Be True to Your Voice

You’re ready to write a novel. You’ve outlined all twenty-three chapters and plan to write about vampires in a fresh, exciting, and bound-to-be profitable way. Soon, Twilight fans will have a new obsession and you’ll be raking in the profits from the bestselling novels, movie rights, and merchandising.

Or not. In fact, the rejections of the proposal it took you six months to create have cited something “missing” in your voice. How could that be? You penned a supernatural love affair for the ages! It should be sent straight to the most powerful editors, not to the slush pile!

Don’t despair.

I’ve been there too. I’ve written more than one less-than-stellar proposal, believe me. Back when chick lit was all the rage and any book resembling a Sex in the City episode flew off the shelf, I decided to pen a chick lit-style mystery. My agent (the fabulous Jessica Faust of Book Ends) regretfully informed me that my voice wasn’t working. She was right. My attempts to form a plot focusing on cocktails, high fashion, and one-night stands fell flat. Road kill flat.

The book wasn’t me. Chick lit was selling, but I couldn’t write it. These days, vampires are hot, but I can’t write them either.

Then what do we do, fellow writers, when we can’t put our spin on what’s already selling? We color our voice with personal experience.

If an experience can move you, then it can move your readers as well. Case in point: I’d returned to church after a twenty-year hiatus and, inwardly kicking and screaming, joined a monthly Bible Study group. Taking this risk changed me. The people in the group changed me. I assumed they’d be a bunch of stuffy, judgmental, humorless, blue-haired Republicans and, except for the Republican part, I was completely wrong. They were flawed, funny, courageously honest, generous, beautiful, and wise. I’d never laughed so freely or cried so openly as I did in their presence.

I wanted to write about these precious people. I wanted them to solve crimes, to puzzle over obscure clues, to ensure that good triumphed over evil. In the end, I wrote a mystery series about church folk and two major publishing houses offered to buy it. And there wasn’t a single vampire in my proposal. I was in heaven (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Your richest, most believable voice will be born out of dozens of such personal experiences. So don’t get hung up on Carrie Bradshaw or Bella Swan or whatever the next trend may be. After all, you don’t want to ride a trend; you want to start one. Forget what you think people are looking for and write your story. Your voice will outshine even the glitteriest vampire.

The 140-word Novel, by Jess Lourey

Sherman Alexie was recently on The Colbert Report to discuss his latest novel, War Dances, which he has refused to release on Kindle or in any other digital format. You can watch the interview below (and I recommend you do), but his main point is that once books are digital, we lose the celebration of the book as an art form and as a community-creator, not to mention the potential royalties lost as readers pirate books as easily as music listeners pirate songs.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sherman Alexie
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Most authors lack the industry clout to refuse to sell the digital rights to their books, but even more than that, I think many of us don’t know what it means to have our books digitally available. The Google lawsuit seems to be muddying that water even more.

What are the pros and cons of Kindle, and other digital readers? I’m asking you as a reader and/or a writer. What do you see as the future of book delivery, and how will that affect writers and readers? The environment? Privacy?

Kids These Days

Cricket McRae

In early November I received an email from a local high school sophomore. She was looking for a community mentor to help her with the personal project she was doing for the IB program she was in. She wanted to write a novel.

I agreed. Meet once a month for six months, answer questions, give advice and encouragement. No problem.

Well.

First off, she didn't just want to write a novel. She wanted to write a novel and get it published. The first time we met, in the second week in November, she said she planned on having the first draft done by the end of the year. It was right there on the goal sheet she'd worked out with her project advisor. Six weeks, one book.

Okay, I said, and to her horror brought up the calculator on my phone. To write a 250 page book she'd have to write 6 pages a day. Every day. And it might a good idea if we met more than once a month.

With a relieved expression she waved it off. "Oh, I can do that."

And she did. In fits and starts, around school, advanced homework, violin lessons, orchestra concerts and travel for speech and debate, she wrote a book. The last seven chapters hit my inbox at 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday. From what I can tell from all the chunks -- she's putting them all in one file now -- it's over 300 pages about a group of teenagers coming of age.

I'm so stinking proud of her.

It's rough, and she realizes that. On Tuesday she was ready to start rewriting. I reviewed all of it as she wrote, and very deliberately kept my feedback to structural, character and plot issues. Left her writing alone, not wanting to trip up her considerable momentum.

The writing has a crazy, raw vibrancy. Some places it's nearly unreadable, others are crisp and spot on. Some of the dialog is amazingly good, other places she's feeling her way with the characters and it shows. She's learning how to show rather than tell, and has a real knack for describing characters.

I handled the text-y dialog (OMGee Yay! jsyk) and the occasional dip into hip-hoppity lingo all right, fo' shizzle. Then toward the end of the book I cottoned to the fact that a lot of the dialog between the teens is in song lyrics.

Pointing out a particular line, I asked her about it. The look she gave me was full of pity. "You don't know that song? It's Queen."

Hrm. I know that look. See, my brain is the place song lyrics go to die. But I recognized what she was doing, finally, because I live with a musician, and he quotes songs all the time. Sometimes I notice and sometimes I don't.

"Do kids actually talk like that?" I asked.

"My friends and I do all the time. It's like a code."

I am so glad I'm not in high school now.

So my mentee is plunging back in to her book. She has three months to rewrite and research publishers (and agents) and send out queries. I'll be giving her more specific feedback on her writing now, but I don't want to step on her decidedly unique style.

I know a lot of you are teachers, and even more have kids. Any advice?

No Drawer Left Unorganized

By Deborah Sharp

I think Book No. 4 is going to be a 10-pounder. Not that MAMA SEES STARS is going to tip the scales at 10 pounds. No, I'm going to weigh 10 pounds more than I do now if I ever manage to finish the darned thing.

Ah, avoidance. Often, it takes the form of deciding I need a little snack before I can start a new scene. And I never decide that a couple of carrots or a stalk or two of celery would really hit the spot. I've had three cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows tonight. Yes, it's unseasonably cold in Fort Lauderdale. But still. Three cups??? Last night it was tortilla chips with melted cheddar. (It's cold out, right?) The night before, a can of chocolate peanuts left over from Christmas. Note to husband: Lock up the chocolate.

It's not all about eating. I've also done laundry, paid the bills, watched TV. Including re-runs of shows I didn't like the first time. I've even organized drawers -- cleaned out drawers! -- in a desperate bid to avoid getting back to the book I promised myself I'd dive back into come the New Year. Well, the New Year is now a week old. The notebook awaiting my next chapter is growing cobwebs.

Is it just me, or is everyone else having trouble getting back into the swing of writing? (Sue Ann Jaffarian, don't answer that. Your work ethic puts every other Midnight Ink author to shame. Three concurrent series??? You know the rest of us suspect you're an android, right?)

Fess up, y'all. Let me know I'm not alone. What's your favorite avoidance tactic? How do you finally get back on track? How many pounds did you pack on finishing your last book?

How about the non-authors out there? Anybody gotten ANYTHING done, work-wise, since mid-December? And clean drawers don't count.

HBC or LBC? – Decisions, Decisions

No, HBC and LBC are not new cholesterol acronyms or new TV networks. They stand for “High Body Count” and “Low Body Count.”

Every time I start a new book, Rudy, my former boyfriend who still reads my works-in-progress, asks: “So, does this new book have a high body count or a low body count?”

The first time he asked, I replied, “Huh?” Then he pointed out the body count differences in the books I’d already written. For example, my Ghost of Granny Apples books tend to be LBC (ghosts notwithstanding), while in my Odelia Grey series, the number of corpses can fluctuate greatly from book to book.

When I write the books, it never occurs to me to count the dead bodies. I simply write what comes and let the corpses fall where and when they may as the plot progresses. Of course, I always know ahead of time the featured victim – the one who gets the ball rolling – but the others are often left up to the muses. Although there are times when I get three fourths of the way through a manuscript and think: “Hmm, another dead body might raise the tension. (drumming fingers on desk) Who shall it be?”

When Rudy received the first several chapters of Murder In Vein, the first book in my new vampire mystery series, he made a sniffing noise and said: “I can smell an HBC coming.”

Well, duh! It’s about vampires. Of course, it will be an HBC!

How about you? Do you know ahead of time whether your new book will be HBC or LBC?


Sue Ann Jaffarian
www.sueannjaffarian.com
www.sueannjaffarian.blogspot.com
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Why Do We Like Conspiracies?

Tom Schreck, author of OUT COLD.

The Lincoln assassination.

The Kennedy assassination.

Martin Luther King

Pearl Harbor

9-11.

The financial bail out of the richest companies in the world.

The Bush/Gore election.

All have been speculated to be conspiracies. All the conspiracies have been debunked by experts.

To believe in a conspiracy is to voice your lack of trust in the world and the power structure that runs it.



Are conspiracy theories merely collective psychological defense mechanisms to help us conceive of monumental events? Are they just a way for us to deny that catastrophic things can happen randomly?

In OUT COLD, a schizophrenic, PTSD suffering patient winds up on Duffy's caseload. He's nuts and believes in every conspiracy ever. He also predicts future conspiracy-type events.

Then, they start coming true.

In the end it's left for you to figure who's nuts.

What is the healthy stand to take? Trust no one and believe the powers that be are out to screw us or blindly follow what the governments, the media and the "experts" tell us?

Creating Unlikeable Characters

My daughter was a little bored yesterday afternoon, so I offered to play a game with her. I didn’t want to play a long game with her (like Monopoly), and it happened that there was a deck of Old Maid cards very handy.

She did not want to play that game.

When I finally persuaded her to play, she shrieked whenever she got the card and did everything in her power to give it back to me. She was a wreck.

Luck was on her side and she won 2 out of 3 games. The one she lost really upset her. And she doesn’t even know what an old maid is. She just didn’t want the card with the leering, goofily-unattractive woman on it. She seemed to associate some really sinister feeling to the card.

I need characters like this sometimes. I need characters that no one wants to be around, that throw monkey wrenches into my plot.

I’m not talking about flawed characters. Flawed characters are interesting and fun, well-rounded, and sympathetic to readers. I’m talking about characters that other characters run away from, screaming.

You know them—the Uriah Heeps of the world.

Ways to Conjure Up the Ick Feeling for the Reader

Other characters’ negative perceptions of the character. Do they cross to the other side of the street when they see them? Does a chill go up and down their spine when someone mentions their name?

Invade the reader’s personal space. Have the character stand too close to the protagonist in conversations. Bestow them with unpleasant smiles full of bad teeth and malodorous breath.

Grate on the reader’s nerves. Conjure up that fingernail on the chalkboard feeling with a whiny, discontented voice or the habit of arriving at houses uninvited and staying far too long.

It’s not too hard to do—we’re basically going to imbue the character with annoying habits, poor table manners, and anything else that personally bothers us. We just have to be careful not to overdo it—make it a character that goes onstage only for short periods of time or after long intervals offstage.

Have you delved into the world of unlikeable secondary characters?

Happy New Year

2009 was a very good year for me (if you aren't nauseated by some serious horn-tooting, you can check out my recap, writing-wise, here). But it's human nature to try to do better.

That's why I'm big into New Year's Resolutions. There are usually plenty of areas in my life than can use some good resolving, so every year I draw up a list. Diligently. Thoughtfully. Some years I even write them down. (I resolve to write more stuff down, rather than rely on my spotty memory.)

To be honest, most of them, like G.M.'s, are somewhat vague. And a lot involve incremental language. I'll eat a little better, I'll exercise a tad more, I won't yell at my kids quite as much. Hard to quantify, thus hard to fail at. (I resolve to be somewhat more concrete when I make my resolutions.)

I guess if I wanted more quantifiable yardsticks, I would compile a list of goals. But "New Year's Goals" doesn't have the same ring to it, and I suppose that goals are really a whole 'nother kettle of fish when you get down to brass tacks (I resolve to use fewer clichés.)

During the course of my resolution-crafting, I sometimes get philosophical. Why do we (humans) have to wait until some arbitrarily appointed time to make resolutions to better ourselves? Why can't we address our shortcomings as they crop up instead of putting it off? (I resolve to procrastinate less. One of these days, I'm sure I'll get around to doing that.)

My quest for self-improvement is not a solitary one. I'm always amused by all the ads for exercise equipment, gym memberships, and weight-loss programs that proliferate in January. Ditto for the storage containers and home organizing products. Then I'm doubly amused come February--or March for the slightly more dedicated--when the pages of eBay and Craigslist swell with treadmills (hardly used!) and unopened crates of Jenny Craig lasagnas (hardly used!). (I resolve to spend less time reading ads for stuff I don't want or need.)

Don't get me wrong--I'm all for bettering myself. Like I said, I compile a list of resolutions every year, and (pat on the back) I think I do a pretty good job of sticking to them. But during those last few weeks of the year, when my exercising has waned and I get a glimpse of the overflowing file cabinets in the basement I had resolved to go through eleven months earlier, I always question my, uh, resolve. (I resolve to stick to my resolutions better.)

Here are a few additional ones:

• Read more.
  
  
• Maintain my exercise regimen (I've been a little lax on the stretching component).
  
  
• Spend my time more wisely, and its corollary, don't waste so much time surfing the Internet and cruising the blogosphere (some version of this one ends up on the list every year).
  
  
• Take Vitamin D.
  
  
• Reduce clutter. Simplify.
  
  
• Eat a new food (Every year I resolve to add a new (healthy) food to my repertoire. Some winners: beans, avocados, hummus. Still can't do Brussels sprouts. And don't get me started on cheese. This year's candidates: edamame or fennel.)

How about you? Any "unusual" resolutions this year?

Have a very happy and healthy 2010!