Tips for NaNoWriMo-What You Can Do Before November

Halloween is fast coming upon us. For many people it means carving pumpkins, wearing costumes and passing out candy. But for some writers, it marks the last day before November, better known as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). If you are one these writers, taking advantage of this time to do some preliminary work on your new novel will save you time while you are in the thick of NaNoWriMo. Below are some tips to get you prepared for November:

• Write out the story goals in detail. What is at stake? Get a sense of the larger picture and the personal picture. What does the character want? What would it mean for the story if she gets it? What would it mean if he doesn’t?

• Create a plot outline.  Some writers are meticulous planners, which helps them stay on track. Other writers are “free-writers” who prefer the spontaneity that comes from not knowing what going to happen next. I would suggest something in-between: a broad outline of the plot, so that you have an idea of where you need to go with the story, but still have room for experimentation and discovery.

• Get to know your characters now.  This will alleviate the time you’ll spend during NaNoWriMo guessing at your character’s responses to important decisions and how they should act when they encounter unexpected challenges in the story. 
  
  
  

• Design the world ahead of time. Or at least, have a good idea of the environment your characters are going to exist in. This will save you from getting bogged down in world building during NaNoWriMo.  Hone in on the details of the world, including weather, geography, people, and objects, letting these details reveal the character who would be observing or experiencing them. And although this world may be very familiar to your readers, describe it in a way that is unfamiliar, strange or foreign. In other words, let the unfamiliarity and unique perspective of the character seeing it for the first time come through.  If the story is set in an exotic, strange or alien place, try to describe it as if it was familiar, demonstrating the ordinariness of the world.
  
  
  

• Do any preliminary research that you think you’ll need to know, or at least have on hand. Research can easily become a black hole and make you lose momentum while in your NaNoWriMo groove.  While you can’t anticipate every piece of research you’ll need, you might be able to do a little research to help you understand how to get your character to a particular plot point or what the motivation is behind a character’s action.

• Start setting aside time to write now. Get into some kind of writing regiment (you can do these exercises to fill that time), so that when November starts, your NaNoWriMo efforts won’t feel like a sudden shift in your daily life.

• Set up a support system with other writers. There are some great resources and blogs about National Novel Writing Month, but start with the official NaNoWriMo site first.  Sign up for free and get help and support in just about any aspect of your NaNoWriMo experience, from planning to staying motivated throughout the month.
  
  
  

In following these tips, you’ll be able to start your new novel with a more grounded picture of the world and a clearer understanding of your characters. And if you are only able to do just some of these exercises, you'll still be better equipped to handle the challenge of writing every day in November. 50,000 words can seem daunting but a little preparation can not only give you a good start, it can help you maintain your writing momentum and keep you on track to meet your NaNoWriMo goals.

How to Query a Novel

Today I'm going to give you a lesson on how to query a novel. I'm kind of in a unique position to do this because I'm both an author (under a pen name) and an agent (under my real name).

Merissa McCain and I have just finished a romance novel and we're in the process of beginning to query it. It's just as exciting and nerve-wracking for me, even though I'm an agent, because I really want someone to love my work, just like every other author does. And of course sell it to a publisher for a truck load of money and whatnot.

But what do you need to do in order to query?


STEP ONE: Write the damn book.

See the irony there? Be sure your book isn't ironic like that...

 This seems obvious, but trust me, as an agent I get queries for incomplete manuscripts. Polish the book. Then send it to beta readers other than your mom, who can give you intelligent, constructive story and copy-editing feedback. Polish it some more. Make sure it's at its shiny perfect best before you even think about querying.


STEP TWO: Next, write a synopsis.
 

This sucks. Everyone hates it. It's hard and you'll tear your hair out and cuss like a sailor, but you need to have one. Make sure it's not more than two pages double spaced and covers the complete story arc, including the ending.


STEP THREE: Write a query letter.

The necessary elements to include in a query letter are:

           - title
           - genre
           - word count
           - a back-of-the-book style blurb that will hook the agent or editor. There are lots of places online
              to get advice on how to write a good query blurb. Go to the book store (or Amazon) and read
              the backs of a bunch of books in your genre. You'll get a feel for it. Then practice writing the blurb
              for yours. Write it a whole bunch of times in a whole bunch of different ways.
           - a VERY BRIEF author bio that includes your publishing history, if any, and/or just a little about
              who you are. Don't include that you've been in love with writing since you were in grade school.
              We all have. It's not really relevant. If you have no publishing history, just give some brief
               professional background and call it good.

That's all. Query letters should be short. They're a professional business communication, not an opus. Remember, agents get hundreds of them and they don't want to get bogged down reading huge long letters.


STEP FOUR:  Figure out where you're going to send your queries.
 

This includes a lot of research. You must be patient. Publishing is a long game.

Check places like QueryTracker, Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write Water Cooler, Writer's Digest Guide to Literary Agents, or if you have a subscription to Publisher's Marketplace, you can research there. These are some good places to start.

I recommend making a spreadsheet that includes columns for: date submitted, agent name, agency name, email address, submission guidelines, notes, date response received.

This will help you keep track of your queries so you don't query the same person twice, and so you can keep track of submission guidelines.

Once you have a list of agents you think might be a good fit, look at each and every one of their websites and make copious notes about their submission guidelines. They will all be different.

This is CRITICAL, folks. Seriously, one of the best ways to irritate an agent is to not follow their guidelines.

It could be useful to also look at the agents' Twitter feeds to get a feel for who they are and if you think you'd be a good fit.

***Query Tip:  Just because an agent offers you representation, doesn't mean you should accept it. Lots of authors panic and think they won't find another agent, so they sign with the first one who offers. If you're not a good fit with each other, for whatever reason, you don't have to sign with them. Keep looking!


STEP FIVE: Send 'em out.
            

You've done the research, you know who you want to target and what their guidelines are. Now it's time to submit to agents.

The best plan is not to send to every single agent at once. Do a test run of maybe a third of your list to see what kind of comments you get. Make any necessary adjustments then send to the next third, and so on.

It bears repeating here to FOLLOW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES TO THE LETTER.



STEP SIX: Wait.


This is the hardest step.

Be patient.

Don't nag the agent.

Give them space and time.

Agents can get a hundred or so queries a day. That's not easy to keep up with, so give them some time.

Sometimes they list on their website how long their turnaround time is. For the love of all that's holy, do not check in with them before that time frame is up.


STEP SEVEN:  As your responses come trickling in, make note of them on your spreadsheet. Indicate the date you received it and if the agent gave you a reason why they rejected. Often you'll get a form rejection. Don't take it personally. Agents don't have time to write a personal note to every single author who queries them. It's just the nature of the business.



STEP EIGHT: Have faith.


This is also hard because when you keep getting rejections, it feels like nobody loves you or your literary baby. You get a lot of "this isn't really a very good fit for my list" responses which sound like bullshit, but are really true.

When you go to the bookstore and read the back of a book and maybe the first page, it's not the author's fault if you don't really like it enough to buy it. It's just that it's not the story for you.

It's the same for agents when they read queries. Most of them just aren't the right fit.  

But eventually it will be the right fit. The book will be the right fit for the agent, and the agent will be the right fit for you, and a chorus of angels will sing and radiant beams of sunlight will rain down on you, rainbows will burst, unicorns will frolic, and all will be right with the world!

And then you have to start the process all over again when your agent submits your project to editors.

Congratulations and welcome to the wonderful world of publishing.

~Margaret

What's in a Name

One day it happens. You're blessed with a budding idea of joy. That little character you hold in your hands, the pride you've spent months cultivating, stands before you. You test the waters with hair coloring, eye shape and the perfect lips by scouring pinterest. Eventually you settle on that perfect character, the one the masses will remember for ages. And then it hits you. What is his name? What will the people call her?

After all the careful planning, you haven't come up with a name.

Coming up with a character name can be difficult. The name you choose says a lot about what type of person your character will be. Will she be a Myrtle working in an eighteenth century dress shop? Is he a William who fights pirates to save his damsel in distress?

Choosing the name for your character can be as simple as using a friend or an acquaintances first name, or a name that you simply adore, to researching and choosing the perfect name, background and meaning in a baby book. The main character from one of my manuscripts is Evie because I fell in love with Rachel Weiss' Evie from The Mummy. Having the perfect name can transform your character. 

Here are my tips for picking the perfect character name.

1. RESEARCH

It's that ugly "R" word again. The one that seems synonymous with being an author. Research. Research doesn't just begin when you decide to search for the perfect agent or publishing house. Research starts the moment that inkling of an idea tickles your brain. Names, much like setting, require researching the era your character belongs in. You aren't going to name your renaissance princess Sienna. It wasn't a name that was common during the time period. And you certainly aren't going to name your Japanese business man Caleb, unless he was adopted by American's or has some background that gives the name sense. You don't need to go out and buy a baby book to research meanings and time periods. Babynames.com is an excellent source, not just for searching names, but to also search by meaning. The meaning of the name can by just as important as the name itself. Spend a little time researching names and meanings. It will help in the long run.

2. SAY THE NAME OUT LOUD

But I feel ridiculous doing this, Niki. Yeah, I do too. My kids always look at me funny whenever I start reading anything out loud, but it helps. Your book may end up an audio book at some point. It pays to make sure that it's a name that's going to come across well out loud. Anita Dickinme may look good on paper, but out loud it's just plain silly.

3. ALLITERATIVE INITIALS

Now, this isn't something I've used, but it something I've noticed in a few books, particularly Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, or Severus Snape in The Harry Potter Series. It also occurs a lot in comic books. The repeating initial seems to make the name more memorable, in my opinion. If you're having a tough time coming up with a name, try something with alliterative initials.

4. REPEATING FIRST INITIALS AND MIDDLE INITIALS

When you have a large group of characters, it can be hard to name them all. What's even more difficult? Characters with the same initials. Sometimes it works. I have a manuscript where the two secondary characters both start with T, Takeshi Sato and Tawny Saunders. For my manuscript it seems to work, but it may not for everyone. Same thing with giving characters middle initials. A good reason to avoid that middle initials? No one wants to name their character after a known murder or give someone a reason to sue them for having a name too close to their own. 

These steps, like many others in writing, can get overwhelming at times, but it pays off in the end. You don't want to name a Japanese character with a Chinese name and have your readers tell you you've screwed up after all is said and done. We want to have the Celtic spelling of Brynt make sense with our Russian character. These characters are our babies, and like with our real children, we want to give them names of their own that have meaning and reason.

What are your tips for choosing the perfect character name? Leave your best name in the comments and tomorrow, 2/27/15, I'll choose a winner for a $15 Starbucks gift card. Look forward to the winner and a new blog post tomorrow!

Writing Research: A Valentine to People I'll Never Meet

My last three big writing projects were an urban fantasy set in now-ish L.A., a contemporary romance set in now-ish Seattle, and an m/m romance set in 1955 Seattle. I've loved working on all three, but trying to capture 1955 was a unique challenge.

And you know what? I loved it. I loved the historical angle, discovering the rhythm of the language, throwing around terms like Aqua Velva and dungarees and Brylcreem. I loved it so much that I've jumped into a new historical project, one I've affectionately designated Victorian Goth QueerPunk. Everyone wears gloves and refers to each other as Miss and Mister, and I'm having too much fun!

Maybe writing historical fiction is my true calling. It makes a certain amount of sense. I'm old enough that my take on the contemporary time period is filtered through the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s, so might not feel all that contemporary. Also, I love detail, even though it drives me crazy.

And I love research.

Now we're getting to the heart of this piece. Nothing makes me happier than an open browser and all kinds of time. There are at least three pages open on said browser: Google (because it'll take me anywhere), Wikipedia (because duh), and spl.org.

Good ol' spl.org. Not one you're familiar with? Well let me tell you a thing or two. It's the website for the Seattle Public Library, and their main page will take you to a wonderful place. The Seattle Times on-line archive. Seriously. Someone(s) uploaded every page of the Seattle Times newspaper from 1900 going forward.

I love them. This nameless, faceless person - or more likely a group of people - who scanned page after page of fragile newsprint, and the nameless, faceless person(s) who created the super-fantastic word recognition software. Their keyword searches seem to be quite sensitive, and I have yet to pose a query this program couldn't handle.

Let me give you some examples on how useful this can be for writing historical fiction. I'm not an expert, by any means, but when I have some success at something, I like to share it so others can have the same success.

Example 1

I wrote a short story for a Christmas anthology, set in Seattle in 1911. Part of the premise was that the upper middle-class heroine had just graduated from college (without her M-R-S degree). One beta reader commented that a woman in 1911 wouldn't have gone to college. From Google, I was able to determine that the University of Washington's first graduate was a woman, in 1876, and that the school's 1910 catalog listed nearly as many female students as male (follow the link and scroll to the last several pages).

I also searched the Seattle Times archive and found the University of Washington Sunday Pages, a weekly feature provided by the staff of the UW newspaper, The Daily. On the Sunday pages, there were articles about fraternities and sororities, and about the women's track and rowing teams. I also found an enlightening article about the debate over weather a woman's education should focus on preparing for her future as a homemaker, or if it should have a broader application.

Seriously good stuff - and it shows how the newspaper enabled me to flesh out the facts I was able to find from other sources.

Example 2

I used the archive extensively on a more recent project. A good friend of mine was researching a book about the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a World's Fair-type event that was held on the University of Washington campus in 1909. She emailed me to ask if I knew anything about the baby incubator exhibit on the fair's midway.

Um, no.

In my conversations with Paula, I learned all about the turn of the century fad for displaying live "premature" infants in incubators. People paid $0.25 to see them, and the newspapers did a great job of selling these littlest stars to the general public. My friend asked if I knew which hospital was the first in Seattle to have baby incubators, and although I'd spent my entire adult life working in the field of neonatology, I couldn't answer her.

But the Seattle Times archives could.

Using the archive, I was able to reconstruct a rough history of premature baby care in Seattle. In doing so, I uncovered gems like this, from 1907...

According to the accompanying story, the poor man was running up 2nd Avenue with a tiny newborn baby wrapped in a shawl, begging for someone to direct him to a hospital where he might find an incubator. He and his wife were new to the city, and were staying in an unnamed hotel under the care of an unnamed doctor. Someone on the street apparently directed him to a hospital, though the reporter was unable to learn whether he found an incubator or if the baby survived.

I can see the plot bunnies from here!

More than that, without the Times archive, I wouldn't have been able to answer Paula's question about which hospital had the first incubators. I know this, because I tried. I talked to my older colleagues and friends, but their collective memory didn't go that far back. Even Sr. Theresa from Providence Hospital couldn't tell me, and she was in her 90's and had been working there forever. It would have taken a search of every hospitals' archives, looking for meeting minutes and budget data, for me to come close.

As it is I can say with some confidence that the first hospital in Seattle to care for infants in an incubator was Monod Hospital (a place I never knew existed) in 1902, and the first hospital with a designated unit for premature babies was likely Seattle Children's (then called Children's Orthopedic Hospital) sometime in the late 1950s.

Example 3

So I've talked about how I used the Seattle Times archive to fill in the gaps around facts I found elsewhere, and how I used it to construct a rough historical record. I used both of these techniques when writing Aqua Follies. From other sources I learned that the Follies had happened during Seafair throughout the 1950s, but it was from the Times archives that I was able to start coloring in those bare facts.

I saw articles about how the water ballet team and the dance troupe were from Minneapolis, that they traveled by train, and that they stayed in the the UW dorms while they were here. They were media darlings, and photographers caught them brushing their teeth and curling their hair and practicing their routines, then put those pictures on the front page of the paper. Beyond that, I learned that the summer of 1955 was quite cool and rainy, which impacted attendance at the outdoor Follies.

All those things are in the book.

I also used one of the articles for a major plot turn. I needed something to interfere with my two heroes and was brainstorming possibilities when I found a tiny article about one of the Aqua Dear swimmers. Seems she inhaled water and required first aid, then treatment at Harborview County Hospital. (I badly wanted to crop the article out and paste it here, but couldn't get the pdf to cooperate.) I don't want to give anything away, so won't say HOW I put that poor swimmer to work for me, but she's there.


The Seattle Times isn't the only newspaper archive on line. I was digging around the Boston Library website the other day (because research geek) and saw one of that city's major papers has an on-line archive too. Obviously the record is limited to how far back the paper was printed and how much they scan, but there's tons of information out there if you know where to look. You can use these on-line archives to learn facts, to flesh out what you already know, and even to help inform your plot.

And while you're at it, send a big Valentine's smoochie to the hardworking, patient soul(s) who made your research so much fun!

Cheers,
Liv

In the interest of sharing what we know, if you've got other ideas for how to apply on-line archives - or other sweet research tips - leave them in the comments. I'd love to learn from you...