LTUE talk part 5

Continued from Part 4

One last cliche for you, and then I can share the meat of the talk tomorrow–what happens once you get that contract. 

It’s not you, it’s me
 
If you’ve followed the submission guidelines and your book is the right genre that the publisher is looking for, intended for the right audience, and all of those basics, you’re already doing better than most of the slush pile. If you’re starting to get feedback on rejections, it’s easy to get your hopes up and think “This could be the one!” and it can be even harder to realize that the writing still needs work.
 
Sometimes the story and the writing can be perfectly fine, though—brilliant, even—and you still get rejected. What do you do then? If your boyfriend breaks up with you, do you try to convince him to take you back, or do you use it as a learning experience for the next time?
 
Well, I can say from experience that it’s really, really hard to just walk away from what seemed to you like a perfectly good relationship, or even a possible relationship.
It can be just as heartbreaking for a writer to feel that kind of rejection from a house they’ve done their research on, over a manuscript they’ve labored over and are sure it’s good—the editor has no objections except to say “It’s not for me.”
 
The comfort in that situation is that it truly isn’t personal. It’s not you, and it’s probably not even the story. Any number of factors could be at work in the rejection in a dating relationship—they are already dating someone, or they have too much baggage and aren’t ready for a relationship.
 
In publishing terms, they couldn’t make a P&L work to be able to offer any kind of money, or they could have a forthcoming book already on the list covering too similar a topic. Again, any number of reasons.
 
And the most heartbreaking of all—perhaps there’s nothing standing in the way except personal taste or the whims of the market. Maybe no one in the house is into Greek mythology, or cats with ESP, or whatever your story is about, and don’t feel they could champion it with their whole hearts.
 
Chalk it up to what could have been and focus on finding someone new.
 
You want this to happen. Really, you do. Because that means it leaves you open to finding the right match. Your editor is your book’s champion in the house. If she’s not excited about it, you can guarantee that few people in the chain of selling your book will be either—marketing, sales, publicity, all depend upon the editor’s infecting them with the same excitement she feels for the book when she’s acquiring it. 

Tomorrow: Working with an editor is a relationship–like a marriage

LTUE talk, part 4

Continued from Part 3

Don’t play games
 
This goes back to “be yourself.” Simple and professional is the name of the game. There are no tricks to getting published. It’s all about the writing. Write well, write a good story, and if it’s also marketable you’ll find the right publisher eventually.
 
You might have heard authors saying “this trick worked for me,” or “this is the secret to getting published”—often including tricks that ignore the publisher’s submission guidelines. What they’re saying is simply “t
his worked for me.” It won’t necessarily work for you, and it especially won’t work if you’re doing something that implies you don’t trust the publisher you’re submitting to.
 
In dating, would you use tricks to keep someone interested in you? Would it work, long-term, if they’re not a good match? It’s the same with publishers. If your work is not a good fit for them, for whatever reason, it will show.
 
I’ve had a few submissions in the past where the author had a certain “platform” (useful in nonfiction, not as much in fiction)—the ability to market the book to a built-in audience. For example, one had a connection in Hollywood.
 
But the story didn’t work. The writing was bad, the plot barely existent, and the concept wasn’t really very original. Despite the “trick” of having a built-in audience, the story didn’t hold up and I had to reject it. 

Focus on the craft, focus on writing an amazing story. That will win out a good editor far beyond any gimmicks.

 
 
You are not the exception
 
If I say I don’t date smokers because I’m allergic to smoke, do you think I’ll make an exception just this once because this amazing guy happens to be a smoker?
 
Well, I won’t. I happen to like breathing.
 
It’s the same with publishers. You not only want to find a publisher, you want to find the right fit with a publisher.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to get familiar with their submission guidelines and catalog. Go to the bookstore and find books in the same genre/storytelling vein as the book you’re shopping around and target your submissions to them. Don’t just depend on the Writer’s Market or something like that—go to the publisher’s website and read their guidelines there, too.
 
With a new imprint like Mirrorstone—heck with any imprint, but especially with a new imprint, coming to conferences to listen to editors say what they’re looking for, searching the web for industry news and editor interviews, will also give you a better idea what they’re looking for.
 
I cannot tell you HOW MANY PICTUREBOOKS I received in the slush pile even after we specifically noted in our submission guidelines—including every writer resource that asked us—that we don’t publish picturebooks. Even now, after those guidelines have been in force for years, our assistant editor tells me that the slush pile is a good 30-50% picturebooks
on any given day.
 
If they don’t publish something, your manuscript, no matter how perfect, isn’t going to be an exception.
 
I even wrote back to one person once, whose picturebook was pretty interesting. I said, “We don’t publish picture books, but we do publish fantasy for children and young adults. You’re welcome to submit if you write that kind of thing.”
 
She responded with, “Thank you for the reply, but fantasy is the one genre I don’t write.”
 
Why in the world then did she submit to Mirrorstone? Fantasy is the ONLY genre we publish!
 
Do not follo
w her example.

Next up, and last for tonight, It’s not you, it’s me

LTUE talk, part 3

Continued from Part 2

Play the field

 

You’ve heard this one before, right? When you’re first getting out there in the dating world, you can’t just zoom in on one person. You have to get to know a lot of people, figure out who has what you’re looking for. Who matches you.

 

It’s the same in publishing. You have to do your research. Find out which publishers publish the kind of books you write.

 

The more you target your submissions, the more likely you are to get past the slush pile. And once you have a query or a manuscript out there, get to work on your next book!

 

I know authors who have as many as four or more books they’ve finished and are shopping around, while working on the next one. I’m more impressed by an author who has finished more than one book before getting published—it lets me know they’re an independent hard worker. You should listen to what my friend Brandon Sanderson says in some of his panels here—he sold his sixth book while writing his 13th.

 

 

He’s (she’s) just a slow mover

 

Just like in dating, you have to decide if you have the patience to deal with slow movers in publishing. Well, you should know that most publishers are slow movers. Some who have submitted to me know that I’m probably way up there in slow responses, but I know I’m not the only editor out there with a slow turnaround time. I often have a lot of pressing deadlines, and I work for a very small new imprint.

 

That means that between me and my senior editor plus part of the time of an assistant editor (thankfully I don’t have to be the first reader on the slush anymore!), we do:

all the editorial work,

plus we help out with shows, promotions, launches,

we support our marketing staff,

we have meet
ings to plan out things with the art staff, schedule, acquisitions, etc

coordinate freelance copyeditors and proofers,

and all that—and we’re also looking for new authors at the same time. You can probably imagine that our schedules tend to get quite hectic, and that means we’re awfully slow movers.

 

In dating, being a slow mover might mean they’re not interested. But it might be that a slow mover is simply someone who does things slowly. In publishing, it truly does mean that we’re just slow movers! We take a while to decide, either way.

 

But it also means that you shouldn’t wait around for an ultra-slow mover to make a decision. As I’ve already talked about, you should have other irons on the fire—both in your writing projects (developing your talents, improving yourself, I suppose) and in your search for a publisher (continuing to date other people casually until someone decides to commit to a relationship). 

Make sure that if you decide to “date around,” though, that the publisher accepts simultaneous submissions. I do. Many don’t. Watch the submission guidelines to be sure, and be sure to be clear that your submission is a simultaneous one.

 

If you work in a niche market, those opportunities may come as few and far between as my dating opportunities, but they’re out there, and you should be keeping yourself busy and goi
ng forward rather than twiddling your thumbs.

 

And if it’s been a while, don’t be afraid to follow up. If you had a great date with someone, it’s perfectly acceptable to wait a proper amount of time and then follow up with a quick email or call saying that you had a great time and seeing how they’re doing.

 

With editors, if you haven’t heard from someone after a month or two after their response time has passed (usually posted on their submission guidelines), it’s acceptable to send a quick email or postcard/letter just checking on the status of the manuscript. However, unlike dating, DO NOT CALL.

 

Editors are busy, and especially if she’s not concentrating on slush that day, your call will only put her on the spot and make her more likely to reject a manuscript she’d been on the fence about. Professional courtesy should always be at play here, on both authors’ and publishers’ parts.

 

If you commit to a relationship w/ someone, make sure you let everyone else know. If you have an offer on the table, let the other publishers considering your piece know before you make a commitment, though, because that might speed up their consideration.

 

However, ONLY do that if there really is an offer on the table. 

Next post, Don’t play games and You are not the exception

 

LTUE talk, part 2

Well, I’m on a roll right now, and Law and Order is on the boring side, so I have time for one more cliche post tonight. Here you go–I think I’ll actually post a couple.

Continued from Part 1

Put your best foot forward

 

Sending out a submission that isn’t as perfect as you can make it is like showing up for a date to the opera in torn jeans, smelling like you finished mucking stables. Clean up for your night on the town. Make sure your submissio
n is as perfect as you can make it before sending it on. If you’re not the best at catching grammatical and spelling errors (and even if you think you are! it’s easy to miss them when you’ve read the cover letter or manuscript over and over), have a friend you can trust with things grammatical look it over for you and point out any errors.

 

Join a writing group or get a couple trusted alpha readers to help you make sure you’ve ironed out any problems with plot, characterization, mood, etc. before you start submitting.

 

You’re here finding out what I look for, which is perfect. Keep coming to events like this, and when you meet an editor who you feel would be right for your book, make sure your book is ready before sending it on. For people local to Utah, there are several other conferences you should be aware of:

CONDuit

SCBWI conference in March at UVSC every year

Writing for Young Readers at BYU every summer

 
(For readers not in Utah, look up your local events at http://www.scbwi.org or at your local college–often there will be similar events that will be extremely helpful.)

I personally am looking for great fantasy adventure stories told in e
vocative writing
by authors who know the difference between middle grade and YA, etc.

Make sure you first focus on your craft, perfecting both your storytelling and your wordcrafting, before you start submitting.

 

 

You have to kiss a lot of frogs to meet your prince

 

Don’t give up after your first reje
ction. Or your second or your third or your twenty-fifth. How many stories are out there of authors who made the rounds of publishers, whose book was finally published by that 26th or 50th publisher? Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time was rejected by 20-something publishers. Dr. Seuss, too. Keep going and don’t let yourself get discouraged. It’s about finding the right fit.

Tomorrow: Play the field, They’re just a slow mover

LTUE talk part 1

Seeing as how my LTUE talk is all put together, it doesn’t require any thought for me to at least give you a little beginning of the talk. I can’t post the PowerPoint, because wow, that would take up a lot of space, but I can reproduce the points I made and hope you can make the connections. Really, nothing I say is new, but the dating analogy works really well (which is why I’ve heard so many editors use it, I’m sure), so hopefully you’ll find it useful. Too bad you’ll miss the pretty slides of all our covers from my introduction. Go to http://mirrorstonebooks.com to make up for that. 🙂

So, here goes…

 

Collaboration: The Editor’s Role
in Making Your Book the Best Book You Could Ever Write

So you came here today expecting to hear a talk on working with an editor, right? What you didn’t know is that you’re going to get a lecture on dating. This is BYU, after all! How could I resist?

 

No, actually, despite my bachelor’s in MFHD—that’s marriage, family, and human development for those of you who aren’t BYU students—I’m really going to talk about collaboration with an editor. But I’ve come to find that dating can really become a great metaphor for a writer’s search for publication. So I’m going to use the idea of dating as a framework for my talk, and I think you’ll see there are some great insights we can gain, both as writers and editors, in learning how to “date” with a healthy attitude.

 

If you want to date, what do you do? Do you just start sending out emails to every guy or girl in your classes? Do you start asking out everyone you meet indiscriminately, barely pausing to ask their name? Of course not. You see someone in class that’s said something interesting, you join a club and meet people with similar interests, you see someone cute across the room at a friend’s party and you start a conversation. Getting published is the same way.

 

You have to treat it like you’re seeking a professional relationship—because you are. You are looking for a job; writing and getting that writing published is a job as much as it is an art.

 

Getting published is like dating

I’m going to use some dating cliches and apply them to the process of getting published. I’ll post one today, then the next one tomorrow, etc. That way it’ll break down to blog post length.

Today’s cliche: Be yourself

 

What kind of books do you love to read? What kind of stories do you love to tell? “If you do what you love, the money will follow,” as the saying goes. Don’t choose to write the “next Da Vinci code” or “the next Harry Potter” because it happens to be hot right now. Even if your manuscript got accepted today, it would be another two years or so before you’d see it on the shelves, and by then the trend will be over and people will be excited for some other hot new thing. Write what you love. Because it will show.

 

That also applies to originality. I was reading an agent’s blog the other day (full credit, it was agentobscura, I think–I’ve tried to link that several times to her LJ but it keeps messing with me, so I give up–who has been talking about this subject a lot recently), and she talked about how sometimes authors write the book they know their editor will accept rather than the masterpiece they’ve been wanting to write for years. There’s something to be said for marketability, but you have to allow your inspiration to lead your perspiration, because it’s your individual voice and originality that stands out when an editor is looking for the next big thing.

Next post: Put your best foot forward

Normalcy and folk on the fringe

I came home from work sick today and ended up sleeping a good six hours and will probably go back to bed early. I tell you this because I wish I could participate in the discussion of the way that we treat normalcy and people on the fringes of society in fantasy over at

 that

  is continuing at her own LJ ,but I’m just too out of it to be making any sense of the discussion. On a normal day, this would be a fascinating discussion. I mean, it still is, but I’m not really able to read coherently right now. But though I’m not up for it, I thought perhaps you all might find it interesting. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into it later.

The discussion on the community starts with a post Holly made back here, then someone bumped it. (Holly brings it over from a couple other authors’ individual LJs, which links I want to follow eventually myself.) Interesting stuff.

Future LJ fodder

Here are some upcoming topics that I’ve been meaning to blog about but haven’t due to time constraints (or the fact that I never thought of them until this weekend). This is your place to comment and tell me other things you’d like to see here on my LJ.

Planned soon:

A recap of my LTUE talk, Collaboration: The Editor’s Role in Making Your Book the Best Book You Could Ever Write (unofficial subtitle: Getting Published Is Like Dating). Possibly including video; expecting a DVD from the symposium committee soon.

Recommendations of writing books

A full list of all the great children’s lit sites out there on the web, including blogs I read, authors to watch, informative publishing resources, etc.

Updated links to things like Cynthia Leitich Smith’s new LJ, which I don’t have right on hand and am feeling too sinusy to look up right now (but go look for Tantalize, which is out in stores)

A review of Wicked Lovely and anything else I’ve read lately

Pictures from LTUE with recaps of fun events such as going to the Christa McAuliffe Space Center and running a simulation of Star Trek’s Voyager, all those great dinners with writing groups–including asking for people to identify themselves because so many names and faces were introduced to me this weekend that I’m unlikely to match them up well myself, RiffTrax Saturday night with friends from Timewaster’s Guide, and other various LTUE related stuff

Planned someday:

Thoughts on things that LTUE discussions sparked (though it tends to be leaving my brain as I type, and I’m not feeling completely up for remembering right now)

Whatever other things you want to hear about.

I’m sure there was something else, but the lucidity is gone again. I’m seriously considering going home early and sleeping the rest of the day. Apparently the barometric pressure is much greater here at sea level than it was up in the mountains in Utah. Though the altitude wasn’t kind on my lungs (I felt like the infection was becoming bronchitis, but it turns out I can breathe just fine here at home), it did remove some of the pressure on my sinuses that now seems to have come back.

Podcast interview

I forgot to mention that I-Sci-Fi, a live internet broadcast that has talked with pretty much every science fiction and fantasy author out there, did a show at LTUE last week. You can find the podcast of the interview with me here, in Part 2 of 2 (I’m not sure how to link each episode directly, so for future reference it’s episode 296b). Also interviewed that evening (and probably more entertaining than me trying to remember the name of a Capistan something or other engine) were Julie Wright, Brandon Sanderson, Gloria and Ed Skurzynski, and Julie E. Czerneda. Other LTUE guests interviewed at other times have included Bob Defendi (a Writers of the Future winner) and Howard Tayler.

One more: had to share

I got a great thank-you gift from the con committee, that I just had to share pictures of. 

It included a great tote bag (I’m all about the great tote bags!)…

a funny bumper sticker that I haven’t quite decided where I’ll put it…

Also, a BYU mug for my love of hot chocolate, and to prove I’ve been in Utah, a box of lime Jello. Carrots not included. 🙂

What a weekend

I’m finally home, to a sunny and slightly warm Seattle afternoon. Opened all the windows in my apartment to air it all out, a little disappointed at the mess I left behind in all my hurry to leave for the airport Wednesday morning.

The weekend at LTUE was really great. The committee and all involved in taking me out to meals were just the nicest people and made sure to take care of me.

  and Rick Walton and a number of great members of local writing groups especially deserve great thanks for feeding me over the course of the three days of th
e symposium. I had a great time chatting and getting to know everyone.

The other guests of honor also deserve great kudos–I had a great time getting to know

  , Gloria Skurzinski, and Julie Czerneda. The highlight of my weekend had to have been the gift of a caracature from Howard Tayler, who draws the popular and extremely entertaining webcomic Schlock Mercenary. He offered to do one as I was talking with Mette about editing a book, during which I happened to mention the phrase “killing some darlings”: 

Yeah, that’s gonna have to become a usericon.

More updates and plenty of blog fodder from the weekend. Welcome to any new readers via LTUE or any linkages via that! I promise to post soon a series from my main address, and I might even possibly have video, which will be a lot of fun–though it was dark and I faltered quite a bit at the beginning for two reasons: 1, not being able to read in the dark (lights were out for the slides) and 2, not being all there due to the sinus infection I’ve been nursing for a month.

On the bright side, all that time in the lovely dry climate of Utah (I love the sun! I love the sun!) I think helped dry out my sinuses. Hard to tell until I get a nap in this afternoon, which is the next item on my agenda.

I also told several people I’d try to blog about their questions, such as book recommendations for writers, so I’ll try to get to those soon too. All these interesting subjects to talk about!