Are You Made of Win?

Question of the day: Although part of me gets inspired from reading all the "stories of success" of various authors, I can't help but feel totally defeated and discouraged at the thought of just how MANY people there are out there scrambling towards the same goal, where there's really only standing room for a few of us in the genre particularly, but in the market as a whole. How do you stay confident and inspired? Or more importanly, motivated?

Yes, well, this is the conundrum of being an aspiring writer. Not only that there are so many people out there trying to do the same thing, but also not knowing if a) you're good enough to rise to the top and b) whether or not being good enough really matters. Because let's face it: there are plenty of good authors out there whose work will never see the light of day. Not all of them, probably not even a ton of them, as I do believe that most truly talented writers get a break at some point, but yeah, not everyone, which is what makes this whole venture truly damn scary.

I've often said on this blog, and I can never repeat it often enough, that it takes a certain temperament to endure this career, and I stand by that. Years, YEARS can go by without success, and the rejection can diminish even the most confident among us. The only way that you will endure is to surround your ego and your confidence with steel armor, armor that might get occasionally nicked in the face of defeat but is basically impenetrable. I think you likely either have this disposition or you don't. But I also believe that you can at least learn to shrug it off, to get knocked down but stand up and face it all over again.

I was probably born overconfident. This has not always worked to my benefit (trust me - ending relationships was never my strong suit, as I always believed I could find a way to work things out), but in this career, yes, it has been. I simply never doubted that I could succeed. Which I know sounds ridiculous, but that is truly how my brain functions. I remember once, many years ago, when I was still finding my freelancing sea legs, my husband gently suggested that if I didn't start to get more work, I should perhaps start looking for a JOB job. I scoffed, literally scoffed at him, because I couldn't believe that he didn't KNOW, as I did, that I'd get 'er done. To paraphrase Captain Kirk: I don't believe in no-win situations.

And surely, when defeaning silences amassed from freelance editors or when my first agent and I agreed to part ways (UGH!), this way of thinking buffered me from what might have been an impulse to spin on my heels and bolt the other direction. Look, this is a tough, tough, tough business. Other than acting, I can't think of one that might be as difficult. So you either have to resolve that you're going to do your best and stick with it, or you get out. Because if you take rejection to heart and let it diminish you, your confidence will suffer, your writing will weaken, you'll present yourself as less of a package than you are.

And what should you do if you're not born with natural armor? I'd remind you to not take any of this personally. Ever. Rejection of your idea or your novel often has nothing to do with you. Agents, for example, are looking for whatever fits their specific criteria; magazine editors aren't dwelling on whether or not they think your query was poorly written. They have a product to push and sell, and they're looking at whether or not you add (or don't) to their business. This is a business. Period. Don't ever forget that. Another tip? While you're waiting to get published, keep writing. In my opinion, writing is the best way that you are going to get better. My first manuscript wasn't published and looking back, it didn't deserve to be. My second one was better, and resulted in my debut novel. My third was even better (IMO), and it's a New York Times Best Seller. There's no shame in putting something aside and recognizing that it was a learning experience, the end.

I hope this post doesn't come off as making me sound like I'm some narcissistic ego-maniac. :) I'm actually not! LOL. But, just to give you some perspective as to why I promise that I'm not, when I was a kid, whenever I had some sort of competitive activity, my dad used to sit me down and say, "What's your last name?" I'd roll my eyes about a dozen times, and finally, after much prodding, would say, "Winn." (Get the play on words?) Looking back on it now, I'm grateful that he did this. It wasn't that he turned me into a competitive freak, it's that he let me know that I always held that win inside of myself, that I was always capable of coming out on top. Even if your last name is Brown, Smith or Weinberg, the same theory can hold true for you...and I think it's a critical one for success as a writer.

Wow, long post. Anyone want to chime in on how you keep your confidence afloat?

Dear Author: Here's a Little Piece of My Mind

Question of the day: Do you think about your readers as you write? Does that work for/against you? How do you NOT think about all this stuff?

Like it or not (and the jury is still out on this one), I do think about my readers as I write. Especially as I wrote book #3 (which I previous referred to as The Happiest Days of My Life, but it is getting a title change, so now I'm just referring to it as book #3). It was really difficult not to because Time of My Life was such a break-out book that I got A LOT of feedback - a lot good, some not so good - and I found it impossible to void out the feedback as I wrote.

Now listen. Here's the thing. I write for readers. Without them, I wouldn't have a career. So while it wasn't always a wonderful thing - me mulling over some of the harsher reviews and whatnot - I did find it important to consider what struck a chord and what didn't. For some reason, TOML was read by a lot of Christian readers, some of whom wrote me, my agent or just posted on their blogs, that they enjoyed the book but took issue with my liberal use of the F-bomb. I'll be honest in saying that, as a non-Christian NYC-er who is exposed to some pretty foul language, this criticism never even occurred to me. Never once. But, as I was writing book #3, did I at least give a second thought to every F-word I used this time? Sure. It was an easy enough fix that didn't compromise my writing or my characters. When I felt like the swear word was absolutely necessary, you bet your ass (ha!) I put it in. But when maybe I could find a better way to phrase it, I found a way to do that too.

I also learned a lesson in my first book and that was that readers really want to LIKE your protagonist. Not everyone liked Natalie from The Department, which is just fine, and I wouldn't change a word, but it is and was something that I'm now conscious of. Why would readers agree to give you their time for 300 pages when they don't even care if your character wins or loses? Ditto some of the reviews that said I was a good writer but didn't develop my characters deeply enough. Those really stuck with me, and I agonized with my characters in book #3, making sure (I hope) that they were three-dimensional, real, fleshed-out people, like friends you might know in real life.

So that was the good. The bad is also all of the above. :) And that while I have all of these different reviews and voices and criticism clanging in my head, it's easy to feel paralyzed. I know, because I was. Even though you KNOW that you can't please everyone and that certainly books are SUBJECTIVE, if you ruminate too much on these things, you simply can't write or you can't write well. For a while, I was so, so, so terrified of writing crappy character development, that I didn't write anything. I mean, God forbid someone put up another Amazon review stating my characters were flimsy! (That's sarcasm if you can't tell.) But yeah, for a while there, it DID feel like one of those Amazon reviews would be the end-all.

So...I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it's a mixed bag. But in the end, I'm glad that I'm weighing my reader feedback. They're the ones who buy books, and they're the ones, ultimately, whom I have to please. I pleased the majority of readers with Time of My Life, so with book #3, I aimed to do something similar...I hope I have. And even if I have, I'm sure they'll be dissenters. Oh well. They'll post their Amazon reviews, and hopefully, I'll make them happy with book #4. :)

What about you guys? Do you listen to what your readers have to say?

On the Clock

Question of the day: You said in one post you only work on your book about an hour a day -- did I get that right? Do you do it first thing in the morning or after your freelance work? And how often do you violate that rule?

Yep, indeed, I did say that, and it's only sort-of true. I set aside one hour a day to write because that's what I tell myself I HAVE to write...given how arduous I sometimes find fiction, I think if I told myself that I had to write four hours or whatnot every day, I simply become paralyzed with dread. But an hour? I mean, what's a measly hour? It's nothing. So I schedule my day around this hour because let's face it, anyone can do anything for an hour. (I often use this same psychology when it comes to running or working out...I can really endure a little pain for that short a period of time, and then it's over, and then I'm always glad that I did it, right?)

I almost always designate this hour in the morning, if only because my afternoons tend to get away from me with non-writing stuff - dropping in on my son's baseball class, walking the dog, running errands, and the only way that I can ENSURE that I get my hour in is to crank it out when the house is quiet.

Now. Does this mean that I only give an hour? No, not at all. Often times, once I get started, I completely lose track of the time and devote much more. But if I'm having a crap writing day, after minute 59, I give myself an out. Again, just like a workout. You have to break a sweat, but that doesn't mean you have to exhaust yourself. On days like that, just showing up is enough.

As far as my freelance stuff, it all depends on my deadlines. I procrastinate much less on my articles, so carving out time isn't that tough. Many times, I give myself that hour to work on my fiction (or else I'll end up skipping it altogether), and then, once my brain is in the "work mode," I transition pretty easily to my articles.

I think there are a couple of reasons why this works for me: 1) I don't expect too much from myself. As noted above, anyone can suffer through an hour. And 2) I've established a pattern that really works for my mental and physical schedule: I start writing right after my coffee has kicked in, when no one is around to bother me. No excuses. No reason NOT to dive in. It's a no-brainer.

The Price of an Agent

Question of the day: What do agents charge? What advice do you have for someone that wants to write a book & be published?

Legitimate agents don't "charge" anything. If anyone, ANYONE, wants you to pay him or her for reading/submitting/publishing your manuscript, run, run, run as fast as you can in the other direction, and you might consider reporting him to Editors and Predators, as well.

Agents earn their keep by selling your work. Period. So if they make money only when YOU make money, which is critical, because their success is contingent on your success - this is why it behooves them to work for you. Agents usually take about 15% of the sale...so, if your ms sells for 10k, they earn $1500; if your ms sells for 100k, they earn 15k. You get the idea. Anyone who wants to charge you differently (more or less) is a scam artist. (I should note that these percentages might change slightly in the area of foreign rights, film, etc, but this is a general barometer.)

As far as how to get started? WRITE. Full stop. You cannot sell a book without having written it. I've read before that something like 90% of the populations believes that they are capable of writing a book. Ha! Of that 90% how many actually write it? Well, I don't have the specific percentage on that one, but I can assure you that it's a tiny fraction of this percentage. Wanting to write a book and actually doing it are two very, very different things. So get going. Prove to yourself that you're one of the few who CAN do it, not just dream it.

The. End.

So...I did it! I did indeed finish this baby on Friday. I wrote 20k words in three days, and it all happened so quickly, I actually think I'm in a small state of disbelief about it. I mean, there were points in writing this book that I actually didn't think I could do it, that I either peaked with Time of My Life or that I needed to ditch this one and start over. And so, no one is more surprised than I am (albeit pleasantly surprised) to suddenly have that lightening bolt strike and have everything click into place.

It's funny: I was chatting with some other authors at my reading last week with Laura Dave, and we all agreed on a few things: 1) the more books you write, the easier it gets. (More on that in a minute.) And 2) the more books you write, the more you realize that this is just a job (a great job, but a job nevertheless) and the less exciting it is to hit The End.

What I felt when finishing this one was...relief. :) Well, that's not true. I reread the last 20k, and actually, if I do say so myself, I love, love, love, love it. BUT, when I finished my first one, I was nervous about selling it/AMAZED that I'd written a book, and when I finished my second one, I was THRILLED to discover that I wasn't a one-hit wonder, and this time, I just thought, "Well, thank the sweet lord, because I'm under contract and if I hadn't finished it or if I'd really tanked it, my career would take a real nosedive." Ha. Not exactly what you'd expect.

I shouldn't minimize it too much, to be fair. I am genuinely thrilled at not only what I've produced, but at the fact that I produced it both well and at all, but yes, there is a very different feeling now than four years ago with my first one. This is what I do now. I write books. After this one, I will write another one. It's a wonderful, wonderful job, but it's my job now. There are expectations, contracts, and a need to prove myself each time I publish. I love it. I'm not complaining. Don't even think for a second that I'm complaining, but the feeling between my first book and now is so, so different. I don't know - maybe the same as that honeymoon stage in a marriage and what real life marriage actually is? Is this making sense to anyone? :)

The good news is, as I alluded to above, that every book, in some ways, is easier. This one was harder for a lot of reasons - pressure, expectations, plot complications, a difficult protagonist - but know that I know HOW to write a book, well, that part makes it a hell of a lot easier. I know when to crank up the tension; I know when to throw in more conflict; I know when to dial back characters and how to pace various plot lines.

I don't know - I hope this post isn't too rambling! I guess what I'm trying to say is THANK GOD I AM DONE!! But now I have to write another one... LOL.

Any other authors out there understand what I mean?

Yeah, I Should Leave My House More Often

One of the things that I think I forget as a writer is how much fun it is to be, um, you know, not sitting in my office by myself all day long. I swear, in high school and college, I was super-social, but slowly, with every passing year, I've become hermetic, and honestly, if you locked me in my house with a computer and some supplies, I could probably live out my days happily. :)

So the good news is that I got off my ass last night, put on some killer heels (which subsequently twisted my ankle, proving that I am definitely more of a Converse gal than Louboutin gal) and trekked down to Prince Street to read with Laura Dave at McNally Jackson. And oh what a night we had!

The store was packed - standing room only, and it was chock full of friends, industry-folks and writers, including Anna David, Joanne Rendell, Alison Pace and Jasmin Rosemberg, and it was so, so, so awesome to have their support (and meet a few of them for the first time after years-long internet friendship). Laura and I each read sections from our books and then we took questions, which we answered in tandem. It's always interesting to hear how different authors approach different things - from the writing process to the research process to what we enjoy most (and least) about this whole shebang, so I actually thought it was a pretty informative gig (personally speaking, since I loved hearing Laura talk...I have no idea if I came off as a blithering idiot or an acute smarty).

Anyway, more importantly, I got out and met some readers who loved the book and talked to friends whom I haven't seen in a while and grabbed a slice of pizza with my agent (yes, very glamorous, we were both so exhausted that we begged off of the chichi drinks with Laura and her editor and some others), and came home both exhilarated and totally pooped. But it was a wonderful reminder that part of being a writer is getting out there in the world and soaking it all in...and now I have all the more material to seal myself in my office for at least another year. :)

This is the Best Idea Ever

I cannot claim this idea as my own, but I love it so much that I had to blog about it. I woke up this AM and checked Twitter and saw that @joshmalina, an actor whom I don't know, but whose work I have followed (West Wing, Big Shots - yeah, I watched that, so what?, I confessed as much to Michael Vartan when I interviewed him), posted the brilliant idea of tweeting your worst reviews. Ha!!!! I am SO DOWN for that.

Here's the thing about bad reviews: they may be eviscerating, gut-punching, vomit-inducing at the time, but I promise, you can look back at them and giggle. I swear. Case in point: when The Department came out, the Washington Post ripped me a new one. I mean, it was like the reviewer knew me and launched a personal attack. (Seriously, my agent saw it and called me to ask if I knew her!) The review, at the time, literally gave me the shakes - it was physically revolting. But now, omg, I saw Josh's tweet, and I'm actually laughing as I try to find the review on the internet to post it up. I mean, seriously! It was one stinking review that the reviewer took a little too seriously.

Anyway, whether you're on twitter or not (and if you are, come post your own bad review!), this is just a good reminder that this too shall pass. :)

Twitter: TOTAL PAN TUESDAY! #tpant
My twitter tag: @aswinn

UPDATE: Josh stops by in the comments section and weighs in! Say hi to him below!

When NOT to Write

So normally, I am a big fan of sitting down in front of the computer and cranking out at least 1k words come hell or highwater. If I didn't hold myself to this daily rule, my manuscript would never, ever get done. Let's face it: writers are the masters of procrastination, and certainly, an entire day can pass with me accomplishing exactly zilch. Thus, my per diem rule: crank those words out OR ELSE. (I don't actually have consequences for my OR ELSE, but much like when I use empty threats on my kids, this seems to work on me as well.)

Anyway, last week, I knew, knew, knew that I had to sit down and write. I'd blocked off the amounted time, opened the document, and...just couldn't. Well, that's not true. I could have. But I also knew that before I did, I had to sort out a quagmire that I'd run into with the ms. I wanted to write. So badly, did I want to write. Because, frankly, writing would have been easier than recognizing that I might have to go back and redo several parts of the ms, but...again, I couldn't. I knew that something had gone askew, and rather than stick to my 1k rule, I had to address it.

Now. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I were actually just procrastinating by PRETENDING the ms had a problem, or if I really and truly had a problem on my hand, but the morning turned to noon and noon turned to mid-afternoon, and all the while, I hadn't written a thing. But what I WAS doing was thinking. What appeared to be a total waste of a day was actually spend ruminating, even while I was on Facebook, or Twitter, or J.Crew or...well, you get the idea of how I spent my day.

And something pretty great happened during this day of doing nothing: I figured out how to resolve this problem, and now, I think the ms is going to be so much better for it. In most jobs, doing nothing means just that: you're wasting your time doing nothing. But as writers, some times, doing nothing is simply the best thing you can do. I could have wasted that day writing another chapter that would inevitably need to be overhauled OR, I could have stopped, thought about things, and considered that just as productive - if not more so - than upping my word count.

So this week? This week I'm starting at the beginning (yet again - I think this is my third redraft of the first half of the ms), and that's totally fine. I want to get this part just right because if I don't, then the second part of the ms will have to be just as overhauled as this part has been, and if I can work out the kinks now, all of that extra work won't be necessary. So...if you're having a day in which you seem to do anything BUT write, that's okay! In our world, "not working" can still be considered "work," and sometimes, it might be just what your ms needs.

Fish or Cut Bait?

Question of the day: Do you feel the current state of the economy is dictating what books are being published? For instance, my second novel is about a mother caring for her adult daughter who suffers from a chronic illness. I am struggling to find an agent for it, although all my rejections are personal. You were able to write about cancer and yet didn't scare away agents, why is writing about diseases now so taboo? Everyone says that my writing is great, yet they say that the subject matter is a tough sell right now. Arrgh!! I wanted this to be my break-out novel and it's not breaking anything but my heart. I've written a third novel in the meantime and my publisher is gobbling it up, but I had hoped to have an agent by now to help me. What would you do, wait to see if the second book can find an agent or go ahead and sign the papers on the third book even though I'm sure the contract will be bad? Do desperate times call for desperate measures or is patience a virtue on this one?

I'll offer a third suggestion: since your newer book is the one that's generating the heat, why don't you shop that one around to agents? I wouldn't sign a contract that I know is going to be crappy, but an agent can certainly take a crappy contract and make it a better one, AND, hey, you never know what other offers an agent could get you. If your previous manuscript just isn't getting the job done, set it aside, and you might discover that as time goes on, your wound will mend...especially if you sell the next one. :) And once you've sold the other one, who knows, maybe it will open doors for the one you have your heart set on right now.

I think the key is not to get too, too, too invested in one manuscript, such that it can divert the trajectory of your career. A lot of us have had that ms, the one that we poured every ounce of ourselves into and that ultimately didn't sell, but I'll tell you what: I am so grateful that I didn't get hung up on that specific ms and that I moved on from it, because if I hadn't, my career would be DOA right about now.

As far as the first half of your question, I'm going to devote a separate post to it because I think it's a worthy discuss to have in and of itself.

Good luck and hang in there! BTDT. Other readers who have BTDT, can you weigh in and help her out?

Question of the day: Was it difficult to create relationships with editors at magazines, and thus, create work through said relationships?

Hmmm, well, I guess it depends on your definition of difficult. :) The reason I say this is because creating these relationships is sort of like establishing your freelance career: they happen over time and eventually snowball, but there are a lot of factors that are going to contribute to your success (or lack thereof).

The first thing you have to remember is that you're going to have to be persistent. If you don't hear back (which you likely won't) from a query, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. If you have other ideas for an editor if she passes on your initial query, send them, send them, send them! Too many aspiring mag writers give up on an editor, and while sure, sometimes you should, many times, you shouldn't. You have to keep pitching until you find something that sticks.

From there, once you land the assignment, you need to nail it. By that I mean that you need to consider her instructions and deliver what you promised you would. Without careless fact-checking errors and typos and all of those easily-correctable mistakes that look sloppy. Your job as a writer is not just to hand in a great piece but also to help make your editor's job easier. Yes, I know this sounds sycophantic, but I don't mean you have to turn yourself into a slobbering servant, but yeah, you need to ensure that the piece really is the very best that you could make it.

After that, you need to be amenable to reasonable edits. These days, yeah, I hear about some ridiculous requests for revisions and no, you are not a doormat, but I consider two rounds of revisions fair game (this is just my opinion, of course), and even if the questions and red-lining are driving you crazy, that's part of the deal, and you'd be wise not to let your editor know. When I was really in the thick of my mag writing, I really did pride myself on the fact that there was very little editors could or would ask of me that I couldn't get done. And I think they knew this, which is part of the reason I was a go-to writer. (I am not talking about those last-minute 10PM "we need a total overhaul by tomorrow" requests, which I perhaps would conveniently not reply to until a reasonable hour the next morning. I'm talking about what I considered fair requests even if they were annoying and pains in the ass.)

Finally, I made it a point to be friendly with my editors. Not everyone is comfortable with this, but for me, it was only natural. I knew about their kids, I knew about their outside interests. And I really think it benefited me - not in a selfish way, like I was learning about their lives only to land work - but because it made our collective experience working together a hell of a lot more fun and enjoyable. You're a lot less likely to get irritated with an editor (or conversely, a writer) if you genuinely like her, and I really did (and do) like the majority of my editors, and I think they felt the same way. We enjoyed working together, partially for the reasons mentioned above (i.e, I worked my tail off for them) and partially because we had something in common other than the 750 words we were working on together.

So, all in all, was it hard? As you can see, yes and no. I also found that if I did good work for one editor, she was always happy to refer me to another, and from there, an entire network of business contacts AND friendships have been built. But it takes time and hard work. But yeah, it's entirely doable, in my opinion.

What about you guys out there? Easy or hard to build those relationship?

Finding the Right Match

Question of the day:
Can you explain more about how I can find a good writing group (preferably online)-- i.e., one that can help me develop writing as profession, not just a hobby-- and how exactly writing groups work? I'm not really sure, for example, about at what stage you might share your writing with a group. Can groups help with brainstorming/developing ideas as well? How would you know if you trust a group enough to give honest, good feedback? Would you ever be worried about a group stealing ideas? I'm not sure if you've ever worked with a fiction group, but I know you say that freelancer groups helped you as you were breaking into that business.

The freelancer groups that helped me when I was breaking in were more geared to magazines. Specifically, I found an incredibly supportive group of folks over at FreelanceSuccess.com, who, even now, are part of my network of support, and I've become dear friends with many of them. These are folks who often share the same writing philosophies that I do: that there is more than enough work to go around, that collaboration is a GOOD thing, that sharing contacts, etc, is good karma.

Unfortunately, I've never been in an a fiction writing group, but I wanted to post this anyway because I KNOW that there are readers out there who have been and who currently are, so if you are one of them, will you please share your insights as to how you found your group and how they help you? I imagine, though this is just a guess, than a writing class is a good place to start: you'll meet like-minded adults and can see who gels when you read your stories and give critiques.

Anyone want to weigh in to help this reader?

How High is the Magazine Ceiling?

Question of the day: How hard is it to break into magazines? How much tougher is it in this economy?

Piggy-backing this onto last week's magazine post. The answer to this question is going to inevitably vary from writer to writer. As I said, in my case, I broke in relatively easily by pure fluke, but then, even once I had a few credits, it took a really, really long time to establish myself as a go-to writer and/or a writer to whom editors brought ideas rather than having to pitch them myself. But I think my experience is pretty unique in terms of ease of breaking-in, and from friends' anecdotes, I think it can truly be all over the board: right away or years later.

I'm hesitant to say that breaking in to major magazines is difficult because I think it's a very doable goal, but the truth is that there is a difference between difficult and unattainable, and I think you need to keep this difference in mind if you're aspiring to break in to magazines. I think that if you have the stomach for a hell of a lot of rejection and the fortitude to ignore said rejection and the tenacity to keep pitching, pitching, pitching, AND an ego-less personality in which you don't mind taking smaller, less prestigious jobs, AND you're a good writer, then by all means, I think this is a very viable goal. And I don't mean that sarcastically at all. I think to make it in this business, you really need to have a personality that can endure the peaks and valleys, and if yours meets the above criteria, yeah, then certainly, over the long run, I do think you'll break in. But you have to KNOW that it's not going to be easy, and you have to be okay (and not whine about it when things aren't okay) with all of this.

Has the economy made it tougher? I'd say so. Editors simply aren't assigning in the way that they were before, so even long-time writers are seeing their regular pieces drop off. For a newbie to crack this force field will undoubtedly be tougher, but again, not impossible. It really depends on how much you're willing to hustle and how wide you're willing to cast your net and how many rejections (or silences, as often the case may be) you can stomach.

I really, really hope this doesn't come off as a negative post. It's not meant to be. At all! Remember again, that there is a difference between difficult and unattainable, and if you don't shy away from a challenge, this one is certainly within reach.

Thoughts? Am I a negative Nelly or just a realist?

Cracking Women's Magazines

Question of the day: I'm curious about how you broke into writing for major women's magazines. Is it hard to do so? Harder now with the economy than it used to be? You did a great blog a while back about how you packaged a story with a "Why You Resist/Why We Insist" theme and I wondered how a big a part of the process that is -- coming up with the catchy concept and headline.

I'm going to break this question up into a few parts because it has a lot of different elements to it, so check back for the answers to the second and third questions.

I think I've chatted about this before, but I'm happy to revisit. I broke into women's magazines in a fairly untraditional manner: I did it with no magazine experience. Basically, many years ago, I was doing some celebrity ghostwriting for a PR firm (yes, celebs hire ghostwriters and don't pen things themselves), and I was antsy to break out and do some editorial work. I was planning my wedding at the time, so sent of a pitch letter to The Knot, which now is a magazine, but back then, was only a website. I figured it would be an easy way to break in. Well, as fate would have it, they were looking for a ghostwriter for one of their books. I submitted a proposal, along with some sample chapters, and they hired me. I know. I couldn't have been more floored.

While the experience was less than ideal (for reasons I won't publicly get into - and don't take this as disparaging against the current Knot - this was years ago and many editorial teams ago), I have no regrets about it. Because with that on my pitch letter, "I recently ghostwrote XYZ for The Knot," I broke down my first door. I fired off a query to Bride's, based on a similar subject to the book, and voila, was granted my first feature. Easy as pie!

Ha! While it didn't take me long to break in, once I broke in, it DID take me a looooong time to land something else worthwhile. I did contract one other feature relatively quickly, only to be met with a swift and nasty kill fee, for reasons never explained to me and yeah, oh boy, was that demoralizing. (And FYI, in my defense, I'd freaking outlined the piece AND written half of it in proposal form, so to this day, I remember that editor and would never work with her again.) So instead of concentrating on features, I opted to really bone up my clips: I started pitching FOBs and a variety of websites, who always need more articles than magazines do, and slowly, things began snowballing for me. Cooking Light and Men's Health (I adore those editors to this day) began contracting a bunch of my FOB ideas, and eventually, I was able to leverage my good work with those shorter articles into feature pieces, not only for those original magazines but others as well.

Breaking into magazines requires a lot, A LOT of patience. There is very, very little instant gratification but if you realize you're in it for the long-haul, and attack your career with that mentality - whittling away piece by piece - I do think that you can find success.

So I'd love to hear from readers how YOU broke into mags.

Is Anyone Even Out There Reading?

Question of the day: Recently on the Dystel & Goderich blog there was a post that bemoaned the fact that agents are having a difficult time getting editors to read their submissions. I'm wondering if other agents are finding this also. Excerpt from DG blog: "Has EVERYBODY stopped reading? This last week a senior editor at a major publishing house received a proposal from us and rather than read it at all, she simply looked up other books in the category and decided that since they hadn’t sold, it wasn’t even worth reading one word of this author’s work. In another, rather shocking instance, a publisher of a very good house turned down material I had submitted saying that the fiction market was extremely difficult these days. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the note – the material I had submitted clearly stated that it was a memoir."

Well, I'm not an agent, but I do chat with my agent regularly, and from what I can tell, it's not that people have stopped reading, it's that acquiring has certainly slowed down, and thus, unless an editor really believes that what he/she is about to take a look at is really going to be worth her time, she's not going to devote said time to it.

One thing that is definitely happening right now, given slow book sales and the whole gloom and doom economy is that fewer books are getting bought and those books that ARE getting bought are selling for a whole lot less than they would have a year ago. I definitely even saw this when we sold The Happiest Days of My Life. Yeah, I got a very nice-sized advance, and trust me, I'm not complaining, but numerous parties involved noted that in a different environment, it would have been an even nicer-sized advance. But again, I'm not complaining. I'm happy to have had a healthy offer and a guarantee of a published book than nothing else, and yeah, these days, plenty of authors who would otherwise have a shot aren't getting them.

So are editors reading less? I'm sure. Because they're buying less. That's the real root of the problem here. Sort of like how in better times, I'd immediately open shopping emails (i.e, J. Crew) in my inbox just to see if there might be something that catches my eye. Now? I rarely bother because I'm not going to spend the money on something that I really don't need.

That said, I'm sorry that you got that "fiction" rejection for your memoir. That does feel sloppy and dismissive, but regardless, it's a "no" all the same, and I'd just try to forget about it. I don't know, maybe it's better to hold off on submissions until things are on the upswing? What do you guys think?

No Longer Working for the Weekends

So, as a follow up to yesterday's post about writing blog posts on the weekends, I've also changed something pretty dramatic about my weekend behavior as of late. And that's this: I no longer check my email over the weekends. Gasp! True, my Blackberry does go off, but I almost always just tune out the emails as soon as they come in. And despite my Blackberry, I make a very conscious choice not to open my inbox from Friday night until Monday AM.

And you know what? I totally freaking love it. I am not beholden to think about work for an entire two days, and as a result, on Monday AM, just with the blog posts, I sit down at my desk totally re-energized.

In this day and age of instant technology, I think it can seem scary to ignore your email (and again, yeah, if there were a crisis or whatnot, I have my Blackberry to warn me), but I'm telling you, the world does not stop for these few days or hours. I was someone who was sort of always on-call, and it feels so, so, so liberating not to be. Honestly, if you're feeling burnt out, try it! Just knowing that I can ignore someone's request for my time or thoughts or answers for a few days makes me feel empowered and more in control of my time and schedule.

Anyone else do this? Or thinking about it? Give it a try!

The Truth in Fiction

Question of the day: I wrote a NaNoWriMo novel whose plot basically consisted of Experiences That I Know Well Enough to Write About. After getting deep into serious revisions, along came Big, High-Concept Idea-- one that intrigues me more, but I feel I would be BSing my way through because it isn't in any way based on my personal experience (except as a closeted celebrity stalker). How crucial do you think it is to channel personal experiences into your novels? I'm torn because I think I write more convincingly about things I've experienced, but I'm probably screwing myself by FORCING marathoning, teaching, and cat ownership into plots just BECAUSE I've experienced them. I know you emphasize that your novels aren't based on your life, but at the same time you write about women who are in broad strokes similar to you-- I'm thinking of writing about characters caught up in an utterly different world.

This is a good question, and I've touched a little bit on it before. I think you absolutely DO NOT need to write about experiences that mimic your own life experiences. Right now, my current protagonist is very, very different than I am, and her world is set in one that I've never experienced: small town, claustrophobic, limited choices, very different marriage than my own, hobbies that I, personally, have never taken an interest in, a family dynamic totally unlike my own. But the beauty of writing something outside of your personal scope of knowledge is that these days, with the help of the internet, it's not that difficult to do enough research on whatever sort of life you put your characters into, that you can really have an understanding of their situations. (Which I'm doing in my current book with things like infertility and my heroine's love of photography.)

Another example of this is the fact that I had limited experience with cancer when I wrote The Department, and certainly, no first-hand knowledge. I tracked down oncologists, spoke to patients, etc, and found a way to incorporate this research into the book pretty fluidly WITHOUT it having anything to do with my real life. The same held for her job in politics. Ditto Jillian from Time of My Life working at an advertising firm. Again, no previous knowledge of it before I started writing, but I knew it was the best thing for the character. (Because, let's be honest, if I were writing from personal experience, all of my characters would be freelance writers who work from home!) And, um, obviously, I've never gone back in time. :)

I think, and I've said this before, the key to creating a realistic, albeit fiction, world is to have an EMOTIONAL connection with your characters and their struggles. Again, I have very little in common with Tilly, my current WIP protagonist, but I do understand her desire to control her life, control her future, and that's our shared connection. With Natalie from The Department, I understood her bull-headedness and her interest in exploring her past to improve her future. With Jillian, I connected with her "what ifs," even though I'm content with my own life. Right now, with Tilly, it's enough for me to delve inside her brain and her world, and hopefully, bring her to a multi-dimensional, full-fleshed out life. So, I say, go for it! Start anew on that BIG concept and see where it leads you.

Readers, how much in common do you have with your own characters?

Elizabeth Gilbert on Fear, Aspirations, Genius of Writers

My favorite pal and writer, Laura Dave, just sent me this wonderful clip of Elizabeth Gilbert giving a talk. I can't figure out how to embed it, so here's the link...definitely worth checking out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA

For Better or Worse

So I've talked a lot on this blog about how I think it's important to be open to constructive criticism, and this advice has really hit close to home recently, as I attempt to shape my next book and hopefully grow as a writer as I do so. One thing that I've found myself doing is replaying some of the common criticisms from readers in my mind. (Yes, I know, it's hard to believe but there are folks out there who didn't like TOML! LOL. Really.) The truth is that I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many authors who don't read their reviews and, well, on the internet, people feel free to say just about anything (especially when it's anonymous), so we writers really can see and read how we disappointed readers, and of course, conversely, when we made them happy.

So it's been interesting as I write HAPPIEST DAYS, both in the positive and negative sense of the word "interesting." Because, to be honest, it's hard to erase some of those criticisms from clanging around my brain (they linger long after the positive reviews flee your mind), but maybe that's an okay thing. One thing that a lot of readers have written to me about personally (yes, people actually take the time to write me to air both their raves and their grievances) is the foul language in the book. Huh. It actually never even occurred to me, to be honest, that Jillian's inner-monologue, complete with curse words, might offend people. And truthfully, I felt and still feel that this was her honest dialogue with herself and I wouldn't change that even today, knowing that it upsets some readers. It would be disingenuous to both the character and the writing process. But with Tilly, my next protagonist, I AM keeping this in mind. She's softer than Jillian, and maybe I'd have dropped more F-bombs in this one if not for those readers, but I realize now that I don't have to...and trying to please them is actually okay with me. I can find other ways to say what I wanted to say without swearing.

That's an easy concession. There are other criticism that are harder to accommodate, but I'm trying to listen to what readers had to say and use it wisely. Some readers complain about lack of character development, which I really don't get, but maybe that's because I knew these characters so well in my mind. But I've read this complaint a few times, and thus, maybe it makes it a little more valid, a little more worth considering. NOT that it shapes my writing, but maybe it can make it stronger. Maybe, when I'm thinking about Tilly, I can dig a little deeper to create a more dimensional character. I don't know. The truth is that I truly don't know if I can because I really felt like I laid Jillian pretty bare. But I'm trying to learn from these comments and see what I can do with them.

The truth is that once you're published, it's probably easier to rest on your laurels. But it's also a little scarier. At least for me. I absolutely DO NOT want to put out a book, which I deem as wholly representative of my capabilities, that isn't up to my standards. And thus, it only seems wise to listen to these reviews, and when there is somewhat of a collective agreement on my weaknesses, to see where I can bolster up my writing. I'm not going to get rejected by agents or editors anymore - these objective readers might be my only outlet for honest (and sometimes down right rude! LOL) criticism.

Obviously, there is a fine line to walk here: you can't become so absorbed with these reviews that you become paralyzed. I admit that it's tough: I keep thinking: character development, character development, character development, and it might be hampering me. But better that I'm aware of these things - and at least making the attempt to improve myself - than to have my head stuck in the sand and think that I can't make myself a stronger writer.

So...I don't really know where I'm going with this! :) Only to say that I know that a lot of you guys are still honing your writing and are often faced with criticism. So maybe this is my way of saying, hey, you can use it to your advantage - at least, I'm going to try to.

Finding Inspiration

Today I'm over at Writer Unboxed talking about lifting my reading ban while writing in hopes of uncovering inspiration. (Though the good news is that since I wrote that blog post, I've reread what I've written of HAPPIEST DAYS and am quite pleased, which has lit the spark for me to keep writing - yay!)

Check it out!

I'm Getting My Groove Back

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on yesterday's post. Very, very good thoughts, and I hope my post didn't come off as divisive or judge-y or condescending. I only meant it to provoke some good food for thought, and I think it achieved its goal. :)

So in other news in my life, I am so excited to report that I've taken the leap and started my next book. I'll be honest with you: those first few pages, well, really up to probably about 10k words, where the ms starts to feel substantial, are very, very difficult for me. Knowing the uphill battle that I face - banging out 80k words or so - is so daunting, even though I know I've done it before and know that I have it in me to do again. But still. I hate the onset. I can't imagine a time when I will ever like it. The blank page practically mocks me as I sit there trying to fill it up so that the words amount to something more than a few paragraphs.

But I returned home from vacation determined to just dive in...and so, I did. I just did it. And once I got going, it proved a lot easier than I remembered it would, even though, as I hit the groove, I also remembered it being pretty great when you hit your stride in your prose. So I wrote about 4k in two days, and I plan to (ideally) write at least 1-2k each work day from here until the finish line. I'll keep you posted. I've found that the only way for me to maintain my momentum is to just throw myself into the deep end and keep swimming until I'm done. So this ms will likely consume my every thought (and many blog posts!) for a while. I hope you don't mind. :)

So, with that said, it feels like it's going to be a pretty happy holiday weekend for me. I hope that yours is the same - optimism in this time when it might not be so easy to be optimistic, quality time with your family, nourishment to help restore whatever part of you needs to be restored.

Happy holidays! See you in a few days!