S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 149

Jump Into Journaling

Journals and notebooks have been my daily writing companions since I was a teen.  In addition to PBW, I keep a personal journal, at least three novel notebooks, one or two series bibles, a photo album, an art project book and a quilting diary.  Now and then I'll also break out my current venting journal (for anger management), my belief & prayer journal (ditto) or my idea binder to contain the overflow.  They're generally messy, overstuffed volumes of things that matter only to me; catch-alls for my creative work and anything else lingering on my mind.  The only exceptions are the journals I write for other people now and then; I try to keep those a little neater for the recipient. 

I think regular journaling or notebooking is a good habit for a writer to develop.  I constantly refer to my novel notebooks and series Bibles as they're invaluable repositories of story history, especially when I'm working on a lengthy series.  As series writers know it's not always possible to remember every single detail from each book; keeping a running record of your ideas, outlines, research, character and plot development etc. from each volume can provide valuable reference info for future installments.

I don't often look back through my personal journals, but when I do it's generally to remind myself of how I've managed some challenge from the past.  By revisiting my personal history I often find new motivations -- and sometimes good ideas -- on how to approach, handle, or resolve a situation in the present.  When there aren't any answers to be had, rereading those old journals help me get a better handle on accepting the things none of us can change.  I always want to fix things, and I get frustrated when I can't, so occasionally I need a reminder that not all problems can be solved.

This quest has given me a whole new appreciation of the ready-made blank journals and notebooks available to purchase -- and so have your comments.  I would never have discovered all the amazing journals published by Chronicle Books without Diana Gillette's recommendation, and look what I would have missed out on:





My quest will continue, too, as there are always new products to be discovered, like these Fantasy Art, Doodling and Life Log journals found during my last visit to BAM:







It takes time to create a written record of anything; preserving it for future generations -- even if it's only for the benefit of your own descendants -- takes more effort.  If you keep at it you get into the habit, though, and after thirty years of creating my personal chronicles it's become so much a part of my daily routine that I don't even really think about it anymore.  In time you will have to think about storage issues -- this stack here represents about six months worth of just the personal side of my journaling -- but that's where technology might actually prove useful, as you can elect to scan your paper journals and notebooks and instead save electronic copies of them.

To help some of you get started I'm having a not-so-blank journal and notebook giveaway today.  In comments to this post tell us how you'd use a new journal or notebook by midnight EST on Friday, September 28, 2012.  I'll draw three names at random from everyone who participates and send the winners one of the journals or notebooks I've found since beginning my quest (you won't know which until it arrives, so it will be a surprise.)  This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past. 

Not-So-Blank Notebooks

Hunting around for not-so-blank journals made me realize that notebooks are changing, too.  For years writers as well as school kids have depended on the ruled white pages of composition books and spiral-bound notebooks to contain their scribbles; I've used hundreds, possibly thousands of them myself.  Finding new and creative versions of these old standbys delighted me, mainly because I didn't expect to see notebooks change -- but they have, and in wonderfully imaginative ways:



This composition-size spiral-bound notebook has an antique look to it, but the real surprise is between the covers:



Instead of the usual white ruled pages, this notebook has pages printed with four different colors and artistic designs.  What it doesn't have is a single line, so you have plenty of room to write, sketch, mount photos or images and otherwise fill the pages however you like.  From Papaya Art; I got mine for $10.76 at my local art store.

You don't have to shop at an art store to find interesting notebooks; I found these two at Target for under $10.00:



The inside pages of the notebook with the flower cover have light gray dots instead of the usual lines (handy for anyone who wants to work out maps or other types of drawings on a gridded surface) while the Poetry/Art/History composition book offers a more elegant spin on ruled pages:



One trick I'm learning is to look for unusual notebooks in places other than the office supply shops and aisles.  I found this notebook with colored, printed and plain white pages at an art supply store; it's sold as an art journal kit but would work great as a notebook.  While gathering school supplies for my kid, I noticed Crayola had put out various sizes of what looked to be a pretty standard spiral-bound notebook.  Which it is, until you write on a page with the pen provided by Crayola, and bring out the psychedelic colors embedded in every inch of the paper.

If you don't find the notebooks you want to use, you can begin making your own.  Collect interesting papers until you have a nice stack, punch holes in them and place them in folder with grommets or a slim binder, and you've got your own notebook.  If you'd like to spiral bind them, you can have that done at most printing service outlets; Office Depot also has a number of spiral binding machines you can purchase and use at home to put together your own notebooks; I even found a video over on YouTube that demonstrates how one of the them works.

Tomorrow I'll wrap up my quest with one final look at some of the other not-so-blank books I've found and the giveaway I promised, so stop in if you get a chance.  (Those of you who are addicted to notebooks might also like to visit Nifty's Notebook Stories blog to see what other writers all over ther planet are using.)

Sub Ops Duo

Crossed Genres has an interesting open call for SF and/or Fantasy speculative fiction novellas featuring tales of older women: "We’re looking for speculative stories featuring women of advancing age (late middle age and older). They’re smart, they’re tough, and they have wills of their own. They may be warriors, politicians, adventurers, etc. Even if they are also wives, mothers, wise women or healers, those archetypes must not be their defining characteristics. Their motivations, their driving force, must be their own. Whatever was in their past, they’re not interested in being in the background now. We want stories about women breaking free of suppression; we also want stories of women who’ve been empowered all their lives. We welcome and strongly encourage submissions with underrepresented main characters: characters of color, LGBTQ characters, etc." Length:  17.5-40K (firm); Payment:  "$0.01 per word, plus one print copy & the ebook."  No reprints, electronic submission via online form only, see guidelines for more details.  Deadline:  October 31, 2012

Postscripts to Darkness has a standing open call for "works of short (up to 3500 words) fiction for our soon-to-be twice yearly publication. We are currently open to submissions for volume 4, which will be published in the fall of 2013.  We are open to a variety of approaches and styles, but are interested in original work that pushes and plays with(in) the boundaries of the fantastic, the marvelous, the uncanny, and the horrific. We are not interested in formulaic re-treads of genre conventions, but in work that revises and interrogates the relationship between genre writing and literary experimentation."  Payment:  "As of Volume 4, we will offer fiction contributors $25 per story (payable through PayPal), regardless of length. We will also provide a complimentary pdf version of the book to each contributor. Contributors also have the option of purchasing more copies at a low contributor’s rate (30% off.)" No reprints, electronic submission only, see guidelines for more details.

Both of these ops were found among the marvelous market listings at Ralan.com.

Flea Market Ten

Ever see a silky chicken? Me neither, at least until last weekend. Here's a peek included with:

Ten (Odd) Things I Found at the Flea Market

Winner

I think the magic hat has a weird sense of humor sometimes, as the winner of the Later Reading giveaway turned out to be someone to whom I just sent a package (yesterday, in fact) unrelated to blog stuff:

Shiloh Walker, who wrote: I kept Endurance tucked away for almost a year because I was afraid of what you were going to do to Joey.

Shiloh, you don't have to send me your info, I got it, lol.  My thanks to everyone for joining in.

Lemming Writing

I got an e-mail from an yet-to-be-pubbed writer who asked me an interesting question (and gave me permission to post it on the blog): "So if all anyone wants to read is mommy porn, shouldn't I be writing it to better my chances at publishing?"

I (correctly) deduced the phrase mommy porn to mean the particular fanfic-based erotica that has sold so briskly of late, and thought for a while about how to respond. After nearly 15 years in the biz I've seen a lot of trends come and go: romantic suspense, fashion chicklit, vampire romance, vampire brotherhoods, vampire bromances, YA written for adults, and now the mommy porn thing. Likewise I've watched countless writers rush up that cliff of popularity and dive off because they saw a lot of other writers take the jump and thought, "Hey, maybe that will work." In the biz we call it jumping on the bandwagon; I think of it more as lemming writing.

Taking advantage of a publishing trend can absolutely open some doors for you. A couple of weeks ago one of my biz associates mentioned to me that editors were so hot for BDSM erotica that if I wanted it I could probably get a contract within a week. Recently my agent made a similar comment. It took me almost three years of traditional submission to sell my latest series; it would be nice to sell something else in a week. Very nice, in fact. If I could land an offer and bulk up my numbers with a fast seller, it would likely do great things for my other works.

Unfortunately it won't, as I seriously doubt I'll ever write BDSM erotica, mommy porn or whatever you want to call it. I'm not a snob; I like well-written books of any variety regardless of genre. I can write just about anything, too. But I won't be making like a lemming for the same reason I don't publish Westerns, Christian chicklit or political thrillers:  I have zero interest in writing it.

Publishing certainly likes fiction that is riding a wave of popularity, but you need to watch it closely and decide when its trends are most advantageous to you and what you want most to write. For example, I originally pitched my Darkyn novels back in the late 90's, and all I got was a resounding rejection. It was what I wanted to write, but vampire fiction didn't sell much back then, so the bounce was simply a good business decision (not only for the publisher but for me, too; I doubt at the time the series would have lasted past book three.) I shelved the idea and moved on. When the vampire fic trend kicked off six years later, I tried submitting my proposal again and landed a three-book contract in a couple weeks.  By timing this right I also had time to establish my series before the genre became glutted.

This doesn't mean I haven't eyed a few cliffs myself. From time to time I've been tempted by certain trends because some of them were vaguely interesting, and I knew if I researched and focused I could do a decent job of it. It's hard to resist a situation that practically guarantees you'll get an offer in order to find that that one editor among hundreds who wants to buy exactly what you want to write. The way the economy is going I don't blame anyone for going for the easier sell; you do what you have to in order to pay your bills and take care of your family.

Trend-driven writing's major downside has to do with how whatever you publish brands you.  If all you've ever sold is mommy porn, publishers are going to focus on that as your niche, and it will be very difficult to persuade them that you can publish anything else successfully.  It's much tougher for a pubbed writer to sell something different from what they've been publishing than it is for a unpubbed writer.  Also, if your mommy porn doesn't do especially well on the market, those low numbers will make you look even less appealing to a publisher than an unpublished writer; booksellers use those numbers to decide how much they want to order of your new venture (aka not much.)  If you're bright/shiny/new with no sales track record, the buyers can only judge you on the strength of the work.  If you're pubbed, you'll be judged on your numbers.  

You pros out there won't escape this, either.  Involuntarily branding yourself can happen at any time during your career.  The reason it took me three years to sell my latest series is because it's new, fresh, and not like anything I've ever written.  Although I'm an established multi-genre writer, the books I've sold in the highest numbers are all vampire fiction, which is also what I'm best known for writing.  I probably could have sold a new paranormal series any time over the last three years; a half-dozen editors who rejected my proposal actually wrapped up their bounces by asking me to send them a paranormal sub instead. 

If you want to write this mommy porn because it's all you've ever wanted to write, happy days -- this is definitely your time. You're not going to be jumping off a cliff; you'll be pursuing what interests you and possibly what you were meant to write. But if the desire and the interest isn't there, I believe it will show through in the work. A few writers have copy-catted their way to success, but most get swallowed up in the glut at the base of the cliff . . . at least until the latest bandwagon comes along to cart them off to the next one.

Destiny

This inventive animation is a terrific example of how to tell a story without a single line of dialogue (music and sound effects in the background, for those of you at work):



Destiny from Bellecour 3D on Vimeo.

Later Reading

Last week petite mentioned Bill Bryson last week as an author who makes his readers happy, and I have to chime in on that. I've been a diehard Bryson groupie since the first time I read A Sunburned Country, and I will buy anything the man cares to publish the minute I see it on the shelves. Doesn't matter what it is; if I saw "Bryson's Weekly Grocery List" I'd grab that, too.

I don't read Bill's books right away, however. Most of the time I put them in clear view of my desk and use them as writing carrots (i.e. when I finish a manuscript, I get to read one of them as a reward.) Others I reserve for reading during long trips away from home, or hold onto until I have a bad case of the blues; the old "save it for a rainy day" approach.

In this era of get-it-with-one-click the practice of deliberately saving books for later reading seems to have dwindled to the point of vanishing altogether. While I appreciate the technology that allows us to get most any book we want the moment we want it, I think it's changing a lot of what used to be gleeful anticipation into surly impatience.

I'm guilty of this myself; for about a year I've been waiting/hoping to read an e-book by a favorite author who went indie; I've been checking Smashwords monthly to see if it's released there in .pdf (which I had planned to print out at home, as has been my habit with every indie author e-book I want to read.) For the last twelve months I've been willing to wait, but since my family stuck me with this e-reader and I don't have to wait for a printer-friendly edition anymore I've noticed I've been getting grumpier -- and more impatient -- by the week. It's out in Kindle format, so why doesn't the author release it for Nook? Why do I still have to wait? Maybe I should complain . . .

Before the era of instant delivery I never minded -- or even noticed -- the time it took to acquire books I wanted to read. When I was younger and much poorer I had to sign up on a waiting list at the library, and when the call came that my book was available I was thrilled. If I couldn't find a novel by someone I loved, I used the time as a chance to discovery new authors. I used to spend years hunting through used book stores for OOPs editions while slowly acquiring an author's entire backlist. It was a bit like treasure hunting, and I absolutely loved it, especially whenever I found the very last book I needed to complete a collection. So were my trips to the brick-and-mortars, when browsing for titles was always punctuated by the delights of finding new releases I didn't know were coming out.

Saving books I buy for later reading may be the only way to get back a little of that lovely feeling of anticipation, so I've started a Rainy Day Reads shelf in my book room. Marjorie Liu just published Where the Heart Lives, a short story on Smashwords that I've never read; that along with Bryson's At Home are the first two additions.

What books or authors would you put on your Later Reading shelf? Tell us in comments to this post (or if you can't think of any, just toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST on Saturday, September 22, 2012. I'll draw one name at random from everyone who participates and send the winner a signed manuscript copy of Nightbred, my upcoming December release (bound by me in a ring binder, and whether the winner reads it right away or saves it for a rainy day is his/her choice) This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

Two Christian YA ops

Abingdon Press is launching a Christian YA line in 2014 and is looking to acquire in early 2013 high-quality books written for 14 to 19 year olds; would especially like to see series books as well as steampunk, medieval fantasy and urban fantasy.  They note on their website that they accept submissions only through agents or from writers who meet with their editors at conferences, so if you don't have an agent you might want to see if you can swing an editor appointment at one of your local Christina writer conferences.
OakTara wants to see Christian YA fantasy, sci-fi, realistic fiction, medieval fantasy series aimed at boys, issue fiction and teen writers; they are eager to acquire "really good" teen writers and fiction written for male readers.  They do accept unagented submissions, see more about their guidelines for writers here.

(Notes on both of these sub ops were found in the August 27th issue of Publishers Weekly; I chased down the links myself.)

Writers Visual Dictionary

Because I obviously don't have enough on my plate already, I'm tinkering on a visual dictionary for writers, using photo-metaphors for different aspects of the writing life (sort of like a picture book version of the Devil's Publishing Dictionary.)

Here are some first attempts at entries:



To make it a proper dictionary I need to come up with A to Z terms, and likewise choose one word for concepts like "how it feels to hold your book for the first time" so I've plenty of work ahead.  Still, I think it's a fun way to revisit my photo archives and offer a few chuckles for the folks on Flickr.
Does anyone out there have a writer term they'd like to see me define with a photo?  Let me know in comments.