melissajm asked: Has anyone asked about the best way to get an agent yet?

That's something we haven't talked about in a long while. The best way is basically the old-fashioned way: research to find out the agents who represent the sort of things you write, then query those agents. The research part is made a little easier by the fact that more agents now have blogs and websites, which will list the genres they represent, their current clients, and instructions for how to query them, three big things you need to know before you query.

(And you should read Writer Beware's Thumbs Down Agency List. This also lists all the things to avoid, like agents who try to charge you fees, who want to shuttle you off to an associate who will "edit" your manuscript for a fee, who haven't actually ever sold any books. Don't get scammed.)

There are also general writing sites that will have lists of agent names, addresses, and emails. That's a good place to find a list of agents, but it's very important to look them up individually and get as much information as you can. Not every agent represents every genre; sending a query to them for your SF/F novel when they don't represent SF/F is a waste of your time and theirs. Every agency has different guidelines for sending queries, and you need to know what they are so you can follow them exactly. It's sad, but just carefully following the guidelines will put you ahead of a huge number of the other people sending queries.

There are also pay services that will send out queries for you. Don't use those. They're basically spamming hundreds of agents at a time, without following anybody's guidelines, and they aren't worth the money. Nobody likes to be spammed.

There's also this service AgentinBox, where you post your queries and agents will look through them and contact the writers they're interested in. It's a neat idea, but I can see some problems with it. Unless it's policed scrupulously, it's a perfect hunting ground for scam agents who charge fees or people who want to be agents but have never actually sold a book before and don't really know how to go about it. It also looks like one of those things that's going to work brilliantly for a few people and not at all for most of the others. I don't think people should rely solely on it; you also need to do your own research and pick the agents you want to query, so you're more in control of the process.

I know there are also conferences where you can pay a fee to schedule pitch sessions with agents. I've never been to one and don't know much about them, so I don't know how useful they are. It sounds like it's potentially expensive, and again, like something that will work brilliantly for a few people and not at all for everybody else.

tinpra asked a really good question: A friend of mine who's doing a writer's workshop was apparently ripped to emotional pieces because her prof is anti-speculative fiction. Have you encountered a lot of this kind of sentiment regarding your own writing? Has it really mattered or effected you?

Yes on the first count and no on the second. When I was in college I took a general fiction writing workshop class, and it wasn't helpful at all. My prof wasn't an asshole, so he didn't rip me to pieces, but he did make it clear that he didn't get what I was doing and he saw no point in getting it. It didn't bother me as much as it could have, because I had already done SF/F specific workshops in Austin and Houston, including Turkey City, and I knew that while my work wasn't ready to sell, it wasn't crap, either. But Texas has a huge SF/F community with a lot of writers, so I was lucky.

Encountering that kind of attitude is pretty common. The British SF/F newsletter Ansible collects quotes in the "As Others See Us" sections that are hilarious and infuriating, and many of them reflect the same attitude that my fiction prof had -- that the SF or fantasy elements in a story somehow render the characters in that story into something else, something different from the characters in a non-genre book. They seem to think that SF/F characters, whether human or alien, aren't undergoing any kind of emotional journey and that a normal reader is somehow incapable of identifying with them because holding a raygun or a magic wand somehow takes you out of the realm of human experience. I think that's it, I actually have no idea. I can't explain an attitude that's so completely alien to my way of thinking.

I'd already been warned in SF/F workshops that that would probably happen in a general college fiction writing class, so I wasn't too surprised or thrown by it. (Though on the workshop day where the prof spent an hour and ten minutes talking about one student's two paragraph poem, and five minutes talking about my 10,000 word fantasy story, that was kind of a weirdly awkward experience. The other students noticed it too and the guy with the poem was twitchy with embarrassment by the end of the class.) I think it's a bit easier now to find college writing classes that are more genre-friendly, and sometimes you can find them online. (I believe planetalyx teaches one.) If you can't find a genre-friendly writing class, it might be better to look for SF/F workshops associated with the local SF/F conventions (like the one ArmadilloCon does every year).

Though one problem I've seen with SF/F workshops is that some people tend to look at them as a way to prepare a story to sell, and if you don't sell your workshop story, it somehow makes the experience useless. Most people in the workshop (unless it's a special invitation-only thing for more advanced writers) are probably not going to be at that level. A good SF/F workshop will help you figure out what's right and what's wrong with your story, will give you a chance to learn how to interpret good and bad criticism, and provide an opportunity to talk about writing with people who get what you're doing and are doing it too. I got a huge benefit out of the workshops I went to, but I never sold a story out of one.

In college, I got a lot more benefit as a writer out of just taking literature classes, and that's what I recommend whether you can find a good writing class or not. My favorite was a class in Russian Science Fiction, which introduced me to a lot of different techniques of writing, plus some great authors I hadn't heard of before.

Harlequin Horizons: A Bookseller's Perspective This is a bookseller explaining why bookstores won't carry/can't afford to carry vanity press-produced books. Basically, if you’re writing to sell books, you need a product that is roughly equal in quality and retail pricing to a traditionally published book to meet the expectations of readers. To meet the expectation of booksellers, you need an attractive wholesale discount, inclusion in Ingram or Baker&Taylor and returnability.

That's just to get a book into the stores. What makes a book sell is when the publisher not only gives wholesale discounts and allows returns (so the stores might actually order it), but pays for the book to be placed face-out in the front of the store in the "new book" tables or racks, where it gets much better visibility. (There was a trend for a while where a few romance writers were asking their street teams to move their books from the back shelves to the front of the store whenever they visited a bookstore. Chain bookstores usually rent out that space to publishers, and if the publisher's rep comes by and find the space they paid for is being occupied by other books, the store can get into big trouble. The solution was usually for the bookstore to immediately remainder any books that had been placed in the front by customers.) Publishers also have sales reps who will be presenting their current list of books to the buyers for the chain bookstores, and talking them into ordering them. Vanity presses don't do any of that.

On that depressing note, happy Thanksgiving to everybody who's celebrating this week!

More from Jackie Kessler: The Day After: Harlequin Blinks Just because your book wasn’t good enough for Harlequin to pay you for it, that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough for you to pay us for it!


ETA: A friend posted this link on Facebook, and it's great if you need to see something happy: A soldier's dog greets him when he returns from Afghanistan.

Couple of publishing links:

Jackie Kessler explains in detail how Harlequin Horizons is a vanity press, not a self-publishing service: Harlequin Horizons versus the RWA:
A-ha! Here’s a big clue that aspiring authors better have their eyes open. Yes, the press has the name “Harlequin” on it. But even though you may think this means you’re a legitimate Harlequin author, you’re not. Oh, and Harlequin won’t distribute Horizon books. Horizon books won’t appear “in stores next to your books.” Well, gosh, if you’ve written a romance, and you get it printed through Horizon, it won’t be shelved in romance! Want to know where it will be shelved? Simple: It won’t.

They won't be sold online through the publisher's site, either.

Keep in mind:
- Self-publishing: author keeps all the money after paying expenses.
- Vanity publishing: publisher keeps majority of the money and the writer pays all the expenses.

Now self-publishing isn't easy; a self-published book usually sells less than 200 copies, even if the author promotes it like crazy. But it's still a better option than a vanity press.

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A link pointed out by beth_gis: Revenue Reality of a Bestseller If I published only one book a year, and it did as well as this one, my net would be only around $2500.00 over the income level considered to be the US poverty threshhold. This was a book that was on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Thanks again for everybody's good wishes on Troyce's job interview. He thought he did really well, so we'll just have to wait and see.

I have to take Tasha to the vet this morning for her yearly exam, so let's hope that doesn't turn into a prolonged and exciting-in-the-bad-way experience.

They didn't have cool things like this when I was a kid:
Shared Worlds Teen Writing Camp: Registration Now Open
Registration is now open for the 2010 teen science fiction/fantasy writing camp Shared Worlds. Shared Worlds is a unique two-week inter-disciplinary experience on beautiful Wofford campus in Spartanburg, South Carolina. (It’s also fun!) A number of scholarships will be made available. The official sponsors of the camp include Tor Books, Wizards of the Coast LLC, and Realms of Fantasy. SF Signal and io9 have also provided support.

Instructors for 2010 will include Spiderwick Chronicles creator Holly Black, critically acclaimed YA and adult authors Kathe Koja and Marly Youmans, Nebula Award winner Michael Bishop, writer and gaming expert Will Hindmarch, and World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer, plus Wofford College’s own Dr. Christine Dinkins, philosophy professor, and Jeremy Jones, lecturer and camp director. Artist Scott Eagle will also conduct a workshop during the camp. Although the full 2011 roster will be announced later, Shared Worlds is pleased to note that Philip K. Dick Award finalist Minister Faust and Nnedi Okorafor, winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature for her novel Zahrah the Windseeker, have both accepted invitations to attend as visiting writers.

Writing Link:

BookLife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer This is Jeff VanderMeer's new site: Welcome to Booklifenow.com, a site that serves as support for and a supplement to my new book Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer. My book is somewhat unique: a manual that’s about how to be a writer in our new media age, but with the spotlight on sustainable creativity and sustainable careers rather than on new media tools, although tools are an integral part of the discussion.


For the new writers getting ready to try Nanomowrimo for the first time, here's two of the basic mistakes I see beginners make:

1) Using stereotypes. Not just the obvious racist or sexist stereotypes, but all stereotypes, any stereotypes. They're a sign of sloppy writing and sloppy thinking. Think about every character in the book, even minor characters, as a real person, with feelings, attitudes, a past, a future, an agenda of his or her own. You don't have to tell the reader all of that, or even any of it, but you have to know it, because it should color how that character speaks and acts.

2) Thinking about what you would do in a situation instead of what your character would do. If your character is a tough adventurer, and you are a tiny person with stress asthma, make sure your character approaches challenges and difficulties like a tough adventurer. And vice verse.

book_wench (Cassandra Chan) has an interesting post on the problems she had writing her most recent novel. (which I'm really looking forward to reading.)

I've had similar problems with books, where I got so far down the wrong track I couldn't see daylight. It's a very frustrating feeling, when you know you've gone wrong somewhere, something in the plot is just not working, your vision of the book is not meshing with what you seem to be doing now, but you can't put your finger on what went wrong where. To me, the solution always seems to come in a lightning bolt and be blindingly obvious, to the point where I can't remember how I got on the wrong track when the right one was right there, all the time.

(and I highly recommend her books. They're mystery novels set in Britain, and the first one is The Young Widow)

scottedelman has a link and pictures of the books found in the place where Jaycee Lee Dugard was held captive for 18 years -- most were sf/fantasy. It's very eerie, to see books there by people you know.


texanfan asked: What is your favorite thing (book or short story) that you have written and why?

Of the published books, I think I'd have to say The Ships of Air. I'd wanted to use the Queen Mary as a setting in a fantasy novel for years, since I first went there in the early 90s. And it was the first time I'd written a direct sequel, so that was a fun experience, being able to start with an already established world and get deeper into all the relationships and characters. And I really loved those characters. And the plot involved exploring a new world to a certain extent, which is something I really like to write. There was just a lot of fun stuff I wanted to do in that world that I finally got a chance to do in that book.

Still taking writing questions here.

circe_tigana asked: How do you organise your preparation & research notes when you're working on a project? With all the amazing world-building you do I'm assuming you must have copious notes you need to refer back to and keep in some semblance of order!

And have you found some amazing software secret re: the above that you can share? I'm trying Scrivener myself but am not yet fully convinced...

I actually don't have any usual system, and I don't use any programs for writing except the word processor. When I'm going for a specific time period and look, I'll do some reading for research before I start, and make notes of things that I want to use, either on paper or in a separate document in the same directory where I'm saving the book chapters. Once I start the book, I only do specific research, when I realize I need more detail for something, and that usually goes right into the book. So I tend to wing research the same way I tend to wing plotting. :)

Has anybody out there used Scrivener? What did you think of it?


Still taking writing questions here.

teenygozer as a published author, do you find it necessary or desirable to continue your education in writing? I mean, do you still take classes and learn now things that you find you can apply to your writing? Or do you just find reading people's work is what teaches you new things?

I think it is necessary and desirable, because I don't think anybody ever gets to a point where you know everything there is to know about writing. For one thing, I think your process and your ability, does, or should, change over time, the more you do it. I don't take writing classes, because I don't have the time or opportunity; most of the classes or seminars I'd want to take tend to be in other cities or states. I try to push my envelope and try new things, read new things, authors I haven't read before, etc.

Still taking writing questions here.

toliver asked: While you are writing something that you hope will be published, do you also write "for fun" things at the same time? Meaning, bits/stories you know will never see the light of day but you write it for yourself, just for fun or other reasons. Do you have several stories going at once (for publishing) and turn to the others when you need to think about something different? Does that help your process?

Yes, I usually do. It helps me to keep writing even when I'm stuck on whatever my main project is. I also still have a lot of "I can't do this" issues to overcome. Those are basically when you sit down and look at the blank page and think "I can't do this" and it really doesn't matter how many times you've done it before or how far you are into the book or story. ("I can't do this" is one of the many manifestations of Impostor Syndrome.) So it helps me to have other things I'm working on to poke at, because once I get moving on one thing, I'm more likely to be able to get moving on the others.

Another way to get past the "I can't do this" mental block point is to always try to stop during a scene or at a point where you know what needs to be written next, so when it's time to work on it again you have some built-in writing momentum.

Still taking writing questions here.

Okay, let's do this again. While everyone is having fun without us at DragonCon (and OMG I wanted to go so bad this year), let's do writing questions: If anyone has a question about writing and/or publishing in general, or about my writing, comment with it here and I'll answer it in a later post if I know what the answer is.


From WriterBeware: Postage Promotion: From publicity companies (some competent, many not) to the marketing packages hawked by self-publishing providers such as AuthorHouse (typically overpriced and largely ineffective) to completely worthless pseudo-services (email blasts, online catalogs, book fair "representation"), self-published authors these days have near-unlimited opportunities to spend money on self-promotion.

Such as this one, from self-publishing service Outskirts Press: put your book cover on a postage stamp.

This reminds me of the Hercules/Xena stamp people. Back in the day, they would steal fan art off websites, use it to make fake stamps (claiming that they were real ones issued by other countries) and sell them on Ebay.

Just posted another short story, Holy Places, to my web site. It appeared in Black Gate #11, in August 2007, and it's a prequel story to the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. In chronological order, it's the first Giliead and Ilias story, and is about how they met as children, and the first time Ilias sees the god of Cineth.

Again, I put up a Paypal tip jar, though I still feel weird about it. If you've already donated, I really appreciate it and please don't feel obligated to donate again!

The other stories recently posted to the web site are The Potter's Daughter (from Elemental, the Tsunami Relief Anthology) and The Forest Boy (original to the web site).

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sorka42 asked: Have you ever had an editor not like where a chapter went or ask for a rewrite? and if so how do you handle that?

I've made changes to all my books based on the editors' comments. It's usually just tweaking what's already there, like asking to tighten up a scene, add more tension, clarify something that's confusing, pare down or remove a scene that's redundant or unnecessary, along those lines. I've never had an editor want me to change anything that would fundamentally alter the story or characters, it's always been trimming or fluffing what's already in place. If an editor does ask you to change something in a way you really don't like, you should talk to her about it and try to work out a solution you can both live with.

I wanted to link to this book review on DearAuthor: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. It's described as a girl-positive fairy tale, set in Ancient China. It sounds fabulous.

Plus Jeff VanderMeer did a post about Online Press Kits for Writers


I really need to buy a new hand brace. I'm starting to get a lot of hand nerve pain again, even though I'm wearing it about sixteen-plus hours per day. I think it's because my hand brace is not bracing so much anymore. The cats keep tearing open the velcro with their teeth, and that can't help, either.

thanate asked: Do you have any favorite resources or pieces of advice for people who write but haven't yet gotten up the courage to tackle the publishing industry?

My big piece of advice is don't tackle the publishing industry unless you really really want to, and feel compelled to. (It's not a career where you make a lot of money (unless you just hit it lucky) and there's no real job security.) There's nothing wrong with writing just for fun, for your own enjoyment and fulfillment.

(We were talking about this in the comments of an earlier post, wondering when the idea showed up that writing is somehow a no-no unless you are writing for publication. People have been writing stories, poetry, memoirs, travelogues, etc, just for themselves or to share with a small group of friends or family, in every culture that has a written language, since written language was invented, and the ones who can't write their words down tell stories. Now somehow you have to be planning to make a profit at it or it's a bad thing. I tend to think this is something that crept in with the idea of bestsellers, where all writers are seen as rich celebrities like Joan Collins? I don't know. The fact that most writers who write for publication either still have other jobs or are barely scraping by, and that there are a much larger number of writers who don't write for professional publication at all, seems to be almost absent from popular culture.)

But if you really really want to try for publication, I've been putting together a list of basic information links on my web site here, though I'm still adding to that. I'd also say one of the best things you can do to get a feel for the professional publishing world is to read agent blogs, like arcaedia (Jennifer Jackson), Bookends, LLC, Nathan Bransford, Pub Rants, onyxhawke (Mike Kabongo). Their blogs also have links to other agent blogs.

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ArmadilloCon is this weekend in Austin! With Scott Lynch and Joan D. Vinge.

lucyplayscards asked: For some reason the only thing to come to mind is very random (and you can feel free to skip it, of course), which is: what is Florian's last name? For some reason I've been thinking about this forever, and I thought I may as well ask.

I know she had one, and I know it was in my notes circa 2002, but I can't find those notes. (I'm pretty sure they were casualties at least two hard drives ago.) I don't think I ever used it in the books.

thefourthvine asked: Okay, then I have a question: how do you stop revising when you're writing the first draft? I seem to have only two modes:

1. Editing editing editing editing, to the extent that I can spend a couple hours "writing" and add maybe 100 actual new words.

2. Totally ignoring all that has gone before and writing at top speed, even though it means later I will have to do things such as figure out how my characters got from the car to the sofa without apparently ever getting off the freeway.

So I'm curious to know how you can revise continuously as you're writing without getting totally lost in it. (And by "curious," I mean "desperate." I hate writing in the the second mode, but it's the only way I get any done.)

I'm not really sure, it's just a habit I got into. In the age of the dinosaurs before I had a computer at home, I used to write new stuff out by hand at home and then type it when I got to work, then print out pages and take them home and make handwritten corrections, and then add the new stuff to the end for typing the next day, so I had a set revision process. Now that I use laptops, and all my files are right there all the time, I don't have any set pattern for revision.

If I change my mind about something, or figure out where I've made a mistake, gone off on the wrong track, need to add more, I can't just note it down for a later revision (see above, notes disappearing), I have to go back and fix it right away, so I can keep it straight in my head. I think this is probably a feature of plotting on the fly, and not having the plot outlined in advance. But I don't ever get lost in revision and get stuck in one spot, I always feel a push to keep the story moving forward. It's weird, I can describe the process but I have absolutely no idea why I work that way.

What you might try is being very aware of how much time you're spending on revision, especially revision that's more stylistic and not just making sure there's a consistent narrative with no gaps. If you realize you're just polishing one spot, try to make yourself move forward and write new material.


Still taking writing questions.

malimar asked: When you write a story about other people's characters, do you do anything special to make sure you know the characters well enough to write them? Do you ever worry that you'll never know the deepest minds of the characters as well as their original creators do?

Well, when I wrote the SGA characters, I was already familiar with the world from watching SG-1 for seven or eight years, and I had already watched the first season of SGA without knowing I'd be writing a book for it. (I got the book contract not long after the first season finished and I had finished writing it before the second season started.) I started taping the repeats so I could watch the episodes over and over again. (The show had grabbed me from the beginning, but I hadn't taped it before because I knew I'd be buying the DVD sets later, but they weren't out yet.)

I think all you can do is watch the show with a lot of attention, and try to put in as much of the actors' performances and interpretations and the writers' characterization as you possibly can. It's still going to be subjective; all characterization is subjective. It's an exploration that's going to change over time, just like with original characters.

Still taking writing questions.



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Happy birthday, jess_ka!!!


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We saw Julie & Julia last night, and Julia Child is fabulous! ETA: to clarify, it's a wonderful movie, totally worth it for the sections with Julia Child. ( minor character spoiler ) Must get My Life in France by Julia Child immediately.

I also read Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen. It's a mystery set in 1932, with the main character Georgianna, who is the daughter of a duke, 34th in line for the throne, and penniless. I liked it, especially that most of it takes place in Scotland at Rannoch and Balmoral, and you see a lot more of the cast of characters from the first book. I thought it should have been a bit longer, though, and I still like the first book, Her Royal Spyness the best.

I got a few questions, so I'll be taking them in order, probably doing one a day, through the weekend of WorldCon where everyone is having fun without us.

elanid asked: What is the first part of a story that typically comes to you, if there's any trend to it? And how much information do you need to have before you start writing?

I don't think there is any trend to it. Sometimes I have an idea of the main character I want to write, and I come up with the story and the world that that character would fit into. Sometimes I have a feel for the world I want the story to be in and I come up with the character to match it. The kind of story I want to tell generally comes bundled up with the world or the character.

Before I start writing, I have to have the idea for the opening scene, the first line, and generally a vague idea of the ending I'm going for. Sometimes I know more of the plot than that, but sometimes I just build it as I go along.


Still taking writing questions.

tinpra asked: How hard, or not, is it for you to do the first round of editing after you've finished a story? Do you follow any sort of schedule?

It's not hard at all, because I like doing revisions and editing. I usually edit and revise pretty continuously as I'm writing the first draft. After the book is done, then I'll do some revision based on the comments of the beta readers. With my last book, arcaedia gave me some great suggestions, and I did a revision to incorporate those. I don't follow any real schedule. And I'm also a very quick reviser. It usually only takes me a couple of weeks, if that.


I'm still taking writing questions here.


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oldcharliebrown posted some shout-outs with neat covers: Women of Wonder: the Classic Years and Women of Wonder: the Contemporary Years both edited by Pamela Sargent, collections of stories by women science fiction writers. And Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, edited by Sheree R. Thomas.