THE END: A Commentary on Editing

THE END

Two of my favourite words. To a writer, they are the culmination of days, months, or years of blood, sweat, and tears. But they are misleading. We write them, sit back, and revel in our cleverness, in our determination, our grit, our savvy, our persistence, and our sheer magnificent brilliance. It could grace the page of a blog post, social media blast, short story, novella, screenplay, or novel. Writing THE END feels incredible, but it’s just another beginning. THE END is the start of EDITING.

I recently attended Bookapalooza, which is a really cool venue in my hometown where local authors get together and sell their wares. There were speakers and panels and celebrity guest authors. I was honoured to sit on a panel with fellow romance authors Molly O’Keefe and Mary Sullivan. These ladies are veterans. They’ve written a lot of books. They’ve been doing this a long time. Avelynn is my debut historical romance. I was the newb in the room, but they welcomed me with open arms. I was humbled and thrilled to sit at the table beside them. *girlie fan crush moment over* Back to my point: one of the audience members asked the panel a question, “What do you like better, writing or editing?”

Interestingly enough, both Molly and Mary liked the editing phase of writing better. I stared at them gaped mouthed as they waxed poetic about the brilliance of polishing a first draft and turning something misshapen and clunky into a work of art. I concurred with their sentiment, but ‘like_editing?’ That sounded like something out of a fairy tale. Seriously. Editing_is_hard!

Gone is the euphoria of creation, the buzz of new witty lines of dialogue, the high of brilliant lines of prose. In its place comes the breakdown and rebuild, the dissection and amputation. Our writing is better for it, sure, but the_pain, the_torture.

I recently (like yesterday) finished editing the second book in the Avelynn series. It took me just as long to edit the manuscript as it did to write it. Now, I blame NaNoWriMo for part of the first draft’s shortcomings (writing 50,000 words only to cut 40,000 of them, sucked) but I’m also a pantser. The first draft is a misnomer, it should be called Hundreds of Pages of Verbal Diarrhea. It’s the thrill and rush of creating new worlds, populating them with interesting people, and then making them do all sorts of crazy shit. Shit that just pops into your head, like out_of_no_where.

Inherent in that wild, organic process is wee bit of surplus and ludicrous, irrelevant tangents. We write THE END and then grab our red pens, or click up our track changes and get to work. And we keep working. For_a_very_long_time. We tweak and hone, over and over again. First drafts become tenths drafts and then morph into eighteenth drafts. We get to a point when we can’t figure the damn thing out anymore and call in for back up. We send it out to beta readers and beg for perspective and direction. The verdict comes in, and we crack our knuckles and sit down and get to work. Again. For_a_very_long_time. By the fortieth something draft, we pray we’ve reached the finish line. We send the manuscript to our agent or editor, or we query and submit. We get feedback. It’s still not quite cooked all the way through. So we sit_down_again.

For this final round of baking, I used the Heminway App. The whole writing process this is a never ending learning curve. I now know, I should have tried this handy little resource a few drafts prior. But, nonetheless, I plugged in my pages and reduced my passive voice, cut my adverbs, and cleaned up my run-on sentences. In a final pass through, I obliterated my comma splices and polished my prose until it shone. In short, I made Avelynn #2 as close to phenomenal as I could possible get it.

The good news is, I’m getter faster. My process is more efficient. I’m learning. Avelynn took me six months to research, a year and a half to write, and a year and a half to edit. The second book in the series took me a month to research (same time period just a slightly different setting) a year to write, and a year to edit. I’ve shaved my process in half!

Editing is essential. It’s a tough market out there. As authors, we have to put our best work forward. That being said, do I like editing? I love the results, but I’d rather each broccoli. Trust me. That’s saying_a_lot.

What do you think? Editing: love it or tolerate it. :D

In gratitude,

Marissa xo

Want to Understand the Publishing Industry? A Few Comparisons

Warning: I’m feeling subversive today, so this post might raise some eyebrows. But I’m willing to risk it. Why? Because I’m a writer and it’s my job to explore controversial topics. At least this is what I tell myself.

We talk a lot about how writing is a craft, while publishing is a business. And this is true. So true. Neither side is right or wrong. They are just different, with different goals around the same core product. Writers NEED to write. Publishers NEED to sell.

Alright, what about the juicy and subversive parts?

Okay, here we go.

SUBVERSIVE COMPARISON #1. Writing is a drug, and publishing is the cartel.

That’s right. I’m comparing books to street drugs.

Let me explain. For the writer, words on the page are a buzz, a personal high (“YES, I made that word count today! Yay me!”). For the publisher, words on the page mean the bills get paid.

For the writer, connecting with readers about their stories is like smoking out together with friends at the same party (“Dude, I freaking LOVE your protagonist. I could totally live in that world forever and ever and ever. I'm serious, man. If you stop writing this series, I'll literally die. I can’t put it down.”)

But for the publisher, writers who connect frequently with readers on social media will sell more books. This is a crucial difference that I think many writers fail to understand. Which leads me to…

SUBVERSIVE COMPARISON #2. Writers who want to become successful in today’s market must understand both user and dealer, without succumbing to the trappings of either role. So yes...forgive me, but I’m just going to say it…today’s top published authors are like veteran drug lords.

It’s a rough comparison that doesn’t make either side look good, which is exactly my point. Throughout history we’ve glamorized the publishing industry, as if selling books is somehow less prone to the politics found in other types of industries. Here’s the truth: If you want to become a semi-successful published author, you will encounter an industry that’s more Breaking Bad than Jane Austen.

Now wait. In my last post, “How to Sell Your Book Without Selling Your Soul,” I made a big point about using “idea-based marketing” techniques to get your book in front of readers, so that you’re not always having to pimp yourself out to everyone you see. Now I’m saying that you need to be like the hardened leader of an illegal drug cartel. Which is it?

I guess I can understand your confusion. Illegal drug cartels might be a stretch. What about legal ones?

SUBVERSIVE COMPARISON #3. Writing is the cure for cancer, and publishing is the pharmaceutical company that wants to fund the research and secure the patent.

Better now? It’s certainly a more noble comparison. But the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of problems, too. I mean, not everyone out there is trying to cure cancer, right?

Here’s my point: There’s stuff behind the scenes in every industry that most people don’t see. When you take a tablet of Advil, for example, you have no idea what happened to bring that Advil to your home. When a kid parties one night, she probably doesn’t think about how many people were beheaded in Mexico to make it happen.

Business is business.

People who become successful in any industry—be it publishing, the illegal drug trade, or pharmaceutical cancer research—learn the rules of that industry and work to master them.

Violent beheadings aside, I think it’s still fair to say that writing is like a drug. The written word is powerful and dangerous. Always has been, always will be.

And you know what?

I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Certainly not anything involving a Mexican drug cartel. (Though one of my characters might…)

How to Sell Your Book without Selling Your Soul

Right away I need to tell you something personal. Not the TMI-kind-of-personal, but personal in the sense that this won’t be the typical “how-to” blog post about book marketing. Why? Because sales and marketing turns me off completely and causes my skin to itch. 

 

 

I’m fiscally skeptical to my core, the kind of girl who skips commercials and doesn’t care who designed my shoes. This shouldn’t come as a surprise—I write cyberpunk, so a certain level of anti-establishment goes with the territory.

Perhaps this makes me a poor example. After all, experts say if you want to sell your book, view it as a product, and view the readers as customers. Your job as a published author is to move that product, grow your customer base, and write that next book so there’s more product to sell. The more you write, the more you have to sell, the more customers you’ll get, and the more money you’ll make.

Good advice, right? Yes, of course. But personally, I can’t do it that way. Not without selling my soul in the process.

 

Now here’s something else you need to know about me: despite this deep, dark issue with marketing, I sell books all the time as an associate editor at Henery Press. Even when I’m on break, even on weekends, even after hours...I do it without violating my conscience, and I enjoy it. How? Because I believe in the authors and their books. I think anyone who has the guts to write a novel is pretty darn amazing, and I want to support them.

So here’s my secret to selling books without selling your soul: **BELIEVE IN YOUR IDEAS**



Mr. Robot is a fantastic example of idea-based marketing.

To make it work, you’ll need to separate your identity from the book itself, without breaking away from the ideas behind the book.

Let’s say you write about zombie insects. For whatever reason, creepy-crawly zombies really float your boat. So go forth and find other people who like zombie insects, either in person or online, and strike up a conversation. Just geek out for a while with all those other awesome zombie-insect lovers—people who aren’t going to judge the fact that you think zombie ladybugs are the bomb—your kind of people.

 

If you view your book as a product, you'll feel like a salesperson every time you talk about it. But with idea-based marketing, talking about your book will come naturally as you engage with others about the ideas that inspired your writing in the first place.

The cool thing about idea-based marketing is that you can do it anytime, in any place, across any platform. In-person signings could become lively discussions about topics you enjoy. Tweets could entertain and inspire. Facebook posts could inform and even raise awareness about important events or causes. 

 

You don’t have to have an active product, just an active idea. My sci-fi thriller OPEN SOURCE doesn’t come out until January, but in a sense, I’ve already started marketing and building my audience around its core concepts. The best part is that most of the time it doesn’t feel like marketing, because these are things that really do matter to me. I fully believe in my ideas, and I want to talk with other people about those ideas. It’s a natural outflow of my interests.

One last note: idea-based marketing only works if you MAKE IT EASY TO BUY YOUR BOOK. I won’t go into strategies here, but all your social media profiles should clearly identify your author name, your book title, and provide a buy link (when available). If you make it easy to buy your book, you can spend more time talking with people about the ideas that inspired your book, and less time telling them to go buy it.

 

Maybe book sales will follow, maybe not. But you’ll still have your soul, and that’s a good thing.

Be A Tease!

Everyone loves a tease. That tiny morsel of goodness to whet your appetite and leave you begging for more. The build up of anticipation for something, whether it's food, books, movies, a hot date...it's what keeps your attention and focus, leaving you aching for more.

Teasers are an important part of book marketing. Done right, you can grab a brand new reader's attention in less than a minute. Done wrong, you can turn a potential reader away for life.

Here's a teaser for my new book out today, ELUDING ILLUSIONS

Sometimes teasers can be done using a tagline or a "hook" for your book. Here's another using a tagline for my book, VEXED.

Sometimes teasers can be lines or quotes from your book.

You'll notice in the teaser above I put my copyright info and gave credit for the picture to the owner of it. NEVER use pics of celebrities or steal pics from the interwebs to use in teasers. You can get in serious legal trouble without express written permission from the rights holder of the image. There are many stock photo sites you can buy images from to use in your teasers. 

And if you don't want to buy images, some photographers will allow you to use an image if you credit them in the photo, as I did above. But you must have their permission to do so. Or you can use plain backgrounds and make your own using images from your book cover art files as I did in the first two teasers. Ask your cover artist for help if you want banners made up or blank teasers you can manipulate using your cover art files.

A teaser can even be as simple as just an image and your release date to start getting your cover in front of your potential reader audience, like the one I did above.

Also, please remember when making teasers to keep the fonts legible.

While those are cool fonts and it makes it eye catching, it's somewhat hard to read. Teasers should entice a future reader, not make them work for it or get frustrated because they can read only every other word because of font, or colors blending in over background images. 

Try can keep them as crisp and eye catching as possible.

Remember to change up the teasers. 

• Have a sexy one if it's a romance novel. 
• Have a more serious and dramatic one that shows the depth of the book as well. 
• Have a tagline hook as we mentioned earlier. 
• A PG level one for general audiences is also a good idea. 
• Have one as well that gives perspective and insight into the personalities of your characters. 

Like the one below for my novel, VEXED, it gives you a sense of the banter between the main characters.

Teasers can also can turn a potential reader into a lost sale. Remember that a variety of people will be seeing your teaser. So, unless you're posting in a specific group of people, please make your teasers for a general audience. If you write BDSM or Erotica, make sure you have a teaser specific to those audiences, but don't post those in a general FB group using graphic sexual references. Have a cleaner version for the masses and put a warning that the book itself will contain language, violence, or graphic sex. 

Also, please, for the love of all humanity, make sure your teasers don't have misspellings or typos. It's a reflection on you as the author. Put your best work forward.

Go forth and tease the world!!

To Self-Pub or not to Self-Pub: The Burning Question

Self publishing--Indie publishing--is all the rage these days, and for good reason.

In its fledgling days, self-publishing amounted to vanity publishing. It consisted primarily of people who had written a book, mostly for themselves, and wanted to see it "published" so they could give copies to their friends and family. For the most part, they weren't serious authors whose goal was a career in writing novels.

For a long time self-publishing was the illegitimate child of the publishing industry. Books were just plain bad: badly edited, badly written, bad characters, bad plot, bad storytelling...just BAD. It gained a horrible reputation that lingered like that uncle nobody wants around.

But self-publishing has shed the stigma and evolved into a serious, reputable, potentially profitable alternative to traditional publishing, so much so that many traditionally published authors are engaging in hybridization of their careers by doing both.

What are the advantages of self-publishing?

 The major advantage to self-publishing is control. As the author, you have control of everything: cover, content, price, marketing, branding.

You have the freedom to do whatever you want with your book.

You also keep all the subrights to your work, and can sell those yourself.

Finally, you keep all the profit. For ebooks, most publishers pay authors between 25% and 50% of royalties on all sales. As a self-published author you keep most of the profit.

Sounds great, right?

What are the disadvantages of self-publishing?  

You're responsible for EVERYTHING. You may envision yourself living the life of an artist, free to make your own choices regarding your work. And that's true. But once you write the book(s), you have to take off the artist hat and put on the businessperson hat and start all the hard work of cover design, formatting, purchasing ISBNs, interacting with vendors, understanding pricing and SEO and markets and readers and genres and niches.

Part of being a self-published author is keeping your name in the readers' mind, so often self-pubbed authors produce more work than traditionally published authors. Romance, especially, is a high production genre where many authors crank out anywhere from two to four manuscripts per year.

And then there's marketing. So much marketing. When you self-publish you're solely responsible for making sure your target audience knows your book exists, so they can buy it. How do you do that? It's like the quest for the holy grail, my friend, the thing all self-pubbed authors are searching for. Basically, marketing is a shitton of work.

Finally, when you self-publish, you bear all the cost of publishing your book. You must purchase the cover art, pay for the ISBNs, pay for copyrighting, pay for marketing, pay for printing, pay for shipping...you pay for everything.

A side note about genre: Not all genres sell well as self-published books. In fact, romance seems to be by far the best genre to self-publish, primarily because romance is the best selling genre overall in all publishing formats at over 50% of the total fiction market. Romance readers are rabid, gobbling up books as fast as authors can write them.

Unfortunately, not all genres do as well self-published, so if you're thinking about publishing your own book do some research to see if self-published books in your genre sell very well.

If self-publishing is so much work, why do so many people do it?  

There's a lot of frustration with traditional publishing. Because the publishing industry is evolving so rapidly and expansively, traditional publishing has changed a lot of its models to meet the changing habits of readers. The days of huge advances are gone, and if you hadn't noticed, the days of huge chain bookstores are waning as well. Digital books have taken a huge bite out of print book sales, which means bookstores can't afford to stay in business.

Because of this, traditional publishers are more cautious about acquiring authors for print deals. They don't pay as much, they don't acquire as many, and there are different expectations of authors. As a result, many traditional publishers have started their own digital lines and acquire authors for those more often than for print. Authors get no or very little advance for digital deals, and usually smaller royalty percentages than smaller digital-only presses, or what they'd make from self-publishing.

Digital-only presses offer higher royalty percentages than traditional publishers, but they often don't do much more than what you could do yourself as an indie-author. They bear most of the costs of publishing the book, but often expect authors to shoulder a large portion of the marketing effort.

Because it's more difficult to get a print deal with traditional publishers, and digital-only deals aren't maybe as attractive as they could be, more and more authors are turning to self-publishing.

When is it a good idea for you to self-publish?

First, ask yourself: Why do I want to self-publish? Am I willing to do all the work involved? Do I want a long-term career as a writer? Do I want to publish a book just so I can say I did it? Am I frustrated with traditional publishing and want to try something different?

If you answered yes to any of these questions...it's a good idea to self-publish!

BEFORE YOU SELF-PUBLISH: It's important to keep in mind that once you self publish, you can't take it back. You can't take that same book and query it to agents or traditional publishers. So if you self-publish a book and it tanks big time, you can't say, oh, well, I'll just start querying agents now. They just won't look at it because it's ALREADY PUBLISHED.

With that in mind:

If you can afford a professional editor and decent quality cover (some people can do these things themselves, but not many. Be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses);

If you're a good storyteller and have had beta readers (other than your mom, other family, and friends) read it and help you polish the story;

If you've researched and know your genre sells well in the indie-published arena;

If you're a savvy businessperson who knows how to market and publicize your work;

You have all the ingredients to be successfully self-published.

What prompted this post about self-publishing?

My writing partner, Merissa McCain, and I have decided we're going to self-publish our contemporary romances, the Tap Zone Series, set in the world of MMA fighting.

We did extensive research, we've made a to-do list and split it so we each have responsibilities, we've put together a long-term plan, and we're proceeding  according to it.

We haven't set a release date yet for book one, but it will be sometime this fall. We'll keep you posted.

In the meantime...everybody keep writing!


~Margaret


 

 

ROCK the CON: Pro Tips for Writers Conferences

(by Charlotte Levine Gruber, with Anna Davis)

Next week is the annual DFW Writers Conference. As Dallas area writers, Anna Davis and I thought we'd tackle pros and cons at the "Con."

Wrong kind of con, but still a great film.

My first professional writer’s conference was the DFW Con last year. I'd just completed the first draft of my first manuscript and made one (yes, one) weak polishing attempt. I had a writer friend to help break the ice. While my friend really helped my comfort level, it's often good to go without knowing anyone, forcing you to make new friends.

I've been to three conferences since, and have made several good friends. But the workshops—listening to other writers talk about what worked and what didn't—can help exponentially.

Generally, there are two tracks at conferences: 1) Classes on craft, publishing, and critiquing; and 2) Networking. Professional conferences are most effective when the writer can "work" both tracks. But for many writers, this is a step—or leap—outside of their comfort zone.

Anna and I have divided up tips for those who master track (1) and those who master track (2).



No, these are not the two tracks we want to master...

PRO TIP #1: Research classes ahead of time and plan accordingly.
While many writers are introverts, you'd be hard-pressed to find any of my friends or acquaintances who would call me shy. But at a conference? I'm all about the classes, the workshops, and the critiques. I'm planning my schedule now for the con that takes place in ten days.

Time spent researching the instructors is beneficial. Specific things I look for: publishing credentials, book sales, and genres. This research will help you decide which classes to attend, and will also help you prepare for each class so that you can get the most out of it.

Don't miss a class! Keep track of the schedule during the con.

PRO TIP #2: Use Twitter for Networking.
Here’s the deal: most of us writers just flat-out don’t like networking. We live in our heads because we like it there. But when you sign up for a conference, you’re paying a lot of money and taking time out of your normal schedule, and you don’t want to miss a huge benefit: MEETING OTHER WRITERS.

So in the interest of all that is good and holy about networking, take advantage of Anna's little-known conference secret: Use Twitter.

If you don’t have a Twitter app on your mobile device, GET ONE. Twitter is the business card of the digital age. It beats Facebook hands-down for speed networking situations like conferences and conventions.

If you have Twitter but don’t know how to use it, LEARN. You don’t have to be a Twitter expert. You just need to know how to follow people and how to look up a hashtag (like #DFWCon, for example). 

Knowing how to make lists would help, too. If you create a list for the conference ahead of time, you can easily add new contacts to that list throughout the con. When you go home, completely brain-dead and exhausted, you will have a record of who you met. You will also have a way to get in contact with them again. And you might even have their picture. Twitter is a mysterious and powerful type of networking magic.



Dazzling. Shocking. Twitter can be your best con strategy.

Twitter is a useful tool for all writers, but especially for introverts and others who might struggle with a slew of socially-challenging conditions (anxiety, ADHD, a hatred for small talk, etc.).

Plus, there’s nothing more fun than live-tweeting during a class, seeing someone else’s tweet about the same class (because you both hashtagged the conference and class name), and looking over to see that person with phone in hand, hunkered down, sharing the same experience online but not especially comfortable in social situations. Like you.

Writers: Twitter can be your best #networking tool ever. #GetTwitterNow #IntrovertsUnite #ConTips 

Why You Need Beta Readers (Feat. Women of Cyberpunk)

It’s been a while since I set my high-heeled foot in a college classroom. But from what I remember,  the laws of physics provide boundaries to human capabilities, right? That’s why I was so baffled by Lucy, the film in which Scarlett Johansson's character absorbs a drug that allows her to use a hundred percent of her brain. Without giving too much away, I’ll say this: Lucy has an interesting premise and incredible visual effects, but the science is a hot mess. (If you don’t care about spoilers, read this from Mashable.com).

 

This is one screenplay that needed more beta readers and a thick red pen.

  

Lucy

 

What are beta readers, you ask? Beta readers are volunteer test subjects for your drafts. They find plot holes, suggest changes in the story, point out things you can’t see for yourself, and generally let you know when something doesn’t work (and when it does). They tell the truth about your writing. They see the big picture because, unlike you as the writer, their minds aren’t overflowing with character sketches and plot outlines.

 



Big Hero 6

 

You cannot do this for your own drafts. It doesn’t matter if you’ve read a thousand books in your genre or if you’ve memorized every major style guide in the English language. You’re the writer, NOT THE READER—and these are two very different roles.

 

There was a time when I thought I could edit anything, even my own work. I created my first newsletter at the ripe old age of ten(ish) after a trip to the Fort Worth Japanese Gardens with my grandparents. In high school and college I annoyed my peers by editing the heck out of their articles, and now I do the same thing with novelists as an associate editor for Henery Press.

When I’m in the zone, my eyes catch missing apostrophes, errant quotation marks, word clutter, main character likeability problems, and plot issues like nobody’s business. Words run in my caffeinated blood.

 

Blade Runner



Yep, I’m a trained editor—a professional. But here’s the deal: I STILL CAN’T DO THIS FOR MY OWN WRITING. When it comes to my own stuff, I’m blind. And stubborn. Sometimes, very VERY stubborn. (Should I delete the vague adverb, very? Of course I should. But I’m leaving it there. Twice even. Why? Because I want to. Because I’m the writer, darn it…and you can’t stop me.)

 



Ghost in the Shell



Even after the eighth draft or so, I still hold onto that-which-I-should-delete (backstory, excess character reflection, adverbs) and fail to expound on that-which-I-should-include (worldbuilding, character emotion, descriptions).

 

I do things in my own writing that I tell other writers to avoid, unaware that I’m committing the same literary sin until someone calls me out on it.

 



The Matrix

 

Fortunately, I have some amazing beta readers. These brave souls provide informed ideas to make my imaginary biotech believable, tell me I'm writing like a girl (when it should be a guy's POV), and mediate for characters I'm tempted to kill. (I'm no George R.R. Martin, but I like a high body count. Just sayin'.) A big thank you for my beta readers—I couldn't do it without you!

 

Okay, writers: Go find yourself some beta readers. And bonus points if you decide to watch this short scene from Lucy, which includes—of all things—A RED PEN. No joke.