Blurbs, back cover copy, and pitches

So, um, I don't have anything coming out anytime soon.

Which doesn't mean I'm not writing, just that I'm not selling anything. Worse yet, I can't really share any of the pitches or proposals that are in the works because there is an outside chance that a decision-maker somewhere will like one of them and whee I will have a project (maybe even a contract) again.

So instead of sharing all this top-secret silliness, I'll pass along advice I've received about preparing hooks, pitches, blurbs, and back cover copy. Cuz guess what? All those marketing-copy bits are very similar.

1. Focus on the conflict. Distill it as succinctly as possible. Sherry Thomas "pitched" Twilight to my writing group once as something along the lines of "She loves him even though he could kill her. He loves her back, except he also thinks she's tasty." The thing that sells that story isn't the wish fulfillment or the sparkles. It's the "how are they ever gonna figure that one out?" question. Whether the author answers the initial question in a compelling way is fodder for another conversation. At pitch/blurb/back-cover-copy stage, you just need to raise the question.

2. However, don't use rhetorical questions. "Will they overcome their many and various compelling hurdles and find true love (or save the galaxy, or what-have-you)?" Well, yeah. Most likely they will. Asking me a question I already know the answer to isn't gonna make me buy a book.

3. If you're writing spec fic, put the deep world building front and center. This is tricky because you don't want to dump a bunch of author notes and back story in a pitch/blurb/back-cover-copy. But also, you don't want a reader to figure they're looking at just another epic fantasy or vampire romance or cozy mystery with cats and robots. Highlight the worldbuilding piece that makes your world unique.

4. Keep it brief.

5. If you're writing a romance, give the goal and conflict for each central-romance character, as well as the major conflict that's keeping them apart. (See tip 1.)

6. Match the tone/voice of the book. So, if you're writing a sarky, irreverent book, the marketing copy should match. If you're writing a thriller, sell it with that same choppy, chilling, rat-tat language. If you're writing an epic fantasy, the world is changed. You feel it in the water. You feel it in the earth. And so on.

Guess, before I head out, I should put a giant asterisk on this list of tips: I have never successfully done this kind of writing. My queries all received form responses. I would never have sold if my agent weren't a genius for this sort of thing. However! I have collected the above wisdom from a number of more accomplished writers, and I trust them.

Crossing fingers some of this sage advice will work for me. And for you.

True Confession: I liked Twilight

This is hard for me. See, I'm a book snob, studied literature in college, wax enthusiastic in deep lit-crit conversations. My favorite writer ever is John Freakin Keats. In other words, I'm not a person who should have enjoyed Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books. At all.

But -- yow, am I really saying this? -- I did.

Here's how it went down. Hubs, toddlers, and I were going to the coast for a vacation. Having lacked a free nanosecond since these children were born, I was positive I wasn't going to get any time to indulge in something so selfish as reading. I figured the week would be jellyfish avoidance, sunscreen application, and diaper changing 24/7.

Hubs did advise me to bring a book. I don't need a book, I said. I'll just bring this ancient pink GameBoy and play a spot of Tetris if I somehow manage to steal ten minutes of me-time.

Turned out I got just that. True fact: the Corpus Christi area of Texas is imbued with some magical time-dialation vortex. The toddlers played unburnt and unstung and came back to the condo and slept like, well, babies.

And I was bored.

Now, what happened next isn't some attempt to avoid self-incrimination. I sincerely have no idea who uploaded bootleg copies of the first two Twilight books onto my GameBoy. Whoever it was clearly did not have my best interests at heart. Reading low-res black-on-gray and having to right-rocker-button every 200 words through an entire book does not a pleasant user experience make.

But the books had me from scene one (gory vampire fight in a mirrored-all-over dance studio! Right there with you, Stephenie!). I zoomed through them. Found a book store in town and bought the rest of the series. Using actual money. Even purchased the first two books that I'd already read (because, bootleg files aside, I'm not a complete scumbag).

Yes, I inhaled the whole crazy, first-person, teen-angst bizarre-ass story through my eyeballs and then sat upstairs in the condo wondering Oh My God What Did I Just Read?

I mean, vampires, obviously. And I do love me some vamps. Dracula, I am down with you. Lestat, too. But... whiny, unlikable teenage girl getting stalked by creepy old dude who gets off on sniffing her?! And the most outstanding qualities of said whiny teenage girl also happen to be clumsiness and the ability to function as a null within a universe of thinking, feeling beings? THIS WAS NOT MY SNOBBY-READER SCENE!

I'm still not sure what I enjoyed so much about these books. It might have been the accessible language, the teen soap-opera quality of it all, or that scene late in the series when we get Jacob's POV and he says everything that was in my own mind: I have no idea why I love Bella so much as she is totally not lovable and kind of cruel and self-centered and actually might be killing my brain cells at this very moment yet here I am loving her despite. It might also have been the magic time-dilating vortex hovering over Corpus Christi. (Totally a thing. Believe it!)

Regardless, I did not in any way intend to love the Twilight books. But like them unexpectedly I did.

When goal-setting becomes counterproductive

I used to be a huge goal-setter and plan-maker. Once, during a 16-week technical writing contract that turned out to be pure agony -- I had to physically clock in and wear pantyhose, for the love of everything holy! -- I hand-drew a calendar and gleefully X'd out each completed day. So satisfying! Later, when I managed a department, I had to-do lists and calendars running for twenty or more projects at a time and felt like I was queen of the freakin universe. My personal planning during college was a thing of beauty.

But becoming a writer broke something inside my brain. (At least one thing, you might say.) I don't make plans anymore. I can't. It hurts too much.

As much as folks say you can't take anything personally in this business -- because it's, well, a business -- the near-constant barrage of failure can be traumatic. I've heard of writers making plans to have X number of releases or hit certain lists or write X number of words each day or earn enough to quit the day job, and I'm not saying don't ever do those things. What I'm saying is be prepared for your meticulously laid plans to go sideways with no warning and through no fault of your own. And be prepared for that to happen a lot.

Writing for publishers is notoriously out of writers' control. I've experienced publishers that went out of business, lines that were discontinued immediately after my story was released, publishers that spontaneously decided not to pay out royalties, one series that just stopped abruptly, crap sales, snarky reviews, and anthologies that languished sometimes for years after the contracts were signed.

At the beginning of this writing adventure, of course I made short-term, medium-term, and long-term career plans. I was the queen, remember? I wrote my goals down, affirmed them, created calendars and lists and committed myself whole-heartedly to gettin shit done.

And each time the industry spasmed and one of my stories -- one of my goals -- was affected, I would look at all those intricate plans and see only lists of failures. Irrationally but inevitably I decided these were my failures, and I owned them.

It's not easy to admit, but there were times when the failures became too much, too many, and depression crept in. My critique partner and I went through a lot of similar experiences and took to calling the big D "the pit." We'd text things like "Pit's deep today," and the other would reply with something like, "Yeah, but you're still good. I still believe in you."

So, I don't make goals anymore. I don't have plans in the detailed sense, save one:

I plan to write stories for as long as I am able and
make them available to whomever wants to read them. 

How precisely this master plan goes down is a wide open who-knows. And that's okay.

Why Perfect Gravity's cover does not feature a shirtless cowboy and robot cat

I've never worked directly with a cover artist or designer. I've never had any say in a cover once it was done.

Aaaand now you're thinking: this gal is completely unqualified to talk about awesome cover designers. You are, as usual, completely correct.

At my level of power in the biz (i.e., none), I don't talk to artists, designers, or art directors. I don't offer feedback on final designs. I don't get a yes or no. If there's something truly wrong about a final cover, I can point out that detail and it may or may not change. I think the reasoning here is that I don't know markets or reader expectations nearly as well as the people who are in charge of bringing my story to the public. So I bow to their experience and expertise.

However! What I can show you is a peek at the one thing I do get to contribute to the cover-design process: an information packet that describes the characters and setting. I send these in at product launch time, right at the beginning, and they are supposed to function as a cheat sheet so the designers and artists don't have to slog through reading the whole book.

I love filling out these things and sharing my inspirations and wishes; it's one of my favorite parts of book production. Here's what I sent Sourcebooks for Perfect Gravity (note that the images I included are all copyrighted, so I can't post them here, but I've included a short description of each in [brackets] and I'm sure your imagination or Google-fu can illuminate the rest):

Hero (Kellen Hockley)	Race:  Texan (okay, not a race, but definitely a type) Complexion: Tan from spending a lot of time outside Age:  30 Body (height/build):  He gets a lot of exercise. Um, I used this image for inspiration: [pic of Scott Eastwood shirtless] Hair color/length: dark blond Eye color (one word):  blue Facial hair?  Nothing really in the story, though he does go a few days without a shave there in the middle and could definitely be scruffy. Clothing: He wears jeans and boots a lot. Stetson sometimes (outdoors only, because down-home manners!). A belt buckle. At the very end of the book, at a fancy-dress shindig, he wears a tux. Thusly: [pic of Scott Eastwood in a tux] Signature Accessory: A cat. He rarely goes anywhere without Yoink, a cloned, bionic kitty. She’s cinnamon-and-white striped and has metal horns protruding from her wee skull, near her ears. The details aren’t hugely important. If y’all decide to put a cat on the cover, I don’t think it matters too much what kitty looks like. [pic of shirtless cowboy holding a cat] My dream cover for this book would feature a shirtless cowboy holding a bionic cat. But probably that stock photo would be really, really hard to find.
Heroine (Angela Neko)	Race:  Bengali/Japanese Complexion: more South-Indian than Japanese, so kind of latte Age:  early 30s Body (height/build):  short, slight, in command (of everything). Bit Napoleonish. Hair color/length: Black. Can be in any style: she goes from having a super fancy updo to being bald to having a short pixie cut at the end. Eye color: dark brown [pic of Priyanka Yoshikawa] Tattoos, body marks or piercings? Nothing that you’d want to feature on a cover. Clothing: Conservative high-fashion futuristic chic. Tailored to within an inch of her life, but with flights of couture weird. In terms of style and deportment, I think of her as a mashup of Huma Abedin, Padme Amidala, and Alexander McQueen. [pic of Huma Abedin in her wedding dress] [pic of vaguely steampunk long-sleeved Alexander McQueen dress with buckles and frogging on the bodice] [pic of Padme Amidala in her heavy velvet addressing-the-Galactic-Senate costume] Key Accessory: Elbow-length biodeterrent smartgloves. (That, uh, just look like regular gloves, those heavy-duty long things the Victorians wore to keep the whole world off their skin.)
Setting/description (similar to first book in series)	The year 2059, so near future. Look should be futuristic but gritty. Western U.S. desert (so, lots of scrub-brush flora and bumpy horizons) with an unexpected giant megastructure (an arcology, like those mongo buildings in BladeRunner) jutting out of a vast, dark nothing.  Also scenes in post-apocalyptic underwater Galveston and a futuristic Guadalajara.
Design ideas/inspiration	This movie poster sums up the mood nicely: [pic of Cowboys vs Aliens movie poster featuring Daniel Craig's backside] Also has cowboy, futuristic-looking tech, impending doom clouds. Nice.
Cover descriptive words	Techno, sexy, old-west, bleak, futuristic

And this is the cover they came up with:

I think the cover is gorgeous. Does it match my vision? Not really. But it fits smoothly into that urban-fantasy kickass-heroine market, which is where I suspect the publisher was trying to place it.

So, yeah, it's probably best I don't have a lot of control over covers. There are people who are much better at this than I am.

But, just the tiniest bit, I do mourn the shirtless-cowboy-with-a-robot-cat cover that never was.

Devising a gamer girl's latest thrill

Gotta confess, I skimmed through most of the quidditch scenes in Harry Potter. Sabbac continues to bore me in every Star Wars book, comic, or game that seeks to implement it as a look!fun!thing. And Casino Royale almost put me to sleep, despite the fact that I love me some Daniel-Craig-as-Bond.

Which, you have to admit, is all so crazy for a gal who has a gaming addiction plays games as much as I do.

So if I had to make up a sport or a game for a book I was was writing, I...

Oh crud. I sort of do. Right now. With a thing I'm writing.

The heroine in this story is hard-core gamer trying to wean herself from the lifestyle. (No, this is not a memoir.) My first thought was that she'd be a guildmaster from an MMORPG--something that would not require me to research much--but alas, base-building kill-your-friends games seem to be the affliction du jour, and mama's gotta keep up with the times.

Okay. I downloaded the mini version of Fortnite. It's on my phone and Switch. Just sitting there. Because I don't have any friends who are playing and also have a great desire to be killed.

Turns out, no one in my household can stand PvP. We're a cooperative family. Also, most of my actual friends dig, you know, living. Therefore, if I'm gonna come up with a Fortnite clone for this story, research will most likely be like pulling hair. (Which, incidentally, is lots less painful than pulling teeth but way more annoying.)

Switching tracks, then, what about a role-playing group? Dungeons & Dragons is making a comeback, maybe thanks to Stranger Things, and hey! I didn't even get bored during that opening sequence of season 1. I could totally sit my characters around a table, feed them bad food, and encase them in a made-up world and awesome magical armor!

Okay, so I think this is the way it'll roll up: tabletop role-playing, old-school with paper-and-pencil and hand-painted miniatures, and the setting will be ... epic fantasy? Cyberpunk? Berserk computers and happiness officers a la Paranoia? Space pirates with questionable ethics? Robotic farm animals defying the farmer patriarchy?

All right. *rubbing hands together* Now it's getting fun.

Ain't got time for hate

This week at the SFF Seven party-in-a-blog, we're talking about books that we loathed, specifically those classics that teachers or mentors forced upon us and threatened us on pain of Fs until we read them.

I studied literature in college, so yeah, I read quite a few things that I didn't especially dig. But I was also a stubborn and spiteful child, so fairly often I'd choose to write papers on the worst fictional offenders, the books I initially loathed. Which meant I had to read them again. And again.

And you know what happened sometimes (most times)? On about the third reading, I'd crack the bitter nut, peer inside to the meat, and realize the deep parts of that book were actually delicious.

I remember specifically that happening with a a half dozen Russian tragedies (hello, Anna Karenina), everything I had to read by Goethe, and E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. The thing about literary classics that suck superficially is that there is subtext. So if you dig deep enough, you will find something else, especially if the author has done a good enough job layering to have a book join the literary canon.

These days, no one is forcing me to read, so I read what I want to. Sometimes it's layered, high-protein, literary nuttiness. Sometimes it's deep-dish genre pizza. Sometimes it's birthday cake fluff consisting mostly of icing and sugar flowers. Sometimes it's just a snack, a cookie, a lollipop, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get confectioner's sugar joy ride.

Because these days? I don't have time to read a book twice or thrice before I see its beauty. And I sure don't have time for hate.

As Elsa would say, let that stuff go.

52.

I have 52 manuscripts in my Just Writing dropbox folder. Some are complete, some have a couple of filled-in scenes and then basically a synopsis to remind me how I meant the story to go. None of them are sellable or even readable.

Not sure about all authors, but I get ideas a lot. I'll think, whoa, I'd really like to read a paranormal romance where the heroine hooks up with a not-as-evil-as-he-seems anti-Christ sort of dude. So I go off and write 60k (so, so dodgy) words because I'm so into the idea... and then I stumble across a book on a shelf somewhere that has already dealt with the topic. Brilliantly. Perfectly. (Thank you, Darynda Jones. Your version is the one the world needed.)

So anyway, my answer to this week's question -- do you ever abandon a project, and if so why? -- is yes, and because sharing the story isn't necessary. It was enough to have written it to settle my own brain.

See, thing is, not every idea that bubbles up in a writer's brain is going to work for actual readers. And not every writer is capable of writing every idea they have.

It's okay to put that first manuscript in a drawer. It's okay to say, you know what, there just isn't room in the market for another Harry Potter clone. (Inner voice says, "Yeah, but ours is with fresh-out-of-high-school new adults learning magic as a profession and how to adult and ..." and I say, "Shut up, inner voice. Seriously, just shut up.") It's okay to realize you've grown as a writer since you started working on that space opera that, let's be honest, was just a Deep Space Nine fanfic with substituted names.

It's okay to write those for-pleasure idea bursts. It's even okay to love them.

And it's also okay to let them go. 

"How big is your... to-be-read list?" she innuendoed.

"So, how big is it?"

It's not like I'm blushing or anything, but did you really ask that question? I mean, this is personal. But here we are, and you did ask. I struggle to answer.

"I mean, it's sizable."

You raise eyebrows.

"Biggish, then. Biggish and not showing any signs of shrinking." To my shame. "It just grows, and I can't seem to stop it."

Okay, you can giggle here, note that warning about calling a doctor if these things go on longer than four hours, and float off in a puff of innuendo. Go ahead. 

Except no, you're still here. Waiting.

Fine.

My to-be-read list is how big? SO big that ...

... clocking in at 702 ebooks on my Kindle queue alone, if those were holdable, sniffable books I had to store, I would no longer have a kitchen. Possibly would not have a house and would be relegated to a she-shack in the back yard. (With a reading nook, naturally.)

... even with all those titles offloaded to digital, the paperback stacks collapsed the shelves in my closet. (Poor closet.)

... I no longer remember which were loaners, which were freebies, and which I bought. So, if you loaned me a "you have to read this book!" book, forgive me. (And remind me of the title. I'm sure I'm getting to it!)

And the worst, most difficult confession of all:

... if I've read about ten pages and am not completely and absolutely invested in a book, I'm probably not going to finish it. That's the sad truth. It's probably going right back into the "maybe later" aka TBR pile.

I guess this is why folks say a book's opening page has to be gripping. There are just too many options out there now for entertainment. Such is the embarrassment of riches for a reader these days.

Of course, then I wonder what my own opening pages look like, and finally -- finally! are you happy now? -- I blush scarlet. 

Because I get the punchline to this very unfunny joke: My next book best start off with a dead body in a car chase, because I'm not alone in having more books than eyeball time. Snagging a reader's attention and holding it is the only way any book is going to move from TBR to keeper shelf.

Quiz: Should I go indie or trad?

I'm brand new to this publishing thing--I only have two books out right now, and both went the traditional publishing route. So it's not like I have a whole bunch of wisdom to drop on this topic of whether folks should keep keep banging manuscripts against the query wall or take the also terrifying leap off the indie cliff.

Here's what seems clear, though: not everyone is going to succeed in the same path. I suspect that choosing what's right for you comes down to your personality and what you want from this writing adventure.

Also, I've made a quiz. Because I love quizzes. Jot your answers on a separate sheet (or write them on your forearm in Sharpie; not judging). Here goes:

1. Having a cover that looks exactly like the character and setting from the story is

A. Not as important as having a cover that conveys tone and genre, so readers aren't surprised.

B. Nice but not really my focus. I'm about writing the stories.

C. The most important thing.

2. If you absolutely had to reduce costs in the production of your book, you'd skip

A. Starbucks for a month. Or gym membership. All's I know is nothing about this book is gonna get skipped. This baby is gonna shine.

B. Editing. I know how to use commas and write clean. Plus I ran this thing through Autocrit, so it's good enough.

C. Celebratory vino for release day. Possibly the Amazon ad.

3. A line edit is

A. Close enough to a copy edit that one contractor could probably do both.

B. A what-what?

C. In my budget, and I have a great service scheduled to do it.

4. My primary goal for my writing career is to

A. Make enough money at writing to quit the day job.

B. Earn accolades, awards, and starry trade reviews.

C. Turn out the best-quality story I can, every time.

5. I consider myself a risk-taker

A. Heck yeah and bring on the sky-diving.

B. No. And I think I'm getting sick just at the thought.

C. Um, is that thing safe? If it is, sure, why not just one jump.

6. It's release day for your very first book. What's the worst thing that can happen today?

A. Seller's web site doesn't have the buy links active until after noon, meaning I'm on the phone and annoyed and losing money, but we WILL get this sorted.

B. No one even knows the book is out. No one sees it. No one reviews it or mentions it on social media. No one buys it. Holy wibblefest, am I even a real writer?!

C. Just...today? Like, one day? Man, I'm in this for the long haul. Tell me the numbers in six weeks or so, and then we'll see if we need to panic or change things up. Today, I'm just going to sip some celebratory vino and plot out my next opus.

For items 1 - 3, count 1 point for As, 2 points for Bs, and 0 points for Cs. For items 4-6, tally 0 points for As, 3 points for Bs, and 1 point for Cs. Total your points.

If you got...

0-5 -- You got this and would probably rock the indie path.
6-10 -- Consider branching out and building a career as a hybrid author. Indie first or trad first: do what works best for you, just realize that you can have the best of both worlds.
11-15 -- Keep querying. You will probably be most comfortable with a publisher at your back, at least at the beginning.

So, how'd you do? Is the quiz bunk? All your thoughts, I'm ready to hear 'em.

Writing a book is not a single-player RPG

When folks talk about “leveling up” writing craft, they’re slapping possibly the best metaphor in the universe on this process. Because writing a book is almost exactly like game-mastering a role-playing game. In which you are also playing all player characters. Alone. Deep into the night. And recording the whole thing in case someone, anyone, ever wants to hear about your fun made-up adventure that you had with yourself.

First you read the module (get the story idea and some rough sketch of the conflict and setting). Then you roll up heroes (main and secondary characters, with motivations and emotional problems and gear). Then you sit down at your little table for many hours and eat bad food and melt into this strange, magical, wonderful world you’ve devised.

And after you’ve defeated the big boss (written the first draft), it’s time to assign experience points and loot, and … level up.

Yes, leveling up is revision.

When I’m leveling up (revising) a book, the most helpful source books (tools) are going to be

• Critique partners—Get you some! At least one. I have three. These are professional writers who are at or above my skill level (not necessarily writing in my genre; the skill-level match is the key here) and do not hesitate to point out crap that isn’t working. They aren’t “oh I love everything you write” people. They are “eeew”-in-the-margin and “nope, he’d never say this” people. 
• A developmental editor—My publisher hooks me up with editors who read my icky drafts and offer suggestions for making the books better, but if you’re self-publishing, you need to go out and find a good dev editor on your own. Don’t skip this part. I don’t know a writer who turns out perfectly balanced and paced first drafts about adequately motivated characters. And I know some damn impressive writers.
• A read-along performance—I don’t mean you need to get up in front of an audience and read your book aloud. I do mean that you need to read your book aloud, though. Yes, the entire thing. Even those scenes that make you blush. (Have a glass of wine, if you need it.) Read the characters in their own voices and make sure the POVs are sufficiently distinct, the dialogue makes sense, and the chapter-ending hooks make you want to keep reading. If you stumble over a word or sentence when you’re reading it aloud, very likely there’s a problem in that spot. Flag it and move on, and later, you can come back and think, Ha! I spelled teh wrong and spellcheck totally let me down! Because this is not the kind of thing your eyes notice when you’re reading silently. But your mouth realizes that teh is completely unpronounceable and helps you fix all these embarrassing things.
• Beta readers—Contrary to some weird stuff I’ve heard lately, you do not need to pay for beta reading. Find another writer in your genre who you trust, and trade manuscripts. Or find a reader in your genre who is willing to read in exchange for a shout out in the Acknowledgements or chocolate or advance copies of all your books in perpetuity or just to elevate the genre. Note that a beta reader is not a line editor and is not responsible for your commas. You should have already sorted your commas by this point. Also, don’t use your book-buying readers as betas. Readers who buy the book should not also have a duty to tell you that your pacing is off or you’re showing rather than telling all through chapter six (why is it always chapter six?). Readers bought the book. Your job is to make sure that thing they bought is already a quality purchase.
• A line editor—To sort the dangling participles (you have some, I promise) and word repeats and 42-word sentences and language that might trigger or offend a reader in ways you would have never anticipated. A good line edit helps you polish the low-level, sentence-type stuff. It also points out bad habits you didn’t even know you had—oh, hello, overused "just" and made-up verbs! If you publish traditionally, this step might be rolled in with a white-glove treatment on your final revision, or it might be called something else. Regardless of what you call it, though, it’s the pre-copyedit and post-developmental edit. It’s the stage where your sentences learn to shine.
• A copy editor—Even if you are pretty sure you write clean, you still need a copy editor. Everyone needs a copy editor. Copy editors need copy editors. Because none of us are that good all on our own. Also, a good copy editor is not someone who did real well diagramming sentences in sixth-grade language arts. A good copy editor has memorized The Chicago Manual of Style and has training specifically in how to recognize inconsistencies and errors in a book-length manuscript. Get editing samples and references. Important note: you cannot hire a good copy editor for $50 for your 100k-word opus. (Read that sentence again. Cannot.)

So, okay, I lied. 

You aren’t running this adventure alone after all. 

Sure you can bang out the crappy first draft all by yourself at your little table in the dark of night and with Cheeto-stained fingers. But if you want those characters ever to get the Chain Lightning spell or the insta-kill +1 vorpal sword, you’re gonna need to get some other folks in on your game.

Getting unstuck when the muse lets you down

In the massive multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic, if you maneuver your character between boulders or buildings or something and get stuck, you can type in /stuck, and the game will magically transport you to a space where you can move your character freely again.

Writing? Sadly lacks that feature.

This week, our SFFseven topic is the one thing that helps us get unstuck in a story, but I'm going to adjust that topic a little. (Forgive me.) See, once I get going in a story, with a deadline in my pocket and a character arc in my head, I rarely get stuck. That point in the adventure is the sweet spot, the roller coaster at full speed. It's the between-story living that sticks me really hard. I'm talking about especially that stickiest of things: the will to write. Some folks call this the muse.

I've said I write because I can't not. Because I am a thing that writes. Because it's what I love to do. But, true confession: sometimes I'm not, and I don't. Sometimes I get stuck. Here are some things that have helped me, to varying degrees:

• Find the thing you love that isn't writing and do the crap out of it. Dance. Cook. Play games. Walk the dog. Reupholster your dining room chairs. 
• Read something other than the genre you write. When I read excellent books in my own subgenre, I inevitably get the "I can't do it this as well so why even try" blues. But if I read excellent books in another genre, like thriller or horror or literary meandering, I get energized and thoughts like, "This would be really cool if it also had robots. And kissing. Hey! I can make that happen!" And then ideas--and more importantly, enthusiasm--pour in.
• Develop go-to unsticking resources. A very wise and talented writer, Skyler White, has developed a game for getting unstuck. It involves identifying the sticky thing, turning it into a goal-positive, and coming up with ways you would be able to tell if it was getting less sticky. The preliminary documentation for this process is on her Facebook page, The Narrow Shed. I recommend it. A lot.
• Write fanfiction. I'm not even kidding. If you disdain the hobby, consider getting over that, because fic is the single best way to practice your art without the weight of "oh crap, I have to get this manuscript done and shop it and sell it and promote it and build a career with it." In fic you have no pressure. You can just make words. It is incredibly liberating.
• Find a friend who you trust, and who can handle this, and whine. Let that person whine back when they get stuck. Writing can be incredibly lonely, and most of us get low from time to time. But, quick protip: that trusted friend is not social media. Don't whine on social media. :)
• Be kind to you. You are worthy beyond the manuscript. Daily word count, reviews, sales, social media followers--these are not reflections on who you are as a person or, in many cases, as a writer. The pit of stuckness is easy enough to fall down without letting those outside things give you a push.

Hugs, you guys. We can get through all the stuck.  

Zero advice from a multitasking failure

I am a crap multitasker. Seriously, I can’t even answer more than one question at a time. When I was in college, I had to make lists and calendars and check them every 5.2 seconds, and set alarms and Sharpie schedules on my skin, and even then I was a human wad of panic for four years, certain I was going to forget something important or let somebody down.

When my kids were little, I breathed in a volcanic-seized anxiety cloud and held it in my body for about ten years, and everything else in the universe went on hold so I could do just that one job right.

I have to be honest here: I have no advice on how to balance time and commitments, how to keep a consistent writing schedule despite the maelstrom of life. I have never done it successfully.

When you have a day job, you go and do the job, then you come home and—unless you are crazy and bring work home, like I used to do—you have a whole evening to be parent or partner or fan or hobbyist or, basically, yourself. Geography manages the priority of tasks: if you’re at the office, you do the work. If you’re at home, you do the other work.

But writing isn’t like that. I don’t have an office. I don’t even have a chair that other people feel uncomfortable invading when it suits them. I can’t say, hey, here’s the cubicle so I must work. Instead I’m driving down the MoPac Expressway and character dialogue pops into my mind, and I have to pull over and scribble notes and then deal with being late to music class or the dentist. Or I get the most brilliant workaround for a plot snaggle, but it’s 3pm and I have to go fetch the children from school and by the time I get to a place where I can write down that brilliant thought, it’s gone. Lost.

Or I have a deadline, so I put the kids to bed then lock myself in the guest room and write until I literally fall asleep on the smooth, warm keyboard. Only to have my alarm go off an hour later and, as Deadpool would say, it’s time to make the chimichangas.

So yeah, I’ll write this morning… but only after I’m done typing out this blog post.

And putting the laundry into the dryer.

And setting up needed appointments with orthodontists, scanning and emailing forms to day camp coordinators, replying to emails that probably arrived yesterday.

Answering phone calls from family members who are extroverts and need to talk things out, and I love them so it’s OKAY.

Feeding the pets. Taking a shower. Deliberately ignoring the news because I just can't with that.

And quite possibly, by the time I've completed all the musts, it won’t be morning any longer.

I’m sorry I don’t have good advice on carving out write-space in your life, but the thing is, every writer deals with the stuff I deal with, and you make it work. You make the time. You keep all these balls in the air with grace and a grin like precision Cirque jugglers.

And I admire the hell out of y'all.

Don't be distracted by the shiny! It isn't story.

Regarding ideas and where to get 'em... Did you read KAK's post yesterday? What she said. I'll just add a tiny bit to it.

I get ideas from science news feeds and web sites, the brain-crunchy books of pop-science geniuses like Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk's Twitter feed (which is crazysauce, have you seen that thing?!), re-watches of TV shows that stoke my fangirl imagination (Farscape, Firefly, X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Deep Space Nine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe, etc.), documentaries, vacation photos and journals, those people in the Starbucks who look tense and clearly have some drama going on, and, when all else fails, the disco black hole of YouTube.

The problem with ideas is that they aren't a story. Yeah, I know there's such a thing as an "idea story" ("What if we were all living in the dream of some dude name Jack?"), but the format has never worked for me. Maybe my ideas just aren't juicy enough to drive a whole story, I dunno.

For me, ideas are gems, scattered out on the bedspread. I pick up a science article here, a TV character's gesture there, and a dead language there, and I slip all those jewels into a velvet bag, give it a little shake, and start drawing them out, hopefully in an arrangement that appropiately bedazzles my story.

And I mean story in the Lisa Cron sense: "A story is about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses."

So, as sparkly and beautiful as all those ideas are, honestly, they're just vehicles for telling a story. They aren't the story themselves.

Which is good news, right? I mean, you can get ideas from anywhere, and they don't even need to be good ideas. The trick is use all those shiny idea gems to to tell a story that means something to you.

Why my new obsession is and must be a secret. (Hint at the end.)

The thing I like most about my work-in-progress is that you know nothing about it.

It's not that I don't like you or trust you [I love  you to bits, and you should know that]. It's not that I'm scared of rejection [except I so am] or even that I don't do well with criticism [oh God, what if it sucks? what if my baby grows up to be a super villain?!].

See, the thing is, this new series is nascent, gestating, passing through gleaming android milk over and over again like the monsters on Westworld, slowly becoming something better than it was in my brain.

But it's not there yet.

Right now, it's a lattice with little sprout vines reaching up, latching on. I think they will make flowers someday, and I think they will be beautiful. But I don't know for certain, and my hands are still dirty, and the no-you-can't voice is still really, really loud in my garden.

Last night, this unformed android alien plant baby transmorgified into complete synopses of all four books.

Tomorrow I will send those synopses in all their slimy, gross, hope-laden still-growningness to my agent. And I will be terrified.

This is the first time I've ever written a synopsis before I finished the book, and, in case you couldn't tell by the disturbing metaphors, doing the process this way is extremely weird. In the past, when I've synopsized, either the book was done and ready to roll or ... the magic bled out in the summary as I wrote it and the exsanguinated story gasped and died. Crisp vine, no flowers. Limp, fetid puddle of android alien goo. And then I hopped along to the next shiny.

Except, this time, I'm trying really hard not to do that, to kill my plant. I sort of have to send this early idea-let to my agent because that's how the next phase of my writing adventure progresses. I should be able to do this. I'm a professional, damn it.

So tomorrow I'll drop the chubby li'l info packet off at preschool [write email to agent; attach prehensile thing; tap Send], maybe have a little cry, and then go drink a lot of vodka and hope it learns how to play nice with others.

[Though, like all nurturers of super-villains, I do dream of it taking over the world someday.]

Wish us luck.

Hint: There are dragons.

All the Truly Nasty Titles I've Thought Up

Okay… titles, huh? I’m going to have to punt on the expertise here because I’ve never successfully titled a work. Let me explain.

I have two books out. The first was a cyberpunk romance featuring a BladeRunner-type android assassin, and in my overwrought newbieness I called it On the Squeeze. Note the singular lack of cyberpunk or romance imagery there. To my ever-patient editor I submitted more than twenty terrible titles, each terribler than the last. Don’t believe me? Feast your giggler on these gems:

• Lost Things
• Hard Drive
• Hard Wired
• Guardian Machine
• Full Metal Seduction (<-- Seriously, I sent this. Amazing SFR author Cara Bristol had just done a poll on Facebook asking readers what words in a title were appealing for romance, and "seduction" was the clear winner. So I guess I thought I was being marketing savvy or something. Am blushing with embarrassment now, though. Pretty sure this was not the context the voters had in mind.)

Finally, in the last batch via email, I said, um, maybe Wired and Wanted?

At that point, either I’d worn down my editor with the sheer volume of badness or that title was close enough to what we needed. She switched it around to Wanted and Wired, and voila.

But wait! The follow-up book was going to be even more fun to title, for both of us. And by “fun” of course I mean agony. My working title for book 2 was Claws in Chrome, which, again, wasn’t super romancey, but at least it had a cyberpunk feel and called out the robot cat, who is a pivotal character in the story. (I had in my mind the cover image of a shirtless cowboy facing away from the camera, a la Daniel Craig on that hot Cowboys & Aliens movie novelization cover by Joan D. Vinge, only with a creepy robot feline peering over his shoulder, possibly in full ears-back hiss mode. THIS IS WHY VIV DOES NOT DESIGN COVERS.)

My poor, poor editor. 

None of the titles I suggested were even close to suitable, and just in case you don’t believe me, here’s the complete list I sent with the launch paperwork:

• Fire and the Fall
• Desire and the Desperado
• Spurred and Smitten
• Trust and Treason
• Tampered and Tempted
• Bliss and Bravado
• Riled and Ready
• Claws in Chrome
• Evils and Angels
• Passion and Power
• Outlaw and the Oratrix (<-- OH YES! Clearly targeted at readers who always have a dictionary handy!)
• Shadow Trust
• War and the Wild Things
• Fire of Forever
• Best of the Beasts

The title we ended up with, Perfect Gravity, has nothing to do with the book, but lordy is it better than anything I submitted. We may have gone back at revisions and added a couple of lines about the pull of gravity, or the heroine’s magnetic personality being like gravity or something. Regardless, it’s a pretty cool title.

That I would never in a zillion years have thought up.

So that's my unimpressive track record so far. The third book in the series has a working title of … (wait for it)…Bits of Starstuff. And okay fine, I love it and it’s so appropriate for my noncorporeal, sentient-chatbot heroine Chloe. So what it isn’t romantic. So what no stars actually explode in the story. So what it’s punny with “bits” having two meanings, and no one likes puns.

We’ll have to see what happens with that book, but hey, if you have title ideas, please feel free to pass them along. They can’t be worse than the crud I’ve thought up.

Help Viv name her fancypants new Facebook group. Win prize!

My blog-mates have posted about really thought-provoking things this week, haven’t they? Impressive. And on this fine Wednesday, I invite you to go back and read all their wise and insightful thoughtings.

Am afraid, however, this post will be the inverse of wise.

Which, of course, is panicky.

See, my poor brain is jammed completely full of info concerning the EU GDPR (European Union General Data Protection Regulation), which is a new set of laws designed to protect people’s privacy on the internet. Yay, privacy! Yay, Internet! Boo, VivBrain.

This regulation goes live May 25th, by which date everyone who has collected any user data via the web must be compliant. User data includes, among other things, lists of emails like folks use for newsletters. To become compliant, distributors of newsletters have to … okay, you really don’t want to hear all this. I promise. It's overwhelming. But it’s the reason why you’ve been getting all those “hey, if you still want to receive this newsletter, could you click the doodad below?” notes in your inbox. Look for such notes to become more frequent as we near May 25. (And be sure to click on the ones you do in fact want to continue getting!)

Like most writers, I have a newsletter, but frankly, it’s a big ol’ mess, and the task of bringing it into compliance has boggled my brain and made me grumpy. For the time being, I've taken down the subscribe forms, sent info to the folks who are already subscribed, and have put my newsletter on hiatus until I am absolutely certain no one will get an unwanted email from me.

So.

In the mean time, if you’re interested in hearing about my upcoming book releases or discounts/sales of books that are already out, you can

- Follow me on BookBub

- Follow me on Amazon

- Join my brand new, fancypants Facebook group

About that last part... It’s brand(ish). It’s new (true). It’s fancy (only true from a certain point of view). It may be ultimately be named after a cat, but the best part is YOU CAN HELP DECIDE.

Oh yes! This little group is so new it doesn’t even have a name yet.

We’re soliciting ideas for names right now, and in a couple of weeks (May 25th? too on the nose?), I’ll run a poll and we’ll all vote and pick a winner. The person who suggests the winning group name will get… I dunno, something cool. (Do people still like free books? Kittens? Cookies? Bespoke flash fiction?) 

At any rate, here’s the group link again: 

Viv Likes Kissing Stories and Cat Videos (Official Name in the Works)

Join if you want. Don’t if you don’t. Not gonna judge either way.

Regardless, I promise to clear the grumpy outta my brain and get back to putting good-hearted characters into mortal danger.

The why of stories, via royal weddings, traffic, and pets

Writing commercial fiction isn’t the same as, say, crafting Viking swords. With the latter, you want to make sure you apprentice with someone who completely knows his or her art, and you want to pay attention. Lots and lots of fervid, note-taking attention. However, with the former, although some basics of craft are good to know, the goal of your art is to illuminate the human condition, and let’s face it, none of us on this planet have a clue what we’re doing. Or why. Anybody else’s guess is as good as mine.

So that’s who I learn from: anybody. Everybody. All the time.

From my kids, who get weird messaging that we should all be leaders, but also we should all work in groups…where not everybody is going to be, you know, leading. So is being second-in-command undesirable, then? But what if the wolf-shifter pack alpha is a craptastic leader and it’s the get-shit-done somewhere-in-the-middle-of-the-hierarchy canid who actually deserves my attention? (And my heroine’s…)

From the rush hour traffic ballet, where the several-decades-old American muscle car with the heavy metal band bumper sticker brakes to let in a SmartCar with an Infowars bumper sticker, and suddenly I’m wondering about the drivers’ genders and demographics and politics and dreams and fears, and how this whole faceless highway social structure might change if, say, we all used driverless cars.

From my news feed, which is filled with clashing stories about the upcoming Royal Wedding (and the new Prince Louis and his oh-yeah-she-is big sis, Princess Charlotte) and Elon Musk, and now I’m wondering how something old and crumbly like monarchy will fare in a future of Mars vacations and cyborg dragons.

From my tiny dogs, who are hosting my mother-in-law’s pets while she is out of town, and are learning to live with a cat. Lily has responded with curiosity and an adorable desire to get to know the newcomer; Tahiti clearly thinks his space is being invaded by something not-dog and is super anxious as a result. Which feels a little like immigration? Invasion? Integration? So many human behavioral stencils can be laid over this burgeoning pet relationship, each yielding story fodder.

Oh, and here’s a pic of the dogs, all together on one chair (Lily, the super friendly gal, is that one in the middle). Notice no cat. OreoKitty is on the stairs nearby, watching, maybe wanting to be part of the fuzzy blanket club. Or maybe just thinking how sad it is that all those pups can’t jump up to the lofty place where she is.

Human condition, right? The lessons are everywhere, and I can never learn enough. Also, each time we interact, you teach me a little more. So, I learn from you, too. Thank you.

Since I suck at prognosticating, here's my wish list instead.

Predicting trends in the writing biz? Me? Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m the last person you’ll want to consult for prognostications. I kind of fail at them.

Back in the querying stage, I did a crudton of research on the market: what was selling, who was selling it, who was writing it, how they were selling it, what the covers looked like, what movies or television shows were sort of like the stuff that was selling. Even that crudton was barely a crumb on the surface of this gigantic, seaming pile of…er, research you can do. And people were there all along the way, advising me to research more, know more, learn more. Ack!

In the end, I learned that I was basically Jon Snow. I knew nothing.

I signed with an agent three years ago, and holy hell has the book business changed since then. No one predicted the convulsion our industry has endured, and I honestly don’t believe anyone has a clear handle on where it’s headed from here. We think trends are toward more optimistic, fluffy stuff. But tomorrow’s news story stands a good chance of yanking the stuffing right out of us. Alternately, if we go dark and current events go darker, I can’t imagine readers are going to follow us down into the pit of despair. And bless them for not.

So since I’m failing so completely to predict, how about I wish instead? That's what futuristic fictioneers do, after all: we build a world to our own spec. And if I were building the near future of the publishing biz, here are a few trends I would like to see:

• More characters of color. Not just because representation matters (though it definitely does), but also because that's the way the world looks. Humans are a wonderfully, wildly diverse lot.
• A resurgence of cyberpunk or more specifically, post-cyberpunk (e.g., Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash). Technology is eating us alive right now in the real world, so fiction where we pwn that stuff would be empowering.
• Gay characters who exist in stories that aren’t about gayness. You know, where they’re just people, peopling. 
• A retreat from trope-stuffing. One or two are fine, but commercial fiction has become overloaded with tropes, and the stories suffer from this bloat. At least we writer types should seek to invert or turn a few tropes sideways. 
• Less mocking. Mockery isn’t funny, and I’m tired of reading books where “comedy” occurs at the expense of someone else. 
• Consent. So much consent. Consent on every page. Heck, a whole cast of characters who are oh-yeah, all-in enthusiastic about the sexytimes. 
• On a related note, I would like the word “mine” in a romantic context to become archaic usage. People don’t belong to each other and are not objects to be won. 
• Actually, instead of stories about horrible characters doing horrible things to each other, how about some books about good people doing awesome things for each other? 
• I mean, if you need stakes and stuff, they can always save the world. I’m so over being told that I as a reader like to see characters making poor life decisions. I don’t. 
• Oh! And this: a gory, blood-spattered, 'bout-time end to cliffhangers.

Yeah. I feel better now. Probably haven't predicted anything at all, but I definitely feel better. How about you? You got anything specific you'd like to show up on your to-be-read pile? 

Oh no she didn't! (Except I so did.)

Ermaghad, the topic this week is gaffes we’ve made in books, published and pre. I…don’t even know where to start. I am a serial word abuser. (If you ever meet my copy editor, please buy her a drink and promise to never spontaneously make up verbs.) So how about a game of Six Truths and a Lie? In honor of our SFF Seven blog title, here are seven super-embarrassing word crimes I have committed:

1. The fanfiction from second grade where Luke and Leia went out on a date. (Qualification: RotJ wasn’t out yet, so the incest was as yet unconfirmed. Also, I wasn’t super clear what a date was but had some hazy thought that it had something to do with eating pasta together, like Lady and the Tramp.) 
2. The one-act play I wrote in high school, which I intended to be this tense, tragic relationship drama, but the actors got ahold of it and played it as a straight-up comedy and I never told anyone it wasn't meant to be funny. At all. 
3. The tech document I wrote about a public health web site but forgot the L in "public." 
4. The thing with a scuba suit that was so gross my critique partner wrote “eeewww” in the margin. 
5. Same book, I wrote a prologue. 
6. Still same book, I wrote not one, not two, but three flashback scenes. 
7. That fanfiction tale of old Gondor interpreted through a series of limericks. 

Aaaaand of those is a lie.

Dear Mom, Please don't read my books...yet.

Mom (upon learning that I’ve co-written a story that an actual publisher wants to actually publish): Can I read it?

Me: Er, I don’t think you’d like it.

Mom: It’s a romance. I like romances.

Me (silently: Oh, you sweet summer child) and aloud:  Actually, it’s more of a… scene. With three people. Who chat a bit in the parlor and then head upstairs to, uh, not chat. For twelve thousand words. Of nakedly not chatting.

Mom: Oh. Maybe the next one, then.

Hubs: Okay, so I’ve finished reading [the manuscript that eventually became Perfect Gravity – my second full-length novel].

Me: Uh oh, the ending fizzled, dinnit? It needs more guns blazing and cat hissing.

Hubs: No, that’s not what I was going to say at all.

Me: Wait, you and your fancy film degree and years making computer games weren’t going to give me constructive criticism that will definitely make me a better writer after I get over the initial navel-gazingly depressing realization that I’m not quite there yet?

Hubs: No. This one is good. Consider me a fan.

Me, having just received the biggest compliment of my life, sobs and kisses the shit out of that man.

My eldest child grabs a copy of my first-ever published-in-paper book.

Her: This is so cool, Mom. Can I read it?

Me (after slight hesitation for she is yet a Jedi youngling): Er, sure. Just, if you get to something confusing or weird, let’s talk about it, okay?

She cracks open the book and digs in. A couple of minutes later, she closes the book and sets it back in the box.

Her: I’m not allowed to read this book.

Me: Nonsense, I just told you—

Her (interrupting): Three. You have three swears on the first page, and two are the F-bomb. Mom, I’m not allowing myself to read it. And you need to watch your language.

So, to date three of the most important people in my universe have attempted to read my books. One actually made it all the way through. Hey, one of three ain’t… okay it’s a crappy percentage.

But someday I’ll write something without swears or sex.

(Stop laughing, you. I totally will.)