Smooth

On October 31, 2012, Seawritesforfun wrote, I was wondering how can you make a book fluid? Mine is rather all over the place because I write very sporadically, (started in ’10, still not finished but very close now). I plan to do about 20 rewrites to try and fix it, but I’m not sure whether or not that will disrupt the plot.

First off, when we revise our first principle should be, must be: Everything is up for grabs to make the best book we can at this time.

I don’t mean we have to toss the first draft, because then we’ll be writing a new book, not revising. And I don’t mean that every element always has to change, only the ones that need fixing. For me, some drafts need just a little tweaking; some need much more. We work within the established framework, but we may have to move a few walls and change the furniture. We may have to add characters, drop characters, change POV, and even adjust (or disrupt) our plot. I’ve begun my revisions for my second Elodie mystery. I don’t foresee adding characters, but I’m doing everything else, and my plot is definitely changing.

If you’re young, say you’re fifteen now and you started your book when you were thirteen, of course the story feels jumpy. The you that started and the you who’s writing now are separated by eons of growth and change and learning. So I suggest that you try to go through this revision in the span of a few months, tops, because you’re still on a steep maturing slope. A year from now you may again be vastly different (although, naturally, many essentials will remain). If you start and then stop, fluidity may again elude you.

A lot of the feeling of fluidity comes from voice. Try reading a few paragraphs from page 3 and a few from pages 25, 80, 130, etc. What do you notice? What are the differences? Which do you like? Maybe one of the pages has a contemporary voice, another goes even further into slang, another is more formal, and another has a distinct old-fashioned tone. Decide which best suits your story.

Can you identify something that you can replicate to give the narration a sense of continuity? For example, in the Elodie books, when Elodie is surprised, she has a habit of saying or thinking, Lambs and calves! Just that expression helps create the sense of a single personality presenting the story. I’ve switched to third person in this revision, although I’m not sure I’ll stick with it, but in most chapters Elodie is still my POV character, and the reader still encounters her Lambs and calves!, not in every paragraph or even on every page, but often enough to remind the reader that this is Elodie’s tale.

In the past I’ve mentioned a novel for adults, or for kids high school and up, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, a fascinating mystery that switches from first-person to third, that changes tenses, and that intersperses the narrative with newspaper articles. The effect is jumpy, I guess, but the reader comes to expect the discontinuity, and the story works as a whole. The key is repetition. We can change tense or POV once right at the beginning or we can sandwich our narrative with a beginning and final shift, but if we’re going to do more, we generally need to do it frequently. If there’s just a single switch a third of the way into the story and not again, the reader is likely to be confused, but if it’s a regular thing, she’ll be prepared.

Here’s another, possibly weird solution. Think of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, which was written over several years, and which, admittedly, isn’t fiction. Anne changes in the course of the book. The youngster at the beginning and the young adult at the end are vastly different. The reader accepts this because of the time span. Maybe you can work something into your structure that accommodates the two years you spent writing your book. Maybe your book can be presented as a journal. Or, if you can’t separate the parts by time, maybe you can by distance. The first part takes place in an earth city, the next on recently colonized Venus, the next in a scientific station on the ocean floor. Or, separate them by narrator, so the voice is different in the different parts. Then, possibly, the revision won’t be so radical.

Here are four prompts:

• Use the scenario I suggested. Your three MCs are geographically apart. Earth is running out of some resource, say, fresh water. Your characters are engaged in a project to save life on the planet, but there are conflicting allegiances among them, and there’s a romance. Write the story, and make it jumpy, with different narrators, different time periods.

• Tell a story within a story within a story, like those Russian nesting dolls that fit inside each other. Your MC is writing a novel about an actor who’s in an original play. Your story includes all three: the life of the MC, chapters of the novel, and scenes from the play. Give your MC problems in her life that find expression in her novel and in the play inside the novel.

• Write a contemporary story but tell it in an old-fashioned, fairy tale sort of voice.

• Retell a fairy tale in a modern setting using a contemporary voice.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Finish Line

On October 11, 2012, E.S. Ivy wrote, As to why do I finish some (projects) and not others, and why do I fail to finish: I have found that I’m much more likely to finish a project for another person than I am for myself. For example, when I was expecting my first child, I crocheted a dress for my cousin’s baby with a similar due date, but got nothing so elaborate made for my own. :)I noticed a similarity in Lark’s situation. 


My difficulty in finishing, or even progressing, in a book is the fear of not getting it “perfect.” 


I know those are two of my hurdles, but I haven’t quite figured out how to gracefully sail over them yet.

Two topics here:

∙ The ease of finishing something for someone else and the difficulty when the project is just for oneself;

∙ Fear of imperfection.

These are deep-seated issues that many of us struggle with our whole lives. I do! I don’t know how to discuss either one without getting a tad psychological.

When I was little the worst criticism that could be leveled at anyone was that he or she was selfish. If you were selfish, you were evil.

In E. S. Ivy’s example, I suppose it could be called selfish to finish a dress for her own baby because, while the baby may enjoy it, the chief delight will probably belong to E. S. Ivy, in seeing how adorable the baby looks and in feeling pride for having created the effect. And for having created the baby! Mixed in (I am completely guessing here) is the amazing luck of having a healthy child. Good fortune can be hard to tolerate when other people are suffering – and other people somewhere are always suffering.

But E. S. Ivy didn’t cause anybody’s misery.

Don’t get me wrong. Making others suffer so that we can enjoy is terrible. Ignoring the troubles of others for our own comfort stinks. Real selfishness is bad. But we’re not talking about that kind of selfishness. We’re talking about pleasure that harms no one and may help some.

Let’s stick with the baby dress example, but let’s make the crocheter someone other than E. S. Ivy, maybe a character named Barbara in a story, and let’s think about the happiness Barbara’s baby’s dress, created as a selfish act, may bring other people. Barbara takes the baby – Carlie – with her when she goes shopping at the supermarket, and the sight of Carlie in her dress makes the cashier’s day. The cashier’s last customer was horrible, but Carlie wipes out the bad taste. For the whole rest of the day the image of the baby in the great dress makes the cashier smile. That night she even falls asleep with the image in her mind.

In a larger sense, someone else’s good fortune is a blessing for sufferers, a promise that things can get better, a comfort that even if matters are going very badly for me, some are thriving. Not every sufferer will be comforted. Not every sufferer will believe that his lot can improve. But some will. Some will feel the load get a little lighter because of a cute baby in a sweet dress and a happy mother.

When it comes to art the case is even stronger. Creating art for our own pleasure benefits everyone else. The major writers, artists, musicians create out of an urgency that has nothing to do with the greater good. I very much doubt that Monet, for example, painted his water lilies for the benefit of sixth graders on a class trip to an art museum. But some of those eyes are opened, and some of those children live expanded lives forever after.

When I write – when most of the writers I know write – it’s to tell myself a story or to tell a story to the child I used to be. If I tried for an altruistic purpose, to please my readers, I’d be lost. The idea is too vague. One reader likes one thing, another likes something else. So I write selfishly to please myself, and the story goes out into the world and turns out, sometimes, to be just what a reader needs.

Naturally, we have to finish our stories for that to happen, and we have to show them to at least one other person, because keeping them entirely to ourselves may be a little selfish in the bad way, because no one else is allowed to benefit from the tale we discovered.

Finishing is going to benefit someone besides you. If nothing else, the glow of accomplishment will spread cheer.

If your story is published, a wider audience will be enriched. If it isn’t, your friends and family, your teacher, your writers’ group will be the lucky ones. They’ll learn something about you. They’ll read a story the rest of the world won’t have access to, which will make it precious.

On to perfectionism, which takes me back to my childhood, too, and to my poor mother, who was criticized mercilessly by her mother and her two sisters. She became the universe’s biggest perfectionist, trying to do everything exactly right and escape judgment.

So maybe that’s the root of a lot of perfectionism, because criticism hurts!

I caught it from her. If someone comes to my house I want it to look great. Two fragments of tile are missing in my bathroom, and they bother me. When I go out, I fuss with my looks, even if I’m going to be with people who’ve known me for eons. When I’m with a group I want my every word to be clever. This is a burden, and I should get over it.

But when I write I’m not burdened, or not so much. I know the impossibility of perfection, which is what I say in Writing Magic, that there’s no such thing as a perfect book. The best I can hope for is the best I can do at this time. Maybe in a year I’ll do better.

I admit that when I’ve finished writing a scene I go back and fiddle with it before moving on, especially if it’s a good scene and I like it. It’s fun to tweak it to make it funnier or more exciting. And it’s much easier than to move forward into the next scene, which may be hard to write, which may drive me crazy with its imperfections and may even make me temporarily blocked.

Some of you aren’t like me. Some of you blaze bravely on and save the tweaking for the second draft. Good for you!

Even I move on eventually, though. Because I’m darned if the book is going to peter out. It will limp or gallop to the end so that I can start revising and start making it the best imperfect story I can.

Here are a few prompts:

• When I think of Monet, I often think of one of my favorite poems, “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller. This prompt is just to read the poem and enjoy. Here’s a link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/236810. If you read it, please let me know what you think.

• The first time I made a beef-and-barley soup, I decided to go to the movies while the soup simmered. I came back to fire trucks, an apartment full of smoke, and only ashes where soup should have been. My second attempt was delicious, but my husband’s spoon made an odd, clinking sound in the bowl, and he fished out my key chain and all my keys, dripping but sterile. Use a cooking disaster of yours – or any non-cooking mishap – or borrow mine to write a story or a scene on the theme of perfectionism. If perfectionism turns out not to be the theme, don’t worry. We’re really after story.

• Develop two characters, one selfish in a way that benefits many others, and one selfish in a way that benefits no one. Put them in opposition to each other. Write what happens in a scene or a story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Awake, dead scene!

On September 28, 2012, GillyB wrote, What do you do when you have a dead scene on your hands? You know what’s meant to happen next. You even know what SHOULD happen in this scene. But it just isn’t moving. Your characters, which were alive like just a second ago, are suddenly wooden puppets. How do you rescue yourself? What if everything that follows is riding on this particular scene and it just needs to happen, for Pete’s sake?

Try this: Skip the scene. Assume the events in it have happened and write on from there. I got this idea from mystery writer Lawrence Block’s book about writing, Spider, Spin Me a Web. (I haven’t read this book in many years, so I don’t know what age level it’s appropriate for – check with a librarian. I remember the book fondly.) Mr. Block suggests that you’ve already written the scene in your head, so actually typing or penning it is too boring for your brain to accept. If this is true, you can go merrily on, finish your story and insert the scene in revision.

But if you skip the scene and your characters are still made of wood in the scene that follows, you may have a plot problem. You may be forcing your characters to act contrary to their natures as you’ve written them.

You can ask them. Interview your characters in notes. You can write, Cindy, what’s your problem? And Cindy may say, How could you make me be rude to Mr. Morris? I wouldn’t be! You know me!

In this case, you may need to go back and turn Cindy into someone who can be rude, if that will work for the rest of the story. If not, can you make events unfold so she doesn’t have to behave badly.

Or she may say, I just don’t believe we’d raid the tower when the guards are right there, and besides, even if we liberate the royal rabbit, we can’t keep her safe. It doesn’t make sense. If you make me do it, don’t expect me to be normal about it.

If that’s what she says, or something like it, consider what’s going on in the scene. Examine your premises, especially if this is a pivotal moment in your story. Is what you’re planning believable? Is it overly complicated? Can you simplify? Talk to a friend and ask for an opinion. Have her read what you’ve got and see what her take is.

It’s possible, too, that the scene is fine. Say your friend doesn’t see the woodenness, and neither does the next person you show it to. Could be you’re just picking on yourself. Keep writing, and assume you’ll be better able to judge the scene when you’ve been away from it for a while.

But if you discover that there really is a problem with the scene, you may have to rethink a lot of your story and you may be in for a big rewrite. This is disappointing, but also an opportunity. In realizing what’s wrong, in fixing it, in making your story better than ever, you’re learning to be a better writer.

Alas and hooray, I’ve had many such learning experiences.

Here’s another possibility: You’re rushing the scene and not giving your characters a chance to be their lovable and not-so-lovable selves. You have goals for what needs to be accomplished at this plot juncture, but you may be forgetting that your characters’ goals aren’t the same as yours. Make sure you’re including your POV character’s thoughts. If the situation allows for dialogue, are you giving your characters a chance to express themselves? In your notes you might try inhabiting each one in turn. Write down what it feels like to be Cindy on a moonless night, standing at the base of the tower. Is she cold? Did she forget to wear a scarf? Is her stomach churning? Is she worried about whether she’ll be up to the job? Mad at the leader of the raid for poor planning? What’s her idea of success? Maybe, right at this moment, she’s caring more about getting back to her cozy room than about the glory of saving the royal rabbit. Maybe she giggles at the thought of how much she likes rabbit stew.

Go on to the next character. How is it to be Peter here in this moment? And on to another character.

When you’re done, think about how they can be themselves and still accomplish what needs to happen. It’s possible that you have more than one scene on your hands and that, when you slow down, all will work and be exciting.

Yet another thought: Is your setting vague? Are your characters having trouble moving around in it? Is that what’s turning them to wood?

One more: Take a look at the scene before the wooden one. How is your transition? Is everything set up for what comes next?

To summarize, I’ve listed the alternatives I just suggested, some or all of which may apply to your story:

• Skip the scene and keep going.

• Ask your characters in an interview in notes what they think the problem is.

• Change a character, or more than one, so he can behave naturally in the scene.

• Examine your premises to see if what’s happening is believable.

• If necessary, revise your plot.

• Get a friend’s opinion.

• Accept the possibility that you’re being over-critical and keep writing.

• Expand the scene to give your characters more scope to be themselves, to think, speak, and act.

• Solidify your setting so your characters can move around comfortably.

• Check to see if the problem starts in the scene before the wooden one.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Pick an old story that you didn’t finish. Reread the scene where you gave up and try the approaches I suggest above. If you get re-inspired, finish your story.

∙ The assault on the tower to rescue the royal rabbit is your pivotal scene. Write up to it, assembling your company of brave bunny saviors. Write a scene in the tower where the rabbit is confined, because I’ve gotten very curious about her. Is she intelligent? Can she talk? Is she good? Or is she the villain? How big is she? Then write the assault and the ending, if you like.

∙ The pivotal scene in Little Red Riding Hood begins when Little Red opens the door to her grandmother’s cottage. Re-imagine it. Flesh out the characters of Little Red and Grandma and Big Bad. (You may have to write the beginning as well.) Write the pivotal scene and what follows. You’re not limited to the way it goes down in the fairy tale.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Thinking It Out

On September 26, 2012, Courtney Arzu wrote, I’m an extremely young author…But I would like to know how to set up a story/novel. I can begin a story but I can’t seem to finish because I haven’t thought it out. I don’t know what I’m going to do, what the main climax is going to be or how I’m going to end it. I just wanted to ask: What “outline” would be best for creating the plot? I’ve tried multiple things, but I always end up writing halfway through and get stuck at my mid point. I don’t like writing blindly but that’s the only way I seem to know how to do. I have extreme difficulty with plot, supreme extreme difficulty and was simply wondering what to do.


I’ve read your only Planning one, and I don’t seem to click with it. I’m an odd one. As I’m so young, and just trying to kick start myself into writing. I have been telling stories since I was able to talk and I love it. I read everything I could get my hands on. By nine years old, I was in adult fiction. It wasn’t enough. I started to write my own stories, yet I could never finish one because writer’s block would poise itself in the middle of a sentence somewhere.


When I’m writing, I write tons but when I’m not, I have no ideas. A story of mine has fallen into the humor category simply because I’m filling space. I’m going to go back and edit it out but I haven’t a clue how to plan ahead. It’s a bad trait of mine and I do hope I’ll figure it out but to me the light is way at the other end of the tunnel, a couple hundred miles and I can’t quite tell if I’m going to get there before a train comes barreling in my direction.

Courtney’s question spurred this response from Maia: I started loads of stories and then never finished them b/c the plots got too complicated and I couldn’t see where they were going…so before I even start writing now, I write out the entire plot using bullet points. It’s very useful – it keeps you on track but isn’t so strict that I can’t add things here and there and often stories have taken off by themselves outside the confines of their structure.


The light in the tunnel is nearer than you think, and fortunately trains don’t happen along very often.

And this from writeforfun: I always force myself to write a roughly one page summary of the story before I start writing, because once I’m writing, I have to know where I’m going. If I can’t write the whole summary, including the climax and end, then I think about it and write an idea for an ending, even if it’s a bad one, so that I have a road map for what I’m writing. Some things will change, but that helps me a lot. Just a suggestion.

These are great suggestions – planning tips for people who don’t completely outline. But if you’d like to learn one approach to really outlining, you might enjoy Walter Dean Myers’ book Just Write: Here’s How.

I don’t outline, but I usually have an idea of the ending, and I write toward it. Often the golden coin of the ending is clutched in the fist of the beginning. The beginning introduces a problem, which the ending will solve, one way or another, happily or not. In Ella Enchanted the problem of Ella’s curse is introduced in the first chapter, and the end is right there, too, the lifting of the curse, or if the book turned out to be a tragedy, the certainty that Ella would never be free. What I wrote in between were instances, as Ella’s life progresses, of the burden of the curse, her attempts to save herself, and the life she manages to live while her suffering goes on (the budding relationship with Char, her friendship with Areida, the continuing support of Mandy).

So we can look at our beginning and ask what problem it’s posing, and then what the possible solutions are. Say we start with an alien invasion. We need to ask lots of questions about the aliens until we discover what the central question is that the beginning is posing. Are these good or evil aliens? How much more advanced are they than we are? What are their intentions toward us? Let’s say they’re neither evil nor good; they’re traders, and we have something valuable that they can trade. Say it’s lumber. They want our trees, and they have marvels to give us in exchange, but we need our trees, too, and yet the marvels are tempting. Some powerful people will make enormous fortunes from the alien goods if we do trade. Now we have the problem, and the ending is sewn up inside it: whether or not Earth will be stripped of trees.

Suppose we decide that the planet will keep its trees. That’s the way we want it to come out. How are we going to get there? Who’s going to be our MC or our MCs? Who will represent the aliens? What other characters do we need? From this we can build our summary. And then we can start working out scenes.

A fascinating but disturbing tale of an alien invasion is Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, which takes the alien theme in a surprising direction. It’s a book for adults but if I remember right it should be fine for kids twelve and up. Check with a librarian to be sure.

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while you know I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer. I set off without much more than a beginning and a dim idea for the end. I’m familiar with the kind of distress that Courtney describes. The difference between us is experience, which may be annoying if you’re just starting out. Sorry! I’ve gotten through getting lost before and I’m pretty sure I can do it again. I cobble a story together from the threads I follow, and then in revision I tighten and tighten. So part of the solution is tolerance for your own writing style, which may be organized or may be messy. And another part may be tolerance for imperfection. First drafts are not supposed to be good. Good comes later, in revision.

As I’ve mentioned here, I’ve been working on a book based on the blog, which I just sent off to my editor on Monday. Much of it comes from the blog, but some I wrote for the book. Below is part of a plotting chapter. Although bits may be elsewhere here on the blog, I think at least some is new, and if not new, it all bears repeating:

Try writing a short summary of each scene that you have on an index card, then spread them out and move them around, out of their original sequence. You can even bring in scenes from other unfinished stories. Edgar in your old story can turn into Garth in the new one with a few personality adjustments. When you think about the characters, do you see new threads that connect them? Does one scene suggest itself as a fresh beginning? Another as the end? If, after rearranging, your story flows except for a few scenes that stubbornly don’t fit in anywhere, you can cut them but save them in case you find a use for them when you revise or in some future project.

If you discover that the cards move you farther along but then you bog down, you can lay them out again starting with the point where you got stuck – you don’t have to go all the way back to the beginning.

And here’s a plot exercise you can do in your notes that comes from What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter (most of this book is fine for kids, but a few chapters aren’t, so before you use it, show it to a parent). You can use this technique on a new story or an old one. If this is a new story, whenever you’re not sure where to take the story next, ask yourself, What if? and write down five options for directions the story might take. Be wild. Be carefree. Anything goes in notes. Don’t even look at what you have till you’re done.

It might go like this: My MC is at a party and feeling all alone. What if she sees a framed photo of her long-lost brother on the mantelpiece? What if she starts writing on a wall of the living room where the party is happening? What if she decides the party needs livening up and starts singing? And so on.

Now look over your list. Suppose two options appeal to you. Write a paragraph about each: what it would mean for your story, how it would take place. Pick the one you like best and return to your story. When you reach the next story decision point, ask What if? again and repeat.

If you write five possibilities and none pleases you, write three more or five more.

In an old story that you’ve given up on, ask What If? after your last sentence. If that spot doesn’t yield anything interesting, go back to a point where the story was still burning in you and ask the question. When you find a new path, start writing.

If you find them helpful, use the plotting strategies above for these two prompts:

∙ Write the story about the aliens who want our trees.

∙ Write five more What if?’s about the MC who feels alone at the party. Then write the story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Ready… Set… Send

On October 31, 2012, C.L. wrote, …how many times do you edit on your own before you send your work to your editor? How long do you wait before editing a book you just finished writing? What do you do while you’re waiting to edit one book? How many edits do you tend to go through before you’ve found you absolutely can’t do anything more to a book?

For those of you who haven’t yet discovered this, it’s generally not a good idea to start revising the moment after you finish a story. For me, I tend to think everything I’ve just written is brilliant and perfect. Some writers are convinced that their new work is drivel. Neither opinion is objective. We writers need time to let us see clearly.

My answers to C.L.’s questions change as time goes on. My process also depends on the editor I’m working with. So let me answer chronologically.

Since I began writing and hoping to get published in 1987, I’ve sought outside opinion pretty early in my process. My first effort was an art appreciation book for kids, an intolerably long picture book about a desperately ill eagle who’s the king of the birds and a sparrow who thinks he’s ugly. I included pencil drawings by me of birds and reproductions of famous artwork. A published children’s book writer lived on my block. She was kind enough to read my manuscript and blunt enough to tell me I couldn’t write. Undaunted (I don’t know why not!), I showed the manuscript to a few librarians who were more encouraging. I don’t know how many times I revised that book before I sent it into the world. Probably not enough. I leaped before I looked.

When no one wanted that book I really began my children’s book writing education by taking a class. With some of the other students I formed a critique group. And I joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), which I’ve mentioned many times here. Through SCBWI I learned about publishing and I started sending manuscripts out, only picture book manuscripts because at that point I hadn’t mustered the courage to try a novel. My process was to present a manuscript to my critique group. If the criticism was light I revised and started sending. In those days you could send unsolicited manuscripts directly to publishers. If the criticism was heavy, I revised and then showed the story to my critique pals again before sending out. Maybe I revised a dozen or more times. With picture books, because they’re so short, revision goes fast. When I stopped it was because I thought I’d made my story as good as it could be.

Mostly I got form rejections, which tell you nothing. Basically, they thank you for submitting and wish you luck placing the manuscript elsewhere. I’d guess that these days agents send out something similar.

Occasionally I’d get more, maybe a scribble on my cover letter suggesting how my manuscript might be improved. That kind of comment was gold. I’d revise madly and resend.

As time went on I started getting more substantive responses from editors, who became sort of extensions of my critique groups. None of them, however, loved a story enough to buy it.

Whenever I sent out a manuscript, it was because I’d made it as good as I knew how to. I didn’t torment myself about perfection. As good as I could do had to be good enough.

When I finished a first draft or a revision, I would wait a few days or even a week before looking at it again.

My process was the same with the first novel I ever wrote, which was Dave at Night. The second was Ella Enchanted. When I wrote Ella I had begun taking a new writing class, the best ever, and our teacher was willing to critique everything we wrote. Each week I handed in whatever I’d written and the next week I got back basically an editorial letter (she had been an editor) and edits right on my manuscript. I also belonged to a critique group of classmates from this class. It was my golden age of becoming a better writer.

The point is, revision for me has always been part of the writing. Many writers don’t revise as they go. They push through a first draft to get the story and the ideas down, put it aside for however long they decide, and then go back in for the revision. This is a great way to do it, just not my way.

By the time I reached the end of Ella (with a nearly 200-page detour when I got lost in the middle), it didn’t need major revision. I don’t remember how long I put it aside for but I’m sure I waited a little while before jumping back in. I know I showed the whole thing to my critique buddies at least twice. I didn’t start sending it out until I was so sick of it that just looking at the first page made me a little nauseous. A few of my books have gone out into the world in really really good shape. Ella was one of them.

My critique group shrank to just one person. We were fine for a few years until she got sick and had to stop being my writing buddy. That was hard. I wrote Ever, A Tale of Two Castles, and two of the Disney Fairies books alone, which was rough. I like feedback. I have a new critique buddy now, the wonderful kids’ book writer Karen Romano Young.

Nowadays, after I type “The End,” I don’t have to wait very long before diving back in. The reason is that, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’ve half forgotten the beginning. When I’m writing for my long-time editor at HarperCollins, I’m willing to turn in something that isn’t completely polished. She’s seen my worst and continues to work with me, and she may have ideas that will change my story significantly. If I spend a lot of time on the polish, that effort may be wasted. Maybe I go through the manuscript twice before sending it in. Maybe not even twice.

But if I’m writing for someone new, I do polish. It’s scary to submit a piece of writing. Nothing I’ve ever written – or ever will write – has been perfect. I don’t know how the editor will respond, so I go over it until I start changing words and then changing them back. That’s when I know I’m done done done.

While I’m waiting for an editor’s answer, I start something new. It’s not pleasant to sit around waiting. The waiting is hard enough, but if I’m working on a new story I feel productive and not as if everything is riding on this one thing.

Having said all this, everybody’s different. I like fresh eyes on my work early on, and I like someone else’s take to help me as I revise. It’s hard even to show my writing in its early stages to a critique buddy especially when we’re just starting out together. When I send pages to Karen they’re really rough; my story is just forming itself; I’m exposed as a bumbler who feels my way. That’s scary, but not so scary that it stops me. I’m convinced the rewards are worth it.

Some writers don’t show their pages to anyone. An editor or an agent may be the first to see. That’s fine too. These writers are probably great self-editors.

Personality may be a factor. I’m outgoing and not easily squelched. Rejection got me down, but not forever. I popped up again. And popping up again is a quality to nurture in yourselves.

Here are three prompts:

∙ Your MC has won a writing award. She’s dressing for the award dinner and can’t seem to satisfy herself about the way she looks. Write the getting dressed scene. Make the reader worry that she may never make it to the dinner.

∙ Timothy Toad is competing in a competition to be named Toad of the Year. The contest will be judged by three former Toads of the Year. Timothy Toad isn’t certain exactly what it means to be a great toad. Is he going to be judged on character or looks or hop? Write the story of the contest.

∙ The three members of a writing group find out about a short story contest. They all decide to enter stories and agree that they’re going to critique one another’s entries beforehand so they can be as good as possible. All does not go smoothly, however. There’s tension in the group, which comes out in their communication between meetings and in the meetings themselves. Perhaps not every one of them wants the others to succeed. Write a scene or a story about the process.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Mid-book crisis

Before I start, I want to let you know that a poem of mine, “Snow Fight,” was just published in the fall/winter 2012 edition of the poetry journal Sugar House Review. The poem won’t hurt you if you’re below high school age, but it was written for adults. I haven’t read the whole issue yet, so I can’t speak for the rest. I’d say high school and above is safest. If you’re interested in getting a copy, here’s the link: http://www.sugarhousereview.com/subscribe.html.

On October 3, 2012, unsocialized homeschooler wrote, I wonder about middles. I always have some sort of ending in mind when I start writing and beginnings are usually easy for me, but it’s the middle that’s the hardest. Getting from point A to point C is always rough for me, and I can’t just skip point B. Some people have told me to take a while and outline everything, but I’m not a fan of outlines, and they don’t seem to work for me. Does anyone have any tips for getting through sagging middles?

In my opinion, there are two secrets to middle for writers who don’t outline. One lies in our characters, our main character and our secondaries. We’ll start there, and I’ll get to the second later.

Let’s look at it in terms of fairy tales, stories with the simplest of structures. Here are the beginnings and the ends of a few.

Beginning: Evil queen discovers that Snow White has surpassed her in beauty and is overcome with jealous rage.

End: Evil queen dances to death in red hot shoes at the wedding of Snow White and the prince.

Beginning: Cinderella’s father marries a horrible woman with two equally horrible daughters, and she’s made the servant of this terrible troika.

End: Cinderella marries the prince and forgives her stepfamily.

Beginning: Sleeping Beauty’s parents fail to invite an unforgiving fairy to the christening of their daughter.

End: Sleeping Beauty wakes up to a kiss by her prince.

In each of these we could drive a herd of cattle, a circus, and a marching band between the beginning and the end, meaning that anything could happen. Neither the middle nor the end is made necessary by the beginning. Let’s take the most complex of the three, “Snow White.” To get to the end and to fill up the middle, the inventor of the tale in the mists of history hauled in a magic mirror, a kind-hearted hunter, seven dwarves, and a prince – and gave the queen a few witchy powers.

Seeds for the middle and the end lurk within the character of the queen. She’s furious, but she doesn’t slip into Snow White’s bedroom at midnight and bludgeon her to death. Maybe she’s afraid of being caught, or maybe even she shies away from that degree of violence. She wants the awful deed done, but she doesn’t want to do it herself – at first. Her unwillingness moves the story along.

The next seed is that she’s a bad judge of character. She doesn’t notice the hunter’s kindness or the admiring glances he bestows on Snow White.

Snow White herself isn’t much help. She’s more of a pretty chess piece who moves from place to place merely because she’s pushed. When she’s abandoned in the forest she walks, I’ll give her that. And she stumbles on the dwarves’ cottage. You know the rest. The dwarves warn Snow White of her danger, but she’s too stupid or foolish to listen. The queen overcomes her squeamishness about violence, decides to do the job herself, and finally seems to succeed. Then the dwarves’ love for Snow White causes the next plot turn when they, weirdly, put her in a glass coffin. Finally we have a prince who, weirdly again, falls for a seemingly dead maiden.

The point is, the story moves forward through the middle because of the characters.

Let’s look at my version, Fairest, which also progresses because of the characters. Behind the scenes are the parents who abandon Aza and set her story in motion. And there are the innkeepers who take her in and mold her into a character who, although insecure,  knows she’s loved and has solid values. We also have: the duchess, who can’t go to a wedding without a servant; a prince who has an eye for the exotic (Aza); a king who loves his wife; a queen who is phenomenally insecure and jealous; an evil magic mirror; and, way behind the scenes, a crazy fairy. They all, directly or indirectly, rub against Aza and, because of their complexity, create the scenes that make the plot seem to rattle along but actually slow the story’s progression with interesting moments and surprises – a satisfying middle.

Here’s the second secret, which has to do with endings. What we need to do when we enter our middle is to forget about the end with ninety percent of our brains. Only ten percent of our mind can have its eye on the finish line. And the finish line shouldn’t be worked out in detail if we haven’t outlined. If the ending is too distinct, we may force our characters to behave a certain way and they may never come to life.

Let’s try it. In our beginning, Beryl’s village has been destroyed by war. Her parents were killed, and her brother and sister were taken by the army. Let’s say she’s fifteen, old enough to have been taken too, but she was missed because she was visiting someone on the village outskirts. She’s left behind with the elderly, the sick, and the very young. Rebels prey on skeletal villages like hers. The survivors have to get to safety. We know that in the end Beryl and some of the others will make it to some haven or other, although we don’t know exactly what that will be.

We’ve written the beginning in which Beryl returns to the center of the village and discovers how bad matters are. We look around with her and consider what characters we might have. Well, we’ll probably want one or two who can help her and a few who will make her task much tougher. For the ones who can help her, there could be a child who has a hidden strength and there could be an elder who has past experience with the methods of the rebels. For the ones who get in the way, one could be too sick to move. Another could disagree with all Beryl’s ideas and could divide the villagers. We might want to figure out a way to include a rebel or two in our cast. Maybe Beryl goes spying or a lone rebel is caught by a sentry.

We’ve got quite a bit of middle going already. The very ill character gets a scene or two, likewise the one who pits characters against one another. Beryl may be slow to realize that the child with the special strength (whatever it is) has it. The one with experience may be reluctant for some reason to share. Beryl’s spy mission could run a dozen pages. The rebel who’s caught becomes part of the action.

There can be natural crises, too – a hurricane, a blizzard, earth tremors, whatever. Food can run short. More food can be discovered. In each of these, the characters will respond characteristically. There won’t merely be a hurricane, there will also be characters behaving foolishly or bravely or brilliantly in the face of it.

And it isn’t enough to grasp what the characters’ roles will be in our plot, we also have to develop the characters themselves. For example, the character who has had dealings before with the rebels may be long-winded. Beryl will need qualities that help her and others that get in her way. Maybe in the past she’s always given up too easily and she’s distracted by grief for her family but she’s a good listener and she has hunches that usually pan out.

As we’re fooling around with all this middle stuff, we have an eye out for the passage that will lead us to safety, but we also have in mind that some element of the safety should be surprising. Safety, yes, but not exactly in the form the reader expects.

Here are three prompts:

• Tell Beryl’s story, changing any elements or characters you like. Go for at least five scenes in the middle.

• Expand “Sleeping Beauty” and keep the fairies who come to the christening on the scene. Have them and other castle characters get involved in creating a middle. Remember, in the fairy tale there’s an ongoing effort to keep Sleeping Beauty from pricking herself. Decide in a vague way how you’d like the tale to end. You aren’t locked into the long sleep and the big hedge and the prince.

• Retell one of my fairy tale examples or any other fairy tale you like, but make it modern and have it take place in an acting troupe or a circus or a dance school or any other situation that will bring in a bunch of characters. Again, keep your plans for the ending indistinct.

Have fun and save what you write!

Past is prologue?

On September 19, 2012, Charlotte wrote, I have a sort of beginning-related question for the comments section (and a post, if you think it’s big enough for one): What’s everyone’s opinion on prologues? I read somewhere that everybody knows that “prologue” is just code for “backstory”, but then again, backstory is important, now isn’t it? I say this because the first chapter in my current project takes place six years before the main conflict, so technically I ought to be calling it a prologue, but I’ve always shied away from the term for the above reason. If there’s tension in the backstory scenes, is there any reason to leave them off until later? When you jump in medias res, does anyone really dictate which medias res you’re jumping in?

(By the way, as a student of Latin, I’m very excited to have finally realised that in medias res, when translated literally, means “into the middle things”. Which doesn’t sound quite as good, but means the same thing. And explains why I just said “jumping in” instead of “jumping into”.)

I’m with you about which res the writer can begin with. You can start the body of your book at any point. There’s no law.

And, rather than calling our beginning a prologue, we can use a heading, like June, 2006. Once we finish with the events of that period, we can call the next part January, 2013. Or, if the rest of the story takes place in January, we can have it be January 2, 2013, and we can make the earlier segment be June 12, 2006.

My chief objection to prologues is that children often skip them. My only book that has one is The Wish, and I half regret it, because what happens in the prologue, which takes place just minutes before the body of the novel begins, is crucial.

I discovered by googling that children aren’t the only ones who skip prologues, which alone may be a good reason to avoid including one if you can. If the material in your prologue is essential, you may have a bunch of confused readers among those who skipped. They may then give up and stop reading.

Of course people stop reading for lots of reasons. I know this for fact because some kids have confessed to me that they abandoned one or another of my books, even those without prologues. So we shouldn’t be ruled by what readers may or not do; it’s just a consideration.

I didn’t think that prologue necessarily means backstory, so I googled about it and found several sites that agreed with me. A prologue can give background about the world that the reader is about to enter. As Patricia C. Wrede says in her blog post on the subject, this background shouldn’t just be an information dump. We have to make it exciting.

Suppose our story is about an alien culture on the planet Hemmi in a distant galaxy. The Hemmians are intelligent and look like us, and like us they have a right side of the brain and a left side, but unlike us the two aren’t connected; they act independently. Like us again, one side is more artistic and the other more logical. Our human heroine Moni, age fifteen, is on a spaceship that’s about to land on the planet. When it does, she’ll stay and the spaceship will take off again. She’s to spend a year in a Hemmian school forging friendships that will heal the rift between the two planets. We want the reader to understand about the Hemmians before the landing and we do this in a prologue. Here are some choices of the sort of prologue we might choose:

• A scene of the dust-up fifty years ago that caused the last delegation to leave Hemmi. People and aliens are enraged. There’s shouting and table pounding. Someone on either side is injured or killed. This is the backstory prologue.

• A fragment of an earthling newspaper announcing the departure of the spaceship that’s carrying Moni and explaining its purpose and including background about the Hemmians.

• Narration from a different POV from the rest of the story. A Hemmian boy, Divis, in the family where Moni is going to live narrates his preparations for her arrival and his expectations. We show him in action and reveal his thoughts. Through both we give the reader an idea of the differences between Hemmians and humans. For the sake of tension, at least one side of his brain isn’t looking forward to the coming of Moni. When the book continues in Chapter One, Moni, not the Hemmian, is the narrator.

• A retrospective perspective. Moni at the age of sixty-five is telling her grandson about her adventure. The reader is given the impression that there’s something a little unusual about the grandson. Moni  sets the stage for the story in the prologue. Chapter One opens on the first-person narration of Moni at age fifteen.

• A scene from the middle of the novel that’s right before a turning point, maybe the moment when Moni profoundly misunderstands something Divis has done. The first half of our story works up to that scene and the second half unravels its consequences.

• A scene from the distant future, long after the events of the story took place. The scene is connected to our story in ways that are revealed as the plot develops.

• A Hemmian prophesy that plays out surprisingly.

I’m being won over to prologues by the possibilities. It’s just too bad we can’t make our books frustrate readers’ attempts to skip them. It would be very cool if the book itself always returned to the prologue if its pages hadn’t been read. I hope some e-book publishers are looking into this!

Another thought from Patricia C. Wrede is that the prologue should be short because we don’t want the reader to get so invested in what’s happening there that she resents leaving and has trouble entering the main event.

Here’s one more idea in favor of prologues: By calling our beginning a prologue, not merely Chapter One, we set it apart, which signals the reader that what’s in here is especially significant. After all, there’s only one prologue in the entire book.

So, my only objection is the risk of reader avoidance. You can check out Patricia C. Wrede’s blog post here: http://pcwrede.com/blog/moreprologue/. The link is to her second post on the subject, which is a lot like this one, minus the Hemmians. In the first she lays out some of her reasons for not writing prologues, and you can click on that, too.

Two prompts:

∙ Write the scene when Moni and Divis meet. If you like, keep going. If the divided brain is hard to work with, imagine that all Hemmians are split personalities, one only dimly aware of the other. You can decide on other splits besides logical and artistic. Or make them alien in any way you like.

∙ Write each of the kind of prologues I suggest, either for the Hemmian story or for another of your stories.

Have fun, and save what you write!

The book biz part two

Before I start, here’s a link to an interesting New York Times article about reader reviews on Amazon: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/technology/amazon-book-reviews-deleted-in-a-purge-aimed-at-manipulation.html?hp&_r=1&.

I didn’t finish writing about publishing last week, so here we go back into it.

You may remember that I mentioned the Rutgers conference and said it’s the best one I know of, but I didn’t say why. First off, here’s the link again: http://www.ruccl.org/One-on-One_Plus_Conference.html. The conference is for writers for children and young adults, and it’s another one that you have to be at least eighteen to go – but if you’re not there yet, you’ll reach that mark sooner than you think. You also have to submit a writing sample to get admitted to the conference. You’ll find information on the website.

The conference is the best because everyone is paired with a mentor, who is either an editor, an agent, or a published author. The overwhelming majority of mentors are editors or agents. I’m one of the few author mentors. They let me in because I’ve been going for so long, first as a mentee – and I met my agent at the conference. We’re not paid for mentoring. The editors and agents volunteer because they’re hoping to find new writers.

There’s a panel on some publishing or writing topic and a speaker, but the most worthwhile parts are the one-on-one and the five-on-five sessions. Before the one-on-one, the mentors read the selection submitted by the writer with whom they’re paired. Then the two meet for forty-five minutes and discuss the work and answer any question the writer may have.

In the five-on-five, five mentors and five mentees get together to talk about publishing and craft, with one of the mentors as a moderator to keep things moving. Again, the mentees can ask whatever they like.

And there’s lunch, when the editors and agents mingle, and you may be able to ask an agent or an editor if you can send her something.

In my starting-out days, before I had an agent, when publishers still looked at unagented submissions, I often waited many months for a response. Even if I’d met the editor at a conference, I waited. Sometimes my work was lost. It was maddening. Once or twice a rejection letter for someone else’s story arrived in my mailbox!

In their defense, editors are very busy, and they squeeze in reading manuscript from newbies in odd moments. So, as is true of everything else in writing and publishing, you need patience.

Most of the editors and agents who go to conferences are near the beginning of their careers. If one of them falls in love with your manuscript, she will be almost as happy as you. Editors advance through acquisitions. If your book does well, it’s a feather in her cap. If it does super well, she may get promoted, say from assistant editor to editor.

Your editor does a lot more than edit. She (most are women) will negotiate your contract with your agent, your literary lawyer (see the last post), or you. She represents the publisher with you and your agent.

She represents you inside the publishing house. One of her jobs is to get the sales force, the people who sell books to bookstores, excited about your book. As an example, my editor dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood when she presented my picture book, Betsy Red Hoodie, to the sales people.

She’ll consult with the art director about your cover. If your book is illustrated, she’ll have a say in picking the illustrator. More than anyone except your friends and family and possibly your agent, she’ll be your book’s biggest booster.

And an agent does more than find you a publisher. She (again, most are women) will negotiate your contract, which means she’s an expert on contract clauses, language, and the fast-changing publishing world. She knows each publishing house and what its policies are. There are differences, but I’m not privy to those secrets. I think the similarities are greater than the differences.

Your agent may also represent your film rights and may sell your book in foreign markets. Or may not.

Your agent will certainly represent you to the publisher. If your relationship with your editor gets gummed up, she’ll help you straighten things out.

Your royalties go to her. She takes her cut, usually fifteen percent, and then passes the rest on to you. But before she pays you, she checks over your royalty statement to make sure it looks correct. For example, you’ll get a different royalty rate for hardcover books and for paperbacks, different again for e-books. She’ll check to make sure that the correct rates are applied. Mistakes have been made!

Onto the contract.

I discussed some of this in my post almost exactly two years ago, on December 29th, 2010, so you may want to go back and take a look.

When you sell your book to a publisher, you’re selling specific rights. For example, you might grant it the right to publish in English all over the world or in English only in North America.

In exchange, you receive an advance against future book sales (royalties). You have to make some promises, like that you’ll deliver the manuscript by a certain date – which you can negotiate. If this is your first book, you’ve probably already delivered.

The contract will say that the publisher can’t change your words unless you agree, but it can follow its own standards of punctuation, spelling, and so on. In other words, it’s your book. I hardly ever make a fuss over a comma.

The contract commits the publisher to releasing your book within a certain time. And it spells out your royalty rates and says when you will be paid (usually twice a year).

Subsidiary rights are included in the deal, which means that you’ll let the publisher handle things like book club or audio book rights. (Or your agent may handle the sale of audio book rights.) The contract will specify what percentage you’ll get and they’ll get if there are such sales.

You have to warrant (assure the publisher) that your book is original – that you wrote it.

There’s more, but that’s the heart of it. There are other parts that you need to keep in mind, but your agent or literary lawyer will go over everything with you. Ask questions. You should understand it all. My latest contract is thirteen pages long, written in legalese. Many of my books have been published in other countries and most of those contracts are blessedly short, not much more than: I promise I wrote the book, the publisher promises to publish it, and if it doesn’t, I keep the money. Nice.

Here’s a prompt:

I forgot to say anything about query letters because they weren’t very important when I was trying to get published. But nowadays, you need ‘em. Usually the query letter will go with your sample chapters and probably a synopsis of your story. The purpose of the query is to create interest in your book, much like the copy on the back of a book creates interest. You paint your story in the best possible light in a few paragraphs and say a little bit about why you wrote it. The letter should be less than a page. Here’s a link on the subject: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/08/how-to-write-query-letter.html. If you google query letters you’ll find more. A query letter is a little like bragging, which may be hard for some of you but in this prompt I want you to give it a shot. Write a query letter for one of your stories. Could be your latest NaNoWriMo creation. Even if you’re unhappy at the moment with everything you’ve ever written, pick one and find great things to say about it.

Have fun, and save what you write!

The book biz

I’ve contributed a couple of books (Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It and Writing Magic) to a silent auction in relief of victims of the shootings in Connecticut. There are many wonderful items in the auction, which you can view here: http://pubheartsconn.blogspot.com/2012/12/list-of-auction-items.html, and some of which have bearing on today’s post. There are manuscript critiques on offer, which may be great and seem to be at bargain-basement prices and the cause is certainly worthwhile. My only caution is that I don’t know the people making the offer, so before you bid, do a little research.

Back from poetry land: On September 4, 2012, Lark wrote that she was wondering “how to get published” or “the publishing process.” I know that’s a tall order, and might be a lengthy post- I wrote my 9th grade research paper on book publishing and got a C because it was WAYYY too long, was more of an instructional manual (!), and most likely mediocre at that because I’ve never been published- but as a FAMOUS 😉 published writer I, at least, would love to hear your thoughts on that. I’m sure that getting published is a main goal of at least a few of the readers here. 🙂

Well, this is fortuitous! I was going to post this link anyway, and it fits right in. A few days ago, on the Guestbook of my website, robin s. asked  if there are any novel-length contests for teens. I didn’t know, so I googled and found this opportunity from Scholastic: http://www.thisispush.com/write/. Scholastic is about as reputable as you can get, so I would absolutely trust it. If you have something ready or almost ready, I would encourage you to put on the finishing touches, follow the instructions, and submit. The deadline approaches.

If you can’t get ready in time, you can make next year your deadline and have it to work toward.

If you do submit, be sure to follow the instructions, which require a certain number of chapters with a minimum and maximum page length and an outline of a specified length. My guess is that if you don’t follow the rules your submission won’t be read.

When I googled “novel writing contests for teens” the Scholastic one was the only one that popped up that I recognized. There was one from Delacorte, but it seems to have been discontinued. If any of you know of any others that you can vouch for, please post the information. There may be online contests that are good. I’m just not informed enough to judge.

In fact, I’m not knowledgeable enough about online publishing to discuss it at all. Or self-publishing, which I understand is more and more an acceptable way to go. This post is about traditional publishing-house publishing that results in a print book and, probably, an e-book. My perspective is from the children’s book corner, which includes young adult (YA) books, which have recently been inching older and older into upper teens and even early twenties. And I think that most of what I’m about to say applies to adult publishing too.

This post can’t be nearly long enough to cover a subject that many books have been devoted to. The one I know is Harold Underdown’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books. Mr. Underdown also has a super-informative website at http://www.underdown.org/.

Also, in October I gave you the name of an agent who is willing to read submissions from teens. Here’s the information again: She’s Brianne Johnson, an agent at the respected Writers House. She said to email her a cover letter describing the book and to send the first 25 pages in a Microsoft Word document, as an attachment. Brianne prefers to receive submissions via e-mail, at bjohnson@writershouse.com. In your e-mail, say you got her name from my blog. Your writing sample should be double-spaced in 12-point type and the typeface should be easy to read. Your name, address, phone number, and email address should appear on the left above the title. Your last name and the title of the book should be in the upper left-hand corner of every page that follows, like this: Levine/Ella Enchanted. This is in case a page gets separated from the rest.

I’m not sure if the Scholastic contest rules specify double-spaced, but assume that is the requirement, because it’s standard. The double-spacing gives an editor room to write in edits and comments. If an editor takes the time to do that, it’s a very good sign.

And, just saying, whether you submit to Brianne or the contest or both, make your manuscript as free of typos and punctuation and grammatical errors as is humanly possible, because those will rule you out in a heartbeat.

If you do submit to Brianne and the contest too, let her know in your cover email that you’ve entered the contest. Not necessary to inform the contest that you’ve submitted the manuscript to an agent. The contest editors won’t care.

In the regular publishing process, aside from contests and special arrangements with agents, you don’t need to say anything about your age, whether you’re fourteen or ninety-four. If an editor or an agent falls in love with your book you can confess then, and the likely response will be delight that you’re so young or so ancient. Either way, there’s a story there for the marketing folks.

Conferences are the best way I know of to meet editors and agents. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (www.SCBWI.org) offers regional conferences throughout the year (and throughout the world, pretty much) and two national conferences annually. Alas, you have to be at least eighteen to join the organization and attend. The Rutgers One-on-One Conference (http://www.ruccl.org/One-on-One_Plus_Conference.html) is the absolute best conference You have to be at least eighteen for that one too – sorry! You may find other conferences online. There are certainly conferences for other genres, like mystery, romance, fantasy. Look for participation by agents and editors.

If you meet an editor at a conference or in any other circumstance, like through a college class, and the editor says you can send her something, then you can. Otherwise, the major publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts – manuscripts that just arrive in the mail. Some smaller presses may – I don’t know. Most editors find new authors through agents.

AAR, the Association of Authors Representatives, lists agents on its website, which is www.aaronline.org. It may take a long time to load, so be patient.. I suggest you check out individual agents’ websites or, if the agent works at an agency, the agency’s website. When you do, look at the authors who are represented by that agent. Look up the books published by those authors. You can even go further and read one of the books to see if you like it, to see if you respect the agent’s taste. The website and the AAR site say what kind of work the agents is interested in seeing and how to submit. Follow the guidelines slavishly!

If an agent is interested in your work, he (or she) may ask for revisions before he’s willing to represent you. He should never ever charge for any editing he does. If his suggestions make sense to you, if you think they’ll get you to a better book, revise according to his guidance. Even after he begins to represent you, he may edit your manuscript just as an editor would, meaning that you don’t have to do whatever he wants. The edits have to seem right to you.

Most agents edit but not all. Mine doesn’t.

One advantage of an agent is his knowledge of the industry. An agent has relationships with lots of editors; he sees them at conferences; they meet for lunch. He knows who’s looking for what, who like what. My agent sent Ella Enchanted to a particular editor because she knew Alix was “hungry,” eager for new material. Often these hungry editors are just starting out and don’t already have a slate of authors they work with. For example, Ella Enchanted was Alix’s very first acquisition.

If you do meet an editor somehow and the editor wants your book, you may still decide to be represented by an agent, and you’ll have an easier time finding one if you already have an offer of a contract.

The agent will negotiate your contract, and here industry knowledge is essential. The agent will know what a reasonable advance is, what reasonable royalty rates are, will probably have a standard contract with the various publishers, so you’ll get the benefit of that.

When you reach this point: an agent wants to represent you, I think you should meet the agent if you live or work near each other. If not, I think a phone call would be a good idea. You want to be sure that you’ll work well together, that he sees your work in the same way you do, that you’re a good fit. My first (brief) agent didn’t like fantasy. You can guess how that worked out.

If you don’t want an agent, however – the agent will take fifteen percent of your advance and royalties forever – you can have a literary lawyer negotiate your contract or help you negotiate it. You’ll have to pay the lawyer, but all your earnings after that will go straight to you. However, do not involve any other kind of attorney in the negotiation. Any lawyer who doesn’t know the territory will find the contract terms unacceptable, and a deal will be impossible.

This post is going on too long. I’ll continue next week with a partial post or a whole one. Your prompt is to ask me questions. If there was anything you didn’t understand or if there’s an area you’d like me to go into in greater depth, please ask. If you have industry experience, please add your expertise.

Have fun!

Poetry finale

This is the last post on poetry for the time being, but I’d be happy to write more if more questions come in.

On October 19, 2012, Charlotte wrote, …on the poetry front, I’d be interested to hear about your own experience with poetry: do you do it intentionally or just when the mood strikes? What kinds of poems do you usually write? Do you switch things up? How do you edit your poems? How is your process for poetry different from fiction?

I spoke to the sixth graders at a middle school in Connecticut on Monday, where a girl asked me how I can write from a child’s perspective. My answer was mostly about how my most important reading experience was when I was little, and I mentioned that I’ve been writing poetry for adults lately, too, and it feels as if I step from one room in my brain to another to write for kids and to write poetry for grownups. For the new writing book chapters about poetry, I wrote a few poems. At first they were poems for adults, which felt dull for kids, so I had to make a conscious effort to move furniture from my kids’ writing brain room into the poetry room. Then I was able to write about a haunted house and about that “horrible hoodlum Robin.”

In my poetry room I’m less analytical and more relaxed than in my novel-writing room. I’m not bearing the weight of pursuing a long stream of events and a bunch of characters and needing it all to come together logically, satisfyingly. In a novel I relax and play in individual scenes. A blog post is contained too, and pleasurable for that reason (and also because I’m talking to you guys directly). And prompts are the tiniest of all and the most fun.

But I’ve wandered away from poetry. I go into more of a trance when I’m writing poetry. My mind settles.

I generally start poems by writing prose about what will be in the poem. For example, a few years ago I did something online called “poetry boot camp,” which is the brainchild of poet Molly Fisk. In poetry boot camp you have to produce a poem a day for a week. I have never been more observant!

During the week my sister and I visited our aunt and uncle. Aunt Naomi had a form of dementia that had deprived her of speech and the ability to walk, although she didn’t seem unhappy. I decided to write a poem about her, and I started by writing prose about the visit, about what had happened, about the details, about what might have been going through our aunt’s mind that couldn’t break through into words. I imagined what it would be like for her if the dementia went briefly away. That imaginative leap turned it into poetry for me, not just a journal entry. Then I started to arrange my lines. What resulted is a free verse poem that doesn’t rhyme.

If I’m writing a form poem, I’m thinking about the form as I write my prose. If I’m writing a sonnet, for example, I look for meter and hunt for synonyms that will work. When I rhyme I tend to go for simple – I don’t attempt rhyming with hippopotamus. If the form calls for repetition, I pay attention to ideas that can repeat, that are important to the idea of the poem.

You know from the blog that I love to revise. Poetry, the way I write it, is mostly revision. From the moment I get my ideas down in prose I’m in revision mode, happy, happy, happy.

Occasionally I’ll write a poem because the mood strikes, but more often it’s because I’m taking a class. I go to a poetry retreat every January, and write there and often revise when I get home. Sometimes I decide to look in one of my poetry books for a prompt, and then I write a poem. Nobody is expecting poems from me, so I have no deadlines.

Although I’ve written a bunch of poems, I still feel like a beginner, or at best, an intermediate student. Sometimes when I finish a poem, I feel sure about it, but more often I don’t know. A poem is such a little thing. A perfectly lovely poem can be about not much, but even so, often I’m not sure I’ve done enough. And sometimes I worry I’ve done too much, been obvious. I wish I had a poetry editor, like I have an editor for my novels.

I write all kinds of poems except long. I write free verse (no rhyme, no consistent meter, no set number of lines, no anything) and form poems, like the tritina, triolet, pantoum, sonnet. My poems are about almost anything. I wrote a sonnet about a genetically modified apple variety.

And writeforfun asked, …could you address the subject of publishing poetry? I mean, nowadays, it seems like the only thing poems are good for is song lyrics. Of course, you wrote Forgive Me, I meant to Do It, which is poetry, but aside from that, do people publish poetry? Or is it a dying art form? And if it is still alive and kicking, how does one go about getting published?

Forgive me, I Meant to Do It is for children and is the publishing arena I know best. I don’t think poetry is a dying art, but it seems to have limited appeal – which I don’t understand because it appeals mightily to me. I mean poems appeal to me if they yield themselves up to understanding pretty easily. Very dense poems confuse me at this point in my poetry development. But straightforward ones go right to my core and warm me or chill me or thrill me in a way that no other kind of writing does. I mean, I love fiction, but fiction worms its way into me more gradually through the medium of the story. Poetry is like a sword straight to my heart – in the best possible way!

Anyway, here’s the little I know about the poetry publishing world: A lot of people (including me) get the magazine Poets and Writers, which carries classified ads for journals and publishers seeking submissions. The publishers are usually looking for chapbook (from twenty-five to forty-five poems, shorter than a collection) or collection-length manuscripts. Poets and Writers also lists poetry contests that you can enter for a fee.

Here’s what I’ve been told by experienced poets: that contests are a good way to begin to become published; that by reading poetry journals and hanging around the poetry world, which I think is to a large extent an academic (university) universe, you get to know which are the best journals to get published in and you can submit to them.

The Association of Writing Programs (AWP) has conferences that poets attend (I’ve never been) where they network with other poets and with publishers. I don’t know much about this.

I’ve had a few poems for adults published, only one by submitting through Poets and Writers. I haven’t put much time into it. On one occasion I met two people at a signing who published a journal, and they asked me to submit, and they took one of my poems. Five poems got published because I audited a poetry residence at an MFA program.

None of them paid a penny. They paid, as is common, with a copy or two of the publication. That was fine with me. I was just happy to have them published. And publishing them was like dropping a pebble in a well. I’ve never heard back from a reader. I don’t know if my few poems have been read by a hundred people or by three, have no idea if they made an impression on anyone. If I weren’t such a newbie, I’d probably have an idea of who’s reading what. And poetry readings are probably the place to experience a direct audience response. I’ve certainly never read my poems except to friends.

Please! Anyone who knows better and more than I do, please comment!

Here are three prompts:

• Write a poem about something that seems entirely unpoetic, a hair knot, a fork, bumping your head, chewing gum. In the last stanza, find something significant to add. Twist whatever your little thing is into an important statement that lots of people should care about. Don’t start with significance. Don’t even think about going there till you get to the end of whatever you wanted to say about chewing gum or whatever. Naturally there’s a poetry term for this switch: the turn. The turn is a characteristic of lots of poems. We think the poem is taking us in one direction, but skreek! off we go in another.

• Write a poem in which several of the lines start with one of these words or phrases (the term for repeated beginnings is anaphora):
I wish
actually
when
do not
long ago

• Write a cinquain, which is a five-line unrhymed poem. The first line has two syllables, the next four, then six, then eight, and then, finally, two. Here’s an example. I wrote this, imagining someone looking down on the New Zealand city of Christchurch after one of the earthquakes that hit there in the last several years (I visited a few years before):

Vantage Point

Alone
she walks along
the heights above Christchurch
to see what looks the same and what’s
missing

Have fun and save what you write!