There Ain't No Rules--Okay, Maybe One

I follow lots of blogs and subscribe to newsletters and magazines and work with an editor, through all of which I'm learning all the rules I need to follow to become a successful published author. And it seems there are many. Here are but a few I've picked up so far:

1. Your book can't be too long. People don't want to take forever to read it.
2. Your description can't be too extensive, lest it bog down the prose. 
3. Your dialogue has to be minimalist. Your characters should talk like Tonto or Frankenstein's monster. Leave out articles as much as you can. 
4. If you're forced to choose between detail and pacing, choose pacing. 

I'm in the midst of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It breaks nearly every rule I've ever been told. The descriptions are exhaustively complete, giving minute details that I've been told are just too much and that they slow down the pacing of my book if I try to use them. And the dialogue is positively voluminous. Whole long, uninterrupted paragraphs and even pages of one person talking--and using the same voice that someone would use if he or she were really speaking. None of the shorthand dialogue I've had pushed on me. It's like I'm experiencing the events in real time because I'm hearing every single thing that's said and done. And guess what. I have enjoyed every page. Apparently, so did a lot of people. It was a NYT bestseller, as were its two companion books. As of 2012, the newest statistic I could find with a cursory web search, 73 million copies of his books have sold worldwide. 

You may be saying that this is a bad example since he's not American, that Swedes are more literate than we. Except they're not. Plus, many millions of his books have been sold in the States, so Americans do love his books. I'm an American and I've loved his first one so far. 

What I'm saying is that I'm starting to think there's but one hard and fast rule: write well. Tell a great story and tell it in a way that makes the reader reluctant to put it down. How that looks will be unique to each writer. And if I tell it well enough, no one's going to care whether I followed the "rules" or not. 

So I guess the question for me is, do I do it well enough? I hope I find out someday. 

I Forget To Be Young Sometimes

I needed to exercise today, but it was cold and miserable outside, so I decided that I would go to the mall to walk. But that wouldn't work because it's cold and miserable outside but warm and pleasant inside the mall. What would I do with the coat I'd have to bundle up in on my way there? They have lockers, but who wants to pay for those? I could leave it on a bench, but what are the chances that it would be there when I get back?  But I had just finished a really stressful chapter and was wired. And besides, I am working my way back to running, so I just really needed to get a good hard walk in.

So I sucked it up, bundled up, and checked the radar because it looked pretty gloomy out there. Clear as could be. No snow within 100 miles of us. Off I went. It was cold, but I knew how to dress against it from back in my running days. The odd thing is that the radar was wrong. It was spitting snow as I left and snowing pretty steadily by the time I got to my turnaround at my parents' house. As I turned in to my driveway, it really started belting, so I shot the video above.

Snow's definitely nothing new around these parts, especially this winter. I've turned into a humbug on the subject, complaining every time it snows and bellyaching about how much I want it to be summer. I've told so many friends that I don't know why I'm this way because I used to love it when I was younger. Not anymore. All I see is the inconvenience of class time lost to snow and less time to prepare my kids for the AP Exam.

And then today happened. I just got back from walking for almost an hour in a steady snow. It reminded me of a few things. Things I knew when I was young but I've forgotten as I've embraced my curmudgeonliness.

First, snow can only be enjoyed when you're out in it. And I don't mean driving in it or shoveling it. I mean just out in it, watching it fall down, feeling it on your eyelashes, and catching it on your tongue. Walking through it today, just letting it pelt my face, I felt something I haven't felt in several months: pure, unadulterated joy. I felt like a kid again. No cares. No worrying about tomorrow. I was just enjoying being in the snow like I used to but haven't in decades.

Second, exercise is fun, but only when you do it outside. Back when I ran half-marathons (which I plan to do again before 2014 ends) I ran in all weather, with the possible exception of thunderstorms, though you might not be surprised just how fast you can run when you're still not home and a big thunder clap hits nearby. Over the past several years, I've joined gyms in the winter and trudged away on the treadmill, wondering where the joy of running went. It's been there all along. But it was outside waiting for me to remember where I left it.

So, to my friend Julie Bertram, the queen of the snow dance, I say this: just keep on dancing. :)

My Writing Process: Is My Story Arc on the Right Trajectory?

I recently crossed the 50,000-word threshold of my newest manuscript, and I'm pretty excited. I think it has potential to be a good book--maybe even better than my first. I have no way of gauging that objectively, I know, but I just like how the story is playing out. I hope the public will tell me which they like better when I someday get them both published. 

As I worked over the last week, though, I ran into yet another new challenge. I got to a crisis point in the story. I don't mean a crisis in the story itself, although that was going on too. I mean that I was at a turning point, at which I had to decide whether I was going to simply play out the plot to resolution or add some other twist or plotline. At some point, you have to decide that it's time to finish the story; otherwise, it just keeps rambling on with no end in sight. So last week, I decided I was going to push on to the end and have the big showdown where Harry and Dee save the day. So that's what I started to do and it was going fine.

But then I got to making some calculations. I talk to my students about finding the Goldilocks zone as they are making up their own practice Advanced Placement multiple choice questions. They can't be so easy that they aren't worthy of discussion and they can't be too hard or ask questions that a reader can't even infer from the text without reading something into the piece that isn't there. They have to be just right--requiring close reading and careful analysis, but achievable. In a similar vein, the kind of books I write need to fall into a Goldilocks zone in order to be saleable. They can't be so short as to fall into the novella zone. I don't even know if that zone exists, but if it does, I don't want to be in it. But they can't be so long, especially as I try to build a following, that people grow impatient. They want a story with enough substance to be worth their time, but not one that forces them to invest days or weeks of reading, something most don't feel is owed to a book of my genre. The reality is that I'm not, for the moment, writing literature. It's supposed to be a ripping yarn, not a ponderous tome.

So I realized I made a mistake. I was creating too low a trajectory. If I played the tale out from where it stood, the story would be too simple, too short. So I did something that I hate to do--I deleted one and a half chapters and rewrote them completely, going in another direction altogether. Whereas in my previous entry I talked about killing off a character, I decided to bring a dead character back to life (in the literary sense, not the zombie sense--that's not my bag), change a character from found to still whereabouts unknown, and add a major plotline. It wasn't a line I just picked out of the air. I was planning to have this happen to Harry and Dee all along. I just thought it would be in the next book. And it partly will be. But I'll start the thread now and play it out part way, so everyone will want to buy the next one to find out how it turns out. 

Sometimes I feel like a mouse in a maze. I know I'll eventually find the cheese, but from time to time I hit a dead end, make a wrong turn. When that happens, I can sit down and squeak about it or I can backtrack and try another route. Maybe a longer route, but one that leads to the payoff I want. 

The Challenge of Writing a Series

One of the things I love about writing is that I constantly discover new challenges and learn new things, about writing as well about myself. I've encountered a new phenomenon this week as I progress through the first draft of the second book in a series starring the same central characters. The challenges of maintaining the story arc across all the books while at the same time creating individual books that can be read on their own is greater than I anticipated. Actually, let's be completely honest--I didn't think about these matters at all until I had to deal with them. And that's one of the reasons writing is such a joy.

One of the issues that I am encountering as I write what is essentially chapter two in what I hope will be one huge story about Harry and Dee Shalan is that I have to plan for the fact that someone may pick up any book in the series and read it without benefit of reading the series from the beginning. So I have to do a certain amount of explication and character development in every book. That's not to say I have to create the exact same character; like we in the meat world, to borrow a phrase from the online realm, change and grow, my characters are different in every book because they've encountered new things, learned, grown, or, in some cases, regressed in some way. But I can't leave out vital information that lets the reader know, for instance, the characters' histories that give them depth and reality.

At the same time, though, I have to consider the fact that, like me, many readers insist on reading series fiction in the correct order. I can't have so much background and characterization that readers of previous books get bored hearing the same stories over and over. So I'm having to learn shortcuts to get new readers up to speed quickly without belaboring material that "veteran" readers will want to skip. I toss in a line or paragraph here and there that briefly sums up an event that someone who has read the previous books will recognize while giving the basic information the new reader needs to fully understand where Harry and Dee (and Harry's best friend Otis as well) come from. I know as an avid fan of both Robert B. Parker and Craig Johnson, I enjoy the little Easter eggs, so to speak, from previous books that are only fully understood by those who've read those earlier works. They're like inside jokes that I feel like the writer and I share without making other readers feel like they've missed something.

Another challenge is illustrated by a commercial I saw last night. It was for a travel website. I won't say which one, but it starred William Shatner and Kaley Cuoco. In it, Shatner has climbed up the outside of a hotel and used a laser to cut a hole in a window. He throws his daughter's gentleman friend out the hole (he lands in a pool so no one gets splattered). The problem is that when they cut back to Shatner, his little suction cup thingies he had used to climb up the building are now on the INSIDE of the window instead of the outside. Now when I see that commercial, all I notice is that lack of continuity. The beauty, I imagine, of writing books that are completely stand-alone, is that I wouldn't have to worry about whether something in this book fits with the mythology I've created in previous works. I can't decide in the eighth book that Harry was an orphan when his parents have been central characters up to then. That's kind of a silly example, but people like me who are driven crazy by tiny continuity issues in other media are the same way with books. Serious fans will be turned off by mistakes like these.

I'm sure there are other challenges I'll encounter along the way, but I fear this entry has gone on too long already. If you have made it to this point and are a writer of a series, I'd love to hear your input. What challenges have you encountered and how have you overcome them? If you're a reader of series fiction, what have you seen that you think is important for an author to either emphasize or avoid? I'd love to hear from you too.

Killing Off Your Darlings

Another chapter in the books. Well, only one book. I'm really enjoying these snow days. I am really growing more and more impatient to write full time instead of just when I can find the time. I need to find a way to get paid for it, though, is the problem. I'll figure that part out eventually.

This one was hard. And so was the one I wrote a couple days ago. Not hard to write. The words came tumbling out almost faster than I could type them. Hard because they depicted horrific events. One ended the life of a character and another devastated two more. I have become attached to these characters to a degree that surprises me.  Think how you felt when you read what happened to Dumbledore. Now imagine how J. K. Rowling felt. She made him. He was even more real to her than he was to all of us readers. I'm in no way comparing myself to J. K. Rowling. It's just an example that most of my friends will readily understand.

I read an article in Writer's Digest about editing that talked about "killing your darlings." It's a phrase used to remind writers that, no matter how much we get attached to them, we have to be willing to cut superfluous words. That's not an easy task. But I've learned that it's just as hard, if not even harder, to say goodbye to my darlings of the human kind. And even the idea of putting them in harm's way is painful. These characters are real to me, no matter that they're fictional. First of all, they really aren't completely fictional. Each character I create is inspired in some way by one or more people I know and, in almost all cases, have elements of me in them. Second, they're just as real to me as they would be if they were flesh and blood because I know all about them. I know what they like and what makes them sad. I know where they were born and how they got that scar on their knee.

So killing my darlings, of all kinds, is really tough. But that's the price you pay if you want to be a writer. At least if you're not going to write books about fluffy bunnies and other happy woodland creatures. And I'm not.

My Brain Is a Brat Sometimes

The bad news: I haven't started grading the last two folders of essays that MUST be graded and recorded by tomorrow morning, assuming we don't have a snow day. I could do what I used to do when I was younger and tell myself that we will definitely not have school tomorrow so I can worry about it then. But that would curse it and the snow would go around, so after this, I promise that I'll get to work. After lunch. And maybe a nap. Oh, and a walk.

The good news: I got what I think is a really strong chapter written. I'm quite excited with how the next installment in the adventures of Harry and Deanna Shalan is coming together. I wasn't certain how well it would turn out because it's basically two stories being told alternately, with one in the past and one in the present, with the two storylines coming together at the end. If I don't do it right, it could turn out to be a bridge built from both sides of a river at the same time, only when the two sides meet, one's six inches higher than the other. Close is not helpful. But I think they're going to meet nicely. I really believe that, as much as I am convinced that my first book was good, this one's going to be much better.

The problem is that it seems like I do my best writing when I should be doing something else. When I have time and nothing else pressing, I can find a million other things to fritter away time. When I need to grade, I want to write. When I feel like I need to write I want to check my Facebook a million times, cook everything in the house, go for a walk, straighten my closet--anything but write.

The weird part is that I somehow get it all done. By doing the thing I say I'm not going to do, I end up getting all the stuff on my to-do list finished. I grade papers during the time I set aside for writing. I write during my house-cleaning or cooking time. I cook and clean during my grading time. But if I just say I need to do all of these things sometime over the weekend, I end up not getting any of them done. I have to say to myself, "Grade papers now," and I will instantly find inspiration to do literally any of the other jobs on my list. Same if I decide I'm going to write.

So I guess the key is to give into my inner disobedient brat. Just tell him to do something--anything--and he'll do something. Just not the thing I told him to do. When I tell him to decide what I want to do, he won't. But if I decide for him, he's quick to change my mind.

I'm not sure what it means that I'm learning to outwit myself, but it's probably not good.

My Writing Process: Rewrites, Revisions, Revamps--And That's Just the Synopsis!

I'm not a complete imbecile. Okay, maybe I am. I went into this writing venture knowing that I wasn't going to be able to just sit down and write a novel and get it published as it was. I knew I was going to need editing and revision. But I'll tell you now, if you're considering going into writing, you have no idea.

I finished the first draft of my manuscript a year ago last fall. I remember writing in one of the first entries of this blog that my editing process was to edit as I went. I would write some pages, edit them the next day, and then write some more pages. So I guess I really did think that I could sit down and write a novel and get it published as is. I really thought it was in its final form when I typed the last word and hit save.

I went online and read about how to query agents. I wrote a query letter and a synopsis that I sent out to a few agents, just to test the waters. Some didn't reply, though some did. One even replied personally, with some comments on how I could make the manuscript more publishable. She said I needed to work with an editor on pacing and dialogue. This was discouraging on one hand because I thought I was already finished and could move on to the next step: publication and celebrity!

But on the other hand, it was encouraging that, out of the first handful of queries I had sent, I had actually gotten some encouragement. She liked my narrator. She liked my sense of humor. So it was worth it, I decided, to consult an editor. That started a rather long process in which I ended up cutting over 10,000 words from what I thought was the finished product. After re-reading it after this was all finished, I realized that my original final draft had been bloated, windy, and just plain ponderous. The new one flowed. It was economical. It was snappy and quick.

So I started querying in earnest. I sent out dozens of queries to anyone and everyone who was accepting new clients in my genre. Crickets. The majority simply didn't respond. Those who did were auto-replies. "Sorry, not for me." Not one request for a manuscript. I thought I was doomed to be an unpublished author my whole life.

Then someone suggested it might be my query letter and synopsis. So back to my editor I went. Based on her initial comments, it really might be my query letter and synopsis. So we've been trading edits and revisions via email for a few weeks now. I think I might be homing in on what I need. Hopefully I'll be back to querying sometime in the next week or two.

Am I discouraged? Absolutely not. If anything, I'm more motivated. I am not going to have gone through all this work just to give up. I will get published. And I find I'm enjoying the whole process. I feel like I'm really learning what it is to be a writer. And I'm definitely not going to stop writing. As I work to get my first book published, I'm more than halfway through the first draft of my second. Only this time I have all this knowledge and experience under my belt, so I might get it right with a little less hullabaloo this time around.