Next Lifetime

If you were currently in my head, you'd hear me say the term "next career" a lot. While it's not the newest of phrases, it seems common over the past few years as people are finding layoffs and unexpected job changes the norm. Once a person's life reaches a point where they would have to use a term such as "next career" their social media becomes a never-ending stream of inspirational quotes and memes, all of which I would ignore and hashtag something snarky (usually #eyeroll).

Another phrase you'll hear is my head is: "Aren't you tired of this already?" I'm not one to feel the pressure of age, per se, but I am approaching 40, and the part of my mind that's a project manager is wondering why I've missed so many milestones. Everything feels unfinished, chapters feel undone.

It's been almost a month and these are the first words I've written in that time-space. There were priorities to figure out, bills to get paid, sleep to catch-up on. Those "life" items seemed to be a culmination of the cycles I allow in my life and repeat, but why can't I just write?

I left out the "during all this" because it is an open ended question, one that speaks to what I've always wanted to do with my life and one that asks "why can't I just write during all this?"

Do you experience "creative droughts" when the pressures of life show themselves? I'd like to know.

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.

 

 

Pitch Perfect

With the advancement of the interwebs and social media, the publishing world has exploded with opportunities for aspiring authors to get their work in front of editors and agents. Sure, the tried and true query method still works. But gone are the days of mailing off a sample of your manuscript and waiting six months to a year to hear back.

Oh wait, I lied. Some agents and pub houses still take six months to a year to give you a response. And then, it's most likely the ugly form rejection letter via email. With the influx of querying via email, those poor agents and editors are often inundated with queries. Some getting up to 10,000 a year! And having friends on both ends of the spectrum, I now understand the necessity of the form rejection.

So, what's a poor author to do to get your work in front of those amazing agents and editors?

Well, here's one idea we can explore today....contests. But, where do you find a contest? Your biggest asset in today's day and age is social media. You will find out all about the many contests you can enter. Now, beware. Not all contests are created equal.

Do your homework. Research your options. <----you just knew I was going to throw that in there, didn't you.

There's partial manuscript contests that you can pay to enter a sample of your work, usually the first 5000 words or so. A lot of these are done by RWA (Romance Writers of America) chapters, and they use the entry fees to help support their chapter. So it's a good investment because your partial will be seen by a number of pubbed and aspiring authors in the first round. And if you're lucky enough to make it to the next, your manuscript will be seen by agents and editors!

There's also the free contests around the world wide web. There's query contests, first 250 word contests, Twitter pitch contests. The big daddy of them all, Pitch Wars, run by the immeasurable Brenda Drake, is one you should definitely have on your radar.

Query Kombat, Pitmad, Pitchmadness, Pitchmas, Nestpitch, Sun vs. Snow, Nightmare on Query Street are just a sample of the great contests that you can enter!! Now some of these may have already passed for this year, but keep them on your radar for the next submission period so you can prepare. 

So, that being said, each contest has it's own rules. Some require just a 140 Twitter pitch, like Pitmad. Some require a query and the first 250 polished words of your manuscript. Some require a 100 word blurb only. Some are query only. 

Yeah. What's the difference between a blurb, a pitch, a query?

Well, let's see if we can dissect that.

A query is what you should always have at the ready for your book baby. You'll need it pretty much no matter what avenue you're taking to get in front of an agent or editor. There are so many websites, books, seminars on how to write a good query. The best place I can recommend is Janet Reid's Query Shark blog.

But here's an example of a query from my own WIP, my Space Opera entitled CLANDESTINE CHAOS. I've entered this before in a few contests so if you've run the circuit you may have seen it before. 

Pre-med student Kadence Murphy's sole mission in life: get out of college and into scrubs. Struggling with a hormone-surged roomie, a two-timing almost boyfriend, and financial aid problems, the only thing keeping her from shivving someone is her part-time job in the campus library. She discovers a cryptic book that entwines its storyline with reality.

Kadence drops into Captain Jeremiah Colt's lap, interrupting his latest effort to redeem his floundering business. Now stuck on a dysfunctional transport-ship, Kadence learns she’s in an alternate version of 2013 where Earth collapsed as a result of a global meltdown from Y2K. The survivors took to the skies in an attempt to colonize and sustain human-life on other planets.

Colt itches to dump her aggravating hide on the first planet they come to. Kadence can't last five minutes in his presence without the driving need to stab him with a spoon. A fierce attraction lies beneath their bickering, making Kadence rethink her quest to get home. But a mutinous crew member has other plans, none of which include Kadence, and he isn't above murder to get rid of her.

Now, that's the meat of the query and it's all of 185 words. Agents/editors view so many queries a day, if you can't capture their attention in less than 250 words, you're out the door with a form rejection. So keep it succinct, short, and captivate them to read more. Goal is to keep it around 250 words tops, including your bio & writing credits and cat/genre/word count.

Do not try and turn your query into a full synopsis and hit every plot point and character arc in your story. You want to merely engage the person to request more to read, not shove it down their throat in one fell swoop. You're only asking for a rejection that way.

Ok, well what about a blurb? How does that differ?

Think of a blurb as the back cover info on a book. Short, succinct, overall pitch of the book to make you want to read it. Often it's about 4 or 5 sentences, tops. Something you can recite off the top of your head, not have to write it down to remember. 

Here's my 100 word blurb/pitch from CLANDESTINE CHAOS:

Pre-med student Kadence Murphy discovers a book that entwines its storyline with reality. She drops into Captain Jeremiah Colt's lap, interrupting his latest heist, finding an alternate version of 2013 where Earth collapsed from a global meltdown duringY2K.

Colt itches to get rid of her as soon as he can. Kadence can't last five minutes with him without the driving need to stab him with a spoon. A fierce attraction lies beneath their bickering, making Kadence rethink her quest to get home. But a mutinous crew member has other plans and isn't above murder to get rid of her.

So you start with your 250 word query and narrow it down to the meat of the story. Hit the high points, inciting incident and what's going to make us want to read it? Leave all secondary characters out of it, you can hint at them but stick with the names of only your protag or hero/heroine. What is their goal? What are the stakes? They must be clearly defined. 

Stay away from hypothetical questions in a query, pitch, or blurb. IT IS KRYPTONITE! 

Ok, so then there's the Twitter pitch. You think you have 140 characters to play with. But in reality it's actually less, because often times in a Twitter Pitch party you have to include a hashtag for the agents to peruse like #pitmad, #pitchmadness, #adpit etc. And many require you to put in the category and genre. So you have to get creative. There's some rules here to strictly follow in a Twitter pitch:

1) DO NOT spread your pitch over 2 or 3 tweets. Those hashtags move so fast your first tweet will end up being 140 tweets away from your second. Also, don't make the agent work for it, you need to capture their attention in one tweet.

2) DO NOT try and short spell stuff like 4ever, 2gether, 2night etc. While it helps shorten your tweet, it looks like a damn text message to your bae. It's unprofessional and hard to read. It sucks having to condense your 80,000 word novel into 120 characters. But it can be done. You're the author, get creative.

3) Always have multiple versions of a Twitter pitch. One may not catch a person's eye, but maybe another one of yours will. It's good to change things up and have at least 3 or 4 if you can.

So here's some examples of Twitter pitches for CLANDESTINE CHAOS:

Kadence falls into an alt timeline. Colt can't decide if he wants to kiss or kill her. A mutinous crew member may do it for him. NA #pitmad

Losing yourself in a book has new meaning when Kadence's reality is entwined w/one. Colt wants her heart someone else wants her dead #RTSlap

Firefly meets Outlander. A book dumps Kadence in an alt timeline. Stuck in space, the one man who can help her she wants to kill. NA #PitMad

Hopefully you can take this knowledge into the universe and use it for good instead of evil. May the pitches be with you!

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Where do you get your ideas?

I'm a writer. People ask me that. And when they ask, I want to do this...

Yeah Ke$ha, I don't know either.

Because tearing my hair out is easier than trying to explain how I come up with my ideas. Take my current project...

Jack rides his bike from Portland to Seattle in January because his maybe-ex-boyfriend's mom is in the hospital and he doesn't want to accept the gift of an airplane ticket. Will his stubborn streak end things for good, or can he and Gregory find a way to rekindle their love?

As hard as it is to summarize a 200 page story in fifty words, it's even harder to explain how I came up with it in the first place. Most people who aren't writers (or artists, or musicians, or participants in any other kind of creative endeavor) think we must carry around some magical fountain from which all good things flow.

Instead, I feel more like a pug doing bicep curls. The initial concept - whether it's a photograph or a song lyric or a mental image - comes from...somewhere...and then it's all heavy lifting while I figure out the story's shape. 

Because really, when it comes right down to it, there are only seven types of stories in the world. According to a guy named Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, you can tell a story that's

• man against man
• man against nature
• man against himself
• man against God
• man against society
• man caught in the middle
• man and woman

Of course, if those are a little abstract, here's another way of looking at the same list...(also from the post by Len Wilson

• Overcoming the monster
• Rags to riches
• The quest
• Voyage and return
• Comedies
• Tragedies
• Rebirth

So really, all you have to do is pick something from one of these lists, come up with a couple characters, and you're golden.

Hold on, Adam. Wait till I get to my point.

The thing is, especially when you're writing genre fiction, the tropes - some would say clichés - do govern a lot of your choices. How many fantasy novels can you think of that involve a quest? How many romances start with a friends-to-lovers premise? The trick is taking a standard story structure and giving it a fresh spin. 

In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder even titled a chapter Give Me the Same Thing...Only Different. So, you know, take something you've heard before and put it in a different century or a different country or a different planet. (I swear someday I'm going to rewrite Wuthering Heights with Heathcliffe as an L.A. biker. Don't steal that. It's my idea. Mine.)

As Mr. Snyder puts it...

“You can be near the cliché, you can dance around it, you can run right up to it, and almost embrace it. But at the last second you must turn away.”

While it may be exceedingly unlikely that you'll come up with a truly unique idea, the game is to take something that's been done a thousand times before and make it your own. And when you do that, well...

Happy Dance!

The place where the magic happens is when you make YOUR friends-to-lovers story absolutely unique. Where you take an old Harlequin Romance blurb & rework it as  a m/m romance (& I totally just stole that idea from Josh Lanyon's fantastic book, Man, Oh Man: Writing Quality M/M Fiction). Where you "borrow" from Shakespeare or People Magazine or a story your college roommate told you.

Ideas are EVERYWHERE, people, and my own ideas don't come from anyplace special. I keep my eyes, ears, and heart open, and when it all comes together...

Boom!

So where do you get your ideas from? I'd love to hear from you...

Peace,
Liv

Gratuitous Prince. Because, Prince.

Inside the Writer's Head: "Just An Ant"

Just An Ant

A writer decides to write about an ant. So it is written: There is an ant.

Then the voices begin.

Just one ant?

Right; the ant needs more development. Edit: There is an ant line.

Where is this line?

Setting edit: There is an ant line on our path.  

What kind of ants? 

Black ants. 

Black with red marks? Or very dark brown ants?

They are tiny shiny black ants walking across our path.

Tiny as in small? That doesn’t explain anything.

Okay, tiny as in the size of sesame seed. 

And they are just walking?

Shiny ants the size of a sesame seeds are moving together in a black cloud across our path. Look at them march in unison. One, two, three, four. Here comes a flutter of wings. A smallish bird, with drab coloring. 

Smallish?

About the size of a small rock. 

How small is a small rock? 

I don’t know, like my fist? 

Well are you a large person or a small person? A man or a woman?

*Pause*

Re-edit: The bird is the size of a medium female person’s fist. A smallish bird, with drab coloring. 

Drab in what way? 

Drab in every way. There are not many ways something can be drab. Is there? 

Yes, yes there is. Drab can mean dully dressed.

A bird doesn’t have clothes. 

It can mean not stylish or elegant.

Again. Birds don’t have clothes.

What about a lack of brilliance?

Fine. The bird has a certain lack of brilliance in its plumage.

That sounds . . . boring? 

Well the eyes are not boring. They are very brilliant. Glittery and black. 

Re-edit: The bird is the size of a medium female person’s fist. It has a certain lack of brilliance in its plumage, drab. However, its eyes are bright and glittery and black.

Aren’t bright and glittery the same thing?

I'm not sure. 

Me neither. I think they are though. What is the bird doing? 

It's watching the ants, and the spider jumping around them. 

Just watching them? And where’d the spider come from?

Okay, no spider, and the bird is standing a few inches away from the ant line, hopping a little bit from left to right and its head is cocked to one side. There is something bouncing over the grass. Boing, boing, boing.

What is bouncing? 

It’s a grasshopper. The bird is watching a grasshopper.

A grasshopper? What happened to the ant?

. . .  

Damn it.

Fighting the Great Depression

When I first thought about writing this blog post, I was going to focus on everyone else. I've been helping with #Nestpitch and getting the next round selection ready for the final posts that the agents can request off of. I thought about the people who already looked at the blogs and realized their names weren't on the list. I know what it feels like. I've been there. I'm still there. It was that moment that I realized that maybe this post is more for me than it will be for the rest of you.

Rejections are hard and constant rejection is like having someone kick you in the face while you repeatedly beg them for more. We put ourselves through this with hopes that something great waits on the other end. And even when we reach that something great, getting signed by an agent or a contract with a publisher, we're still open to those rejections. The many back and forth edits to make your manuscript better, the various competitions we enter, or our books are nominated for, and comments from reviewers that can almost hurt more than an actual rejection letter itself.

Getting a lot of rejections or rewrites can lead to a funk. How do you combat that funk? I'm still there. I've surrounded myself with a writer's group that won't let me wallow in the funk. I have a best friend that won't let me disappear. Surround yourself with people who will pump you up when you're feeling down. Remember that everything is subjective, which is so cliche and often heard in this industry, but I'm going to say it anyway because it's true.

And when all else fails, surround yourself with inspirational quotes.

Remember, if writing were an easy profession, everyone would be doing it. Surround yourself with a group of people who won't allow you to quit or give up. And above all, believe that your words, the story that you've written, is needed in the world. You wouldn't have been inspired to write it otherwise.

An Ode to Words and Trees

Words, like trees are beautiful, powerful, transformative.

Old-Growth Forest, Cape Perpetua, Oregon Coast

This morning a short video entitled “Trees” arrived in my mailbox, courtesy of Mother Earth News. It was created by journalist and filmmaker Nick Werber, whose previous film Reynaldo — Rainforest Hero earned three international awards including a United Nations film award.

“As beautiful as it is heartbreaking, this elegiac film glides through majestic stands of trees to the superb words of poet, painter and author Herman Hesse and the accompaniment of music by Keaton Henson.” ~ K. C. Compton, Mother Earth News

By itself, the pictures are touching. But combined with the narration of Herman Hesse’s Ode toTrees and a little music in the background, something profound happens. Our hearts open and emotion pours out.

See what you think:



See what I mean? Sublime.

"But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is.

That is home. That is happiness." ~ Herman Hesse

Do not words inspire these same feelings? Home? Happiness? The desire to just be? I think so. How about you? Whose words have touched you lately?

~ Olivia J. Herrell