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Shoe-obsessed superagent Daphne Unfeasible blogs about books and authors, answers your questions, and talks about publishing industry gossip. , subscribe to this blog, or check out her Writer's Resources.
I'm Not 100% Sure I Agree With This
But Cory Doctorow (yes, him again) posits an interesting idea on publishing, and the value of giving stuff away for free. Dandelions and artists have a lot in common in the age of the Internet. This is, of course, the age of unlimited, zero-marginal-cost copying. If you blow your works into the net like a dandelion clock on the breeze, the net itself will take care of the copying costs.Now, I know I do agree with artists having a place on the web where their readers can find them, and that those sites should be frequently updated with new information, which should be shared widely. Do I believe in giving away copies of their books for free? All of them?
Ummm, no. But making them available to read in large chunks, and links to sites where you CAN get the book immediately? Yeah, I like that.
I'm looking forward to Doctorow's next article.
Recent Reads
So I was looking at my list of Recent Reads lately, shocked and a little appalled that it's so short (though I consoled myself with the fact that it's short because I've been reading manuscripts, not books), when I remembered a title I left out! Marvel's Civil War trade paperback collection, on the ride back from the airport recently. Especially fitting considering Rexroth and I just saw Iron Man (so awesome! Go see it!) and I was pulling most of my pre-movie information about the character from this book.
So, do I have any other comic book nerds out there? Rexroth is one, so I have lots more books on my shelves to read. I'll keep you posted!
DON'T (a list)
Rather than doling them out in drips and drabs, someone wise and wonderful suggested I compile a list of some of my querying "don't"s. Now, these are specifically mine, and other agents may have their own pet peeves, but there's some general advice I hope you can take from this list.
- Send it on behalf of your wife/husband/child/sibling/gerbil. I don't want to represent any writer who isn't actively involved in their own submission process.
- Write it from the point of view of your characters. I've said this before: while your creations may speak to you, they don't speak to me. Let your letter show that you're a professional writer, not a nutjob who thinks their characters come alive.
- Tell me it'll be a huge bestseller, change the world, and win the Newbery/Printz/ManBooker/Pulitzer/Oscar. Tell me the story, and let me imagine the accolades.
- Detail all the kids who've read it/that you've read it to who think it's the best book they're ever seen or heard (and you didn't even tell them you wrote it! How tricksy you are!). Children aren't critics, and they aren't editors.
- Preach at me. Don't tell me the lesson I'll learn from the book. Readers, myself among them, don't want to be taught, we want to be entertained.
- Include a proposed cover design, or suggest an artist, or link to an image that you feel captures the essence of the manuscript. There are people who do that for a living. They're called art directors, and they come into the publishing process well after I do.
- Think your book is strong enough to vault over my stated preferences. If I ask for a letter and the first three pages, send me a letter and the first three pages: not pages somewhere in the middle, not the first third of the book, not a chapter listing.
- Send a form letter, or worse, send to all of my agent colleagues on the same email, without even the benefit of a "bcc". Personalize each query. Know who you're writing to, and be able to say why you're approaching them. And "I'm going through a list of Agents and you were next alphabetically" is not a good reason.
- Create a new category or genre for your book, and please Please PLEASE don't refer to it as a "fiction novel." I generally shouldn't need more words to describe your book's category or genre than are in your proper name. Urban fantasy, chick lit, romance, science fiction, mystery, magical realism, comedy: these all work, but not all together in some mashed up new phrase like urban-romance-sci-fi-mysterious-comedy. Too confusing.
- Worry too much about the query letter. If the manuscript is strong enough, and you haven't broken too many of the above "rules", it'll be read, and someone, somewhere, is going to love it.
Ask Daphne? What's Women's Fiction
Shannyn writes:
What exactly do you consider women's fiction? Are you lumping all romance categories into that? Or are you looking for the non-romance genre fiction?Hi Shannyn! I'll admit I'm cheating a bit by saying Women's Fiction. The fact is, 80% or so of all fiction IS women's fiction, if only because women are the primary buyers of books. But "Women's Fiction" is also a handy code. Yes, it means romance, to a big degree, but it also includes non-genre titles, or authors that have stepped out of genre to cross over to a general readership. A book by Jodi Picoult may include a love interest, but it's not typically considered straight romance. Likewise, anything by Nora Roberts is likely going to include some steamy sex scenes, but there's a lot of plot and adventure as well. James Patterson, though I'm loathe to admit it, writes a lot of women's fiction. Tom Clancy -- not so much.
So, for me, "Women's Fiction" is pretty much anything you can think of, assuming it's not overwhelmed by military jargon or politics. It has a strong female protagonist and a driving plot.
Hope that helps!
Why 3 Pages?
On my submissions page, I recommend that writers querying me include the first1 three pages of their manuscript along with their letter. Why these three pages? Mostly because I recognize that the art of writing a good, strong query letter isn't the same as the art of writing a novel. (What to say or not say in a query letter is a WHOLE other topic to be tackled on another day.) Sometimes a writer's voice sings out from the letter alone, and just on the basis of that material, I know I want to read more. More often though, I need to actually see something from the text to make my best, informed decision.
And if I'm on the fence about something? Well, if all I have is the letter alone, and I'm not sure about the project, 9 out of 10 times I'll decline. But if I think "maybe" after reading the letter, and can then go on and read three pages -- well, you might just convince me to ask for more.
Nothing's a slam dunk, of course. The flip side of the above is that I might recognize in reading the first three pages that you have a killer idea, but I might see in the pages that you lack the expertise to write it well. That's a chance you have to take.
When I get together with writers over lunch, or chatting at conferences, and someone pitches me, I always tell them to check out my guidelines online and email me. Why? Because that's what I need to see to make my decision: a query letter and three pages.
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1 Yes, the FIRST three pages. If your best sample pages aren't the opening ones, how do you expect to catch a reader's attention?
Throwing away the draft
In writing, as in life, sometimes things happen that you don't expect. You can draft and draft and draft, and prepare an outline of your novel that has every tiny little bit of plot mapped out to the nth degree, but if you're not willing to toss all that aside, to let things go where they want to go, and let scenes play out as you never imagined they might, then I think you're crippling yourself as a writer.
I could throw a ton of metaphors out there for you on this. It's like when you've fully planned out your day, and each hour is carefully scheduled, but the real fun and adventure is in allowing yourself to disregard the calendar, and spend an extra hour playing at the park, or talking with an old friend, or even sleeping. Ah sleep.
You may hear other writers talking about their characters as if they're real people -- "I wanted to write him out of this scene, but Spencer insisted he remain in." -- and you may think they're crazy. But all they're doing is allowing the momentum of the writing to carry the day, not the outline.
So go ahead -- draft an outline and follow it, but let yourself have fun along the way, see where that takes you -- hopefully somewhere fun, and not the emergency room!
Cory Doctorow on YA
Thanks to Rexroth for this link to Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing, talking about YA sections in bookstores. He writes:
Living in a space that no one watches too closely is one of the secret ways that people get to do excellent stuff.So take that, Kirkus! And here's to writers doing excellent stuff.
Driving around Inspiration Point
It is May 1st, and it's snowing, of course, so why wouldn't I choose this day to try to get some important errands done? But driving around this morning in the snow got me thinking about inspiration, and how it truly can come from just about anywhere (and it's usually not sign-posted).
Then again, sometimes it is! I was in the car the other day with Rexroth and passed a small road sign, barely above the level of my window, that read "Elite Cheerleaders Wanted -- All Ages", followed by some details about auditions. Well, my little mind just went to town. Combine that with the song "1985" that I'd recently heard on my iPod, and a novel burst into my head almost fully formed, about a housewife/mom who misses her heyday of high school cheerleading, sees such a similar sign, and makes the team, leading them to championships. It's like "Bring It On" meets "Desperate Housewives." Or something. (First person who writes up said story and queries me gets an automatic request for a full!)
Inspiration can strike anywhere, whether it's something you're watching on tv (did anyone else catch "High School Confidential? So heartbreaking at times!), something you see out of the corner of your eye, something you read that pulls you to consider a topic in a different way, or something that just comes to you in the middle of the night with a "Eureka!" moment. But that's not all you need. Once that inspiration strikes, you still need to DO something about it. Write your idea down, first of all. If you don't have a pen and paper, text yourself your idea! Don't just count on being able to remember it later (a nod to Arthur A. Levine's keynote at this weekend's SCBWI conference outside Seattle). Push through a first draft, when it seems like inspiration was so long ago, and all you have now is perspiration. Keep going. Revise, revise, revise.
Put it in a drawer for a few weeks/months/ages if you have to, until you can pull it out again, read it, and feel that inspirational tug once more.
Ask Daphne! What's in a name?
S.L. asks:
If a writer publishes both fiction and memoir, and wants to publish all of her writing under one name, must she use her own name rather than a pseudonym? Or is it considered acceptable to write "memoir" with a nom de plume?I'm not sure if there's a hard and fast RULE about this, but I'm sure you've noticed the recent spate of memoirists outed for untruths and outright lies in their books (see: James Frey, Margaret Seltzer). Given this, and the pretty strict language in contracts about non-fiction, I would recommend using your own name for a memoir. Industry newshounds are on high alert about memoirs, and you don't want to give off any scent of impropriety by hiding behind a fake name.
Pen names are more acceptable in fiction, I think, but if you want to write everything under the same name, just use your real name (or some form of it1) -- it's easier.
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1By which I mean if your real name is Kate Schafer Testerman, for example, you could publish your memoir as "Kate Schafer" or "Kate Testerman" or pull from your middle, nick or other names and go with "Katie Elizabeth" or "Katie Daniels", etc. (Yes, I have a lot of names.)
I'm not the only one with a high-tech toy
Still loving my Kindle, and yet still very interested to hear what others think about their high-tech reading devices. On No Want Decaf!, an editor shares her thoughts about her Sony Reader, and how it has basically changed the way her publishing house does business -- saving huge bundles of money on copying fees alone:
Step 1: You receive the manuscript via email and put it immediately on your e-reader, swinging your deliciously small bag over your shoulder with glee. You can tell that the people shuffling their newspapers are impressed as you read one-handed while standing on the train.Now, granted, I don't have the same worries about sharing material widely that an editor does, but I still found it interesting reading -- not just about a reader, but also about the acquisitions process.Step 2: You love the manuscript and ask other editors to read it, and email it to them right away. When you walk by the copier later, you can't help but smile.
Step 3: Good news, the other editors love the manuscript too! Time to take it to acquisitions -- email the manuscript to everyone on the committee. Get on with the rest of your job!