My Weblog

Just write it

by Donna

I’m currently working on a Meg Langslow book on a tighter-than-usual deadline.  When I agreed to take on the project, I resigned myself to the idea that I was setting myself up for a pretty miserable, stressful few months.  I apologized in advance to some of my friends for the antisocial grouch I’d have to become.  And to some of the people I work with in volunteer organizations for the fact that I might not be as productive as usual.  With a sigh, I accepted that I wouldn’t be doing as much gardening this spring, which would probably mean diminished beauty in my yard for the rest of the season—diminished, not totally absent, because I go in as much as possible for perennials that repay your up front investment of planting time with beauty for years.

So I set my daily quotas, I warned the world that I was about to become Grumpy Recluse Writer, and I sat down at the keyboard to begin the long, yet all-too-short, and bound-to-be painful process of writing this book. 

To my astonishment, it hasn’t been as painful as I expected.  Oh, there are all the usual pains and problems, and I’m sure I’ll have to do at least the usual amount of rewriting and polishing and general cleanup.  But overall, the process hasn’t been worse than usual.  Maybe a little better. And that’s mainly because I’m getting a lot better at just doing it. 

Too bad Nike has already taken and probably copyrighted that tag line.  If they hadn’t, some writer’s organization should, because "just do it" is probably the best and most down-to-earth advice anyone can give a writer.

So lately, if I wake up and can’t get back to sleep, instead of doing the usual things I do to cope with insomnia, I stumble downstairs and start writing.  Never mind that I’m profoundly not in the mood to do anything, much less writing.  Never mind that I usually have no idea what I’m going to write next. Never mind that I’m not even quite conscious yet.  I’ve been telling people for years that the secret to writing was application—applying the seat of the pants to the chair.  (And until just now, I never knew who originally said it, but I just did some research: the otherwise-unknown-to-me Mary Heaton Vorse.)  Anyway, I followed her and my own advice—not, I hasten to add, for the first time, but it never fails to astonish me how well this particular bit of advice works.  I sat, I started typing, words emerged on the computer screen, and wonder of wonders, the book moved forward.  I just wrote.

And the rest of my life hasn’t come to a standstill.  I’m probably in the doghouse with my volunteer organizations, but not too badly.  My friends haven’t seen as much of me lately, but they haven’t forgotten what I look like.  I’ve kept the book going in spite of having other projects on my plate, like helping my mother start what we hope will turn from a trial stay to permanent residence in a retirement community near me, and doing a lot of househunting for my brother and sister-in-law’s projected move to the area.  I’ve even gotten a reasonable amount of gardening done.  The house isn’t a total mess. I know I don't have time to weep and wail over how busy I am. I just do things. 

Of course, something had to give.  What I haven’t done much of is reading, because I’ve been walking around with the book in my head even more than usual.  Not all a writer’s work is done at the keyboard, and those hours at the keyboard flow better, with better results, if my brain is chewing away on the project between keyboard sessions.  If I test drive dialogue on my way to the grocery store, think over what I’ve done while pottering in the garden, and fret for a few moments over some knotty problem before going to sleep, I come back to the keyboard that much better prepared to write.

When I first started writing seriously, I thought what I needed was quality time.  Big, sweeping stretches of it. If I had anything else looming ahead of me that day, it cast its shadow over the writing time ahead of me, and I felt less able to focus on the writing.  I still feel that way sometimes, but I’ve learned to recognize that as a trap. One of the ways the lazy part of your mind sabotages your writing.  Oh, I can't write, I've only got an hour.  Well, an hour's better than nothing. In fact, sometimes I get less done on days when I have the luxury of nothing else to do, and can be more productive when there’s something else looming that I have to do or want to do when I finish my writing. 

I’m not sure which I find more reassuring: to find that after twelve books the writing process is getting perhaps a little bit easier, or to realize that after twelve books, there are still things I can learn about it.

I’d go on but . . . I have this book to write.

A Writing Instructor's Musings

by Kris

I'll be repeating my popular online mystery writing course, Committing the Perfect Crime: Writing Your First Mystery, in April for the UCLA Extension School's Writers' Program. Online courses are tough to create. All good instructors plan their courses, naturally, but in classroom situations, they don't have to write every word of every lecture. Nor proofread them until they're perfect. But that's how online courses work. Proofing online course material is like proofing a novel — mistakes seem to creep in while you sleep.

On the upside, once an online course is finalized, the theory goes, the teacher doesn't have to revisit that work again, and can simply offer up those lectures to new students without having to put in any extra work. For the lecture part of the course, anyway; assignment feedback and questions from students work pretty much like classroom situations, except that they're typed.

But I like to review my courses before I offer them again, as I recently did for my April class. I look at the lectures to see if I can better clarify areas that I know have plagued some students in the past. I add new assignments, take others out, and come up with new ways this round of students can attack certain challenges.

As I reviewed my course, it struck me anew how much this class requires students to cover, and by extension, how much new mystery writers need to learn. And these are just the basics — they'll have to deepen their knowledge of all of this material as they go on. It also struck me what an act of faith and hope it is whenever anyone sets out to learn a new discipline.

While everyone who is published today made it over that hump — most take the abilities they developed for granted now, and have largely forgotten the growing pains they must have suffered along the way. I've never had kids, but I've heard women forget the pain of childbirth the same way.

While I've always been told I'm a compassionate instructor, nothing has brought back the difficulty of the journey, and the emotional ups-and-downs, like the art classes I've taken occasionally in recent years. They're closer in time, and in memory, than learning to write. And I'm still very much a newbie artist. Granted, they're not precisely the same. The process of learning art contains a physical component. It's  hard to get pencils and fingers and brushes move in a way that will allow what appears on the paper or canvas to approximate that vague image in the artist's head. But while a writing student's fingers merely have to hit the right keys on the keyboard, the student's inability to paint as effective a word picture as she longs to, can feel quite similar. And just as frustrating when it won't happen.

Those times when I took art classes while teaching writing classes caused me to observe the struggle from both sides. I remember nights of dragging myself to art class, and confessing to my teacher that I felt hopelessly inept, forcing him to be as much a therapist as an instructor — even as I gave the same pep talks to writing students pained by their slow progress. I also remember the smug smile my art teacher would flash at times, because he could see the progress I was making when I could not, I suspect — while I enjoyed that same satisfaction with my writing students. Every experienced teacher observes when students are making big leaps, or starting to grow at faster rates, before the students make those discoveries themselves.

So…I keep experiencing both sides of that leap of faith and hope. Although this course is billed as "Writing Your First Mystery," it actually attracts a range of students, some newbies, some intermediates, and even some who've been published, not to mention thriller writers, and even some literary writers, at every stage as well. Most of the published members of the class have come to the mystery from other genres, and just need to shore up some of their mystery conventions and skills. I welcome them, of course. But it's the newbies and the intermediates for whom I bring my strongest wishes. So that they can make the progress I know they're capable of, even if they don't know it. To keep their faith and hope alive.

Going to the Dogs

The Femmes Fatales would like to welcome our guest blogger, Twist Phelan!  Twist writes the critically-acclaimed Pinnacle Peak series, legal-themed mysteries featuring different extreme sports. Although she’s learned to team rope, ridden her bicycle across the country, and paddled a canoe from one Hawaiian island to another, the tiniest Chihuahua can make her run in terror.

I have to admit, I’m not much of a dog person. In truth, I’m afraid of them. (Probably has something to do with getting pinned for a half-hour by a neighbor’s guard dog when I was three years old.) I’m okay with some individual dogs—those to whom I’ve been properly introduced and spent some time with. But if a strange dog approaches me, no matter how friendly, I look for the nearest tree to hide behind (or, if it’s a big dog, climb).

I’d been recuperating in the desert from a sports injury. Couldn’t do real exercise (limited to 90 minutes in the gym, plus hiking), so fell into the habit of taking a walk in the early morning before it got too hot. Near where I parked my car (I know, driving to go hiking is weird, but it couldn’t be helped) was a doggie daycare center. Actually, I think it was more of a doggie spa—it had dog massages, a dog whisperer, dog yoga, etc.

One week a banner in front of the spa read “Take a shelter dog for a hike.” When I enquired, they told me they brought dogs from the animal shelter up for the day so they could walk with the daycare dogs. They also said anyone could take a shelter dog on a hike alone. 

I felt sorry for the shelter dogs. The whole thing smacked of bussing in the orphans so they could see how the rich kids live, then taking them back to the orphanage at night. So I signed out a dog. When asked what kind I preferred, I responded “lively.” A medium-sized whitish dog with shaggy hair was produced. I was handed his leash, told his name was Sparky, and we were out the door.

Lively didn’t begin to cover it. Every rabbit hole had to be sniffed out, every bush investigated, every trail run down. I had a wonderful time. After an hour, I returned Sparky (after unsuccessfully trying to comb the bits of brush out of his hair with my fingers), bought him a treat from the dog snack bar, and promised to be back the next morning.

The next few hikes were great. Sparky jumped and barked and wagged his tail whenever he saw me. What an ego boost! Or maybe he was just happy at the thought of the treat I gave him at the end of each walk. Sparky stayed at the daycare center fulltime because they had the space and I was walking him regularly. The staff showed me where his leash was and let me go in the back and fetch him without being accompanied by a staff person.

On about the sixth day I picked him up, he looked especially great. He had been bathed and clipped (he looked rather like a poodle but not quite). He was also whiter than he had ever been before. He was a little subdued when we started, and I was worried he wasn’t feeling well. But when a cottontail broke cover, he was off running like his old self. He chased the tennis ball into the chaparral and rolled in the sand. (We lost the bow that was in his hair. I was glad—I think bows look dumb on boy dogs. Actually, all dogs.) He capped off the morning with a dive into a cattle water trough to cool off.

When I returned to doggie daycare, I was met by a staff member, a county sheriff’s deputy, and an angry woman who began screaming I had stolen her dog. Yep, the pooch I had taken on a walk wasn’t Sparky. I’m embarrassed to admit it wasn’t even a male dog. (I told you I wasn’t a dog person!) To make matters worse, apparently Dog #2 was a somewhat valuable dog who was supposed to have been exhibited that morning at a local dog show.

As it turns out, Sparky had been adopted (hurray!), and Dog #2 had been put into his kennel after being bathed and show-clipped. The woman kicked up such a fuss, the deputy actually put me into the back of the squad car. (The woman was convinced I was working for her rivals to sabotage her chances at the dog show. Under her theory, my “assignment” was to kidnap her dog and either hide it until the show was over or just mess up its coat so it wouldn’t look nice for the show.

Even though it was scary being in the squad car, I couldn’t help but laugh when she laid out my “plans” for her darling. (To my relief, the deputy cracked a grin halfway through her diatribe.) Then the daycare employee who knew me and Sparky arrived. She explained I was a volunteer dog walker who was clueless about dogs. (That made the owner of Dog #2 mad all over again—how dare I confuse her purebred with a mutt?)

Things were finally sorted out, with the woman agreeing not to press charges if I covered her entry fees for the aborted dog show and paid for another bath, trim, and pedicure for her dog (who had a very long and fancy name, the only part of which I remember is “Princess of ...”). The lady didn’t even let me give the dog a treat. (The way she reacted, you’d have thought I was peddling canine crack.) 

Anyway, I’m sticking to cats and horses now. No more pooches! Although I think part of me is going to miss Sparky tomorrow morning.

Blogging. I'm not doing it right.

by Toni L.P. Kelner

I've come to a conclusion about blogging: it's a lot harder than it looks.

Seriously, the web is filled with blogs from people who post every week, every day, more than once a day. They talk about the music they're listening to and the books they're reading, give interesting links, describe their day, and even add clever insights. Whereas I've spent the past two days trying to come up with something worth blogging about.

So here it is, eleven in the evening the day AFTER I was supposed to blog. And I'm going to do what I try to teach my daughters never to do, and have tried to avoid whenever possible. I'm going to copy other folks.

MUSIC: I listened to one of my husband's mix tapes in the car, with everything from Duran Duran to the Beatles, but none of that good stuff was stuck in my head. No, what I can't escape is the song "Christmas Shoes." Do you know it? Sappy, sappy, sappy piece about a guy encountering a kid buying shoes for his mother for Christmas because she's dying and "meets Jesus tonight." Totally idiotic and it always makes me tear up because I'm totally idiotic about sad songs. And it reminds me of a very sad incident. Two years ago, my daughters' school had a Christmas pageant, and I remember the eighth graders singing that song, and listening a bunch of kids from Massachusetts trying to sing in a Southern accent was one of the saddest things I'd ever endured.

BOOKS: A high point for the day, actually. Thanks to the recommendations of Femme Charlaine, I've discovered Diana Galbaldon. I read one of her Lord John mysteries first, and it was good, but now that I've started reading the Outlander series, I am hooked. I'm near the beginning of the third, Voyager, and having a wonderful time. Can't wait to see what comes next. I also read an interesting biography this week. Mr. Confidential by Samuel Bernstein is about magazine editor Robert Harrison and the effect his scandal rag Confidential had on Hollywood. Great stuff, and great research for my "Where are they now?" series.

LINKS: Just discovered this site this week, and have spent several happy hours laughing here: http://icanhascheezburger.com/ It's difficult to explain the appeal of LOLCats. I expect you either like 'em or you don't. Take a look and see which side of the fence you belong on.

MY DAY: And a long one it has been... But I just can't convince myself that anybody cares about my gripes and daily tedium. Does anybody care that I had to spend ten minutes scooping wet litter out of the guinea pig cage because their bottle leaked while we were gone? I didn't think so. I'll just mention the good stuff.

Via e-mail, I found out that my agent and editor have finally ironed out the important issues of a new contract. So I can now say confidently that my new book really is the first in the "Where are they now?" series. Berkley Prime Crime will be publishing the paperback reprint of Without Mercy, and will continue the series for at least two more books. (Apparently the editor does not like my proposed titles, since she refers to Untitled Books #2 and #3, but I can accept that.) There is much rejoicing in this--contract negotiations had gone so long I was starting to worry that it wouldn't happen.

The yard men came and cleaned our yard. It's so satisfying to watch other people work hard.

On the way out the door to go to a library event I had scheduled, found a box on the doorstep. It was copies of the large print edition of Many Bloody Returns, the vampire anthology I co-edited with Femme Charlaine. It is pretty.

I spoke at a Sisters in Crime panel at the library in Burlington, MA, and it went very well. My daughters were well-behaved in the back of the room, there were brownies and cookies, the discussion with Gary Braver and Nancy Bruett was interesting and entertaining, and I sold a few books. Can't beat that.

When I got home and checked my e-mail, I found a very favorable review of Without Mercy that's been posted on a blog.

Best of all, my husband Steve will be returning home in a few minutes. He's been in Australia for TWO LONG WEEKS, and I'm really looking forward to seeing him again. Really, really, really looking forward to it.

CLEVER INSIGHTS: Make sure your guinea pig's water bottle is sealed tight. Sorry. That's all I've got. Maybe I'll do better next time...

Roundtable question #1: What was your worst signing ever?

As much as we might not want to remember, we’ve all had rotten signings. Communication or chemistry fails, and we’re left muttering to ourselves, “well, there are two hours I’ll never get back.” Sometimes we learn from them, sometimes we find unexpected allies, but still…we wouldn’t want to repeat the experience. I asked the Femmes, “What was your worst signing experience?” and the answers are below.  Ladies, in alphabetical order by last name, if you please.

Donna: My worst and best signing experiences seem to go together. Sometimes they're the same event. For example, the first time I visited a mystery bookstore, I didn't see my book on the shelves. I was about to slink out in despair when the staffer behind the desk spotted me and asked if he could help me. I 'fessed up that I was looking for my book, which they didn't have. I gave him the title, and he led me to the space on the shelves at the very front of the store where it would have been if they hadn't already sold out. Worst turned to best in a heartbeat. 

Dana: I think the most miserable was a brutally hot evening in a venue with a wheezing air-conditioner that produced more noise than cool air. The Red Sox, against all odds, had found a slot in the playoffs and I would have cancelled, but was told “some people don’t watch baseball.” In New England, when the Sox are hanging in there? Ha! I had to shout to make myself heard over the a.c. and the two people in the audience only opened their mouths to praise the author who’d been in the month before. Three more people showed up. The discussion widened to include other authors we all liked, and this was much better, right up to the point where I had to tell them that one of the other authors they’d enjoyed (and wanted to come back) had just passed away.

Charlaine: My worst signing experience? I have several to choose from. Probably the most startling came on my last tour. The crowd at the store (and I forget which store) was pretty good, and I was doing my usual spiel and answering the usual questions, when a man standing in the back row asked, “Why is Sookie such a slut?” I think my mouth hung open for a few seconds. I was not the only one who had decided he’d put it that way for the shock value. I straightened my spine and told him that these days, a woman of 26 who’d only had three lovers certainly didn’t qualify as a slut, and I’d created Sookie to be a moral person. To my relief, the rest of the readers present waxed indignant on my behalf. He backed down pretty quickly after that. But now I’m much warier, and I won’t be lulled into false security again.

Toni:  That would be the time that Femme Alumna Teri Holbrook suggested I sign at a particular chain store in Georgia. She'd had TWO terrific events there.  When I showed up, it turned out that they hadn't received their order of my books.  So there was NOTHING for me to sign.  Why hadn't they called me?  The CRC said it was because by the time she found out, I was already in Georgia and she couldn't reach me. With gritted teeth, I pointed out that I have an answering machine and checked my messages regularly.  Then I sat there to greet people who came, expecting to buy books.  Nobody came.

A signing with no books, and nobody cared.  Which was worse?  Oh, I know what made it perfect!  It was my birthday.

Kris:  My worst signing experience was one of my early ones, when my first book came out. I presented a "how to get published" workshop in a large chain bookstore, which drew a respectable 60+ people. Unfortunately, among them was a Neo-Nazi who wanted to get his hand-written scrawl published. Forget about the Ayran efficiency of the movies, though — this was a disgusting little dweeb, teetering on the periphery of psychosis. While clutching the pages of his messy tome, he punctuated his continuous mumbling by shouting out nasty beliefs. He also kept thrusting his hand into his pants for a little self-jollying. I don't know why I feared he'd pull out a gun, since the purpose of the hand-in-the-pants was pretty clear from the groaning, but I was afraid he was going to shoot me. Inefficient, maybe, but he was a scary guy.

I'd like to think I'd handle it differently today, but then I took my cue from the CRM, a young woman who sat there, relaxed and giving no evidence of what scared the crap out of everyone else. What did I know? Maybe they always had Nazi whack-jobs at their events.

But people kept leaving. I later learned many complained at the register. But nobody did anything because that was the CRM's job. One of my former students was among the attendees. When I concluded my talk, the Nazi wandered off, leaving just the CRM and my poor student, who had soldiered on to the end, with a sickly, rigid smile plastered across her pale face. The strangest part was that the CRM, who, while insisting that she listened to everything, claimed not to have heard anything we heard from Weird Guy. What an enviable ability to zone out! 

To my amazement, I sold six books. Not great normally, but with only one person left in the audience, my expectations were low. Besides my loyal student, a few of the folks who had left, listened from other parts of the store, and they returned for signed copies. Given the mass defection, it stunned me to sell any. My goal for that appearance had long since gone from selling books to just leaving the store alive. 

Apparently, the Nazi went on to engage in more vigorous self-jollying in the aisles and more people complained. Finally, some employee threatened to call the police if he didn't leave. My student and I waited, hoping he'd be gone from the parking lot by the time we left. Fortunately, he was — the only good thing to happen that night. At the time, I just hoped that this wasn't a normal signing, because I knew I would never survive my first tour. 

Let us know: what was the worst signing you’ve ever experienced, as an author or a reader?

Oy, What A Book

Dana's post about the artist's need to reach and connect with an audience had such good thoughts in it. I particularly liked the chef's take, that his art is for the purpose of making his customers happy for a couple of hours.

For a long time, I've held a favorite prejudice, that so-called literary writers who try to write mysteries can only fail. I've believed this because their stories seem to be only for themselves with no thought about connecting to the reader. Well, this week, I had to flush that prejudice swirling down the toilet. Goodbye, old friend. I commend you to the sea.

One of the new Edgar nominees brought this about. THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by Michael Chabon manages to both defy and embrace several genres at once in a beautiful way. It's a classic detective story with a classic protagonist, one who himself defies and embraces the qualities of cops and PIs from the best of those genres. This from a guy who is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Who would have thought?

If the Edgar committee had not chosen this book, who knows when I might have read it. Its description and blurbs didn't appeal to me. It's set in 2007 but in an alternate world, one in which Israel lost its battle for statehood in 1948. The U.S. allows the displaced Jews land in and around Sitka, Alaska with a lease of 60 years. Now, the lease is almost up. When the land is about to revert, the Sitka Yiddish police department is ordered to close all its unsolved homicide cases before handing over control to the new U.S. police force.

Sound funny? Deep? Not to me, but I was oh so wrong. It is both of those things and a fantastic mystery all wrapped up in gorgeous imagery. They don't tell you these things on the cover because it's better for it all to sneak up on you and grab you before you know what happened. This is what makes me love a book and a new-to-me author. The humor, intelligence and the imaginative nature of Yiddish Policeman's Union are not things one normally expects in an Edgar nominee. Hats off to the committee for recognizing it.

Don't take my word for it. Don't be turned off by the book cover or the fact that the writer hasn't, until now, been known as a mystery author. This is a one-of-a-kind book. I'm so in love with it, I will risk reading a non-mystery, literary book by Chabon. He's that fabulous.   

Selective Ignorance

For some of us, it's true that ignorance is bliss. In this day and age, when you can't avoid information if you try, that statement seems like heresy. After reading Donna's and Dana's blogs, I've been thinking hard about the business side of the book industry, and I've been thinking about how stupid I sometimes feel when I talk to other writers.

These writers are completely informed about their situation. They know how many copies of their books were printed, what the cover price is, how many titles each Barnes and Noble has ordered, which Borders sold the most copies of their previous book, and how many more units they've sold than their closest competitor. They know the numbers on their returns; they know how many more (or less) returns they had with their previous title. And there's so much more to know! Yet these writers seem to know it all.

It's very good to be informed about this side of this industry, and I also believe that if you're going into the book business, you really can't be too informed. There are lots of terms you need to understand, and lots of different kinds of publishers . . . well, you can't say "to choose from." You pretty much have to say, "by which you may be chosen."

I achieved success the good old-fashioned way -- by which I mean, the bad and ill-informed way. I didn't think about the numbers. This is a luxury a lot of writers can't afford. I was fortunate in that my husband had a good job, so we weren't going to starve if my book didn't sell. I know many writers are not in the position of having a spouse who makes a good salary, and my hat is off to them. I also want to make it clear that I think there huge holes in my method, and something too Scarlett O'Hara for words.

I simply didn't think about how many books I had sold. I tried every time to make the next book better than the previous one, and I knew when a series was failing I had to think of another one. I knew when my publisher was going to drop me, before my publisher ever told me that was going to happen. (Sure, this can happen. Some editors are so reluctant to tell you the bad news that they simply never do. You just don't ever hear from them again.)

I thought about the work, not the economics of the work. And eventually, I got to a good place.

I'm not advocating this approach. In fact, I think I'm pretty awful for confessing this publicly. I got away with such an attitude because (a) I have a great agent, and (b) I have a trustworthy agent. Also, did I mention I've had the same agent for at least eighteen years? During those years, he has had many long conversations with me about percentages and returns and sell-throughs, and I suspect he knew damn well that I wasn't listening to a word he said. From my point of view, since he already seemed worried enough for both of us, I didn't have to share the burden of it. (Joshua, if you're reading this, I apologize. What? I didn't quite catch that? Sorry.)

But along with mycavalier attitude towards most figures, there were some I paid sharp attention to, and that was the dollars and cents. As in any industry, that's the basis of almost all decisions.

What's the conclusion I'm fumbling toward? It's certainly not that I think anyone else should follow my attitude of selective ignorance. It's certainly not that it's to anyone's advantage to be uninformed about the basis for the decisions that affect your career. I believe the bottom line is that you, as a writer, should not be so wrapped up in the minutiae of the the industry that you forget its main requirement; that you write an excellent book. Sure, you need to search for an agent (which can be like going on eharmony or match.com, from the stories my friends tell me). Finding that agent needs to be your second priority.

But the first priority is to write the best book you can. 

Cooking and jazz, writing and editing

by Dana

“Iconoclasts” on Sundance Channel is one of my current TV favorites. If you haven’t seen it, the format is two people, groundbreaking in their respective industries, carrying on a discussion about their work. What I particularly like about it is that often they are both from a creative profession— writing, cooking, music, acting. Hearing two people who know what they’re doing talk about the creative process is just about my favorite kind of entertainment.  

The episode that caught my eye recently was “Wynton Marsalis + John Besh.” Both grew up in
Louisiana; Besh is a chef, Marsalis, a jazz musician and educator. There was one interchange between them that knocked my socks off. It had to do with creating art that was accessible, and to which people could respond. I’m paraphrasing here, but Marsalis said something like “If I’m too good to play for people, I’ll stay at home.” And Besh agreed, saying that when people come into his place--his house or his restaurant— he’s in charge of their happiness for a few hours. The upshot of the conversation was that both men believed that to serve is to be served, and that unless people were getting something from what they were presenting, it wasn’t worth doing. 

I love that notion being applied to art. One of the reasons it struck such a chord with me was the question that almost inevitably comes up when someone discovers I’m a writer. It runs along the lines of “How can you bear to let anyone edit your work? It’s your art, why would you let someone interfere with that?”  

I run through the usual replies “It’s still my creation. Editing is not interference, it’s a discussion and negotiation. It’s an opportunity to get another take on the writing. It makes my work stronger.”

This is almost always met with some variation of “But why would you let an audience direct your work? Why not bring audience to you, instead of the other way around?” 

Because what I do is communication. Communication requires a meeting of the minds, what the writer preents and what the reader brings. If a scene speaks to me, and no one else, it doesn’t matter how well it’s written: it’s not working. If what I’m doing is creating a place for someone else to withdraw to, and I break that mood, I’m not successful. I find the editorial process invaluable because of the perspective it brings: sometimes a twitch or a tweak of a line can have a profound effect on the way a character is perceived by another reader. Because I’m responsible for the reader’s happiness (well, if not happiness, then satisfactory involvement in my fictional world) for a couple of hours.  

Sure, I want to challenge a reader with new ideas or a new way of approaching them. But I have to establish a place the reader wants to spend time, and then situate those challenges in a way that he or she will feel comfortable going (especially when the destination is scary or getting there will be uncomfortable). It’s about trust. I could be besotted by my own writing, but I don’t get anything out of that if no one comes to my place.

Giving back or giving up: on reading unpublished manuscripts

by Donna

When I was an aspiring writer, I felt very grateful for the people who gave me help and advice. I looked forward to the day when I could give back some of the help I’d received. "Pay it forward" has become almost a cliché, but it still sends shivers down my spine when I think about the concept.

Problem is, now that I am published, all too often it feels as if what I want to give back isn’t people want to get.

Maybe it’s because from a young age I bought into some kind of Protestant work ethic view of writing as a career. Side effect, no doubt, of having a father who was born in the Kansas during the bad old Depression/Dust Bowl days and worked his way through college, with a little help from the post-WWII GI Bill. I knew that you worked hard and long, and if you were good enough and lucky enough, maybe someday you’d get published. And there was that big "if/maybe"—part of the whole mystique as I absorbed it was that no matter how hard you worked and how good you were, you didn’t get a guarantee. Life was not inherently fair, and you’d only drive yourself crazy expecting it to be.

I feel old and cranky just writing the above paragraph. I keep imagining a quavery voice saying, "You young whippersnapper! In my day . . . "

But maybe it explains why I have a hard time when I hear writers giving other writers advice that runs something like, "Never let go of your dreams! If you want it bad enough, and never give up, some day, you’ll get published!"

The painful truth is that some of the people holding on tightest to those dreams really should let go, because they can’t write for beans. And some of the ones who can write won’t get published because they spend way too much time thinking positive thoughts and holding on to the dream, and not enough time perfecting their craft and learning how the publishing world works.

And yes, some people who have the talent and work until their writing sings and make all the right moves won’t get published. No, it’s not fair. Neither, as discussed above, is life.

But if I’m somewhere—on a list, at a conference--and the "hang onto your dreams" cheerleading starts, I usually just shut up, because I know that if I break in with one little, "Yes, but—" I will be accused of negativism. And God forbid that we sound negative, even if what we’re trying to do is tell the hard, cold truth as we have learned it about what it takes to get published. I’m suspect I'm not the only published writer these days who is a little less ready to dash off an answer to some general question about the industry for fear that our attempts at being honest and helpful will be labeled as "negativism."  Just because someone doesn't like the message doesn't mean it's negativism.

And lately I’ve started to notice a certain sense of entitlement among some unpublished writers. I’ve seen posts on lists or questions at conferences that all boiled down to "People helped you when you were struggling, so why aren’t you giving back to the community?"

Most of the published writers I know do. We give back what we can, given our time and our talents. Some of us volunteer for organizations like SinC or MWA. Some of us help organize conventions or conferences. Some of us teach classes, either for free or for fees that don’t really pay for the time lost from our own writing. Some of us answer questions, on lists or individually, and post information about writing on our websites and blogs.

The problem is that the thing some aspiring writers want most is for someone to read their unpublished manuscripts. It seems like such a simple thing—"Just read my manuscript and tell me if it’s publishable." Or "Just read my manuscript and tell me what I need to do to it."

Just read. Yeah. If you’re not going to read the manuscript thoughtfully and critically, give some kind of feedback about what works and what doesn’t, and suggest what the writer should do next, why are you even bothering? And doing that is cold, hard work.

Work most of us are already doing—just not for every person who contacts us out of the blue. I participate in three face-to-face critique groups. A few of the people in these groups are published. More are still aspiring. On average, I read and critique somewhere between fifty and a hundred pages a month of someone else’s writing. For me, that’s a lot. I’m not looking to take on any more.

Besides, the problem is that many people who ask a published writer to read their manuscripts don’t really want critique. They want the literary equivalent of Lana Turner’s legendary discovery at Schwab’s Drug Store or maybe even the hand of God reaching across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to touch Adam. They want the published writer to say "Oh, my God! This is fabulous! Can I show it to my agent and my editor?" Admit it, a lot of us have had that fantasy. I know I did before I was published. But at least I knew it was a fantasy.

Sometimes, when people ask "Why aren’t you giving back?" what they really mean is "Why aren’t you doing something to help ME?"

Like most published writers, I wish I could share some magic formula or secret technique to getting published. There’s no magic, or if there is, it’s something each writer brews for herself, in the quiet of her study. We give back what we can, hope it’s enough, and know it won’t ever satisfy everyone.  That’s life.