Fridaydream: the movie version

If (when) they make a Hollywood blockbuster or cool indie film of your book, who's going to be the star?

Thursday wishlist

This is one of the quietest weeks of the year in publishing; when I can concentrate, I'm trying to work my way through the backlog of queries. Here are some of the categories I'm actively looking for right now:

-commercial women's fiction, or literary/commercial women's fiction (also sometimes called "book club books")

-multi-generational family sagas

-stories about female friendships (I'd especially love a book that traces a group of friends over a couple of decades)

-historical romance, especially a Regency romance series with a great sales hook

-paranormal romance, especially shapeshifters

-contemporary romance, especially a series with lots of quirky secondary characters (think Gilmore Girls)

-character-driven historical fiction

-stories with a crafty angle, especially knit/crochet, quilting, or a character who makes his or her own clothes

-likeable heroines (I'll have much, much more to say on this soon)


Any terms you'd like me to explain in a future post? Let me know in the comments!

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?