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Weekly Roundup: 10/29–11/4

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Locus Online: World Fantasy 2011 Winners

Locus Online has posted the results of the World Fantasy awards, which were awarded at the World Fantasy Convention last weekend. I haven’t read the best novel (though I’ve read or will soon have read much of the short list), or any of the shorter fiction, but I am in the middle of reading the winner for best anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer. Thus far I’ve found it excellent. My review will come out after I actually finish reading all the stories.

Nathan Bransford: Are You Participating in NaNoWriMo?

In case you writers didn’t already know, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) started earlier this week. If you’re up for the challenge, commit to writing 50,000 words in a novel this month. If you want to get in on the biggest online party the writing community has, jump on the NaNo bandwagon. If you haven’t started already though, you’re going to need a boost to make up this week’s word count. So look to Nathan Bransford’s compilation of NaNoWriMo-related advice.

Publishers Weekly: Survey Says Library Users Are Your Best Customers

This week PW put out an article describing a new research survey that illuminates the contribution libraries make to the publishing industry. Many readers report buying books of authors they have read in the library, and there are a host of other findings.

Liz Castro: Where Should an Ebook Begin?

Ebook wiz Liz Castro explains how to make your ePub file guide a reader to the first chapter of your book when a reader opens it (instead of, say, the cover). I disagree with Liz—I like to see the cover first—but I do agree that the frontmatter of ebooks can get painfully excessive. Outside of the table of contents, I’m a fan of putting what is traditionally frontmatter (like copyright pages, etc.) at the back of the file.

David Carnoy: Amazon Launches Free E-book Borrowing for Prime Members

Now as a part of Amazon’s $79.99/year prime membership, Kindle owners can borrow one ebook at a time, free of charge, with no due date. Kind of like Netflix, but for books, and the prime membership also includes Amazon’s video service. Not all books are a part of the program, as it depends on publisher consent.

Weekly Roundup: 10/22–10/28

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Guido Henkel: Amazon Introduced New Kindle eBook Format with a Major Misstep

Guido Henkel points out that Amazon’s new Kindle format isn’t supported on older Kindle devices. Amazon certainly isn’t the first to roll and update like this, but that doesn’t make it ideal. I know it’s not exactly the same situation, but when Sony updated its bookstore so all books came in ePub format, Sony paid for my ereader to be shipped to their shop and given and upgrade so the new format would work on my clunky, archaic device. I really appreciated that. It’s a bit annoying when you pay a company for a piece of their hardware and then that company releases updates that can’t apply to your device.

Christopher Priest: Are You Watching Carefully?

Christopher Priest writes an article about the genesis of The Prestige for Fantasy Magazine. I greatly enjoyed The Prestige, so it was fun to read this bit of background on the novel.

Intelligent Editing: Consistency Mistakes

Intelligent Editing shows the most common consistency mistakes that writers make in their manuscripts. Consistency helps your reader understand you meaning; when you switch between hyphenating or capitalizing a phrase or not, you signal a change in meaning to your reader. If you don’t actually intend a different meaning, you end up confusing your reader. Being aware of common inconsistencies helps you avoid them yourself.

Mike Shatzkin: Can Big Publishers Actually Do Tech and Make Books at the Same Time?

Mike Shatzkin discusses some changes rumbling through the big publishers: they’ve started to get into the tech game. But his article’s title raises an interesting question: can and should publishers be splitting their attention between books and technology? This applies as much to Amazon as it does to traditional publishing houses. Can you have core competencies in both stellar technology and stellar content?

Prose Tip: Simultaneous Syntax

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Quill-and-ink writingWhen fiction writers come to me and ask me to add some spit shine to their prose, there’s a pair of problematic sentence constructions I’m almost guaranteed to run into (nonfiction writers also use these construction, but not as often). These two constructions are grammatically correct, and sometimes they are appropriate to use, so they’re hard to catch. But once you know what to look for, it’s fairly easy to keep a wary eye out for these sentences when you’re revising your work.

These sentence constructions center around
–ing words and as. Permit me two examples:

  • Pulling out her red pen, she sighed.
  • As her eyes hit another –ing sentence, she reached for a match.

The Problem

As you may have noticed, and as I’ve already pointed out, neither of these two sentences is grammatically incorrect. As far as correctness goes, they’re completely sound. The problem with these two sentence types is twofold: 1) you’re making some of your action subordinate to other action, and 2) you’re making two actions simultaneous.

Subordinate action. The first issue is kind of like the argument against passive voice: these constructions minimize action and weaken the impact. As editors Renni Browne and Dave King* say:

Both these constructions take a bit of action … and tuck it away into a dependent clause. … This tends to place some of your action at one remove from the reader, to make the actions seem incidental, unimportant.

If that’s what you intend to do, then you have no problem; using these constructions will be just what you need.

Simultaneous action. The second issue is something you should consider any time you use one of these two constructions. The syntax of these sentences means that both the as or –ing clause and the other clause happen at the same time. In my examples, she pulls out her red pen and sighs at the same time. That’s not a problem. The problem arises when your characters start doing impossible simultaneous things.

  • Pulling on his shoes, he ran out the door. (You can’t run and pull on your shoes at the same time.)
  • She pulled open the door, climbing the stairs. (Unless the staircase is really short, it’s unlikely she can open the door at the top while she’s climbing. Alternately, if the stairs are on the other side of the door, there’s no way she can climb them while she’s opening the door.)
  • Jumping astride the horse, he tucked the trinket into her hair. (I’m not even sure what this guy is doing, but I’m pretty sure it can’t be done all at once.)

Lesser Problems

The other problems with these constructions exist mostly because the constructions are difficult to use properly. The subject of your sentence needs to come immediately after the comma (i.e., Jumping astride the horse, he tucked the trinket into her hair; not Jumping astride the horse, the trinket was tucked into her hair) and you need to punctuate them properly. If you don’t set it up right, then not only are impossible simultaneous things happening, but generally impossible things are happening (how the devil does a trinket jump astride a horse?).

Even if you use them properly, be wary of using these constructions too often. They’re just unconventional enough that they stick out a bit, so if you overuse them your writing starts to draw attention to itself (instead of the story) and it begins to feel false.

The Cure

The cure for these constructions is a pretty simple one: don’t use them. Here are all my examples reworked:

  • She pulled out her red pen and sighed.
  • Her eyes hit another –ing sentence: she reached for a match.
  • He yanked on his shoes and bolted out the door.
  • She pulled open the door and started climbing the stairs.
  • N/A (The last sentence was too messed up for me to fix without knowing what’s going on, and I didn’t think through my example that far. Is the horse a she? Is there another she on the horse?)

If you use one of these constructions, consider whether or not you mean what you’re saying. Is the –ing or as action really subordinate? Do both actions really happen at the same time? If the answer to both questions is yes, then using one of these grammatically correct methods is perfectly all right. But as I mentioned before, be wary of using them too often, even if you use them correctly. If it starts standing between your reader and the story, even the most elegant prose needs to meet either a red pen or a match.
_________________________

*This quote is taken from Self-editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne & Dave King. I highly recommend this book to writers who want to do all they can to polish their work before handing it off to an objective eye (whether that’s a reader, a publishing house editor, or a freelance editor).

Image by Simon Howden via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Looseleaf Editorial Philosophy

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Looseleaf Freelance EditingEvery writer works differently—there are a lot of similarities between many writers, but no two work the same way or come up with the same end products. Similarly, every editor works a little differently. Even when it comes to copyediting, different editors do things differently. When you, as a writer, are looking for a freelance editor to help you with your work, it’s important that you find one that fits you.

In the spirit of giving you all the information you need, allow me to give you a rundown of the Looseleaf editorial philosophy. There are three main principles: editors exist to help writers be better writers, words need to communicate to and capture a reader, and books belong to their writers.

Editors Exist to Help Writers Be Better Writers

There are some services out there that exist to help make books better. However, Looseleaf isn’t about taking a manuscript and making it into an awesome book. It’s about working with a writer on a manuscript to help make that writer a better writer. The manuscript will become a better book as a result, have no doubt about that, but my primary focus as an editor is to help writers do what they want to do, only better.

This means that when it comes to changes bigger than commas or colons, I’ll be writing comments to you, the author, so you can understand why I thought a change was necessary and why what I did fixes the issue. I’ll expect that if you don’t understand my comment (or if I made a change you don’t understand because I forgot to comment on it) you’ll ask me to explain myself. I expect to be available for questions during and after an edit.

If you want to hand your manuscript over, have it polished, primped, primed, and packaged into perfection by someone else, Looseleaf may not be for you. Make no mistake: I’ll be digging in and doing as much tinkering, tweaking, and fixing as I can to make your vision a reality. As it says on the Looseleaf home page, “We’ll help you achieve the clarity, credibility, and style you need to reach your audience.” But my primary goal will be to help you be better, not just your book.

Words Need to Communicate to and Capture a Reader

Looseleaf editing is very reader-centric. If there’s something you like to do in your writing that isn’t strictly correct but will still communicate and carry your credibility to a reader, I’m not going to touch it. If it’s something that will make a reader think you don’t know what you’re doing, or that will force the reader to read your words more than once to understand them, I’m going to recommend a change.

This means that many “rules” are flexible. For a hyper-formal, scholarly audience, I might recommend that you don’t split your infinitives (i.e., “to boldly go” would be changed to “to go boldly”); in a young adult novel, I won’t touch your slang unless it’s so heavy I think it will make your book sound dated in two or three years, or that you won’t be able to get any crossover audiences with it. I will always be considering your reader, not just the rule book.

Books Belong to their Writers

Some writers fear editors: this minority considers editors to be a group of people who meddle with a creative individual’s work and take it away from the creative source and beauty it originally had. However, I subscribe to the mentality described by legendary editor Maxwell Perkins:

I believe the writer … should always be the final judge. I have always held to that position and have sometimes seen books hurt thereby, but at least as often helped. The book belongs to the author.

Everything I do to or suggest for a manuscript exists to help you and the reader communicate more effectively. You have ideas you want to communicate; your reader wants to engage with and receive those ideas. I will make suggestions and explain the reasoning behind them; I’ll tell you why they should be made. But the final decisions always belong to you. Because you’re the one with something to say; I’m just here to help you let that idea loose.

Image by markuso via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Weekly Roundup: 10/15–10/21

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Page from the Book of KellsChristopher Butler: How Disregarding Design Limits The Power Of Content

This is a pretty long article from Christopher Butler that talks about how design can shape and inform meaning and interpretation. It’s especially relevant today when design is so fluid—ebooks change from device to device, etc. Butler points out that the problems with fluid form aren’t problematic for everything, but fluid form does present limits that are problematic in some instances.

Kevin Canfield: Can Harper Perennial Reinvent Publishing?

In this article Kevin Canfield examines how Harper Perennial is staying nimble and relevant in today’s publishing climate. It’s a good look at how publishers can adapt to the opportunities available today.

New York Times: Authors to Get Sales Data Online From 3 Big Publishers

The New York Times reports that three big publishers are implementing online access to sales data that they will release to their authors. This is a great change, in my opinion. Authors have been a bit starved for information in many situations—that’s one of the appeals of epublishing. Changing that discrepancy will strengthen publishers’ positions in the market.

Duolit: Get Noticed: 5 Steps to Boosting Book Publicity

The team over at Duolit gives out five key points for publicizing your book. Their tips help you look professional and prepared. Another piece of their advice—having your publicity plan figured out before you publish—is key to publicizing your books properly.

Writing Excuses: Endings

Writers often get a lot of advice about starting out and beginning, but advice on endings is a little harder to come by. Lou Anders returns to Writing Excuses to discuss sticking your novel’s ending.

Sedate Your Inner Perfectionist During First Drafts

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Many aspiring authors struggle to get through their first drafts. This is understandable. You have a brilliant idea, and your story is going to be more than a mere book. It will be a Book of monumental influence and exposure. The trouble is, once you get started on the actual draft, you’ll start seeing flaws, holes, and weaknesses throughout your prose and plot. This will be especially true for any of you who are committing to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November.

Completing the NaNoWriMo challenge requires you to write 50,000 words in a novel during the month of November (technically you are supposed to complete a 50,000-word novel, but many novels run much longer than that). To accomplish that feat, especially if you’re someone with a day job, children, or a full-time student course-load, you’re going to be churning out a lot of crap and filler words—there’s just no escaping it.

Why Crap Is King

The thing is, that’s okay. Regardless of how quickly you’re writing, your first draft is still going to contain a lot of crap. That’s what your own revisions, critique groups, and editors are for. First drafts should follow the advice of editor Maxwell Perkins: “Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it.”

Incidentally, Maxwell Perkins is a legend of editing and publishing. He edited and published writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. If the editor of immortal, canonized authors says you really need to just spew your ideas out and think about it later, why should you insist otherwise?

There are a few writers who can turn out nearly impeccable first drafts. However, they are probably aliens. While you’re writing your first draft, cling to your humanity and allow yourself to make mistakes, fumble through troublesome scenes, and throw in a few clichés. It won’t kill you or your story.

How to Sedate Your Inner Perfectionist

When you’re writing your first draft, pattern your #1 rule off Perkins’s advice: Just get it down on paper. Sedate the perfectionist living in your mind and lock him or her in a closet until you’ve written “The End” for the first time. You can use several perfectionist sedatives. You’ll probably have to brew up a particular concoction that suits your particular perfectionist, but here are a few ideas.

Write like you’ve already fixed the problem. When you recognize a fatal flaw in your story, make a conscious decision to write like you’ve already fixed it. For example, if you realize you need a new character, or you need to merge two or more characters, start using the new character right now, even though he or she hasn’t been introduced earlier in the draft. While I was in Brandon Sanderson’s writing class, he explained that this is part of his writing process. In his first drafts, he pretends he’s already made the changes he needs; his first revision consists of going back and filling in those changes. Pretending you’ve already solved the problem can keep you calm, which helps keep your inner perfectionist deep in dreams of neatly organized pencils.

Keep careful notes—away from your draft. If you know you’ve used the word “chilly” approximately 6 million times in a particular chapter, instead of taking the time to go back and replace all your frigid adjectives, make a note of it in a separate document or in a separate notebook. Keeping notes will reassure your inner perfectionist that even if he or she is experiencing nightmares during sedation, there will be a way to straighten everything out when hibernation ends. If you have a list of flaws, it’ll be easy to trek through them in your first pass of revisions, but you don’t have to spend time and lose momentum fixing them in the first draft. Storing that list separate from your draft keeps you from thinking too hard about the flaws while you’re creating.

Display a motivational phrase. Sometimes all you need to keep your inner perfectionist asleep is a comforting lullaby mantra you can chant when you see flaws. Try displaying Maxwell Perkins’s advice close to wherever you write. Maybe you need something more direct, like “Crap is okay … for now.” These sorts of phrases are useful because they remind you that now is not the time to stress about how many syllables you put in the last sentence; they also don’t advise you to settle for less than you’re capable of. Choose a phrase that reminds you that this is step one, and that the first step in a marathon doesn’t need to be perfect.

You’ve got time to make up for stumbles and implement second thoughts during later drafts and revisions. You are capable of writing a Book, but your first draft doesn’t need to be anything more than a draft.

Image by anankkml via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Blogging for Fictioneers

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Lately there’s been a bit of hoopla surrounding blogs that belong to fiction writers, or writers that expect blogs to be a means to building a platform. Last week Roni Loren shared a post in which she rants about blogging, and she sums up the arguments and annoyances several people have voiced about author’s blogs. When you’re a fictioneer, what should your blog be doing for you?

Reasons to Blog

There are a few reasons why a writer would decide to blog:

  • To gain personal validation by whispering (or shouting) into the interwebs
  • To engage in a community
  • To gain exposure (i.e., build a readership platform or name recognition)
  • To drive sales

If you’re posting when you feel like it, responding to comments when you have them, and commenting on others’ blogs, you’ve got the first two reasons down pat. If those are the only two you have in mind, you’re golden. But if you want the last two, you’ve got to think about the way you blog a bit more, and you may need to do things a little differently than you expect.

One of the main gripes about writer blogs that Loren addresses is that writers who blog about writing are only engaging other writers, and many aspiring author blogs devolve into something nearing drivel. If you are blogging to reach readers, you need to be writing posts that appeal to them, not your critique group. You should also make the content engaging, not just whatever you were thinking that day. Illustrator and art director Jon Schindehette points out that random madness will not engage a readership/viewership, even if eclectic posting makes you feel better.

Reader-focused Blogging

If you want to engage a readership and not just the writing community, you need to write posts aimed at your target audience. To do that, first determine what about your writing will appeal to a reader.

  • Do they like action? Write about your favorite action sequences in film or about martial arts, explosions, or weapons.
  • Are they into crazy science? Write about the bizarre bioluminescent chemical recently discovered in a deep-sea fish or dark energy.
  • Is your writing in a specific genre with an active fandom? Review other pieces of work in your genre or talk about what makes the genre great.

For example, for a couple of years now I’ve had an idea for a story about a spice caravaner and a cook. Spices feature prominently, as does food in general. I know that if I were to write and publish this story I would share recipes for meals in the book, spicelore, and spice-related history on my blog. It relates to my story and it relates to readers.

There are plenty of other things I could write about for that story, and there will be plenty of reasons why readers will be engaged in your novel. You don’t have to pick just one.

Balanced Blogging

Does everything need to be reader focused? Heck no! You should be yourself, and if you’re a writer, you think about writing. But you should consciously include posts that talk about things your readers like and things they want to know or hear. In my example, I wouldn’t necessarily need to start a dedicated food blog where I posted nothing but bizarre things I’ve learned about cinnamon. But I’d do food-based posts occasionally, because it would be relevant to my readers and could be shared with non-writers who have not read my books. I’d engage with non-writers who are interested in those topics (i.e., I’d expand my “engage in a community” reason for blogging beyond the borders of book creators).

The things you share can widely vary. They might be video games, other books, movies, annotations to your stories, poetry, sailing, science, spacecraft, or cooking. If the ideal reader for your book would enjoy it, write it. Then share it.

When someone who has read your book comes to visit your blog, that reader is looking for you, so you shouldn’t smother who you are or what you think about. Just curate your thoughts and target them. If you want to try to engage new readers with your blog, you have to keep in interesting for someone who reads the sort of things you write, but who doesn’t know you or have an interest in writing his or her own novel.

Balance your blog: express yourself, but target those expressions. Meandering blogs soon see readers meandering away. Balance your focus: if you’re a fiction writer who also blogs, you should make sure you’re not putting more weight on your blog than your fiction. Unless you’re a blogger first and a fiction writer second, you shouldn’t allow your online activities to overshadow your stories when you’re creating. Stories reach readers; occasionally blogs help the stories get in readers’ hands.

Weekly Roundup: 10/8–10/14

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Kern Type ScreenshotKern Type: A Kerning Game

This may not appeal to many book people, but type nerds will appreciate this kerning game from Method of Action. From the game instructions: “Your mission is simple: achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters. Typographers call this activity kerning. Your solution will be compared to [a] typographer’s solution, and you will be given a score depending on how close you nailed it. Good luck!”

Tony D’Souza: When to Stop Working on Your Book

Novelist Tony D’Souza describes all the work and years he put into his manuscript Voyage of the Rosa … and then explains how he let it go and started something else. Letting a book die is something many writers have a problem with. Having an objective eye to help you know when to let something lie is a huge benefit. Indie publishing means anything can be published, but not everything you write is something you should sell. D’Souza explains how his masterpiece became a monster; maybe his story can help you avoid similar pitfalls.

Amazon: Amazon Launches a New Imprint

Amazon is launching a new science fiction, fantasy, and horror imprint called 47North, and has announced the first run of titles.

Rose Fox: Someone at Amazon Launches a Speculative Fiction Imprint

In light of the 47North announcement, Rose Fox expresses concern that nobody seems to have stepped forward to claim the imprint from an editorial standpoint. She raises questions over whether or not the editorial side has much genre experience. She sounds a bit hostile (and she admits that she is), but she raises some good points regardless.

Stacy Whitman: FAQ: Muslim Protagonist

Editor Stacy Whitman of Tu Books answers a question from one of the writers submitting to her. The writer wonders if a Muslim protagonist isn’t relatable enough for a widespread audience. This writer really shouldn’t fear: he or she is submitting to Tu Books, which has the great goal of adding diversity into YA and middle grade science fiction and fantasy. In Stacy’s words: “When we say ‘about everyone, for everyone,’ we mean everyone. Except maybe Sauron.” In her post, Stacy focuses on what makes a character more or less relatable. Especially when you’re dealing with speculative fiction, that doesn’t mean your reader shares a background with the character.

Carolyn McCray: “Price Pulsing”

Over at Digital Book World, Carolyn McCray gives some Amazon-sales advice in her article, “‘Price Pulsing’: the Benefits of Dynamic Pricing on Amazon.” She describes a method of temporarily lowering your price for promotional purposes to boost you in the Amazon rankings before you put your book back at retail price. It’s essentially a sale, but McCray explains the strategy behind the sale.