Writing Advice Wednesday: turn your novel into a short story.

(I am seeing how many silly "day of the week" themes I can come up with before someone objects. Maybe you guys are not paying attention because it's August. Maybe you like the silly.) 

The fabulous Charlie Jane Anders at io9.com has an unusual suggestion on how to revise your novel: once you've finished your first draft, try rewriting the novel as a short story. 

Why would you want to do this? There are a few reasons. For one thing, this allows you to see more clearly what the main arc of your story is. For another, it's a great way to make sure that the things you've decided are subplots are actually subplots — and that you haven't somehow elevated a subplot to "main plot" status while keeping the main plot squished into the space of a subplot. Paring away all the subplots, more or less completely, lets you see what's left. But most of all, this is a way to convince yourself that your protagonist(s) and your story are really epic and perfect as they are — and convincing yourself is half the battle, when it comes to revision.

I'm intrigued. Anyone out there want to give this a shot and report back? I'd be glad to host a guest post on the subject.

What other revision techniques have you tried? Here are some favorites of mine:

-Go through the manuscript and highlight all the dialogue tags ("she said"). Delete as many as you can without sacrificing clarity. 

-Read it out loud, to yourself, to your pets, to your partner. To a tape recorder if you're really brave. If it sounds clunky, fix it till it doesn't sound clunky any more.

-Storyboard the entire arc of the novel, scene by scene. What's getting too much "screen time"? What's not getting enough? Does anything feel repetitive, viewed through this "lens?" 

Yuuuuuup.

The publishing process in GIF form. 

Monday morning thought.

"You never have to change anything you got up in the 

middle of the night to write." 

-Saul Bellow

Fridaydream: libraries.

I've always wanted a huge, wood-paneled library: the kind with a ladder that slides around the room and shelves that are twice my height. Not terribly practical in earthquake country, but this is fantasy territory, so the practicality is kind of irrelevant.

Some of the libraries in this slideshow would suit me just fine.

How about you? Do you dream of shelves full of leather-or-pleather-bound hardcovers with deckled edges? Are you plotting to keep your entire library on your Kindle/iPad/Nook/Kobo?

Rachelle Gardner's advice on dealing with impatience

A lot of thoughtful advice here from Rachelle Gardner at Books and Such Agency, on dealing with impatience.

I talked briefly yesterday about agents being slow sometimes. Well, unfortunately, that often holds true for the entirety of the "traditional publishing" industry. Writers have a lot of options that they didn't have a few years ago, but it's important to make choices that are best for you, that will further your career-- and not just leaping on whatever opportunity comes your way because you want it now now now.

I've had a number of queries in the past year or two from people offering me the second book in a planned trilogy, where they've already self-published the first. Please do not do this. Self-publish if you wish; certainly there have been a number of terrific success stories in that arena in the past few years. But unless your self-published work is flying off the shelves, virtual or otherwise, it's going to be nearly impossible to get a publisher interested in a series that's already underway.

Maybe you tried self-publishing and it wasn't for you. Fair enough! It's a lot of work, and not everyone enjoys the self-promotional aspects of it. Maybe you didn't sell as many copies as you hoped, and would rather give traditional publishing a shot. That's fine too. But when you offer me the second book in a trilogy, I find myself with two concerns:

-the writing isn't strong enough to attract publisher interest (this is an unfair assumption, I'll grant you, but one of the things everyone loves about self-publishing is that the barriers to entry are lower.)

-the writer wanted an agent and a publisher all along, but was too impatient to jump through the industry hoops. Agents get really good at "reading the tea leaves" from a query letter; I'm trying to suss out as much information as I can about what you might be like to work with. If you thought query response times were too slow, wait till you find out how long it takes your publisher to get your book into stores. You're going to get frustrated, and then some, and you're likely to be somewhat harder to work with as a result.  (Scroll down to "Sixthly" in Neil Gaiman's commencement address here, for some more thoughts on this point.)

If you're in this exact situation, where you've self-published part of a series and would now like an agent or a traditional publisher, here's my advice: start another series. Let everybody-- agent, publisher, readers-- feel like they got in on the ground floor.

What's your strategy for dealing with impatience? How do you make the waiting easier?

Eleven reasons to start your next novel.

1. You're querying agents. Congratulations! As we've talked about before, this is a distinct stage in your career, worthy of celebration. But here's the thing: agents can be slow, and this process can take forever. Years. (If you've got a horror story, share it in the comments. Don't name names, please!) I know from talking to my authors that this stage-- the waiting game-- can be incredibly painful, because it feels like your most cherished dream (and your novel! your baby!) is now in someone else's hands. Start the next book. If I love the project you queried me about, I'm going to ask you what's next, because I'm looking to build your career, not just sell one book. If you're midway through your next book when you get The Call, you'll have something great to tell me about.

2. Your novel is on submission to publishers. So now you've got an agent on your team, or maybe you've taken matters into your own hands and are submitting the novel to publishers who don't require that their submissions are agented. Again, this is a stage worthy of celebration-- but again, it can feel like everything is in someone else's hands. Take your mind of the submission process, since there's not much you can do at this point, and start another novel. Best case scenario: you've got the next one underway when your publisher wants to make the next deal; worst case scenario: the one on submission doesn't sell, but you're hard at work on a new novel so you can try again soon.

3. You've stalled out on your WIP. Opinions vary on the efficacy of multitasking. (That was maybe the worst sentence I've ever written, sorry.) Some people like to focus on one task at a time, seeing it through to completion without so much as thinking about the next task. Some people, myself among them, prefer to have a lot of different things going at once and toggle between tasks when they get bored or need a break. If you're stuck on a tough scene in your work in progress, open a new Word document, or take out a new notebook, and start playing around with something new. The break from the WIP may mean you come back to it with fresh eyes, and that tough scene might not feel so tough anymore.

4. The WIP is fine, but your new idea is noisy. Now, I don't want you doing this if you're on deadline-- if you've promised the manuscript to your publisher by a given date, please move heaven and earth to keep to that schedule. But if your schedule is a little more flexible than that, give the new idea a chance to breathe. You never know which of your manuscripts will turn out to be The One.

5. You've got writer's block. Change your usual writing spot-- take your laptop to the kitchen table instead of sitting at your usual desk. Try writing by hand if you usually type everything. Try typing if you usually write by hand. Steal a plot from Shakespeare or a fairy tale or Jane Austen. Don't worry about whether it's any good. Just start writing.

6. The novel's been accepted for publication. Congratulations! Not only have you sold the book, but your editor's told you that your revisions look great and they're sending the manuscript for copyediting and typesetting. It's pretty much out of your hands at this point. Start the next one before you get too busy promoting the book's publication and obsessing over its Amazon sales ranking.

7. You're scared to start. Start.

8. You've done six books' worth of research. If you're the research-y type, it's never going to feel like enough research. Just dive in already. I promise you can go back and look at more primary source material if you really need it along the way.

9. You're revising your WIP. One of my authors and I had a discussion last week about how the writing brain and the revising brain are two different, well, brains. I think shaking up your processes can be really good for your creativity-- for both the manuscript you're revising and the one you're just starting.

10. You've just self-published your latest. Congratulations! Time to start the next one. One of the upsides and the downsides of self-publishing is that everything moves so much faster; to build the largest possible fanbase, I think you'll find you need to write faster, too.

11. Because you'll never run out of excuses not to. 

So what's your next book going to be about?

When is it time to start your next book?

Today. Right now. What are you waiting for?

(Okay, okay. I'll go into detail on this for tomorrow's post. Meanwhile, feel free to use the comments section to lay out all your excuses for not starting your next manuscript.)