Kevin J. Anderson just did a good blog on the topic of taking a chance with your work, about “Daring to be Bad” on a first draft and getting it down. Read his blog here, it’s short.
Kevin credits me with coming up with the phrase, but it was a catch phrase that Nina Kiriki Hoffman and I used in our early years of our short-story-per-week challenge. I think Nina might have said it first, but it was our chant. And I have repeated it over and over during the last few decades. Both to myself and to other writers.
Now in this new world of publishing, it still applies, maybe even more.
Kevin takes the phrase “Dare to Be Bad” and applies it to first drafts, using it as permission to write hard and fast on the first draft and then fix it on the next draft if it needs fixing. That works and works well, especially if you are a rewriter. And Kevin uses external deadlines a great deal to stop the rewriting and release the product, which is also great.
Nina and I were using the phrase in a slightly different way. Not 100% sure how it helped Nina, she would have to talk about that, but for me it got me out of the rewriting mode. And it helped me get the courage to send my stories out for editors and readers to read.
The base of the phrase for me is this: It takes a lot more courage to write and mail something than it does to not write, or write and not mail. And by putting out your work to editors, and/or readers, you are risking the chance that readers and editors might not like it, that it might be bad. So you are daring to be bad.
Where I have used this phrase over the years is to try to help writers who are stuck in rewriting whirlpools, never thinking anything was good enough to mail, so thus never making any real progress toward selling their work. At some point, if you write first draft or ten drafts, you have to take a chance and mail your work if you want readers to read it. At that point you must “Dare to be Bad.”
Of course, there are no real repercussions of mailing a story that fails. No editor reads anything that doesn’t work and no editor will remember your name if your story doesn’t work. Most of us (editors) have trouble remembering the names of the authors and the stories we have bought over the years, let alone the stories we glanced at and form rejected.
And there are no real risks in putting a story up on Amazon and Pubit and Smashwords yourself. If the story sucks, if your sample is bad, or your cover sucks, or your blurb wouldn’t draw flys, no one will read it or buy it or remember you. No real risk to you. Sure, no sales, but no real risk either.
But alas, new writers (and I was no exception) are all afraid of mailing our work to editors or putting it out for readers to read. New writers think that some editor with an empty desk like we see in the movies will pull up the manuscript, read every word, realize it sucks, and then put the new writer’s name on a blacklist and send thugs with guns to the new writer’s house to kill their cats. Or worse.
The reality is that no one notices, which I suppose for some people is worse. But there are no real risks.
So I used the “Dare to be Bad” saying as a way to jump my brain over the made-up fear that kept me from mailing and kept me rewriting things to death. I wrote one draft and then instead of tinkering with it, I had a first reader find the typos and the mistakes, fixed those, took a deep breath, and mailed the story while repeating over and over, “Dare to be Bad.” I was convinced that every one of those stories I mailed sucked beyond words, that they all needed to be rewritten just as I had been doing without any success for seven years.
But I still mailed them.
I would also turn every story into a workshop after I had mailed it to an editor. The workshop, of course, would back up my fear that the story sucked beyond words and I needed to fix a hundred different things about it. Then I would sell the story and be very, very glad I didn’t listen to the workshop or my own fear.
In those early years, with “Dare to be Bad” I never fixed a one of the stories I wrote unless an editor asked me to. And I still need that saying at times now to mail something. I just keep writing new stories and mailing them. And in hindsight, when the stories started selling, somehow I managed to hold the fear under control and not go back and touch any story. In fact, in those early years, I became so militant about not touching a story (because I had to in order to climb over the fear) that I got angry when some editor wanted me to rewrite or touch-up a story. I always did it, but because I was so intense about the “Dare to be Bad” I got angry every time in those early sales. (I never let the editor know I was upset, but my poor friends around me sure knew. (grin))
When I look back at it, I can’t believe I actually managed to swim so hard upstream against so many myths. Knowing that Heinlein and Ellison and Bradbury and others did it the same way helped me, but mostly it was the “Dare to be Bad” chant that pushed me week after week after week.
The New World of Publishing
It takes a huge amount of courage for a new writer to put their work out into the real world. It takes one hundred times more courage to put out first drafts that you are convinced can be “fixed” and “polished.” But for seven years my fixing and polishing had gotten few stories written and finished and no sales. Mailing first drafts got me a career. “Daring to be Bad” got me a career, such as it is. “Daring to be Bad” has paid the bills for over two decades.
And now we move into a new world where sometimes writers can take a chance and put up stories on sale directly to readers. Writers can become publishers. The bad stories will sink without a trace, the good stuff will find readers and get some word-of-mouth and good reviews and sales.
So many writers I hear these days talk about the “noise” of the internet, the fact that so many writers are putting up their own work that their little story won’t be able to find an audience. Of course, I want to tell them (but seldom do) that all New York publishers are also putting up the writers they buy, so the quality of fiction for sale on the internet is very high, as high as it is in any bookstore in the land. So it is much,much worse than even the noise they can imagine.
But all that “noise” again means there is nothing really to lose. And nothing really to fear. No one will notice if a story sucks.
So back to “Dare to be Bad.”
There are always fears of one sort of another, fears that turn into excuses, to not put your work in front of editors or readers. So let me list a few “excuses” here just for fun that “Dare to be Bad” chant might help you with in getting your stories either on editor’s desks or for sale electronically.
And note: Let me just take these excuses right down Heinlein’s Rules.
1… I don’t have anything to write about, and I have trouble thinking of any idea. Maybe the fear of writing is stopping you and you just need to sit down at the computer and dare to be bad. Writing something is better than not writing. (Heinlein Rule 1: You must write.)
2… I can’t seem to find the time to write. Yup, we all had that problem starting out with day jobs and family. But if there are no major emergencies going on in your life, maybe you really don’t want to be a writer if you can’t find the time to write, or maybe you are just afraid of what you might write. Bluntly put, you need to just sit down and dare to be bad. (Heinlein Rule 1: You must write.)
3… I write, but I can never finish anything. Yup, I know all about these excuses. You can’t figure out the ending, or you get bored and jump to another project, or the project just feels awful about halfway through. If this is happening to you (happens to me all the time), you really need to dare to be bad. It takes courage to finish a project even when you think it sucks. Far more courage than it does walking away from it and quitting. (Heinlein Rule 2: You must finish what you write.)
4… Story isn’t good enough, it needs another polish. Sure, some writers need to do more than one draft, but if doing another draft is an excuse to not mail it for fear of the story being rejected or not read by readers, and this fear has a bunch of your stories sitting in files not mailed, maybe you might want to think of not doing that final polish and daring to be bad and mailing the thing. (Heinlein Rule 3: You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.)
5… I write and finish stories, but I can’t seem to get them to editors or find the time to learn how to put them up electronically myself. Here is where the real rubber hits the road, the real fears I talked about above hit each of us. Dare to be bad. It takes a vast amount of courage to get your stuff to editors or readers, even though there are no real threats coming back at you. No one notices if something is honestly bad. And maybe that’s the biggest worry of all, that no one will notice. And if that’s the case, run from this business now. Your ego is way, way too big to survive as a writer, either through traditional publishing or publishing your own stuff. (Heinlein Rule 4: You must mail your work to someone who will buy it. (Modern addition, put it up so readers can buy it.))
6… I mailed the story, got five or so rejections on it, so it must stink. Wow, again, if you give up after only a few rejections, you might again think about another career. But now, even if you do give up after a few rejections from editors, your story can still find readers. All you have to do is learn to do a cover and format your manuscript correctly and get it up on Amazon and other places. There is no reason to ever retire a story these days. Again, no one will notice if it sucks and if it doesn’t suck, it will find readers. But to get to those readers, you must dare to be bad. (Heinlein’s Rule #5: You must keep your story in the mail until someone buys it. (Modern addition, get your story for sale directly to readers and give them a chance to buy it.))
Courage
The phrase “Dare to be Bad” is a phrase that allows you to gain courage. Sometimes you just have to let go and dare to suck.
Someone pointed out to me once that Babe Ruth not only held the home run title for decades, but also the most strike-out title. Luckily for him he had no fear of being bad. He just stood up there and swung at the ball. That’s what I did every time I mailed a new story. I just stood up there, swallowed the fear, and took a swing.
Every writer, without exception, has mental issues with courage. Long term professional writers have figured out ways over and around or through the fears. For me, putting my work out there is always a challenge because so many of my stories have personal themes, personal fears. I still use “Dare to be Bad” as a chant to get me to mail things, to put up stories electronically, to even write the new novel or the next short story.
It takes a lot more courage to try and fail than it does to not try at all.
Go ahead, dare to be bad and see what happens. Mail a story to an editor without rewriting it to death. Put a story up on Amazon on your own. Try new things, experiment, take chances. You really have nothing to lose.
Step up to the plate, take a deep breath, and swing.
And who knows, just as I was, you might be very surprised at the positive results.
I do agree that editing for love of the story (rather than fear of being bad) is not so bad – but to me that’s a part of the first draft process. That is, it’s a limited thing.
The thing that does slow me down is that I write mysteries, and I like the ones where the puzzle fits together tightly. When I write an adventure, that can be just bump and go and straight forward, but with a puzzle mystery, the whole point is filing down the edges and making it all fit perfectly and deceptively.
Dean and I had a chance to talk skiing when last I was in Oregon, so I hope Dean won’t mind a skiing analogy.
When you first go up on the hill, regardless of how expensive or newfangled your equipment, you are going to fall on your face. A lot. Over and over and over. It might take you hours to get through even a single run on a modest slope, and you’re liable to come away discouraged and dismayed. What seems effortless in a Warren Miller movie winds up proving near-impossible when you’re doing it for the first time. Second time. Even fifth or sixth time.
So how do you improve your skiing? By reading books and magazines on skiing? By sitting in the lodge forking out too much money on overpriced, bad lodge food? By complaining to the other lodge denizens about how your boots are too tight, the bindings on your skis are too loose, the snow conditions suck, it’s too cold to be any fun, and so forth?
Naw. You pick your ass up out of the powder, clear the snow out of the neck of your parka, find the end of the line for the ski lift, go back up to the top of the run, and do it again. And again. And again. And again. And you go home and you rest and heal up — skiing the first few times makes you work muscles you never knew you had — and you come back for more. More runs. More turfing it, sometimes in spectacular style when everyone is watching. Only, they’re not. It just feels like that as you trudge shame-faced across the width of the slope looking for goggles and poles and skis that all flew off when you went ass-over-teakettles.
Do this for even a single winter. Maybe take one or two ski classes from the surfer dudes — most ski instructors seem to share 90% personality overlap with their wave-riding brethren — running the hill’s resident ski school. But past that, just keep going up on the mountain.
In other words, dare to ski bad! It’s the only aperture to improvement!
Keep hitting the hill. Half days. Full days. Even if you don’t consciously try to improve, you will improve. I guarantee it. It’s like the body — all on its own — begins to remember what works and what does not work. The more you allow your body to experience the act of skiing, the better you will get at it.
Do this for even a couple of seasons, and you’ll start to ski like you belong in a Warren Miller movie. You’ll get ambitious and graduate from green beginner hills to the blue experienced hills, maybe even the vaunted “black diamond” stuff that looks suicidal — at least when you’re brand new. Again, without any real deliberate effort. Let yourself go through the motions again and again and again, and it’s automatic.
But because writing is a largely intellectual exercise we tend to think we won’t get any better at it the same way we get better at a sport like skiing. Bullshit. To get good at it you have to do it. A lot. And not be afraid to biff it in front of the crowded lift line where hundreds of folk can all see your colossal blunder. No big whoop. The experienced ones know: they did it too. And still do it. You just get up, collect yourself, and get back in the queue for another ride on the chair.
Writing is a project of critical mass. It takes time and effort and constant accumulation, until one day **POOF** the contracts start coming in. But you won’t get that critical mass if you don’t do the constant exercise: writing fresh prose. Dean hammers this, and so does every other pro I’ve met who is working and making a living, yet this seems to be the hardest lesson for everyone to accept and internalize.
Once you do, though — once you make it part of your paradigm as a writer… WHOOSH! You’ll be scooting down the mountain, your legs humming like the well-tuned shocks on a baja buggy — you’ll be zipping by the beginners and marveling that it ever seemed so hard. It will be liberating. A far cry from the first time you angled downhill, panicked, crossed your tips, and fell forward with arms and legs tied up like a pretzel.
(P.S: the above skiing analogy is mainly due to the fact that I am taking my 7 year old daughter skiing for the first time this winter, and can hardly wait!)
Anyone else who wants to join is welcome. I’m itching for some serious competition
-Dan
Hey, Dan, when does the contest end? What date? And what’s your number now? And if I understand, you get three points for every short story, right?
One more thought, on how skiing compares to writing. Getting trapped in the re-write loop is like going to the top of the run on the ski lift… and never getting off! You get scared, you think it’s not the right time yet, you think you’re not ready, so you ride the lift back down the bottom.
Now, as some of you who ski know, there is a certain bit of stigma attached to riding the lift back down to the bottom. In fact, you hardly ever see it. Because it’s just accepted in skiing culture that when you ride the chair to the top, you’re damned well going to ski to the bottom. Even if you suck. Even if it means performing 500 falls in the process. A skier skis. Who cares if you do it badly? A skier does not ride the lift back down!
As writers, I think we need to teach ourselves a similar internal stigma: no shame in getting off the re-write lift and taking spills down the hill. But there is shame in constantly riding the lift up, and down, up, and down, over and over. What’s the point? That’s not what skiing is! Skiing is skiing. All else… is not skiing.
Brad, fun analogy, and from those of us who ski and write, it makes perfect sense. Thanks.
Snow skiing for me is the only completely addictive thing in my life. I walked away from it in 1972 because if I didn’t I would have done nothing else with my life. I lived and breathed skiing and loved it, loved teaching it, even though compared to the guys I was skiing with, I wasn’t that good. Compared to most skiers, I was an expert and totally crazy. But when you ski with the guys who started the freestyle movement (called hotdogging in my day), you had to be totally crazy. I was so addicted, I knew that if I didn’t quit cold turkey that would be my entire life. Not a bad life, granted, but I had to see if there was more. (So I quit and moved to Palm Springs, CA, to play professional golf for the winter, about as far from skiing as I could get. 18 years later I went back to the hill to have one of my old friends teach Kris and our Pulphouse managing editor, Debb, how to ski. It was as if I had never gotten off the boards. The addiction was just as strong as ever and I wanted to just shut down Pulphouse and go skiing. I managed to walk away again, went twice more over the years for an afternoon and again just quit each time because it’s like an alcoholic taking one drink. I couldn’t control myself. It is the only thing in my life like that, weirdly enough.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I watch old Warren Miller movies from my years of skiing. Luckily we live a very, very long ways from any ski hill.
And Brad is right, the stigma of riding the lift back down is just too much for most people. We do need something like that in writing.
Sorry Dean, I had forgotten that ski talk for you was like discussing fine whiskey with an AA 12-stepper. (grin)
Contest ends Memorial Day Weekend 2011 — specifically, first day of Balticon, May 27.
I’ve currently got 100 points.
Point system is as follows:
Short story = 3 points.
Novel proposal = 4 points
Nonfiction query/submission = 1 point
Any fiction sale = 8 points
Any nonfiction sale = 3 points
The rules state that to qualify:
Only submissions to paying markets count. Free markets, royalty-only markets, agents, or pay-per-click markets do not count. Sales made by your agent(s) count, so long as the agent did not receive the property until after you entered the contest. There is no floor on acceptable pay level, so long as it is a paying market.
With the addendum:
Submissions to agents don’t count, as an agent can’t pay you.
There are currently 15 people with slots on the board, and 8 people (including me) have posted points.
For verification, everyone posts a screenshot (for e-subs) or a photo of the mss (for mail subs) when claiming points, and I update the scoreboard accordingly [and all the subs stay visible to everyone, so anyone who wants to check my scoring math can do so].
That’s the basics
-Dan
Brad,
Excellent use of the snow-skiing analogy. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve used it many times in many situations because it’s absolutely accurate. Falling down is an inextricable part of learning to ski. And people who have learned to ski do not (generally) scoff at those having a “yard sale” with their equipment strewn all over the hillside after a fall…because we remember when WE did the very same thing. The only thing that separates someone who skis well from someone who does not is the getting back up and going at it again. And again. And again.
@DWSmith, thanks a million for your efforts on the blog. It really is making a difference in the lives of aspiring writers.
Nothing wrong with the skiing metaphor, Dean.
I’d only point out that you don’t learn much about skiing if you go down the bunny slope once and then head into the woods and off the cliff. Sometimes the best thing to do is to realize the route ahead isn’t worth it and to go practice elsewhere.
Right now, I’m not good enough to survive skiing off a cliff, let alone enjoy it.
Anyway, I’ll get back to checking the electronic formatting on that novel. It involves a bit of rereading, and as I noted in the previous entry, it’s much more pleasant to do this in a story I like.
Thanks for that small publisher checklist earlier. It’s helping quite a lot.
Kevin wrote: “(And while I’m plugging Resnick books, I read “Rejections, Romance, and Royalties” last week and really enjoyed it – nice work!)”
Glad you enjoyed it!
Which leads us to yet another (LONG) agent anecdote! This book was the last/final sale a literary agent “made” on my behalf before I quit the business model. And it happened in the (weary sigh) half-baked, mundo-bizarro way that 98% of my agented business invariably happened.
(And, btw, let me preface this by saying that my fourth agent, who stars in this anecdote, was recently mentioned to me… because she was specifically cited in a respected writing workshop as one of the top agents in the business. My third agent was also cited there. As I’ve said before, when I relate my experiences, it always sounds as if I was working with lunatic-fringe charlatans. But, in fact, I was always dealing with highly reputable, lauded, sought-after agents. Which was a huge factor in my realizing I couldn’t continue working in this business model.)
When I prepared REJECTION, ROMANCE, AND ROYALTIES and spoke to agent #4 about it, I was VERY CLEAR about what sort of book it was, and said multiple times (since I was by now used to my own agents refusing to represent my books): “Are you SURE you want to handle it? If you don’t, rather than waste time, I’ll just send it out myself.” No, no, no, the agent insisted she completely understood what kind of book it was and wanted to handle it herself.
Okay. So I sent it to her. And since my agents had all been pretty hard to coax into the game when I had material to submit, I, out of long-established habit by then, also sent her a list of suggested markets for it, which I had been researching.
Five months passed, during which time I was very busy with a variety of other things. Then one day, I realized we should have had some responses to submissions by now. So I emailed my agent to ask about this. She said… she’d forgotten all about the book and hadn’t sent it anywhere.
(sigh)
I controlled my temper and replied, very evenly and businesslike (yes, really) that this was disappointing news, and I hoped she would be able to get the book into submissions by the following week.
She, by contrast, did NOT control her temper: She sent me back an angry email in which she talked about what a great agent she was but how I was free to leave the agency if I wasn’t happy with her services or suspected her of doing less than a stellar job.
(more sighing)
This was precisely the sort of behavior I had STRONGLY EMPHASIZED, during the interview and hiring phase, that I was Completely Unwilling To Deal With anymore. My previous two agents had both been prone to regular (and sometimes exceedingly nasty) tantrums and fits and sulks. I found such behavior inappropriate and counter-productive in a business association, as well as stressful, and I had been VERY clear about specifically seeking an even-tempered, civil, consistently professional and businesslike person as my next agent, when interviewing this one. This agent had assured me multiple times that she was indeed exactly what I was looking for… and then THIS happened. And it happened, er, on the basis of my being (I assert) businesslike and reasonable about discovering she’d let a submission of mine sit dormant on her desk for FIVE MONTHS, for goodness sake.
So I picked up the phone to fire her. As soon as she answered though, she was very, very apologetic for everything. And although I really think in retrospect that I should have followed through and fired her then, it nonetheless seemed reasonable to me at the time to give a second chance to someone who was acknowledging mistakes and assuring me they wouldn’t happen again. So I agreed to stay on. Even though, in that same conversation, she made more mistakes:
She said she’d let the MS sit on her desk because she had no idea where to send it or how to market it. (I reminded her that we had DISCUSSED markets when I told her about the book, and also that I had SENT HER a list of suggested markets. No reply.) She said that, well, when we had discussed it… she had not realized what sort of a book I was talking about. (I pointed out that I had told her exactly what kind of book it was, and that I asked her multiple times if she was sure she wanted to handle a book like this. No reply.) Now she switched tactics and said, well, the REAL problem was that I wasn’t famous; this was the sort of book that was only marketable if the author was a really FAMOUS writer–a top-ten NYT hc bestseller, that sort of thing. (I pointed out that I hadn’t been famous five months earlier when telling her exactly what sort of book it was and asking if she wanted to handle it. No reply.) And so on.
(Yes, I should have left. So far, all this agent had done “on my behalf” was collect thousands of dollars in commission from a book deal that was already ON THE TABLE when I hired her. I should have left in this middle of this nonsense… but the entire ethos of the industry tells us to put our faith in agents, make excuses for them, put up with their antics, trust their judgment, assume they know best, etc. So I let this this book and my business remain in agent #4′s hands even though, in retrospect, that was plainly idiotic of me.)
Anyhow, the upshot was she agreed to send it out. (Gee, thanks.) Then a couple of weeks later, it was rejected at ONE market, which turned out to be the ONLY market she was willing to submit it to, and she declined to handle the book further.
So, with nearly SIX MONTHS now wasted on this agent who had insisted she wanted to handle this book (after I had begun the whole thing by specificying I did NOT want to waste time)… I took it back from her to market myself. However, the timing was very bad for me, since I was preparing to leave for six months in Jerusalem and a full-time journalism internship there. With THAT on my plate, plus owing under-contract novels, I had to back-burner finding a market for this completed manuscript now, though (agh!) I WOULD have had enough time to deal with it six months earlier–back when Agent #4 INSISTED on handling it herself and then did nothing. (more weary sighing) So I leave for Jerusalem with the non-fiction book now gathering dust on -my- desk, so to speak. And, not surprisingly, my work in Jeruslem tied up all my time and attention for a while. (Shift Editor: “IDF just reported a bomb threat in the center of town. Let’s send Laura to look for it.”)
Then one day, I get an email from my agent’s assistant. A small press had come to NYC and scheduled meetings with some agents. My agent’s assistant attended. During the meeting, the small press described what sort of books they were looking for. The assistant remembered my non-fiction book, thought it sounded just the ticket, and contacted me to ask if the book was still available. It was, and so I emailed the submission to her to send to them. Subsequently, there was an offer, at which point my agent took over, and then there was a deal.
Later that same year, the fiction deal I’d had on the table when I hired this agent was cancelled, due to weak sales of the first book, and I could barely even -find- this agent for the next six weeks. When I did, her reaction was along the lines of, “Er, have we met?” So I left the agency. Her reaction was along the lines of, “Good riddance.” (Within a year, that perky assistant had also left. She may have stayed in the biz, for all I know, but I’ve never seen her name anywhere.)
And the small press which released the book? Well, after the second royalty statement, which showed the book was within about $20 of earning out and paying royalties… I never heard from them again. I pursued this for months, but I got no response to my emails or letters, and their phone was disconnected. Although Agent #4 had collected commission on this deal, presumably to DEAL WITH THE BUSINESS END… I couldn’t even get an acknowledgment or reply from the agency about this matter, never mind action or answers.
So, finally, I had to pay my lawyer (having ALREADY paid 15% to my ex-agent) to help me. We decided that with the company evidently going bankrupt (or at least closing down and disappearing), the most viable solution was for me to forget about the money I was probably owed (which it was unlikely I’d ever get) and focus on getting my rights back, so that my intellectual property wouldn’t be caught in whatever MESS this publisher was obviously headed for. So we proposed to the publisher that I would agree to forego all monies owed on the book, now and in future, if they would immediately revert ALL rights to me. After MONTHS of ignoring my emails and letters… they responded within 20 minutes. Deal! Happy to comply!
They also now claimed the book was going out-of-print, would no longer be available retail, and had never earned out. Er, that was TWO YEARS ago, and guess what? The book is STILL available and selling in retail today. And I have never seen a penny of royalties (or a royalty report) on any of that. (However, I will soon do my own e-book and POD version, since I own all rights.)
Laura, wow is that stunning. And yet another great warning story for everyone reading.
Maybe a good Sacred Cows blog would be the myth of “You’ve Got it Made When…”
Got a hunch that one would be a long one. Hmmm.
What other Scared Cows have I mentioned doing lately? Any suggestions from anyone.
And I’m going to take all the agent chapters, which I am sure “You’ve Got it Made When…” will be one of and put them together in a book. Just got to find the time between other projects to put it all together and write the introduction.
Frank Coles just posted this in an earlier topic, but thought it fit here.
“Thought you might like this from Lee Child:
“I have a kind of two-steps-forward, one-step-back process. At the start of every day I revise what I wrote the day before, and then press ahead. At the end of the book I’m always vaguely aware of one or maybe two sections that are a bit loose, so I duck back and tighten them up. But I don’t really do a second draft, as such. I just finished the book that will appear in 2004 — wrote the last line at midnight on a Thursday and had it in final shape by Sunday afternoon. Over the years I have realized that a book is a snapshot of where you were that particular six-month period, and you have to just let it go. Perpetual revising is a danger. Just type ‘The End’ and mail it in.”
Thanks, Frank, for posting that.
It ends when Balticon starts, which is May 27th. They’re not really clear if that means last submissions have to be out on the 26th or the 27th, but I’m sure Dan can clear that up.
You get 3pts per short fiction submission, 4pts per novel query, 1pt per nonfiction query/submission, 8pts for any fiction sale, and 3pts for any nonfiction sale. Submission to any *paying* market counts (pay-per-click and royalty based were excluded, but no floor on payments to count). You DO get points for submitting the same piece more than once; in fact, I noticed some of Dan’s points were from simultaneous subs of his novels.
Dan is at 97 points right now, and things are about halfway through. I figure I need to come up with about 200 points by the end of May to be competitive, which is 67 story submissions, assuming no sales and excluding novel subs. There’s still 25 weeks left; if I write a short story a week and submit each an average of twice, that’s 50 subs (150pts) right there.
I figure I can at least give him a run for his money.
Off to go get some work done…
Brad–I love your skiing analogy, I think it nails the learning process in writing right on the head.
And also points out just how much mental baggage gets hitched onto the act of writing itself.
Imagine if after each tumble down the slope as a beginner, instead of going right back up to ski again, you sat around in a circle of beginners and listened to them critique your skiing and tell you what they thought one had to change to get better?
And then you had to go back up the slope, and do the exact same run in the exact same way as much as possible with all the added changes the beginners recommended, then do another critique circle, then the exact same run, over and over until the circle thought it had been finally done right.
In the meantime, you’ve been watching another beginner tumble down the hill, then go right back up, tumble down a different way, get back up, chat with a ski instructor who gave a few pointers, and then go again to tumble in a spectacular way.
Due to the long critique meetings, in one day you’ve done just the same run the same way over and over and over. And likely it’ll be that way for the entire vacation.
In the meantime, unhindered by using a circle, the other beginner has been doing the run four times as often as you, as well as asking experienced ski instructors for pointers.
Wow, this scenario sounds absolutely crazy when your skiing analogy is used for rewriting with a critique group of beginners.
Boy, do you have that right, L.M.. When the skiing analogy is used that way, it does sound just as silly as doing it in writing actually is. Thanks, Brad for starting this line of thinking. It does help clear up some confusion.
Like Tom above, I recently had some WOTF success following Dean’s advice.
Back in May, I decided to write a story a week after reading about it on Dean’s blog. It only lasted about eight weeks because I realized I’d rather focus on writing novels.
But what happened is that, following Heinlein’s Rules, I wrote my third short story, finished it, did a proofread, stomached all the “problems” I thought were there, and sent it off to WOTF.
And lo and behold — I got an honorable mention.
Never would have happened if I hadn’t “dared to be bad.” Why? Because 1.) I would never have written it because I would’ve gotten caught up rewriting Story #1 (wouldn’t have even written story #2, much less story #3). 2.) If I had written it, I would’ve spent weeks “fine tuning” it until I was positively sure it was the worst piece of drivel ever written, and then it would’ve gone into drawer.
If I wasn’t convinced before about following Heinlein’s rules — and after following them I was having so much fun that I WAS convinced — I am now.
So I’m guess I’m one of those few writers that actually listens to you, and is encouraged.
Thanks, Dean.
Hey, Jeff, great to hear, and thanks for the repeating that it can be fun. That’s important, so very important. And letting stories go and focusing on writing new stories can be a blast. I love that part of this craft more than anything, the excitement (mixed with fear, of course) of creating something new and wondering if it will work.
I liked Brad’s skiing analogy for writing so much I asked him if he’d blog about in more depth, and he’s been kind enough to do so. New blog post by him at:
http://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/on-writing-and-skiing-dare-to-ski-bad/
Ugh, Laura… Stuff like that just reinforces the whole “build your own small press” line of thinking. I’m actually more than a little ticked off, too, because I *like* thinking that I am actually, you know, PAYING THE AUTHOR when I buy a book. If I’d known the book wasn’t paying you a dime, I would have held off and bought the POD when you put it out. I was going to blog a nice review about it too, but maybe I’ll hold off til you release the version that actually, you know, PAYS you. =P
I’m hoping that you’re still getting royalties for the Sirkara books? Was planning to buy those next.
Love the skiing analogy, and Dean, I understand a bit where you’re coming from. The first time I (downhill) skied was with a bunch of folks from work (software startup, you can imagine the type, and no way was I going to ride the lift down.) After a couple of practice runs on the bunny slope, I joined the gang in a run from the top. They all paused to regroup on a flat area above a mogul field — as I zoomed by (I couldn’t stop!) I heard “I thought Al didn’t know how to ski.” Hah! Made it through the mogul field and was so surprised by that I wiped out at the bottom of it.
I was hooked. The slopes (this was near Ottawa) were close enough to town to get a couple of hours night skiing in every night after work. Yeah, I wiped out a lot, but I got better fast. My motto, cribbed from a T-shirt, was “Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death”.
When I moved out to Colorado I made a deliberate choice to stay away from the slopes, and now I wouldn’t trust my knees on them. I’m still tempted.
And I get a little bit of that rush every time I stick a manuscript in the mail.
Thanks for the contest idea, JDS!
I’ll sign on as soon as I find out when to start counting from. For 2010 I’ve only amassed about 25 points, by your point totals. Too bad finishing NANOWRIMO doesn’t count
On my first or second ever ski trip, after getting bored of the bunny and green slopes, I ended up on a black diamond slope because I’d meant to get off on the blue slope and didn’t manage to get my feet and skis coordinated to do so. There was no way I was riding down the mountain in the lift, so…I skiied off.
Once I got over the sheer terror of being half out of control most of the time, I loved the speed and adrenaline rush so much I hit the bottom of the hill and wanted to do it again, and have been fond of skiing ever since.
Great analogy for writing. It’s a wild and crazy ride but the only way to get better is to learn the basics and just DO it over and over.
Laura, here’s another thank you for your hard-earned advice and shared wisdom, too. I’m halfway through your book (library loan!) and am learning a lot–and ever more leery of agents–especially the ones touted in your former field, heh.
LM May, that was an excellent extension of the skiing analogy! If I hadn’t gotten the message of “write write write and send send send” by now, I think that would have cinched it.
Kevin wrote: “If I’d known the book wasn’t paying you a dime, I would have held off and bought the POD when you put it out. ”
Nay, think not that! This is NOT the reader’s problem. This is the author’s problem, and it’s between me and the publisher (which no longer exists). As long as you didn’t STEAL your copy of the book, and you got it from a legal outlet rather than a pirate, your portion of the transaction was perfectly honorable!
And: “I’m hoping that you’re still getting royalties for the Sirkara books? Was planning to buy those next.”
According to my royalty statement, those went out of print recently. But releasing e-books (I hold the e-rights to those three novels) is on my To Do list. (Actually, I had hoped to have it done by now… but, as a friend of mine says, things always take longer than they take.) Meanwhile, to be clear, when books are out of print, I have no objection at all to readers buying them second-hand. (Or, at any time, to going to the public library. I am a great fan of libraries.)
Hermatoles -
You can read all the rules at http://www.anmap-foundation.org/?q=node/21
-Dan
Doh. Trust me to go and misspell your name that badly. Apologies, Heteromeles!
Maybe you could cover the idea that if you send out a book before it is “perfect”, you’ve wasted your chances to publish that book (I hear this a lot, seems stupid to me…).
Or the often repeated idea that if you self-publish and therefore use up first rights, no publisher will touch your novel afterward and so you’ve “wasted” that novel. I know you touched on this a little with your idea of putting things up and then sending editors print copies as part of the submission package, but the whole myth that you can “ruin” a book by either submitting it too early (ie potentially with a typo or five or before you’ve polished the life out of it) or by putting it up and making it available before submission is seemingly everywhere.
Boy, do you have that right, Annie. Good point. A flat silly myth. Just as silly as saying Hollywood ruined a book when the book is still just sitting there on the shelf just fine.
Along the same lines as those Annie mentions would be the idea that you can “time” the market. Save your stuff for just the right time, whenever that is, and hit all the editors right when it’s the perfect time for them.
Something like being able to tell when everyone is looking for Harry Potter and then sending it out at the right time. (Which Rowling didn’t do, of course.)
Not sure it’s a myth, but I’m sure someone believes that submission times are seasonal or something like that, so they wait.
Jeremy, I think the myths that Annie mentioned and the timing myth are both brought on at the lowest levels by fear. It’s easier to make up some reason like “it’s not time” than to actually take a chance and mail a book and then write the next one.
Actually, I think writing the next one is a fear that scares more writers into doing silly stuff with their first book, such as over promotion and stuff like that. The fear of doing it again causes many of these myths to come into being. But that’s just a theory.
I agree with Annie, Dean, those two myths annoy the hell out of me. Not as much as the bestsellers can’t write b.s. but pretty close. So it would be cool to see something about all of those posted here.
Also, I just read “Flawless Execution” (literally just read. Just got it from the UPS guy actually), and I thought it was a great little story. The rejection makes me laugh even more now. =)
Once again I’m sure as hell glad I read this blog. I’ve been following some self-publishing/indie writers, and it’s amazing to me how they’ve fallen into the Book As Event myth. “My novel just hit my beta readers. Waiting, then make change. February release still good.”
And on, and on, and on.
At first, I thought, well, you have to build up some kind of momentum, right? You’re all on your own here. And while there’s probably some truth there, all I’ve seen is momentum toward the release date. What are these folks doing while they wait for their beta readers to finish? Are they working on the next thing? I dunno, they never talk about it.
Now maybe I’m completely wrong about them — but I can only judge based on what I read, and what I read is a Book Is An Event.
So maybe one of the “myths” you can talk about is how to avoid the Book As Event when you’re self-publishing, and maybe how to get a balance.
But then, you’ve done all of that, just not in one post aimed at the new world of publishing.
That’s an interesting point, Jeff. I hear “Book As Event” in that type of post series, but I also hear “author instead of writer” that Dean has lately been on about.
Dean’s said that an author is someone who has been published, and a writer is one who writes. The author only cares about that one story, and the writer cannot even remember the one that’s in the hands of the beta readers (if she even has them), because she’s about three books past that one and has no idea what was really going on in it.
Given the discussion lately about author versus writer, I’d say “Book As Event” is caused by the author mindset. Or maybe it is that the Book As Event mindset creates the “author” model.
Hmm. I’m perplexed.
Jeremy, nothing to be confused about. You are right on the money. Book as event thinking and also all the self-promotion crap that goes on puts a writer squarely into the mindset of author, meaning a person who has written.
Someone mentioned a book of mine and asked me when it was coming out this last week. I honestly have no idea and for a moment couldn’t even remember the book they were talking about. Of course, I’m a writer and my focus is on the book I am writing. The book they were asking about was three novels ago. And to be honest, I didn’t waste the time to go ask when it was coming out. Not my concern. I just write the stupid things. (grin)
Heh. Then did you tell that person you had no idea, or give them a coy, stock answer like, “Soon”?
I think that’s funny. Some would probably find it off-putting that a writer didn’t know when his own work was coming out, but I just think it’s awesome.
Kind of like some visionary engineer in a company designing new innovating products who, when asked when his new gadget is coming out replies, “Oh, I have no idea about that. I just let all the marketing geeks worry about that crap, and work on the next project.”
That sounds like exactly the right mindset for me. As long as the contract and check are in order, I imagine that’s the time to stop dealing with that project. (Unless there is some bump.)
Jeremy, oh, I pay close attention on the business side. Just not on the publishing or marketing side. The money I care about. What they do with my books doesn’t much bother me.
Here’s a perfect example of what I was talking about:
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/12/marketing-your-self-and-your-book.html
Of course, it’s by an agent, not an indie-writer, but I see the same thing among indie writers, too. MARKET, MARKET, MARKET, MARKET, MARKET, MARKET, write.
Jeff, you can’t stop them. Just be glad they are wasting their time over there doing all that “author” stuff. They will be gone shortly and won’t be taking spots on shelves. You can’t convince them otherwise.
The best promotion is good next book. It really is that simple.
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say. It seems to me that you are firmly in control of everything you can control or even influence, and you let all those things you can’t control or have little influence over take care of themselves.
And that definitely fits into the theme of the KTSCOP series: Be in control of your own career.
One of the key aspects of being in control of something is knowing when not to attempt to control it.
To be clear, I was not implying you are some head-in-the-clouds person, if you got that impression.