image by ba1969 on sxc.hu

Winner: Rebecca Enzor
Rebecca posted about her floating-head syndrome, and her love of dialogue. I guess I’ll be seeing both when I crit her full. ;P

And let’s not forget second-place:

Runner-Up: Julie Weathers
Julie will be receiving a three-chapter critique, and maybe a little help working on that habit of writing things out of order.

I’ll be emailing the winners tomorrow to request your manuscripts, or you can email me at adrien-luc(at)entangledpublishing(dot)com if you don’t want to wait.

As promised, here’s the top 5 comments, and my response:

1. Liana Brooks
My worst writing habit is TWITTER.

I turn it on to check the news in the morning and it’s open all day. I’ll write a few paragraphs, and then go chat with other authors. Write a little more, and then check out someone’s new book they tweeted about. At this point I’m almost positive I have a serious Twitter addiction.

You’d think the answer to this would be to close Twitter – Tweetdeck, your browser, whatever. But they’re still right there, waiting to be opened again. Drives me out of my mind, because I do this too. All the time. There’s only one thing that really works for me: writing in TextRoom. TextRoom is a full-screen text editor that blocks out everything else and cuts down to the minimum needed to write. There are other full-screen editors, like Q10 and DarkRoom, but I prefer TextRoom because it allows rich text formatting instead of NotePad-style plain text, making it easier to deal with when I copy to Word to save in .doc format. It also makes sure I can’t see those windows in my taskbar, or the damn Twhirl notifications – and it helps keep me on track with daily wordcount goals, percentage trackers, etc.

Or, you know, you could try this thing called self-discipline. I don’t advocate it. It’s terribly dull and annoying. God knows I don’t have any. Oh hey, someone just tweeted at me…

2. L.S. Murphy
Besides checking my email every thirty seconds or so, I overuse the heart as an emotional cue. You would think my characters should see a cardiologist as much as their hearts beat, drop, slam, or dissolve in the pits of their stomachs. *Sigh* The heart wants what the heart wants…

This is a problem I see rather often, actually, and it’s hard not to fall back on the heart as an indicator of emotion. We’re ruled by our hearts, and everyone understands what it means when the heart stops, stumbles, races. We know the feeling. We share it. So it’s not always bad to use the heart as a way to convey emotion – but you also have a great opportunity here to really strike your readers with something unique, something they’ve often felt but never been quite aware of it. In one story I read, a nervous character curled her toes up inside her shoes–but she didn’t focus on the cliched toes curling. Instead she focused on how uncomfortable it was when the knuckles of her toes pushed against the insides of her shoes, and the fabric on the insoles bunched up in the creases. It made it more real for me, because when I scrunch my toes up nervously, I feel the same thing, but never really think about it.

When you’re conveying emotion in a scene through physical cues, stop and close your eyes. Put yourself in the scene, and try to picture everything. Maybe the taste of the air, breathed in through the mouth instead of the nose because the character’s panting with fright. If they’re blushing, maybe their neck is burning instead of their face, because they’re blushing just that hard. Angry? Forget clenching fists or tension in the shoulders. What about that hard pull of sinew in the solar plexus as the body prepares for action? The point is, we don’t just feel emotion with our hearts. We feel it with our entire bodies. We react from the tips of our eyelashes to the tips of our toes. It’s not something we normally think about, but if you’re going to write convincing emotional responses, you have to.

If you’re having trouble imagining from your perspective, watch emotionally charged movies. They can’t always rely on the beating heart unless they use special sound effects; what they have to rely on is body language and visual cues. Look for those cues, and how the actors convey emotion. Imagine what those cues must feel like – the sensations involved, etc. Use that for a frame of reference when trying to break out of the typical heart-shaped box. (Go ahead. Groan. I know you want to.)

3. Tamara Gill
My worst writing habit would have to be the use of adverb tags with dialogue. And I’m a really lazy writer…punctuation, what’s that?

Okay, the laziness I can’t help you with. Punctuate your sentences, dammit. Unless you like watching my head explode.

…

Don’t answer that.

Anyway, on the adverbs: don’t beat yourself up over it too much. One or two here and there? Actually not that bad…as long as it’s only one or two. When every dialogue tag is “he said softly” and “she said loudly,” it’s a problem. The fun thing about the English language is that it’s ridiculously full of nuance and has about fifty different words for everything, many with different inflections and subtle variations. There’s probably a verb out there for that “said + adverb” combo.

Obviously these two are easy: saying something softly can be murmuring or whispering, while saying something loudly can be shouting or yelling or even screeching, depending on the tone you want. Choosing the right verb can go a long way towards defining tone and even characterization, more so than tacking on any adverb. Just think about the difference between shouting and screeching. Both involve saying something loudly, urgently, but one is aggressive and almost imperative, while the other is high-pitched and can seem angry, bitchy, hysterical, or even panicked, depending on context.

The right verb is out there. You just have to look for it.

4. Sarah Robinson
I tend to overwrite. My manuscript as it sits is at 100,000 words. Young adult Contemporary. I know I need to get it below 80,000 to make it acceptable to agents, but I can’t seem to part with much more. I need fresh eyes.

…my first YA novel (which will never see the light of day) was 135k. Yeah. I know. That’s frightening.

Two tips on how to get around this. One, plan for it to be 75k. If you’re not a planner, that may be hard, but if you have that goal in the back of your mind, it forces you to consider what’s really necessary as you write. It gives you a little leeway for that 80k limit, too.

Another way, though, is to refuse to allow yourself any internal monologue as you write. None. Every time you catch yourself doing it, delete it. Write only the action and dialogue, as straightforward as possible. Don’t even tell us if your MC is wondering what another character is doing. In your next draft, you can go in and add that where it’s necessary – but only where it’s necessary. Most of the time it’s internal monologue and exposition bogging us down, but we tend to write less of it if we’re adding it in after the fact and trying to figure out the best place to fit it into seamless action.

5. Kathryn Sheridan Kupanoff
My worst writing habit? Ugh. I could give you a million, but since you asked for one, I’ll settle for long-ass sentences when I’m on a roll, and just can’t seem to find that period, and how could I stop this train of thought when the character’s mind seems to be going here and there, and what did the beginning of the sentence have to do with this? That’s why it’s always good to reread, kids. Periods are your friends (also told me by my health teacher in high school, but I don’t think it was relevant to this question).

…I admit I picked this one not because I had anything useful to say, but because it made me laugh until I choked. You know how to fix this one. Okay. Well. Maybe you don’t. If you don’t? One action per sentence. Seriously. Go back to baby steps, and write very simple subject-verb-object sentences. Don’t let yourself do anything else, no matter what. In edits, you can combine into more complex sentence structures. The point isn’t to write in a simplistic fashion; it’s to train yourself to break your thoughts up and present them in an organized fashion, so that the more you practice, the more you’ll be able to write concisely and oh hey this sentence is getting a little long here and…

…yeah. Maybe I need to take my own advice.

And that’s it for now. Keep an eye out for two new contests soon: one that’ll show you how to tighten your story’s hook, and one that’ll give you a chance to be a secondary character in my upcoming book, From the Ashes.

In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out at the Romance Author Hotspot 2011 holiday bash from 12.24.11 to 1.1.12, giving away free books and just chatting, so feel free to drop by – especially since RAH is giving away a free Kindle!

Want to win a full critique of your manuscript? Tell us about your worst writing habit – that nasty little flaw you’re trying to shake but just can’t.

photo by lucianotb on sxc.hu

So what’s yours?

The rules:

1. You have to comment to win. Share your worst writing habit. Make sure to leave a valid email in the email field so that, if you win, I can contact you. Email addresses are not displayed publicly.

2. I’ll critique both literary and genre fiction manuscripts anywhere from 30k to 100k in length, but not non-fiction. It’s not that I don’t like it; I’m just not qualified to critique it.

3. Entries will remain open until December 20th, 2011. At that point I’ll choose one first-prize winner and one runner-up at random, and contact them for their manuscripts. The first-prize winner’s manuscript will be read in full and marked up in Word with editorial commentary, accompanied by an email discussing overall impressions and critique points. The critique will remain private between me and the author. The runner-up will receive a critique and markup of their first three chapters only.

4. The winners will, however, be announced in a blog post. The top five comments will also be posted to the blog, with my responses on how to help kick that habit.

5. This is not an official submissions call. Do not email any materials for the contest unless officially requested. (Well, if you want to query, go ahead, but it’s not related to the contest.) The contest is in no way affiliated with my work at Entangled Publishing, and neither participating nor winning constitutes any form of endorsement for publication. Any queries for publication are considered separately, and contest participants are welcome to submit their stories outside of the contest provided they comply with Entangled Publishing’s submission guidelines.

Get it? Got it? Good. Get to commenting!

P.S. If your comment doesn’t show up immediately, Akismet probably caught it. I check the spam filter regularly and will fish it out in short order, so no need to repost.

Probably not the choices most would expect me to make. Most would expect me to acquire the well-written one, reject the undeveloped one, and send an R&R for the average one, right?

Wrong, because those aren’t the only factors that affect my decisions.

Some of it has to do with technicalities. The sub with beautiful writing just didn’t suit the Ever After or Flirt lines. The R&R had a good voice, but the plot wasn’t where it needed to be if I was going to put the work into honing the author’s writing. The full request looked like it might be a good commercial fit for the lines.

But there’s something more intangible than that. Something that feels right; you just know it when you read it, but you can never really explain it in a single word. Some people have called it a click; others a spark. I don’t think either of those is correct. Clicks and sparks are instantaneous, singular things, entirely fleeting – while this is something more deeply woven, interlaced into every page of the story, lingering with you and telling you, deep down in your gut, that this is the one.

This knowledge isn’t something that can be taught, but it’s something that can be acquired with time and experience. It’s a matter of instinct, and the more time you spend acquiring and editing, the more you learn to trust that instinct. That instinct will make you reject a book that might sell 500,000 copies for another publisher, but that you know would completely tank with yours. That same instinct will make you pick up a book dozens of others have passed over, and see the potential not just in the story, but as a good fit for your publisher, their capacity to market it, and current industry trends.

As a writer, there’s a similar instinct that tells you when a story isn’t working, and warns you to change course before you write yourself into a corner. To be honest, some writers don’t have that instinct. Some writers will get an idea in their heads and charge forward, convinced that no matter what they do to the story, it’s made entirely of pink sparkle ponies and glitter farts because they’re writing it and that makes it just the bestest thing ever lolololol. These are usually new writers who haven’t developed their literary palates, and haven’t acquired the instinctive, almost subconscious knowledge of good story development that comes from not only practicing your craft, but reading widely to understand the craft as a whole.

You might scoff at that, but don’t. I scoffed at wine tasting until I tried it. I swear to you it all tasted like dry, bitter crap to me…at first. I didn’t know what all these pretentious douchemonkeys around me were talking about. Oaky. Nutty. Full-bodied. Fruity. Whatever. I was fruitier than that crap, and you don’t even want to know about the time I embarrassed myself asking, “What the f*** are tannins?” Red wine was red wine, and it was nasty.

Slowly, though, I started to notice the difference. I started to pick up the subtle undercurrents that could hint to a wine’s age, fermentation techniques, numerous other factors that shaped the flavor in almost indefinable yet still distinctive ways. It didn’t make me like red wine, but it made me appreciate it. It made me understand the subtleties of flavor, until I could instinctively tell a good vintage from a bad one even if I was looking for the first opportunity to spit it the hell out.

Maybe I should’ve used scotch for this example. I actually like scotch.

Anyway. The point is that you think you know everything about taste until you realize you don’t. I still don’t know everything. For example, even though I read literary fiction in my off time, I’m not devoted enough to it to trust my instincts. I’d never acquire literary fiction, because my tastes just aren’t honed enough. I don’t have the instinct for it.

I have, however, spent a rather long time developing my instinct for commercial genre fiction. And what I look for when reviewing subs is a writer who has that same instinct, and trusts it to tell him or her when the story is going in the wrong direction. A writer who uses that instinct to tell a story with an engaging voice, strong characterization, a beautifully woven storyline, tight pacing – and yes, with spark, but more still than even that. A truly great book is more than the sum of its parts, to the point where those distinct pieces blend together into a whole that takes on a life of its own.

And when I find it I know, without rhyme or reason, that this book is for me.

My novella, From the Ashes, just sold to Entangled Publishing as part of their 2012 superhero anthology. Not only that, but I’ve been recruited as Senior Editor for Entangled’s Flirt and Ever After lines.

So, yeah. I’m dancing like a fool.

image by MeiTang on sxc.hu

It’s kind of funny how things happen, really. Back in January, Savvy Authors ran their EditPalooza writers’ workshop; back then I was working as an editor for Lyrical Press, and when Liz Pelletier asked for participating editors from various publishers, I joined in. EditPalooza was a lot of fun; I got to meet some really cool authors, and got to work with Liz, who turned out to be pretty awesome.

Then life went back to normal. I took a break from editing for a while; I needed to simplify my life and destress, as I’d managed to work myself to the edge of a nervous breakdown fueled by the fact that I wasn’t coping with my grandmother’s death as well as I thought. Things calmed down, I settled back into my daily routine in the day job as a freelance business writer, and got back into the habit of writing fiction on the side. I’m not sure what chain of links led me to Entangled’s website, though I’m pretty sure it had something to do with Twitter. It always has something to do with Twitter. Twitter will be responsible for the downfall of the western world.

Well, no. But it’s pretty much destroyed my attention span.

Anyway. I ran across the Entangled website, recognized the folks from Savvy Authors, and thought what they were doing was pretty cool. I also noticed the submissions call for their superhero anthology.

A week before the final submission date.

Meaning I had four days to churn out a 30k story if I wanted time to let a few beta readers hack it apart.

I don’t know how I did it. I do know I didn’t sleep, but that’s not news. Somehow From the Ashes made it out the door in time, and so help me but I’d have embarrassed myself if not for my friend Amanda, who is just about the best editor in the world and who caught my more cringe-worthy mistakes. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything for a few weeks, so when I saw an email from Liz the very next day, I think I died a little inside. Wow, I thought. That was fast. My story must’ve been really bad.

But it wasn’t a rejection. It was a note from Liz asking if I remembered her from Editpalooza, and asking if I was interested in joining the Entangled Publishing editing team.

So. After I picked myself up off the floor, I sent back the coolest, most composed email ever, stating my interest. Yeah. Stop laughing. You know I was shrieking and squealing and grinning like an idiot even in text, but let me have my illusions. Liz said great, and I took the editing test to see if my editing style and skill level were a good match for Entangled’s needs.

Let me tell you something: everything you know about the agony of waiting for a response to a submission is compounded exponentially when you’re waiting for a response not only to a submission, but a job application – with the same people. I bit my nails down to the quick. I refreshed my email obsessively. I think I sprouted a few more grey hairs. I drove my husband out of his mind, constantly asking if he thought I should have made the story hetero instead of LGBT, if they’d hate the story but love my editing, hate my editing but love the story, or absolutely despise both and wonder how I ever ended up involved in publishing the first place.

It was more a “none of the above” situation. I’m pretty sure I deafened an entire city block when the email came. I had to reread it six or seven times to convince myself it was real, and yes, they wanted the story and wanted me. I’m 99.9% certain I made a rambly, awkward jackass out of myself on introductory phone calls with Liz, the inestimable Heather Howland, and K.L. Grady, the walking epitome of awesomeness who’ll be my editor on From the Ashes.

But jackass or not, there it is. I’m happy. I think “happy” may be the biggest understatement of the year, actually, but it’s a start. I’m really looking forward to working with the Entangled team, both as an editor and as an author, and I think 2012 promises to be an amazing year all around.

But right now, well…

…I have a slush box to clean out. ~flees~

You know what day this is, right? Of course you do. It’s the release day for Rogue’s Curse, Jason Beymer’s debut novel, available from Lyrical Press. (For only $5.50. My lunch costs more than that. C’mon. It’s worth it.)

Seeing this book debut is like watching my firstborn child leave for their first day of school. If I had a firstborn child. If I wasn’t as child-friendly as an uncovered electrical socket. The point is, when a book is published its successful release isn’t just the pride of the author and his family, friends, and demon minions. It’s the pride of all the people who worked on it: the copy/content editor(me!), their senior editor(s), the line editors, the cover artist, the production manager, the review coordinator…the list goes on and on. It’s a group effort, one where the author is central but not entirely alone in their investment in the book. There’s a whole team of people who care about that book, who take pride in its success.

I definitely take pride in Rogue’s Curse, and in Jason.

It’s only by random chance that I ended up working on this book. I’ve only been with Lyrical Press for about six months now; before that I was working as a freelance editor. When I first started I was told I’d be taking on some previously contracted authors they thought would be a good fit for me, until I started to pick my own from the slush pile. So here I was, several books already on my list, all of them interesting, exciting, fun. Apparently my senior editor gauged my tastes well, because I’ve yet to edit a single book that I didn’t love.

Jason, though…Jason was my first.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t know what to expect. I was used to authors coming to me as a contractor, hiring me because they trust my expertise, and generally placing the reins in my hands. The relationship works a little differently when you work for a publisher. I’d heard horror stories about dealing with difficult authors on the publisher’s side: everything from delayed releases caused by author meltdowns to month-long arguments over non-conventional apostrophe use as visual art. In truth, I expected Jason to be a nightmare. Arrogant, stubborn, utterly lacking in common sense, and refusing to budge on so much as a misspelled word or a godawful pet phrase.

Instead he proved why you should never make assumptions or believe stereotypes.

His sense of humor caught me from the first page of Rogue’s Curse, and proved utterly infectious – to the point where my senior editor made me tone down my silly comments when I left editorial notes throughout the book. (I believe there was something in there about Godzilla and octogenarian poontang.) Before I’d even really had a significant dialogue with him, I learned to like him through his book, his characters, his humor, his storytelling, his style – but I learned to value him from an editorial perspective when I sent his first round of edits back. Rather than whine about the amount of work asked of him or argue that his book was perfect as-is, he threw himself wholeheartedly into editing with all the enthusiasm and professionalism anyone could hope for.

Not only that, but he took my questions about plot points and went one step further: he refined the entire story to the point where it was practically a new book. Rather than viewing criticism as a negative point, he instead used it as a jumping-off point to come up with some wildly creative solutions that more than proved his talent and ingenuity. Sometimes I almost couldn’t keep up with him as he spun through ideas, changes, and cheesy one-liners that left me spraying diet coke at my screen on an alarmingly regular basis. His wife, too, has a wonderfully sharp eye; she was always there, looking over Jason’s shoulder and catching that one letter out of place that neither of us noticed after staring at the manuscript for the eleventy-millionth time.

Oh, there were a few points of contention. A few things had to be deleted for the sake of house rules, and darlings (and sheep) had to die. There was a particularly knotty wrangle about italics that left us both so confused we didn’t know if we were coming or going, but we never wanted to see another verbalized sound effect in our lives. Renee, She Who Commands All, nearly killed me over a slight oversight on the cover text. (Seriously, never make a pregnant woman angry. I swear I found three more grey hairs the next day.) Jason had to be threatened with a ruler across the knuckles if he didn’t stop picking at things that were already tweaked to the point of exhaustion. He’s a bit of a perfectionist, in case you can’t tell. He’s also paranoid, neurotic, and utterly hilarious when he starts biting his nails over every tiny little thing. One of these days he’s going to stress himself to a heart attack. I’m probably callous enough to point and laugh. I’m an editor. It’s what we do. All part of crushing your spirit and destroying your artistic vision.

Ahem. Back on topic. More than anything, Jason is a witty, fun, engaging person, and a wonderful author to work with. Just by being himself and dedicating himself to polishing his book, he made my investment in Rogue’s Curse personal. He proved that when an author and editor work together rather than against each other, a good book can transform into a great one. We may not be friends, but I’m damned happy to be his editor.

Maybe if Jason hadn’t been my first author, I wouldn’t love working for a publisher so much. Maybe if Jason hadn’t been such a delight to work with, I would have doused myself in holy water and run screaming back to the freelance life and my private client roster. But “maybe” never happened, and I consider myself lucky that out of all the contracted books pending editorial assignment, my senior editor decided to send Jason (and my other starting authors, because yes, I love you all) to me.

So thank you, Jason. Thank you for being my first Lyrical author, for being wonderful, and for trusting me with your next book, Nether.

Thank you, and happy release day for Rogue’s Curse.

…

Now excuse me. I need to go drown something small and fluffy before people start thinking I’m human.

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?

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?

And I’ll have you know, I didn’t edit this post one single bit.

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Killing Peter Rabbit
Jason Beymer

Adrien invited me to guest blog today. It’s not easy guest-blogging for your editor. I expect to see puddles of red highlighter all over this post, bearing familiar comments like “Watch your adverbs,” “An octogenarian is not a type of monkey,” and “You think this line is funny? What, are you seven?”

It would be disingenuous to say Rogue’s Curse is my first book. When I was five years old, I plagiarized The Tale of Peter Rabbit a thousand times, peppering it with unspeakable kindergarten horrors and bunny-on-bunny violence. I didn’t know my alphabet yet, and my penmanship consisted of squiggly lines. At first I copied Beatrix Potter’s story word for word. Eventually I improved it. I was a pioneer, like Gus Van Sant when he allegedly shouted, “Balls! I’ll remake Psycho shot for shot, but this time in color and with full-frontal boobies!”

In the original work, a naughty bunny runs away from home to go a’noshin’ in a carrot garden. He barely escapes Old Man McGregor, who chases him with a hoe. No, I was still too young to comprehend that word’s comedic potential. “Hoe” wouldn’t enter my vocabulary as a double-entendre for another six years, when I snuck into the living room and watched Eddie Murphy’s Delirious on HBO. Moral of the story? Don’t piss in Old Man McGregor’s garden. Or, as Momma Rabbit put it, “Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.” Yikes! If that doesn’t stain your underroos at age five, nothing will.

The more I rewrote this story, the more it transformed. I became curious. How much of Peter Rabbit’s body could I dismember without killing him? It sounded innocent coming from my five year old mouth: “Mommy, if I wooze my arms and wegs will I still wiv?” The question was cute; the motive was not. Look, I didn’t have the Internet back in the ’70s. I didn’t have TLC and the Discovery Channel to conduct research with. If I wanted to turn on TV and gawk at a man with no legs and half a skull I had to wait for Donahue to hit the summer slumps.

So began Peter’s dismemberment stage: leg ripped off while escaping, ear severed by flying glass, paw lopped off in a sewing machine accident, etc. Soon Peter Rabbit wasn’t sneaking around Old Man McGregor’s garden searching for carrots anymore. Why not? How would I know? I’m five, remember? A new question came to me: How does one ‘accidentally’ put an old man into a pie? I researched it. All authors are expected to research their novels, right? I didn’t want to tarnish my credibility before my first pubes broke the skin, so I went to work. I watched the Looney Tunes classic “French Rarebit” and studied how the French chefs prepared Bugs Bunny for “Louisiana Back-Bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise … a la Antoine.” Now the tables were turned: Peter Rabbit tossed Old Man McGregor into a cooking pot and baked him into a blueberry pie. This concept worked for several iterations and then I got bored.

And when I got bored, characters randomly died. This concept hasn’t changed much in thirty years. Random death is the spice of life. Peter stepped on a landmine, the carrots turned evil and attacked the Rabbit family, and the McGregors succumbed to an awful case of burning farmhouse.

Editing done, I prepared to show my creation to the world. This got me booted out of Cub Scouts. The pack leader claimed I was channeling Satan (psst, she was right!). So what is the moral of this guest-blog post? Squelch your child’s creativity at an early age, lest the Church strap him to a ducking stool.

Jason’s debut novel Rogue’s Curse is scheduled for release in August 2010 from Lyrical Press.

Visit Jason Beymer’s blog at http://www.beerandtv.com/.
Follow Jason’s Twitter at http://twitter.com/beerandtv/.

That’s right, I said it. The R word. Dreaded, hateful, but inevitable, it’s something I’ve dealt with often enough from a writer’s perspective. It’s a little strange from the other side of the desk, and frankly it sheds an interesting light on the entire process when I think of sending my own books out to agents or publishers. When I look at my own work I now try to see it as another editor would, weighing its merits and seeking out its flaws with a more detached eye. Honestly, I think it would do most writers good to spend just a month reading through the slush pile at a publishing house or literary agency to really hone your critical perceptions.

But since not everyone can do that, I thought I’d share my first week of wading through the slush. Not to be cruel to the authors, or to embarrass them; any identifying specifics have been removed so not even the authors themselves could tell if any of these refer to them, and this is just a small sample from the overall submissions pool so it’s a bit of a roulette as far as which ones I chose. Despite a tendency towards overt honesty and tactless dissection, I don’t want to hurt or humiliate anyone; I’m just offering a glimpse of what goes through my head as I review, and an idea of what factors led to my final vote – not just the negative comments, but the positive ones as well.

The process:
For every submission I read the query, the synopsis, and the first and last chapters. Generally I can tell about halfway through the synopsis if a story’s just not for me, if it’s not right for the publisher (Lyrical publishes genre fiction, primarily with romantic or erotic themes), if it’s starting to fall apart, or if the story and writing suffer from problems that just can’t be blamed on the fact that synopses exist to torture authors, editors, and agents alike. Still, the chapter review gives them a chance to surprise me – to grip me so thoroughly I don’t want to put the story down. If the first and last chapters look solid and the synopsis offers hope of a well-constructed plot, I skim through the rest from beginning to end to look for major deal-breakers and mentally note any issues that could make me lean toward no, but aren’t killing it yet.

Only if it passes that trial do I stop and make the time for an in-depth read from beginning to end, in the hopes of saying yes.

I haven’t said yes yet – but here’s my commentary from ten instances where I had to say no.

The Rejections:

1. Interesting premise, but feels contrived and a bit unfinished; the synopsis indicates that some plot threads are closed off messily or simply as an afterthought when they’re no longer convenient. Writing is fairly solid in technical construction, but lacks style or an engaging voice. Could be workable, but would require a great deal of author/editor collaboration to tighten up the prose and give it a decent hook. As a whole, it didn’t really pull me in.

2. Bill Engvall calls himself “15 degrees off cool.” I love him anyway. This author’s story is 15 degrees off right, but I kind of like the idea anyway. It has promise, although I admit I was fairly lukewarm on the idea and probably would have skipped reading a sample if not for a good hook. The synopsis starts off strong, but doesn’t deliver on its promises; the plot seems to get lost with characters whose behavior erases any chance of empathizing with them. Looking through the first chapter, there’s a strong voice, good characterization, but very poor technical execution and sloppy prose (and some painful comma abuse), as well as a tendency to use words that aren’t quite what the author means. Overall it just doesn’t work, but I wish it did. The idea really interested me, but I think the author should have done some major paring, rewriting, and strengthening before submitting.

3. Keep wavering between hot and cold on this one. I love this genre, so that caught me…but just reading the quick outline made me say “And…? Is that all?” (Which could be a good thing or a bad thing, as it did leave me wanting more.) Unfortunately the synopsis did the same. Although it clears up some questions, it feels lacking in substance and impetus once it nears the end – as if the author got close to the end and said “screw it, let’s just be done with it.” Which is a shame, as I think the concept is strong enough to hold up when written well – although it is a little derivative and the conclusion seems to come too easily. The writing’s mechanical, but can be fixed with variations in structure. There’s a lot of potential, but there’s also a chance it’ll fizzle badly and require a lot of work, especially in the latter half.

4. It drew me, but something’s rather off about it. I couldn’t help but wonder why the author chose this perspective. I’m honestly not sure what to make of the style. It’s very literary and atmospheric, but suffers from poorly fleshed-out characters. I’m…puzzled by the story, to say the least. Very intrigued, yet at the same time a bit put off. It seems a bit stereotypical, and the main characters seem detached from from the conflict. And even though it’s interesting, I don’t think Lyrical’s the right market.

5. I’m already shaking my head before even opening the docs. Heavy, heavy, heavy. I love a weighty story with some good meat and a penchant for subtlety in conflict rather than outright slap-dash action, but this just takes it too far. It’s dry, very dry. Too much navel-gazing, not enough actual story. It’s too bad, because the prose is good, the voice strong, though it’s repetitive – and I think the author is a little shaky on perspective. Entirely not suited for Lyrical.

6. So derivative of other published novels that it borders on generic and wanders dangerously close to plagiarism. Plus the plot seems to peter out in the last third; an attempt to create tangled threads just makes a muddle that loses my interest. I rather enjoyed the writing style, though; it’s clear and fairly well-paced, and with editing could make for a tight, strong voice. I’d be willing to take a look at a more original revision.

7. Couldn’t get past the first page. The technical problems hinted at in the query and the synopsis just exploded in the story itself, along with a much larger dose of Mary Sue than I can generally handle. Too much backstory, and no appeal whatsoever. Might work for someone who really loves the concept, but it’s not for me.

8. Strong voice, compelling, an entertaining and funny homage to its genre. I haven’t had time to read through the whole thing so I can’t say for certain without a synopsis, but if the rest of the book lives up to the promise in the first and last few chapters I’d say yes – although there are some issues in the last few chapters that need clearing up, as this is another one that peters out towards the end. Too much exposition, not enough action, and the wrap-up is a bit inconclusive. Really would need to see the synopsis to give a solid stamp of approval.

(Note: yes, this is still a no. If I don’t see a synopsis to tell me there’s something worth reading in the meat of the book, I don’t have hours to spend digging to find out. Not everyone uses synopses, but when they’re the only thing standing between you and a full they’re evil, maddening little lifesavers. Sometimes I might be able to set aside time for a full read before a submission rotates out, but when I’ve got production schedule deadlines looming that won’t always be the case. I won’t always have time to give people the benefit of the doubt without the synopsis to justify the effort.)

9. The setup picked me up, gave me hope, then dropped me on my face. All this buildup to gloss over the central plot? Don’t do that to me; my fragile heart can’t handle it.

There are stereotypes that could easily alienate readers. The author can write, but can’t tell a story. There’s no plot here; just events. The symbolism is much too overwrought, a flimsy skeleton that can barely support a story that didn’t have much meat to start with. I’d pass.

10.Totally the wrong genre. MG or YA pitched as adult, when the voice and storyline aren’t even remotely suitable. The synopsis spatters events together with little connection, yet for such a busy story nothing of significance to the plot seems to happen very often. The writing takes a lot of risks, but lacks the technical ability and style to support any boldness.

Pass.

Well, hope that’s been enlightening (or that you at least found my sad attempts at humor somewhat amusing). Who knows, I might do this again at some point – but for now I’m signing off, and hoping that next time I dive into the slush pile I’ll find something that makes me say “yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

Disclaimer: This post does not represent the opinions or commentary of other Lyrical Press editors or employees. These comments are my opinions only; the comments of other editors are private and confidential, and should not be inferred from my statements. In other words, we’re different people with different thoughts on why stories do and do not work, so don’t assume that my decision to publicize my thoughts means my comrades in slush would say the same things.

Yesterday I signed on as a Content Editor for Lyrical Press.

Basically, that means I help authors shape their manuscripts into the best work possible prior to publication, and work with authors for the duration of their careers with Lyrical. I also get to participate in acquisitions, along with the rest of the editing team. It’s not a full-time gig, but it’s one that makes me happy; I love editing. Plus I get to work with the ever-so-fabulous Amanda. (Who’s probably giving me dirty looks right now.)

Lyrical publishes a rather broad range of genre fiction, but primarily romance of some sort or another, ranging from fantasy to paranormal to realism and more. I don’t have my first author yet – but I’m still getting myself oriented with Lyrical’s processes and standards, and meeting the group. Don’t be surprised if, once I do start working with my first author, I start pimping his or her books like mad.

…promise I’ll try not to shill too much, though. Ahem.

But yeah, that was my good news. I’m torn between wiggling happily and being utterly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I need to read just to get started.

Definitely wiggling.