Call For Guest Posts!

gentle readers!

I will be taking vacation time the week of Memorial Day, so I'm going to need five—count 'em, five—guest posts to go up from Monday, May 30th to Friday, June 3rd. And one of them could be yours!

Who: You!

What: One (1) guest post per customer. Please try to keep them in the neighborhood of 300 to 1,000 words. Be creative! Feel free to include a brief bio (50 or so words) and a link to your blog/website, if you have one. Reposts of material from your own blog are 100% fine.

When: You have until 11:59 pm on Monday, May 23rd. I'll announce the five winning posts on Wednesday, May 25th, and they'll be posted Monday, May 30th through Friday, June 3rd.

Where: Right here, on pmn!

Why: I'll be out of town and 100% incommunicado. The show, however, must go on, and I need your help to ensure that happens.

How: Please paste your post into the body of an e-mail and send it along to pimpmynovel [åt] gmail [døt] com (see link at right).

On your mark—get set—go!

Three Cups of Baloney

That title actually grossed me out a little more than I expected. My apologies.

In case you haven't heard, mes auteurs, it's looking like Greg Mortenson may have made up a lot of stuff in his books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools, and now Jon Krakauer is calling him out on it. (You can download Krakauer's .pdf book, Three Cups of Deceit, for free for a limited time.)

The problem of partially fabricated memoirs isn't new to the industry; you probably remember Margaret B. Jones' Love and Consequences, which was found to be totally fraudulent not long after it was published, as well as the much more infamous "memoir" by James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, which was also (much) less than honest (the Daily Beast mentions both here).

Now, the allegations of fiscal misappropriation against Mortenson aside—as I think that's a very different, and far more serious, question—do you think it matters if the/a story is true or not? Does "memoir" mean "fact," or does it mean "how I remember it, which may or may not be super true"?

If this seriously offends/bothers you (it seriously offends/bothers me), what do you think publishers can do to remedy the situation (besides the easy and vague answer of "do a better job of fact-checking")? What actions should be taken against house and author, and should/how can we differentiate between memoirs that are "mostly true," "somewhat true," "fraudulent," &c &c?

Theories, questions, and diatribes in the comments!

Tip o' the Week

I've been re-reading Emerson, cats & kittens, and this quote of his caught my attention over the weekend: "The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent."

Writing is work, folks. More than that, writing is hard work, it's getting up early and staying up late, it's sacrificing doing other fun things to put another few hundred or thousand words to paper, it's spending money on printer ink and postage and conference fees when you'd rather spend it on mega sweet vacations, it's applying for fellowships and retreats when you'd rather be watching reality TV, it's spending time on your on-line platform or reviewing proofs or perfecting your backlist of e-titles on Amazon instead of hanging out with friends.

Writing requires commitment and discipline even more than it requires talent. The hungrier writer will outperform the more talented writer nine times out of ten. If you don't want to be a writer more than you want any other professional goal, odds are you aren't going to make it very far.

This isn't to say that writers don't have families or personal lives or other hobbies and interests; they have all these things. They simply want to be professional writers badly enough to put in the requisite time and effort to improve their craft and make the necessary connections. If you want to be a writer, you'd better be willing to put in all the work and jump through all the crazy hoops. If you want to be a writer, you have to be good enough and smart enough and dedicated enough. And you've got to be lucky as hell.

Nothing worth doing or learning comes easily, dear readers, but if that were the case, you wouldn't get any satisfaction from doing or learning those things. Keep working, keep reading, and keep writing, and your efforts are bound to pay off in some respect sooner or later.

Tomorrow: a lesson on special markets!

Tip o' the Day: Part 4 of 4

My fourth and final installment in this miniseries, mes auteurs, has to do with (à mon avis) the most difficult aspect of the writing life: dealing with rejection.

As I've said before, a rejection of your work—no matter how strongly you identify with it or believe it to be an extension of yourself—is just that: a rejection of your work. It's not an indictment of your character, it's not a dismissal of your accomplishments or promise as an artist, it's not a personal attack. All it means is that the agent or editor in question doesn't want to represent you or pay you based on the work you've created. That's it.

That said: rejection still sucks. Nobody wants to be told something he/she created isn't wanted, especially if he/she spent years crafting it. It can be especially upsetting if one gets relentless form rejections, or (though slightly more encouraging) receives a few partial requests but no invitations to submit the full ms.

The truth is, however, that just as discipline and talent are necessary (though not sufficient) conditions for success as a writer, so, too, is perseverance. Refusing to quit in and of itself won't necessarily get your work published, but without it, you'll be steamrolled over by the inevitable rejections and will never get your writing to the right agent or editor.

Be prepared to get rejected hundreds—if not thousands—of times. Understand that this business is exceptionally susceptible to bias and subjective/individual taste, meaning that simply because your work is rejected, that doesn't mean it isn't good. Remember that a lot of people who are/were much better writers than you were/have been rejected a lot more than you have been. Finally, keep in mind that there are some people who for whatever reason—celebrity, better connections, more money, &c—will have a leg up on you that has nothing to do with their (or your) writing, and you need to be writing as well as possible and submitting your work as persistently as you can in order to partially offset this imbalance.

Stupid? Yes. But, to quote Bender "Bending" Rodriguez, the truth is often stupid.

If anyone has any particularly good methods for dealing with rejection, please post them in the comments—as for me, I find that pinning up the personalized/tiered rejections is encouraging, and the form rejections can make pretty good art projects. In all seriousness, though, I read the rejection, have a snack/drink/nap, and get right back to writing and submitting. What else is there to do?

Tip o' the Day: Part 3 of 4

In a perfect world, mes auteurs, the writing business (like all businesses, enterprises, systems, &c) would be entirely meritocratic: everyone would get a fair shake, the best writing would be selected for publication, and talent, discipline, and hard work would pay off regardless of extraneous factors like luck, emotion, nepotism, and social status.

Alas, dear friends, we do not live in a perfect world.

Because of this, you have to do something besides read great books and write great books if you want to increase your odds of getting published: you have to network. And, as the name might imply, networking is... well, work. Details? Why, sure, if you insist.

1. Networking is necessary. While some of you may have a strong negative—yea, perhaps even visceral—reaction to the prospect of spending any of your writerly energies doing anything apart from reading and writing, you need to understand that networking is a necessary part of the writer's life.

Think of it this way: if you're interviewing two candidates who are more or less identical on paper and equally impress you in person, are you going to go with the candidate who was initially recommended to you by your Most Trusted Bro, or the guy who walked in because he saw your ad on Monster.com? Exactly. And, unsurprisingly, agents think the same way. This goes back to what I was saying two weeks ago about who you know: there's a certain amount of prerequsite what (read: good writing) you've got to have, and after that, it's all who.

This is absolutely not to say that you must know someone in the industry in order to get published. All I'm saying is that the more people you know, the more doors you'll open to opportunities that you might otherwise have missed by being an unknown quantity.

2. Chances are, you know someone. Think about the people you might have a connection to in the industry. Does your best friend have an agent? Is your fraternity brother working in the industry? Do you have friends of friends in mfa programs, literary agencies, independent book stores? Is your aunt a book conference junkie? &c &c. Make a list of the people who you could reasonably ask about the industry, representation, getting your foot in the door, and so on. I'm willing to bet you'll come up with more than you might at first expect.

3. If it turns out you know no one, don't despair. Okay, let's say I'm wrong and you know absolutely no one in the industry (worse, you don't even know of anyone who might even be related to the industry in the most tangential way). You're not doomed if you query agents to whom you haven't been recommended or haven't met at conferences, so long as you follow their guidelines and send them a well-crafted query. In fact, if you get a "close, but no thanks" e-mail from one of them, you can refer to this if and when you query them with a different project down the line.

In the meantime—and if you can afford it—consider attending conferences, readings, workshops, and other literary events, and do your best to meet industry insiders (authors, agents, editors, librarians, sales(ahem)people, &c) and develop strong professional relationships with them. The publishing industry isn't really as impossibly huge as you might think, and any given person who's been in it for a few years will have a lot of connections that might come in handy when you're trying to sell your book.

4. Relationships require upkeep. A quick note on the above: all relationships require work, and professional relationships (especially in this industry) are no exception. If your friend lands your dream agent, don't let jealousy consume you: foster your relationship with that friend, ask about him or her, trade work, and hopefully down the line he or she will be able to help you get representation via recommendation to his/her agent, getting you in touch with an agent or editor who may be interested in your work, and so on.

The flip side of this issue is: don't be creepy. Don't reply to form rejections from agents in an attempt to be Super Best Bros. Don't pitch your MS to agents or editors at/in inappropriate times/places (e.g. the bathroom at T.G.I. Friday's). Don't corner your friend of a friend's girlfriend's brother's former roommate at a party because he once worked at a publishing house after college. You get the idea.

That's all I've got for today, bros and she-bros. If you have any comments/questions/epiphanies/ideas/vitriol/profound insights/divine revelations, you know where to go.

Tip o' the Day: Part 2 of 4

Today's tip is a piece of advice I once received from a college professor, and it may be the best aphorism on the creative process I've ever heard: "There is no thinking except in the writing. There is no writing except in the rewriting."

Revision is essential to the writer's work, at least insofar as doing so is a an actual re-visioning of the author's original intent—a method of getting closer to what he or she meant and desired to communicate in the initial draft. The first words, mes auteurs, are not always the best words, and if you want to be published someday, you've got to know (or learn) to revise.

Some writers prefer to revise as they go along, writing passages or chapters, revising/editing them, and moving on; others prefer to write the entire novel before going through for a second pass. I fall more into the former group than the latter, but I don't think either approach is superior to the other. My theory is: do whatever works for you.

Unless! (And here's the caveat you knew was coming): unless what "works for you" is not revising. There may—although I personally doubt it—be an argument for this in the realm of poetry, but I don't think it's ever a good idea to send unrevised (un-re-visioned, un-revisited, &c) fiction or nonfiction out into the world for potential publication (or, heaven forbid, self-publication). As mentioned above, the first draft is where the thinking takes place; the second (and subsequent) drafts are where the writing takes place, the correct words are chosen, the plot is tightened up, the craft is honed, the characters made flesh.

All this to say: you're going to be writing more than one draft, and if you're convinced you're a one-draft wonder, you're almost certainly wrong. Again, I'm not aiming this advice at the one-in-ten-million outlier. I'm aiming it at you.

That said, meine Autoren: what's your process for drafting new work? Do you edit as you go along, or once the entire draft is complete? Do you cut passages apart with scissors? Reorder chapters? Do you go through two drafts? Two dozen? Two hundred? Do you tend to revise on your own at first, or do you immediately enlist the help of others for your second (and subsequent) drafts?

To the comments!

Tip o' the Day: Part 1 of 4

And now for something a little different!

This week I'll be focusing on the best writing advice I've heard/seen/received, mes auteurs, and I'll be kicking it off with some thoughts on what I think is the most crucial ingredient necessary to a writer's successful career: discipline.

As I've said before: even more than talent, a successful writer needs discipline. A modestly talented, disciplined writer can have a solid career with luck and hard work; an undisciplined writer of immense talent probably won't, since he or she will never actually finish anything, write regularly, or develop the kinds of relationships and connections that, generally speaking, grease the wheels of the Great Publishing Machine.

I'm going to preface this with the admission that, yes, there are exceptions to every rule, and I'm sure anyone could come up with a list of at least a dozen writers who were immensely talented, terribly undisciplined, and either had successful commercial careers, were widely recognized as geniuses after their deaths, or both. This advice isn't aimed at the one-in-ten-million outlier. It's aimed at you.

In patented, battle-tested Bullet-O-Vision™:

· Set and keep a writing schedule. Write regularly, if not daily. Do not wait to be inspired; writing is work. Even if you can only spare an hour a day three days a week, set that time aside and don't give it up for anything except a real emergency. Try to write at the same time of day each time you write, and be sure to select a time that works for you. Don't get up at 4:30 in the morning if you're not a morning person, because your writing will reflect this.

· Write the scenes you want to write when you want to write them. This isn't to say you should wait to be inspired, because (as mentioned above) you shouldn't. What I'm saying is: if you get to your daily hour of writing and are really excited to write the scene where your protagonist escapes from the robot Nazis, write that scene, even if isn't chronologically next in your plot. You have to stay excited and enthused, mes auteurs.

· Maintain a writing space. Find a place that works for you and write there consistently. It's a little Pavlovian, but it gets results: you'll train yourself to recognize that this time and this space are reserved for writing, and you'll find yourself undistracted and ready to write after a few writing sessions at the same time and in the same place. Again: try to write regularly, if not daily.

· Set deadlines and stick to them. Deadlines will be very real once you sign your first contract, so my advice is to get used to them early. If you can reasonably write 5,000 words a week, make that your goal; if you want to finish a chapter a month, set the 30th/31st as your deadline and stick with it. Reward yourself when you meet or exceed your deadlines and goals!

· Keep a notebook. When you are inspired, you won't necessarily be at your desk or computer. Record anything you think might be useful: images, snippets of overheard conversation, epiphanies, &c. Save the things you cut out of your novel for potential future use. Review them periodically. You'll be surprised how often they come in handy.

· If you fall off the horse, get right back on. Things come up: family drama, extra work at the office, family emergencies, holiday extravaganzas. Some weeks you might not get to your writing. If and when this happens, don't stress out, go into overdrive, or—worst of all—give up. Get back into your writing regimen as soon as you can and don't look back.

That's all for today, meine Autoren. Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? You know what to do.

Banned Books & Round Ups

Before the round-up begins, mes auteurs: next Thursday, September 30th, as per Le R's & Tahereh's brain(blog?)child, I'll be blogging about my favorite banned book. If you want to do the same, add your name to Tahereh's post!

And now: today's Friday round-up with Laura from Combreviations.

Today I have split the happenings of the week into three distinct categories: things that make me go "Ugh, for reals?," things that are interesting, and things I love. As a cranky, pre-caffeine, non-morning person, I think we should start with the things that are super annoying and work our way to happiness. Yes? Yes.

I don't know if you heard, friends and foes, but Danielle Steel is not a romance writer. Yep. That's right. Also, Sarah Palin is super persecuted. Shame on you, persecuting world, for being mean to this poor woman, who has done nothing to deserve any judgment. Speaking of women, there are just too many ladies in publishing. And, you know what, the article isn't that bad, but this really cheesed me off: "The main impediment for attracting men, many think, is the low pay of publishing jobs, especially entry-level ones." I'm sorry. That's an impediment for anyone. You want to pay me $25k a year, before taxes, to work in an industry centered in New York, the most expensive city in America? Where I'll spend $1,000 in rent a month to live in Brooklyn with 4 roommates? Sign. Me. Up. And, unfortunately, it is lucky, because breaking into the industry—even entry-level, even if you're a lady—is extremely difficult to do. If you try to be on the writing side, well, you'll suffer the stigma of your trade paperback original, and e-books are probably going to wipe out print anyway. Also, finally, what is up with Texas and textbooks? It's a truly terrible combo deal.

On the things that are interesting side, here's a round-up of fall 2010 literary movies. If you're not so literary, there's also a list of the most scientifically accurate sci-fi novels, or, hey, some smut by John Milton. Important questions include: Is Danica McKellar sending the right message about being smart and sexy? Could we have a female great American novelist? Why do we bother reading things we won't remember? And does it matter if 4-year-olds can understand irony, if they won't grow up to use it correctly? Also interesting is this 2,400 page cookbook, this list of smart YA books, and suggestions for what to read on jury duty.

For the truly awesome, we need look no farther than Tim Burton's poem for Johnny Depp. But, if you must look further, here are nine great word apps, and also news about a new J.J. Abrams show, starring Locke and Ben Linus from lost. Happiness, thy name is television. You can analyze common author poses, or be impressed by the fact that Terry Pratchett forged himself a meteor sword. Where do such good ideas comes from?

That's all for this week—see you next time, right here.