Ink Dance

by Ross, Deborah J.

  Sometimes I feel like a ping-pong ball, bouncing between two “shoulds.” I should attend to my inner muse, let her lead me, write only when I’m inspired. Or I should approach my writing day in a professional and craftsmanlike manner, applying fanny to chair at precisely 9 am and immediately pouring forth the next scene. The fact is, neither of these strategies works for me.

  It took me years to realize that I don’t have to worry about being unproductive. I start beating myself up the moment I’m working at less than full-out crash-burn capacity. That’s not everyone, that’s just me. Maybe it’s you, too. So the challenge then becomes, how do I find “cruising speed,” a pace I can sustain, one that allows me to come up with new ideas, to ferment and cogitate and mull things around, not to mention have a life outside of writing?

  The second thing I realized about my own working style is that almost always, once I get started, I’m fine. I regularly achieve my word or page goals, or if I do not, I’ve accomplished at least that much in creative or structural work. (For example, finding a misstep, taking apart the last couple of chapters and putting them back together so they work, might not add any pages but definitely is a good and productive thing!)

  Sometimes, it takes me a while to apply fanny to chair. I call this process “settling.” The reminds me that preparing to write is as important as the writing itself. More often than not, the reason I’m not ready is that my “back brain” is chewing over some point, either in the work to come or the work I’ve just done. Something’s not quite right or I don’t see the next step clearly. Words and images aren’t popping into my mind. So I go off, play a Chopin Prelude, scrub bathrooms, balance my checkbook, walk the dog, sew on a button . . . and at some point, I’ll either know exactly how to proceed or I’ll be sitting down with the Magic Notebook; either way, I’m ready to work . . . almost.

  The “almost” is the inertial hump, that final action of sitting down, email server and Internet browser closed, fingers on keyboard. This is yet another opportunity for me to castigate myself with accusations that range from laziness to incompetency. But it’s just a hump. It’s like those times when I want to call someone and the phone suddenly weighs 250 lbs and I pick it up and call anyway. I want to be anywhere but sitting at my desk, but it’s an idle want. My real want, my true desire, is to get past it into the joyful state of writing. So instead of being an occasion of self-flagellation, I try to look at the hump as a funny little quirk of mine. It’s annoying, true, but it has no power over me unless I grant it.

  It’s just a hump.

  Come on, hump. Let’s get to work.

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  Sam In Spades: Why Not to Revise

  Creating a novel is more than putting text on a page, fleshing out characters, and polishing dialog. It involves the scope and soundness of the original conception. The process of turning an idea into a book has been compared to sculpting in wood. You take a block of lumber and you assess its density and strength, the fineness of its grain, its ability to withstand torsional stresses. If you’re starting out with a soft wood like balsa or pine, it won’t support a lot of elaborate ornamentation—you’d be better off with a short story. For a novel that involves complex world-building and multiple point-of-view characters, nuance and interwoven themes, teak or mahogany or even oak is required to “bear the weight.”

  Most of us begin our writing careers with pine-weight, plywood story concepts. If we keep reworking those stories, we prevent ourselves from going forward with what we have learned and developing denser, bigger stories. It takes an act of will, not to mention considerable intellectual courage, to just leave a story alone, to let it be what it is, and to begin again. Occasionally, we’ll get cherrywood or stronger, but we’re not skillful enough to execute a story that achieves its potential. In this case, when looking back and wincing and being unable to abandon the unrealized heart of the story, I think it’s better to do a complete rewrite. Chuck the old manuscript or rip out everything that fails to measure up to the best you can do right now.

  Begin again, with a true re-visioning.

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  Career and Survival

  Queries, Synopses, and Other Uneasy Friends, Part 1

  What do all these have in common? They are marketing tools that require you, the author, to in some way summarize “what your book is about” (and why the editor or agent should love it as much as you do). For most of my writing career, I have answered that question with an agonized cry: “If I could have told you that in a single paragraph, I wouldn’t have had to write 100,000 words!”

  Like many authors, I’m not terribly good at summarizing the emotional heart of my stories. I have all kinds of excuses: each reader’s journey through the landscape of the story is different; the themes and subtext are evoked rather than explicit; it would take too long to detail the nuances and twists of the plot; yadda yadda, yadda. These are all excuses for a hard reality: the purpose of the query, etc., is not to duplicate the experience of reading the book. It is to arouse the editor’s or agent’s interest. By analogy, the purpose of cover art is not, as I once believed, to illustrate the story. It is to invite the reader to pick up the book. “Read me and you’ll have this kind of experience,” the painting says. As a reader, I’m annoyed when the artist has gotten the details wrong—the hero’s eye color, the wingspan of the dragon, that sort of thing. Annoyed, but not betrayed. Betrayed is when the cover suggests a magical faerie realm and instead I find gritty military shoot’em-up space adventure, or get a steamy vampire romance instead of the anticipated witty and mannered steampunk.

  It took me a long time to also understand that a query or synopsis is not what happens in the book but what the book is about. I had to have this explained to me very simply: in The Wizard of Oz, a dog runs across a prairie, an old woman catches the dog and puts it in her bicycle basket, a young girl talks with the farm hands, her aunt and uncle discuss local animal control regulations with the old woman. I’ve probably got the order wrong, but hope you can see that none of this conveys Dorothy’s longing to find a place where “troubles melt like lemon drops.”

  I have learned two truths about writing queries and preparing pitch statements (even more condensed than queries!):

  1. The skills necessary are not those I’ve used to write prose stories. I have to tell not show, to summarize and distill instead of portray. It feels as if I not only have to switch gears, I have to do everything backwards and inside-out. It makes my brain hurt. I have to remember that just as writing a technical manual for a space station is different from writing a Shakespearean sonnet, this is not the same as writing a story. I have far less experience in it. I should not expect it to be easy.

  2. If I do my work carefully in composing a query, etc., the result can teach me valuable lessons about my own creative process. Although I outline some projects, I’m a fairly organic writer. Even when I have a pretty good idea where I’m going and where the plot landmarks are, I’m always surprised (sometimes delighted, sometimes horrified) by all the unexpected detours and discoveries. I joke that whatever I think a book is about before I start writing it, I’m wrong. The deep story emerges as I go, sometimes not fully until I’ve been through a revision (re-vision) or two. This isn’t a problem, as I’m comfortable with both uncertainty and radical change.

  Writing a synopsis in mid-process, for example, after the first draft, can be invaluable in helping me to see past the misdirections, the infelicities, the gigantic plot holes and character lapses. What’s the heart, the core of the story—what’s emerging like the giants from Michelangelo’s blocks of marble? If I am willing to switch gears, no matter how uncomfortable that is, the result can be not only a richer, truer story but an immense savings of time. A five or ten page synopsis can eliminate a complete new draft.

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  Queries, Synopses, and Other Uneasy Friends, Part 2

  What is a query and why should I l
earn to write one? The short answer is that once upon a time, you didn’t need to. You could just send your completed novel manuscript to the agent or editor of your dreams, with or without a cover letter. You could be reasonably confident that either that person or some overworked assistant would actually read it. True, the turnaround time might be suspiciously short and the form rejection letter clearly one-size-fits-all.

  These days, the number of publishing houses that read “unsolicited” or “unagented” submissions has shrunk alarmingly. The result is that editors want to maximize the chances of a manuscript being what they want before they invest the time in reading it. Most of the publishers who will consider work submitted “over the transom” have very long response times. Regardless of whether this is fair or even good business practice, it is widespread. Hence, marketing one’s work means getting past a series of gate-keepers.

  A query basically says, “Would you look at my book?” It does not say, “I’m a fabulous writer, so please shower me with money.” It does say, politely and succinctly, “I’ve written a book. This is what it’s about. Would you like to see it?” That way, the agent or editor can say, “Sure,” “Sorry, we don’t publish this type of book,” “Sorry, we’re overstocked,” etc. A query should be short, a page or two at most, something an editor can read quickly. It should be as well written as possible because you have so little space in which to arouse the editor’s interest. It should also be direct, not manipulative or cutesy. There are various opinions on whether to include biographical information or publication credits, but in general, it’s best to include only the most relevant data such as experience directly related to the project or previous publications and awards in the same genre.

  The “Sure” response is usually accompanied by submission requirements. “Send us a partial” or “the complete manuscript.” Whatever the response, a wise writer follows these instructions. If an agent wants to see a synopsis and 100 pages electronically in rtf format, do not send a paper printout of the whole book. Chances are, it will generate a form rejection and a distinct prejudice against any further queries. “No thanks” can mean anything from the agent had a bad day and it just didn’t strike her fancy to the letter was so badly-written the story stands no chance, to no publisher is buying cross-dressing teenage werewolf stories.

  This is where a synopsis comes in. The agent has said he’s interested, but he doesn’t want to wade through the whole thing. He wants a good idea of the essence of the book and he wants to see a bit of the writing itself. He wants to know how you envision this book and if you can carry it off. Sometimes agents or editors will ask for one to three chapters, sometimes a given number of pages, for example, 100.

  A synopsis is not an outline. Although it may describe the plot, it is not a blow-by-blow description of events. It’s a way of communicating the emotional experience a reader can expect from the book. Usually it takes about eight to ten single-spaced pages to accomplish this, but requirements vary. A synopsis conveys not only the tenor and shape of the story, but basic information: Does it have a beginning, middle, and end? An identifiable climax? Does it fit within an established genre or is it daring and experimental? More importantly: Does the writer know what he’s doing? Is this a book I can sell?

  If marketing a manuscript is like arranging a marriage, the query is the listing in the dating service and the synopsis is the first date. You’re trying to get a sense of the other person. You’ve signed up for an evening together, a little chat, a little dancing, maybe a nice dinner, but definitely not a lifetime commitment.

  I’m not going to tell you how to write a synopsis. I’ve seen how-to instructions online and if I tried to follow them, I’d go nuts in five minutes. They make as much sense to me as a checklist for writing a novel does. I think it’s as important to convey your distinctive voice in a synopsis as in the text of the story itself, which means not sounding like a pale copy of anyone else. When I sit down to write a synopsis, I pretend I’m writing to a dear friend about my novel, someone who is a careful reader and well-disposed to my ideas. That works for me. It might not work for anyone else, which is why I don’t think step-by-step directions are helpful.

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  The Pitch and Why I Should Care

  A pitch is the shortest of the “why my book is terrific” marketing tools. It comes in two forms: insanely short (one paragraph) and off-the-edge-of-reality insanely short (one or possibly two sentences.) The paragraph can be extracted wholesale from a query letter (or, conversely, inserted into same). The other one, the one that drives otherwise brilliant writers to tears, is also called an “elevator pitch” because it’s what you say when you get into an elevator with the agent or editor of your dreams, who looks at you with mild interest and says, “What are you working on?”

  I don’t know why so many of us who are articulate and eloquent (all right, maybe not that fantastic, but competent) on the page turn into dithering lummocks when presented with such a golden opportunity. But we do. We’re writers, after all, not stand-up comedians. Our medium of expression is the written word. That elevator moment demands that we present our work (a) in a medium utterly foreign to us; (b) at the drop of a hat. This is enough to send most of us into terrified blathers. Fortunately, editors and agents (at least those of my acquaintance) are kindly souls who understand this. They’re willing to cut a writer a lot of slack. But not a lot of time. Ten seconds and the elevator door opens. That’s it. They’re gone. Do it right, however, and you might get invited to talk it over at lunch.

  The third part of this equation, the one saving grace, is that we can prepare. That means having our one-sentence pitch nailed down, polished, and practiced.

  Because a pitch is so short, it’s got to go right to the heart of the zing! You don’t have precious extra seconds to go into detailed explanations. You want maximum wow! factor per syllable.

  For me, this process is very much like writing a title. I’m terrible at titles. Occasionally, just the right word or phrase or name will come to me fairly early in the project, but often I have to slog through the laborious process of finding it. I’ve been known to use working titles like The Hot Tub Novel. This is what I do to brainstorm titles—and pitches.

  I sit down with pen and paper, which work better for me than the keyboard on which I write text. Over the years, I’ve developed a series of exercises to get my critical brain offline. One is a timed list: I set a timer for 1 minute, for instance, and have to come up with 15 titles. Rinse and repeat. Another eliminates the number requirement but keeps the timer: 10 minutes, keep the pen moving, don’t go back, don’t cross anything out—GO! Or eliminate the timer but increase the number: 30 titles, no repeats—GO!

  Suppose a pitch sentence has two parts, a situation and a twist. Each can be drilled by the same methods used for a title.

  At this point, I have generated pages of scrawl, most of which is beyond laughably bad. Usually, however, I find one or two that point me in the right direction. They may or may not be just the thing, but I’ve broken the mind-paralysis. I look over my candidates for vagueness (“this sounds like every other teenage vampire romance”), infelicities of word choice, or failure-to-sparkle.

  The next step, unless I am certain one of them is exactly right, “a match made in heaven,” is to find a trusted listener or three. They can be fellow writers or people who work in other fields where they might use a pitch themselves. Once you’ve gotten the written pitch down, these same friends can serve as an audience while you practice. It probably isn’t necessary to recite your pitch word-perfect in real life, but you want to be so solid on the essentials that they flow trippingly from your tongue.

  Now you’ve developed your pitch, you may fear that you will never have the chance to use it. Perhaps you don’t attend conventions or writers conferences where you might meet an agent or editor. Never fear! Life will provide you with other occasions, ones you might not have noticed. Ones that, I might add, can g
et you invited to speak at book clubs and libraries and high school English classes, or even an interview with your college alumni magazine or local newspaper. I suspect that simply because I have that succinct wow! statement handy, I am much more likely to let people know I’ve written a book. The pitch then gives me a launching pad for a discussion (as opposed to my bumbling around, trying to express “what it’s about” and missing that moment of open curiosity).

  When I was a fairly new writer, with only a couple of short story sales, Poul Anderson asked me what I was working on. Gentleman that he was, he very kindly listened through what must have been the most inept pitch since the dawn of time. For no other reason than to never again abuse another writer’s courteous interest, I try to have a short description of my latest story ready. It may not be a finished pitch, but it provides a succinct way of encapsulating why I’m in love with the project.

  No, I won’t give you examples. Unless we meet in an elevator.

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  Book Promotion Rehabilitation

  Sherwood Smith offered some thoughts on the obnoxiousness of authors tooting their own horns unrelentingly in interviews:

  Too many read as if the person was interviewing themself, examining why I’m the greatest, and my novel is the greatest, from every angle in the mirror. The interviews don’t look outward, talking about other things.

  This brings to mind a panel topic at Westercon not too many years ago, “How to Promote Yourself as a Writer without Being Obnoxious.” That we even need to discuss the social etiquette of career building is significant in itself. We aren’t born knowing how to communicate our enthusiasm for our creative efforts. In the world of science fiction and fantasy, like any other genre, there is wide variation in social skills. Aforementioned skills are not necessary to write brilliantly, although an ability to observe them in others is useful. I’ve known writers who were so painfully shy, they’d rather undergo a root canal without anesthetic than go up to a stranger and try to convince him to buy their book, and other writers who gleefully do just that, over and over again.