Magic Words

Pat Rice checking in.  Since we seem to be answering reader questions, I thought I'd join in---

> How did you all go from zero to published? Did you futz about with it for years  before buckling down to write a whole novel? Or did you decide one day, "I'm  going to write a novel", and voila! finished it 3-6-9 months later?

I wrote my first full novel in fifth grade on the IBM Selectric typewriter my father brought home from work (he worked at IBM and they had special deals).  I always intended to be a writer, but as I got older, I realized there were complications---like making a living.  I'm not much on the starving artist in a garret business.  I took accounting in college because I'd always worked in the financial sector and money was of interest to me.  <G>  I aced my advanced comp and literature courses in college, my teachers adored me, but it wasn't to be. I'd make a really, really bad teacher, and that's about all you can do with a literature degree.  So I wrote and researched as a hobby until we moved to a rural area where female accountants weren't highly valued (which seriously dates me, I fear!).  With nothing better to do but watch the kids and corn grow, I read my first historical romance, and the rest—as they say—is history.  It probably took me longer to get serious about writing a book than it did to get it published, but this was in the early eighties when anything sexy and historical sold.  (And yes, I started with the cheapest K-Mart spiral notebooks and Bic pens that I could find at the time--being an unpaid housewife wasn't something to which I was accustomed!)


>>What did you use to learn the craft - college classes? Books? Critique partner/group? Trial  and error? ... How many completed  manuscripts did you have before you sold? Is getting published the first time different today than when you first published?

I read every book I could find in the market I wanted to enter.  I knew nothing about critiques or RWA.  My only training was the immense amount of literature I’d consumed over the years, and the articles in Writers Market and Writers Digest.  My first manuscript I wrote as a joke---I'd already figured out that historical romance required a tall, dark, handsome hero set in a historical drama, so I wrote a black Civil Rights activist in the 1960s.  <G>  But then I got cocky and decided my stuff was as good as anything I'd seen published, and I began sending it around.  An agent wanted to charge me to read it, and I said thanks, but no thanks (I read those Writers Digest articles after all!).  She got real snippy and said I might try Zebra.  I found Zebra books at the store, realized they wanted sensuality, and sat down and wrote a sensuous story set in the area in which I was living (because I’d been told to write what I know).  So I sold the second book I wrote.  I don't think the first will ever see the light of day <G>, but I learned a lot while writing it.  I'm a reader.  The errors screamed at me when I re-read the pages after setting them aside for a while.  Trial and error is me.

Getting published today is totally different.  The romance market has been narrowed in many ways, and broadened in others.  But today, you have to know the basics, or you won't get past the first reader.  And by "basics," I don't mean just grammar and punctuation, although those are essential.  You have to know that writing a book set in Africa in 1900 is going to be a tough sell and be prepared to add in all the marketing high ticket items to sway an editor into reading it.  You have to know word counts and which editors like what and that there are only half as many big publishers as twenty years ago, and be prepared to go to small pubs if your book leans too far in the wrong direction to sell to the big pubs.  Or else your name needs to be Nora Roberts.  <G>

I wish I could hand our readers the magic words that would instantly turn them into published writers, but I might as well wish for a wand and a million dollars.  Getting published requires a lot of hard work, a lot of luck, talent, and persistence.  Unless you’re prepared to write just because you love it, it’s best not to even embark on a writing career.  It’s a wonderful release for fantasies and dreams and things that build up inside of us, but the reality is that writing is a business, with all the same ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs.

How many of our readers are interesting in becoming a writer? Is it because you’re readers that you want to write? Or because there are stories inside of you that need telling? 

Comments

[Susan Wilbanks]

Pat, that story about the civil rights activist sounds like something I'd want to read. :-)

I am indeed an aspiring writer. I've completed two manuscripts and am working on a third. The first lives in a box under my bed; the second landed me an agent and is currently making the rounds of the publishing houses.

I've always written, but until a few years ago I never finished anything. I'm not sure what changed--maybe I just got a little more mature and able to focus. But for all my life I've had imaginary people in imaginary communities running around in my head, and a desire to write their stories down. I was in my 20's before I realized that was in any way unusual. I remember talking about it with my then-roommate, and being surprised she *didn't* have stories jangling around in her head. She gave me a funny look and said that she thought people like me existed so people like her would have books to read. That's when I first suspected I really was meant to be a writer, though it'd be another 3-4 years before I started the first manuscript I finished.

I'm going to resist the temptation to whine about the state of the market. It's not that I never whine--I'm HUMAN--but this is too public a forum for it. And, after all, I have an agent, and my manuscript is currently somewhere on three editors' desks. Maybe I'll get lucky and sell tomorrow. But I'll confess to a sometimes paralyzing fear that I'll never manage to hit the sweet spot of the market--that I'll always be too far ahead of the trends, or too far behind them, too derivative, too far out there, or too whatever. I can't imagine quitting. I love it too much, and on some level I *need* to write. I have a quote from one of Jennifer Crusie's RWR columns on my wall at work to keep me going when the juggling act of working full-time while trying to be a good wife and a good mother to my toddler daughter while still stubbornly making time to write is almost overwhelming:

"So you're building your island based on unrealistic dreams and convictions made of thin air. What's the worst that can happne? You never get published or the book of your heart tanks, and you never reach your goal, but at the end of your life you look back and say, 'I had a dream and I fought for it, I believed in myself and my work, and I never, ever gave up.' That's a life well lived, folks, a helluva lot better than, 'I had a dream but it wasn't realistic so I quit and watched television.' Do not let reality push you around, do not be sensible and kill your own dreams, and for the love of God do not let people who are only guessing about what's going to happen next tell you that you're a fool for believing in yourself and your stories."

I love that quote. It helps me stay stubborn on the tough days.

[Cathy]

I have stories in my head, more than you care to know about.

I'm the one with the crumbling terrace wall who imagined a whole castle grew up around it.

I often hear published writers say they always told stories, even as children. I never thought I did until I realized that my childhood prevarications were stories! That was a recent revelation.

Before the age of 7 or 8, I couldn't just relate the facts to my grandparents (who raised me). Everything had to take on a twist... though I hadn't intended it when I started out telling the event.

For instance... My father took me for a ride in his new covertible. I think I was 5.

Later, over dinner, my grandmother asked me how the ride was. I told her...

It was wonderful. I stood in the backseat as we drove under rows of trees. Dad had to speed up because monkeys started throwing coconuts at us and dad was worried they'd dent his new Cadillac. So he sped up. Then one of the monkeys grabbed me and started swinging me from tree-to-tree. At the end of the road they dropped me back into dad's car.

This was probably somewhere in New Jersey!

Ya know, my grandparents just listened. Fortunately I learned to tell the difference between fact and fiction before it got me into trouble.

[susannac in alabama]

I love that quote too, Susan! And Pat, you remind me of what a preacher friend of mine told my brother when he was thinking of committing his life to that work: Don't do it if you can do anything else. He didn't mean, "Run! Run away!" He was saying, Don't do it unless you can't be happy doing anything else. It requires that kind of commitment. I think being a fiction writer is the same way.

I too am working on a manuscript. I've started several over the years, been in various writing groups, made all kinds of notes and directed my life so I was experiencing the things I wanted to write about. I never gave myself permission to really focus on it. But I eventually realized that everything I did was about writing even when it wasn't on the surface. So now I'm serious. And living Jennifer Crusie's admonition!

As for stories... mysteries are my thing, with romance tossed in (think Tami Hoag with a dash of Stephen King or Michael Connelly). Nearly everywhere I go, part of my brain is considering how it would work as a murder site. I have a slew of story ideas, including Regency era, three in particular that I don't have the skill to write yet. I'll get there :). And if I never publish, well, I will have told my stories nonetheless.

But I think I'll publish. Gotta have confidence, right?

(BTW, when I say "experiencing what I want to write about", I don't mean murder :D. I mean I've gone ride along with cops and studied abnormal psychology and been to an autopsy... that sort of thing.)

[Patricia Rice]

Crusie's quote is perfect, and the Reverend's reference to not doing it if you can do something else is right on. Writing seems to be a personality trait, something that lives with us and can't be shucked off. We can ignore it, but it's always there, popping out in some manner. But writing for a living is another critter entirely!

It should be interesting to see how that imagination pops out in our younger generation as e-books and video games become the way of the world. Animated literature anyone?

[Merry]

What is my interest and why am I on this blog? I am not, nor have I ever been, a writer of fiction. I wrote poetry incessantly when I was a kid, but never stories. The wierd thing is now I find myself interested in knowing about writing, even though I don't do it. I read most of "writing a romance novel for dummies", even though I am quite clear I don't intend to write one. People who write novels write a lot. I occasionally write a comment or two on this blog, - and do what is necessary for work (as a therapist) and that's about it. I find myself interested in questions like "how do they manage to write like that?" what is it that draws me to the novels that I like, and what distinguishes them from others?" I'm also interested in the more sociological questions, like how are womens self-concepts, self-definition, drive for equality and personal growth are expressed in romance novels. I am also interested in how romance novels express and deal with characters who are unconventional, but have to make some kind of peace with existing society- and the process of figuring that out. So I'm basically just a very interested reader.
Merry

[Jaclyne Laurin]

You asked a very good and though inspiring question. Why do any of us want to write. I do have stories in my head, but the problem is that I lack the discipline it takes to write it down... Oh I started, got a couple of chapters down and just left it -- to float inside the computer! Who knows, I might get back to it (or not!)

[Jane George]

Dear Merry,

You sound like the reader every writer dreams about. The one who "gets it." There's thousands more like you, right?

I too am interested in how romance novels function in the larger sociological scheme of things and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they're cropping up more often as thesis topics.
Best,
Jane

[Susie F]

So cool Pat! Thanks for sharing!

And though I am totally into these stories, I am not writing or attempting to write novels (I know how much talent and hard work it takes!).

However I love to read everything and do write and produce entertainment for a living, so the stories y'all tell fascinate me.

Getting the first book written and published takes GUTS and audacity and reminds me very much of those of who strive in comedy or showbiz, even if the base personalities and life experiences couldn't be more different.

Thanks again,

Susie

[Patricia Rice]

I utterly adore readers who are curious about the world around them. Maybe your active minds don't take you down the writing path (fortunate you!), but it will take you far in any endeavor you choose. I wish we could teach everyone to use their brains for more than finding the closest Big Mac.

Yeah, Susie, creating kids can be as challenging as being a writer and may take all your genius and creativity right there. "G" Ask your mom. So, are you saying your brother is a glutton for punishment? "G" Give him a hug next time you see him. I am thrilled to find a new writer who can use his brains and still keep it human.

(Everyone else not Susie--go check Amazon for Adam Felber's first book. With Edith Layton for Mom, you know it's gonna be delicious.)

[LorettaChase]

Great post, Pat. Interesting how most of us had to learn to earn a living first, but we had to write, as you said. Merry and Jane, reading your comments made my day.