Everyone knows editors are the natural born enemies of writers. We’re…uh. They’re mean, narrow-minded, ruthless people without an ounce of human compassion in their black, shriveled, gin-scented hearts. Bitter and entirely destroyed by the rigors of life, they hate everyone – but especially hate writers. And books. With a passion. And it’s likely that your editor hates you. In fact, it’s pretty obvious. Not sure if your editor hates you or not? Look for these 10 11 signs:

1. He points out your errors. It’s impossible to be perfect with some asshole constantly griping at you about comma abuse, homonym misuse, and proper apostrophe placement. You never do anything wrong. The dude needs to just back off.

2. He explains things to you about grammar, proper usage, plotting, characterization, etc. What does he think you are, five? Of course you know these things. You know everything. He just doesn’t get that you’re exercising your stylistic freedoms. And why is he giving you lessons in history, physics, Cantonese slang, Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and the limits to which the human body can strain in that particular position of the Kama Sutra? You’re creative. You don’t have to be factually accurate.

3. He suggests improvements to your story and style. If you’d wanted to write it the way he suggested, you’d have done it that way in the first place. Even if you’d never thought of it before. Jesus. What an ass. He’s probably a failed writer with nothing better to do than try to undermine your talent. If he’s so smart, he can go write a book. You don’t need to improve anything. Ever.

4. He makes you do all the work of implementing his recommended changes. Cripes. You wrote the book once already. Why should you have to retain ownership of your characters and storyline to write it again? All that BS he spouts about trusting you and your talent, and about not taking over your story…pfft. He’s just blowing smoke up your ass because he’s too lazy to do it himself. He should just whip everything together and take care of it; it’s not your problem anymore. Editors are really just glorified proofreaders anyway. Everyone knows that.

5. He actually thinks your writing should mature with each iteration of edits and each new story. Why should you have to change what’s already perfect? So what if you just had to rewrite ten pages of action because he decided the existing scene created a plot hole the size of a mutant manatee? You’ll just dash it off and send it in as-is, flaws intact. Nevermind the fact that he’s spent the entire manuscript griping like your mother-in-law about semicolons can’t be used that way or make sure the modifying clauses agree with the main subject, verb, and object. Whine, whine, whine. If your writing style changed from edit to edit and book to book, he wouldn’t have anything to do. You’re just being considerate and keeping him from getting bored. After all, he wouldn’t have a job without you.

6. He’d rather go without sleep than miss another chance to go through your manuscript. I mean, obviously he’s just trying to create problems and he’s got a grudge against you. Does it really matter if every instance of the word Green in the Manuscript is CapitaLiZed? Get a life, man. Maybe if he slept more than three hours a day he wouldn’t be so nitpicky.

7. When you halfass your edits, he makes you do them again. Clearly he doesn’t understand that you skipped 75% of his editorial commentary because it was all asinine and destructive, demonstrating that he doesn’t get what you’re doing. Also, see previous comment re: getting a life. Doesn’t he think you have anything better to do?

8. He makes you kill your darlings. You spent months crafting that perfectly placed piece of purple prose, with its precisely poetic palliteration. You love that particular figure of speech and damn it, even if it’s not appropriate, you’ll make it appropriate. Your favorite 20-page scene detailing the movie the lovers watched in chapter 40 just touches your heart and reminds you of when you first watched it at a slumber party 72 years ago. You adore the way you always write “ocular orb-thinguses” instead of “eyes;” it’s your signature. You love your art. You are your art. And he’s trying to destroy you by making you cut out the things you love most. Nevermind that the narrative makes more sense without them. He’s ruining the beauty of the thing.

9. He challenges you. He pushes you beyond your comfort zones and asks you to write things you’ve never written before, try things you’ve never thought of, learn new ways to do an old art. What is he trying to do, give you nightmares? New experiences are traumatizing. If you take risks, you might fail. Wait. That’s it, isn’t it? He wants you to fail.

10. He gives you deadlines. You have other priorities. Your hair appointment is this afternoon, your dog needs a mani-pedi, you’re working on a brilliant new story that will blow the NYT list out of the water. Look, those deadlines can wait. It’s not that hard to put a book together. You can just turn it in the day before the release date and it’ll be fine. It’s not like there are any other books in the pipeline, anyway. Yours is the only one that matters. If your editor really cared, he’d prioritize you above everyone else.

11. He makes you self-promote. And he’s out there promoting you, too. I mean, really. There are marketing and PR people for that. You shouldn’t have to self-promote; you are the author, the diva, the prima donna who watches from an ivory tower as the fans come flocking. You shouldn’t have to do anything to draw them. And heaven forbid anyone expect you to speak with them or engage them in any way. They aren’t authors like you.

If your editor meets even half these criteria, it’s obvious that he or she hates you and wants your book to fail. Or at the very least, they’re trying to make you as insane as they are. You should take up drinking. Make sure you drink while you write and while you edit; it’s a bonding experience, and you’ll be keeping your editor company. It won’t affect the quality of your work at all.

Besides, even if it does, your editor will fix it. That’s what he’s there for, after all.

I just know someone out there will take this seriously. And then I’m going to cry. You wouldn’t want to make a poor, defenseless, exhausted editor cry, would you?

Psst. Hey, you. Yes, you. I’m talking to you. The aspiring author sitting there struggling over your query letter. The guy or gal wondering just how to approach an editor, an agent, whomever. The one trying to decide on business formality or sass, beautiful prose or wit, eye-catching originality or appreciable directness. The writer trying to figure out just the right way to walk up to this person who could hold the key to your career as a published author and say “hi.”

Well, hi.

No, seriously. It’s as simple as that. Just say hi.

Yes, you’ll need to tell me about your book. A little about yourself, too, though don’t overwhelm me. But really, just to start off with, say hi. Smile. Be polite, be friendly, and give me your message. It’s just like making friends.

And just like making friends, it requires a little tact.

Tact means not complaining about how you don’t like the submission format. Tact means not trash-talking other writers. Tact means not whining about how stupid you think the publisher or agent’s requirements are. Tact means not deriding the other agents and editors who rejected you. Tact means not proclaiming yourself the One True Savior who understands the truth of the publishing industry and will show us all the light of your genius.

Tact also means keeping your crazy quite firmly under your belt where I can’t see it.

You wouldn’t let it all hang out like that when making a new friend. Don’t let it hang out with me. There’s time enough to show me how quirky-awesome you are, when I know you well enough to appreciate it. On that first meeting, what I need to know is that you’re sane, you write well, your story engages me, and you’re capable of understanding the business aspect of this entire crazy machine.

So just say hi, and hope we hit it off well enough for your book and my editing schedule to be friends.

We won’t be friends. We can’t be. I can’t be your friend and do my job. I can’t worry about hurting your feelings when I’m chopping apart incorrect modifiers or urging you to drop the passive voice and use more active verbs. I can’t be your friend when trying to train you out of your little bad writing habits, even if I’m doing it in your best interests so your talent can shine through and showcase the good writing habits that made me love your story in the first place. I won’t be your friend, because friends can’t be honest with friends about their writing.

But we’ll be friendly. We’ll learn to love each other and hate each other–but more than that, we’ll learn to depend on each other through revisions and deadlines, galleys and proofs, cover art quibbles and panicked last-minute changes. We’ll learn each others’ senses of humor and share inside jokes swapped via tweets and MS Word comment boxes. We’ll tease each other about quirks, find out strange little things about each other, and know each other in ways that often, friends don’t. Writing reveals a lot about a person. So does editing. So do those moments at three o’clock in the morning, when we’re both ready to tear our hair out trying to fix that one last sentence before the book’s due in to production the next day.

And when your book releases I’ll share a drink with you in celebration, although I’ll never come to your kids’ birthday parties or help you shop for Christmas. I don’t care about photos of your dog in sunglasses or slideshows of your vacation to Redondo Beach, and please don’t tell me about your hot date last night or the guy you found your wife in bed with. I don’t want to know. I’d rather not picture you that way, and it’s really not my business.

So no, we won’t be friends. But we will be establishing a unique relationship that, if all goes well, could last for many years and through many books. You wouldn’t start a friendship by approaching a stranger and criticizing their choice of those shoes with those slacks. You wouldn’t walk up to someone in a bar and, without even saying hello, begin a spiel of negativity about every person who ever hurt you in the past.

So why would you start a relationship with an editor or agent by antagonizing them?

“Interesting” is a strange word, with so many positive and negative connotations in modern vernacular it’s a wonder anyone can be sure what you mean when you use it. It can mean fascinating, disturbing, intriguing, annoying, fantastic, or “oh god, the horror, the horror! Mine virgin eyes; what has been seen can never be unseen!” There’s also the Chinese context, my favorite proverb of “may you live in interesting times” – which basically boils down to a polite way of saying “I hope you die in a fire.”

Trust me when I say I’ve used it in all these contexts after nearly a month of digging through the Lyrical slush pile.

I’ve seen some great queries. Compelling writing, clear plot summaries, professional address and presentation. I’ve also seen sloppy, poorly-written queries, bland queries, queries that aren’t queries at all…and some delightful gems bordering on sheer cracked-out insanity. These wanderers off the beaten path have informed us of everything from their life stories to their sexual fetishes to the weight of their dogs’ testicles in precisely measured ounces, which is key to the accuracy of the were-sex in their paranormal romance. (The latter two are thankfully not linked. Um. I hope.)

What were these writers thinking? Sure, these facts are…interesting. Informative. Sometimes unique. But they’re also far too strange and intimate, and vastly off-topic from what your query letter should be about: your book, your previous publishing credentials (if any), and why you chose this publisher or this agent. I doubt anyone would feel their precious Rover’s harbls were an appropriate topic of discussion in an official letter to a business partner – so what’s the logic of mentioning it in a query?

To start with, let’s take a look at the erroneous assumption that your query is wholly private. It’s a special secret between you and the agent or publisher, a little locked diary entry with a single key that you share between you, making moon eyes at each other as you pass it back and forth and hold it to your pulsating hearts (which, naturally, beat as one when you love someone – thank you, this has been your 80s flashback for the day). You poured your heart into it, your soul, and included every quirky, offbeat detail that you hope will make you unique and endearing – no matter how inappropriate those details might be. And when the day’s done you’ve made a special connection, because of this private thing you’ve shared with that precious someone.

Wrong.

First off, it’s possible you’re sending your super special query to an intern who’ll take one look at it, make a face I won’t even try to describe, and toss it in the trash. Second, if it makes it to the agent or to your chosen contact at the publishing house, it’s quite possible they’ll pass it around to everyone else at the establishment. Not to be malicious, no, but for one of three reasons: 1. they’re interested in the project and want counsel from their peers, 2. they’re not interested but think someone else might be, or 3. you sent a query with pictures of cats doing the nasty as relevant to the theme of your supernatural shifter story, and they want to be sure everyone knows your name in case you come across their desks with a fresh pile of crazy.

Do they do this out of spite? No. But industry professionals do talk, they do look out for each other, and at the end of the day memorable queries do sometimes come up. “Memorable” is a word like “interesting;” it can mean something awesome, or it can mean you’ll go down in infamy as the Cat Smut Dog Harbls writer.

Recently literary agent Michelle Wolfson got dragged into a bit of intarwebz drama on Twitter. She posts #queryquotes as she reads queries, with 140 characters of insight into things that make her go “hmmm.” (And “ech.” And “what is this i don’t even.”) Although she makes sure the quotes are anonymous and removes any identifying details of the stories, this sparked an argument with a published author who felt she was demeaning writers for the sake of her own cruel amusement. Many writers, editors, and literary agents jumped to her defense (although it proved pointless; it’s hard to argue with someone who’s fencing with a Nerf bat yet is convinced he’s holding a rapier). They pointed out that #queryquotes is meant to be humorously helpful, not hurtful. Yet many detractors were less worried about what she said, and more worried that she posted excerpts publicly. Was Michelle violating writers’ privacy by publicly posting lines from their queries?

No. Not just no, but hell no.

Step back and look at this with a little perspective. You’ve written a book, and now you’re letting that little bugger out into the world. Fly, little pages, fly, and hope that one day you’ll be read and appreciated by thousands or even millions of people. When you’re actively seeking publicity, you have no right to privacy as far as those words are concerned. People will read your book, they’ll talk about it, they’ll quote you, and sometimes they’ll say not-so-nice things – and you can’t do a damned thing about it other than wear yourself out flailing about. You can’t even cite copyright law, as long as they’re only quoting a few lines. Fair use is a bitch when it’s used against you, but it’s still fair use.

Your query is an extension of your book. You’re sending it out into the woolly wild hoping to find that one person who’ll love it enough to launch your publishing career. If you aren’t prepared to have your query seen publicly, then you aren’t prepared to deal with the ups and downs of making a published book available to the widely diverse and highly opinionated world at large.

So here’s a rule of thumb when crafting a good query: if you’ve written something you’d be embarrassed to see on #queryquotes, read to your mother, or have flashed on the big screen during the Superbowl halftime show, stop and take a closer look at your query. Ask yourself why that section is embarrassing you, then delete it. Keep deleting until you have something you’d be proud to place on public display. Rover will thank you. So will all the agents and editors whose minds you saved from irreparable scarring via TMI.

Because if it’s too embarrassing to be seen by the general populace, it doesn’t have a place in your query.

Similar to my post about the ever-so-clever fellow offering a literary agent a 50% commission deal via Craigslist (and setting himself up for scammers), I’ve been boggling over the recent rash of Craigslist posts seeking a literary agent. I even saw one hokey-looking agency post seeking authors and screenwriters, one that screamed “scam” in flashing red lights. But this one…oh, this one does indeed take the (cheese) cake.

Female Writer Looking Agent (NYC)
Date: 2010-02-05, 12:50PM EST
Reply to: gigs-nbh2m-1587342071@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

Talented, sexy up and coming Writing is Looking for a NO Bullshit Agent.

She has many short stories already written.

A novel in the works…that could easily be turned into a trilogy.

Notes for a mini soap opera for Spanish TV

As well as a draw filled with notes for other books

If your looking for a fresh, new & edgy writer then look no further

# Location: NYC
# it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
# Compensation: TBD

I’m going to sidestep the obvious problems with this “Writing’s” so-called talent and put my red pen down before I end up leaving permanent marks all over my screen. I’m also going to ignore the fallacy in looking for an agent on Craigslist; I’ve covered that already. Instead, ponder this:

What does her gender or physical attractiveness have to do with her ability as a writer?

Gender can play a strong role in an author’s platform as a woman writing about women’s issues, gender issues, feminism, and any number of other subjects where the perspective of a strong female writer is a selling point (there are entire shelves in bookstores reserved for these kinds of books).

But somehow I get the feeling this isn’t what our illustrious Craigslister intends.

This young lady, fresh and edgy up-and-comer that she is, wants to sell herself on sex appeal.

Not on the strength of her writing, not on the value of her story, but on being young, sexy, and fresh.

This is the same misguided sentiment that causes writers to include headshots with their queries, rather like the Bon Jovi look-alike who left so many agents tickled a few weeks ago. It’s the same lack of understanding of the industry and lack of interest in self-educating that leads writers to post on Craigslist when they should be building a strong query letter and sending it to individual agents.

And it’s the same ignorance that’s going to get this poor girl disappointed when she finds out her C-cups probably won’t sell her novels, short stories, or soap opera.

Now, I won’t pretend that some agents and publishers wouldn’t use an author’s sex appeal to sell books. But frankly that’s a bonus, sprinkles on the cupcake that an agent or publisher might use if it’s there, but won’t care about when making decisions about a book’s value. The only things that will matter are the words on the page. Not that Roman nose or mile-long eyelashes; not the tight ass or the legs that go on forever. You can’t sashay your way into a publishing contract. And you can’t tell someone you’re hot and talented, and have good ideas.

You have to show them your talent. (Your talent, not your cleavage.) You have to show them a finished product that makes them care about your story, and show an understanding of the industry that makes them happy to work with you as a client. Believe it or not, most people want you for your brains…not your body.

Your appearance is not a selling point. Your story is.

So write the best story you can. Write something worth selling, that will have more lasting merit than fleeting, shallow physical traits.*

…and then dear lord, child, learn to proofread. Seriously. Did you even glance at the post before you hit “submit”?

 

 

*You know, I’d do the nice thing and contact her, give her a little gentle nudge towards AgentQuery and AbsoluteWrite and many other wonderful sites that explain the proper way to obtain an agent, but I’ve found more than once that it tends to bite me in the ass.

I’ve written two posts and then deleted the drafts because they weren’t quite right, weren’t really things I felt like discussing here…or they seemed preachy without any real point. I haven’t been blogging much because really, there’s only so many times that you can hear “I’m working on X story, I had problems with X story, I fixed them / I moved on to Y story when I got stuck.” So I’ve only been blogging when I feel I have something worth saying, and for the past week most of what I’ve had to say about writing, querying, etc. has been things I prefer to keep to myself. So…I guess, just for the sake of posting once this week, I’ll just pop on a vague status update in listy-list form:

• Haven’t missed a day on the 1k a day challenge yet.
• Discovered this may not be the best for my writing process, as forcing it is a good way to kill a story. Live and learn. Hitting the goal of 1,000 words doesn’t make them stink any less when all those words are trash. Eau de Literary Roadkill.
• Revived NIHILISM in story form. Go ahead and groan, Sihaya and Indikaze. SHINJI THE ANGSTBUNNY LIVES.
• Started watching Sita Sings the Blues, which has amazing animation and music.
• Got a few more partial requests on SHADOW’S BREATH.
• Got a few rejections, too. Either nice personal notes saying it’s a good story, I’m a good writer, but it’s not for them…or the usual “dear author” form letters. Onward and upward.
• Told my doubts they can kiss my shiny metal ass, and figured I can try to write a better story while waiting to see if an agent will pick up SHADOW’S BREATH.
• …though I also finished chapter one of SHADOW’S VOICE. Not working on that seriously, though. Sell SB first, then worry about the sequel. Although Roman is now popping up in my dreams. In Cabo. With the Kingpin. Yes, from Marvel comics. You really don’t want to know.
• Got really sick of hearing a thousand contradictory, argumentative predictions on the future of publishing. Also, the Apple tablet. Sweet honking baby jesus.
• Made some shiny new writer friends on Twitter. The large majority of them are batshit insane. That’s okay. I fit right in.
• Got a few good nibbles on editorial jobs; response so far has been positive. Looking good. And behaving myself in public while I try to get a foot in the door. Which means I probably shouldn’t be calling people batshit insane.
• Took a stab at writing a classic romance novel.
• Failed spectacularly and hilariously. I’m a little rusty on what goes where when there’s a woman involved.
• Realized drab, blow-by-blow lists like this are dull as hell.
• Signed off.

Wow, has it really been a week since I posted? Feels like an eternity. I just haven’t had anything worth saying – but today, something caught my eye. On Twitter, I follow a user who’s basically nothing more than a feed of all the writing and editing jobs posted to Craigslist in every major city. And as a flood of posts rushed by, I saw this:

Seek Literary Agent (World)

“What?” thought I. “Surely this can’t be right.”

So I clicked. I clicked, and stared in blank amazement – for yes, it was exactly what it seemed.

Seek Literary Agent (World)

Ivy League Latino writer with completed works seeks Literary representation. First Novel is written in the style of Magical Realism; screenplay, television pilot and stage plays are part of the package. There is one short film written in Spanish, as well as a stage play in same. Let’s break into the huge Hispanic literary market. All works have copyrights, and are in professional format.

* Location: World
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
* Compensation: 50% of First Sale, standard fee after

Oh. Oh, lawdy.

Don’t do this.

The scary thing is, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like this.

Flat, plain fact: you will not find your agent on Craigslist. Finding an agent isn’t like finding a hookup with someone with compatible fetishes (really? You like to do what with guacamole?), or even like finding a normal 9-5 job. Agents don’t trawl Craigslist looking for new clients; they don’t have time. Anyone on Craigslist claiming to be an agent is either a scammer, a troll, or someone who thought being a literary agent would be “fun,” styled themselves as one, and then went looking for clients despite having no experience, no industry contacts, no plan, and no way of getting their unfortunate clients a deal*.

Agents don’t come to you. You go to them.

They’re too busy handling business for existing clients, dealing with interns, attending conferences, and slogging through the slush of query letters, partials, and manuscripts from potential clients – and when they’re done with that they’re generally off having personal lives, not poking around Craigslist looking for your brand of genius. Don’t expect them to do the work for you. Look up agents who rep your market; resources like AgentQuery, QueryTracker, and the Publisher’s Marketplace are invaluable. Send properly-pitched query letters, according to their instructions; if you don’t know how to write a good query letter, Google is your friend. Find out what kind of writers’ conferences host events suiting your market, attend them, and arrange for face-to-face pitch sessions there.

Take the time to do your research and learn how this business works. Don’t think you’re just going to fling yourself out there, and agents will come running.

Especially when “out there” is Craigslist, where you’re basically painting a target on your back and saying “Screw with me; I’m gullible and lazy, and expect someone else to make my career happen for me.” You’re more likely to find a three-way with a goat** and a purple speckled alien from the planet Grarrwron than to find a legitimate agent.

*There is one exception to this. Once I saw a legitimate agency posting to Craigslist, looking to expand from nonfiction into fiction titles and seeking authors with completed manuscripts. It set off my warnings so strongly that I checked with Victoria Strauss over at Writer Beware, and she confirmed that despite the odd practice, they were indeed legit. Bizarre, and very much not the norm.

**Goats are becoming a trend around here lately. Anyone else find that disturbing?

Last night on Twitter, a friend compared restructuring her novel to climbing Everest without gear or a guide. My response?

“People have lived on Everest without modern technology, climbing pitons, nylon rope, or expensive cold-weather gear. If people can survive on Everest with fires, huts, and goat skins, you can make this novel work.”

Fortunately she was smart enough to get what I was driving at despite my muddled analogy, and dove into her goatskin hut to get some work done. But the conversation left me thinking, during my usual bout of late-night insomnia:

Books were once scratched out in cuneiform on clay tablets, each word a painstaking labor, each page heavier than an entire hardcover book. Parchment and ink were probably a miraculous invention to the Babylonians and Assyrians, and still light-years behind typewriters we now consider primitive. For centuries our written literature was transcribed entirely by hand, with archaic tools; it may have been time-consuming, may have been difficult, but they got it done. Here we sit surrounded by high-end computers, specialized word processors, plotting and diagramming programs, printers that can spew out a dozen copies of a manuscript in a fraction of the time a Benedictine monk might have spent copying a single page by hand. Research tools are only a click away, with the internet instantly delivering information to save us the month-long trek by ass donkey to look up one Latin phrase in an obscure, crumbling book stashed somewhere in the Carpathian mountains.

So why the hell do we turn writing into such a difficult process?

Maybe we’ve made it too easy. Maybe without the dedication required of more traditional forms of transcription, we’ve lost the discipline and patience necessary to the art of writing. Maybe it’s time to climb our personal Everests without the thousands of dollars in specialized gear and the rescue helicopter hovering overhead – and maybe with the shiny, distracting toys taken away, we’ll learn how to work with our words rather than struggling against them and making the process more difficult than it has to be.

So step away from the internet. Close Facebook. Close Photoshop. Close that game. Close your e-mail. Close Wikipedia, too (what are you doing fact-checking there, anyway?). If you’re not inclined to write by hand, then close everything that isn’t just you and your words. No shiny plotting tools; no easy outlining programs; no fancy fonts and formats. Just you, the words, and an empty page.

And wrap yourself in your goatskins to just write.