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Avoiding creative burnout

Monday, July 12th, 2010

I recently got a note from a writer saying she felt creatively drained.  She said, “My book is good.  How can I convince others?” Reading between the lines, I figured she’d written a book she felt was excellent but agents/editors were rejecting it, and that was making her feel a lot like not writing any more books, and also that she wished she could figure out how to get an agent’s (or publisher’s) attention.

I will be the first to admit that beating your head against a wall is way more fun than querying agents and editors, and that the more rejections you get, the harder it can be to feel like doing it all over again.

I also know that making creativity your work — the thing that pays the bills — is a good way to want to shovel ditches for a living.

Basically, we have two connected questions: “How can I succeed in the commercial arena of publishing?” and “How can I, at the same time, renew and feed my creative energies?”

You really do have to separate the act of creation from the act of publishing.  The act of creation is something to be nurtured and protected, even on the days when you don’t feel like it.  The act of publishing is a business transaction, period.  They are two very different creatures, although of course we’re bound to conflate them, being human and wanting to see our hard work rewarded.

Protecting your creativity — renewing it, feeding it, keeping it from shutting down when you get five more rejection letters this week — requires a couple of important habits:

1.  Protect the time.  Even if you’re just drawing doodles on a sketchpad, keep your creative time free from other encumbrances.  My first two hours of every day are for The Work, even though sometimes they actually consist of talking to friends at the coffee shop. 

2.  Remember that sheer financial terror impedes creativity.  Putting the entire burden of your financial health on the capricious whims of the publishing industry requires nerves of steel.  You can spend more time worrying than working.  Not worth it.  I just wrote a blog post for the Renegade Writer on the importance of diversifying your client base as a freelancer; this is just as important for people working on fiction or other creative endeavors.  Have different work to serve different purposes.  It’s not selling out: you’re buying the time to do The Work.

3. The Work is sufficient in and of itself.  Yes, it’s nice to be recognized for your talent, but it’s not required.  There are ways to share your work beyond traditional publishing, if it comes to that.

4.  Keep more than one project going.  Have new work you’re conceptualizing while you edit the old work and send out the older.  Keep your focus on your work and not on the publishing business.

To the in some ways more difficult question of succeeding in commercial publishing:

1. Create a network.  The hardest thing in writing is feeling like you’re talking to yourself.  Have other writers, readers, colleagues, who can give feedback and offer resources.

2. Learn to sell your book.  It’s easier to write a blurb about someone else’s book.  So either pretend you’re writing your query about someone else’s book or trade with a friend: write a query for someone else’s book and have them write one for yours.  See if that helps you nail your query.

3. Don’t invest everything in one project.  Especially these days.  Times are tough in publishing. You can love your book but you also need to Let. It. Go.  Maybe it will be published, maybe it won’t.  Like a child, you do your best by it but beyond that, you don’t have a lot of say in how it turns out. Get to work on the next book.

4. Invest in getting better.  Yes, this book is good.  Focus on how the next one is going to be better.  Read, attend conferences, join writers’ groups.  Immerse yourself in understanding the craft and the publishing process.  Experiment.  Fail.  Fail a lot.  Learn something.  Fail some more.  Write the book no one can turn down (then sell the secret for one million dollars).  That’ll keep you too busy to focus on the inadequacies of the agents and editors who are rejecting your book.

5.  Recognize what you can control and what you can’t.  Writing the best book you can?  Completely under your control.  Convincing other people it’s the cat’s meow?  Not so much.

Oh!  I almost forgot.  Starting today, my “Freelance Editing 101″ class through the Rengade Writers.  More here.

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Making a Living Writing Short Stories?

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

“I am an aspiring author who wants to make it big in this industry.  My passion is for writing and I would love to pursue it as a career. I have written many short stories and poems.  I’d appreciate any information you can give me.”

 

I receive questions like this every now and then, and I always struggle with how to answer them.  Realistically, it’s not possible to make a living writing short stories and poetry.  That’s the short answer.  Even so, you can still see those acts of creativity as worthwhile.  You can still see them published.   

 

But if you want to make it big – or even just make a living from your writing – then you need to do something a lot of creative people don’t like doing, and that’s think about your market.  Who is going to read your work and pay for the privilege?

 

How many short stories collections have you purchased in the last year?  The last ten years?  How many poetry chapbooks?  As compared to how many novels, nonfiction books, magazines?  I can tell you I haven’t read a collection of short stories since my dear friend Mary O’Connell published Living with Saints in 2001.  But I have easily bought eight hundred novels since then (hey, I read a lot).  I haven’t purchased a poetry chapbook since I was in graduate school, longer ago than we need to get into here, but I read several hours of nonfiction (books, blogs, websites) every day.

 

That is to say, I’m a lot like everyone else in the universe (okay, not everyone else in the universe reads *quite* as much as I do).  I read novels and I read practical nonfiction. 

 

When was the last time you opened a women’s magazine (for example) and read a short story?  Never?  They used to publish them.  I remember reading each issue’s short story in Redbook when I was a kid.  But Redbook has been dead a long time.  So where do you see short stories published now?  In literary magazines and their associated websites, which operate on shoestring budgets and are put out by volunteer (or really badly paid) editors.

 

There’s just not a lot of opportunity for paying the bills there.  But if you open that same women’s magazine and look at what is being published, you’ll see everything from short round-ups to in-depth reported pieces to personal essays.

 

If you write those, or are willing to write them, then you have a shot at making some money with your words and turning your talent into a career.

 

I’m not saying you should.  I’m just saying you could.

 

If you want to focus on short stories and poetry, then your best bet is to get a teaching position.  So, invest your energy into getting published in those literary magazines and earning your MFA, then start hunting down a sinecure at a college or university.  Of course, these are somewhat harder to find than dragon’s tears, but it’s possible you’ll be able to land one of these positions with the right publications and the right credentials.  But being a teacher and writing on the side isn’t a lot different from being a fill-in-the-blank and writing on the side, and you could save yourself a lot of frustration and annoyance (academia is not for the faint of heart) by sticking with your current fill-in-the-blank job and writing on the side.

 

Here’s the thing, which I can’t emphasize strongly enough: making a living from your writing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  You don’t get to spend your time writing only what you want to write.  You have to care about the market.  You have to care about being a business.  You have to care about sales and platform and building an audience.  You have to care about a lot of things that, frankly, most creative people don’t want to care about. 

 

Still want to give it a try?  Then you need to get your stuff out there in the world.  Query publishers about your collection of poetry.  Send your short stories off to those literary magazines.  But you have to go beyond that.  Look at what is being published in markets that pay.  If they’re not publishing short stories, maybe you can use the craft you learned writing short stories to write essays, which are more marketable.  Maybe you can write about writing poetry, or looking at the world through a poet’s eyes.  Open up and see what the possibilities are, instead of thinking there’s only one way to be successful as a writer, or only one way you want to make a living as a writer.

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Finding an agent

Monday, June 28th, 2010

In today’s inbox:

 

“I’m an unpublished author getting ready to submit my book.  I’m writing a book in a genre I’m not sure how to define.  Can you give me some advice on agents or publishers to submit it to?”

 

This is a common question that I get asked many times each week in one form or another. 

 

Here’s what I always recommend.  First, I would start by approaching agents.  Major publishers do not look at unagented material, so the only way you’re going to get published by Simon & Schuster or HarperCollins is by having an agent. 

 

I have been published by every type of press in the universe – micro, small, midsize, ginormous – and I have to say that I’ve sold way more books and made a lot more money being published by midsize and ginormous publishers than I ever made working with small and micro publishers.  This is not to say I’m not grateful for the small publishers who publish some of my books.  For certain niche-oriented projects, they are the very best choice.  And I’m not saying the only reason to publish something is to make lots of money.  But if your options are “big publisher with excellent distribution and a way to get review copies into people’s hands” and “small publisher who can sometimes get a book into a distributor’s catalog,” you can see where I’m going with this.

 

So.  Start with agents.  If agents don’t bite, and you’re sure it’s because they simply can’t see the merit of your work, and not because your work needs work (so to speak), then you can certainly approach smaller publishers on your own.  You would query them the same way you would an agent (with a brief letter explaining what your book’s about, its genre and word length, and possibly a few sentences about yourself, if that has any bearing on the book – you’re a pastry chef, and the book is about pastry chefs, or you have won the Pulitzer prize, or you have had several other novels published by publishers people have heard of.)

 

Where to find out about agents: Agent Query is a good place to start; so is Preditors & Editors.  You will want to vet potential agents.  A good place to check out other writers’ experience is on the forums at www.absolutewrite.com, especially the Backgrounds and Bewares forum.

 

I do have an e-book for sale that goes over the basics of book publishing, including information on finding agents.

 

When you specify your book’s genre, don’t say, “It’s part-memoir, part-paranormal, part-contemporary romance with a little mystery thrown in.”  No one can sell that.  No one reads that genre.  Which is not to say no one would read a part-memoir, part-paranormal, part-contemporary romance with a little mystery thrown in. They just wouldn’t call it that, so neither should you.  Ask yourself, where would this book be shelved in the bookstore?  If you don’t know the answer, then just call it a novel.  Send your query about it to agents who represent novels.  Let them worry about what to call it.

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Why you need to be more cynical than you are

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

One of the best tools any writer can possess is a healthy sense of cynicism.

I don’t mean skepticism, as in, “Yeah, and I bet you’ve got some ocean-front property in Arizona to go along with bridge you’re trying to sell me,” although skepticism is also a fine virtue for a writer.

 

I mean cynicism, as in being motivated by self interest, and understanding that other people are, too.

 

Wide-eyed enthusiasm is wonderful, and so is a passion for words, and ditto a desire to find things out, or at least to experience them.

 

But publishing is a tough game, and it’s toughest on the writers.  And you will be exploited if you don’t keep a very firm grasp on what your own self interest is.

 

So, when content mills make millions and billions of dollars selling content to third parties and they pay you five dollars to write an article, I have a hard time getting all bent out of shape over content mills doing what companies do in a capitalistic society.  (That is, make the most profit with the least amount of expense.)  What I do wish is that writers would look after their own self interest better.

 

If someone else is profiting off your labors, you need to be compensated for that, period.  And that compensation should not come in the form of abstractions like, “Good exposure.”

 

I do understand that writers need to get their work out there, to build an audience, to spread the word.  But what is happening is that writers are mistaking promotion for work.  I will write a blog post about my book (Simple Self Defense!  Makes a great gift!) for the purpose of promoting my book.  I’ll do an interview.  I may even write up a brief article for which I don’t expect much income.

 

But all of that is in support of the book.  I don’t mistake it for being the book or for serving any other purpose than to promote the book.

 

The minute someone wants me to blog, interview or write articles for their purposes, they need to pay me.  Simple enough, but a lot of writers fall down at this step.  “But,” they say.  But it’s my friend, but it’s a start up, but the opportunities are endless (the opportunities for working for free are always endless).

 

All the blog posts in the world won’t feed my daughter, unless they happen to sell a book, or get someone to enroll in one of my classes.  So when people crow about having a certain number of page views, or a certain number of followers, that’s all well and good, but the bottom line is, what does that put into your pocket?

 

Here’s the thing: once you start paying attention to your bottom line, then you realize that that’s what everyone else is doing, and that’s when you really get that it’s nothing personal.  It’s nothing personal that I don’t write for start-ups.  It’s nothing personal that I don’t write on spec. 

 

That makes it easier to understand that when people reject your work, it has nothing much to do with you.  They are just looking at their own interests.  And once you really get what that means, it’s easier to find ways to appeal to their self interest.  It becomes less about I wrote a book and hope you like it and more about I wrote a book and here are the reasons I know you’ll like it.  A much stronger position to be in, don’t you agree?

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What’s Your Book?

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

 

That’s my new tagline for Act 3.  (Waaay back in Act 1, I would have snorted tea up my nose if someone had suggested that I needed a tagline.  What can I say?  Times change.)

 

I love writing books, but I also love helping other writers shape their book ideas and bring them to fruition.  If I may be so immodest, I’m pretty good at it, too.  It’s not just a matter of bringing my understanding of the market and the industry to bear on a particular project.  It has to do with wanting to meet the writer where the writer is, and to not impose my ideas about what the book should be.  Ideally, my experience and expertise will help the writer shape a more marketable book, but won’t alter its substance or the writer’s vision for the book.

 

This is a lot harder than it sounds, for both the writer and for me.  But it’s work worth doing.  So, to that end, I’m pleased to announce that I am back in the coaching business. 

 

For writers who have a nonfiction book they’re working on, please be aware that I’m running my book proposal e-course this summer (starting Monday, June 21).  Let me know at jennifer@jenniferlawler.com if you have questions or want further information.

 

For writers who are interested in expanding their areas of expertise, I’m offering my Freelance Editing 101 e-course  (scroll down the page) through the Renegade Writer, starting July 12.  Again, please e-mail me with questions.

 

And in fun news, I’ve got a new book coming out later this week – Cold Hands, Warm Hearts (Avalon), a contemporary romance written under my pen name, Jenny Jacobs. 

 

What’s your book?

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Dealing with rejection

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

An online writers’ group I belong to recently had a discussion about saying no — how to do it, how to mean it, how to deal with people who try to negotiate after you’ve already said no, and so on.

That got me thinking about the other side of the coin — when people say no to us, or at least say no to our queries and proposals and manuscripts.  There’s a right way to deal with those, too, and keeping in mind the process that goes through your mind when you say no helps ease the sting.

For example, when someone asks me to help with a school fundraiser, I may very well see the value of it, but simply not have the time to participate.  I have other priorities that take precedence.  Turn this around: when someone says no to my idea, it’s not always because my idea sucks or because I do, but rather that the agent already has a house full of clients or the editor already has something similiar in the lineup.  In other words, it isn’t about me personally.

When I say no to someone, I don’t want them to argue with me about it or find reasons to overcome my objections, unless I’m clearly inviting them to do so.  “No, I can’t help at the fundraiser” is different from “I’d like to help at the fundraiser, but it’s being held on a day I’m out of town.”  The first means I’m not able to help; the second means I may be willing to do something as long as you don’t expect me to show up on the day of the event.

 In the same way, “No, I’m afraid I can’t take you on as a client” is different from “I really like this book idea, but I don’t think it can reach a big enough audience as you currently envision it.”  Understanding how to differentiate between these kinds of responses is crucial for writers.  One is an opportunity to show your creativity and ability to respond positively to criticism; the other is an opportunity to move along.

One of the most important things I learned to do as a writer was to make a plan before I ever started submitting a project.   So if I was going to submit a manuscript to agents, I didn’t just pick the top three or four I really wanted to work with.  I researched fifty or seventy-five, then sent letters to my top ten.  As soon as I got a rejection from one, I sent the pitch to another (always pausing to ask myself if the pitch needed to be reworked). 

The other thing I learned to do was detach from outcomes.  All I could control was the writing and submitting part of the process.  Once I had the submission plan in place for a particular project, I moved along to the next project.   Moving along to the next project is the most important part of dealing with rejection.  I know some people will say, “But you have to be committed to this project!  You have to do everything you can for this project!”  And while that’s true to some extent, the six months it takes between starting to pitch a project and finding a home for it cannot be solely devoted to that project, unless that project is your life goal.  I don’t let any one project be my life goal.  My life goal — to make my living as a writer until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands — requires that I move along until I find the project that hits the sweetspot: I love it, an editor loves it, and an audience loves it.

And sometimes it takes a lot of rejection to get there.

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On the pleasures of hobbies

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

My friend Marilyn, at Simmer Till Done, told me a story from her culinary school days that has stuck with me for months.  Her instructor used to say to those who didn’t work quickly and efficiently, “you scrape the bowl like a housewife.”  That line made me laugh when I first heard it and it makes me chuckle every time I remember it.  I like to cook and bake, at least sometimes (the impulse comes and goes) and I am the first to admit that I scrape the bowl like a housewife.  That is, I take my time turning over the pages of the cookbook, trying to decide what to make, usually in intense consultation with my daughter.  Then, we gather the ingredients, notice that we are out of baking powder, and wander over to the market, collecting some bagels and milk while we’re at it.  When we get home, we remember that the big mixing bowl is full of apples and so we have to relocate the fruit.  After that we may start measuring and chopping and stirring, possibly pausing in our labors to answer the phone or check online to find out how to substitute cocoa and vegetable oil for baking squares, which we forgot to get when we went to the market for the baking powder.

I love the Sunday afternoons when Jessica and I do this, and when I’m feeling particularly engaged in the process, I dream of shiny kitchen tools and gadgets that would make preparation easier, although I know all I really have to have is a good knife, a big bowl, and a couple of pans.  Some years ago, I used to think about going to culinary school so that I could master the tricks of the trade.  I would really like to make a better ganache than I know how.  And I’d like my pie crusts to turn out right every time, or at least more often than they do. 

But Marilyn has cured me of my culinary school daydream.  Culinary school, she tells me, is like bootcamp, only more dangerous.  The purpose is to turn talented individuals into chefs, into professionals, into people who can run restaurant kitchens.  I only want to figure out how to avoid Jessica asking me, “Are meringues supposed to be flat as a pancake?”  In other words, I’m a hobbyist who’d like to be a bit more accomplished than I am.  I have absolutely no interest in becoming a professional.  Running a restaurant kitchen bears only the most passing resemblance to my Sunday afternoons with Jessica, and that only because they share the common denominator of food.

I think of this a lot when I talk to writers who are trying to make the leap to being professionals.  Being a professional is a world away from being a hobbyist and doing something just because you enjoy it.  And there’s nothing wrong with preferring to keep your writing as a hobby and not trying to turn it into a paying proposition.  And if you do — be prepared for the profession to have not a lot in common with the hobby.

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Hire an editor?

Monday, March 29th, 2010
In my inbox, from Sally in Boulder:

“I am finishing my first novel, but I am not sure of the next steps when it comes to looking for an agent. Would an agent expect me to hire a professional editor to polish my work before I send it to her?  Or would the agent be primarily interested in the story and overlook small errors such as punctuation (writing friends say I need to use my comma button more!) Thanks for any insight you can give me.”

First, no one expects you to hire an editor for any reason before you submit your manuscript.  Freelance editors (that you hire and pay out of pocket) may be able to help you reach a certain level of professionalism, but so can reading great books, attending writers’ conferences, taking writing classes, joining a good critique group, paying careful attention to your own work, and so on.  In fact I would say the latter (reading books, etc.) is far more important than the former (hiring an editor).  Being a writer isn’t something you do in a vacuum, and the more you’re around other members of the writing/publishing community, the more you will learn (if you’re open to it).

Some people do learn a lot from working with a freelance editor on their manuscript.  But you have to remember that even if you’re paying the person, all you’re getting is an opinion, and it may or may not be right for you, or accurately reflect the expectations of the market.  I always say that you should do your best to polish your work before submitting it, including getting feedback from other readers and writers, and only if you get form rejections with no explanation should you consider going to a freelance editor for help (in other words, a freelance editor may be able to help if no one likes your work and you can’t figure out why). 

Second, story/content always trumps a few typos (for me, anyway).  However, sometimes people think they have “a few typos” when in fact they lack the basic ability to write well in the language.   I’m by no means saying this is true of Sally in Boulder, but her letter brings up a point I want to make: Writers, especially at the beginning of their careers, often think they know more about writing than they do, or think that they don’t need to know that much about grammar and punctuation to be good writers.  That’s not true. 

The “rules” of grammar and punctuation allow for a certain fluidity of interpretation (just ask the Chicago Manual of Style), and within that fluidity you’ll find your own personal writing style.  But the rules are there for a reason, and it’s not just because a bunch of academics got together one day and decided to inflict pain on the world.

To sum up: Yes, your work needs to be as professional and polished as possible before you submit to agents, but getting it to that point does not require paying a freelance editor, although it can.

 

 

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How long?

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

I am frequently accosted by writers, not necessarily my clients, who demand to know how long it takes to hear back from editors.  They have an agent who has submitted a proposal or a manuscript, and they are biting their nails waiting to hear back.  I understand how hard it is to be patient; I am as neurotic as the next writer.  What they want me to tell them is “six days.”  Or 43, or 19, or even 176, as long as I promise they will hear back by then.   It is the uncertainty they object to, not the elapsed time. 

Which is why no one ever wants to hear my answer, which is: “It depends.”  Asking, “How long does it take to hear from an editor?” is like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” 

I can tell you that no comes faster than yes, so be careful what you wish for.  I can tell you that editors with more seniority generally respond faster because they have to do less hoop-jumping to make an offer and are more likely to know if something is going to get past the acquisitions committee.  By the same token, some agents and agencies have more clout, and editors will respond more quickly to submissions from them.   Projects that have huge commercial appeal will go faster than projects of less commercial appeal or with non-celebrity writers. 

Other than that, it depends on how strongly the editor feels about the project, how much buy-in she needs to get from others to make it fly, how full her list is (not to mention her workload), who’s on vacation, and even how well another book on a similar topic is doing.  I’m currently testing an hypothesis about the fullness of the moon.

You may get an offer in a few days or weeks (I’ve had that happen).  You may get an offer after many months (Ditto).  You may never get an offer.  You may never even hear back.

So instead of worrying about “when,” accept that it will be seven months from now, be pleasantly surprised when it isn’t, and get to work on your next project.

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Who are you? And other details.

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

This past weekend, I did a small group pitch session where writers had a few minutes to tell me about their books.  A couple of things struck me as worthy of mention, in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation:

1.  It’s really important to be able to say what your story is about in a couple of sentences, not in fifteen paragraphs.  For fiction, who are your main characters, why should we care about them, and what is the main conflict of the story?  Figure that out before your pitch session.  For non-fiction, what category are you writing in, who is your audience, what other books are like yours, and why are you the right person to write the book?  Tell me this concisely.  If I want to know more, I can ask more.

2.  What is the title of your book?  No one in the session mentioned their book title until prompted.  This is the hook that people will remember you by, so don’t forget to mention it!

3.  Give the listener a chance to talk.  Several people would have gone on and on except I interrupted them and made them stop.  They were all shocked to find that they had taken two-and-a-half or three minutes to describe their book.  Remember, say a couple of sentences, then stop and let the listener respond.

4.  The pitch session is not hugely different from the pitch letter.  If you’re making mistakes in a pitch session, you may be making them in your pitch letter.  Let what you learn about each inform the other.

5.  And on the topic of pitch letters . . . when you query via e-mail, it is very helpful for you to include your actual name in your letter.  I get e-mails from addresses like rlmnp@gmail.com but the writer never signs his/her e-mail, so I have no idea who is writing to me. And I have no idea how to respond to people who don’t give their names.  Who you are should not be a secret.

Hope these tips help!

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