Author Interview
Up Close and Personal with David Kubicek, Author of In Human Form
Author interview on Patti Roberts’ Blog: http://paradox-theangelsarehere.blogspot.com/2011/10/up-close-personal-with-david-kubicek.html
David Kubicek
The Official Website
Archive for the tag “writer”
Self-Publishing and Book Reviewers
Although self-publishing is less stigmatized now than it was even ten years ago, we still have a long way to go before we stamp out every form of prejudice against self-published books. For instance, book reviewers – other than local reviewers in the author’s hometown – refuse to review self-published books. They won’t even open the book and read the first few paragraphs, which is enough for people who make their living reviewing books to determine if the writer is good, or if he’s publishing prematurely.
Once upon a time, I edited a book called October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror. I received an average of 240 submissions per month. I had lots of other things to do besides read 240 submissions per month, which would have taken a substantial amount of time. After reading a couple of paragraphs, two pages at most, I knew two things: 1) If the writer was ready for publication, and 2) If the story was the type for which we were looking. That’s not difficult to do, and it doesn’t take much time. There is not an editor anywhere who reads every word of every manuscript he or she receives.
When I was a student at the University of Nebraska, one of my English teachers brought in an arm load of self-published books. They weren’t difficult to find. UNL’s English department publishes The Prairie Schooner, a prestigious literary magazine. The Schooner receives many review copies of books from traditional and self-publishers. At that time they dumped the self-published books on a table where anyone who wanted them could pick them up.
My teacher read excerpts from the books, and we all had lots of laughs over them – until he came to one written by a fellow named Thomas M. Disch. That piqued my interest because, being a reader of speculative fiction, I was familiar with this author’s name. My teacher, with a smirk on his face, started reading. Slowly, the smirk dissolved. He stopped reading, and in a voice that clearly communicated his astonishment, he said: “This isn’t funny.”
He seemed almost let down, as if the Prairie Schooner had cheated him by putting this book on the rejects table.
The reason that book wasn’t “funny” might have been that Thomas M. Disch had a long history of being “traditionally” published. I don’t know why he chose to self-publish the book my teacher picked up. There are many reasons writers choose to self-publish, and it is a mistake for a critic to dismiss a book because of his or her own misconceptions, his or her own prejudices.
Reviewers who have a rule that they will review no self-published books, would not have reviewed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Mark Twain self-published because of “the foolishness of his publishers.” That’s one reason some writers self-publish. Other writers self-publish because the pay is better (a royalty of 60-85% vs. 10-25%), and they are paid more quickly (many traditional publishers withhold an author’s royalties for three pay periods – 18 months – after the book is published). Other books may be self-published because, for whatever reason, they failed to find a publisher who thought there was a market for the book.
And yes, many self-published books are not ready for publication. But this is true of traditionally published books as well. I’ve been an avid reader for many, many, many years, and 99% of the books I’ve read were published by traditional publishers. And I’ve read lots of crap. Lots of crap. I’ve read fiction by writers who weren’t ready for the big time or who had ineffective editors or both, and I’ve read nonfiction books that did not support their hypotheses with good evidence. I’ve also read many good traditionally published books.
On the flip side, I’ve read some good self-published books as well as some that were not ready for publication.
My point is, to borrow an old cliché, you can’t judge a book by its cover. A reviewer who refuses to even look at a book because it is self-published not only is failing to do his job, but he’s also doing his readers a disservice, readers who might like Amanda Hocking’s stories, for instance (for those of you who may not have heard, Hocking found her audience by self-publishing, then was offered a $2 million deal from a “traditional” publisher).
For a look at some famous authors who self-published, check out my earlier blog post Self-Publishing: Is It For You?
Learning To Swim: A Review
Learning to Swim: A Novel by Sara J. Henry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Learning to Swim begins when freelance writer Troy Chance sees a child plummet from the deck of a passing ferry into Lake Champlain. Instinctively, she dives in and saves him, then begins the long swim back to shore.
The child, who speaks only French, tells Troy his name is Paul. Other than that she manages only to get sketchy information from him. He tells her he was kidnapped and held in a room somewhere, and that the kidnappers shot his mother.
Troy becomes attached to Paul and, instead of going to the police right away, uses her internet researching skills to do some preliminary investigating of her own. She wants to find out to her satisfaction that the boy will be safe if she turns him over to the authorities and he’s returned home. She wants to make sure the father wasn’t involved in his abduction.
Her investigation leads her into deeper involvement with Paul and his father and puts her under suspicion of a local detective who thinks she had something to do with Paul’s initial disappearance.
After an attempt on Troy’s life, she really hits the investigation trail, determined to find the two men who kidnapped Paul. But what she stumbles into is a twist that I never saw coming.
Learning to Swim is Sara J. Henry’s debut novel. It is a relationship story as well as a mystery, and on both levels it succeeds very well. I highly recommend it.
Visit Sara J. Henry’s blog at Sara in Vermont.
Thriller Writer Barry Eisler Turns Down Half Million Deal to Self-Publish
As little as a decade ago self-publishing was a stigma. The industry and the public viewed it as something one did out of desperation, when one could not get one’s books published by traditional means.
In the past few years, particularly with the growing popularity of e-books, that has been changing. And now thriller writer Barry Eisler, author of the popular John Rain novels, has given self-publishing a tremendous boost. Eisler turned down Minotaur’s $500,000 offer for two books and plans to self-publish his next novel as an e-book because, he said, he believes in the long run self-publishing will be more financially lucrative.
In a conversation with self-publishing guru Joe Konrath, Eisler talks about his reasons for his decision. It’s a lengthy conversation but well worth the time for anyone who is considering self-publishing.
Huckleberry Finn Censorship
Poor Mark Twain. He can’t catch a break.
When The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884, censors banned it because it portrayed the slave Jim as a human being. Today, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth books in Alabama have joined forces to publish a combined cleansed
Mark Twain
version of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The new edition will replace the N-word (which, by Gribben’s count, appears 219 times in Huck Finn and 4 times in Tom Sawyer) with the word “slave.”
In the first place, I don’t see how “slave” is an improvement over the N-word. Slavery was not a good thing. It was one of the most shameful conditions ever condoned by this government or any government. So one would think that if the N-word was offensive to school children, “slave” would cause its own share of nightmares.
In the second place, to rewrite Twain is to rewrite history, as the Soviet Union used to do. The N-word was commonly used in Twain’s day. If Twain had meant “slave,” he would have used “slave” instead of the N-word. Remember, it was Twain who said: “The difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”
In the third place, the N-word is a teachable moment. It is an opportunity for teachers to talk a little about the time in which the novel was written and why the N-word, although commonly used then, is offensive today.
We can’t escape our history by denying it. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a literary masterpiece. It should be taught as it was written or not taught at all.
Net Neutrality Update
Yesterday, as was widely expected, the FCC passed the new regulations governing the Internet–the same regs that Sen. Al Franken called “worst than nothing.” Newsweek technology editor Dan Lyons in his article The Internet Splits in Two suggests that we’re entering into Phase Two of Internet technology, which he compares to the growing pains of television – for example, cable vs. rabbit ears. The new regs probably will be challenged in court, and they may be tweaked – or they may not be, which wouldn’t be good for writers, researchers, or for folks with Websites and blogs who can not afford to buy priority placement in the pecking order. As Lyons suggests in his article, which I encourage you to read in full, expect these costs to be passed on to consumers, who will end up paying more for a crappier product. Sen. Al Franken in his Huffington Post article today, The Internet as we Know it is Still at Risk does offer a ray of hope for the future of Net Neutrality.
To keep up on the Net Neutrality issue: savetheinternet.com.
Curtis Brown Writing Course: Not Enough Bang for the Buck
Curtis Brown UK will launch a writing course next year, which the agency touts as “the first and only new writing school to be run by a literary agency.” The course – which will run from May 5 to July 21, 2011 – is designed to help “15 talented writers to produce distinctive, compelling novels.”
Although the agency doesn’t guarantee representation of the student’s completed work, it does guarantee that “every student’s work will be read by a Curtis Brown book agent and every student will receive a detailed critique on their work at the end of the course.”
The price of the course is 1,600 Pounds (approximately $2,533 American).
Although it could be argued that because prospective students must apply and be accepted into the program it is not unlike applying to a college and then paying tuition. My problem with this is that writing a novel is not like taking Geology 101. Writing a good novel comes from practice, lots and lots of practice.
It’s unlikely that a person with little or no writing experience could win one of the coveted 15 spots, and a person who can write well enough to be accepted into the program probably is quite far along the road to becoming a successful novelist. I’m sure this course will impart valuable information, but I’m not sure the students will get enough bang for their bucks.
With all of the resources available on the Web and all of the books about writing (Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel and Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook are the best I’ve seen) and the writing groups where members give one another honest feedback, serious writers probably could learn as much as they would if they spend 1,600 Pounds ($2,533 American) to take this course.
Many agents, probably most agents, will give aspiring writers guidelines for revising their novels – if the agents think the novels promising, and salable – and they will do this for free. An agent asked me for revisions on one of my novels. I made the requested revisions, and she offered representation (she couldn’t sell the novel, but that’s another story).
The point I want to leave you with is: develop your craft, built a network, and – unless you are independently wealthy – think long and hard before you put up the price of a halfway decent used car for a writing course.
Education is a Life-Long Commitment
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury
Contrary to popular belief, having a college degree does not mean you’re educated. A degree is only the beginning of your education, the first tiny step. Education is a lifelong commitment. This is true for everyone but is especially true for writers.
Fortunately, I discovered this when I was in college. About midway through my course of study I took a good look at what I was learning. I was reading lots of books, writing lots of papers, and taking lots of tests. But what I really wanted to learn was how to analyze data and reach conclusions. I wanted to learning how to think. And the curriculum wasn’t helping me accomplish that goal.
I enrolled in the honors program, and under the supervision of a professor in the English Department, I undertook a research project which culminated in a thesis entitled Ray Bradbury: Space Age Visionary. I re-read all of Bradbury’s early work, analyzed it, and drew my own conclusions about it. The project was a good exercise in thinking for myself.
But even the thesis is only a beginning. I consciously made the decision not to pursue a graduate degree because I believed it would hamper my learning. Getting a degree is fine if y0u want to go into a particular line of work, like teaching, engineering, or business, etc. But you don’t need a degree to be a writer – the subject of my thesis, Ray Bradbury, only graduated from high school.
To be a writer you need a curiosity about everything, a hunger to learn how the world works, and a drive to understand people and why they do the things they do. You satiate this hunger by absorbing everything you can, soaking up information like a sponge. Read on a variety of topics, listen to a variety of music, watch films and TV, have new experiences, meet a variety of people, get out of your comfort zone once in a while.
There is an old Chinese parable about obtaining enlightenment – Imagine a palace with a beautiful courtyard. A young man peers through a tiny hole in the door, but he can’t see the whole courtyard at once. In middle-age he looks out on the courtyard through a small window; although he can see more, his view still is hampered. But as an old man he has thrown open the door and stands on the balcony where he can see the entire courtyard and beyond.
This illustrates the learning process throughout our lives; as we expand out horizons, the view becomes more clear.
To paraphrase Bradbury, stuff yourself with everything. The key is to continue to grow for the rest of your life by doing all the things I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago. Don’t become stuck in time; continue to evolve. For writers, you can’t write about life thoroughly unless you strive to understand it – you never will understand it completely, but the important thing is that you continue to expand your world. For everyone else, the non-writers, you need to keep expanding your world or your world will become a cramped, cold place.
To understand our world and to change it for the better we must remember that a formal institution of learning cannot give us an education. Teachers and mentors can point the way, but ultimately we are all responsible for what we learn, and our education is a life-long commitment.
Banned Books Week 2010 Begins Sept. 25; Plan to Celebrate
Banned Books Week 2010 begins Saturday Sept. 25 and runs through the following Saturday, Oct. 2. I encourage every reader and writer – every citizen, in fact – to celebrate because it gets to the heart of what the First Amendment is all about. To find local events, do a Google search for Banned Books Week in your area, like the events being planned by Indigo Bridge Books in my hometown.
According to BannedBooksWeek.org, “Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. The challenges have occurred in every state and in hundreds of communities . . . They object to profanity and slang, and they protest against offensive portrayals of racial or religious groups – or positive portrayals of homosexuals. Their targets range from books that explore contemporary issues and controversies to classic and beloved works of American literature.”
Click here to see a map of book bans and challenges in the US from 2007 to 2009.
To be clear about the terminology, “challenged” means that a book has been objected to, but when it goes before the school board or whoever is charged with considering the matter, it is not removed from the shelves. A “banned” book is one that has been challenged, and the powers-that-be have taken it upon themselves to decide that people should not be allowed to read it and have stripped it unceremoniously from whatever shelves said powers-that-be over have jurisdiction over.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I would be willing to bet that every work of literature – titles that you would instantly recognize – has been challenged or banned by some powers-that-be somewhere at some time for the sole reason that it’s impossible to please everyone.
Some books have been challenged for the silliest reasons. The Harry Potter series is repeatedly challenged because it supposedly indoctrinates its readers in black magic. There are villains, to be sure, and these particular villains can do some seriously nasty things to their enemies. But the main characters are good people, and they celebrate Christmas, by God. But instead of fighting with their fists or guns as in western sagas, they use magic. It’s a fantasy, for crying out loud. The author, J.K. Rowling, has said she doesn’t know of a single ready who has said, “Oooo, I want to be a witch when I grow up!” (Although, I must admit, being able to point a wand and turn someone into a toad is somewhat appealing; I have a list.)
I’ll climb down of my soapbox now and mention that I’ve had a couple brushes with those who wish to make the world safe and bland by limiting our knowledge and o
ur imaginations. Can’t have us using our imaginations; that would be BAD. (Okay, so maybe my pant leg got caught on a nail protruding from my soapbox; I’ll pull it free and jump down now.)
One brush I had with the keepers of morality was A Need To Kill, by Mark Pettit, a true crime book about child killer John Joubert who terrorized Bellevue, Nebraska, in the early 1980s. I didn’t write this book, but I did some fairly heavy editing on it. A local group thought some of the descriptions were too graphic and tried to have it removed from the shelves of ShopKo. I don’t know if they every succeeded. I thought it was kind of cool that a book I’d been involved with was being challenged, and I never followed up on it. Challenging books may be a bad thing, but having a book challenged can be a guilty pleasure for its writer; it’s like earning a merit badge, like having arrived, because he or she is in the company of giants (not real ones, lest some group should challenge this blog post; when I say giants, I mean writers of literary stature).
The other book that ran into some difficulty was October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror, a collection of horror stories by various auth
ors, which Jeff Mason and I edited. I don’t know if it was formally challenged or banned anywhere, but there were a few indicators that some people were displeased with it:
- A local radio station was excited to do an interview – until they actually read the book, and then we never heard from them.
- One lady returned the two copies she’d bought, along with a letter admonishing me for the colorful language used in some of the stories and expressing her hope that the next book we published would be more wholesome.
- One of my former co-workers was convinced that I was possessed by the devil.
Anyway, find some Banned Book Week events in your area and celebrate. For more information about BBW, check out the American Library Association’s Website.
Writing Fiction: Be True to Your Inner Voice
On most magazines’ Submission Guidelines page, the editor suggests reading a few issues to see what type of stories they publish. While it’s a good idea to be familiar with the magazine to which you’re submitting, sometimes this can be taken too far.
I’m talking about slanting a story to fit a magazine, an editor, or an audience. Early in my writing career I read lots of articles about how to slant stories to fill editorial needs. Many of them suggested dissecting a magazine, taking note of such things as:
- Preference for male or female characters
- Age of characters
- Genre of fiction preferred
- Profession of characters
- Length of stories, etc.
Many even suggested taking notes on the percentage of the magazine devoted to advertising, and what kind of products are advertised. A writer of one of those how-to-slant articles told about how he dissected Good Housekeeping in this way, wrote a story for the magazine, and they bought it.
But I am reminded of the late Richard McKenna, author of The Sand Pebbles. When he was trying to break into print, he decided that he wanted to write for the Saturday Evening Post. He analyzed several copies and started submitting stories. The Post rejected the stories, so he sent them to other magazines. On rejecting the stories, those editors included notes that were a variation of this: “This is so much like a Post story, we wonder that you haven’t tried them.”
As you probably have gathered by now, I’m not a big fan of slanting. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a good idea to know a publication well enough so you don’t send a western to a mystery magazine or a science fiction story to a woman’s magazine (unless you know that the woman’s magazine publishes SF). And you do need to take certain things into consideration – don’t send a woman’s romance to a man’s magazine, for instance – but those things are easy enough to see; no heavy analysis required.
One of my objections to slanting is illustrated by the Richard McKenna story. No matter how well you slant a story to a particular magazine, its acceptance is not guaranteed. There are lots of reasons editors reject stories, and “not being right for us” is only one of them. If your story is rejected you’ll have to substantially revise it before you submit it to the next editor, and the one after that, and the one after that … And that’s a lot of work. It’s also not being true to yourself or your craft.
Which brings me to the most important reason for not slanting – if I jump through hoops to write a story for an editor, I’m ignoring my inner voice, which is screaming: “No! No! That doesn’t make sense. You’ve got to write it this way.” Stories can often be written several ways, but a few of those ways are better than others. You must trust your instinct. The way you write your story must come out of you; it must not come out of an attempt to make it acceptable to a particular editor.
That’s a tough way to go because it may mean that a lot of what you write is not what other writers are writing, so you may collect more than a few rejection slips. But it is how you write your best fiction, by being true to yourself.
Ray Bradbury had an awful time breaking into print. One of the reasons is that he wrote stories his way, which was not the way many editors wanted them. He succeeded because he was a disciplined and prolific writer (he wrote a story a week), and he started selling a story here and there. Soon he developed a following, and readers – and editors – looked for his work. Many of the other pulp writers of the Forties have long since been forgotten, but we remember Bradbury and other writers who were true to their inner voices.
Think of the best stories you’ve ever read. How many of them are standard, run-of-the-mill stuff? I would be willing to bet the stories that stick in your mind have a fresh, a different perspective. And that can only happen when the author is true to himself or herself.
So my advice is to write first, then find a market for what you write. Remain true to your inner voice, and you will be published, and you will write lasting work.
Structuring Your Novel: Lessons from Screenwriting
About fifteen years ago I decided to write a screenplay, mainly because I’d never written one before, and it was a new challenge. I immediately set about learning everything I could about writing screenplays. Over the next few years I wrote three screenplays and one teleplay, for The X-Files (I wrote it for the America’s Best contest; I wrote it for the challenge and never expected to get it produced ).
None of the screenplays has yet been produced (although I’m currently in contract negotiations for one of them), but they’ve been read by a variety of producers including the NBC story department, Amblin Entertainment, and George Romero (producer of Night of the Living Dead)–Romero wasn’t able to use the screenplay in question, but he passed it on to New Line Cinema. Two of them were quarter finalists in the America’s Best contest (one of those was my X-Files script).
One thing I took away from my brief stint in screenwriting was a better knowledge of how to structure my novels. It’s called the three-act structure. Most published novelists probably use the three-act structure, but at that time–even though I’d written two novels, both unpublished–I hadn’t been aware of it. I simply tried to write novels like the ones I liked to read. I realized that my novels would have been a lot sharper had I known about the three-act structure when I wrote them.
To structure your novel in three acts, draw a line and divide it into fourths. The first 1/4th is the first act, the second 2/4ths is the second act, and the final 1/4th is the third act.
In the first act introduce the characters and set up the story. In the second act develop the story as your protagonist struggles toward his or her goal. In the third act the story moves toward its inevitable conclusion (or, if you prefer, the hero’s showdown with the villain).
The crucial turning points (there are others, but these are the biggies) are at the end of the first act and at the end of the second. Each turning point commits your protagonist to an unavoidable course of action.
For example, in the film Salt, Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative who is ready to leave the office when she’s called in to interrogate a Russian spy who insinuates that she also is Russian Spy. This is the first turning point. Instead of going home, Salt must escape the building and evade her pursuers while she tries to find the truth; her life has been changed, and she is committed to this course of action. The second turning point is when Salt discovers that there is another mole in the CIA and is thrust into a final confrontation with him/her. (Since this is a current movie, I’m doing my best to be vague, and even fudge on some of the details, so as not to spoil the film for any of you who haven’t seen it).
The protagonist winning or losing comes at the climax, after which is the resolution. The resolution ties up loose ends, but make it as brief as you can. If you end the story with the climax, the reader feels like Wylie Coyote–falling off a cliff and smacking face-first into the ground, with an anvil falling on top of him. The resolution should give the reader some breathing time.
I won’t tell you the resolution of Salt; that would give too much away. An example of a resolution that is so long it becomes anticlimactic is Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. The novel is a great read; however, the book goes on for 40 pages beyond the end of the story. Unless you’re a history or a symbology geek, you could stop reading after they catch the bad guy (and they always do in Dan Brown novels, so I”m not giving anything away) and you wouldn’t miss any important story elements.
The second act can be tricky. You’ll notice that it consumes roughly one-half the length of the story. This is where–to put it in the simplest terms–the protagonist strives to reach his goal, but he runs into obstacles, then he has to try something else and have another go at it. Until the second turning point where something happens or something is revealed that pits him in a final battle with the antagonist/villain.
The best way for you to learn this basic structure is to apply it whenever you read a novel or see a movie. Ask yourself when the protagonist’s situation has radically changed, and you’ll have your first and second turning points. Also, watch how writers ease their readers out of their stories after the climax. Dan Brown, I love you, Dude, but don’t use The Lost Symbol as an example of how a story should end.
Net Neutrality: Keeping the Internet Free
I try to avoid politics on this blog, but occasionally I make an exception when it’s a topic of vital importance to writers. The Google-Verizon deal is one of those topics.
In a nutshell, Verizon is agreeing to give Google priority on its systems over all other Internet traffic. According to the New York Times, the agreement “could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.”
If other corporate giants hammer out similar deals–and the Verizon-Google contract is all the precedent they need–it would be the death knell of Net (network) Neutrality. Net Neutrality means that all Websites are treated equally. No Website–from Google with all of its ramifications down to Uncle Joe’s blog on wheat grass–is deemed more important than any other; the users determine the importance of any particular Website.
According to savetheinternet.com: “The consequences of a world without Net Neutrality would be devastating. Innovation would be stifled, competition limited, and access to information restricted. Consumer choice and the free market would be sacrificed to the interests of a few corporations.”
Josh Silver, President of Free Press, writes in Huffington Post that “the [Verizon-Google] deal marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as you know it.” Later in the same article Silver says:
“A non-neutral Internet means that companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Google can turn the Net into cable TV and pick winners and losers online … Ending Net Neutrality would end the revolutionary potential that any website can act as a television or radio network. It would spell the end of our opportunity to wrest access and distribution of media content away from the handful of massive media corporations that currently control the television and radio dial.”
In a New York Times article Edward Wyatt writes:
“Cable and telephone companies want free rein to sell specialized services like ‘paid prioritization,’ which would speed some content to users more quickly for a fee. Wireless companies, meanwhile, want no restrictions on wireless broadband, which they see as a different technology than Internet service over wires.”
If you think this is all abstract and may not affect you, let’s bring it a little closer to home. Are you a Twitter or Facebook user? If Net Neutrality goes, those applications most-likely would go as well; Google has similar products which would be given priority. Do you blog on WordPress? Google has Blogger, which would elbow out WordPress.
Why is Net Neutrality in danger? According to Silver: “We have a pro-industry FCC Chairman who is terrified of making a decision … a president who promised to ‘take a back seat to no one on Net Neutrality’ yet remains silent … a congress that is nearly completely captured by industry.”
Net Neutrality has been called “the first amendment issue of this generation.” It must be protected.
Every writer, reader, and Internet user has a stake in Net Neutrality. For more information and to find out what you can do to make a difference, read the complete New York Times and Josh Silver articles and visit savetheinternet.com.
A Man Called Outlaw, by K.M. Weiland: A Review
A Man Called Outlaw by K.M. Weiland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I won’t say too much about the plot of A Man Called Outlaw. To do so might give away too much information, and I hate giving spoilers.
This novel tells two stories, thirty years apart, and switches back and forth between them–a few chapters in 1887, then a few chapters in 1858-9, then back to 1887 again. In the end the story-lines merge, and loose ends are tied up.
I hope that’s not giving away too much. But it’s obvious from the beginning that there are two stories going on. I even guessed the big secret long before the ending, but that didn’t lessen the suspense. I was still eager to see how the story played out.
The author does a good job of maintaining suspense, and despite what I thought I knew, it kept me riveted until the end. In addition to the “greedy rancher trying to force the smaller ranchers off their land” plot, the 1887 protagonist, Shane Lassiter, is struggling with his own ethical and moral dilemma. Both problems are resolved in the novel’s explosive conclusion.
Have I given too much away? I’ll shut up now. This is a great read and a good addition to every western afficianado’s library.
Images From A Writing Retreat
From July 16 to 18 I participated in the Nebraska Writers Guild’s annual retreat, Write Across Nebraska (WAN). This year a retreat was held in three locations: Valentine, Grand Island, and Schuyler. I was one of 20 who attended the Schuyler retreat (or the Eastern WAN), which is in the northeastern part of the state, about 68 miles from Lincoln.
The retreat was held at the Saint Benedict Center, a non-profit retreat and conference center, which was established by the Missionary Benedictines of Christ the King Priory. It is primarily used for religious retreats but other groups are welcome. The mission, which was established in 1934, is built into the side of a hill across the road.
The Center–which is about four miles north of Schuyler–resembles Lincoln’s Southeast Community college but with religious imagery and stained glass windows. There is a lake with a fountain and a statue of St. Benedict in it, benches and tables outside, and a walking path around the lake. Meals were served buffet-style in the cafeteria from 7:30-8:15 a.m., 12:15-1:00 p.m., and 6:15-7:00 p.m., although there was a refreshment area where guests could get coffee and other drinks all day.
There was little to distract us from our writing–no TV or telephones in the rooms, and because of the Center’s location in the hills wireless phone reception was almost impossible from inside the building (although some fellow writers reported being able to make calls from outside). I managed to send a few text messages from my room but that was it.
We didn’t write all weekend. Saturday morning Sally Walker, President of the Guild, and Connie Crow, the Guild’s Secretary, each led a class. I think most of us attended. I’ve been writing for a while (no, I won’t tell you how long, but if you’re motivated you could figure it out by looking at the bibliography on my Website) but I always learn something new from every class I attend, and last weekend was no exception.
Saturday night we had a reading. Everyone who wanted to could read from his or her work-in-progress. Readings ranged from poetry, to memoir, to song lyrics, to fiction. All of it showcased the wide range of talent in the Nebraska Writers Guild. I read approximately the first 750 words of my young adult dystopian novel, working title: Beyond the Wall. It was the first time I read from that novel anywhere.
The rest of the time we spent writing. I wrote 2,310 words more on Beyond the Wall, which actually was toward the lower end of production; some writers wrote several thousand words. But I have an excuse. I wrote in longhand (well, actually I printed because I wanted to be able to read it later), and I don’t write my first drafts at white heat; I am constantly rewriting and revising as I go.
Checkout time was 10:00 a.m. Sunday, but we had the conference room (where we held the classes and the readings) all day. So after we checked out, some of us congregated in the common room for a little final writing.
In all, the retreat was a relaxing and productive experience. If you have an opportunity I encourage you to attend one.
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Writing Short Stories Teaches Discipline
During the first decade of my writing career I wrote short stories as if I had a patent on the form, about 200 of them, and that’s only the ones I have a record of. There were many more that I deemed unworthy of being submitted and took a direct route to obscurity–the trash can.
After that fairly prolific period, I moved into other areas, and my short story writing slowed to a trickle. I wrote two novels (unpublished), three screenplays (not produced), started a publishing company (published five books), and finally became a photojournalist (published more than 3 million words). When I again focused on fiction writing, I concentrated on the novel.
But the other day I came across an interview with a fellow named Stephen King, who is not only a prolific novelist but a prolific short story writer. King said that when writers concentrate too much on novels, they tend to lose interest in writing short fiction. I would add that the short story is a good laboratory for learning discipline.
Every story has a perfect length. College students often want to know how long their assignments are required to be. I had a writing teacher in college who, when asked what length a story must be, said “As long as it needs to be.” A story could be 1,000 words or 100,000 words, as long as it does what you intended it to do. That’s pretty much what King said.
If you are focusing only on novels, you may be missing lots of good ideas for shorter fiction.
For me there are a couple of obvious advantages, not in any particular order, for writing novels over short fiction:
- The pay is potentially better, and you will be paid a royalty per copy sold, whereas selling a short story to a magazine is a flat fee (although you may be able to pick up an occasional reprint fee if someone likes your tale well enough to include it in an anthology).
- You can develop memorable characters in novels; this is the part I like–developing characters with depth and reading stories about characters with depth. In a 5,000-word short story this is an almost impossible task.
- A novel may be easier to sell, and there are more markets for novels–although this is an arguable point.
Plenty of magazines (including some online mags) buy short stories. Start with Writer’s Digest, which publishes several Writer’s Market directories. You can even subscribe to Writer’s Market online. If you write in a particular category–science fiction, mystery/crime, literary, etc.–there are many magazines that publish those types of fiction. Glimmer Train is one magazine that not only pays well for fiction, but also has several contests each year.
Writing short fiction is more difficult than writing novels. You must focus on a single, defining event, and any wasted words or other mistakes will jump off the page. But for those of you who are starting out–and even for seasoned novel-writing pros–writing in the short form will teach you discipline.
In the past ten years I’ve written a total of three short stories, even though I’ve had plenty of ideas that I jotted down for future use. But the Stephen King interview has inspired me to start writing some of those stories, although I certainly will not neglect my current novel.
To watch the Stephen King interview as well as comments from a couple of other prolific short story writers:
When You Should be Paid for Your Writing, and When it’s okay Not to be Paid
In the documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth, in a nearly three and a half minute segment–laced with, as Spock said in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, many “colorful metaphors”–writer Harlan Ellison rants that writers must be paid for everything they write. Everything.
In general, I agree with him. People–sometimes even editors, who should know better–undervalue writers. Isn’t there an old joke in Hollywood that when it comes to power and respect the screenwriter is one step below the janitor who cleans up the studio?
Back in the days when I was doing writing-for-hire work, a fellow wanted me to write his book, for which he magnanimously offered to pay me $100. To write the whole book. That’s one of the reasons I no longer seek writing-for-hire jobs.
Ellison scoffs at the idea of giving away his writing for publicity; publicity, he says, will not do him as much good as cold, hard cash. He’s probably right. Ellison has been writing for more than fifty years and has a respectable track record across several genres, including television. So the publicity value of working for free is negligible, but the cash would buy some groceries.
But for writers at certain stages in their careers, giving away freebies may be helpful. These stages include:
- Beginners who are trying to become noticed.
- Writers who are known locally or regionally and are trying to broaden their appeal.
- Writers who are trying to create platforms, to brand themselves, to become known as an experts of particular subjects.
- Writers who already have platforms but want to promote their expertise in other areas.
All of the above can be done most effectively on the Web where writers can create their own Websites and blogs, can be guest writers on other blogs, and can comment on blog posts they read. This is a seriously cool time to be a writer; creating a platform is much quicker and easier than before the advent of the Internet. The networking possibilities are virtually limitless.
As I wrote in an earlier post, one of the Four Steps to Building a Successful Writing Career is marketing. When I write for my blog or other blogs or post articles at other sites around the Web, I’m working in the marketing/PR area; the free work I do will eventually pay off in a growing audience for my work. Writing is an art, and I would write even if I never made a dime, but when I move on to the production step, I’m writing fiction and nonfiction for which I eventually expect to be paid.
For another perspective on being paid for your writing see the blog of novelist Allison Winn Scotch.
Review of Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern
Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is hilarious. The Backstory: Justin Halpern started a Twitter account (of the same title) where he tweeted humorous quotes from his father. He didn’t tweet quotes frequently, but before he knew it he had over 1 million followers and was getting calls from agents. One result was this book, which quickly shot to the top of the New York Times best seller list. The Dad in the title has a potty mouth (one reason I recommend it for adults), but he is an educated man, a doctor who spent his career in research. At the end of each chapter is a list of quotes on various subjects. Each chapter tells a story about a different experience Justin had growing up and what he learned from his dad in the process.
Review of Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An engaging character-driven relationship novel. Sparks did a wonderful job of creating characters we care about and maintaining story tension. I highly recommend it.
Four Steps to Building a Successful Writing Career
For a business to succeed, four things are necessary:
- Financing
- Research and development
- Production
- Marketing
To build a successful writing career, you must use the same principles.
- Financing. What this means is: don’t quit your day job. You will need money to support yourself and your family while you are struggling to break in. The financing may come from your job, your spouse’s job, a trust fund, or the lottery, but it must be there until you’ve established yourself. A WORD OF CAUTION: Don’t quit your job as soon as you get an advance for a novel, unless it”s for a million bucks or so; a first novel usually won’t bring an advance anywhere near that, but it’s not unheard of (i.e.-Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook).
- Research and Development. Applied to novel writing, R & D is thinking up story ideas and developing plots and characters. Many success gurus recommend setting aside an hour a day to think about how to improve your work. Lots of writers use this method to plan stories. Sit at your computer or with a notebook and write down everything that comes into your head about the story you’re working on. Everything. There will be lots of garbage, but you can eliminate that later. For that hour, don’t reject anything. Write it all down.
- Production. Writing the novel. Sit at the keyboard and type and revise and polish your manuscript. Although some writers claim that you’ll know your novel is finished when you’ve revised it so much you’re sick of it, I maintain that you will know when it’s completed, and you won’t be sick of it. There’s a thin line between doing the best you can and being a perfectionist; at some point you must let go. Perfectionism may seem like a good thing, but it’s not. Perfectionism can stall a budding career because the writer is trying to make his or her novel perfect, and that is impossible. You’ll only be tinkering with it–tinkering that won’t make any difference in the long run–when you could be trying to sell it. You must sharpen your ability to sense when you have crossed the border from revising to tinkering. After all that work, you’ll be too close to your novel and your judgment may be impaired. Send out 10 queries, and if you get 10 rejections, your manuscript will have cooled off enough for you to take another look at it (also take another look at the query letter; that could be the problem, not the story).
- Marketing. Send out queries. Send them out to 10 or more agents at a time. If you have a good story and have written a good query, chances are good a few of the agents will ask for partials or the complete manuscript. If none of the first 10 agents offers representation, send out 10 more queries–possibly rewriting the query slightly. Repeat this process until you sell your novel. Don’t dash off your query; take your time, make it as good as you possibly can. A query that grabs an agent’s attention may be all that stands between your novel being published or being shoved to the back of your closet where it gathers dust. For some good insight into writing queries, go to agent Kristen Nelson’s blog and scroll down the right side of the screen for everything you need to know about submitting to agents.
For your writing career to prosper you must not neglect any of these areas. And don’t stop. After you’ve gone through the process with one novel, begin again with another. Keep repeating the process. And never give up. The first novel you write probably will not be the one that is published.
To see how one best selling author did it, read Nicholas Sparks’ account of how he found an agent and a publisher for The Notebook.
One Writer’s Process for Writing a Novel
I’m at the end of what, to me, is the most annoying part of the writing process: planning the story.
When I started writing, I wrote short stories, tons of them. My process of writing a short story is much like Ray Bradbury’s. Bradbury said: “My stories run up and bite me on the leg–I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.”
A novel is a different beast. It is generally 50,000 to 100,000 words. Most of us couldn’t write one of them in an afternoon. Not even the prolific writer Isaac Asimov managed that. The story tension must be maintained throughout. There are usually many characters that must be kept straight and a few subplots that must interact in just the right ways.
Unlike a short story, which grabs my leg and hangs on until I write it down, a novel to me is more like hit and run. Then I have to catch it and wrestle it to the ground and try to tame it. At first, I have fun thinking of the possibilities. But as I get down to specifics the irritation sets in.
This is the period during which passersby accuse me of sitting around doing nothing or even sleeping. Well, sometimes I am sleeping, but sleeping is the best time to work on your story. It really is. You prime the pump, so to speak, by thinking hard about your story, then you drift off to sleep and let your subconscious do the work. You’d be surprised what kinds of revelations pop into your mind the next time you’re working on your story–while you’re awake, I mean.
Sometimes during the planning process I get a lot figured out. Sometimes not. That’s when I get impatient and start writing. I’ve never been good at just starting to write and letting the story flow–unless I have a solid idea of what the story’s about. If I don’t have the characters and their purpose in the story well delineated, if I don’t have a solid conflict, if I don’t have some idea of where I’m going, I usually wind up with hundreds of pages of junk.
When I wrote my second novel (which, alas, still is unpublished) it took me six months to get it started. I wrote, then threw away what I had written and started over. I did this several times. I’m not alone in using this method. Mark Twain wrote 400 pages of Huckleberry Finn, then tossed it and began again.
NOTE: I don’t mention my first novel simply because it was so bad that the garbage collector refused to touch it–he suggested I call the hazardous waste people.
I’ve been working on my current novel, a young adult dystopian story, for weeks (all right, months), and I still haven’t quite got it figured out. I have, however, just written a clear, concise paragraph in which my heroine states precisely what she wants and the major obstacle standing in her way of reaching her goal.
The paragraph has a character, a setting, a conflict, and a nemesis–although we don’t know from reading the paragraph that one of the other characters mentioned is the nemesis. That’s a surprise I’m saving for later.
Although I usually see a short story in its entirety and follow a familiar path to a foreseen conclusion, I usually begin my longer works without knowing what’s going to happen along the way. Sometimes I know how they will end, but sometimes I don’t. This is one of those times.
A famous sculptor, I forget who, said that he sees his finished work in a block of stone. He just chips away everything that isn’t part of his final sculpture. I look at writing the same way: the story is there, the writer just has to reveal it.
I’m ready to start the next phase, the less annoying phase, and start expanding on the paragraph. I’m ready to start revealing my story. I have a heroine and a nemesis, a setting, and a conflict. I want to find out what’s going to happen to these characters. My typing fingers are itching.
That’s a sketch of my writing process. What is your process?
Favorite Quotes, Part I
Once upon a time there lived a king who hungered to know all the wisdom in the universe. He assembled a group of the wisest men in the kingdom and sent them out on a mission to discover this wisdom and write it down. The wise men went out and after many years returned with five huge volumes packed from cover to cover with wisdom.
The king stared in horror at the five volumes and said, ” That’s too long!”
The wise men worked for several more years and returned with one volume, but the king thought that was still too long. So they condensed it to one chapter, then to one paragraph, and finally to one sentence.
Helen Keller
“That’s it!” the king cried. “That’s the wisdom of the universe.”
The sentence read: “There ain’t no free lunch.”
I don’t know the origin of that story, but I first heard it several years ago from Zig Ziglar. He used it to illustrate the principle that to get something out of life you must work for it–the universe will only reward you if you are willing to make an effort.
I like quotes like this. They are short and to the point, and the good ones hold nuggets of truth; some of the truths are profound discoveries, others are whimsical or satirical observations about life.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
Thomas Edison
- “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ~ Sylvia Plath
- “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision” ~Helen Keller
- “Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block. Why should writing be the only profession that gives a special name to difficulty of working.” ~ Philip Pullman
- “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” ~ Mark Twain
- “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” – Thomas Edison
- “You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer.”- Isaac Asimov
- “Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.” – Robert A. Heinlein
- “Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.” – Robert A. Heinlein
Mark Twain
- “Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.” – Maya Angelou
- ‘A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” -Mark Twain
- “People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do” ~Lewis Cass
- “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” – Mark Twain
- “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” – Earl Nightingale
- “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve.” ~ W. Clement Stone
- “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” ~ Mark Twain
- “Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “You fail only if you stop writing.” – Ray Bradbury
Ernest Hemingway
- “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” – Ernest Hemingway
- “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond to it.” ~ Lou Holtz
- “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” ~ Milton Berle
- “A year from now you may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
- “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” ~Mark Twain
I’ve got lots more favorites. Maybe I’ll do a Favorite Quotes part II someday.
What are some of your favorite quotes?
Why You Need An Agent
Do you really need a literary agent to sell your novel?
Probably not; however, you should have one. The reason is simple–writers write. If writers also try to sell their work and handle the business deals, they have less time to write.
There are several reasons you should stick to writing and let the agents handle the sales and business deals:
- Selling a manuscript is a specialized skill. You would have to do extensive research on the types of fiction publishers are buying and which editors are reading which categories of fiction. And you’d have to keep up-to-date–editors move around, and their needs change.
- Agents have made contacts in the publishing industry–doing the research and keeping up-to-date is their job.
- Agents can often get your work read more quickly than you can if you submit it yourself; the editor may not know you, but he knows the agent and trusts her judgment, so he’s more likely to put your novel on the front burner.
- Agents sometimes can set up an auction situation where several publishers bid on a manuscript; this would be difficult, if not impossible, for an unknown writer to do himself.
- Agents know the ins and outs of contracts. They try to get their clients the best deals they can and hold on to subsidiary rights (film, TV, foreign, etc.)–the inexperienced author might inadvertently sign away some of these rights to the publisher. Being able to navigate contracts is more important than ever now that eBooks are at the center of a controversy about what royalties should be paid, how earnings should be reported, and the rights that will be retained by the author or sold to the publisher.
- Agents interpret the royalty statements, which can be a pain if you’re not familiar with publishers’ accounting procedures.
It’s not as difficult to get an agent as you might think. Do the following two things, and you should be able to find one :
- Write a good novel, one that people will want to read.
- Write a good query letter, one that will inspire the agent to ask for a partial or the complete manuscript.
To write a good novel, there is no substitute for practice, lots of practice. An excellent guide to writing a novel that people will want to read is literary agent Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel and its companion, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. Those books not only have good information on how to write a novel that people will want to read, but they also offer some insight into what agents and publishers look for in a manuscript.
To write a good query letter, here are a few things to remember:
- Keep your letter to one page.
- Try to make a connection with the agent. Keep it brief, like “I met you at such and such conference.” If you haven’t met or corresponded with the agent, do some research about her to see if there is something you can work in, such as a similarity between your novel and another she has represented. But don’t try to force a connection; if you don’t have one it’s better not to say anything. Say something like, “I’ve just completed an 85,000-word literary novel entitled [you novel's title].”
- The next paragraph should be your “hook,” a one-line summary of your novel’s conflict, what makes it unique. Then write a few sentences expanding on the hook. Include the main characters and the setting.
- Next write a short paragraph about you. Keep it short. If you’ve had fiction published, mention it. If you have some special knowledge or experience that is relevant to your novel, put that down. If you’re a beginner with no published works or special experience, leave this part out. It won’t hurt you. The agent probably will have decided to ask for a partial on the basis of your hook and description. If he has decided not to ask for a partial, he probably won’t finish reading the query.
- End by asking the agent if she would like to see the complete manuscript, and thank her for taking the time to read your letter. Very important. Don’t leave that last part out, the thanking her part. The agent will then ask for a partial, the complete manuscript, or will pass on your novel.
It’s okay to send queries to several agents simultaneously. Most agents expect this, but if you receive an offer of representation it is common courtesy to inform the other agents to whom you have submitted.
It’s as important to craft your query letter as carefully as you crafted your novel. The query is your main sales tool; too many writers spend most of their time an energy writing their novels, then dash off a slipshod query and expect agents to be trampling one another to get their hands on what is surely to be a hot best seller.
I’ve only sketched in the process finding an agent. For for information in much more depth, check out Guide To Literary Agents and Pub Rants. Not only do those two Websites tell you how to do it, they give you samples of queries that worked. Also, do some Web surfing yourself. You’ll find more information on writing queries than you’ll need.
Happy writing!
Rejections of Famous Authors Before they were Famous
I heard a speaker at a writing conference remark recently that many talented writers remain unpublished while the works of many marginal or bad writers find their way into print. Writers who keep sending their work out will eventually be published.
Among the rejection slips I’ve received, my favorite was from a science fiction anthology: a full-page drawing of a dragon dabbing at his eyes with a kleenex as its tears flowed down. It was much funnier than these meager words can describe. I once showed it to a friend, also a science fiction writer, who didn’t find it quite as amusing. It’s a matter of attitude; I couldn’t do anything about the rejection, and it was a change of pace from the usual, uninspired form letter.
If you have trouble staying motivated in the face of an expanding file of rejections, perhaps this list of the receptions of some famous authors and their work will help.
- Crash by J.G. Ballard: “The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.”
- Dr. Seuss: “Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.”
- Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway: “It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish this.”
- The San Francisco Examiner, rejecting Rudyard Kipling: “I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.”
- Lust for Life, Irving Stone’s historical novel about Vincent Van Gogh: “A long, dull novel about an artist.” Sixteen publishers rejected the novel. When it finally saw print it sold more than 25 million copies.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach: “Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback.” The novel eventually sold to Avon Books and racked up sales of more than 7.25 million copies.
- Tony Hillerman, best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels was advised by publishers to “Get rid of all that Indian stuff.”
- The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells: “An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would ‘take’ … I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book.’”
- Although Emily Dickinson published only seven poems in her lifetime, an early rejection advised her: “(Your poems) are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.”
- Animal Farm by George Orwell: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.”
- So many publishers rejected The Tale of Peter Rabbit that Beatrix Potter published it herself.
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding: “An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”
- One publisher to another on John le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: “You’re welcome to le Carre–he hasn’t got any future.”
- The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel: “We are very impressed with the depth and scope of your research and the quality of your prose. Nevertheless … we don’t think we could distribute enough copies to satisfy you or ourselves.”
- The Deer Park by Norman Mailer: “This will set publishing back 25 years.”
- Carrie by Stephen King: “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”
And my favorite:
- Sanctuary by William Faulkner: “Good God, I can’t publish this!”
Fiction editing is a subjective process. There will always be editors who think your writing is crap, but there are also editors who will be enthusiastic about it. You just have to find them. And the only way to find them is to keep sending out your work.
Voice in Fiction: What it is and How to Develop it
Voice is important to a piece of writing. Most agents will tell you that voice is a key factor in whether they accept or reject a novel. Hearing that sends many new writers into a panic–OMG, what is a voice, and how do I develop one?
I can’t give you much advice on voice, other than to assure you that you have one.
Voice is, simply, how you write. Some folks might call it your style. Your voice will develop as you learn to write. Your main literary influences will have some input into your voice. You will borrow things from them but you won’t copy them—or you shouldn’t; that would end in disaster. But you will meld these influences into your own style, your own voice.
For example, my major influences when I started writing were Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway. I got my love for creating imagery from Bradbury and Steinbeck, and I strive to keep my prose simple like Hemingway. I borrowed dialogue techniques and narrative techniques from all three.
But I didn’t copy those dudes. My imagery is down to earth (more like Steinbeck than Bradbury, whose imagery gets a little flowery at times), and I tend to mix longer sentences into my prose than Hemingway. The result was my own style, my own voice, that was different from my literary mentors.
Since then I’ve learned from lots of other writers. I learn something from almost every good novel or short story I read. I even learn from the bad ones (i.e.—don’t use that technique or the story might stink to high heaven).
Your voice doesn’t have to stand out like Bradbury’s. It may be more subtle, but it will develop and become more distinctive the more you write.
One thing I do know about voice is that you can’t consciously develop it. If you try to create a voice you will meet with a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions. Your writing will sound phony, and that’s a bad thing if you’re trying to get your work published.
The best advice I can give you concerning voice is: don’t worry about it. Work on your craft, write the kinds of stories you like to read, and your voice will take care of itself.
Editorial Comments: Keep Them in Perspective
When I was a novice writer I lived for editorial comments. Occasionally they came, scrawled on a standard form rejection slip, just a few words to let me know if I was on the right track, if what I was writing was any good. I would bet that most aspiring writers long for that coveted editorial critique.
Receiving editorial comments is great, but keep them in perspective. Fiction editing is a very subjective business, and what one editor doesn’t like, another might rave about.
I’ll give you a few examples from editorial comments I’ve received over the years.
“New Beginnings”
“Keeper of the Shrine”
MY NOTES: I took this story back to my Beta Reader, an English Professor at the University of Nebraska. He re-read it, and we decided that I should change the title (“Of Life, Death, and Spiders” seemed a bit pompous), but I shouldn’t touch the symbolism because we believed it was right for a story like this (and apparently two other readers at Prairie Schooner agreed.)
“That Time of Year”
“The Moaning Rocks”
MY NOTES: Unfortunately, by April Antithesis had ceased publication, so the story went out on the submission trail again. It garnered a wide variety of comments – mostly positive, some not, but most editors to whom I submitted commented on it. I published it finally in October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror. Also, note that Fantasy Macabre liked the “blending of legend and impending doom,” but Shadows wondered if the legend is “really necessary at all” because it “telegraphed” the ending. The part about telegraphing the ending may be true for some readers, but I know of one reader who was so startled by the ending that she threw the book across the room.
Also:
The point of all this is that editors are just readers, and stories strike every reader differently. As I hope I’ve illustrated with these editorial comments, one editor may like something about a story while another may dismiss the same thing. It is nice to get editorial comments because they are a window into how others - particularly, others who read stories for a living – view what you write.
But the best advice was given by the editor of Prairie Schooner in her comments on “Keeper of the Shrine:” “. . . I assume you’re sufficiently experienced as a writer to understand the comment in context.” If you have any questions about your work in view of an editor’s comment, take it back to your readers – and every writer should have a few readers he or she can trust to give honest feedback – and ask them if they think the the story might be improved if you followed the editor’s advice.
Some things you may choose to change, other things you may choose to leave alone. But take editorial comments in the spirit they are given: as one person’s reaction to your story. The next person’s reaction might be completely different.