Well That Was Stupid

So here's what not to do. You remember those posts from the beginning of the year? If not, scroll down the page and take a gander. I haven't posted much this year so they're still easy to find. To summarize, I was all enthused about my novel FAMILY JEWELS. It turned out great, it showed wonderful progress in my own skill as a writer and was receiving positive attention from agents. I insisted, even if this one didn't work out, I was on my way. I would not be defeated.

And then I did something stupid.

I bought into the attention. The attention was strong and it was quick, and it was from people whom I wanted to receive attention. You know those lists you're not supposed to talk about where you have your favorite agents (pieced together from their clients' works, their online presence, and perhaps meeting them at conventions despite the fact they may not be the best fit for you). Yeah, we all have that list. Well the top of my list jumped on my query. Multiple full requests, private messages over Twitter, the whole thing. It's the kind of story published authors tell later. "I thought my early work was so awesome but it was shit. But I kept working and working and when it really was ready, it all happened overnight." And it certainly did feel like it was happening overnight. Two days after my first round of queries, I had multiple full requests. Holy shit, ride that roller coaster! And they were from people on my top five. Including the agent I've wanted to work with most since before she became an acquiring agent and was still an agency assistant. This is IT! Woo hoo!

So I did something stupid.

I waited for my happy ending. I stopped querying other agents, because I was about to get my happy ending. Why would I want to dangle my genius in front of them only to yank it away to work with the person that as about to ask for a call at any moment. I waited. I started my next book. Actually, briefly, I started a sequel to FAMILY JEWELS, but I'm superstitious about that kind of thing, so I started a new novel. And then I waited.

Then I focused on the beginning of the roller derby season and I did a LOT of roller derby. Also, I waited. Then I followed up because it had been a couple months now and I hadn't heard anything, which was odd given how so many people were interested at the beginning and that all of them should suddenly fall silent at the same time. Did the internet break? I didn't get the memo. That's all right. I have this new novel and I have roller derby.

And then I did more derby. And I did less new novel. And I did MORE derby. And I did less new novel. And then I stopped writing.

Because I'm stupid.

Four months of silence from people who showed an interest in my work more effectively killed my creativity than five years of rejections. If this is how the people who like your work treat you, what's the point? Of course, that's just my brain pouting. People have reasons. They get busy. Their actual clients need attention. They change jobs. Who knows, but it's wrong to think it's malicious. (And less wrong to think they brought it on themselves, but we all have obligations, so I don't hand wave that away as easily. I allow a grace period where "overworked" becomes "unprofessional" and I'm still trying to figure out where that line is.)

Either way, I started writing again yesterday. I started by deleting 250 words and then writing 500 or so. They weren't very good. They weren't very bad. But they were more than I had written in the weeks before. Last year, I was hip deep into my second draft. In years before, I was usually on my second novel. This year, though, I'm still on a first draft, and for all my inability to ever give up writing, my enthusiasm for professional publication has been smothered by months of silence.

I'd say I almost prefer rejection, but that's stupid. There's still that chance I'll get an email saying, "Sorry about not responding for forever and a day, my hamster had cancer and things have been hectic here. I loved what I read. Is it still available?" and I'll be able to answer, "Strangely enough, it is."

Covering All the Bases

This post should almost be labeled a redux because I've posted so much of the conversation before. I am once again dealing with that balancing act of craft vs voice. I think more aspiring writers would do well to actually listen, absorb, and apply the feedback they receive from agents when they query. Too often I hear, "It's all subjective and that person is wrong. I'm just going to self-publish." I think that attitude is one major reason why self-publishing still has the negative stigma that it does. But that's not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that taste is subjective, but craft is objective. You might like a poorly written book. You enjoy it despite its lack of technical prowess, storytelling over mechanics and whatnot. So when receiving feedback, it can be hard to understand what is a matter of taste and what is a matter of craft, because the two aren't entirely segregated. They're a cozy Venn diagram. If an agent says, "I think X could be improved," you have to examine this and decide where in the diagram it fits and whether or not its actionable. (Pro Tip: The earlier you are in your career, the more likely it falls in the craft side, so don't get all pissy and go self-publish just because someone didn't extol your genius.)

I'm in that murky larval stage. I've spent the last four years working on pacing, chopping scads of overwriting from my work. I didn't think it was an issue until an agent told me so. I examined my work, saw her point, revised, and improved. One of the main reasons I'm so resistant to self-publishing my own work is that the querying process has improved my craft more than two flipping writing degrees ever did. Working in the system has made me better, so I'm not so quick to talk about how the system is busted and worthless. (Again, getting off track, so I will sum up by saying I agree with the Chuck Wendig school of thought. Publish what's best for you at any given time. It's not one versus the other. For me, I've decided my first step will be a traditional one, however.)

So recently I received feedback about trimming 10k from a manuscript. This is great news. There's interest there or they wouldn't have asked for a resubmit. But I don't know if I want to cut 10k. I'm still analyzing my Venn diagram. This isn't the overwriting of old (or the rambly nature of this post). This was a revised and revised-again manuscript that was built to be what it is. Perhaps with more specific editorial feedback, I could better understand what needs to be cut. But a simple note of "cut 10k" doesn't get me very far. If I had thought 10k needed to be cut, I would have done so of my own accord. So I have to ponder, is this a matter of taste or a matter of craft?

My wife commented about how I like to explain things. I do. She said she doesn't need an explanation. She assumes something happened because the plot needed it to happen and she goes along to see what happens next. I HATE THIS [BOLD FACE]. I hate this soooo much. It reminds me of every bad D&D session I ever sat through where the DM did things for no other reason than that's what he wanted to have happen despite any semblance of logic. I just saw "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit" and there was a prime example right in the middle of the movie. They went to location Beta (one of numerous supposed safe locations, as we had been at Gamma previously) but the bad guys found them! Oh no, a character is taken! Oh no, people are shot! My first thought? Oh no, their secure location has been compromised. They must have a mole! I wonder who the traitor is...

EXCEPT WE NEVER FIND OUT! The security breech is NEVER addressed again. How the fuck did it happen? Sure, I get the power of plot guided the bad guys to the location, but for real, if I'm assuming this is really happening in the setting as provided, how the fuck did they find out? Was someone sloppy and get followed? Was someone turned? Was the site never truly secure? Are none of the other sites secure and if so, how did the previous conversation at Gamma site go so smoothly?

EXPLAIN THIS TO ME, MOTHERFUCKER!

My wife doesn't care. She went along for the ride. But for me, it soured the rest of the movie. There was a whole different story there that I think would have been more interesting than the standard run and gun we see so often. (Why do we drive anywhere if you can outrun a moving vehicle?)

I hesitated in writing this post because I didn't want it to sound like, "I'm not revising any more. What I wrote is perfect." Fuck that. I hate when famous authors do that. Given feedback, I will rewrite if I think it'll make my story better. Absolutely. I want it to be the absolute best it can be. But when I hear, "You should be more like [author]," that doesn't do anything for me. I'm not [author]. I'm me. I don't want to be that person. I want to be me. I have my own voice. And my voice explains shit. I'd like to think there are people out there that want their shit explained (the outer shell of the corn doesn't break down because it's indigestible cellulose, you see). But who knows. Maybe that's such a niche readership that it really will require self-publishing to find them. I haven't come to that point yet. I still have my goals. I still think it's a matter of finding someone who resonates with my voice, and I'm hopeful I'll find that person soon. But I wanted to share my thoughts. I've come a long way. I probably have farther to go (if you think you don't you're both wrong and an asshole). The "Am I good enough?" question never really gets answered. It's always a process of self-examination, and the better I get at this, the harder it is to reach a conclusion. That seems backward, but that's what's happening to me.

2013: A Singular Endeavor

I don't normally do a year in review because my pursuit of publication has been an ongoing effort for over four years now and that story has only changed somewhat. Write a novel -> query, write a novel -> query, start new year, repeat. That was 2009 through 2011. Then came 2012, the year of the great rewrites. I was asked by three different agents to revise and resubmit four different manuscripts, and the entire year disappeared while working on those stories.

And here we are at the end of 2013. It started much like it did every year before it. In February I started and finished the first draft of my most recent novel, FAMILY JEWELS. 28 days almost to the minute. I didn't feel proud. I didn't feel excited. I felt like I had been there before and it wasn't working. 2012 had gotten me "this isn't your best work" plus "this is so close but not for me" plus "I can see how another agent would love this, try sending it to X and Y" plus "This is an amazing story, but it can't be your first novel on the market" all of which equalled being in the same place I had been at the start of the year. Obviously I was improving at my craft, but I still didn't have representation and I still didn't have a book deal, and that just wasn't good enough. And so, we begin 2013, the year of the singular endeavor.

I finished the first draft in 28 days. I spent six months on the second draft. I spent another two on the third draft. And another two on the fourth draft. I did other things in between. I joined a roller derby league. I learned how to skate. I learned how to officiate. I became the head non-skating official of my league. I injured myself repeatedly. I joined a group dance studio with my wife. I wrote the first chapter of my next novel. You know, I lived life. I took all that advice I had always said didn't apply to me and I applied it to me.

And here I am at the end of 2013 and guess what? I still don't have an agent. BUT, I've written the best novel I've ever written since I started taking my writing seriously. It's not my favorite story I've written (that still belongs to WITH A CROOKED CROWN), but it is lightyears better than anything I've put down on electrons. I read Donald Maass' prompts on Twitter and gave more thought to characters that would have otherwise been cliches. I got AMAZING feedback from my beta readers and I applied it to fill all the holes and fix all the failures in logic. I asked myself, what more is there to my character and then I tried to find it and offer it up in the story. (Sure, I've done all that before, but not with the rush I've felt before. It was always, "I don't have any more time to make this better" and that was a mistake. This time, it was going to be better until it was the best it could be.)

How do I know I accomplished that? Well, I started querying this past Saturday (with the twelfth draft of my query) and by Monday, I had two full requests. That's right, kids, FULL requests. Not partials. Stick that feather in my cap, why don't I? I think I will. My query is strong. My synopsis doesn't read like a shopping list. My novel rocks. Even if this doesn't get me an agent, I know that what I'm doing now is what works for me, what makes me the best I can be, and I'm confident that if this novel doesn't have an agent calling me up and saying, "Let's take over the world together," the next one will. Or maybe the one after that. Let's keep going until we find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of this Tootsie Pop.

So happy new year to you, ladies and gents. I hope your past year has been as rewarding as mine and that your forthcoming year is filled with hopes and accomplishments.

Be Sure to Use the Appropriate Nasality

It's been a while since I've posted. I have a few drafts that I'll probably never publish (that happens from time to time), but I have a really good reason why. I've been writing like Robert E. Howard. Not specifically in his style, but when he wrote Conan, he said that the barbarian himself stood behind him, threatening to kill him with his axe if Howard did not tell his story. I started a new draft at the end of January and I fully expect to be finished by the end of February. We often do the numbers and say "If you maintain 1000 words per hour and write two hours every day, you'll have an 80,000-word draft complete in 40 days!" This is absolutely true, and 1000 words per hour is not unreasonable. But things happen. You don't necessarily write 2000 words on Saturday or Sunday. Or you make a mistake and have to rewrite a chapter. Whatever. Forty days is optimistic. It usually takes me three months to finish a first draft, which I still think is respectable. So finishing in one month is both exhausting and exciting.

What would make me stop this high productivity to post here? Well, I'd like to say it's my blog post on what kind of critique critism you should hope for and the dangers of positive feedback, but it's not. It's so I can whine!

A debut author's book is coming out. The cover is being shown all over the webs and people are posting its blurb and an agent says, a fantastic urban fantasy debut! So why am I whining? Because--by the description being posted--it's not urban fantasy! It's contemporary fantasy. Now you might not care for the arguments of what makes a book epic fantasy or what makes it urban fantasy (does it have to have vampires, blah blah blah), but if you're an aspiring fantasy writer, those questions are important. Because when you start looking for an agent, you will see time and time again that the agent is interested in urban fantasy but not other types of fantasy.1

Some agents will just say fantasy with a preference toward... or just fantasy. But that's less common than you might think. Books are shelved in sections. eBooks have metadata. We can be specific, and for personal preference or monetary interest, agents (and editors) specify what kind of fantasy they want. So when a genre is incorrectly shelved in another genre, two things will happen. First, people will be less interested in the story because they think they're buying something they're not.2 Second, people will say that the genre it should have been in is under-represented.

"No one is reading/writing contemporary. It's just too small a market." NUH UH! You're just shelving it wrong! waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! /baby

September marks my fourth anniversary of being a querying writer, so let me ask this anniversary wish. Don't make it harder for me to find representation than it already is. If a book is epic, it's epic. If it's traditional, it's traditional. And if it's contemporary, it's contemporary. Who knows, maybe you'll popularize a genre that hasn't been getting a lot of attention otherwise.



1 Urban was the cash cow for the last decade, so this isn't surprising. Likewise, after Game of Thrones hit it big on HBO, you saw a lot of agents add epic to their list of interests. This faded a lot faster because people who aren't used to reading epic discovered what a mountain of text comes with an epic manuscripts. If you're under 150,000 words, you haven't written an epic fantasy. Or at least, you haven't written it very epically.

2 See this post by Kristin Nelson to understand the importance of metadata.

Run for Your Lives!

An exciting thing happened to me in September. An agent read a full manuscript of mine and offered me a recommendation. I know it's not as cool as offering me representation, but a recommendation is pretty awesome in itself. "Send it to X and Y."

Well hell yes I will! Especially since both X and Y are on my short list of agents I would like to work with. What an awesome opportunity!

The thing is, both X and Y are at the same agency. Now some agencies specifically say "do not query multiple agents" but this isn't one of them. HOWEVER, I was still nervous of querying them both simultaneously. Some asshats out there will use in their query "so and so said I should email you" when so and so absolutely did not do that. They assume agents are enemies and don't talk to each other. Publishing is small folks and agents absolutely talk to each other. If you lie, you will get caught.

So I didn't want to appear to be one of those people by querying two agents at the same agency that I was contacting them on a recommendation even though it's absolutely true. I weighed the merits of both and chose which to send to first. And now I'm waiting. It's hard to wait for a response to queries. Harder still when you have a recommendation that you're hoping will help your already awesome manuscript (of course) rise to the top of the slush pile. Harder to the umpeenth degree when some agencies (a la Nelson Literary Agency) frequently send responses in two weeks or less. I've had agents respond to queries six months after I originally sent them. One time, I finished a manuscript and then received a rejection for the manuscript I had written BEFORE that one. There is not a set schedule for this kind of stuff.

So here I am waiting and it dawns on me. Shit, NaNoWriMo is here! With NaNoWriMo comes the SUPER-SLUSH! That period at the end of November through the middle of January where hopeful participants think their 50,000-word quantity-over-quality block of text is the next Harry Potter. I've made the mistake of querying during the super-slush. If you are serious about your career, just skip this time period. It's a billion times harder to get noticed. There are holidays and there is a ton of shit coming in.

So I am going to query second agent now so I don't get lumped in with the pending onslaught of 50k novels. If you're working on your query right now, I recommend you get that thing polished and out the door.

All In?

I was speaking with an agent a few weeks back, and we got on the subject of self-publishing. As has been recorded here, my opinion on self-publishing has evolved as self-publishing itself has evolved. I won't say it's changed, because that loses the nuance of my progress. The majority of self-published work I read is tear-your-eyes-out bad. Sure the gatekeepers have been tossed aside, but for all their difficulty, those gatekeepers added a degree of value. Bad stuff still gets through, but not so much.

Conversely to that, good stuff also comes out of self-publishing and it can be an avenue for certain circumstances that best benefit the author. That's my position (and will remain my position going forward): do what's best for you and your career. That does not require me to pick one side over the other. I pick both sides. (Likewise, the DOJ is incredibly on the mark and off the mark at the same time with its anti-trust case. It's shocking how much I agree with things they say but for totally different reasons and how much I disagree with their proposed solutions, but that's a different conversation.)

Anyway, (I haven't had a lot of sleep over the last week. I apologize for rambling), I was talking to this agent and we discuss self-publishing and whether I have considered it, which I have. The second time THE TRIAD SOCIETY came a hair's breadth away from getting me representation, I was heartbroken. It's good enough! I cried. I know it's good enough! I'm so tired of being rejected! Why is this so hard?

And that is why I don't self-publish. Because it's easier to publish (not to be successful at it, but to publish it, it is sooo much easier). And once it becomes that easy, why would you ever want to do it the hard way again? My goal is to gain representation and publish with an established publisher. I will self-publish a couple titles, most likely, in the future, but that is not my goal. So if I self-publish now, that goal is over and lost. I will never endure rejection after rejection when I can snap my fingers and have a book appear (and I make ebooks for a living, so before you say "it's harder than that" keep in mind I've been making them for close to a decade now).

Also, said agent with whom I had this conversation asked to read THE TRIAD SOCIETY. In between heartbreak and now, another agent asked to read my best work. Given how close I had come before, I obviously chose this one. I tweaked a chapter I was dissatisfied with and sent it off. She dropped the truth like a hammer. "This is not your best work." End stop.

I determined a rewrite from her feedback and began said rewrite for this request. My scope for the rewrite flopped right away. As soon as I revised the setting, the actual plot fell apart. It couldn't happen the way I envisioned with my new constrictions. But as I went over content, I saw two things. I LIKE this story. I like it the way it is. I don't want to change the scope or lose the plot. Also, it was NOWHERE NEAR MY BEST WORK. What the hell was I thinking? What a lost opportunity. I have truly grown as a writer because I'm looking at this and I want to reach through space-time and slap myself. What was I thinking sending this to agents in such a state.

Which makes me hopeful for this time around. It's better. It's significantly better than it's ever been before. If she turns it down, will I self-publish? Probably not. The last time I said "It's good enough!" I was wrong. Perhaps I'm wrong this time too. Perhaps I have more growing to do.

To quote Kima Griggs from The Wire, Sometimes you gotta play it hard.



And with that, I'm going to go drown myself in coffee so I can get through the work day. Night night.

A Whole Different World

Being a digital generation, it's easy to get trapped in the notion that who people are online is who they are in real life. And not to say that they're liars or phonies, but when we're on Twitter or Blogger or Facebook, we only see a fraction of that person. I never "market" myself, meaning I always write/speak the way I would if you met me in real life. Joseph L. Selby the internet person is the same as Joseph L. Selby the real-life person. BUT, I don't tweet my trash talk during board games. I don't Facebook my tears while I watched Brave. So, yeah, more to me than these words. More to you too, I should hope. Otherwise you need to close your computer and go outside.

I had the opportunity to speak to someone yesterday, an agent that very successfully uses social media to her advantage (no, it wasn't "the" talk, don't get excited). I thought I had a pretty good handle on who this person was, what our dynamic would be like if we worked together, etc. We've been interacting for some time now, right? You learn things about people and that allows you to inform decisions. I do it. You do it. They do it.

BUT HOLY HELL! That phone call was a thousand times more awesome than any conversation on Twitter or Facebook. That was some professional-level awesomeness that just blew me away. So a lesson I learned, Social Media is only a glimpse. And while sometimes a glimpse is enough (I still won't query the agent that uses her Twitter to make fun of how people are dressed), most times remember that there's a lot more to that person than what you're seeing. Wait for the phone call before making up your mind.

If your call was anything like mine, they might just end up blowing your mind.

How Thick Is Your Skin?

So agent extrodinaire, Kristin Nelson, has a feature seminar she takes to conventions and the like. Participants bring their first two pages up to the mic and start reading. She tells them when, if they had submitted those pages to her, when she would stop reading and why. You might think, "How awesome! She's giving feedback!" but pause for a second and let it settle in. She tells you when she would stop reading. Not, she lets you finish and then tells you when she would stop reading.

What would it be like, to be up there in front of all those people and have an agent tell you stop after your first sentence? Not so exciting now, eh?

Oh, it is? Yeah, to me too. And how cool is it that she's offering that seminar directly through her new programs? Now you can knuckle down and muscle up even if you're not at a con. Payment is by paypal, so if you're set up to withdraw from your bank account, you won't have your payment processed in time. If you're linked to a credit card, you still could. It's this coming Wednesday at 8pm Eastern (6pm Mountain--I hope people realize the time is listed as Mountain). Submit two pages and see how you do!

I paused in my current wip and returned to PRINCE OF CATS. It's the only finished draft I have right now that I haven't previously queried. I have beta reader feedback, but I've been having difficulty figuring out how to incorporate it. Until Tuesday, which makes this seminar ideally timed. I've started revising the draft for querying AND for this seminar. I am both thrilled at the chance of getting great feedback (and maybe having all two pages read?!) while at the same time terrified at hearing stop after the first sentence. It's like bungee jumping, it's both terrifying and exhilarating.

So if you're interested, you should join in. Kristin rocks the house.