CERTIFYING THE DEATH OF YOUR BOOK

Recently I noticed that my blog has 222 followers (now increased, which slightly spoils the point but please don't go away). I noticed because it's a cute number but then it got me thinking. "Not for 222" is (apparently) the medical code for a hospital patient so close to death that he should not be resuscitated in the event of heart failure.

It got me wondering how a writer decides his beloved book is "not for 222". How many times can you allow it to be rejected? At what point do you decide there's no possibility of life? Is your unpublished book terminally unpublishable?

Strikes me there are two situations where you might have to make the dreaded 222 order on your book.

1. Your Work in Progress (WIP) is not progressing. It's stuck. What started with an appealing idea and hook has ground to a halt. You have begun to force the plot-line; you know that it all now hangs on an episode which doesn't completely ring true, even to you, but you're determined to make it fit and you pile in more and more things to force the reader to believe in your story. You're starting to bite your nails in your sleep. There are bits of your book that you love and you keep reading them aloud to yourself, marvelling at the gorgeousness of your talent, but you know in a secret and painful part of your heart that your book has been built on sand.
   
2. Your finished book has failed (and failed and failed and failed) to find an agent or publisher. Some have given glimmers of hope, which you have clutched at and possibly exaggerated in your mind; your friends and family love your book (duh) but no agent or publisher seems to care about that; your writing group keep telling you to carry on trying - they mop up your tears and tell you you are brilliant and that publishers don't know what they're talking about or are "only in it for the money". (Well, yes, actually, if you mean that they can't afford to make a loss on every book they take on and they do have to eat like the rest of us.)

In each of these cases, a brave decision must be made.

Situation One is an occupational hazard of writing. It's an often fatal illness that happens much more often to books written by inexperienced writers. As you become more experienced, you'll spot the symptoms earlier and treat the cause before it becomes terminal. I have just done this with an idea that I was utterly gripped by until I began to look ahead and think the plot through. I foresaw fundamental problems in motivation and development, so I killed my baby before I'd developed a relationship with it.

(Note: we talk about the importance of "killing our babies" in writing and it strikes me that killing babies is a lot easier than killing adults. Metaphorically, I hasten to add. If you let your book grow and invest huge amounts of time in it, it's much harder to let it go. Whereas, spectacularly unlike real babies, an idea being stillborn is just a pinprick, something you have to get used to. Apologies for the unpleasant analogy.)

Situation Two
"How many rejections should I accept before giving up?" I was recently asked after a talk on how to get published. It's not the first time I've been asked it. Obviously, there is no answer, or not in terms of a number. In theory, you could send it to every agent and publisher who takes that sort of book, which might only be 20 or it might be 100.

But there are two more useful questions you should ask:

1. How many rejections should I accept before doing some radical re-writing of my work?

Answer: not very many, frankly. IF you have submitted your book to the right people (ie you have researched carefully and only sent it to agents and publishers who handle this sort of work) and IF you have followed all the guidelines so far given in this blog and the submission guidelines of the agents and publishers you've approached, and IF your writing is good enough and IF your book is sellable, then it is likely either to have been accepted or to have attracted some specific feedback, even if not an acceptance yet. So, IF the feedback has alerted you to a problem, you should be re-writing now. IF the feedback has either been inconsistent or has suggested nothing, you should consider getting (perhaps paying for) a professional critique of your work. But be careful to research very carefully the "professionalism" of this critiquing ... (Future post topic.)

What do I mean by "not very many"? Well, you ask me for a figure and figures don't really figure in this game. But let's say, for the sake of argument, not more than ten. No, eight. Seven?

"Only seven? Or even ten?" I hear some of you say. Ah, I don't mean you'll only send it to 7-10 agents/publishers; I mean you'll only send it to that many before taking a long hard look at what you've written (another long hard look because of course you've already given it dozens of long hard looks - I mean a long, hard, critical and objective look). Somehow, you must get a good opinion as to what's wrong with your book which means that you haven't yet hooked anyone.

Thing is, if you send it to 25 and they all say "no way" and then you decide you could have written it better, that's 25 publishers you can't really send it to again when you've improved it ... Well, you can, but it's tricky and needs some careful handling.

But I said there were two more useful questions and the second one is even more useful:

2. What should I be doing while my book is out there being read by an agent / publisher / anyone?

And the answer to this is dead easy: you're a writer, aren't you? So you should be writing. You should be throwing yourself into your next idea. If you're not, you're no writer, just a one-book wannabe. And no agent or publisher wants a one-book wannabe. No reader wants a one-book wannabe.

So get writing. Be fickle - turn your back on your beautiful slaved-over book and fall into bed with a new lover.

When you do that, you learn several important things:

• that your first book may not be as good as you thought it was
• that you can fall in love again
• that the death of a book is not the end of you as a writer
• that being a writer is about striving to be better all the time and that this happens with practice
• that if your first book is not good enough you actually don't want it to be published
• that actually you can postpone the 222 decision and wait for new technology to come along (in the form of your new knowledge gleaned from writing the second book) which might cure the disease
  
• that if at some point you decide to slap a "not for 222" on your first book, this will be a positive moment in your career as a real writer. And that you will (I promise) get over your apparently tragic loss.

Don't get me wrong: it's tough, it hurts, and even grown men cry. But if you have another WIP, it's not so bad. And you will not regret it. Ever. I don't know a published writer who hasn't got unpublished work in a drawer. And I don't know a published writer who really wishes that that unpublished work was published. God, I'm glad mine wasn't.

And a happy corollary that comes from all this is that resurrection and reincarnation both exist in a writer's world: it can sometimes happen that an idea or a book that died can rise again, later, when you are grown as a writer, and become something so much better and stronger and more beautiful than it first was.

We have to love our books with a passion but sometimes we have to let them die; or leave them lying in bed while we look ahead to the next one to love. Call yourself fickle, call yourself callous - it doesn't matter as long as you are writing.

If you have more than one book in you, let's see it. If you don't, give yourself a 222.

HOW TO MAKE A PUBLISHER SAY YES

This evening, in the Edinburgh Book Fest, I'm doing my talk on "how to make a publisher say yes". And I decided to put the bare bones of it below, or at least to try to decipher my notes and then turn them into something that will make sense to you.

I've done the apparently same talk for four years now, but each time I say it differently. Each time, I guess I've learnt more in the meantime. Each year, I throw my notes away because I know I'll do it differently next time.

So, this was how I structured my talk for this evening. I'm sorry you're not there, but you at least have the luxury of being able to relax with wine / chocolate while you're reading it. On the other hand, you don't get to experience my shoes. And, writing this as I am a week ago, I can't predict which shoes they'll be, so spontaneous am I.

WHY DOES CRAP GET PUBLISHED? (I won't use the word crap, because you can't do that in front of a captive audience, some of whom have only come in out of the rain and weren't expect the crabbit old bat to be so rude).

This is the question that frustrated aspiring authors ask. Understandably. The answer is simple: crap sells. Every published book is a book the publisher thought would sell. And, since crap sells in shedloads, you have to admit they were very often right.

Getting angry about why crap sells will get you nowhere. Besides, you're not here because you write crap and want to sell it. You're here because you think you've written something damned good and you're wondering what on earth you have to do to sell it.

I can't (or not here) teach you how to write, but I can show you the most common things people do wrong.

TWO COMFORTING THOUGHTS
The awfulness of the slush pile is reassuring - it means that good stuff shines. When an agent or publisher sees a jewel in a pile of crap, he will leap on it with enthusiasm and is quite happy to get his hands dirty in his efforts to retrieve that shiny jewel and clean it up so that the world can see its beauty.

Because the second comforting thought is: publishers and agents are desperate to find good books, great books, books that readers will love. If your book is good, they want you.

A SLIGHTLY COMFORTING THOUGHT
It's easy to get published: you just have to write the right book at the right time and send it to the right publisher at ther ight time in the right way.

BUT, in order to do that

• you must understand what makes a right book
• you must understand how publishing works, how commercial decisions are made
• you must know (and obey) the rules for submitting your work
• 
  

TO THE POINT
"How to make a publisher say yes" is not the best question.
The best question is "why do publishers usually say no?"

WHY DO THEY SAY NO?
One reason only: they think they can't sell it. (If your rejected book goes on to be published elsewhere and even be a huge success, that does not mean that the rejectors were wrong. They may well not have been able to sell it, for reasons which you'll find below.)

Before we proceed, you need to understand about the ACQUISITIONS MEETING (AM). (Blog-readers, go here; people in audience, sit back and listen.)

REASONS TO SAY NO
These fall in two categories.

1. Publisher-related - not in your power to fix
2. Book / author-related - your job to fix

1. PUBLISHER-RELATED (If even one of these three things applies to your book, it will not get through the AM.

1. book doesn't fit their list or their publishing schedule is genuinely too full. It might not fit their list because they've already contracted something too similar; or they've decided not to handle fairy books any more (thank the Lord). If it doesn't fit the list because they don't handle this stuff, that's your silly fault for not researching, but there are many other reasons that you had no way of knowing
2. the necessary investment is too great. Publishers have to pay a load of money months and years before they have a chance of recouping it. They have to budget and if your fabulous wizard series comes along when they don't have the required budget to invest in it over many years, they should not take it on and you would not (should not) want them too
3. the editor is not in love with your book. This may be because the book isn't good enough (in which case it's your problem) but it may be simply personal taste. Don't underestimate the importance of that. Liking or admiring a book is not an exact science. Hell, it's not even a science at all. And the editor must love your book otherwise she/he won't fight for it.

2. BOOK / AUTHOR-RELATED

1. The writing is not good enough - punctuation, grammar and basic techniques mark you as someone in control of words or not; you cannot expect the editor to overlook these; voice, pace and structure are essential to powerful story-telling and readable non-fiction; are you thinking of your reader at all times and have you avoided over-writing? (Those are the commonest faults which will make the publisher / agent say no)
2. Book is not marketable, even though the writing may be good enough - publishers have to make money (they may make mistakes but they are doing it with their money); you need a HOOK - the hook needs to grab the Sales and Marketing team at the AM; you must understand the current market - read current successes in your genre and read them analytically. This does not mean selling out; it does not mean putting commericality before art: it means thinking of your readers
3. Your submission is faulty - (there are loads of posts on this blog about submissions, so I won't go on about it here too much but here are the absolute bare bones and most common errors:

• obey guidelines for each individual agent / publisher
• write the perfect covering letter (a new post is coming up on 22nd August, during my workshop on The Perfect Approach) - you have 15 seconds to sell yourself
• don't do anything wacky or cool
• don't boast; don't say your kids / friends love it
• show knowledge of the market and willingness to work hard for long term career

TOP TIPS

1. every sentence counts and every word within that sentence must earn its place
2. think of your reader
3. read within your genre - but read like a writer
4. miss no opportunity to improve your knowledge of the industry
5. be very careful whose feedback you believe and whose you ignore. Believe experts before friends and writing group members

MOST TOP OF TOP TIPS
Instead of believing that you are hard-done-by and wrongly ignored or that publishers are stupid, accept that the likely reason is that you haven't yet written the right book well enough. Yet ...

FINALLY - regard the rejection of your book as the rejection of your book. Not the rejection of you. Write another one. Because if you can't write another one, you can't be a writer anyway.

(And then, after illuminating questions from the audience, the event chairperson thanks me for being so interesting and everyone flocks to the signing tent where they buy copious quantities of my book and we staying signing and chatting and generally bonding for about half an hour. Then, the chairperson escorts me across the summer evening grass towards the calming cavern of the Yurt, where I strengthen myself with a glass of wine and some dinky sandwiches and pastries. I then go out to dinner with my husband, older daughter and her French boyfriend and younger daughter who is working in the bookshop [putting my books face-out] and I tell them how a very kind blog-reader brought me chocolate and that three people commented on my shoes.)

I'll tell you if it happens like that.

TRUTH HURTS - SO UNLEASH YOUR HIDDEN MASOCHIST

For a writer, there are sensible ways to take feedback and there are foolish ways to take feedback.

I won't add (much) to the vitriol hurled from and at two writers who got themselves into the news this week as examples of extreme(ly bad) ways to take negative criticism. Alain de B and Alice H will make up their own minds how to react to the feedback to their feedback to the feedback (aka reviews) to which they took such exception. Published writers must learn that some people will hate their books and must work out which negative crits they respect and which they think are rubbish. And how best to react. (Answer: not.)

But what of unpublished authors? What of the feedback that you get, if you're lucky, when you send your precious oeuvre to agent or editor asking for an honest opinion? I know, you don't really want an honest opinion, unless the opinion is "Brilliant! How much do you want for it?" But the fact that so many unpublished authors react unpleasantly to the more unwelcome honest opinions is partly what stops many agents/editors from giving any feedback other than "Sorry, I don't have room on my list." I know agents who've been told to rot in hell after saying that a piece of work wasn't up to scratch. Why should they put up with that when they're not paid and not likely to be paid if offered work that's crap?

Thing is, if you send your oeuvre to an expert, someone you plan to trust with your work during publication, you must accept his/her honest expert opinion when you get it. That doesn't mean you crumple into a heap and blindly make every change suggested if you don't fully believe or understand it, but it does mean that you consider closely what they say and accept that they know what they're talking about. Otherwise, why did you approach them, you deluded idiot? (Crabbit old bat is back.)

The author who does not listen properly to feedback from trustworthy sources (i.e. agents with a track record, publishers with a track record, writers with a relevant track record, and select readers who actually know what they're talking about, and NOT your relatives, friends, pets or even most members of your writing critique group unless they fall into the first category) is a fool and does not deserve to be published. Thing is, if a publisher happens to be taken in by your inferior writing and actually publishes it, readers will not be so forgiving: trust me. They will rip you to shreds on Amazon and your book will die horribly, messily and painfully. And you will be gutted and quite possibly throw a hissy fit. (In private, please.)

The aspiring author who, on the other hand, behaves like Jen Campbell, bravely and open-mindedly laying herself bare (not literally) and allowing herself to receive feedback in public from a host of people she has never met but has decided to trust on the basis that if they read this blog they must kind of slightly know what they're talking about, deserves publication and success.

The aspiring author who does all this and then generously gives me chocolate, just because I allowed her to be publicly judged, deserves to be published thrice-fold (or more) and then to win all the prizes going. Jen, thank you so much for the gorgeous Coco chocolate, pictured below - you honestly shouldn't have, but I'm very glad you did!

Vanessa's bookshop now seems to be the depository of presents for me. In case any of you need to know, for any reason of a donatory nature, her shop can be found at 219 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10, and delicious chocolatier Coco of Bruntsfield is conveniently close by. Vanessa is also opening a grown-up bookshop soon, and I am equally happy to receive chocolate or sparkly wine there too. I am sure Vanessa is quite delighted to look after things for me.

Jen, you're amazing, even without the chocolate - you are an example of how to take feedback properly, maturely and constructively. There's no reason why you should follow it all but I believe what you're doing is seeing your work through the eyes of others and you know much more clearly what you might do to make it gorgeously and perfectly publishable. When you get there, let me be the first to know and I will give you chocolate too.

I also take my hat off to others amongst you who have submitted work to the Submissions Spotlights, either for children or adults, and especially those who sent their work in even after seeing the intensity of the comments that Annie and Jen so wonderfully dealt with. Congrats to Annie too - her response to the feedback for her children's submission was also wonderful.

Meanwhile, I'll be doing another spotlight on July 13th or thereabouts, and I haven't completely decided which ones to pick so do keep your submissions coming. Please follow the same rules as before. I was really pleased with how it went - I learnt from it too.

Thank you all for being such excellently contributory blog readers. You are restoring my faith in unpublished authors: see, I confess that before I started this blog I thought most of you were completely hopeless nutcases and that, on top of that, if that were not enough, many of you were also deluded idiots. Nutcases and idiots among you are obviously keeping quiet, which is quite the best thing for you to do, letting the sane and potentially publishable have their voice and show good author behaviour. Having so many published authors, agents and editors reading this blog is also an enormous help - thanks, one and all.

I can't send you chocolate (otherwise, of course, I would) but I can show you Jen's chocolate and the lovely Coco bag.

AN AGENT ADVISES AND I FILL IN THE GAPS WITH SOME FEET

I could beat myself up about how long it is since my last post, or I could gloat about having spent some days in Paris and the north of Scotland, (all in the course of authory duty, naturally).

Or I could do neither and just tell you something useful.

In my usual kindly way, I will tell you something useful and then I will make a comment or three prompted by an inappropriate and unwelcome sight on my train journey home from Aberdeen this afternoon. (You will need to brace yourselves.)

The useful thing
A wonderful website (which is apparently about to be updated, but I'm struggling to see how it could be better - maybe some vouchers for free chocolate or shoes? You know where I am) by UK literary agent Andrew Lownie. It is not enough for Andrew to have a stable of talented authors (including one of my all-time favourites, Daniel Tammet): he has also taken a lot of time to provide a huge bank of info which will help you muchly, whether you are published or not, and agented or not.

Inside the useful thing ...
... are many pages which, if they are not of interest to you, damn well should be. Like Andrew's submission guidelines - although these will inevitably differ from those of some other agents, they provide a paradigm of the sort of rules you will be asked to follow. And hey - he IS looking for new and unpublished wonderful authors. (Trade secret: agents always are.)

And the FAQ page will also tell you a great deal of stuff which I've said before myself, and which other similar blogs and sites will tell you, but nicely set out in one place, instead of hurled at you in dollops in a shouty way, as I tend to do in my crabbit moods. Andrew is absolutely not crabbit. (Well, he may be, but he doesn't seem so on his site.)

When an agent takes the time to explain everything so clearly, the least we can do is read it.

Trouble is, he doesn't tell you the most important thing - how to write the right book brilliantly in the first place. But that's not his job. It's mine ... and one day I will get back to it. (Meanwhile, if you're new to my blog, go and check out the posts with "right book" labels.)

Meanwhile, the inappropriate thing:
Please bear in mind that this was a gorgeous evening in Scotland and I should have expected to see something like this:



Or, this (please excuse the flies on the window):



Or, for those of you who appreciate the wonderful engineering of the Forth Rail Bridge, this:



Clearly, I did see those things, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to photograph them. However, it was difficult to see or focus on those views because of this:



These are the feet of a tourist who I think had been doing a lot of walking. (The clue was the blisters, which you can't see.) The feet are not pleasant, nor are they appropriate things to put on a seat which I might one day have to sit on. They did not enhance my journey at all. They served only the pure self-indulgence of their owner. If you could have seen them as closely as I did, you would have noticed many unpleasant details about them.

Now, I have a reputation for making my many negative travelling experiences tell a story or make a point of vague relevance to this blog. This is no exception. In fact, I have four points to make, to fill in the gap in Andrew Lownie's education of you (the gap being, if you remember, the all-important advice about writing the right book).

1. Whereas that woman entirely failed to consider what those around her wanted to see, you should, when writing, think of the reader at all times. If the reader would not appreciate something, leave it out. (Or in the case of feet, don't get them out at all.)
   
2. Do not be self-indulgent as a writer: that woman was thinking only of her feet and her own comfort. You do not have that luxury. You have a job to do, and that includes attracting and then keeping your reader.
3. Be appropriate. This does not mean that your book may not contain horrible / gruesome / outrageous things, only that they should only be there when they should be there. That woman was perfectly entitled to remove her shoes, just not there and not then. The art of the writer is to know exactly what word or what detail to reveal and to know how and when.
4. When you include something inappropriate or ill-considered in your writing, you detract from the surrounding beauty of your language. You wreck the view. Don't do it.
   

I had actually almost prepared a very topical and important (naturally) post about writing in a recession, but the recession can now wait till tomorrow, or more likely Saturday.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the really really annoying thing that happened to me today. Suffice it to say that someone is going to find themselves appearing in one of my books very very soon and coming to one of the most appropriately nasty ends that I can imagine. And I can imagine a few.

ARE YOU REALLY REALLY READY TO BE PUBLISHED?

I am about to disappear again for a few days, this time to Paris - yeah, I know, being an author with a book to promote sucks - and I am also aware that a) I have been dilatory with your edification recently and b) I am about to enter a phase of being even more dilatory, as I have to hurl myself into more promotional stuff AND there's been (still is) the bloody Nanowrimo (sorry, Elen, I mean incredibly wonderful Nanowrimo which you kindly organised) and some guest blogs I've promised to do and a list of tasks the length of several arms. No mountains though, or only metaphorical ones.

So, until I come back from Paris (did I say that was where I'm going?) I thought I'd leave you with an excellent website full of sound advice and a particular post within it, which I thought was apt to all of us.

The website (and you should bookmark it, as I'm about to) is Casting the Bones, and thanks to "Sarah" for pointing it out. Robert Gregory Browne is the no-nonsense, successful author and I recommend his advice. I also hope you will look at the craft-honing articles BEFORE the "how to get an agent" ones ... I think he would agree.

The article I want you to think about is Are You Ready to be a Published Writer? There were so many lines in it that had me silently cheering but I particularly liked this: "So don’t be so anxious to get published. Be anxious to hone your craft. Expand your understanding of the process. To write stories that will have editors and producers thinking they have no choice but to buy it." This is exactly the drive of my blog.

We've all had that moment of finishing something and being desperate to send it off NOW because it's FAB and we're WRITERS and need to be READ, NOW, or SOONER if possible. But a) when we look at it a few days later, we should be very glad we didn't send it and b) it is almost certainly not as brilliant to a reader as it felt to us as its writer. When we step back, if we've learnt anything, we'll see those faults and know that there are also more faults that we haven't seen.

We must work to find those faults and improve until our writing really is the best it could be. And also good enough to be read and enjoyed by our intended readers, however many they may be.

This leads on from the interesting conversation in the comments on my recent self-publishing post, because there's so much I didn't have time to say about that, and calm though the opposing reasoning was, I simply wasn't persuaded by it and its sieviness. The reason it leads on is that this time to hone, this need to understand about not being ready to be published, this vast chasm that too often exists between how you are writing now and how you could be writing given good direction, is precisely why self-publishing is a very poor answer for the author in that position. (But a good answer for some other authors.)

Self-publishing tempts the unpublished author to bypass that crucial honing and improving and growing stage - unless you really think that your self-published book is only a practice run and you really don't care whether it's the best you can do, or indeed good enough - and if you don't care, well, er, good luck to you because possibly I don't too much care about that sort of writing or writer either ....

The only sort of writer I care about, and the sort of writer this blog is written for, is the sort of writer who will go to the ends of the earth on hands and knees with a cactus strapped to his back to become a better writer, the best writer you can be. Because nothing else is worth doing, as far as I'm concerned. And granted that "better writer" or even "best writer" is not a finite or objective or box-tickable target, it's the only one I am aiming for.

Yay, crabbit is back! And now is going again ...

From Saturday morning till next Wednesday night, I will be unlikely to get online much, not because they don't have the innernet in Paris (did I say that was where I'm going?) but because I am going to be expected to be working for my baguettes; I've seen my programme from the schools and no minute is left untended, believe me. Even the bits that are not work (and to be very fair, there are many, as they have a decent pace of living over there) are occupied by things like "walk in such and such beautiful garden" or "have coffee in such an such café" or "drink champagne in..." No, sorry, got a bit carried away there: there was no mention of champagne.

Oh, by the way - funny question in one of the school-talks I did this morning (from an eleven-year-old boy, remarkably): "Why aren't you wearing blue boots?" My fame precedes me, clearly.

Au revoir.

DELUSIONS OF ABILITY

I've been thinking. It's kind of all you can do when you're up a mountain, other than wondering how the hell you're going to get down when the cloud has suddenly wrapped itself around your feet and you are on a peak without a piton.

OK, I lie: I wasn't thinking anything interesting at all while on this mountain, but I did need to get that picture into the story somehow. Later on, I will show you the mountain from afar and then you will be seriously impressed and want to examine my calf muscles. (All brand new).

Oh, all right, if you insist:




Yeah, really, me!
Up that mountain thar in the distance.







And again, a tad closer. Just because.




Anyway, now that we've got the fascinating concept of me as a mountaineer out of the way, as I say: I was thinking. I was thinking about people being deluded into thinking they can be published when they are seriously shite. Or sometimes not shite but giving a remarkable impression of being shite by doing everything stupid that could possibly be done by one person in one life-time.

You've seen it yourself, on Somewhere's Got Talent / Dragon's Den / the X-Factor - the utter uselessness of some of the contestants, the ones who are not just quite bad or even pretty rubbish or even pretending to be rubbish just to get on TV, but the ones who long ago crossed the line into madness, the ones who really do think they're the next superstar if only someone would give them a chance. The ones who think they've been held back from stardom by bad luck or the poor judgement of Simon Cowell instead of cringe-making hopelessness.

OK, now this concept is easy: that some wannabe writers, similarly, are utter rubbish. And they are - please do believe me. I have seen the evidence. It is writ in the runes which are passed from editor to editor and agent to agent and even humble author to author and go down in the anals (sic) of ludicrosity. The distance by which some aspiring authors are missing success is the sort of distance it takes light years to cover. You could even say that the length of time it would take them to reach stardom is pretty similar to the length of time it would take them to reach an actual star.

Which is all very well and interesting but not at all pointful for you, who are not numbered in the serried ranks of awfulness. If you were, you wouldn't be reading this blog, I think. You'd have been scared off way before now.

What I want you to consider is other forms of delusion. Delusion such as I too once suffered and which, therefore, is not shameful. Except a bit, in retrospect. Well, quite a lot actually: remember, I was the person who once seriously wrote a covering letter in rhyme. And did a few other things that lack of alcohol prevents me from divulging. I possibly even inserted something silly into an envelope to accompany a submission, but I have happily forgotten this.

But more importantly than that embarrassing silliness, I was deluded. I thought I was better than I was. I thought I was ready to be published. I didn't know that the beauteousness of my prose was of zero interest to a reader if it wasn't hung on a compelling story. Or that my voice was inconsistent except in its pretentiousness. Or that a story about my particular subject had not been written yet for a very good reason: that no one wanted to read it.

Now, the missing link to those photos from my recent Highland trip is this: I was like the people who ran the crap hotel that we stayed in. They were deluded into thinking that they were offering something of quality. They thought that in order to put "locally sourced produce" on the menu, it was enough for a van from Wiltshire Farm Foods to arrive at the door in full view of the guests to deliver the "local" food. Local to Wiltshire, I guess. (For the benefit of my transatlantic friends, Wiltshire is almost as far from the Highlands of Scotland as it is possible to be without getting wet.) They thought that "home comforts" might indeed describe a paper bath mat with a picture of feet, but not enough room on the floor to put it. And that when we pointed out that the cereal bowl was encrusted with brown stuff, it was an adequate explanation to say, with a laugh, "Oh! That'll be the toffee sauce!" (Yeah, well wash it, maybe?) They thought that it was OK to provide a bed with no obvious mattress, so that every time you unthinkingly sat on it you staved in another two vertebrae. And that the sodding Wiltshire Farm Foods van could happily recharge its refrigerator battery all night outside a guest bedroom and that the answer to the bleary complaint from the guests could reasonably be, "Oh! That'll be the freezer lorry!"

And if you haven't got the picture yet, these deluded hoteliers really thought that whatever the shortcomings of their crappy hotel, at least the guests would wake each morning and comfort themselves with the happy thought, "Praise be! There's a Corby trouser press!" Because, if you can't have decent food and a mattress and a double bed big enough for two people, you can at least have a perfect crease in your crimplene trousers.

The point being, caller, that there are aspiring authors out there - and I ask you to search your souls and ask yourselves whether you might be among them - who are making the equivalent mistakes: you're trying really hard, but there are editors and agents somewhere who are doing the equivalent of crunching their vertebra as they clunk down on your heavy prose or bite eagerly on your disappointing, salty, recently-thawed and ready-plated meal .... (The clue to the ready-platedness came in the answer to one guest's request to have a salad instead of veg: "But it comes with veg.")

"It comes with veg" is the equivalent of "My friends have read it and loved it".

"That'll be the freezer lorry" is the equivalent of "This is just a first draft and any mistakes can be sorted during editing."

"At least there's a Corby trouser press!" is the equivalent of "At least there are adjectives. Shame about the plot. And characters, Oh, and voice, pace and style."

Thing is - and here's the main point - there's one thing those deluded idiots should do in order to discover what they're doing wrong: they should go and stay in good quality places. Someone who knows about good hotels and taste and decent fresh food should show them the light and let them imbibe the wonderfulness of a good hostelry (whether simple or luxury: it doesn't matter) and let them see for themselves how it's done. Not just in one trip but in several: see how guests feel comfortable and why not crushing your vertebrae is a happy thing.

And the equivalent for aspiring readers is to read good writing, often, lovingly and admiringly. Any aspiring writer in doubt should ask an expert in their genre what to read and then go out there and read, read, read. Read while working out what is good and wonderful and gripping and powerful about this writing, and work out how this can transfer to your own work and what you might be missing.

See, not being a deluded hotelier is easy if you open your eyes and immerse yourself in the world you want to be part of. Same with not being a deluded writer: don't stop reading, reading, reading all the stuff that's being praised in your genre. Be critical but most of all, enjoy good writing: it's the best way to become a good writer.


It's not easy to write a novel, but then it shouldn't be. Would you want it to be easy?

But, once you've scaled the mountain, the view from the top is seriously worth the effort.

Sorry, that was a corny analogy, but I wanted to show you the pic.


And then there was the dog on the beach, which has absolutely no point in this blog post, but is quite cute:

A LITTLE PRESENT FOR YOU

Hah! that got your attention. No, really, there is a present for you herein.

Two happy things happened to me today. First, I'm proud to say that my 100th follower registered on this blog. (Welcome, Suzette - but you do realise that the rules say that you have to take part in an initiation ceremony? I will let you know what we want you to do, once we've all decided behind your back, OK? Ideas, anyone?)

I almost feel like the Pied Piper with all those followers, but fear not: I have not been paid by agents and publishers to rid their letter-boxes of all unpublished authors; nor am I going to lead you a merry dance into a mountainside and leave you there. Though still as crabbit as ever, I plan to stay with you for much longer, because you are very good company and because I am waiting to hear that you have found a publisher / agent / both and that you are on your way to success. Well, you are on your way to success, we know that, but let's speed it up a bit, hey?

And second, my lovely publishers, Walker Books, sent a seriously cool screensaver as a free download to pass around amongst my teenage readers, but there's no rule that says you have to be a teenager to enjoy nasty iridescent beetles crawling across your screen, so I thought I'd share it with you.

So, if you would like it and/or if you have any offspring / friends / relatives / pupils who would like to have the latest coolness for their computer, then here 'tis. (Unless you're a Mac user, in which case I do have the file but can't see what to do with it.)

I hope you're not going to go all middle-aged on me and say you can't work out how to put it on your computer. Basically, you open the link,**** click on the download button, the thing magically saunters onto your desktop and you select "install", whereupon it asks you a couple of simple questions; then you do nothing at all for a few minutes and then beetles start crawling and smoke appears. Failing that, ask a teenager.

(****Edited to add: Er. not so basic, actually. I have just discovered that this is a TEMPORARY link and will die on about May 6th, and from then the screensaver will be available on the Walker website at www.walker.co.uk)

If you're one of those people who thinks that everything should have an educational point (what management bods apparently now call a "learning") then you can store in your adulty/parenty/teachery brain that the book features a girl who gives away way too much about herself on a social networking site and that this screensaver is not un-akin to but a million times more attractive than what appears on her computer when she unwittingly accepts the attentions of an insect-obsessed stalker. So, if I were to give any kind of message in my books, which I so absolutely wouldn't, it would be Be Safe Online, Kids.

Otherwise and preferably, just enjoy the pretty beetles.

Either the marketing people at Walker were enjoying themselves way too much or else they must quite like me because they've also provided a "viral bug" (it's not as dangerous as it sounds) which you (or a tech-savvy teenager) can put on your (their) phone and send to ... er ... someone. I think you can just right-click the pic and copy it to your desktop, then onto your phone. Or blue-tooth it. I did it so it can't be beyond the bounds of middle-aged possibility.(EDITED to add - this is now a new one, and works better: yes, I know, it just looks blank now but put it on your phone and woah!)


And if you want to know the really clever bit: when you actually put it on your phone, it dances. Yes, really.

Anyway, it was a happy day, which quite made up for the shocking weather. I know this is Britain, and that I am in the Scottish part of it, but really.

WHO KNOWS BETTER? READER OR WRITER?

Interesting piece on BookBrunch here. The woman who button-holed Trevor Dolby is making the same mistake as some unpublished authors - believing that there's some kind of conspiracy amongst agents and publishers not to publish good writing. (Er, hello, can someone please suggest a single sane reason why such a conspiracy might exist????) It's another deluded idiot symptom and will get her nowhere. (Understandable though her frustration is, and I really mean that.)

Such people also seem to think that no agents or publishers would know a good piece of writing if it came up and spat at them. No, sorry, it's we the authors who are the last people to be able to be objective about our own work - though we need to try - and the sooner we accept that the opinion of our desired readers, including the professional and multi-experienced ones, matter more than our own, the sooner we will become published and enjoyed by the reading public.

And here's the thing: all the agents and publishers who rejected me during my now well-documented and shameful 21 years of failing, were RIGHT. And I am even grateful to them. (Though at the time, I'd probably have stuck pins in a few publishers' wax models if I'd been any good at fashioning passable likenesses in wax.) See, I believed I was good enough a writer - which we have to believe, in order to keep going, don't we? And yet at the same time, we also need to recognise that there's something about what we're doing that isn't yet good enough. That's the dilemma, the razor-edge we have to walk along. And all that is why I'm deeply grateful (and not even through gritted teeth) to all of them for not publishing my substandard stuff.

I don't know about you, but much as I desperately need to be published, I more need to be read and enjoyed. We don't write in a vacuum, or even in a nurturing bubble occupied only by our family, undiscerning friends and pets: we write to be read and heard. Don't we? Therefore, we simply have to listen carefully to those who might read and hear us and those who might have a fighting chance of taking our words to the wider audience.

And if no one wants to listen to our words, then we should either shut up or write better.

Woah, crabbit or WHAT today??

TIPS FOR SUBMISSIONS - PART 3 - RULES

For those of you planning a submission to an agent, or wondering why your previous submissions haven't got anywhere yet, here's a quick nudge in the direction of some very useful and common questions and answers on lit agent Rachelle Gardner's blog today. It's also worth looking at other bits of her blog, such as her submission guidelines. Different agents will have slightly different preferences (for example, she is happy for you to submit simultaneously elsewhere, whereas some are not) but it's worth reading lots of different guidelines because then you get a real sense of what agents in general need. You'll see many common themes, the main one being how overwhelmed they get by volume of slush, and how keen they are to be bowled over by a brilliant idea/book.

Your aim when submitting work to any agent or publisher is:

• to make their day far better than they thought it was going to be when they got up and saw that it was raining.

Your aim is NOT:

• to end up way down the slush pile with all the dross written by arrogant fools and deluded idiots (not forgetting the sweetly but hopelessly misguided and also the ones who can actually possibly write but haven't yet written something that someone outside their family would want to read). Because that is a seriously enormous slush pile.
• to make them grind their teeth
• to make them yawn
• to make them wish they were anything but an agent
  

So, how do you make their day? You do this by:

• offering them a proposal which even from the cleanness of the envelope and tidy way you stuck the stamp on, proclaims (but modestly, not in a shouty way) that you are efficient, decent and that you want the process of opening and reading it to be a beautiful one for the agent (or, indeed, publisher)

And by presenting them with a query/synopsis/sample/proposal which:

• shows that you understand the market in which you are writing
• (if fiction) describes a finished book
• is perfectly written and constructed from the first line of the covering letter to the last line of whatever you are including
• presents you as rational, modest, talented, amenable, NICE, intelligent, willing to learn and with a career ahead of you (but doesn't SAY any of these things - "show, don't tell"...)
• is simply a fab idea for a book, written with such a well-controlled and/or (preferably and) fresh voice that the recipient will be droolingly desperate to read the whole thing - that above all is what will brighten their day.
  

Agents get REALLY endearingly excited when they find The Right Book. (They won't tell you what it is before they get it but they know it when they see it. Don't blame them for that - you're exactly the same as a reader.)

Of course, following submission rules is (or should be) the easy part. But you'd be amazed how many writers simply ignore them when submitting their masterpieces. Writing a brilliant book brilliantly is the hard bit. But you'd also be amazed how many people think it's easy. If you think writing is easy, I strongly suggest that you think again, because you almost certainly haven't done it well enough ...

And on that typically crabbit note, I'm off to try to write something myself. In an unusual attempt to be a disciplined writer, I have today made a time-table for myself. A set of rules for the day. Let's see how good I am at following my own rules ... Now, what's the first task? Ah yes, make coffee. That, I can do. Second task? "Write. For an hour. Without looking at the internet." Now that's hard.

But worth it.

PS re WRITERS' RIGHTS

As you may have guessed, I do not need any encouragement to speak about writers' rights. Hold me back, some might say, and often have. If you can bear to listen to me on my soap-box again, please see my long comment beneath the post on Fighting for Writers' Rights.

And thank you to those of you who joined my Facebook group, Fair Reading, after reading that post. I will be finishing my term as Chair of the Soc of Authors in Scotland in August, but I plan to continue riding my hobby horse all over the place long after that.

Those who are (as yet) unpublished may find the idea of writers' rights somewhat hollow or academic - trust me: you need to care, because one day you are going to be published. And if you didn't believe that, you wouldn't be here. So, you need to think about where you stand on your rights, and which ones you are happy to give away.

Funny, when I was at university and had just come up somewhat painfully against my college principal for organising some kind of protest (I can't even remember what it was about now - probably the offness of the milk at breakfast, which was doubtless the most serious issue I could think of), she said, "You know, Nicola, I can just see you becoming one of those angry trade union leaders." I suppose what she meant was she knew I was going to turn into a crabbit old bat. But I am a well-meaning crabbit old bat.

I'll return to advice on writing better and getting published soon, but meanwhile I'm off to train for all the chocolate I am going to be forced to eat on Sunday. Someone's got to do it.

Everything you need to know about getting published

Not quite sure why I blog at all when there are blogs as good as James Moran's around. If you're an unpublished author, wondering what you're doing wrong, please, please, read it and follow the advice in it. Your future fame, fortune and everything else depend on it.

The only things he fails to mention are boots, chocolate and sparkly wine, but I reckon he has all the other publishing essentials down there. Oh, and he forgets to tell you not to put toffees or photos of you naked in with your submission, but he's probably never met anyone stupid enough to do that. Whereas I have.

Thanks to Daniel Blythe for pointing me towards James' blog. Daniel is another writer who knows what he's talking about. He earns a living as a writer, so he must be doing it right. Gestures of admiration.

Well done, guys! See, you don't need to wear sexy boots to give writing advice. On the other hand, maybe you do wear sexy boots. Wouldn't like to make gender-stereo-typical assumptions.

OK, woman, quit while you're ahead.

WRITING A SYNOPSIS

I hate writing synopses. There are two types of synopsis, or reasons you might write one - let's call them Synopsis Situations - and I hate both. Equally. To be honest, I hate them so much that I've even postponed writing this blog post about them. But eventually, we authors have to get tough with ourselves.

Talking about getting tough, someone has told me I go on about chocolate too much. So I won't go on about it at all any more. I will continue to eat it, however, if that's OK with you. Not that you have any say in the matter.

Synopsis Situations

1. when you've written the book and you're trying to sell it to agent / publisher
2. when you haven't written the book and you are trying to plot it out, to give yourself something to follow
3. yes, I know I said two, but this is a minor third, which I'm not going to treat as properly separate, but I want to stop you all piling in and saying, "What about ..., you ignorant woman?" It is: when you're already with a publisher and you're trying to explain your next idea to your friendly editor, hoping for a contract before writing the book.
   

If you're an unpublished author, or at least you don't have a friendly publisher lined up for your WIP (Work in Progress), you will need to become adept at No.1 so that's what we're going to talk about. No.2 is a very useful tool, one which I should make much greater use of, but there are no special skills involved and no rules to follow. It's just a matter of sitting down at your desk instead of vacuuming behind the fridge.

Trouble with synopses is that they reduce your beautiful words to something much plainer. They can seem stark and reveal all your flaws (which is actually one of the reasons why they are so useful.) They are your glorious self stripped bare and made to stand in front of the cameras in an Edwardian swimming-costume under bright lights with no make-up. You're shuddering, I know you are. It's like being in one of those programmes - you know, How To Look Good Naked (shut your eyes or get drunk?) or Ten Years Younger (and $40,000 of cosmetic and dental surgery later, as well as very clever make-up).

But to continue the anology about as far as it will go, if you were on one of those before and after programmes and had to stand there virtually naked and actually frightening the wood-lice, you would be doing certain things to make sure you looked as OKish as possible, wouldn't you? I mean you would not really be letting your abdominal muscles slide earthwards - you'd be holding them in; you'd put your shoulders back, chin up, lips gently smiling.

Actually, what you'd be doing would be trying to show that IF you had clothes and make-up and corsetry on, you'd look sensational. Your synopsis, despite being your story naked, needs to do this. It needs to stand with confidence, poise, structure and form. Use those muscles - they're in there somewhere. Or they were once.

In a minute I'm going to direct you to some articles and blogs which will give lots of advice. Thing is, some of it conflicts. So, I want to distill the essential points, so that you can then decide what to do with the conflicting stuff.

Essential Rules

1. It must be short. Some publishers and agents specify either max 1 or max 2 pages. Don't cheat with this - a page, like a page of your actual MS, must be double-spaced, decent sized font, with normal margins. A shorter synopsis is preferable to a longer one, and if it's too long it will really mark you down. So, edit and pare, edit and pare, edit and pare.
   
2. It is not a teaser - so, DO say what happens in the end. (But if you are writing a synopsis for your website - Synopsis Situation 4, I guess - do NOT give away the ending. SS4 is entirely different from SS1-3.)
   
3. You give, in the order in which they appear in the book, all the main events. Leave out minor characters, and small incidents. Distill to the most important elements of the story.
4. It should retain a flavour of the book's style and voice. Don't just say "this happened and then that happened and eventually the guy dies."
   
5. It should contain no GPS (Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling) errors. It should be nicely laid out and easy to read.
6. The present tense works well for synopses, but it's not a rule, despite being in a list entitled Essential Rules.
   

Here are some resources for you.
Sadly, the other day I came across a brilliant blog piece about an author's search for how to write the perfect synopsis, and I a) wrote a comment on it b) made a note of the blog address and c) lost the note. I knew I wasn't eating enough chocolate. (Sorry.) So, if that blogger happens to see this, could she please identify herself by commenting below and I'll add the URL? I have a feeling it was someone who follows this blog, but I'm not sure.

USEFUL RESOURCES

AbsoluteWrite has a very useful piece here by Lee Masterson The only thing I slightly disagree with is the bit about not asking open questions. I agree that they should be under-used rather than over-used, because you are supposed to be explaining your book rather than simply enticing (which a blurb would do), but I don't know of agents / editors who would mark you down for using the odd open question, if that's relevant to the story-line. Lee's point about then needing to answer the open question is a good one though.

A Literary Agent's tips (from the US) Nathan Bransford seems to have had the same problem as me getting this blog piece done. But he's done it and it's very succinct.

Finally, I came across this one from Marg Gilks and it's excellent. She makes some important distinctions between types of synopsis and strikes the right balance between blurb and outline. (Small warning though - it was written in 2001 and although I hadn't realised that anything much would have changed synopsis-wise in that time, there are two things which I should clarify: first, DEFINITELY double spacing, please, and second, DON'T be tempted to do a ten-pager; two is really the most you should do, unless you've written Anna Karenina, in which case leave out the farming stuff and that should help a lot.)

Anyway, I have to say that Marg Gilks has converted me. I am now positively looking forward to writing a synopsis. In fact, I am am going to engineer a Synopsis Situation. Bring it on.

On another note entirely, since this post has been on the teachy side rather than the chatty side and since you have been working very hard, and since you need an explanation as to why I haven't posted for a few days, I thought you might like another funny story from the mad world of doing author events. So, do read my "My Brain Causes Airport Security Incident" story here.

Meanwhile, the deadline for my Worst Query letter competition is about to close and I am going to spend the afternoon re-reading the entries and trying to decide. You have produced some absolute classics - well done and thank you for some brilliant laughs! I hope to bring you the winning entries in the next few days.

WHY WASN'T I PUBLISHED FOR SO LONG?

What, you mean apart from the fact I wasn't good enough?

Well, time I explained this, I suppose, after several weeks of appearing to know it all. Because the truth is that once I knew a lot less than I do now. Obvious, really.

First, for those of you who have missed the tragic enormity of this failure, it took me twenty-one years of failing to get a novel published. At the time, that was more than half my life, and certainly all of my adult life. Yes, ALL my adult life failing to achieve the one thing I really wanted: to be a novelist. That's some bruising failure. And bruised I was. Badly. It affected my health and happiness and my sense of self. Luckily (for them) few people knew about my constant attempts at fame and fortune. Unluckily (for him) my husband did. He's still here. Still waiting for me to earn a lot of money, I guess. I'm trying.

OK, I did get some "stuff" published during that time, but it wasn't enough. Home learning books (which have done very nicely financially and which allowed me to say I was a published writer) and stacks of magazine articles. Oh, and talking of doing nicely financially: I regularly get money from a magazine I wrote for ten years ago which keeps using my articles and pays me every time, with me sitting at home doing sod all - would you believe that today I actually sold "36th rights" for three articles?? This means they have used them 36, yes 36 times. God, who needs to be a novelist when you get paid 36 times for something you can't even remember writing?

And there was the odd moment of relative success (relative to abject failure), like appearing in Reader's Digest with my photo and actually being recognised on a bus, and a story winning an expensive pen in the Ian St James awards, and a couple of times almost making it through an aquisitions meeting. But almost is not really good enough, is it?

Anyway, reasons for my abject failure:

1. I thought I was better than I was. I just didn't know what mistakes I was making. This was in pre-blog days, when people like me (as in me now, not me then - me then would have been pretty useless) weren't sharing and there were few relevant books and nice helpful things telling me what a load of shocking errors I was making.
2. I wasn't thinking of my readers. Couldn't give a toss about them frankly - yep, it was all for me. Moi, moi, moi. Self-indulgent beauteous prose, right up my own backside, just gorgeous (but over-written) plotless stuff that gave me shivers of gratuitous pride, and gave any potential reader a severe case of "where the hell's the plot gone or going and I mean why should we CARE about your drivellingly unlikely character who murdered her husband just because of some arcane psychological problem to do with Samuel Johnson which we are supposed to guess through the boring fog of your however-erudite turgidity?
3. I hadn't written the right book. As in a book with a concept which would grab the agent / publisher with its stupendous hook, draw them into a tightly-written and either original or genre-specific plot, written by an author exuding wisdom and knowledge of the market. (Actually, I thought woman who murders husband because he's fat was quite good hook-wise, but hey, that was then.) See here for my post on this topic. (Not murders of fat husbands: I mean writing the right book.)
   
4. I wasn't even following the rules of submissions to publishers, despite the fact that I roll my eyes at you lot for sending toffees to agents and being similarly foolish. In fact, once I even .... but no, I can't tell you that. It's too embarrassing. (For rules for submission, see the Writers and Artists Yearbook, publishers' websites and relevant labels on this blog. There is no excuse for not following these rules - there wasn't then, and there isn't now. Well, unless you actually want to beat my 21-year record.)
   

And so followed the rejection letters. Because yes, I've had a few. There were the occasional ones that said lovely things but which gave suggestions contradicting previous ones (like "we feel it's too short" after "we feel it's too long" and "the plot is somewhat avant garde" after "the plot is somewhat traditional"); there were the "not right for our list" ones (unhelpful but true); there was my favourite (though not at the time) which consisted of my rubbish covering letter with the word NO! scrawled across it in pencil and returned to me in an envelope without a stamp even though I HAD included return postage; and there was the one which arrived back the day after I'd posted it, something which defies the laws of both postage and Newtonian motion and I can only assume that the postman was an Orion employee sent to destroy the slush pile before it occurred.

So, if you are now in the position I was in then - one of soul-searing awfulness, when you feel that life will be utterly meaningless if you don't get that contract, when your whole belief in yourself is shaken daily - I feel your pain, I really do.

That not being good enough thing? In a way it's true, I wasn't good enough. And maybe ... sorry ... you aren't either. But maybe, by listening and learning and improving, you can become good enough. But remember too that it's not just about being good enough - it's about writing the right book at the right time and sending it to the right publisher at the right time. I know, I've said it before. I could even become boring. (If you're new to this blog or need a reminder, use the label "right book" on the list of labels to the right.)

The trick, and the one which this blog tries to help with, is to work out whether:

1. you are good enough but haven't written the right book yet
2. you are good enough and have written possibly the right book really beautifully but haven't sent it to the right person in the right way
3. you aren't good enough but could become so, with time, practice and/or help
   
4. you aren't good enough and won't ever be published satisfactorily
   

Thought for the day: actually, a lot of published writers aren't good enough either. Some of you may well be better than some of them. It all boils down to what a publisher thinks will sell. And I've already done a post on Why is crap published? But you're not writing crap, are you? Please say you're not. Though I have to be brutally honest and say that if you ask any agent or editor they will tell you that the vast bulk of the slush pile is absolute utter crap, of a meaningfully finger-in-the-throat boggingness.

After that bit of brutality and after all these weeks of listening to me seem to know it all, you deserve to know that embarrassing thing I did. I think I can trust you now. Please don't laugh.

Here goes. Deep breath. Will you still respect me? I was young then. Young and really stupid.

The thing is ...

I
once
wrote
a
covering
letter
in
rhyme
...

People! Don't do it!

BEWARE OF PRAISE

Praise is very like chocolate:

• it tastes great at the time
  
• too much of it is (regrettably) bad for you
  
• it (regrettably) needs to be balanced with the sensible stuff
• once tasted, you want more and more of it
• people give it to each other to show love, to bribe them, to make friends, and because giving and receiving are linked
  
• you should sometimes reject it
• it has been scientifically proven to be beneficial to mood

Pause to go and eat some , just so's I can remember. Method-writing again.

Anyway.

So, we all need it. Praise, I mean. But actually, it's not like chocolate because ALL chocolate is Truth Incarnate (except mint flavoured white chocolate, which is pure evil and doesn't deserve to be called chocolate) but some praise is False and Must Be Rejected Forthwith.

And I don't mean that it's false because the person delivering the praise is lying. Just that they're wrong, irrelevant and not worth listening to. Sorry. No really. I am. I don't like saying this. But believing that sort of praise is the worst favour you can do yourself as a writer. Would I lie to you after all this time?

Praise from someone who doesn't know what the hell they're talking about is worse than mint flavoured white chocolate. Or those pale ones from Marks & Spencer that have absolutely no chocolate in them at all and make me gag. Oh and omigod M&Ms - I nearly walked out of the cinema when my husband was eating M&Ms. All that vacant crunching and crappy plastic smell and not a hint of genuine cocoa. Am I showing myself up as a chocolate snob? Well, in that case fine, but maybe I 'm a praise snob too.

You should become a praise snob. If you really want to hone your writing and get published, learn to do two things with praise:

1. store it in the cosy bit of your brain to boost you when you have no chocolate
   
2. analyse it, judge it, assess it, and be HONEST about it (Is that 4 things? Call me generous.) And sometimes, reject it.
   

Here's my fool-proof guide to assessing praise, in the context of "Is This Praise That Is In The Slightest Bit Relevant To My Getting Published?" Of course, praise about your hair-style, dress sense, new lipstick colour or new car is entirely outwith the remit of this blog, and I would have to charge a fee for such extension of my adjudicatory powers. Essentially, all writing-related praise should be thoroughly - if reluctantly - discarded (after, of course, thanking the kind donor politely and not actually saying that you've been told to ignore them by a crabbit old bat from Scotland) if it emanates from the mouths (or keyboards) of the following - oh, and may I emphasise that as individuals these are all often perfectly lovely people, just that they're not qualified to praise your writing in any kind of practical sense, though they may be accidentally correct?

• your parents, grandparents, children - other blood relatives may very occasionally give acceptable advice, but only if they are not:
• members of your writing group - oh god, I'm sorry, now I've really blown it. Sorry, guys: it's that you've got issues that get in the way. Like, you're really wanting to boost the self-esteem of the writer, and it's lovely of you, it really is, but you're too psychologically, morally and ethically connected, (and you may be actually in their house and drinking their wine) and it's not possible for you to be objective (unless you're really cool, and I don't mean cool-trendy); OK, I relent: occasionally your writing group may have a point but ... will you know when that point arrives??
  
• other unpublished writers, unless they have publishing credentials, in which case listen to them (unless they fall into the blood-relly category)
  
• anyone who doesn't have publishing credentials or some other reason to Know
  
• especially the above if they're sober - alcohol is a great honesty boost
  
• your friend
• your dog
• anyone on a blog
• anyone on Amazon
• anyone posting an anonymous review, as it's probably your friend, dog, parent, publisher

Look, I know you hate me now - and we were getting along so well. I KNOW praise is important - god, I'm delicate enough that I need it too. I'm absolutely not saying ignore all praise: I'm saying assess it. I'm saying be honest with yourself. Some praise is fab but some is simply air. Poisonous air at that.

Ask yourself two questions:

1. Does this person actually genuinely know what they're talking about?
2. Is this person giving the praise entirely out of the blue and not because I happen to have put them on the spot by asking them for an "honest opinion"?
   

This post has come about because I see people being held back from publishing potential by clutching at empty praise and ignoring the much rarer really constructive criticism, which could actually improve their writing and pull them towards genuine success. Of course I love it when people say nice things to me but I grow much more from the negative points - the girl who asked me why I wrote such long chapters, the comments from readers who didn't like a certain ending - and then the praise from the specific people who I most respect because they KNOW and they are HONEST and I DIDN'T ASK THEM FOR AN OPINION.

There are people I know who are renowned for being honest in their criticism and those are the ones I work hardest to please because I know they won't say it's good if it's not. I so respect people with the guts to be honest - and I admit that I'm not one of them. (You surprised??) I know that occasionally when a friend has written something I didn't really rate, I've said some nice things. That's the problem, it's so hard not to. People say, "Be honest," but they don't mean it ...

The worst places are some online communities and forums. You see people going on-line and off-loading and everyone piles in with all the oh dahlings, and poor you, and don't worry WE know you're fab, dahling. When they haven't even read the thing that's been rejected. And of course it's lovely and kind and generous and right in lots of ways but in terms of becoming published it's so so so detrimental.

I feel really bad after this, but I'll have to steal myself and click "Publish". I really don't mean you to reject all praise but a) don't go seeking it because if you ask for an honest opinion from a friend/colleague/equal it will be highly unlikely to be entirely honest and if not entirely honest then somewhat pointless (except in a chocolately sort of way) and b) when you get praise, consider this: that if you accept praise, logically you should equally accept the negative stuff. Such as the rejections by professionals ...

And now I really am going to wimp out: you're all fabulous, dahlings. Think about it - how does that sound?

Perhaps I should more constructively say: hold all praise briefly to your heart and then let it go and focus on improving your writing.

Before I go, I should also pass you over to a post on How Publishing Really Works a while back, which illustrates this very beautifully and much more pithily than my typically over-long rant has. (Oops, Jane, that sounds like praise.)

DEFINE A TEENAGE NOVEL

OK, so two posts in a row about teenage fiction is hardly balanced, but then I never made any claim to be balanced and any time I'm asked to walk along a white line I find myself becoming suspiciously unbalanced. Besides, your comments and interest in the subject were really all the excuse I needed, if I needed any excuse to talk about one of my pet subjects, which I don't.

Do we need to define a teenage novel in order to write one?
Some teenage authors whom I respect claim not to be able or wish to define or even particularly think about what a teenage novel is when they write one. Others are with me, enjoying trying to pin it down without restricting it, and trying to reach a level of understanding that helps us identify with our readers as perfectly as possible. The former authors prove that you don't have to. But I think those authors are very few and far between and happen to write books which happen to be teenage in tone simply because those happen to be the books they want to write.

For the rest of us who dare to tread the tight-rope between writing a great story from the heart and writing a great story that will hit specific readers in the heart, and for those of us who want to understand our market, we need some analysis and some knowledge.

PLEASE NOTE: a teenager, like any other reader, is perfectly entitled to read and enjoy ANY book. When I talk about "teenage novels" I don't mean "novels that teenagers often enjoy". I mean "novels aimed specifically at teenagers" (but which other readers may indeed enjoy).

It would help if you first read my last post - COMMON MISTAKES WHEN WRITING FOR TEENAGERS. In fact, without it you won't understand what I'm about to say, especially about safety-nets. Yes, safety-nets - essential tools for writing for young people.

A perfect illustration
If you are prepared to borrow or buy three books, I can show you with absolute clarity what makes a teenage book a teenage book. A quick read of the first few chapters of these three books will illustrate all I am about to say. Without reading the books, however, you'll still get a pretty good gist of what I mean from what follows. All three start with a young person being bullied or set upon at or near school, which is one reason they make a great comparison:

Bad Girls by Jacqueline Wilson
Malarkey by Keith Gray
The Illumination of Merton Browne by JM Shaw

Bad Girls is not a teenage book - for a start, the protagonist is too young. The language is simplifed, with short sentences and gentle vocabulary, and there is a great deal of protection by adults. You can see the mesh of the safety-net. It's not particularly relevant to our topic except that it's when you then read Malarkey that you see the great leap that the reader must take, both in terms of topic and safety-net distance, to go from one book to the next. Bearing in mind that the reader of Bad Girls may well be 10 or 11 but that an 11/12 year old could easily be reading and enjoying Malarkey, and you see the leap the reader has made in a very short theoretical time. The main character in Malarkey is 16ish, which, according to the "rules" of writing for young people means that our intended readership is up to 14/15.

But then consider The Illumination of Merton Browne. There is a level of violence (extreme domestic abuse) which goes beyond what we'd be able or probably want to offer teenagers. There's a total absence of safety net. There is a great deal of swearing. The age of the character is interesting too - at the time of writing he has left school and is thinking back to his childhood, relating events which happened mostly around his eleventh birthday, and much of the initial action takes place as he arrives at secondary school, aged eleven. A teenage book would not normally be this retrospective: it would normally take place during the relevant teenage years of the reader (although earlier episodes might well be related) and in fact cover a very small part of those years. So, by having the main character an adult looking back to being mostly eleven, we already skew it for the teenage reader and make it not a teenage book.

However, it's a book which many older teenagers might like - if they could get their hands on it, which they won't in a school library in the UK or US or Australia or anywhere else I can think of. unless the librarian really wants to lose his/her job.

Why have teenage books anyway?
Ooh, I could write a whole post on this, and have already written about it in the Scotsman, but I see they have put it very annoyingly onto their "premium pages" and I'm sure you don't want to pay for it. Anyway, maybe another day. Consider simply that some people still argue that teenage books are unnecessary because readers should do what "we always did", ie go straight from kids' books to adult books. Thing is, (amongst other things), adult books have changed in the last 20-30 years and you simply cannot go from Bad Girls to Merton Browne. Or at least not without experiencing severe trauma on the way.

What you said
Some of you posted comments about eg whether Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books were teenage or not. DanielB and anonymous / tbrosz were talking about whether something was "quite right" / felt properly teenage in those and other stories which we might have thought were teenage. I haven't read those Pratchett books but I have always thought of him as one of those writers who isn't a teenage writer but who writes books that many teenagers love. I'm guessing that it's the "adult perspective" of the story that you are referring to and have noticed. Yes, in my view this would be something which would make them "not deliberately teenage books". And it's once you've identifued the "teenageness" or otherwise that (I think) you can fully understand what teenage really is. And you clearly have!

Another one to think about is perhaps Doctor Who - much loved by teenagers for generations but (you'd agree??) not exactly "teenage"? Like Pratchett? And Children of the Stones?

Which I guess brings me to my attempt at a definition, granted that all definitions break down when you start to pick at their edges, and that there will be exceptions, and that books are just books forchristsake and why should they have to be pigeon-holed ...

The "definition"
I see a teenage novel as a story with a teenage character(s) at the centre, written from a teenage viewpoint, which explores a situation which teenage readers often fear, aspire to, dream about or experience, and which provides an emotional connection to themselves as teenagers now. It has no visible boundaries or safety-nets and may be frightening, cutting-edge, brutally honest, shocking or sad, (but doesn't have to be) but in fact there are boundaries of acceptability and hope:

"it takes them to the edge but will not throw them over."
That's my definition anyway.

Of course, I can't shut up when I should so I feel obliged to give a few extra "rules", some of which I touched on in the previous article but which bear repeating:

• the teenage characters find their own solutions because the story is about them and not the adult secondary characters. Get the adults out of the way. Kill them if necessary (preferably before the book starts, or at least before we get to care)
  
• though some teenage novels are deep and some are shallow (as with adult books), the language does not patronise by trying to be simple
• although the voice is teenage, this does not mean you have to sound like a teenager - see my post on voice. The voice has to be appropriate, a voice they'd like to listen to. ie not a teacher, parent, middle-aged person, sad git, kid
• the protagonist is usually a bit older than the intended readership (this applies to writing for younger children too)
  
• no message, remember - or at least not an in your face one. You're a writer not a teacher.
  
• the pace is likely to be faster and tighter than in adult writing
• a teenager (see my book Blame My Brain for a defence and explanation of the details of this, and for an entertaining read, and to save your sanity if you happen to share your living quarters with a teenage specimen) may be 11 years old, but by the age of 15/16 is off your readership radar
  
• the writer must be aware that the level of literary criticism of plot, structure, language, themes to which the book will be subjected by the young reader will be intense - if you think you're writing for kids and that kids don't know how to tell you what's wrong with your book, you're in for a big shock!

So, Amy-Jane, I don't know if this answers your questions, and the others who contacted me off-blog! In my opinion, yes, you do need to know whether your book is for teenagers or not, but you could be lucky and have pitched it perfectly anyway ...

Daniel and Jane - re the 70s series the Children of the Stones, it's worth remembering too that teenage fiction really had only just got going at this time, all in the US - with SE Hinton's The Outsiders and Paul Zindell's The Pigman (God, that's brilliant and devastating in a simple way that only teenage writing can be) both in the late 60s, and then the fabulously dark Robert Cormier - OMG I am The Cheese* - from the 70s. He, incidentally, was edited by my main editor. (Main? See, I'm so rubbish I need more than one ...). Anyway, I guess the rules and possibilities of teenage / YA fiction were so new by that time that adults still very much ruled the roost. Whereas now, we know who's in charge, don't we?

*title of book, not an existential statement

One other point - teenage or YA? YA is more a US term, though we often use it in the UK too. To be honest, no difference is usually implied between the two terms, though sometimes YA refers to a slightly older teenager, but I think this distinction makes it too complicated and unnecessarily pigeon-holey. Outside the book world, young adult refers to 18-25s (eg in medical terminology) so it can be confusing for people outside when we talk about YA.

In the last post I said you had to be able to reel off at least ten favourite teenage authors or books and some of you enthusiastically came up with your own lists (full marks to you). Well, of course, I have a few more because you can't keep a keen reader down:

• John Marsden's Letters from the Inside
• Alice Kuipers' Life on the Refrigerator Door (though you'll need a lot of chocolate to get your life back on track after either of those)
• Adele Geras' Ithaka - nothing to do with the fact that she reads this blog; I'd just forgotten how much I'd liked it and it's very different from the dark cold ones on my previous list. Adele writes books for many different ages but Troy and Ithaka, which fit my criteria for teenage novels, are my favourite.
  

And now I'd probably better stop talking about teenage books before the rest of you disappear. Next, we'll have How To Be a Lovely Publishable Author. Or something. And relatively soon I'll be able to tell you what topics and dates I'm doing talks on in the Edinburgh Book Festival. You never know, I might just be doing one on teenage writing, so then I'll be able to rabbit on for a whole hour. And there'll certainly be one on How To Make a Publisher Say Yes ... Just think, you could actually come and see my boots in real life.

Have a lovely weekend. I had a near death (not exaggerating) incident on the motorway yesterday and made my first ever 999 call, from a stationary and exceptionally vulnerable position in the middle of an intersection between the UK's two biggest motorways (yes, I know, nothing compared with US motorways but they are Big To Us), having been hit by a lorry which didn't stop to see that it had knocked us off the road. So I am planning to count my blessings for being alive. I think wine and chocolate may well be necessary in extra quantities to get me back to a normal mental place.

By the way, if you ever see a car stopped in an incredibly stupid place, risking being smashed to pieces by speeding cars from six lanes of two motorways, I would ask you to consider that it might not be there on purpose. Some of the drivers that passed us clearly had not worked this out, judging from the way they hooted their horns at us and shook their fists.

Pah! Give me teenagers any day.