Good blog day

Don't read my blog today.

Here's some good stuff to read instead:

Nadia Cornier has an interesting post up on Romancing the Blog. (She's been awol from her own blog lately, so this is a treat.)

Diana Peterfreund rants about how statistics can drive the writer mad, and why you should ignore them. Also, a couple of days ago, she wrote some interesting stuff about rejections.

2 B Read has an post about how being a writer can spoil your life as a reader. This scares the crap out of me. I've noticed I read a little differently now, especially if it's a romance, but I can still completely lose myself in a book. If this ever stopped happening I'd have to jump off a tall building. What the hell do you do if you don't read? Stare at the wall? Watch the depressing news on television? Garden until you're comatose? Drink? Ugh.

And the Smart Bitches have another cover post today, this time about Scots. Enjoy. I can't compete with this stuff, at least not today. I'll come up with something tomorrow.

Abby

What else is there to do?

This is the crappy butt-end of winter - cold, dry, dirty, and depressing. It's great for writing because everyone is holed up, half-asleep, and there's no way to be distracted by, say, patios, cuba libres or swimming pools or trees.

I was very productive today - more revisions, and I have five queries set to go out in the mail tomorrow. I'll do five more next weekend, and then this thing is queried out for a bit. I'll finish my revisions and move on to Book 2. I have been having problems lately because Book 2 is starting to assert itself, stuff is starting to come to me while I'm lying in bed at night, and I've had to push to keep concentrating on Book 1. I haven't been working on Book 2, I swear, but part of my brain seems to be. It isn't ready for work yet, but it will be soon.

I emailed a guest blog to Romancing the Blog, too. I'll tell you if they pick it up or not. But I'm tapped out now, and I'm going to curl up in bed with my Harlequin Historical. Days like this are what romance novels are for, after all.

Abby

Lookers

So I was wandering around the internet, checking out author sites. I've never surfed the sites of most of the authors I've read, which means I know little about them. I went to Laura Kinsale's site once, in order to email her a gushing fan letter (she replied the next day, by the way.) But that's about it.

So I'm on Lisa Kleypas' site and I find this:

Whoa!
Hello - Lisa Kleypas is a complete stunner. Did everyone know this but me? Talented, rich, and gorgeous - sucks to be her, I guess. I'm trying to work up some jealousy but it's not working 'cos I like her books too much.

This made me curious about something I've never thought of: what writers look like. Specifically, the writers I read a lot. I thought writers were all, you know, average-looking or worse, or (like me) so un-photogenic that to take a picture of me is a form of pathetic cruelty. But I was wrong, man.

Here is what Eloisa James looks like:


Fantastic. Dang - cute haircut and everything.

I love Loretta Chase, so I was hoping she'd be mousy or something. But here is what Loretta Chase looks like:


Turns out, she's one of those people who looks great in designer glasses.

Every once in a while people get riled up about Miss Snark or somebody admitting that publicists like writers to be good-looking so that they'll get more attention, but I wonder. If the writing world is so looks-obsessed, how come Lisa Kleypas isn't in Cosmo? Why doesn't Us follow these hotties around?

Two reasons - 1. the idiot media is not interested in writers, even hot ones. Too brainy. 2. Writers, essentially, like to be left alone, and having our privacy invaded gives us hives. When we get into writing we have dreams of a sort of nerdy, respectful acclaim, gushed over in smart journals as geniuses. We don't have dreams of having long-lens pictures of ourselves in bikinis published on the internet. In short, we're not media whores.

And we like it that way.

If writers were judged on their looks alone, George RR Martin wouldn't get published unless he looked like this:



Sorry, my brain just turned off. When I stop slobbering, I'll think of something witty to say.

Abby

The SASE Nearly Did Me In

In my own mind, I am a reasonably intelligent person. And I've approached this getting-published thing with a semblance of a game plan. I researched my genre, wrote my novel, did not submit until it was in readable shape. I researched how to query, where to query, and what to expect. A game plan, see.

The Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope nearly did me in.

When I pitched to two agents at the TRW meeting, they both asked for partials. In my naivete, I nearly jumped out of my pants with excitement. Only when I got home, and checked out their guidelines, did it dawn on me that I had to include a SASE, that I live in Canada, and that I was sending to the USA.

I tried my local Canada Post, but all I got was a shrug. Meanwhile, time was ticking. I wanted my partials to go out within a week of the request. So I polished them the best I could and mailed them, SASE-less.

Agent 1 kindly rejected me by email. (I put my email prominently in my cover letter, in hopes that this would negate the missing SASE.) After four months, I took the lack of response from Agent 2 to mean, "We would reject you on paper, but as you are an idiot who did not send an SASE, you can just sit and wait in agony, meditating on what a nitwit you are." Which I take as a No.

Agent 3, luckily, accepted e-queries, and specified that no SASE was needed, buying me a little more time.

But now, Agent 3 has had my partial for a month, and Miss Snark has corrected my beginner's misconception that I'm supposed to query in tiny trickles. She says I'm supposed to query widely, and Miss Snark is never wrong in her gin-soaked wisdom. So I am planning a query assault (on carefully selected agents, of course, as I do not want Killer Yapp on my ass.) Which brings me back to the SASE.

I asked the question on a few boards, and they told me to buy stamps from the USPS. I emailed the USPS, and got this form answer: "We do not have anything matching this description." Stamps?? Not sure what they thought I was asking for. They do, in fact sell stamps, but I did not know the correct rate I'm supposed to buy. (I can just picture my rejection arriving back at the agency, due to insufficient postage...) So I emailed them again, asking the rate for a stamp to Canada. After a week, they told me it is sixty-three cents.

Of course, the USPS - at least the website, anyway - does not sell sixty-three cent stamps. So I bought seventy-cent stamps, lots of them, and waited for the USPS to deliver them.

Over two weeks later, here they are. I finally have a novel, a query letter, some agents picked out, and at last - at last - I have a bloody SASE.

So, if anyone out there has been stumped by the SASE, let Abby tell you what she learned: 1. If they ask for a SASE, you have to send them one, no exceptions. 2. The USPS sells stamps online. 3. The rate for a stamp to Canada is 63 cents.

Use it wisely, my friend.

Abby

I mean, really

Am I the only one who thinks that Bob Mayer and Jennifer Crusie should write a romance novel about an ex-Green Beret and a single mother who fall in love while co-writing a romantic adventure novel, touring the country, and arguing non-stop?

I'd read it.

The Joys of Revising

I love revising. Really.

Why does revising get such a bad rap?

Revising looks terrifying; we all start out by thinking that every word from the tips of our fingers should be perfect. When it isn't, we have a strange reaction - fear of failure, I guess.

But once you get into revising - once you dive in and do it - you can come to love it. Personally, I like taking something that is not so good and making it better. I found some real clunkers in my first draft - "she practically glided with happiness" and "he said in his ususal brusque style" are particularly egregious examples - out they went. There were several scenes I banged my head against until I realized that my inner Writer was trying to tell me I didn't need them at all. In one scene, my heroine prudishly hesitated at undressing, in another she stretched sensuously before her mirror. Yoink.

The stage direction is taking a real beating. People walking around the room, walking through doors, standing up, sitting down, picking up teacups, setting them down again, walking up and down hallways to get to varioius rooms - I hate reading that stuff, and I hate writing it too. Out it goes. I have no house-maps; I hate house-maps and always skim them as a reader. You know, "to the left was the door to the sitting room, which led to the dining room filled with mahogany furniture that had a window looking down on the blah blah" - I can never follow it. George RR Martin needs maps; your average domestic romance does not. Bye.

The description in my first draft is terrible; I don't write very good description unless I go through it a few times. Dialogue comes a lot more easily, and I rarely have to revise it. Though the actual dialogue is good, the adverbs are awful - people are always talking softly, loudly, airily, wryly, sadly, whatever. This is definitely a weakness of mine. Out.

But the best part of revising is the Problem Scene. The one that has baffled you since you first wrote it; you just couldn't get it right, and couldn't waste any more time on it before moving on. Fixing that scene - finally coming up with the "aha!" solution - is awesome. Only another writer can understand it. And in order to experience it, you have to revise, revise, revise.


Abby

The V-Day After

Went out for dinner last night for Valentine's Day. Er, let's just say there was wine involved. So today the synapses are not firing all that fast.

Am I the only one who's noticed that Harlequin's Next line has awesome covers? Check this out:




I would buy this book, but my local Chapters doesn't have it. Did romance get outlawed overnight or something? The shelves had only old series stuff and most of it was ransacked and picked clean. I didn't even like the one Next I've read, but the books are packaged so darn good I'm willing to try it again.

I ended up with a Harlequin Historical (I haven't read one of these since Deborah Simmons - where the hell is Deborah Simmons?) and a Julia Ross. My V-Day present to myself. (This was pre-wine.)

The other thing I'm loving lately is Snarkling Clean. Too, too funny. The archives are all good, too. And I plan to spend my lunch hour perusing the similar snarkiness of Smart Bitches.

I love men and all, but when we're good, we're good, and when we're bad, we're better.

Abby

Prophets of Doom

Kristin Nelson's blog recently mused on the decline of chick lit. She is having a difficult time selling it anymore:

I’ve been shopping a chick lit work now for several months—something that two years ago probably would have sold in a couple of weeks.

I'm surprised. Writers of historicals imagine all those chick-lit authors have it easy - dash off a 50,000-word book filled with white-space dialogue and emails, get a sassy cover, and watch the money roll in. Instant success!

We have this idea because we have been told, so often and long that it seems to be an industry joke, that the historical is dead. To quote:

Michael Norris, editor at Book Publishing Report, points to the money. "Historicals are struggling, with revenues dropping the last several quarters."

Anyone who writes historical has heard this at one time or another. According to the same article, part of the reason is quality:

"I've seen, literally, thousands of manuscripts," says editor Anna Genoese. "Only about 5% of the submissions have been historical—and only about half a percent of those could have been considered publishable. Creating a fantasy for readers to get lost in is one thing—electric lights in the Middle Ages is quite another."

So we're not writing 'em good enough - we're lazy and we write too light. Check. Write better historical. But wait:

"Look at what's going on in society today—so much tough stuff. Historicals in the traditional sense are so detail-rich and harder to read. People don't have time to work when being entertained."

That was Lisa Kleypas, people. OK, check. Write better historical with E-Z read Hooked on Fonix and no detail that is also true to history and intellectually stimulating.

No matter what kind of historical you end up with, you're damned by your format - because no one buys mass-market paperbacks anymore.

Mass market, the format of choice for historicals, is in decline across genres. Contemporary romances are more likely to be found in hardcover or trade paperback, the formats of choice for younger generations of readers.

Who are all these people with the bucks to spend twice as much for a trade paperback and $35 for a hardcover you can read in two hours? I don't know any. But this is PW, so they must know what they're talking about, and I'm not going to quibble. Which means I have to write something sold to younger audiences in trade paperback. Like, say... chick lit.

Only, not, right?

You can drive yourself crazy with this stuff. I think, from all this, that we're all supposed to be Linda Howard. Except we're not all supposed to be the same, because agents and editors are looking for variety! freshness! Something new!

And none of it matters anyway, because not only are chick lit and the historical dead, so is READING. Listen:

For the first time in modern history, less than half of the adult population now reads literature, and these trends reflect a larger decline in other sorts of reading. Anyone who loves literature or values the cultural, intellectual, and political importance of active and engaged literacy in American society will respond to this report with grave concern.

Even Linda Howard is in trouble, I guess.

I'm going to stop now, and hide in a corner with a Lymond Chronicle and a couple of Mary Stewart gothics. Because I need to escape the real world for a while, and I want to go to another time and place. And I don't want to pay a lot of money to do it. And if I'm lucky, by the time I'm a hundred I'll be able to write half as good as Laura Kinsale, who is a freaking genius and I don't care if it takes me a long time to read her books because that's what's great about them.

The pundits can go to hell.

Abby

Abby rebels

Miss Snark says I shouldn't have a blog if I'm an aspiring writer. This means that a) I am boring and b) I am not writing.

I disagree with this. It's rather thrilling to disagree with Miss Snark, really.

Says one commenter: "When you get published and have something to promote, then you can spend some time on a blog." Lovely idea - site with no content. I've seen lots of those. Big picture of writer, fancy script font, three line bio, and links that say "Coming soon!" Instant boredom.

I can see where Miss Snark is coming from, specifically that an agent doesn't care about your, or my, dumb blog. I did not mention my blog in any of my queries or cover letters, and I don't intend to. I'll bring it up way later in the deal. I can't imagine anything less likely than a busy agent squinting at the blog of an unknown writer, desperately interested in their opinion of this season of Lost.

However, just because an agent isn't interested doesn't mean much. It's like we're a bunch of high school nerds, wondering what the popular kids will think. Do we really, really care? Isn't life too short for that?

Blog your dumb blogs, people - that's what the internet is for. You have a right to write whatever you goddamn well please.

Abby

Dork Alert

I don't mean to make fun of anyone, but this cover makes me laugh. Naked highlander with hair dryer, or just a simple dork?

Here is a dork from the archives:

Badly-rendered burn victim, or just a simple dork?

If you like this stuff, go to Longmire's page - just don't read it while drinking a beverage.

Abby

Beautiful Town

This is the second novel I've written. Every writer has a first novel: awkward, unreadable, incredibly unpublishable. I'm no different.

I took a writing class one year, and had to write a scene - I can't even remember the assignment anymore. When the class was done, I still liked my scene, so I wrote another one to follow. And another one. And suddenly I was writing a novel.

I'm telling the truth here - and no one is reading, so why not? - when I say that I never, for one minute, thought of submitting the thing for publication. Publishing was what other people did. For six years, while working full time, I wrote the thing off and on, usually on. And I did everything, everything wrong.

Here's what I did:
-set it in New York in 1938, with only minimal research, making up the stuff I did not know;
-did not plot;
-did not plan;
-wrote the hero in first person and the heroine in third, switching from chapter to chapter;
-left in lots of bits of dialogue and backstory that did not further the plot, just because I liked them;
-made it a romantic mystery comedy, without in-depth study of any of these genres;
-wrote my characters into corners, then wrote them out again;
-described almost nothing;
-ended up with a plot so convoluted Raymond Chandler would have scratched his head;
-only finished three-quarters of the thing.

Every time I did one of these things, I figured I was doing it wrong. But I always said to myself, "What the hell? No one but me will ever read it anyway," and did what I wanted. And no one will ever read it, and it will sit in a drawer forever, a pile of writing mistakes.

I am insanely proud of it.

Because, you know, it still makes me laugh. There are sentences and bits of dialogue so good I don't even remember writing them; there are parts that are still funny and fresh; and I still love those characters and their crazy world. Sure, the point of view alone would make an editor nauseous. Who cares? I have decided that if I ever get to the point where people ask me for writing advice, I am going to tell them to go write an utterly unpublishable novel as practice. Only then are you ready to even start thinking of writing anything else.

Because I made all those mistakes - every one of them. And now I know why they're called mistakes, and what they feel like when they creep up on you. And I also know how it feels to write one sentence that is so original that it springs out at you from a page of dreck. And how it feels to read that sentence and say, I want to write like that all the time.

This is a craft. It is not for the impatient, and not for the really sane. We like to hide our mistakes and pretend they didn't happen, but every mistake is another lesson in craft, and every lesson is an achievement. Mistakes are part of the game.

Make 'em, and brag about 'em. I dare you.

Abby

George RR Martin is a mad genius

So Toronto Romance Writers emailed me, and apparently they're sending me something. So they know I exist. They do everything with volunteers, so stuff gets done when it gets done. I can understand that.

I read Romancing the Blog pretty frequently. Now that I have my own blog I was curious on how to get listed.

They have a link: "Add your blog to our sidebar!" with a whole set of rules and a Submit button. Then I poked into their FAQ page and found this: "New columnists are added by invitation only. Suggesting yourself as a columnist through the contact form is essentially a waste of time."

I wonder, why would you go to the trouble of making a Submit page, then admonish that it's a waste of my time and yours?

Curious.

There are some books I want to buy and read, but my reading schedule has been stopped in its tracks. This is the reason:




Don't read Amazon reviews. I did, and they actually convinced me to doubt for a minute. Idiot.

Don't start with this book - start with the Game of Thrones, the first book in the series. Call in sick to work; take the phone off the hook; lock the door. You will not be able to concentrate on anything else until you've read them all, I promise. Tell your significant other not to take it personally.

Yes, this book is slower than the others, but the story needs a breather. You can't have relentless action without some time spent analysing the consequences of those actions; it makes for a better story. Writing 101. In this case, "some time spent" is 600 pages, which should tell you something about the scope of Martin's story. How he manages to keep tension, brilliant characterization, agonizing suspense, humor, fear, violence, and emotion under his masterful thumb is amazing to me.

The next one is coming; the writing gods are good. The next one has Tyrion in it.

Abby