Tag Archives: Editors

September 12, 2014 · 12:59 pm

Since This is about What Not to Do. . . .

Here’s a basic truth I learned about fiction writing itself (and about how not to write a failed novel): When your characters tell you they don’t want to do something, listen. Don’t make them do something when they’re screaming No!

In my failed novel (at least the one I’ve written most about here), my plot, to which I was inextricably wedded, required my two main characters to have passionate, illicit sex about three quarters of the way through the book. I spent many lives trying to get them to the point where that moment felt right. It never did, but I stomped my foot and made them do it anyway.

At the time, I thought I was writing about how the drives of sex in combination with desperate emotional need could cause people to act irrationally, to get in all kinds of trouble when they knew better. Since I consider this tendency a basic human truth, you’d think my characters would have said, “Sure, we get what you want people to think. Stand back.” But the book’s critics–and the important reviewers were definitely critics–called the actions of my male protagonist “stupid.” Actually, he thought so, too.

My editor told me, “The chemistry feels wrong.” I  knew she was giving me good advice: it was wrong. But I was lost in a project beyond my then-powers (possibly beyond any powers I’ll ever have), and I was working in total isolation.

Working in total isolation: that’s Thing Not To Do #2.

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Filed under Learning to write, Myths and Truths for writers, What Not To Do in Writing Novels, Working with literary editors

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August 1, 2013 · 11:13 am

The Next Thing I Learned

They don’t promote your book.

Nowadays, that seems like the kind of thing I should have known. With as much information as is available online, I assume everyone now knows that publishers no longer do any serious promotion unless you’re a celebrity. But I was truly naive.

Of course, they hadn’t paid me very much and didn’t have much to try to recover. In fact, they sold my book to their affiliate in England and made back the advance instantly. Moral: make them give you a couple of million in advance money, and then they’ll worry about getting it back.

They asked me for lists of famous people I knew who would read my book and write blurbs for it. I gave them lists of famous people, but I didn’t know any of them. They did send the book out for review. The reviews were extremely strong. They got it into some libraries. But that was the extent of it on their end. Maybe there were efforts I never heard about or saw.

I contacted local bookstores and got the book on the shelf in a couple of them. But I learned about bookstores. Your book–my book–wasn’t going to appear in Barnes & Noble or Borders or any of the bookstores then extant unless it had $$$$ behind it in advertising. Since it was a hardback (and they never sold the paperback), it didn’t appear on any drugstore shelves. I was advised to make the rounds of all the bookstores and find out who the book reps were and make friends with them and sell them on my book, so they would push it to the independent bookstores.

This is all so far away from the kind of person I was (still am) comfortable being that my efforts in this direction fell way short of a lick, let alone a promise. Self-promotion has never been easy for me. It’s why I can’t really pitch well. Besides, I was still working, making about 8K a year (a sum not as bad then as it would be now), and the idea of driving all over the country glad-handing book reps felt like something that wouldn’t happen unless I had a personality transplant. My agents and my editor both said, “Let go of it. Get on with the next book.” (I think today that translates into “Less tweeting, more writing.”)

At a few conferences I’ve been to, when the resident agents learn that you’ve been previously published, they ask for sales figures on your books. The idea seems to be that if you weren’t writing bestsellers then, you never will. KOTR sold, as best I can tell, about 20,000 copies. Not sure if this includes the later Bantam paperback. I have begun to think that I am almost better off not to tell some of these people that I ever was published. Let them think they’ve “discovered” me.

That is if I truly want to work with someone like that.

I have slowly come to believe that the ongoing changes in publishing are for the better. At least now you go in knowing that if anybody’s going to market, it will be you. I have read mixed reports and have mixed feelings about the various gung-ho marketing schemes people recommend, so I don’t know which will work for me. At least I also know now that I will not be getting the 2 million in advance and so that worry is off my mind. What a relief.

 

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July 20, 2013 · 5:29 pm

How I Got Here, Next Step: The Plot Develops Lumps as It Thickens

I’ve tried to recall the problems that kept my 700-page ms. from getting snapped up for a hefty advance. I suspect it had to do with “700-page ms.” It was clear that the book was going to take work to get in shape. It takes a special editor to want to put in that kind of work. Out of the blue one day, that special editor called me.

L and J had sent him my 700 pages. He couldn’t wait to get going on them. His first instructions: change the ending. No argument, just do it. His second: cut 200 pages.

I use this account in my classes, even expository writing classes. He was going to publish my book. I said, “Yes, sir.”

So how do you know when to say “Yes, sir” or “Yes, ma’am” and when to argue? Lord help me, I don’t know. I do know that in that case, I had no choice. First novel, major publisher, erudite editor who said he “pulled all-nighters” with my book and who wrote me 30-page letters exploring its strengths and pushing me to think about its weaknesses: in fact, he was a teacher of the art of writing commercially viable fiction, and I wish I had known enough to practice everything I learned from him.

He said something along the lines of (I have the actual letter with the exact quote in my university office) “There’s enough wonderfulness here for four books. We need to decide which of the four is the best and save all the rest for some other time.” He said, “I’m going to show you how to tighten by doing the first 40 pages for you. Then I want you to follow my example on the rest.” I show those pages, with those big slash marks across whole pages, to my students. I show them my own slash marks, following his example. He said, “If a scene’s just repeating the work you’ve already done somewhere else and telling readers what they already know, get rid of it.” He showed me how to give scenes and dialogue their own internal life, what screenwriters call “beats.” I learned how to find the lines that carried the weight and slice out the shaky bridges between them.

I can’t tell you how much better that book became.

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