in Shots at Remdemption. This story started as an experiment. I wanted to see if I could keep the feel of a Homerian story in a contemporary romance. I read about thirty different translations of the Odyssey, many of which were in the public domain to get the feel of the style. Yet, as I got feedback, the sections where I most closely imitated the Homerian-era voice were the ones were I received complains of being too "purple." Despite the fact that those bits were the ones I was the most proud of, I cut them because the were hurting my story.

"Killing your darlings" isn't easy. But it's necessary. I hope my guidelines for ferreting out "darlings" help make your writing strong.

Strike While The Iron Is Hot - The Jack Gorman Project

The Jack Gorman Project, an anthology coming from Musa Publishing in July, 2012, was born out of a Dog End dinner at the World Fantasy Conference in October, 2011. For those of you who haven't attended a large conference, the Dog End Party is what happens the night the conference officially closes, and while most attendees are still around. At World Fantasy this includes parties to consume the last of the Hospitality Suite's, and anyone else's, for that matter, food and drink so it doesn't get thrown out or dragged back home.

So, I went to dinner with 14 women, some of which I knew and some I met as others invited them, that night. Critical to this story is Celina Summers, the chief editor and head goddess at Musa was part of the group.

During dinner, Goldeen Owgawa told an amazingly funny story. You'll have to read the anthology (and check my updates here on the blog) to find out more about that story. But it probably took a good 15 minutes before we stopped laughing. When Celina could finally draw a breath said she hadn't laughed that hard in a while, and the story really should be published. A moment later, she said, "Oh the heck with it. I'm a publisher. I'm going to publish it. We're going to do an anthology."

The Jack Gorman Project was born.

Everyone at the table was invited to participate. Not submit. But actually participate in a published anthology.

Celina agreed to be the editor. So, the head of a new publishing house had not just offered to publish us, but also to edit us to her standards. Talk about an amazing opportunity. She then gave us a deadline for submissions.

I struggled with my day job, family and other writing commitments and got a story, Through The Stone Circle, submitted.
What surprises me is not that the opportunity arose, but that of the 12 writers (one of the women was an editor) at the dinner only six of us submitted.

Six.

Six people (50%) turned away from a guaranteed writing contract.

I'm not telling you this story to criticize the women who didn't submit. I understand that life intervenes, and often yanks us to where it wants us to be rather than where we planned. After all, that's what life's all about. I'm in the middle of one of those life yanks now. But I digress . . .

I'm telling you this story because writing professionally is often about taking advantages of opportunities that "fall" into your lap or "striking while the iron is hot" to borrow an old phrase. I quoted "fall" because often those opportunities exist because of steps you've taken in advance. For me, those steps included attending the Superstars Writing Seminar, meeting Colette Vernon there, staying in touch with her through the SWS Facebook page and Fictorians, attending World Fantasy and rooming with Colette. She, as I've mentioned before, introduced me to Celina at World Fantasy.

Whether in writing or in any other aspect of your life, when at all humanly possible take advantage of the opportunities that come knocking. You never know where they might lead.

And stay tuned for more about The Jack Gormon Project coming from Musa Publishing on July 20, 2012.

Writing When The World Conspires Against You - Inching Toward Success

I'd wanted to do a post on Orson Scott Card's M.I.C.E quotient and finish the last installment of a short story series (Apollo Rising) this week. But, alas, things didn't work out. The M.I.C.E post has been delayed, and I'm still about 3,000 words from the story's end. Why? I needed to invest a few hours in both activities, and between child transportation issues, an increase in activity in the day job, and electrical outages at the house, my writing time trickled away.

As part of The Fictorianshttp://fictorians.com, I state weekly goals, and my fellow writers hold me accountable for them. My goals use to be fairly lofty - you know 1,000 words or 2 hours of writing a night, submit three stories for publication. Well, I wasn't making those goals. Every night after the kids went to bed, I fought with myself. I knew I needed to put my butt in the seat (B.I.S.) and write. After all, if I didn't write, how was I going to finish my works in progress, much less get them published?

I needed to take a realistic look at my goals, time, and productivity and figure out how to fix the disconnect. The Get-It-Done Guy did a great podcast on avoiding procrastination. http://getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com/how-to-overcome-procrastination.aspx. He recommends breaking large, daunting tasks down into 15 minute intervals of work a day, and if you miss a day, let it go. A few months ago, one of my fellow Fictorians took a similar approach to writing. Her writing goal was 250 words, about a page a day (1,750 words a week). I adopted this goal about two months ago. Two hundred and fifty words takes me about 15 minutes to write when the story and I aren't fighting.

Adopting this approach surprised me. I became more productive. Even dead exhausted, I could work on those 250 words. After all, it wouldn't take much time. What I found out was even when I struggled to get the first 100 done, the words came easier by the 200th. Most nights I average 750 words. I'll miss a few nights a week, but I'm still writing close to 3,000 words a week. I didn't dread writing or feel like I'd let myself down on those nights when I just couldn't write.

While 250 words a day doesn't sound like a lot, it's over 90,000 words, or roughly one novel, a year. Not shabby results for 15 minutes a day.

If you can't commit the time you want to writing, dedicate what you can. There's nothing wrong with inching toward success.