I got a lot of responses from my post about agents and the state of the industry right now. And most of those asked how to get an unusual book in front of editors these days if they couldn’t get an agent to bite. Well, there is one way. Go to writer’s conferences that have editors from major houses and make a five minute appointment with the editor.

I can hear the “Huh?” from many of you out there.

In this new world of publishing, there has developed a wonderful learning tool for all types of writers called a writer’s conference. There are hundreds of these around the country. Kris and I teach at a few every so often. But mostly, the reason for all of you to go is to meet editors and agents. Let me add the word “good” in front of both editor and agent.

Of course, the conferences have wonderful panels with top people speaking.  You will learn a ton about craft, about business, about plotting, about editing, everything.  Nonfiction or fiction writers.  Doesn’t matter.

Many of these conferences are set up so that the editors meet for a few minutes with people who sign up. Now this is a horrid grind for the editors, but the editors do it because they are hoping to meet that one special writer, find that one special book that will fit their line, discover that one new talent and maybe the next bestseller.

So that allows you to get your book in front of an editor.  Easy, huh?

Well, not really. First off, you have to know what type of book you have FINISHED. Don’t bother meeting with an editor unless you have a finished book. If you know the type of book you wrote, then you have to research the editors attending the conference you are looking at. Say you wrote a paranormal romance. Are there any editors going to the conference who edit those kind of books? Or even better yet, two editors.

Are the editors with major New York houses? Research the companies, the book lines as well as the editors.

Then you have to work out your pitch, boil your entire book down into a really nifty “elevator pitch.” An elevator pitch is this. You get on an elevator on the 4th floor and an editor is there. Editor turns to you as the doors close and the elevator starts down. “What are you working on these days?” You have until the doors open on the first floor to light up that editor with your book, control their interest, make them want to read it. That’s an elevator pitch. Or sometimes called a Hollywood Pitch, or a High Concept Pitch.

Before you go to the conference, have that pitch ready and practiced. And be ready to answer questions in an excited manner about your book. If you’re not excited about it, how do you expect an editor to be excited?

If you are saying, “But I can’t afford to go to conferences, or workshops, or conventions.” Find another profession. You really don’t want to be a writer. What you are saying is “I really want to be a lawyer, but I don’t want to spend the time and money to go to law school.”

Kris and I could not afford to go to conventions in our early days of writing. We once shared a room at a hotel with seven other writers. One convention I had no money to eat and didn’t really know editors enough to buy me a few meals, so I managed to get enough food by taking a cooler from home and grazing the free food at a couple of parties. If you want this career bad enough, you do what you need to do.

And one good way to get around the agents is go to a writers conference prepared with a finished book sitting at home. You might need an agent if the editor is interested in your project, and if they make an offer, you MUST get an agent. But at least you can meet editors and get your book looked at by simply going to writer’s conferences.

And don’t forget that while you are preparing to try to sell your first novel, write the second one.

Cheers, Dean

As I continue to slowly work on the bibliography section of this site, I thought this book might be a fun one to mention up front here. Actually, this is only one book in a four book series I wrote under this title for Adventure Boys. None of these books, plus the four books I wrote as Sandy Schofield for them, have seen print yet in any real fashion. Bummer, I had a blast writing them.

The idea for Adventure Boys was a great one while it lasted. And who knows, it might still happen.

This was a really fun series, set in the Wild West, and actually, this is the second book in the series. It follows five boys as they try to make their way across the west following a really bad guy and his gang. A perfect setting for all kinds of adventures, that’s for sure.

The company had some top writers working on different projects. Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Stackpole, Loren Coleman, Steve Perry. All of us wrote books for them that have never come out. I had a blast writing them and was under contract to write three more in this series when the entire thing went down.

I suppose that I should talk to the newer writers here for a moment about how often this happens in publishing. Simply, a great deal. Over the years I have been contracted for over ten books that fell through for one reason or another, not counting these eight. I have written, counting the Adventure Boys eight books, twelve books total that were under contract and yet never appeared. For those of you who think that one book, your novel, is going to make your career, this ought to scare the pants off of you. This is one of the major reasons that Kris and teach that writers are people who write. Period.

Sure, the point is to get your book published, but what matters is the writing. You have to do your best on every book, do you best getting it into editor’s hands, and then move on. Write the next book. And then the next. Because the publishing side of things is out of your control. You have a contract with a publisher, but past that, you have no control over what happens on the other side. None.

So, I had a blast writing these Wild Boys books. I got paid. I hope they come out at some point down the road. But if not, it won’t stop me from writing more young adult novels, more thrillers, more mystery novels, whatever. I am a writer. That’s what I do.

Cheers

Dean

Okay, I am going to be very careful with this post. I get a ton of questions about agents, and Kris and I spend a week in the marketing workshop dealing on this topic and other submissions of novels topics. (Check out the workshop list if you are interested. The workshop is called Marketing and there is one in November.)

In the current world of publishing, agents hold a very strange place. First off, they are an employee of the writer. Yet at the same time, publishers require in their guidelines that the writer hire this employee before they will consider work from that writer.

Now by all business thinking, this is a very strange practice. How can someone come into my business and tell me to hire an employee? Yet, because of events over the last fifty years, this has become the norm in fiction publishing. And to understand all the events that lead to this takes time, but is critical to understanding how to deal with this as a new writer. So for now, just take it as a strange practice. I don’t have the week of typing here to try to explain it all.

Agents are in a bad way with these new guidelines by publishers. They are forced to look at all the crap, the total garbage that this rule stops writers from sending to publishers. They, in essence, have become the slush readers for publishing, a job that used to be done by low employees in the publishing houses.

Now trust me, as a person who has read slush for years, this is not something you ever want to do. Yet publishers, without consent from the agents, have forced this onto them. And every agent is dealing with it differently.

Most top agents have full lists of writers and thus pay almost no attention to the stuff coming at them. If they look at all, they search for something really catching and hot for the current market. Many try their best to read the query letters they get. But remember, they work for their authors and reading query letters is something that makes their other writers no money at all.

Newer agents who open up to this wave soon become overwhelmed and have to cut back. This often means they take on writers who end up getting shorted in one way or another as certain writers sell and go to the top of the agent’s list. But these new agents also try to look at every query they get.

Scam agents who couldn’t sell an ice cream cone in a heat wave make a ton of money off the hungry newer writers in more scams than anyone can imagine.

And, of course, this pounding causes the agents to be so busy, they encourage their writers to slow down, to take their time with books because the agents are just too busy, for the most part, to handle an old-style writer who does three or four books a year. Not all agents, but I have been hearing it more and more, especially from newer agents who have been slammed by this.

But for the publishers this is a two-edged sword. They don’t have to pay for slush readers, their already fantastically busy editors and assistant editors don’t have to deal with this either, and thus the tide of garbage is pushed aside. But, of course, there is one problem with this slowing of the flow and jamming of the agents. Good product is also slowed down or often blocked completely. They (the editors and publishers) don’t even know what they are not seeing. What they do see has already been preselected, pre-edited for them. Fine and dandy if book lists didn’t have to be filled every month. Somehow, editors need to see good books, yet agents have only so much time, can send out only so many books. At the moment, the balance seems to be holding, but there might come a time when the demand goes past what the agents can supply.

So, how is this new twist in the business of fiction publishing going to iron out? How is this massive road block between writer and publisher going to be solved? Not a clue. Right now it is doing what the publishers need, sort of. And more agents are pouring into the business to help take up some of the shortfall. But publishing is a growing business, with lists expanding and more and more books being published every year. And those new authors somehow have to get through this mess, get their good work in front of editors in some way or another.

And I have a hunch that editors will start worrying about what they are missing. New trends, new books, the strange, the different, do not get through this system as it stands at the moment. And that’s a bad thing for readers, for publishers, and for writers.

Okay, now that all the newer writers reading this want to slash their wrists, let me add this. In my opinion, this is the best time in my memory to come in as a new writer. And actually the easiest. You think this system is bad, you should have seen some of the earlier ones in the history of this business. This system allows a writer to help agents sell books. This system allows you to go around agents at certain times. This system does allow good books to be read by editors. But the writer has to take a ton of responsibility for having this happen.

Let me repeat that in a slightly different way. It is the responsibility of the writer to get his or her book read by either a good agent or a good editor. No one can do it for you.

Again, Kris and I spend a full week teaching writers how to market their novels (and surprisingly, there is still room in both November and May marketing workshop.) We teach how to get around this problem.

How? It sounds impossible. (I could hear the shouts <g>.)

Lots and lots of ways. To start off with, learn how to write a really good query that uses your voice, the voice of the novel, and is standard enough to fit, yet different enough to draw attention from either an agent or an editor. (Starting to see why learning this takes at least a week? <g>) You must sell your novel from word one, and I have read a ton of great novels in novel workshops that never got sold because the writer sucked at query letters, proposals, cover letters, and simple marketing.

First, to come into this business now, you have to write a good book, just as it always was. But secondly, you now must also learn how to write great query letters, great proposals, and great cover letters. And thirdly, you must understand how to market your work, how to find the right agent, the right editor. And how to even know when an agent is a good agent or a bad agent for you. A good agent for me might be horrible for you. Or the reverse. You have to understand that.

And so, so much more. After all, this is an international business you are trying to write for. If you can be stopped early in this business, you should be. It never gets easier. If you don’t know how to find the information in this information age, then maybe another business is a good idea for you as well. If you are unwilling to go out to workshops, to conferences, to find professional writers and talk to them, then just stop now. You don’t stand a chance.

But for the writers who know how to learn and have the drive to go the distance, this is the best time to come into this business and make a living with your fiction.

Agents are employees of the writers. Publishers require agents to be hired by the writer. I have a hunch that given time, this very strange practice will change. I just have no idea to what. As a former slush reader, I know that something has to be done to stop the waves of garbage while at the same time finding the new, dangerous, fresh voices in fiction. But will this current system work or will something else take its place? It will be interesting to see what the next step is, that’s for sure.

Cheers

Dean

As I slowly put together the bibliography section of this web site, I decided to talk about some books up front here, as I did under the Schofield name. And I do mean slowly, especially when there are about eighty novels I can talk about and well over a hundred short stories. I won’t talk about them all up front, but every so often I have a book that I am fond of and proud of, so I’ll banter about it here before putting it over on the other page.

This book came back to mind yesterday when I found a tee-shirt I had never worn while cleaning out a drawer in my closet. It is bright red and has a picture of The Shadow Warrior cover on it, and on it the saying “Who want some Wang?” is printed in bold. I am still saving it to wear at a special workshop or something.

SHADOW WARRIOR #1. For Dead Eyes Only. Pocket Books. October 1997.

I don’t think there were many Shadow Warrior novels ever done after this first one, even though I left the very last scene on a cliff hanger like a pulp fiction novel for the next author. This was a complete voice novel because in the game, the Shadow Warrior has a real voice and attitude, and for some reason, I really got into the voice, walking around the house for a month while writing this novel sometimes breaking into Shadow Warrior talk. Drove Kris nuts.

And there is one line in here that got me a call from the editor at Pocket. He was laughing so hard, all I could manage to make out was, “Can’t believe you did that.” Now trust me, that’s a phone call you want from an editor when you are writing comedy.

I remember writing the first fight scene in the restaurant and then walking around for a day laughing and worrying that I had taken it too far. I just reread that first scene and it still makes me shake my head and laugh. I learned a number of years back that this book, because it had gone out of print after about 40,000 copies sold, had become a collector’s item on the secondary market. I doubt it is anymore, since the so much time has passed, but at conventions, I tend to sign a bunch of these and have great discussions with fans about the Shadow Warrior. However, make note if you want to talk to me about this, I never played the game and have no clue about it. I just listened to a few lines from it before writing and tried to nail the voice. Everyone tells me I got it.

A fun book. And someday soon I’ll sit in a workshop with a bunch of writers and I’ll be wearing the “Who want some Wang” tee shirt. After all, if you can’t have fun writing, what’s the point. And I had a blast writing this book.

Cheers, Dean

I have a wonderful office. It is a full building, where my writing office is the entire upstairs with a fantastic view of the Pacific Ocean. Downstairs is a kitchen, living room, and Kris and my business office. It is where we do all of our e-mail and I play on eBay. Kris has her own building as her office and we live in yet another building here in the compound.

Yeah, it doesn’t get any better. <g> See why we don’t travel much?

I am sitting at my downstairs e-mail computer now in our business area. A few days back, on one of the nice days, I turned and stared out the window at the yard after finishing up on some business. I just sat and stared, marveling at how beautiful it was with the flowers and the ocean beyond. So instead of turning back to this computer, I got up and took a picture.

So, here is a picture of what it looks like out the window from this computer.

Cheers, Dean

The one writing question I tend to get the most is a simple one. “Why do I write under so many names?”

I usually want to say, but never do, “Because I can.”

Actually, that’s the most accurate answer. But before I jump into that aspect of this, let me talk about the obvious business reasons.

1) I write in a number of different genres. A reader of one of my romance novels might not want to pick up a copy of one of my thrillers. So the best way to keep them apart is just use a different name.

2) Sales of books in different genres are at different levels, and sales numbers are tracked in computers by name. So I have a small 10,000 copy science fiction novel and a 40,000 copy romance. I don’t want those numbers confused in any sales meeting or computer generated sales orders. Thus different names.

3) Dean Wesley Smith is known as a tie-in writer. So I write a thriller under Dean Wesley Smith and every review starts, “Star Trek writer… ” Thus a different name for those as well.

4) Speed. I write too damn fast for one name. This industry limits an author (unless you are a brand name) to one or two or three books a year. So I can have two books under one name, another book under my real name, another book under yet another name, and no one in the business cares. How do you think I got to over 90 novels sold? One novel per year, starting when I was 37 when I sold my first novel, would make me on the upper side of 130 years old. Nope, I write too fast for this business, so guess what, I can be a lot of names.

5) I am a writer. I don’t have an ego about a name, or care in the slightest if someone knows a book is mine or not. I know it is mine, that’s all that matters. I once stood in Safeway late one night staring at the paperback section, just smiling.  I had three novels there under three names. One Trek under my own name and two others under other names. That was a cool thing. Most writers have trouble with this part of many names. They must have EVERYONE know it is their book for some ego reason or another. Get over it or write one or two books a year.

6) Making a living with my fiction. Let me think, one writing career (name) vs three or four writing careers (names) pumping money into the house? Which is better? Duh. I have three unseen roommates who pay expenses yet never eat or cost me a thing. And my wife Kris has two or three unseen roommates as well in her office bringing in money. Makes it a ton easier to make a living at this business when you have a bunch of names working.

So, those are the business reasons, plus a few other minor reasons. But let’s look at the real answer: “Because I can.”

An actor, an artist, a business person. They are all stuck with their name, their reputation, their faces. With the exception of a very few brand names like King, no one knows what a writer looks like. Our work is not attached to our face, just our name.

Our work is not attached to our age, or our skin color, or our social level. It is only attached to our name. And anyone can change a name at any point. Women often change their name when they get married. No big deal.

Writers have the freedom to change their name from story to story, novel to novel, always being a fresh young face in the field.

Once, way back in the ancient history, I did a new writer column for a magazine Orson Scott Card edited. My job was to find and point out the new writers coming in through the magazines and books. I was a new writer as well, so it fit. And I got to pick up the phone and call the editors to get information about the new writers they published. A great assignment that Scott gave me.

Every time I did this, I was shocked to discover that so many of the “new writers” I was discovering and loving were simply pen names of long established writers. In one issue of one magazine, the same author had three stories under three names. As a new writer myself, this stunned me, until I started to understand the clear meaning of it.

Here is what it meant:

— Editors couldn’t find enough good material, first off, so they turned to established professional writers to fill their pages because deadlines didn’t change. A monthly magazine had to be out every month.

— Professional writers could make more money having more names.

— Professional writers could be thought of as new writers, getting around the baggage they might carry with their own name.

— Many professional writers found it was fun to write something completely different from what they normally wrote, what their fans expected. So, for example, a hard sf writer could publish a high fantasy under a pen name and enjoy the task of writing it without fear of what it would mean to his own name.

And so on and so on.

I’m fast, I enjoy writing across genre restrictions, I like more money, I enjoy the simple aspect of writing.

Writers write. Professional writers get paid for what they write. I am a professional writer. I couldn’t give a crap which name it is published under, or if anyone pats me on the back or not after reading it, or gives it a good review or not. Makes no difference to me, because what’s important is the writing.

Nothing more. Just the writing.

I write under many names because I can.

There, I said it.

Cheers, Dean

In writing, the idea to most writers of making a series of linked mistakes is just frightening. In fact, fear of making a mistake is the one element that stops most writers.

Major writing fears in no real order:

— If I don’t do another draft on this, people will laugh at me and think my writing sucks, so I better rewrite this over and over.

— If I mail this and the editor doesn’t like me, they will remember me and blackball me (or something like that.)

— How can I write that sex/graphic torture/mother murder scene? What will people think of me?

— Fear of no one ever buying anything, so better not risk it by mailing anything because I don’t really want to know that no one will buy my story or book.

— Fear of no one liking what I do, so better not finish anything. It’s always easier to start something new and more fun.

— Fear of publishing. What happens if this actually sells? What will I do then, so better not mail it to be safe.

And so on and so on. As a professional writer, I’ve climbed over a few of those myself, and heard hundreds more, told to me in very logical-sounding ways. All fear based.

So yesterday, I head back onto the golf course for the first time in a long time. I am playing with two other top writers. One a novelist and top Hollywood writer named Michael and the second a long time novelist named David. (No last names to protect our golf games.) Nine holes was all we had time for, but it turned out to be a blast.

Some of you might know that at one point in my life, I was a golf professional. And way back in the 1970s, I played a bunch of tour stops (with no success), and then when I approached 50 I had thoughts of trying for the Senior’s Tour. Now that got stopped by two things. One, my nerves and putting just went south. A long, ugly ways south. Two, I didn’t want it bad enough to climb over the first problem. But now, here I was yesterday, eight years later, staring 60 in the face, hitting the golf ball at my old length, playing irons the same distance, missing a ton of putts. But having a blast.

I didn’t score that well, but when looking back at my round, it was as most of my golf rounds, as anyone’s golf rounds. It was a series of mistakes. (Did you watch Tiger Woods win the US Open? How often did he miss a fairway, a green, twist on a broken leg and make it worse?)

For example, my first hole yesterday. I drove into a fairway bunker out about 260 off the tee but it bounced through and under a tree. Second shot moved forward but hit an overhanging tree limb and stopped short of the green. Third shot rolled past the pin about twenty feet and I missed the par putt coming back.

Every shot had an element of mistake to it, yet every shot advanced me down the fairway and I finished the hole and walked to the next one, enjoying the day.

Writing is the same way. A writing career is a series of linked mistakes. But those of us who are still here working and writing after 25 years of being professionals, like the three of us on that golf course yesterday, we just move forward all the time. With writing, as with yesterday on the golf course, the three of us have no real fear of making a mistake. We’ve made thousands in our careers, had books go south, been late for deadlines, and written poor sentences (well I have at least. Those two are damn fine writers. <g>) Hell, I’ve written entire books that didn’t work. I once had a publisher mix my book up with another writer’s book and put my name on the wrong book. If there is a mistake in publishing to be made, I’ve made it, yet here I am, going forward, having a blast, making a nice living with my fiction.

I wish I had learned this lesson a lot earlier, especially in golf. I might have at least made the first round of qualifying for the seniors, which is all I really wanted. But for some reason, I’ve learned it in writing and in poker.

Mistakes are common in writing. No one writes a perfect story or a perfect book. No one. Just as no one plays a perfect round of golf.

The only fatal mistake in writing you can make is allowing the fear of making a mistake to stop you.

Sadly, it stops many fine writers.

Move forward, enjoy the process, stop worrying about the mistakes. Make them, write that flawed book and mail it, write the next one. No one cares if you’ve made a mistake or not, mailed it to the wrong editor or not, written an ugly scene or not. Honestly. No one cares. Just as no one cared how I played yesterday. No one. But was I still scared on that first tee?

Yup. Luckily for me, it didn’t stop me from playing and having a blast with two good friends.

Cheers, Dean

In September this year, just three short months away, a very special workshop will be held here on the Oregon Coast. September 11, 12, 13, and 14, Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov’s Magazine will teach a short story workshop. She will be joined by Hugo Award winning editor and writer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. (I’ll be there as well, but even with all my editing and short story sales, I don’t hold a candle to those two. I’ll be fetching the drinks.)

Kris and Sheila are on the top of the form. If they can’t help you become a better short story writer, a better writer in general, no one can. And you have four days with them.

The format of the workshop is going to be pretty simple. The writers signed up will have a few months to write two short stories this summer. Sheila, Kris, and I will then talk about the stories, and if Sheila really likes the story, she might have you send it in to her. At the workshop, the writers will also write a new story to assignment.

So the writers attending will have three stories in front of the editor of Asimov’s, letting her get to know you, get to know your work, get to know your fiction. This is an opportunity that just doesn’t come along very often.

The information about this workshop has been held close for a time, since my fear was that it would fill up too fast, but here we are three months out and there are still five spots open. So if you are interested, if you have been mailing stories to Sheila regularly and haven’t had any luck yet, if you just want to know how to write better stories and find out what is both right and wrong with your writing, e-mail me and put Short Story Workshop on the subject line. I’ll give you all the details.

A once-in-a-lifetime workshop. Sheila Williams and Kristine Kathryn Rusch helping you learn short fiction. A chance to sell stories to Asimov’s. It just doesn’t come any better. Don’t miss this one.

Cheers

Dean

Algis Budrys left us today. He hadn’t been well for some time, but still the shock of this news is surprising. I can safely say that most of my writing career, Pulphouse, the workshops we run, everything wouldn’t have existed without Algis Budrys.

I first met AJ on one very hot summer evening in Michigan in 1982. He was teaching that first week of Clarion and he had been a god to me since I read his book Rogue Moon in 1961. But I suddenly understood that gods were real humans as he came into the room, overweight, huffing from the walk, his shirt soaked with sweat. His doctor had just forced him to quit a three pack-a-day habit and he was cranky. But he still cared about all of us, and over the next six weeks, he kept showing that. I grew to really like him as a person and admire him even more.

The following year, he stopped by my bookstore in Moscow, Idaho and stayed for a few days, sleeping in the store. And he did that every year for as long as I owned the bookstore, being both a friend and a mentor.

In 1983 he bought my second professional story for the very first volume of Writers of the Future. At the awards ceremony in the spring of 1985, at Chasen’s Restaurant, he let me be the very first person across the stage to accept my award for the very first Writer’s of the Future book. I still have that picture of AJ behind the podium, Robert Silverberg, and Roger Zelazny standing behind him, and Greg Bear handing me the award.

In 1986, he called me late one night in late April at the bar where I worked in Moscow, Idaho, and said, “You want to go to a workshop with eleven other writers at your level taught by Jack Williamson, Fred Pohl, Gene Wolfe, and me?”

I said, “Of course.”

He said, “One week from now in Taos, New Mexico. The workshop is free, paid for by Writers of the Future, but you have to pay for your own travel and your own room.” Without a second thought I said I would be there.

I had no money. I was working two jobs, living in a hotel. But none of that mattered. I would be there if AJ said it was worth being there. I threatened to quit both jobs if they didn’t give me the two weeks off. It was that important to me because AJ said it was worth my time as a new writer.

Six days later I find myself in Arizona when AJ called my father’s house where I was visiting on my way driving to New Mexico.

“Two writers need a ride from Albuquerque to Taos,” he said. “Got room to pick them up?”

I said sure and he gave me the address.

Kris and Martha Soukup were the writers who needed the ride. And Kris and I have been together ever since. All thanks to AJ. The standing joke was that he convinced me to “pick up” Kris.

The workshops we teach are patterned after what AJ started at Taos. He picked twelve writers from around the nation who were just starting to sell and decided to help them. Kris and I try to do the same thing, in honor of what AJ did for us.

Some of you also might not know that I started Tomorrow Science Fiction Magazine and hired AJ to be the editor. The first issue, which we got out for Worldcon in Orlando, was a hit. Shortly after that, Pulphouse started having money issues, so I gave the magazine completely to AJ. From the second issue onward he did a great job with it as both editor and publisher. A far better job than I would have done as publisher.

I have not had the chance, sadly, to see AJ in the last five years or so. My loss.

The world of literature is today missing a great writer, a great teacher, a great person.

Bye, AJ. Thanks. Literally for everything.

Dean

After my last post, I got a number of questions about how a newer writer could do the same thing with novels. And I have always said, over and over, that if you don’t read short stories, don’t bother trying to write them.

So, how to make the “challenge” I talked about in the last post work for novels.

There are a couple of ways, actually. But first off, you have to start with Heinlein’s Rules #1 and #2. You have to write and you have to finish what you write. The first part of the challenge or “secret” gives structure to those two rules.  But actually, just following Heilein’s Rules will do the trick.

So, here’s my suggestion. (This is too slow for me now, but it would have worked fine when I was working three jobs.)

1) One chapter a week, finished.

2) Repeat until the book is finished.

3) One week later, the book must go in the mail TO AN EDITOR (or better yet, a bunch of editors, which is allowed with novels unlike short fiction). And follow Heinlein’s Rules here as well, keeping the book in the mail until it sells.

4) No break. Start and finish first chapter of the next book the next week.

5) Repeat.

If you have to scream “But what about rewriting?” then you haven’t read Heinlein’s Rules, have you?

Okay, now to change to another topic on novels, one that I am sure will bring up a ton of questions.

Writer promotion of novels.

My rule: Besides a web site and a local signing to help out a local bookstore, don’t do any book promotion unless, and only unless, the publisher asks you to help them.

I know, I know, that’s against all the current myths about self promotion. But folks, think it through. Do the math.

First off, a job description. You are a writer. I am a writer. My job is to sit alone in a room and make shit up. I produce product, the very product that keeps this business going forward. I hire one employee, an agent, to help with some things, but otherwise, I do this alone, producing product.

When I have a finished product that a publisher would like to buy, the publisher and I have a contract. The contract says they are the publisher and I am the supplier of product. Their job is to publish, promote, and sell my product, and they take the risk with that. I took the risk in the time and money spent producing the product.

Unless asked, I NEVER step across that contract line. Ever. And most publisher’s would rather not have an author across that line messing up their promotions. That’s why they hire sales forces. When an author crosses that contract line, they are a problem most of the time, if not asked by the publisher.

If the publisher asks, a different matter. They have their reasons for asking and they will pay ALL the bills.

If the publisher is a small press, they will often ask and expect you to pay your own bills. Careful in that case as well. Your job is to write books, not promote them. But often if you have gone to a small press, and they ask, help them out where you can.

So back to the first topic, you are always better off just sitting alone in a room and writing, day after day, week after week. Follow Heinlein’s Rules, stay the hell away from self promotion of a sold book.

Of course, none of you out there will follow this advice until many, many years down into a career. But just remember I said this. I am just trying to help speed up the success and cut down the number of tragic events that can happen to you in this business.

And oh, yeah, get rid of your ego and write under a bunch of names. But that’s a topic for yet another day.

Cheers

Dean