The Rewards Happy Authors Deserve

By Julie Wright

Writing is sometimes a thankless job with no reward. We spin words on thousands of pages that no one but our moms have read; we mail off queries and get back rejections. We smile over gritted teeth when our friends get contracts, and try to remember that we love our friends, and we're really happy for them. It's hard to stay motivated

If you want a child to do something—to get a chore done—I’ve heard that reward is the greatest tool. If that doesn't work you can try taking away privileges or punishment to motivate the child.

But what happens if you want an *adult* to do something. What happens when you want *yourself* to do something?

I am not easily motivated. As an adult I am no longer swayed by enticements of candy or cookies. I can get those things if I want them--anytime I want them. I'm an adult. That's the perk of being an adult.

And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I should up the reward. Okay fine, if I get my book written, I'll get to go on an exotic trip to Tahiti. Except, I know what my checking account contains (or doesn't contain, as the case may be . . . hello? I'm an author . . .). So I have to be responsible. That's the non-perk of being an adult.

Motivating someone who already knows what they can and can't do is a tough proposition. But I still think it can be done with a few tips to make it easier.

• Self Control--It's necessary to use good self control to make sure your motivating factors are really motivating. With kids, it's easy to reward or withhold a reward when they do the things they do. You put the cookies up on the higher shelf. You lock up the x-box and hide the key. But when we are self governed it's a little harder. We know where the keys are, and we can reach that high shelf with very little effort. Being honest with yourself and refraining from partaking of an unearned reward will make the reward that much sweeter when you genuinely earn it.
• Set a daily goal, a weekly goal, a monthly goal, and a final goal. And reward yourself at special milestones. So let's say every fifty pages, you get a manicure, or a massage, or you get a movie night. It makes the journey of writing a little sweeter. I know that our very own Annette Lyon uses chocolate as a motivator. When she finished a daily goal she rewarded herself with a little bit of the really good chocolate. We're not talking Hershey's here. Were talking real CHOCOLATE.
• Make the final goal something a little bigger. Most of us cannot afford a trip to Tahiti, but maybe you can get play tickets or a weekend getaway to somewhere close by, or season tickets to whatever your favorite sport is. I reward myself with books. When I finish writing a novel, I allow myself to read. I allow myself to read five to ten books in between each novel I write. This makes it so much easier for me not to get distracted in other people's stories and provides me something to work for. I will buy a book (or several books) that I REALLY want to read and put them up on my desk where I have to look at them, knowing I cannot crack their spines until I am done.
• Make submission goals as well as writing goals. It's great to get a book written, but if you don't submit it to anyone . . . so what? You can't exactly make a goal that states, "I will be published by June." You can't control the publishers and agents. So keep your goals within the realm of things you can control. Set goals for submitting: I will query five different agencies every week for the next six months.
• Make networking goals. Attending writer's conferences provides you further education and builds friendships with people who understand what you're going through. Make a goal to attend one major conference a year and to maybe attend several smaller ones to help you stay at the top of your game. Make a goal to meet with at least two agents or editors at every conference you attend. Gather business cards.

I have to be honest, as far as rewards go, writing for me *is* the reward. If I don't write, I find myself stuck in depression I can't readily get out of. If I obtain my daily writing goal, I find satisfaction in every other aspect in my life. I love writing. It makes me happy. I can't think of a better reward than that.

So reward yourself and write. You totally deserve it.

LUW Conference 2008

By Heather Moore



This past weekend, Josi and I attended the League of Utah Writers Round-up Conference. It was a lot of fun and we took tons of notes! So prepare yourselves . . . The most amazing thing I heard was about perseverence. The authors who were there presenting talked about how important it is to get feedback on your work, then to submit . . . and keep submitting! It is hard to break into the publishing world, but it's very possible.

And of course, I always recommend writers, beginners or experts, to attend Writer's Conferences. Networking is just as important as learning to better your craft. One of the presenters (Elizabeth Lyon) talked about how writing is an art form. But it's unique in the fact that we don't have a visual display like an artist. In fact, not many people will see it unless it becomes published. She said that if you have something that you aren't able to get published, then consider having a POD book (point on demand) printed. That way, you will still have your piece of art accessible. Something to think about.

Maybe I'll re-edit those dusty manuscripts and put them in art form :)

Oh yeah, and Josi had a new book come out last week, Her Good Name. It's a great suspense novel based on identity theft. It's silly not to mention this on our writing and editing blog. Congrats Josi!

Art and Commercialism

In college, there was a patch of grass on campus surrounded by signs insisting the students keep off the grass. While walking to class one day with a friend of mine (majoring in accounting), he veered to the left, obeying the sign's declaration of dominion. I went straight--through the grass. He stopped in a moment of uncertainty. We were late for class. The grass would cut out several minutes of walking time. And I showed not the slightest inclination of choosing his direction over mine.

With a grumbling sort of growl, he gave into peer pressure and scurried over the lawn to walk with me. "The sign says stay off the grass!" He waved his arms wildly around as though I failed to notice I was doing the exact opposite.

"I'm an artist," I said. "I pen my own rules." And with that, continued on my merry way to class. We were still late, even with the short cut over the lawn.

Writers, dancers, artists, musicians--we're kind of an arrogant lot--moody, tempermental, we expect things to go our way simply because we're artists. We think outside the box and expect to be able to walk outside the box too.

Recently a book came out that caused quite a stir. It was literary (word 'literary' said with a slight accent as you lift your nose in condescension). The publisher sent out many review copies to various active reviewers and then threw a tantrum when the reviews came pouring in--most of them negative.

I've heard it a lot, "Don't you people understand art?"

Well, maybe . . . maybe not. I know what I like. I know what kind of music I want to listen to, what kind of paintings I want to look at and hang in my house, what kind of books I like to read. If your art doesn't fit with my tastes that doesn't mean it isn't art, but it doesn't mean I have bad taste either. It just means that our minds didn't meet. Big deal, right?

Well it is a big deal if you're an author looking to make a few dollars on your work--at least enough money to pay for your paper and ink.

I totally get wanting to push boundaries and wanting to be unique, but you have to ask yourself one vital question, "Who am I writing this for?" If your goal is to sell books, then you need to have an audience in mind. It sounds base and crass to consider peddling your art like that, but even the most brilliant artist needs to eat.

Commercialism really isn't evil. What good is a really artsy book that no one wants to read?

Readers expect certain things from every genre. In romance, the guy MUST get the girl. In mystery, you MUST discover who the murderer is before he strikes that final time. Rules . . . even for the artist.

Who is your audience and are you writing the best book you can for them? And if your audience is not the mainstream, be smart and don't send review copies out to mainstream reviewers. If you didn't write for them, then they aren't likely to appreciate your product and will end up hurting sales more than helping. And if you find yourself writing a book with a particular audience in mind, but the book you're writing will betray that audience by going places that audience doesn't want to go, you might want to look at a few signs like "stay off the grass."

There may be a more profound message there.

Specificity

by Annette Lyon

Once again I'm inspired for my post by A Conversation on the Writing Life by Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg.

This time the topic could be called, “show, don’t tell,” but to me (and especially the early writer me), “specificity” describes it so much better.

I can’t remember how many times I’d get the comment that I was telling instead of showing, and I’d want to scream, “I thought I was showing!”

Showing has several elements, but specificity is one of my favorites. The gist is to take a general noun (such as a car) and tell us more. Make us see it.

Is it a VW Bug? Is it a little red Toyota truck with rusted wheel wells? Is it a sleek, black Jaguar? A yellow Jeep with fuzzy, pink dice hanging from the mirror?

The more specific you are, the more clearly readers will see the “movie” in your head—and be drawn into your imaginary world.

If I say I walked into a yard with beautiful, fragrant flowers, you might have a certain image in mind. But it’s probably pretty vague, and the picture in your head is going to be very different than the one in mine.

What if instead I say that I walked under a arch of pink climbing roses and then past a hedge of violet-colored lilacs, and that a vase along the winding gravel path was full of yellow irises?

Ah, now we’re picturing the same thing. And it’s a lot more specific and memorable than plain old “flowers.”

So the girl in your book isn’t just a girl. She’s a six-year-old red-head with pigtails and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks—and a black eye.

The man isn’t tall—he has to duck to get through the doorway.

The woman isn’t tired—instead, her eyes open and close heavily, her gait is slow and measured, and she rubs her eyes with her fingertips.

Granted, you can take specificity too far. You don’t want to describe each and every passing character and landscape in total detail, resulting in what’s often called, “purple prose.” (You know, the kind of thing where a sunset lasts two pages and you’re ready to scream at the author to get on with it already!)

But in general, writers tend to err on the side of being too vague.

Think about J. K. Rowling’s first description of Snape’s classroom. Yes, we know it’s a dungeon, so it’s obviously dim and dank. She doesn’t go on much about that. Instead she drops in a creepy detail about jars on the shelves that hold floating dead things. She doesn’t need to include much more than that. We get the picture, and we want out of the classroom as much as Harry does.

Take a piece of your work and circle every noun and every adjective. Look them one at a time. Is there a way to make them more specific? Can you focus your mental “movie” a bit more and give the reader something that’ll convey your world to them more clearly?

In general, two or three details when introducing a new major character or location are plenty, provided you’ve picked good, solid ones that can represent the rest of the person or place.

Now I’ll head to my kitchen, where I’ll open a dark alder wood cupboard for a glass, and then I’ll take out the Winder Farms chocolate milk from the stainless-steel fridge. Mmm. Good.


(Can you see it?)

Five Tips to Improve Your Writing

by Lu Ann Staheli

I’ve been working as an editor now for a long time, first with students at school, but more recently I’ve returned to editing manuscripts for local publishers. As I’ve been working on the most recent projects, I’ve started to keep a list of suggestions that would help the authors improve the flow and content of their stories. Each of these is a simple fix, yet applying them could make a huge difference in the quality of writing, and improved quality means a better reading experience for your audience.

1. Use the Natural Order for Dialogue Tags

“He said” is the natural order of things and should be used whenever possible. Lately I’ve read three manuscripts where the author has elected to use “said he,” every time. Although an occasional use of this order works, using it too often makes the reader begin to focus on the tag and not the dialogue, the place where the focus should be. In an effort to avoid the same-old-same-old, authors tend to let the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction, thinking their new sentence structure will seem fresh and interesting. Instead, it feels awkward and annoying. My philosophy of writing is: Never annoy your reader. If your reader become too annoyed, they will no longer be your reader, and in the publishing world, that’s the last thing you want them to do.

2. Stop Telling Me How to Feel

Although it is important for your reader to experience a sense of place and character, adding a tag or beat that tells them how the character speaks easily becomes distracting. Words or phrases such as laughed, with a smile, in a serious tone, or asked happily are all examples of the author telling the audience. A better way is to strengthen the dialogue itself, so there is no doubt in the reader’s mind how the character feels when they say these words. Of course, an occasional directive may be needed, but most of the time these tags and beats can go.

3. Echoes are for Mountain Tops, Not Fiction

If you are in the habit of letting your characters echo or question everything that is said to them, you need to stop. When new ideas are thrown at a character, it is likely they will want to know more, but instead of repeating the key word from the previous dialogue, give them a question that covers new ground. Insist those characters listen the first time, then build upon the information they have been given. Stand-alone questions like what and huh are wasted words, something most novelists really can’t afford.

4. Put Your Dialogue Tags on a Diet

When you were in grade school, you probably had a teacher who insisted that you use a variety of words to replace said. It’s great that you know all those words, but in this case, your teacher was wrong. Dialogue tags need to be invisible. They are only there as place markers, a way for your reader to know who is speaking during a conversation with two or more characters. Keep your tags as bland as possible. Use said, whispered, and asked, always things a speaker can actually do with words. If you want to add a little spice, you may do so, but don’t change dialogue tags every time the character speaks. As a matter of fact, see how many times you can get away without using them at all.

One way to do this is to know how to use a beat, a descriptive phrase that also adds sense of place. Recently I edited a manuscript that used the following tags on a single page: said, questioned, replied, asked, replied, answered, said, said, questioned, answered, laughed. Not only were most of them too heavy, but the repetition of those heavier words stood out like an elephant in a group of penguins. An occasional beat like this might have worked better: “He could hardly keep the laugher from bursting through his words.”

5. Stop Beating the Dead Horse

Once you established a point, get on with it. Develop the information more if you need to, but don’t continue to tell us the same thing, just in new words. This might be harder for you to recognize in your own work than the other points I’ve made. Ask your trusted readers—the ones who see your manuscript before it goes to an editor—to look for times you’ve gone too far in making a statement. Sure, it might be significant to your story that the audience understands how handsome a character is, that another one is a klutz, and that they each have things they want, but give us credit for being able to remember that from the things they do and say, without you, the author, reminding us numerous times per page.

Final Words

These are the kinds of errors that are easy to make as we write with the muse. They are also corrections that are easy to do. Sometimes we need the help of other people to recognize we have fallen into their use, but most often, we can find them in our own work. Learning to write well requires constant work; each new piece brings its own challenges, but when we pay attention to detail and watch our writing improve, the rewards make all that work worthwhile.

Opening a Vein--Or Not

by Annette Lyon

You've probably heard the quote from Walter "Red" Smith:

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."

Every writer, from beginning to seasoned, can relate (ever hit your head against a wall and just KNOW there's no way you'll finish your book? And if you ever do, it'll stink? Yeah.).

The writing life has more to drag you down than that dreaded wall: writer's block, rejections and everything (a universe more!) in between.

But what if you stopped writing? Would you be happier?

If you're ever to the point where you're stuck on the "open up a vein" and "this is painful" mentality, I recommend listening to A Conversation on the Writing Life with Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron.

The two-hour program covers a variety of topics, but even the first five minutes is enough to lift you up and remember why you started this writing gig to begin with.

Let me remind you: Writing is fun. It brings you joy. It makes you more YOU.

At least, that's what it does for me. Natalie Goldberg says that if she hasn't written that day and you run into her in the afternoon, you can tell. She's less grounded, less herself.

I'm the same way. If I take too much time off from writing, the house is messier. I have less time for the kids and my husband. My entire life seems to implode, and I can't ever catch up.

But when I take a little time here and there for writing, I'm more me. Everything falls into place. Paradoxically, I have more time for all my other demands. I'm a happier person. I'm a better wife. I'm a better mom.

Granted, now that I have deadlines and a publishing schedule, that "little time" can get out of balance and take up a LOT of time. I have to be careful not to let my life get too crowded by writing that other areas suffer.

But at the same time, even when I bemoan the latest critique I got or my low numbers or whatever the gripe of the day might be, I have to remind myself that I'm a writer.

It's who I am.

More importantly, it makes me more me. And that's something to celebrate.

Here's the dirty little secret with writing:

Most of the time, writing doesn't come from angst-ridden, drug-addicted artists starving in some attic in the winter cold. And most of the time there is absolutely no blood-letting involved.

Instead, writing is FUN. Shhhh. Don't tell.

Intellectual Property in the Air

Seven years ago, I shot straight up in bed. I had a fabulous idea for a book. It was going to be hilarious. I laughed just thinking about it, though tried to keep it quiet since the husband was sleeping next to me. I tiptoed out to my kitchen and penned the outline in the fever of maniacal giggling. I knew I had a bestseller flying from my pen to the paper. (this was back when I wrote all my novels in spiral notebooks and had no clue how to send an email.)

The entire book idea stemmed from a play on words from another bestseller. My book was going to be called How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. It was going to be a gag gift for all those positive thinking people that irritate us. It was going to be awesome.

That was seven years ago.

The book remains on my hard-drive--never submitted, though occasionally thought about.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the movies and saw a trailer for a movie that looked so lame, I determined I would never go see it. Guess what the title was.

Go ahead. Guess.

Yep: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

&%$%#@*$@!!!!!!!!! What are the chances????????????? (All those exclamation marks and questions marks are the representation of me stomping my feet and screaming while tearing out my hair.)

This comes two months after I read the backliner of Stephenie Meyer's The Host and realized the whole premise of her book is about two souls living in one body. Guess what.

Go ahead. Guess.

Yep. Two years ago, I wrote a book that has a bi-soul as one of the characters. The bi-soul is seriously awesome. It's schizophrenia at its finest. Though this character is a minor character, I don't want to edit her out. She's funny. She's interesting. Her history and the history of the planet she comes from intrigue me and fill me with joy that I wrote something so cool. I love my character. The book hasn't found a publisher yet, but I am not editing out my bi-soul.

I am never EVER going to read Stephenie's book (no offense Stephenie, but I wrote my bi-soul before you wrote yours). At least that way, no one can ever claim I copied.

Seriously. How is this possible? What are the chances? I really do believe that ideas are in the air like pollen riding the wind. They are waiting to be plucked and put to use. Why do I always pluck and then come late to the putting to use part? Argh!

The moral of this story is

• Tearing out your hair is painful. I don't suggest it to anyone.
• The cosmos feel it unfair for them to hand you a cool idea when you're going to hide it on your computer for all eternity.
• The cosmos have a wicked sense of humor and figure if you don't use your idea, someone else ought to get a crack at it.
• If you have an idea for something, get it written and SUBMITTED.

I'm serious. What's holding you back from submitting? I will be honest and raise my hand and be the first person to admit it was naked fear. Sometimes I get so afraid of the rejection time and time again that I hang onto my ideas with jealous fervor. But hanging too tight to your manuscripts is like trying to hang onto that slime stuff kids play with. The tighter the hold, the more slime eeks out between your fingers until you're holding nothing at all.

So do yourself a favor and submit your manuscripts. After all, you never know when someone is going to take your idea and make a lame movie out of it before you have a chance to be brilliant.