Tag Archives: guest post

Shutting Down, In a Good Way

Posted on by

Cassie Alexander is an active registered nurse. Nightshifted is her debut novel, coming out through St. Martin’s Press on May 22, 2012.

Protect your time. Protect your time. Protect your time. In fact, protect it so much, that if you already know what I’m going to say here, stop reading, and get back to writing.

The most valuable thing you have as a writer just starting off is time. Time, and taking yourself seriously. I was going to break the serious thing out into another post, but it really fits here, because you won’t make the time for yourself until you do take your writing seriously.
I know how easy it is to let real life waylay your writing time. But if your writing never wins out, you’ll never get anywhere. Ever.

There was a point when I was finishing up Moonshifted, where I shut out the whole world and did nothing but go to work and write. I made one date night a week with my husband…everything else went into the book. A little bit ago, mid-July, post turning the book in, I said to my husband, “I worry our group of friends isn’t hanging out as often as they used to.” And he looked at me like I was insane and said, “No, you’ve just been living in a cave.”

Let me say up front that the type of career I want is fast paced and commercial. If you’re writing a personal memoir or a historical that requires a PHD, etc, my ways are probably not for you. But now that I might be under two deadlines here very soon, and I have to shut down again, very soon, I thought I might talk for a bit about what that means, to me.

Again, this is for me. This may not be for you. Your mileage may vary.

What to shut out?

The big ones are job, family, friends, and society.

My job’s part time. Do you think I planned it that way to give me the best possible chance at a writing career? Damn skippy. My primary reason for becoming a nurse was to have a part time career that paid well. If you burn to be a writer and you’re young enough to switch from a grueling career that takes all your creativity out of you to something with more flexibility — the free time from which you will use wisely, not just to dick around, because you have made Goals (see last post) — do so. Or get a job that lets you leave work at work. Sooner the better.

I don’t have kids. Although I like kids, I’ve never been maternal, and despite my in-laws complaining about it, I’m OK with that. I’m very lucky that I get to hang out with kids at work sometimes, and I have an adorable niece to fill in those spots. Not that there aren’t writers who are also successful mothers (before it gets all J. K. Rowling up in here) — but being a mom is hard. It means sublimating a lot of your personal desires for long stretches of time. Some of you may find that rewarding. I wouldn’t. This is what I want to do, and I’m doing it. I don’t have advice for people who have kids, other than to remember who you are. You may be a parent, but you’re also a writer. Make time for that, whenever, and where ever you can.

My husband supports me and what I do completely. Which, frankly, is amazing. My prior marriage was not like this, and the biggest thing I knew going into the dating world after that relationship was that I wanted someone who got what I was doing, and who was very self-sufficient. I think a lot of women feel the need to please other people before themselves. Spouses of either sex who don’t get why you’re writing or why it’s important to you, are very likely to get jealous of all the time you’re spending alone with your computer, unless they have equal and opposite hobbies/careers to distract themselves as well. You don’t want someone who tries to sabotage your writing or your self esteem. They need to understand that rejection’s the name of the game for a decade or so, maybe longer. If they can’t cheer you on (or at least be quiet) for that period of time, and be truly in your court, ditch them. Now.

If I’m going to pound out two books in a year, I need to have the least amount of stress in my life as possible. It’s impossible to avoid everything — your car’s gonna break down, your cat’s gonna get sick, you’re gonna sprain an ankle — which is why you need to control what you can control, as much as possible.

I won’t be reading news — or I’ll be down to just one news feed, where everything is boiled down for me, by people who I’ve come to trust. Not because I don’t care what’s going on in the world, but because I can’t get mired in a link-tab fest where I’m getting a 360 on current issues. It isn’t that I don’t care — I just don’t have time to care right now.

Turn off the rest of the internet. Or only turn on the portion you can be responsible with. For me, that’s Pandora. Other then that, I log off of twitter, go invisible on gchat, and hunker down. When I got really heavy into things, I downloaded my 3 favorite albums to write to to my little shuffle, and disconnected entirely from the net and used it, so I wouldn’t have any reason to get online. Figure out a way for you to succeed — using a program that shuts off your wireless router, a shuffle, willpower, whatever — and use it. Commit to it.

There’s certain friends and family members I’ll be seeing/calling/emailing less of. If there’s someone in your life who is high drama — I get it, that shit’s fun for awhile, yeah. But when the day ends, if you’re spending more energy dealing with somebody else’s problems (that they’re making yours) instead of dealing with your writing, it’s not worth it. Be prepared for some backlash — if you’ve been a willing accomplice or a supportive friend in the past, they may not get your change of heart now, they may even be threatened by it. But it’s worth it for you to be a clean slate and not stew over what your homophobic uncle said last week when you next sit down.

If someone — friends or family — makes fun of you because you want to be a writer, or because you are writing, drop them. Like a stone. You will get so much other rejection in this choice of careers (reward too, but so much rejection first) that you don’t need your self-esteem assailed from any other angle. Again, they’re just threatened that you’re deciding to follow a dream. Not many people past the age of 16 get to do that, and they’ll see in you everything they ever tried at and failed to succeed in. Or things that they didn’t even muster the strength to try. You don’t need that in your life. Segue out of the relationship and move on.

What to Let In?

Good friends and relatives. If you have true friends who get what you’re doing and are supportive of your career, keep them close. Be up front with your friends. If they know you’re on deadline — publisher imposed or personal — they should get it. After all, they’ve been on deadlines before too, right? (This is assuming your friends are responsible non-stoner types.) Tell them you may not be checking on facebook so often, but call them when you have a break too short to write in, or drop them an email or text. You’re gonna have some rocky times in your life, and you don’t want to be an island when those events happen. Just a text or two can let someone know you’re thinking of them and that you still want in on their life.

Make time for yourself. You serve no one if you’re hunchbacked and have RSI from writing too much. For me, this me-time is yoga. For you, it could be 15 minutes of book reading before bed, or a Starbucks latte. Whatever it is, do it for yourself, sheerly for the pleasure of doing it for yourself. Be nice to yourself. No one else will be/has to be nice to you — except for you. Let you be on your own side. (Being nice to yourself will be a whole other post in this series. It’s very important.)

Your Responsiblities?

Don’t be a dick. Don’t let your family starve because you’re being an artiste. Don’t let your work be an excuse for you to hide from people or personal obligations. (Art, the introvert’s shield maiden.) Work your hardest when you’ve set aside the time for you to work, but set aside some time to play, too.

If someone needs you — in a yo, my grandma died way, not a high drama way — get your ass over there. ASAP.

Attend the occasional social activity. I know people humblebrag on twitter about parties they’re missing because their writing, like whoa. It’s fun to pretend that writing consumes your whole life. (Look at this post, for instance! :P) I find open ended parties can get a bit rough for me — 6 till ???, heh — but I like to schedule lunches and dinners with friends. That way, I know that I can be fully present and social for an hour, but not get nervous about getting behind when I’m on the clock.

When you’re not under crazy deadline, get connected with humanity. Volunteer. Read non-fiction. Explore the issues you’ve been avoiding for half the year, to really figure out what’s going on. Being connected with humanity — living, breathing, good and bad humanity — is what’s going to give you actual grist for your work. You can’t write in a box — you’ll die, and worse yet, your work’ll be flat. Find a way to get out some, when you can.

Know that people need you to write what’s true — and you need them to read it, once you’re done. Humanity’s a two way street. Don’t abandon it for your art, or your art will mean nothing to anyone.

How To Find An Agent or Editor Without Making Yourself Insane

Posted on by

Cassie Alexander is an active registered nurse. Nightshifted is her debut novel, coming out through St. Martin’s Press on May 22, 2012.

You’re done with your book, you’ve edited it tons, other people (not your mom) have looked at it, and you’ve taken their input into account, and you feel deep down in your gut that you’re done… what next?
Someone posed this question elsewhere, and I teasingly said they needed to start stalking agents — which got me to thinking of what you really need to do, how, and why.

First things first — become a member of Publishers Marketplace for a month, and use their deals search to figure out who is repping/selling your type of material. If you can afford to keep your membership, read the deal list every day for your genre just to keep a toe in the water. If you can only afford one month, pay for it, and then use their deal search to make a massive list of possible agents and editors who might be interested in your stuff.

There are agents who are too cool to publish their sales in PM, but for the most part if you plug in epic fantasy, or inspirational romance, etc, you’ll get a skad of hits.

With that info, you can start checking out agent websites and reputations. By virtue of them already being on PM, you know they’ve made pro sales (sales to reputable publishing houses) so there’s that. From their # of sales to how $$$ those sales were, you can get a good feel for how much of a player they are, and how accessible they might be.

Start with the big dogs first — google search away. Depending on who they sell too, how much they sell, how often they sell, or if they rep someone whose work you love, or whose work you think yours matches up with, make an list in order of interest. This part is a little hard, depending on your familiarity with names and faces in your chosen market. Hopefully, you’ve got an idea of what publisher matches your work — because you’re reading their books all the time — or a certain author you want to emulate, etc, so you can start off with that place/person. Most writers list their agents somewhere on their website, or the info’s on the internet.

If they keep a blog or twitter feed, you can stalk them that way to see if they seem up to date and sane. (You can also drop info from their blog into your query in a completely-non-stalkery way. Only do this if you know you can do it right. “I love it when you post cute pix of your dog, Boo” is one thing. “I will come and slaughter Boo in the middle of the night if you don’t ask for my full, j/k!” is not.)
If they’re too busy for blogs/twitter things (my agent is) then you just look at who else they’ve sold, and go on reputation.

Another place you can get a feel for agent reps is in the Absolute Write forums. People there have their ears to the ground, and often seem the first to know when someone’s gone from intern to agent, and what material they’re looking for now, in a way that that person’s blogs might not say, and PM sales data might not make clear. Some agents have open windows, and then close when they get too full — AW is a great place to keep track of that. If you sign up with them (it’s free) you can do a search, and see what people are saying about particular agents and agencies. People are refreshingly honest on there about things, which is nice.

Perfect your query letter and synopsis. Query Shark and the Miss Snark archives are great for this. Also bounce them off a few pro friends, if you can. (Synopsis writing is its own torture, which deserves a separate post when I’m more coherent.)

Send your query, plus synopsis (if they ask for it!), plus pages (if they ask for them!) to the first 1-5 agents on your wishlist. Send them only what they want.

It is a huge pain. Each agent wants different things — some want the first 3.5 pgs of your manuscript pasted into your email with your cover letter attached in comic sans font. Okay, not really, but it feels like that, after awhile. But if you want to seem professional, you’ll keep jumping through all the hoops they present, and do things exactly how they want them. Use the last line/paragraph of your query — before the Best Regards, YOUR NAME HERE — to say, “My first ten pages” or whatever precise thing they want “is attached.” This is your one and only chance to prove that you can follow instructions. Use it wisely, do it well.

Hold off for a week, then send out five more. And five more, the week after that. No matter how many email addresses and PO boxes you’ve got raring to go. Eventually, you’ll start getting feedback. Either requests or rejections. If it’s straight rejections, rethink your query. This is why you didn’t send everything out all at once — if your query stunk, you have a chance to change it, now, and fresh agents to show it to.

Wash, rinse, repeat until you have some responses — in which case do something celebratory! and continue to follow instructions precisely as they’re given! — or some outstanding queries.

It’s tough, because you don’t always know if silence is a no. Sometimes agents really do take half a year to get to things. (I know. It’s painful. I so know.) BEFORE you requery them — check back on Absolute Write to see what’s going on for other people who have queries out with them. Or, go to querytracker.net (also a free sign up to search) — it’ll have a ton of people tracking queries they’ve sent to that agency too, which’ll give you a feel if the wait’s a good thing, if they’re being slow, just had a kid, or if that’s just that agent’s way of saying no. If an agent’s website says they respond to everything within a certain time period, go ahead and re-query, but doublecheck using the other websites if you can first, you can save yourself some time. (Keep the requery polite, too. For all you know, your original one got missed. The agent doesn’t owe you anything.)

Publishers Marketplace will give you editor info too, so you can repeat all the steps above with editors, should you choose. And then you’ll recognize names for all the people to watch out for at conventions, to go to their panels, or try to chat up at the bar.

So! There. You can do all that with much less stalking and worry than I did. There was this one weekend when, after requesting my full and sitting on it for 3 months, A Certain Agent tweeted that they’d be clearing their inbox decks over the weekend. I made myself crazed that weekend, dreaming of them signing me and my book. They didn’t wind up getting through everything that weekend, and then they made snarky comments on twitter about not getting through stuff and jeez guys, would you all stop bugging me — because many people who didn’t get a response assumed that agent had lost their stuff, and emailed to ask. I had the wisdom not to pester, but it really lowered my estimation of that person for not following through on their public promise, and/or not updating to say, “You know what, I screwed up, sorry about that.” Apologizing should have been the way to go there, not mocking people for caring about their books so much. (That agent wound up dropping out of agenting all together, heh.) All the worry of that weekend — it was worthless energy that I wish I hadn’t spent. I don’t recommend doing that to anyone. So know your limits, don’t get too involved. Your best use of energy — apart from sending off those five queries like clockwork — is in writing your next book.
Be patient, and good luck!

Horse Magic

Posted on by

Lucia St. Clair Robson’s best-selling debut novel, Ride the Wind, won the Spur Award for best historical western of 1982.  Since then she has written  Walk in My Soul, Light a Distant Fire, The Tokaido Road, Mary’s Land, Fearless, Ghost Warrior: Lozen of the Apaches, and Shadow Patriots, a Novel of the Revolution. Her  most recent novel, Last Train from Cuernavaca, won the 2011 Spur Award for Best Western Long Novel.  Robson lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

The Chiricahua Apache chief, Victorio, called his sister Lozen his wise counselor and his right hand. He said she had the “strength of a man” and was “a shield to her people.”

General George Crook wrote, “The Apaches are the tigers of the human species,” but even in a society possessing extraordinary courage, endurance and skill, she was unique. The Apaches believed that when she was young, the spirits blessed her with horse magic. They also endowed her with the gift of healing and the power to see enemies at a distance. In the Apaches’ thirty-year struggle to defend their homeland, they came to rely on her strength, wisdom, and supernatural abilities.

Because of her gift of far-sight, she rode with the warriors and fought alongside them. After her brother Victorio’s death, she joined Geronimo’s band of insurgents. With Geronimo and fifteen other warriors, she resisted the combined forces of the United States and Mexican armies, and

the heavily armed civilian populations of New Mexico and Arizona Territories. She and the sixteen warriors, and seventeen women and children held out against a total of about nine thousand men.

Lozen is the heroine of Ghost Warrior, my seventh novel. I’ve been researching people and events from history for thirty-three years now, and a thought occurred to me as I started writing this about Lozen. It’s a thought that gives comfort in troubled times, and let’s face it, all times are troubled thanks to our species’ capacity for mischief and mayhem.

The thought is that even in the worst of situations, individuals with extraordinary strength of character appear and leave a legacy that persists. How fortunate we are that other people made note of them and left a record for the rest of us.

The Apache Wars certainly qualified as the worst of times. Many of the names of the leaders who waged those battles are familiar — Geronimo, Cochise, Victorio. Lozen was as exceptional as any of them. One Apache I spoke to referred to her as their “Joan of Arc.”

Reading about what Lozen and her people endured puts my petty problems into stark perspective. And it strikes me as amazing that the spirit of someone who died 120 years ago can influence what I think and feel now.

Buying Books That Are Finished

Posted on by

Larry D. Sweazy is a commercial indexer and novelist. He writes a series of Westerns for Berkley Books featuring Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger.  The series starts with Rattlesnake Season and continues with the fifth installment, The Coyote Tracker, forthcoming in August of 2012.  Sweazy’s first mystery novel, The Devil’s Bones, was published by Five Star in March of 2012. 

Long before I was a writer, I was a reader.  A voracious reader.   I picked my books because of cool, artistic covers that caught my eye, because of genre, because of a writer’s reputation, and countless other reasons that I’m probably not even aware of.  The biggest reason I bought a book was, and is, a writer’s reputation.  If I’d read one book by a certain writer and loved it, then I wanted more of the same—but different.  Whether it’s an eBook, or a real book, that I’m buying, my criteria for the purchase hasn’t changed now that I’m a professional writer.  But I’m not so sure that’s true of the world of books, at the moment, in 2012.  It seems everything is changing, including books themselves.

I’ve bought countless books off the rack at the drugstore, online, at book stores, independents and chains, and in the end, after I’d read the book, it didn’t matter where I bought it.  I have hundreds of books on my bookshelves.  I can’t tell you by looking at them where they came from—but I can tell you whether they were good or not, whether they satisfied me, whether the stories took me away, whether I got my money’s worth.

Now my choices for eBooks are different.  The locations are fewer, on one hand, but much easier to get to on the other.  And eBooks change.  If an author, or company, doesn’t think the book is selling as much as it should, the price changes, or the cover changes, one day it’s free, the next day, it’s not.  Does the text change, too?   Can I, as a reader, really trust the quality of the eBook?  Everything changes with the press of a button, on a whim, or after a day or two of dissatisfaction of no sales, or the lack of blockbuster numbers. Really, it’s like a book is never finished now, like it’s OK to put a book out into the world as a beta test.

I can see the allure of the never-ending book as an author—we don’t think a book is ever finished.  But as a reader, as a buyer?  No.  I’m sorry, I don’t see the allure of buying a book that’s never finished.  I want to buy something that’s final. Done. Completed.

After a book is printed there are no second chances.  Yes, there are second editions and beyond, but they’re announced on the cover.  The buyer, the reader, wants to know what they are getting.  If I buy an eBook by an author, read it, like it, comment on it, write an Amazon review, then two weeks later discover said author has completely changed the eBook to drive more sales…then I’ll remember that, and most likely, never buy another book by that author again. I’ll feel cheated.

Once an eBook is published it should stay published in its original form.  Some books take time to find.  The Internet and eBooks allow for that more than ever—if a book doesn’t change.  So my advice to writers, traditional or self-published, is to publish your book when it’s finished and not before.  I don’t want to read a first draft or a tenth draft.  I want to read a book that is the writer’s best effort.  I want to buy a book that has been published well.  I want to read a book that’s done, that has a good-looking cover, professional editing, and a great story.  It doesn’t matter where I buy the book (though there will be those that argue that it does—and they may be right, that’s just not the point of this posting).  It does matter whether the book is finished or not.  Final, completed, professionally published, no matter where it was published, or who published it.

I love buying books.  A majority of readers are collectors of one sort or another.  I have some books that I will take with me wherever I go, because I’ve been moved to tears by them, and changed and entertained by them.  I want to keep those books close.  To read again, to hold, if just for a moment, to recapture that moment… of completion.  But if I feel like I’ve been had, just marketed to, sold a bill of goods, and bought an eBook that is ever-changing, well, I’ll leave that book behind.  Or I’ll hit the delete button.  That book will have no place in my collection, or my heart.