Get Serious about Writing
If words are your chosen field of endeavor, and you have at least contemplated the publication of your work, then you are already at the craft stage of writing. Here are a few ideas I'd like to share, speaking from a publisher's point of view. Hover your cursor over one of the topics for the short answer.
LEARN: We all develop mindsets, based on what we see or hear or talk about, regardless of whether it was a film, a rumor, a bit of news, an emotional outburst, or an actual thought process. We then interpret new events as seen through our own expectations — well, we couldn't function if we didn't. In the process, we filter out the "extraneous" or "unnecessary" bits, the ones that don't fit into how we already see the world. Homeless persons may become "invisible" as we drive to a job, our minds on the work ahead. Your daughter may change her routine without your noticing it. A weekly get-together, but someone doesn't show up. A lot of parked cars are sporting "For Sale" signs. Stories are all around us, if we just pay attention, dig into something odd or out of place or unspoken.
IMITATE: Shakespeare mashed up tragedy with comic relief; Goethe plumbed the depths of the soul. Those techniques may be useful to your story — or not. Like learning the scales in music, there are only so many ways framing a story. Try them all so that you're ready to use the techniques that work for your voice, your story. With me, it seems to be the em-dash — always with a little twist at the end of every bald statement. Even though I know that it's undercutting my overt message, there's a personal "truth": my own ambiguity (not ideal for a writer, but great for an editor). What do you overuse? Long paragraphs? Adjectives? Similes? Commas? Apologies? Lots of questions? (like me 8=)
AUDIENCE: You may think that you've done enough after wringing out your soul on paper month after month, and plopping down a "finished" manuscript. But what sets a publisher's heart aglow is to see an author who brings her/his own audience along. Why? Because you can help to enlarge that publisher's chosen market. Each publisher marks out a territory, a niche in which they are a "brand." They have found customers willing to buy just that kind of product, and the marketing arm of the publishing firm works mightily to build that customer base with more of the same kinds of books. If you can show a track record of sales or significant interest in your writing, and that record overlaps with the publisher's market, then you can start to have a conversation. If you hear "What else you got?" from a publisher, that's an open door to establishing a relationship.
AFFINITIES: Whatever your subject or story, pay attention to which writers, editors, and publishers are in your arena. Someone has plowed this field before (or one nearby). If possible, get to know them, and make yourself known, especially to editors. Find small presses and magazines — they're always hungry for material. Keep sending your material to editors at publications you'd like to be associated with. If they reply with anything more than a boilerplate rejection letter — even a handwritten signature — that's a plus. Send more. I've often responded to writers who had the right tack, despite the fact that what they sent wasn't quite right. Currying relationships works both ways. Perhaps they were already looking for something similar, or some part of your work starts the editorial side thinking. They may even ask if you'd be interested in writing on a specific topic, a commissioned work that would not belong to you although your name would be on it. That gives you some creds in your field.
PUBLISHERS: You will probably never see or talk to a book publisher directly. In many houses, a young intern going through the slush pile will see your MS first. If the intern sees merit in your work, s/he will pass it on to an acquisitions editor.
Next step: the editor must be ready to pitch it to a senior editor, who (rarely) gives the go-ahead to bring it up in a staff meeting. At this meeting, the other side of publishing, the marketing department, will bring their knowledge of the territory — which books are selling in which parts of the country at what season — to see if your work is at all a fit for their seasonal marketing strategy.
Editors and marketers are always at odds, the one side eager to push good writing, the other thirsty for fast sellers on hot topics with little or no regard for the quality of writing. If there's a disagreement, the marketers hold the upper hand.
Where is the publisher in all this? That's the worrier who hired all these people, whose money funds the entire operation day by day, year by year.
Booksellers, authors, publishers, even marketers go into publishing because they love it, not because it makes a lot of money. I hope you feel the same kind of dedication that I and the rest of the publishing industry do. We're culture warriors!
WRITING:Don't assume that a book editor will actually edit your MS. The less money a publisher has to spend on editing your work the better are your chances. If you're presenting yourself as a serious writer, you had better know your language inside and out: grammar, punctuation, style. And if you can't do it yourself, get help from a friend or a freelance editor. A sloppy manuscript shows disrespect; you're selling a product, polish it up.
POINT: You've produced a lot of material; it may be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography. Have a story to tell. The reader doesn't know what it's about unless you tell them. And not just My years in the War, but how it changed my character, and not all for the better. Not just My Life, but What I Had to Do That I'll Always Regret. Of course it's inspiring to read about heroes, they make good movies, but there's a huge audience of people hungry for some kind of acknowledgement that they are not alone in thinking bad thoughts or facing complex issues poorly. Why do people read fiction? You know already — to experience the heights and the depths of human emotion while sitting safely at home in a chair, risking all on a dubious adventure without actually risking anything.
What about nonfiction? Where's the story in that? Straight nonfiction ideally is providing good information to people who need to know — the educational exchange. Teachers do it every schoolday. Info flow. But any good teacher will tell you that getting and keeping students' attention is the trick. And the students' biggest concern is: Why do I care? You're in a better position than the teacher, because your reader bought (or borrowed) your book and has already invested in it. Like a fiction writer, you would do well to introduce a topic well, explore its facets, and leave with a hint of what is next, a context for what you just imparted, so the reader has a clue about how it might fit with the next topic.
VOICE: What's voice have to do with writing? Academics and scientists may shun the personal in writing technical papers, but for everybody else, writing is another way of speaking. The process of aligning your writing to your speaking may take you awhile. Your goal is to use your personality to communicate. If you tend to start conversations with a joke or a statement that calls for a general response, then start your writing that way. I tend to ask a question to which I probably know the answer (which I just did in the beginning of this paragraph). Be there, in your writing. Once you're comfortable with that, your reader will be comfortable too.
Bandanna Books • Santa Barbara
Copyright © 2012 Bandanna Books