Winners: Worst Writing Habit Contest

Thanks to everyone who participated in the “What’s Your Worst Writing Habit?” contest. The response was phenomenal; over 100 entries, and every last one of them absolutely awesome. A little humbling, too, as I recognized a lot of my own bad habits in your entries. ~coughs~

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!

Without Rhyme or Reason.

Reviewing slush is a strange thing, sometimes. There seems less a process to it than a sort of madness of chance, timing, and whim, where hard criteria come second to a certain ineffable something that seems to decide yes or no before I get any say in it. Sometimes, looking back on my own decisions, objectively they make no sense. In the same day I rejected a sub with beautiful writing, requested an R&R on a sub with rather undeveloped writing, and sent a full request for yet another sub whose sample pages had average, but not wholly original writing.

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.

So, yeah. I’m dancing.

I might as well get right on out and say it:

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~

No, it’s really not a choice.

It’s been a while. I’ve been busy — working, beta reading, writing. The latest project I’ve been working on is a 30k novella submission for an anthology call. In fact, I just sent in my query and submission a few minutes ago. I almost didn’t. I almost told myself it would get rejected right off the bat and I shouldn’t bother, because my hero is gay.

Don’t be silly, I told myself. This is a progressive new e-publisher that accepts LGBT submissions, and they didn’t specify no LGBT for this anthology. But I couldn’t help being paranoid. It was the same paranoia that haunted me throughout the story, that told me maybe I should turn Tobias into Tabatha, or Sean into Sarah, and make it a heterosexual relationship. My paranoia said that even though they accept LGBT, they won’t consider my story for the anthology because it won’t match the tone of the other stories, and might turn off potential buyers who only want to read heterosexual stories. I nearly talked myself out of submitting because I was convinced my submission would be judged not on the merit (or lack thereof) of my writing, but just because the characters are gay.

That paranoia isn’t without foundation. For decades stories of open homosexuality have been either rejected, or “straight-washed” before acceptance; Publisher’s Weekly posted a great blog about the topic, and the outpouring of vocal support from editors and agents who actively want LGBT submissions was phenomenal. Read the comments; there are some amazing and very well-known people speaking up to say “send me your stories. Send me your characters as they are.” They don’t care if they’re gay, straight, bisexual, or transgendered. They want good storytelling regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, and it’s the writing that matters. Some of the comments there will really brighten your day.

It wasn’t always that way, though. As I said, there’s been a stigma against stories with open homosexuals as anything more than secondary and tertiary characters, and even as acceptance grows that stigma lingers. It haunts writers, makes us cautious, makes us edgy, makes us paranoid. We can’t stop thinking about it. I thought about it while I was writing From the Ashes, and while struggling with the dilemma of my gay protagonist. I thought about how despite the acceptance and support shown in that one blog post, despite the personal support I’ve received from friends, we still don’t see that much LGBT fiction being published in the mainstream, rather than as niche fiction or through smaller e-publishers alone. It happens, but very rarely. It’s easy to put the blame on the publishers, and say we aren’t seeing it because they aren’t accepting it.

I can’t help but think, though, that we aren’t seeing it because we aren’t submitting it.

I think, out of fear of rejection, we’re straight-washing ourselves. Just as people in the LGBT community stay in the closet out of fear of homophobic and transphobic reactions, we straighten out our stories even though they’re not really the stories we want to tell. And sometimes, our books suffer for it. We don’t invest ourselves fully because we aren’t wholly behind the new, sexuality-switched or gender-reversed identities we’ve given these characters, and it feels like a lie–so we don’t give our all to writing it.

So many of us do it for different reasons. Maybe we’ve heard horror stories about agents and publishers rejecting stories based on the sexuality of the characters alone. Maybe we’ve had our own experiences with those rejections, or with being asked to straight-wash our stories. Either way, that fear hovers over us and affects the choices we make regarding what we write, and what we choose to submit — the same way the fear of being outed can affect how we behave, and the choices we make in our lives.

The thing is, while we’re beating this metaphor to death…being LGBT, whichever one or two of those letters you might fall under, isn’t a choice. Not for us. Not for me. So while we have the flexibility to shape our characters and make them into whatever little people we’d like them to be, in some ways their sexuality isn’t a choice, either. If it’s part of who they are, part of their story, then there’s really no choice about letting it be what it is — and there’s really no choice about whether you or I should continue to submit our LGBT stories.

The publishers are out there. More and more are opening their arms to LGBT novels; what they need to see now is more of them. More of us. More of our stories to show that they’re valid, they’re mainstream, they’re as compelling as every other story out there. Our stories may be part of the LGBT spectrum, but LGBT is part of the spectrum of life as a whole. Including our stories isn’t really a choice.

So don’t let it be a choice whether or not you’ll write them, or submit them. Write what you feel, whether it’s gay, straight, bi, tri, whatever. Write what you know, write what you love. Write through the fear of rejection, and trust that there are people out there who will judge your writing solely on its own merit and not for the characters’ sexuality alone. Write…and send it in.

I wrote my story. I sent it. Tobias is Tobias, Sean is Sean, and to hell with it. They’re in love. And if the story’s not good enough for the anthology, then I’m going to have faith — in this one publisher, and in every publisher I decided to submit to — that it’ll be because of a flaw in my writing***, not just because loving Sean helps make Tobias who he is. I’ll keep writing past that. I’ll keep improving. And I’ll keep submitting my stories, no matter the sexuality of my protagonists.

After all, they can’t accept it if you don’t submit it. If you don’t, you aren’t giving them much of a choice at all.

 

 

 
***Or, y’know, because I accidentally sent from my work email address and not my default email address. ~shakes fist at Thunderbird~

10 (11) Ways To Tell Your Editor Hates You

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?