Ranting And Writing

November 16, 2008 — Pat Bertram

We are always told to show not tell, yet new writers often have a hard time understanding the difference. And apparently, so do professional writers.

I found this example of tell in a book by a bestselling author. She was enraged, and this was very visible. You and I certainly could never get away with such a ridiculous sentence. How was her rage visible? Did she turn red? Did flames shoot out of the top of her head? Describing how she looked when angry, though not ideal, is better than simply saying her anger was visible, but an accomplished writer shows the anger, shows what the character did.

Perhaps she was angry at her fiancé and so she slapped him. (As an aside, why is this still acceptable behavior for women? If men aren’t allowed to hit women, then women shouldn’t be allowed to hit men.) Or perhaps she tore off her engagement ring and tossed it in the river. Even better if she surreptitiously picked up a pebble, then palmed her engagement ring, and threw the pebble in the river. That way she could show many things besides her anger: she can show that she is smart, controlled, even manipulative. Maybe she isn’t even angry; could be she just wants the guy to think she was angry.

Any way you look at it, the sentence as it stands is weak. So is this one by the same author: He remained perfectly still, not moving a muscle. At least she showed him doing something, but remaining perfectly still and not moving a muscle mean the same thing. Redunancy, anyone?

While I’m on my rant here, I have something else I’ve been meaning to say. The preferred usage now is to use a instead of his or her when referring to a limb. For example: He put a hand in his pocket. The reasoning is that if you say he put his hand in his pocket, it presupposes that he has a single hand. But I always wonder: if he puts a hand in his pocket, whose hand is it? His? A disembodied hand he just happened to have lying around? Okay, I’m getting ridiculous here, but it shows the ambiguity of words.

Sometimes ambiguity is acceptable, but more often it’s the lazy way of writing. Makes me wonder why readers shell out hard-earned money when authors are so willing to repay them with sentences such as She was enraged, and this was very visible.

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Is Writing Worth the Effort?

November 15, 2008 — Pat Bertram

A friend asked me if trying to become a successful author is worth the investment of time and money. Not only do writers have to hone the craft, they need to attend conferences, workshops, hire editors and publicists, build websites and promote.

I wish I knew the answer to my friend’s question. Now that my books are nearing their release date, I’ve been spending most of my time on the internet researching how to promote. And I still don’t know how to do it. Blogging, of course. Publishing articles. Making connections on Facebook and Gather. But to become successful, writers need to go beyond the obvious. Nor do I have the money necessary to do all that is required, including attending conferences, joining national writing groups, traveling to booksignings. So I have to do it on the cheap.

Is it worth it? I won’t know for a year or two or ten if I’m going to be a successful author, so right now,  I’ll leave you with the daunting facts: one and a half to two million books are written every year. 150,000 are published (about half of those are self-published), and since many carry over from year-to-year, I figure that at least a million are being peddled as we speak. 75% of published books (including some with big advances) sell less than 500 copies. 85% of published book sell less than 1000 copies. 84% of books in a bookstore sell less than 2 copies. A book is considered successful if it sells a total of 5000 copies. Considering the time it takes to write, edit, and promote, that comes to about $1.00 an hour for the author. Woohoo. (And that doesn’t take into consideration the sometimes hefty amounts people shell out for conferences, editing, classes, etc.)

Because time as well as money is at a premium, we feel guilty when we promote and let the writing lie fallow. And we feel guilty when we write and don’t promote. Juggling with fire would be easier, and less complicated, especially when the fireballs being juggled include jobs and family.

On the other hand, what choice do we have? We are writers. We need to write, and we need readers.

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As a Writer, Where and How Are You Dropping Your Pebbles?

November 12, 2008 — Pat Bertram

My guest blogger today is marketing consultant Sia McKye. McKye writes:

I’m a reflective person by nature.  I think about many things in life.  Look for lessons and ways to make things better for me and mine.  To me, life is like a giant puzzle made of pebbles.  Sometimes it’s comprised of hard labor.  Other times, the fun is in seeing how to work all the pieces tossed at us, and make a picture of it.  Don’t like those particular pieces? Rearrange them.   I’m also an optimist but with my feet firmly planted in reality.  I know if I work at it hard enough, think it through, I’ll find a way.  And so it is with my writing.

To be a writer is rather solitary.  We pour our hearts and souls into our writing–our characters, our created world.  They’re part of us, aren’t they?  When someone rejects that, of course we feel it AND feel they’re rejecting us. On one level that’s true, but we have to learn to compartmentalize, or we’re dead in the water.  We have to have tough Rhino skin or we’re not going to survive.  And yah, it sucks.

As with most of the entertainment/arts groups, publishing is a tough playing field to break into.  A key element to be a success in any field is to be focused, working at perfecting your skills, and believing in yourself and your abilities.

I think about authors like Nora Roberts, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Catherine Coulter.  They all started out with Harlequin and or Silhouette.  Many curled their lips at books from Harlequin.   Whether it’s a lightweight romance publisher, or POD and E-book publishers-who cares where you start, so long as you start? I believe these authors honed their story telling skills and learned what readers like and didn’t like, and built a readership base in these forums. And who are we to curl our lips, or diminish the worth of an author that makes those choices? Now, these authors are now regularly on the Best Sellers lists.

Singers start out playing local, market themselves aggressively, and get their names out there.  How?  Singers play for anyone that lets them sing.  Bars, lounges, you name it.  Actors do the same with local theatre, and work their way up. They network like crazy.  Are you doing that as a writer? 

Pebble in the pool effect.   Think about American idol.  These singers are looking for shortcuts and there isn’t anything wrong with that, but even the shortcuts come with fierce competition.  As authors, we do contests too, so we can relate.

What’s important here is: if the pebble isn’t first dropped into a pool of water, no ripples happen.  The pebble has to be dropped more than once. It’s the same with writing.  Every time you write a story, you drop a pebble and every time you query, or enter a contest, you drop another one.  Every blog, writer’s conference, and joining a writing group is another pebble.

 Maybe only a few of us will make it big.  The truth of the matter is; it’s not solely dependent upon talent.   There are lots of talented people.  Sometimes chance or fate or whatever you want to call it, steps in.  But, if we’re not putting forth the effort, and getting our writing, our name out there, it can’t be offered.

There’s a quote I like and I’ll share it with you.  “Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.”

 …or dropping the pebbles.

It’s something I think about frequently-what am I doing with my pebbles?

Stacking them in a pile with no work or thought given them?

Am I hoarding them in a drawer where no one can see them?   

Am I allowing fear of success or failure, hold me back?  

 

By putting our work out there, we’re on the dance floor or to continue the metaphor, dropping our pebbles.

 As a writer, where and how are you dropping your pebbles? Are your pebbles used to the best effect?

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What If People Like My Books?

November 8, 2008 — Pat Bertram

An odd thought struck me this morning: what if people actually like my books? Over the past few years, I’ve racked up hundreds of rejections. I told myself the agents and editors were only rejecting my query letters, because what else could they be rejecting? None of those I sent letters to had ever heard of me, so they could not be rejecting me personally. Nor did most request any part of a manuscript, so they could not be rejecting my novels. But others did request parts of the manuscripts, and found them wanting. Some did not like my characters, my setting, my matter-of-fact style, my inability to sweep them away. Some did not like that the books could not be easily slotted into a genre. The rest simply said the books did not fit with their list. I had a great attitude through all those rejections, and I didn’t think they affected me, but they must have, because I’ve been steeling myself against weak sales and less-than-stellar reviews.

Ever since More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire were accepted by Second Wind Publishing, I’ve been so focused on figuring out how to sell my books (I even started a new blog, Book Marketing Floozy, to share what I learned and will continue to learn) that it never occurred to me people might read my books. Of course, one-fourth to one-half of all purchased books are never read, so perhaps those who buy won’t read, but what if they do?

Now that my publication date is nearing (actually, it’s not a date, more like a time — end of November), and my novels are about to be made available, I’m getting nervous. Only one person (a free lance editor I met in a writing group) read all four of my manuscripts, and she absolutely loved them. And an author I met through my blog read one of my manuscripts, and she thought it was brilliant. Although many people have read excerpts of my novels, no one else has ever read one all the way through. Soon my novels will be published.

And what if people like them?

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So You Want to be an Author

November 7, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Today’s guest blogger, Ernie Johnson, author of Destiny of the Divas, says:

If that title don’t grab you, nothing will.

Every once in a while you’ll hear someone say “Hell I can write a book. There’s nothing to it.”

DON’T YOU BELIEVE IT…..!

Anyone who thinks there’s nothing to it, better read this story, from someone who’s been there, done that.

Here’s a story about me, Ernie Johnson, a nobody with an electric typewriter and a friend’s manuscript that had been handwritten to the tune of 750 pages. Mind you, this was not written normally. Normal people will write from left to right. This friend wrote from right to left.

I knew nothing about writing books, but I said I’d try. I started by transposing his words, verbatum, until I had it all typed out – double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman. Then my fun began. I sat down and read it over to see where it needed tweaking, or to put it bluntly, what needed to be added to make it worth publishing.

When you stop to figure, I worked the midnight shift, with my friend, and by the time I got home, I needed to get some sleep, by the time I got to work on his book I only had about three hours a day, during the week with which to work on it. I won’t drag this out, but it took me five years to complete, to what I believed was a good story. By then I’d left the company and was working elsewhere, and hadn’t kept in touch with my friend. I went looking for him, and he’d fallen off the face of the earth. In fact, even the Police didn’t know where he was.

It was during the writing of my friend’s manuscript that I decided I wanted to write for myself, so by 1988 I started with an outline and a subject I knew something about, and began OVERTURNED.

By 1990 I’d received an old computer, and when I say old, it was a relic, but it served the purpose for the time being. I transposed everything from Overturned, and was able to see it on screen. I got involved with a writing group, on line, and it was there that I got humiliated by writers who critiqued my work. That may have been the best advice I was ever given. I wrote the way I talked, and, to be very honest, my use of the English language was not the best. I was, back then, an adverb junkie. Really, and truthfully, I was totally an adverb-a-holic, and it showed dramatically in my writing. That was an example of how I talked, and also the way I wrote. Those critiques, as humiliating as they were, was what I needed to be a better writer.

I went through my entire manuscript and corrected all the needless adverbs. I read and reread my manuscript, each time making necessary changes, like missing commas, etc., until I had that mss as fine-tuned as an Indy Racecar. Now the next step to publishing stardom, is finding a publisher to publuish the mss. Now don’t get me wrong, the old addage “PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE” comes to play here really bigtime, for if you don’t have the patience, this is the wrong profession for you to be in. Submissions after submissions came back rejections after rejections. In between all the rejections, I’d written Mountain of Love and Mountain of Love II – Return to Manhadden.

By late 1993 I’d given up hope of my work every being published. I didn’t have the patience to wait forever. I was so depressed with the process, I gave up writing altogether. I said to heck with it.

In the fall of 2001 I went out with a group of friends who did the karaoke thing once a week at a local watering hole, and we went out for breakfast at a local restaurant that was open 24 hours. While we ate, we talked, and I was talking with a friend who mentioned he’d had an idea for a story, but where he wasn’t a writer, he didn’t know how to go about it. Two days later, at the same restaurant, we were discussing his idea. What it boiled down to was he had the names of four girls, and the instruments they played. He had no beginning, no plot, and no title, so in other words – he didn’t have much. My mind was working overtime developing a story and it took me a while, because I didn’t want just any story, I wanted a best seller. I took my time and developed DESTINY OF THE DIVAS into a strong paranormal, mystery, suspense, drama. Even though all prognosis was in my favor, I still had the hard part, finding a publisher.

I got sidettracked, writing about my book and all, but finding a publisher is JUST AS HARD as finding a needle in a haystack, at least for the new untested author. What do I mean by untested? You haven’t proven your worth to a publisher. Publishers want authors who’ll sell books, lots of them, so a first time author has to prove his worth to a top name publisher.

Some authors bypass the traditional publisher route, by going to a POD (PRINT ON DEMAND) publisher, and today there are a number of them out there, both scrupulous and others who try to do good by the author, and I won’t name names here, but for those of you who are considering this route, check with PREDITORS & EDITORS before you sign any agreement with a POD publisher.

I went with LULU.COM – and published OVERTURNED, MOUNTAIN OF LOVE, KASHMANTOU, LET FREEDOM RING, and THE MISADVENTURES OF THE DEVERS BROTHERS.

You might be reading this, and are thinking, WOW…! He’s published six books. He must be rich and famous. Guess again. Yes I’ve got six published books, but if I’m not out here, seven days a week, marketing my books, they won’t sell themselves. Each book needs me out here marketing them.

Is marketing fun? I think I’d rather wrestle an alligator. No, marketing your book is not fun, but it’s necessary.

Being an Author is more than just writing the words. Being an author is being the conductor of the symphony, being the symphony itself, and being the promoter of the symphony. The better a promoter you are, the larger the audience you’ll attract. Not every author is a good promoter, but every author has to try.

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Sports As Story

November 1, 2008 — Pat Bertram

The one thing that separates humans from other animals is not our ability to communicate; most (perhaps all) creatures possess that ability to some degree. What separates us from animals is how we communicate: by words, by stories.

We all have stories to tell. At work, we tell colleagues, “You’ll never guess what happened to me last night.” At home, we tell our families, “You know what Sally did today? She . . .” Out with friends, we top each other’s jokes.

Stories. That’s what we’re about.

We love to hear other people’s stories, we love to tell stories, and we love to read stories, both real and imagined. “I don’t like stories,” you might say; “I like sports.” Ah, but sports is all about story. The hero, the villain, the conflict, the passion, the suspense, the unexpected or the hoped-for ending. We identify with the characters; we empathize with their plight; we feel as if we have a stake in the outcome of the game. All elements of story. No wonder so many sports movies have been made, so many sports novels have been written. The story of a game within the story of a character. Heady stuff.

Conflict keeps us reading a story, conflict keeps us watching a game. When a character or a player with whom we identify runs up against an obstacle, we want to find out how things will turn out. That conflict forces us to pay attention. When a book is too slow or too predictable, we will toss it aside. When a clear winner of a game is indicated, we will leave the ballpark or turn off the television. When a game is desultorily played, neither team giving that fabled one hundred and ten percent, we lose interest.

We might try to avoid conflict in our lives, but when in comes to story, we need conflict. We need characters, we need to care, we need the contrast and the conflict between the hero and the villain, and we like to see characters change. We love when underdogs win, when they pull out the best in themselves and change from loser to champion. Doesn’t matter whether we hear an anecdote, tell a joke, read a book, or watch sports. It’s all the same.

We are human. We are story.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules for Writing Fiction

October 29, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I recently came across Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing Fiction and thought they were worth discussing. His advice:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the  reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I originally planned to center this discussion on rule number 8, but since the discussions I host usually have narrow topics, I decided to throw this out there and let you discuss any of the rules you’d like. For example:

1. How do you keep a reader from feeling that his or her time is wasted?

2. Do you have a character readers will root for?

3. What does your main character want? What do your supporting characters want?

4. Do you make sure ever sentence reveals character or advances the action? Do you agree with this rule?

5. Do you tend to start too far from the end, frontloading your story with scenes that delay the action?

6. What awful things are you doing to your characters? Do you take every opportunity to traumatize them?

7. Who are you writing to please?

8. Do think readers should have such a complete understanding of what is going on that they could finish the story themselves? As a reader do you want it all laid out for you so that the end is inevitable?

My online writing group No Whine, Just Champagne will exchange ideas about Vonnegut’s rules during our Live Discussion on Thursday, October 30 at 9:00pm ET. Everyone is invited. Hope to see you there!

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De-Creating a Sea Beast

October 28, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Today I created a marvelous sea beast. It had the body of a crocodile and a knobby round head with flat features perched atop a long neck. It moved with the speed of a snake strike, and its breath smelled of wildflowers. It was supposed leap out of the water to try to ravage my hero. What would save the poor guy was the beast’s inability to gain purchase on the pebbly beach.

Today I also de-created the beast. The problem? It was a duplication of effect. Two pages before the beast’s emergence, I had a similar scene involving a tiger attack, and as the saying goes: when it comes to writing, one plus one equals zero.

It’s hard to move an episodic story forward. How many times can one guy manage to survive dangerous situations in a hostile new world without it beginning to seem contrived? But if he isn’t beset by multiple problems, why would he ever let himself be maneuvered into entering a human zoo? Duplication of effect would take away the immediacy of his problem, making it seem more humdrum and less of a conundrum.

No wonder each book I write takes longer to write than the last. I don’t like to follow in my own footsteps, so I always choose stories (or they choose me) that I don’t know how to write. Not only do I have to write the book, I have to teach myself how to write it. But that’s my own conundrum: Writing that which I don’t know how to write.

At least I had fun creating my leviathan. And perhaps someday I will be able re-create him, if later in not in this book, maybe in the next.

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You’ve Written “The End.” Now What?

October 27, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Sherilyn Winrose, author of Safe Harbor, talks about her novel:

It’s been written, you’ve come to the conculsion of your story. Joy, Elation! Congratulations you’ve finished a full length novel. Many dream, many aspire, and you’ve completed the goal: to write “The End.”

When I was writing my first manuscript (ms) I had my best friend (the one person in the world who would tell me if it was crap) beta reading as I went. In as much I did clean up editing along the way. Little did I know how far from the finish line I was; probably a good thing in retrospect.

I bought books on how to query and be published. Very quickly I discovered I was a guppy swimming with sharks. One needs an agent to find a publisher. Agents like to take on authors who have an interested publisher. Huh? I need an agent to get a publisher, and to get an agent I need a publisher?

Confused, I set about sending queries and writing my next book.

What I didn’t know?

I had a first draft, not a finished piece. Reject letters came in and I kept writing.

Fast forward to a contest. I got out my ms and started to read in hopes of polishing it into a winning submission. Gasp! I wrote that? It’s littered with infomation dumps, saidisms, head hopping.. good gracious no wonder all I got were reject letters.

Time for the first real rewrite/edit. Good news? I still love my characters and the stories I’ve written. Bad news? As I learn and grow as a writer I find myself back in the orginal mss looking to clean them up.

The journey from “The End” to Published is a long road.  I made it, and stand as a testiment that hard work and perseverance does indeed pay off.

Sherilyn’s debut novel, Safe Harbor, is available through Second Wind Publishing.

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On Writing: Finding Your Style

October 24, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Most books on writing I’ve read talk about developing a syle, but recently I came across the remark that “style happens.” If style is simply the way you write, how does it come about? In my case, I don’t try for a specific style, such as gritty or sentimental, flamboyant or minimal, sassy or grim or lyrical. Whatever style I have does not even come when I write, but when I edit. In paring away all the excess, I end up with a matter-of-fact style (or so I’ve been told).

I recently entered a contest to rewrite the first 263 words of The DaVinci Code. Dan Brown has a melodramatic style, one that sublimates good writing for effect. (For example, it is a physical impossibility to freeze and turn one’s head at the same time.) In editing his words, I changed the style, but not the basic meaning of the piece.

Here are Brown’s words:

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Carravagio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-three-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.

As he anticipated, a thundering iron gate fell nearby, barricading the entrance to the suite. The parquet floor shook. Far off, an alarm began to ring.

The curator lay a moment, gasping for breath, taking stock. I am still alive. He crawled out from under the canvas and scanned the cavernous space for someplace to hide.

A voice spoke, chillingly close. “Do not move.”

On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly.

Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils. The albino drew a pistol from his coat and aimed the long silencer through the bars, directly at the curator. “You should not have run.” His accent was not easy to place. “Now tell me where it is.”

“I told you already,” the curator stammered, kneeling defenseless on the floor of the gallery. “I have no idea what you are talking about!”

“You are lying.” The man stared at him, perfectly immobile except for the glint in his ghostly eyes. “You and your brethren possess something that is not yours.”

Here is my edit:

Jaques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the Louvre’s Grand Gallery, lunged for the Carravagio, and tore it from the wall. He collapsed under the weight.

Fifteen feet away, an iron gate dropped with a thud, barricading the entrance of the suite.

Sauniere lay still, struggling to breathe. The sacrifice of the Carravagio gave him a moment’s safety. But he needed to hide.

He inched from beneath the canvas.

“Do not move.”

He froze. That accented voice was unmistakable. How did the albino find him so quickly?

“Where is it?” the albino demanded.

Sauniere turned toward the hulk on the other side of the gate. His gaze shifted from the silenced pistol in the man’s huge hand to the pink eyes with the dark red pupils. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You and your brethren are in possession of something that does not belong to you. I want it.”

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