Kristen Lamb's Blog, page 75

Take Your Career to the Next Level–When, Why, Who and How to Fire People

Original image via Canned Muffins Flikr Creative Commons

We all cringe when we hear the words “being fired, and being fired does truly feel like “getting the ax.” Though this could be urban legend, the term “being fired” comes from very early human history. If a village no longer wanted a certain person to be part of the group? They torched their hut, “firing them.”

Slightly less brutal than a pink slip.

I’d love to say I’ve never been fired, but I have. A few times. And it sucked pretty much every time. As I get older, in retrospect, I realize my being fired was probably a good decision on the part of the organizations who let me go, and not nearly as personal as it felt at the time.

Part of that “pruning thing” we discussed.

But we are writers. Why do we need to talk about firing people?

Namely, because I mentioned firing people in yesterday’s post and someone privately messaged and asked I address the topic. I like to believe I’m here to make you laugh and learn, but sometimes we need to talk about the un-fun stuff, too. Dead weight can keep us from reaching our career goals, so here goes….

We ARE the Business

Writers are entrepreneurs, and no matter which publishing path we choose to take, we will (if we are smart) have to hire people to help us succeed. Doing everything ourselves and micromanaging and controlling is a formula for burnout and frustration. Learning to hire and fire well is a critical skill and one we will always be honing.

Firing will never be fun or pleasant unless we happen to be sadists (which I assume most of us are not).

Writers need web designers, cover artists, literary agents, personal assistants, formatters, accountants, publishers (especially for the indie authors), and even sometimes attorneys. These are just a handful of the types of people we as writers might employ.

If these individuals do their jobs well, we can rest assured that we can focus on what we do best…writing books. Yet, if we have “employees” who are dead weight or troublemakers, it can kill our creativity and triple our workload.

Confrontation isn’t All Bad

Confrontation isn’t fun. Most of us avoid it at all costs. Yet, confrontation is critical to healthy relationships (including work relationships).

There have been times in my past I feel I was unjustly fired.

I once worked for a technology firm as an admin. Originally there were two of us, but the other left for another job. For months, I did her work and mine while the company searched for her replacement. I was continually told how valuable I was and how appreciated, so imagine my surprise when one day I was being walked out the door.

To this day, I don’t know what I was doing wrong. I was getting mixed messages and was never confronted. Clearly I was doing or not doing something that was hindering progress, but I didn’t know what or how to correct.

This means if someone isn’t working out (too many delays, not delivering, not performing), we need to lovingly confront first and offer an outline for how to change. Be clear. Don’t hint. People can’t fix what they don’t know about and it’s poor leadership to expect others to read our minds.

When to Fire

So when do we fire? I believe in the Three Strikes and You’re Out. If by the third time we’ve talked, things aren’t changing, then it’s time to part ways.  Web people who don’t do perform, agents who don’t return e-mails, or editors who are taking too long need to go or it creates major problems that will take our valuable time to repair.

Why We Fire

When it comes to business, I am definitely a work in progress. Much of this I’ve learned from the experience of (for the first time) being on the other side of the operation. I also tend to be about as ruthless as a rose petal, but I’m learning to toughen up.

When it comes to running a business (like WANA International) not firing those who need to go hurts others in my organization. It sends a message I don’t care about those in my operation and that we don’t have standards for performance. It drags the company down.

As an individual author-entrpeneur, not firing can affect our career, our health and our intimate relationships. Endure the stress of an agent who doesn’t return e-mails for months at a time and you’ll understand. We need functional web sites to do our jobs well. Not having a web site, a bad web site or an ineffective web site hinders our performance and growth.

Who to Fire

Here is a list to help guide you in deciding when to confront and perhaps, eventually fire:

The Complainer

This person only sees problems and never solutions. This kind of negativity will adversely affect you and your organization. We are who we hang around and if we are around someone who only sees problems and obstacles, we can catch that like a virus.

People in our employ should always be able to come to us with what they see are potential problems. Open communication is vital. Many of the improvements we’ve made over the last year were because brave WANAs could come to me and say, “Hey, Kristen. This really needs to be fixed.”

But if all this person is doing is nitpicking and whining? Time to go.

The Uncommitted

People should do more than take up space, especially if we are paying them. I’ve had people who were hired to assist at certain events who just didn’t bother to show and never called to tell why. This placed me in a terrible and embarrassing position of explaining where this person was.

It negatively impacted how others saw ME as a professional. It also hurt my company and those depending on me because I didn’t have time to fill the position and this wasted precious time and energy. It also hurt my health because I was trying to do the job of two people and that just meant I did my job really poorly and wore myself out.

In fact, on one occasion, I was so exhausted and scattered from doing two people’s work, that I ended up whacked in the head with a trunk lid that gave me a nasty gash, a concussion and a near-miss to the ER before the main conference even began. Needless to say, I was not at my best that week.

Thousands of dollars in conference, hotel, travel went to waste because, without help, I was unable to mine the investment as I’d planned.

The Uncommitted can KILL a business.

The Inept

If we hire someone to do a job then realize they over promised and are out of their depth? Not our job to wait for them to learn what they were hired to do.

When we originally hired web designers for the WANA International site, it required a complicated shopping cart system to handle what WANA wanted to offer. The designer (though a lovely person) just did not possess the skill to design something so complicated. Me “being nice” cost us four months of delays.

Sometimes the person might be talented and capable of doing the job, but too many personal crises are getting in the way, rendering the person inept. “Letting someone go” doesn’t have to be permanent. It can go with an understanding that the person is eligible for rehire at a later point when life has calmed down.

The Misfit

Sometimes, firing really isn’t personal. The person/company just might not be a good fit for the job. This often happens with agents. They could be a fabulous agent for other works, but be terrible when it comes to our books (or genre).

The Rebel

My cover designer is fabulous. In the beginning, though, he kept insisting on using a cover model for the cyborg because it was easier and maybe even prettier since I am no Vogue fashion model. I gently and firmly said, “I want to be on the cover. I don’t care how it happens, but make it so or I will hire someone who can.” And he made it so and that’s why he’s a keeper and I send him all the business I can.

But sometimes, we get a rebel who just won’t listen to instructions.

When we hire someone for a job, we need to be clear what we want. On the other side, that person needs to listen. When you instruct a web designer to fix a shopping cart and “under no certain circumstances touch the look of the web site”, and they ignore you and change it to what they like?

Good-bye.

It’s our business, not theirs. You have a right to expect what you pay for.

The Seed of Discontent

This one, I feel, is the most critical, especially if you are running a larger organization (I.e. an indie press). Some people love drama and back-biting. They stir trouble often because, as long as there is drama, it masquerades that the person really a) is slacking off and not doing his/her job or b) is incompetent.

Seeds of Discontent are often also Complainers. They fracture solidarity and undermine morale. They create distrust and paralyze decision-making and thus need to go.

How to Fire

Promptly, privately and professionally. I’ve learned this the hard way (like a lot of stuff). I’ve worked with people I knew needed to go. Instead of acting, I whined, complained and groused while the situation grew steadily worse.

NOT a recommended action plan.

When we don’t fire, we think we are being kind to the other person, when in fact, we’re being selfish. We are putting off our own discomfort. We don’t want to be “the bad guy.” Maybe we’re prideful and don’t want to admit we made a mistake in choosing the person for the position.

Perhaps, we are afraid or uncertain. We have no clue how to fill that vacuum when the person leaves so we endure the bad instead of embracing the possibility of great.

We Can Hurt Others By NOT Firing Them

In retrospect, I am happy I was fired from those jobs of my youth. I hated working in admin and was terrible at sales. If I hadn’t been let go, would I have ever found my calling? Would I have ever had to face the character flaws that were holding me back? Firing is major pruning. It hurts, but sometimes great things blossom.

I hope this has been helpful for you. I know I am still learning by leaps and bounds and not always doing things perfectly. As writers, we can be enamored with having an agent, or we feel committed to the editor, but in the end, we are the only captains of our fate. If we hit the rocks, the blame is on us.

What are your thoughts? Have you had to fire someone, maybe an agent? What did you learn? Have you been fired from a job then later realized it was a blessing in disguise?

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of August, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

ANNOUNCEMENT: I have a class coming up SOON, Creating Conflict and Tension on Every Page if you want to learn how to apply these tactics to your writing. Use WANA15 to get 15% off.

Also, my new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.

I will announce July’s winner tomorrow.

Take Your Career to the Next Level–Getting Pruned

Image via Mark Smith Flikr Creative Commons

I’d like to blame it all on Jay’s roast, but having time away, true downtime, allowed me to do some thinking (which is generally dangerous and has a wide blast radius). For any of you who’ve done any yard work, you know that for a vine to bear fruit, for a rose bush to produce more flowers, for a tree to grow taller, it needs to be pruned.

One of the key ways we grow in our careers (or even as people) is to be pruned. Pruning hurts. It sucks. It takes away all the pretty fluff we thought was “progress” and renders us naked and vulnerable. After pruning, we might not look like a lot to others, but inside and beneath, great things are happening. Our roots (commitment) dig deeper so we can stand taller.

Image via Keith Williamson Flikr Commons.

The first step to being pruned is honestly and critically looking at where we are weak. I know there are all kinds of experts who say, “Only focus on your strengths. Don’t work on your weaknesses. You can’t be good at everything,” and that is true to a degree.

But…

On some stuff? We need to become experts.

When I first started writing fiction, my dialogue was fabulous, my prose lovely and my characters all adorable…but I could not wrap my head around the antagonist and plotting, thus wasn’t generating true dramatic tension.

Okay, I was playing Literary Barbies.

This was a critical node that would undermine everything I wrote. So I read every book available about plotting and tore apart every book I read and every movie I watched until I had it nailed. But I had to admit my weakness (pruning) to grow stronger.

Practice does make perfect, if it is intelligent practice.  If practice isn’t guided, it can just create a crap load of bad habits we’ll just have to fix later. Just ask anyone whose worked five minutes with a golf pro. Swinging the club incorrectly a thousand times doesn’t improve our game. It creates tendonitis, back problems, and eventually we get a lot of chigger bites from hunting for golf balls off in the rough.

Image via CompanyGolfLessons Flikr Creative Commons

Ah, but to know where to gain expertise, we need to know and admit our weaknesses and flaws.

Back to pruning. We love to look at our flowers, the stuff we’ve done well. Ah, it’s so pretty. I think I’ll call her “Tiffany.” It’s hard to admit where we fall short or are outright failing.

This is one of the reasons rest is so vital (and has been an area where I’ve been failing a lot). We can’t live off caffeine and adrenaline (Who knew?). And if we are always knee-deep in the mess, we lack perspective. Pulling away allows us a new vantage point and permits our brains to calm down long enough to really “see.”

Know there is a difference between fixing weaknesses and fixating on them.

I launched WANA International about a year ago. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit and I wanted a way to reach more writers and offer affordable classes. I also wanted a way to highlight what I believed was emerging talent and use my platform to boost theirs.

Launching a business (publishing a book) requires risk and often we don’t know what we don’t know. More often, we figure it out when it goes BOOM. The learning curve of being a baby CEO has been steep and I am still learning.

My CEO photo.

I have been pruned…a LOT.

I’ve had to fire people I adored, who I really wanted to succeed. I’ve tried technology that sucked and formats of classes that just didn’t work out. Put out classes no one signed up for.

To succeed, we need to take risks and I will warn you ahead of time that a lion’s share of the risks we take (especially early on) will be mistakes. But some will turn out to be the best thing you’ve ever done, too.

I took a risk on Lisa Hall-Wilson and Marcy Kennedy and they have become shining WANA diamonds. But for every person who works out, there are fifty who haven’t. The ones who didn’t? That’s pruning. Each “failure” took me down a notch to learn to be better at diamond-spotting. Still working on it.

Sometimes ideas are just coal.

I took a risk helping Piper Bayard with her disaster book, Firelands, which has become a best-seller. But for every Piper, there have been a hundred writers who didn’t want to face the ugly and do the hard stuff. Some just faded away, gave up, and some have been all-out cataclysms (for more read Plagiarism and Terrell Mims–A Chronic Case of Epic Stupid).

Major pruning *head desk*.

Terrell (and others) taught me that talk is cheap. Pay attention to what people do and what they say. Are they congruent? Does the person have character? Are they focused? What is the person’s work ethic? Are they willing to do the hard stuff?

But where would I be if I’d just sat and cried I was bad at business and a failure and terrible at judging people?

Fix, don’t fixate.

Pruning isn’t Personal

I suppose part of the reason it’s tough to have a Kristen Lamb roast is that I serve roasted Lamb daily on this blog .

After my vacation, I have a teensy-tiny list of like one small thing…okay a long…okay a looooooong, looooong, like longer than my arm list of stuff I am committed to working on now that I’m home.

For instance, there are areas of business I just don’t understand as well as I need to in order to be an effective CEO. Does this mean I need to get a degree in business and be a new Jack Welch? No.

But I do need to study, to understand stuff well enough to know who to delegate what to and then how to hold said person accountable. I need to know enough to ask the right questions and understand if I am getting the right answers….or even if I need better answers.

Yes, work on your strengths. Writing is my strength and I train it daily. But, as writers, we are also small-business owners. We need to know the business side of our business or we waste time, energy, money and can even get fleeced.

And you will likely screw up. It’s okay. We learn by making mistakes. Too many people expect to write the perfect book the first time out, or hire the right web person day one, or make every business decision perfectly, but that isn’t how life works.

We Can’t Avoid Pruning—Indecision IS a Decision

I actually had to fire someone I cared about because this person would not take risks. This person needed validation from twenty people that every decision was perfect, and if one person said change the plan, this person changed the entire plan. We cannot live life by committee. Not and stay sane, at least.

This person was afraid of being pruned, didn’t want to lose the pretty flowers. But no pruning? No growth.

My advice? Get out there. Get dirty. Take risks. Yes, failure and mistakes will come, but they prune us so we can bear more fruit and better fruit.

What are your thoughts? Are you like and bracing for a new round of pruning? Does pruning scare you? Have you been pruned and have the fruit to show for it?

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of August, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

ANNOUNCEMENT: I have a class coming up SOON, Creating Conflict and Tension on Every Page if you want to learn how to apply these tactics to your writing. Use WANA15 to get 15% off.

Also, my new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.

I will announce July’s winner when I’ve had a chance to unpack.

Blog Hijack: I Aim to Misbehave

Not me, I have better hair -AND- an immunity to iocane powder

By Jay Donovan

Poor Kristen fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous of which is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but a couple steps down is this: “Never leave your Tech Guy in charge of your blog.”

Kristen called me Saturday to see if I could approve comments for a couple more days and said it would be easy since she didn’t have anything to post for the first time in a long while.  Being a kind soul, of course I agreed.

Five minutes later, an epiphany…

I control the Horizontal.
I control the Vertical.

So I called her, got voice mail, and left this message: “Hi Kristen, it’s Jay. I just thought of a blog post to put up for you.” And I’m not proud about my loss of control, but I couldn’t help myself—I ended the call with an honest to God *maniacal laugh*.

You’d think she’d know better than to allow me to get used to having so much power. Especially since I used up all my willpower by not filtering last week’s posts through the ValSpeak filter.

You don’t believe me?  I find your lack of faith disturbing.

It think it is time we demonstrated the full power of this filter.

Set your course for Kristen’s last post: Learning to Drop the Donkey.

Original text:

All of us want to do a good job. We want to put our best foot forward. We all say that we want feedback and critique, but deep down, if we are real honest, we want people to love everything we say and do.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the reality. We can’t please everyone, and it is easy to fall into a people-pleasing trap that will steal our passion, our art, and our very identity.

Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational blog-messer-upper:

All of us want to totally do a bitchin’ job. Us guys want to totally put our best foot forward. Us guys all say that we want feedback and critique, man, but deep down, oh, baby, if we are real honest, like, wow, we want guys to totally love everythin’ we say and do.

Unfortunately, fer shure, this isn’t thuh reality. Us guys can’t please everyone, like, and it is easy to fall into a guys-pleasin’ trap that will steal our passion, oh, baby, our art, fer shure, and our super identity.

See what I could have done. Yet I resisted. But Kristen has to further tempt me with an idle blog, and her unable to see her site, let alone stop me.  *Maniacal Laugh* Sorry, #20 of the Evil Overlord list gets me every time.

Um, now what?  Anyone have a suggestion?  Bueller?

This blog moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

 

“I’ve got one.  The question isn’t ‘what are we going to do,’ the question is ‘what aren’t we going to do?’”

Good thought Ferris, how about a Kristen roast?

“That’s a righteous idea.”

 

 

 

Post your favorite Kristen story in the comments. I want good ones.  Sweet ones about Kristen pulling you back from the ledge. Funny ones about Kristen’s top #KlutzClub moments. The goal here is not just to make her ears burn, but to make to make her blush the entire time she’s in places the Verizon guy fears to go.

Here are the rules; I like my roasts medium-rare. Comments which are too mean will be nuked and replaced with that photo with you and your Aunt Gertrude from when you were 11.  Yeah, the one taken a split-second after her dog barfed down your shirt.  It doesn’t matter how I got a copy of it. Worry instead about it being the next big meme.  *Maniacal Laugh* Did it again. Damn!

*********

Geek in His (un)Natural Habitat

Jay Donovan is the official WANA Tech Guy and is writing an “Expansion Pack” on the proper use of pen names to supplement Kristen’s “Rise of the Machines”. He should be working on it instead of hijacking blogs and talking about himself in third person, but where’s the fun in that?

Jay’s company TechSurgeons LLC provides the geeky magic for the upcoming WANACon and hosts WANA’s WANAIntl & authorkristenlamb.com websites

Find him on Twitter at @jaytechdad or on Facebook

Learning to Drop the Donkey–Is Perfectionism Killing Your Career?

Image via Flikr Creative Commons, courtesy of William Allen

All of us want to do a good job. We want to put our best foot forward. We all say that we want feedback and critique, but deep down, if we are real honest, we want people to love everything we say and do. Unfortunately, this isn’t the reality. We can’t please everyone, and it is easy to fall into a people-pleasing trap that will steal our passion, our art, and our very identity.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again with writers. They rework and rework and rework the first chapter of their novel, trying to make it “perfect”—which is actually code for “making everyone happy.” Here is the thing. Not gonna happen. Ever.

One person will say our book is too wordy. Another wants more description. We add more description and then another person is slashing through, slaughtering every adjective and metaphor.

Lessons from Aesop

I find it interesting that some of my favorite childhood stories were about character issues that I’ve struggled with my entire life. My favorite story Old Man Whickett’s Donkey and was loosely based off one of Aesop’s fables, The Man, The Boy and The Donkey. The story in a nutshell is this.

An old man and his grandson head to market with their donkey carrying bags of grain for sale. A passerby says, “What a fool. Why buy a donkey if you aren’t going to ride him?” In response to the critic, Old Man Whickett and the boy load up and ride the donkey into the next town where another passerby says, “You cruel lazy people. That poor donkey carrying all that weight. You should be ashamed.” So Old Man Whickett and the boy dismount and carry the bags of grain and the donkey (which seriously freaked out the donkey).

Anyway—and I am probably butchering this story, but give me a break, I’ve slept since I was five—Old Man Whickett and the boy keep trying to please everyone who passes and what happens?

The bags of grain burst open and spill all over the road from being moved around so much (and in Aesop’s version the donkey falls in the river and drowns). They never make it to market and all of them are exhausted and half-dead from trying to please everyone.

Moral of the tale? Try to please everyone and we please no one.

The Fine Line of Fools

We have to walk what I will call the Fine Line of Fools. There are two different types of fools. There are fools who plunge ahead and don’t ask for any feedback and ignore anyone who tries to warn there might be a problem. But then there is the other type of fool who can never seem to make up her mind. She keeps changing direction every time someone has an opinion (been there, done that).

All of us are in danger of being one kind of fool or another. While the wise writer is open to critique, she also needs to know when to stand her ground. If she doesn’t learn to stand firm, that’s when the donkey hitches a ride.

I would love to tell you guys I’ve never been either of those fools, but I don’t dig getting struck with lightning.

Perfectionism and People-Pleasing Mask Fear

I have learned through a lot of trial, error and stupidity that perfectionism and people-pleasing really are just an extension of fear. If we get everyone’s opinion about our book, web site, blog, color of fingernail polish, if someone else doesn’t like it, then we don’t have to own it.

“Well, that wasn’t my idea. That was Such and Such’s idea.”

We Can’t Please EVERYONE

I just finished reading my friend, Jenny Milchman’s thriller, Cover of Snow.  As an editor, I might have made her turn loose of a few metaphors or similes, but the book was still an awesome read (and I dig flowery prose). In fact, Jenny’s style reminds me a lot of King and Koontz, two staples of my early reading as a teen.

I carried Jenny’s book everywhere with me for four days until I could reach the end. The rest? That’s critique. Still worthy of five stars. The story did what was intended…ENTERTAIN. I put down far more books than I ever finish. Jenny kept me captivated until THE END.

Yet, here was this book I loved and yet when I glanced at the one-star reviews? WTH? Okay, you don’t like a book but there is a real person on the other side of that evisceration.

But it showed me how important it is to just write the story you want to write. Some will wail, “Not enough detail!” Others? “Too much detail!”

I was personally happy that Jenny included so much detail. Being a Texas girl, I had NO IDEA what being trapped in a world of snow and ice might be like. In a sense, she was world-building and for me, it added a lot to the story. Someone who doesn’t even own a coat could GET the story.

Learn to Drop the Donkey

In this new paradigm, all of us need to learn to be leaders and leaders own everything, the good and the bad. That is no easy task, and I have to admit there are times my neck starts hurting and I get this lower back pain and then I realize…I’M CARRYING THE FREAKING DONKEY! DROP THE DONKEY, YOU IDIOT!

We have to be aware that there are jerks and there are also people mean well. Humans offer constructive criticism to show love, even if there is nothing wrong. I’ve seen perfect works of fiction get eviscerated by well-meaning “helpful” critique groups.

This is why it is critical to really understand the rules of writing, why it is essential to really know what our book is about, and to learn to be confident in our brand. This way, when well-meaning folk offer us poles and twine to tie up the donkey on a sledge, we can say, “No, thanks. I think my donkey can walk.”

So are you carrying the donkey? Do you find him difficult to drop? Do you fall into the trap of carrying your donkey? I know I am a notorious donkey-toter, but getting better every day. What tools, suggestion or advice would you offer to other who struggle with their respective donkeys? What are warning signs that you are carrying a donkey?

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of August, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

ANNOUNCEMENT: I have a class coming up in a couple weeks, Creating Conflict and Tension on Every Page if you want to learn how to apply these tactics to your writing. Use WANA15 to get 15% off.

NOTE: My prior two books are no longer for sale, but I am updating them and will re-release. My new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.

What “Finding Nemo” Can Teach Us About Story Tension

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Image via Pixar’s movie “Finding Nemo”

Storytelling is in our blood, it binds us together as humans. On some intuitive level, everyone understands narrative structure, even little kids. All good stories have a clear beginning, middle and end. Ever try to skip parts of a story with a toddler? Even they can sense on a gut level that something is wrong if we miss a fundamental part of the story.

Thus, often when I am teaching new writers how to understand narrative structure, I use children’s movies. Frequently the narrative structure is far clearer, as well as the Jungian archetypes that are present in all great fiction. Additionally, all fiction can be boiled down to cause, effect, cause, effect, cause, effect. But, beyond that, novels are broken into scenes and sequels. For those who missed this post, I highly recommend you go here.

So how do we know when to cut a scene?

How do we knew when to begin and end chapters? How do we know what to trash and what to keep? Structure and conflict are like two gears.

Gears cannot turn unless there is another key wheel turning the opposite direction. No opposition, no power, no momentum. Same with a story.

All scenes have action. Action is more than a car chase or a bomb being diffused. Action does not mean a “bad situation.” All stories must have one main story goal, a core problem that must be resolved for the story to end.

Find Nemo.

I love studying children’s movies because they make it very easy to see and understand fundamental story structure.

In the Pixar film, Finding Nemo, what is the story goal for Marlin (the Clown fish father and protagonist)? Find his only son. How do we know when the movie is over? When Marlin and Nemo are reunited and safe at home, right?

Who is the Big Boss Troublemaker in Finding Nemo? The BBT is the character responsible for the story problem (the CORE antagonist). The BBT is Darla the Fish-Killer, who we, the viewer, don’t even see until Act II. Darla is the horrid little niece of a dentist who likes to go diving. The dentist (Minion) collects little Nemo from the ocean as a birthday gift, beginning the adventure of a lifetime for Marlin and Nemo.

In Normal World, Nemo and Marlin live in a sea anemone. Overprotective father Marlin finally allows little Nemo to go off school (pun intended), even though everything in his life revolves around keeping his son safe. This decision to let Nemo go to school is the inciting incident. If Nemo never went to school then he would never have been taken by the diver dentist.

The turning point into Act One is when Nemo is taken. That gives the clear story goal and the journey of the story is clear—Finding Nemo.

Today we are only going to look at scene antagonists who drive the action.

Obviously Marlin will not find Nemo right away. That would make for very boring fiction. No, there are a series of sub-goals that must be met to find his son.

Marlin takes off after the boat, but then fails to catch up.

He loses the boat and all seems lost, when he runs into another fish, Dori, who says she knows which way the boat went. Marlin follows, renewed in the chase and hopeful he will find Nemo, but then his new ally turns on him wanting to fight. She is unaware why Marlin is following her. Marlin soon realizes the only link to finding his son is a fish ally who suffers short-term memory loss.

Great.

We, the audience, think the journey is over, but then she tells him she does remember where the boat went. Marlin wants to go after his son, but then Bruce the Great White interrupts.

At first Marlin and Dori look doomed, but then Bruce collects them to join him in the Fish are Friends Not Food meeting (think shark AA—Fish Anonymous). So instead of Marlin being able to continue on his journey, he must stop to attend this Shark FA meeting.

He has to play along lest he get eaten and not be able to continue his journey. To make matters worse, the FA meetings are held in a sunken sub that is surrounded by mines. So we have outside obstacles—mines—and character obstacles—the Great White addict needing a Fish Friend for his meeting.

Marlin wants to look for his son. Bruce wants a fish friend to attend his FA meeting. This is what Bob Mayer teaches as a conflict lock. Please check out Bob’s books if you want to learn more.

At this point, Bruce is not Marlin’s enemy, but see how he is the antagonist? Bruce’s wants are in direct conflict with Marlin’s. Only one party can get his way. Marlin is held back from achieving his goal.

Through a fun series of events, Bruce ends up losing it and going after Marlin and Dori with the fervor of any addict as his shark buddies try to keep him from totally “falling off the wagon.” Marlin and Dori swim for their lives and while running, Marlin spots the diver’s mask (The diver dentist who took Nemo dropped his mask). The journey, otherwise, would have ended, but a wild twist of fate has renewed the search.

They have a clue and apparently Dori, the Forgetful Fish Ally that Marlin was going to dump at the first opportunity, can READ. He needs her.  But they must escape Bruce and get the mask.

They escape Bruce by detonating all the underwater mines, but then both Marlin and Dori are knocked unconscious. They awaken and realize that they are pinned under the sub, which is now sitting precariously off an undersea trench. The mask and only clue to finding Nemo is wrapped around Dori. As they try to look at the mask, the sub starts to slide and they lose the mask.

Scene goal. Marlin wants to get the clue, but then the submarine sends them fleeing for their lives. Just as they grasp for the mask, it drops down into the deep.

See how Marlin is progressively worse off as the story progresses? He seems farther away from finding his son, when in reality these are the necessary steps to FIND Nemo.

All looks as if it is lost. Marlin goes to give up, but his unlikely ally encourages him to go on and swim down in the deep to find the mask. Marlin has a chance to give up. He could at this point go home and give his son up for lost, but that would make a seriously sucky story. Marlin is a control freak who is ruled by his fears. He has to learn to be the master of his fears in order to rescue his son. Hemust press on in order to find Nemo. He swims down into the abyss as all good heroes should.

Marlin WANTS to find the mask, but then he and Dori soon realize it is nothing but blackness and they cannot see to find the mask. All seems lost. Ah, but then they spot a pretty light in the darkness…which turns out to be an angler fish that wants to eat them both.

Marlin wants to find the clue (mask).

Angler fish wants dinner.

Do you see how every break the protagonist gets comes with a new test? This is why it is so critical for us to at least start out with our story’s log-line. What is our story about? Learn more about log-lines (BIG story goal), here.

If the screenwriters didn’t know that the overall goal was for a neurotic fish father to swim to Sydney, Australia to rescue his son from a dentist’s fish tank before Darla the Fish-Killer’s birthday…this would have been a booger to plot. In ways it still is. How do we get Marlin from the Great Barrier Reef to a dentist’s office in Sydney? This is where setting sub-goals (scenes) makes life easier. When we know the ending, the main goal then it is far easier to plot the course.

Each scene needs a key wheel—an antagonist—to provide the opposition that will drive forward momentum.

Bruce the Great White and fish-addict in recovery is not Darla the Fish-Killer (the BBT), but he does keep Marlin from his journey…finding Nemo, so he IS an antagonist. In retrospect, Bruce’s intervention was fortuitous in that they never would have been in the area of the ocean where the one clue—the mask—was dropped.

Every scene needs an antagonist. Scenes MUST have conflict. No conflict? Not story. No forward momentum. We must always take a good hard look at our scenes and ask the tough questions. Ask, “What is it my protagonist wants? Who is in the way?”

If no one is in the way, then who can we put in the way? Conflict can even be as simple as allies disagreeing about a course of action—chase after bad guys or call the police and play it safe? Will the Elves take the Ring of Power to Mount Doom or will the Dwarves?

If everything is happening easily and all our characters are getting along? That’s a formula to bore a reader. Scenes where we have our protag thinking? That isn’t a scene, that’s a sequel. If a character is thinking, it better relate to something that just happened (a scene) and what to do next (next scene).

A “scene” that has characters talking about other characters is contrived information dump, not a scene. We can offload information in dialogue, but that cannot be the only purpose. Scenes are sub-goals—action blocks—that lead to solving the final problem.

I have a class coming up in a couple weeks, Creating Conflict and Tension on Every Page if you want to learn how to apply these tactics to your writing. Use WANA15 to get 15% off.

Does this clear things up that might be a little murky? What are some of your favorite movies that demonstrate these same story tactics?

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of August, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

NOTE: My prior two books are no longer for sale, but I am updating them and will re-release. My new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.

Writing & Creating Magic: When Less is MORE

Image via Flikr Creative Commons courtesy of Mr. Muggles.

Today, we are going to hear from my Panster Plotting Maven Jami Gold. What are some of the essentials for creating magic in our fiction? Sometimes, the answer is simpler than we might believe .

Author Jami Gold

For many things in life, more is better. In stores, we see packaging with “Bonus 10% extra!”, “Now even bigger!”, and “Twice the number of chocolate chips per cookie!” (That last one is unquestionably better. One of my greatest achievements is making chocolate chip cookies with just enough batter to glue the chips together. Heh.)

But in writing, the standard beliefs don’t always apply. More adverbs or adjectives don’t make our writing better. Excessive word counts often indicate fluff writing. And going into excruciating detail about every item in a room makes for boring reading.

We especially tend to make these mistakes when we first start writing. We might think readers need to picture the scene exactly like we do, so we describe every smile, sigh, and nod until they become cliché. When we hear advice about using specific details, we might think that means we shouldn’t just mention that the hero ran through the trees, we should say oak trees. Or even better, a mixture of sun-dappled, old-growth oak and maple trees. If some details are good, more is better, right?

Um, no.

Providing too much detail causes many problems, from word count to reader boredom. But there’s another issue with too much information that we might not think about. We need to provide readers room to use their imagination.

We touched on this “leaving readers room” concept when discussing how to handle intense emotional scenes. The same idea applies to many other aspects of writing as well.

Often what makes a scene feel shown instead of told isn’t about how many details we’ve stuffed in, but about how deeply we’ve pulled readers into the story. And readers will usually be pulled more into stories when their imagination is engaged.

That means not spelling out every detail for them. Instead, give readers just the highlights and let their imagination fill in the rest.

Less Information Equals More Imagination

This concept of aiming for less can be difficult. It’s easy to fall into the “more is better” trap, but let’s take a look at two different aspects of storytelling where less can actually be more.

From a Writer’s Perspective

Some writers need a story plotted out in advance before they can start writing. I’m not one of them.

On WANATribe, we’ve been having a discussion about how to make characters seem real. Some authors complete a full biography of their characters before starting the story.

In contrast, I don’t nail down all the background details of my characters before I start. Part of this has to do with how my muse works, and part of it has to do with the idea that only by leaving my characters room to breathe in my imagination do they become living entities rather than puppets to the plot. My characters’ personalities develop more organically than what can be “predicted” by their history.

For example, I recently started a new WIP (work in progress), and I knew the heroine had been ignored her whole life. I thought that would make her quiet and insecure. Okay, great, I sit down to start writing. Nothing.

Hmm, is she too quiet? Is she just not speaking to me?

No, it turns out that even though she’d been ignored her whole life, she’s on the cusp of deciding to be assertive and aggressive—making the world pay attention to her. She doesn’t want to play the part of being shy or demure. Ha! She’s more sarcastic and cynical and straightforward than that.

In the first chapter, she survives an attack that would leave most of us scared and scarred. And she reacts like: Oh yeah? Screw you, life. Screw. You.

Um, yeah, totally different than I expected, and not something I would have come up with if I’d stuck to the psychological script I initially had in mind. *smile* For me, the less information I “know” (which might be incorrect), the easier it is for the characters to talk to me.

Other writers will have different experiences, and there’s no right or wrong method. But sometimes having less information leaves us, as writers, more room for our imagination to bloom.

From a Reader’s Perspective

I read a great post by Jason Black yesterday about the purpose of a denouement. A denouement is the section of a story that comes after the climax and before “The End,” where authors have the opportunity to tie up loose ends. However, as Jason points out in his article, a denouement can ruin a story for the reader if it’s too detailed.

Jason notes (bolding is mine):

“The deeper purpose of a denouement is to reorient the characters towards the next phase of their lives. … An audience usually wants to leave a story with the feeling that the characters are facing a new, better future.

…[Y]ou create that feeling by pointing the characters toward someplace new. Not by actually taking them there.

…[H]aving come to know [the characters] through the course of the story, we readers are finally in a position to imagine them into further life just like you imagined them into life while you were writing the story.

You had your turn. Now it’s ours, but only if you allow us to imagine what the characters might do next. If you imagine it for us, we can’t.”

He’s absolutely right. Readers often want to let their imagination free at the end of a book, and after living with these characters for however many hours, they deserve that freedom.

Beyond problematic denouements or epilogues, a similar issue can occur with teaser excerpts at the end of a book. I read the first book of a series where the heroine was happy at the ending. Aww, perfect.

However, the author included a teaser chapter for the next book in the series, and the heroine was facing problems left over from book one. Ugh. That teaser acted like an epilogue and ruined the entire first book for me. Instead of tempting me to read the next story, the teaser turned me off from the whole series forever. Not the reaction the author was going for, I’m sure. (And she was self-published, so the formatting was her choice.)

Leaving room allows imagination to fill in the spaces. Both authors and readers want to feel the sense of living, breathing stories and characters that comes from letting imagination play. As writers, we should keep that in mind before thinking that “more is better.”

Do you agree that when we use our imagination, we’re pulled more deeply into a story? Or does reading work the opposite way for you? Do you like endings with everything spelled out, or do you want some things left to the imagination? Do you write better when you’ve left room for your imagination to explore? Do you have other examples of how “less can be more”?

I LOVE hearing from you and I am certain Jami will too!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of July, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

NOTE: My prior two books are no longer for sale, but I am updating them and will re-release. My new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.

7 Reasons Every Writer Needs to Be on Twitter

Original image via Rosaura Ochoa via Flikr Creative Commons

While I’m taking a much-needed break, our WANA Maven of Twitter is here to help you understand Twitter!

Marcy Kennedy, WANA Instructor Extraordinaire

Twitter often gets a bad rap by people who don’t understand it, misunderstand it as full of spam and celebrity stalkers, or don’t know how to use it to its full potential to build an author platform. When used correctly, though, Twitter can be one of the best tools for meeting new readers and increasing traffic to your blog. Not to mention it’s fun!

Don’t believe me? Well, let me prove it to you then. I have seven reasons why I think every writer should be using Twitter.

Reason #1 – Twitter has over 100 million active accounts and growing.

Whether you’re seeking traditional publication or plan to self-publish, whether you’re a non-fiction author, a novelist, a poet, or a short story writer, you need a platform to sell your work. Your readers are on Twitter. You just need to know how to meet them.

This is true even if you write children’s books or YA. If you write for kids, your readers might not be on Twitter, but their parents and aunts and uncles and even grandparents are, and your books might just be the perfect gift they’re looking for.

Reason #2 – Twitter allows you to build a following faster than any other social networking site.

People who find you on Facebook usually already know you. People who find you on Twitter are more likely to be complete strangers (at first) because of the ability to participate in conversations through hashtags.

Reason #3 – Twitter makes you a better writer.

Twitter gives you 140 characters to work with. Not 140 letters or 140 words, but 140 characters. Spaces count, and so does punctuation. Links count as well.

Working within those constraints forces you to write tighter. No purple prose allowed. No weak verbs modified by adjectives. You need to figure out exactly what you’re trying to say. Those skills translate directly into better writing elsewhere.

Reason #4 – Twitter brings you the news faster than any news site can.

Twitter is real time, which means that while reporters are putting together their stories and getting approval from their editors, normal people on site are tweeting. In August 2011, Twitter lit up like a firefly on crack about the 5.8 earthquake in Virginia before the news stations could catch their balance. My husband and I were able to call my mother-in-law right away to make sure she and the rest of the family there were safe.

In the plague of tornadoes that rolled through Texas in April 2012, Twitter might have even saved lives. So many tornadoes hit the Dallas area at once that meteorologists couldn’t keep up, even if people still had electricity and the ability to check their television, use their computer, or tune in on the radio. But what everyone could still do was tweet using their phones. People banded together to warn others and report sightings, keeping all involved safer than they could have been alone.

Reason #5 – Twitter allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of the publishing industry.

Twitter is like a writer’s mecca because you can quickly find out about interesting and informative new blog posts (already vetted by others), get tips on writing and publishing from agents, editors, and bestselling authors, and keep up on industry trends and new releases. No searching involved. It comes to you in a bite-sized 140 character nugget. If you decide you want more, you click the link.

Reason #6 – Twitter helps you research.

In her bestselling book We Are Not Alone: A Writer’s Guide to Social Media, Kristen tells the story of how she needed information on bounty hunters for her novel. Rather than wasting hours trying to sort through results on Google and still not coming up with what she needed, she tweeted about it and received replies from actual bounty hunters willing to answer her questions.

But it’s not only facts you can research on Twitter. If you’re not sure your main character’s name is a good fit for his personality and job, ask. If you want to know what writing software other writers actually trust, ask. (I did and fell in love with Scrivener.)

In my co-written novel with Facebook expert Lisa Hall-Wilson, we mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah, and we debated whether enough people would know what we meant. So I asked, and we ended up leaving it in the book.

Reason #7 – Twitter gives you a support network of friends.

I’ve left this to last because, to me, it’s the most important. Writing is solitary. We sit at our computers and play with our imaginary friends. Which is great, but also leaves us without the support network we need if we want to make writing a long-term career.

On Twitter, you’ll find someone to talk you down off the ledge when one too many rejections or poor reviews leave you wanting to quit writing altogether. On Twitter, you can make writers friends who’ll run word sprints with you to help you keep on track. On Twitter, you can make reader friends who’ll be excited to go out and buy your book and tell everyone about it.

Twitter is like the workplace water cooler. Come, chat, and get back to work. It doesn’t take all day to make Twitter a valuable place to be!

If you’re not on Twitter yet, what’s holding you back? If you are on Twitter, what do you struggle with?

On Saturday, August 24, I’m teaching a 90-minute webinar called “Twitter: 10 Essentials Every Writer Needs to Know” where we’ll talk about how to create a profile that lets others know you’re a writer and a real person, how to stay safe, why automation can be a fast track to hating Twitter, how to decide which tools work the best for you, how to use hashtags, how to use lists, what to tweet about, and more.

Even if you can’t attend the live event, the webinar will be recorded and sent to all registrants. The webinar normally costs $45, but you can get 15% off by entering the discount code MarcyTwitter10. Click here to register. (If webinars aren’t your thing, I also run a self-paced Beginner’s Guide to Twitter and Advanced Guide to Twitter.)

P.S. I’ve put together something special for everyone reading this post today. I’m offering a free PDF called “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Hiring a Freelance Editor.” Click here to sign up for your copy.

About Marcy:

Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy) is a speculative fiction writer who believes fantasy is more real than you think. Alongside her own writing, Marcy works as a freelance editor and teaches classes on craft and social media through WANA International. You can find her blogging about writing and about the place where real life meets science fiction, fantasy, and myth at www.marcykennedy.com.

I LOVE hearing from you and ma sure Marcy does too!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of July, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

NOTE: My prior two books are no longer for sale, but I am updating them and will re-release. My new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE. 

Want to Be Interesting on Facebook? Let Followers See Oz

Original Image via Flikr Creative Commons, courtesy of Anurag Agnihotri

This week, I am taking a much-needed break, but I am leaving you in VERY capable hands. Hey, who do you think taught me to love and ROCK Facebook? One of the biggest fears we all have when getting on Facebook is we will bore our audiences to death. We feel the need to be clever and interesting at all times. Yeah, not necessary, so breathe….

Lisa is here to help!

WANA Facebook Maven Lisa-Hall Wilson

One of the most common questions I get asked concerning Facebook is ‘What Do I Post?’

My advice is: ‘Let Them See Oz’

Your content strategy (yes – that dreaded word usually followed by a wide-eyed stare and a writer mumbling, I need a plan? Nobody told me I needed a plan. I’m telling you – you need a plan) must be varied, and there are a few key components to it – but something readers are always looking for is a peek into your world.

Lisa – My life isn’t that interesting.

Whatever. Writers who shun the spotlight like Salinger, Harper Lee and Cormac McCarthy are the exceptions. Listen, to readers authors are these secluded exotic individuals – celebrities. Don’t laugh. I’m serious. lol – Well, mostly. Readers don’t understand the creative process, they fall in love with our voice, our wit, our insights, our quirky way of seeing things, the questions we ask. They beg for more from the characters they love, the worlds they want to jump into.

And they want to see Oz.

I know Kristen’s into Star Wars and Star Trek and Zombies – but let’s not overlook the classics here. When Toto pulled back the curtain for the very first time, what were you expecting? That ordinary looking man was not what I had in mind – but I loved him even more because he was ordinary.

Readers want to see behind the curtain. They want to see Oz. Fans are tired of marketing’s smoke and mirrors ‘buy my book’ ‘look at me’ bravado. They want to see the real person behind the brand. People want to connect with people – not brands, which is why so many fans send a friend request instead of liking an author page. They don’t care that you’re balding, overweight, or have crooked teeth. You’re A Freaking Wizard!!! That’s still cool. So, give them what they want.

Let your readers into your world (and I’m not talking about putting a shot of your breakfast bowl on Instagram). Readers are dying for a peek behind the proverbial curtain into the writer’s world and the writer’s mind. Whether this is a literal peek – a shot of you in your office or on location researching, or maybe sneak peeks on upcoming work, deals/coupons/sales, insights or editorials on links or events. What makes you happy? What makes you shake your fist at the sky?

But Lisa, I’m a private person. I don’t like to post about personal stuff.

Kristen’s written about that A LOT like here . If you can write like Salinger or McCarthy then maybe you’ll win the author lotto and get to remain hidden in your cave. “May the odds be ever in your favor.” Yeeeeah – we know how that worked out.

Seriously – nobody wants to know what you ate for breakfast, or – being totally honest here – that your toddler finally figured out potty training. You don’t have to be THAT personal. Be yourself. What would you tell a group of friends about yourself in a local coffee shop?

Fans are tripping over themselves for this kind of stuff:

George R.R. Martin says the HBO’s version of the Iron Throne is WRONG

George R.R. Martin, author the Game of Thrones tales now a hit series on HBO, recently posted on his blog about his vision for the actual Iron Throne used in the TV series. He says the show got it wrong! I’m hooked. How did HE envision the actual throne? What did they get wrong? And he has an artist’s rendering of the throne as he sees it – almost.

I’m not even a fan and I clicked through to read this. I’ve never watched the TV series, and I only read 1.5 books in the series because I threw the book across the room the third time he killed a character I had fallen in love with. But I wanted to know what the director/producers got wrong. I wanted to know what HE saw in his head.

This is exactly the kind of thing readers are eager to consume. Above, I inserted a few random examples from best-selling authors using Facebook to connect with readers (not directly sell books). Find an author on Facebook who writes the same genre you do. What are they posting? How often are they posting? How are they ‘pulling back the curtain’ for readers? I’m not suggesting you copy what they’re doing, but use what they’re doing as a jumping off point for content specific to your brand, your writing, your fans.

THANK YOU, LISA!

Make sure you check out her classes over at WANA International. Facebook Start to Finish covers everything and it’s only $30 (it’s a PDF class). She is also teaching Advanced Techniques for Your Writer/Author Facebook Page.

I LOVE hearing from you and I know Lisa will too!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of July, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

NOTE: My prior two books are no longer for sale, but I am updating them and will re-release. My new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.

The Personal Apocalypse—When are We REAL Writers?

Raise a glass to yet another BONK on the head.

It would be lovely if, when we decide to pursue our dream to become a writer, that friends, family and acquaintances would roll out the red carpet of support. Maybe some of you are fortunate enough to have had this happen, but I’d wager most of us could have joined a cult of UFO worshippers in New Mexico and received a better response.

New Level, New Devil (Thank You, Joyce Meyers)

Any time we seek to do something remarkable, something that deviates from “normal”… expect rejection. I was “fortunate” to experience a personal apocalypse so massive, that up was the only way to go. With a misdiagnosis of epilepsy, I’d lost my job, my home, my savings, my health, my identity, and my pride. I’d suffered such a sweeping personal extinction that I very literally had nothing left to lose.

Why not become a writer? I’d always wanted to, but was too busy trying to please those who would never be pleased.

Brief History of Kristen’s Failed People-Pleasing Attempts

I’d joined the military to make my father happy. He wasn’t. After being a high school drop-out TWICE, I worked my tail off and won a full medical scholarship to become a doctor and please my grandparents. My grandmother’s first words to me when I announced I’d won a $250,000 scholarship?

“They must have been short on their quota for women.”

I fractured my back in an ice storm in 1995. No more medical scholarship, so I majored in what interested me.

I earned a degree in International Relations, specifically Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa. I was going to change the world! The day after graduation, I boarded a plane for Syria and lived with refugees and mingled among the Bedouin and tried to see how things could be “fixed.” They couldn’t. At least not by me.

Defeated, I returned home.

Lost as to what to do next, I went into sales to please my grandfather (the business brain of the family). I was terrible at it. And yet I kept trying to fit myself into worlds where my strengths and talents had no place. In trying to please others, my health deteriorated drastically from stress. I remember every day going to work and having to pull over and puke. I hated what I did THAT much.

After I lost everything due to that fateful misdiagnosis, I decided to become a writer. I’d been working on my tome for years. I was sure it would be a best-seller and shut up all my naysayers. It wasn’t. It was a train wreck. I realized this when I joined a critique group and they promptly filleted me and my manuscript.

Thus, in a new personal low, I reverted back to trying to please others and got another brilliant idea.

“I know. LAW SCHOOL.”

I bought an LSAT book but never studied. I guess I thought I’d learn through osmosis. Anyway, it would have been great if I’d tanked, but I didn’t. I scored a 168 without studying. Now I was truly in a panic. Until the day I received my scores, I hadn’t been honest with myself. I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I’d just thought maybe my family would let up on me for a while then I could write while I “studied” to do better.

But, no. I was accepted into one of the top law schools in the country.

CRAP.

Crisis Point

I’d always believed in service. I was a Rotarian and had done mission work and humanitarian work for most of my life. So, my mother (my sole advocate) and I went to talk to the church elder to get some advice about law school versus being a writer.

For some reason I expected him to support my writing dream, but was basically told I was a fool and most writers wash out and starve and that writing wasn’t a “real” job.”

*Makes mental note of how many BOOKS were lining his office*

When I left, I was in tears and ready to give up on writing. Had it not been for my mother, I would have. I’d have gone off to law school then later hurled myself in traffic because I would have been chained to yet another profession that wasn’t my calling.

How Could ONE PERSON FAIL So MUCH?

Faith is the belief in things ahead that won’t make sense until we look back. This is one of the reasons I blog so much to teach you guys more than craft, more than social media. I want to teach you that it isn’t over until we give up and that failure provides the necessary ingredients for success.

If I hadn’t been a high school dropout, would I have had the tenacity to never give up?

If you read my new book, it’s loaded with neuroscience, economics, epidemiology and humor. If I hadn’t majored in Neuroscience for three years, then earned a degree in Political Economy, would I have been able to tether all these concepts together in a book that could help artists?

The same analytical skills that helped me on the LSAT helped me pull apart what worked and didn’t work with selling books. Why don’t ads sell books when they sell plenty of mascara, diet plans and computers?

If my first novel had been perfect, would I have had to take on jobs editing and reverse-engineered every book I’d ever read to learn? Could I teach craft had I naturally been “brilliant” at it? If I hadn’t landed on my @$$ so many times, would I have developed the sense of humor that makes all these concepts FUN?

Failure as Fertilizer

When we first moved into our new home, our yard was essentially mowed field. The dirt was nothing but rocks and hard clay. When I planted my first flowers, they shriveled and died. So I planted different flowers and they died too.

So then I planted different flowers and they caught on fire and fell into the swamp died too. But, finally, after rounds and rounds of dead plants, the flowers started to thrive. All that had died had provided what was missing, the vital ingredients for life to THRIVE.

THEY LIVE! Only took FOUR YEARS to BLOOM.

Your “failures” feel like bull$#!&, but bull$#!&  makes fabulous fertilizer . You just need time, work and patience to bloom.

Embrace the Apocalypse

Becoming a writer isn’t easy. We get called “aspiring” writers until we land a sweet three-book deal with Random-Penguin. No one calls a pre-med student an “aspiring doctor.” They don’t call a pre-law student “an aspiring lawyer.” So, as I’ve said before, screw aspiring. Aspiring is for pansies. You are NOT an aspiring writer, you are at the very least a “pre-published writer”.

Writers write, so if you are writing, you are a WRITER.

Ignore the naysayers. They’ll be your biggest fans one day when you prove them wrong. Raise a glass to your failures. They will provide the ingredients for magic in your future writing. Let the old fall away. A lot of an apocalypse is releasing the old, the out-dated and the junk that doesn’t work.

I had to let go of trying to please others. I had to let go of failing at destinies that weren’t mine. I had to let go of amateur thinking and take my job seriously, even if no one could walk into a bookstore and buy my book (yet). Know that you have stories only you can tell, subjects only you can teach or explore (for the NF authors). You were born to do this and ignore anyone who tells you any different.

If your friends and family don’t support you, the WANAs will. Join us on #MyWANA on Twitter or on WANATRIBE. When we try to hold onto the old and fail to embrace the apocalypse and embark on our true journey, we look a lot like this.

What are your thoughts? Did you have a personal apocalypse that prompted you to throw caution to the wind and become what you always wanted to be? Are you like me and struggle with people pleasing?

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of July, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

NOTE: My prior two books are no longer for sale, but I am updating them and will re-release. My new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.

The Bookpocalypse–What to Do When You Realize Your Story Might Be DEAD

Original image via Wikimedia Commons, Nuclear Weapons Test Romeo

Since I am dedicating this week to the apocalypse to support my friend, Piper Bayard, I thought we’d take a day to look at the Bookpocalypse. What IS a Bookpocalypse? The Bookpocalypse is when you realize that first book you’ve been working, reworking, taking to critique, etc. is a train wreck and, for all intents and purposes, unsalvageable.

I went through this, too. Back in the 90s, when I began my tome, I mistakenly believed that making As in English naturally qualified me to be a best-selling author.

Yeah, um. NO.

And there comes that point that we need to be honest why our book is being rejected (or, in the new paradigm, not selling). This can be a very depressing low for any artist. I still remember the day it dawned on me my first book was mess and it was time to pull the plug. This is why I coined the phrase, Persistence can look a lot like stupid. 

If we don’t have a basic understanding of some key fundamentals, more work or harder work is wasted effort. We need to work smarter, not harder.

Sometimes we need professional help. This help can come from reading craft books, dissecting fiction similar to what we want to write, studying movies, attending conferences and workshops. But sometimes it can come through having a strong editor.

A Story of Seeds

Piper won’t mind me telling you this story since we laugh about it now. Of course we weren’t really laughing through the process, and it did seem a strange request that Piper requested a lock of hair part-way through edits.

Image via Flikr Creative Commons, courtesy of Juha-Matti Herrala.

But, the story goes like this.

Piper met me at the DFW Writers Workshop Conference. She met me at a fortuitous point because I believed that antagonists were key to plotting and had spent the previous year studying all the masters with the hopes of creating a program to help writers (especially new writers) be able to create a core story problem, a solid plot, and dimensional characters quickly.

I’d been part of critique groups for years and watched writers all around who kept working on the same novel and getting rejected year after year. I knew there had to be a better way. What if these authors did land the Magical Three-Book Deal? NY wasn’t going to give them fifteen years to write the next books.

There had to be a way to teach new writers how to ramp up the creative process and generate solid books at a professional pace.

When I met Piper, she was shopping a completed manuscript called Seeds. Though I was no longer taking on editing work at this point, I gave in when it came to Piper because she is cute and fun to hang out with. I agreed to edit the first hundred pages because Piper was headed to another conference the next month and a big-time editor had expressed interest in her story idea.

Piper sends me the document and…

Kill. Me. Now.

Three pages in, I sensed we needed to call Literary FEMA. All the rookie mistakes. ALL OF THEM. I remember hitting about page 65 and calling her.

Me: Um, Piper, you, uh, have a lot of characters.

Piper: There aren’t that many.

Me: Are they all relevant to the story?

Piper: Well, maybe not in this book, but it’s going to be a series.

Me: *head desk* Okay, but still you have A LOT of characters.

Piper: Not really.

Me: I counted. I am at page 65 and you have almost 70 named characters. When you name them, that is a cue we need to care. It’s impossible to care about 70 people in less than 70 pages.

She still didn’t believe me, so I went back through the manuscript and not only highlighted all the named characters (which included pets and extended family) but I wrote the names in a list.

Piper: Oh, wow. I guess I do have too many characters.

Me: Ya think?

I continued my edits and notes and this is how I earned the name The Death Star. By the end of the tortuous hundred pages, I told Piper that her book was all over the place.

There were scenes that were irrelevant because she’d missed her core antagonist and core story problem. Because of this, the rest was just filler. She was “playing Literary Barbies” as I like to say.

Characters were talking to each other with no conflict, no scene goal. Melodrama filled in the gaps. Characters were psychologically inconsistent and half I would have recommended seek therapy and get medication. Their emotions were all over, namely to manufacture tension that couldn’t be created any other way (because no core story problem/antagonist).

I could tell she had a great storytelling voice (and a great idea for a novel), she just didn’t understand basic fundamentals, and that was derailing what she’d been trying to accomplish the past nine years.

I recommended we start a new book so she could learn the basics with a bit of guidance and then she’d have the skills to fix Seeds. But, Piper was determined to finish what she started and I knew this would mean a mass genocide of Little Darlings.

I only agreed to help for two reasons. First, Piper was a former lawyer so I knew she had a fabulous work ethic and tough skin. Secondly, I’d never tried to resurrect a novel from the dead and wondered if it was even possible. I knew it would stretch my skills and teach me just as much as it would teach Piper.

I stripped everything she’d written down to a single story problem then made her develop her core antagonist. Then we plotted from there, keeping and developing only the characters salient to the plot. I’d love to say this was easy for Piper, but I am pretty sure she was plotting her book and my death at a number of points along this journey.

At first, we would argue over characters or scenes she wanted to keep. Then, over time, I’d hear her starting to defend, and my response was, Have fun storming the castle.

Eventually, Piper learned to laugh and give in when I said this, namely because every time I recommended something be changed, moved or removed and she didn’t do it? She’d go back and read and see what I was talking about and just end up doing what I advised anyway.

A lot of working with an editor is developing trust, btw .

But, after all of this, I am happy we took the hard road. Piper endured her Bookpocalypse and came out stronger in the end. Seeds was burned and buried, and what grew from the ashes was Firelands.

Not only did Piper get a traditional deal, this book has become a best-selling dystopian that has received glowing AP reviews and was blurbed by numerous New York Times best-selling authors. She wrote a funny blog post about this same journey we’re discussing today in her post, The Nine-Year Baby.

Piper is now a WAY faster, cleaner, stronger writer.

Her second book took less than seven months to complete and she’s now writing her third and has plotted her fourth (those books being an entirely new series). When I read her second book, I raced through it in less than six hours and loved it. Amazingly enough, I only had minor suggestions and corrections to offer.

My Baby Writer’s all grown up! *sniff*

Remember I mentioned some writer’s block might not be laziness or fear, rather lack of a foundation. The subconscious senses what’s lacking and slams on the breaks.

But this experience proved what I’d believed all along. There are some great new storytellers out there who just need some basics and tough love. Not all of us are able to learn by reading books. Some of us are kinesthetic learners and learn by doing. This can mean writing a drawer full of sucky books, or it can mean seeking guidance from someone who is a skilled teacher.

Yet, none of this learning can happen if we don’t experience our Bookpocalypse. I am not going to sugarcoat the experience. It SUCKS. When you have written and rewritten over and over, the characters and experiences become very real. It very much does feel like burying friends. I’ve been through it, too.

But we can’t move forward until we admit we have a disaster on our hands. And if we don’t learn why we wrote a disaster, this can be a formula for writing even more disasters.

This is why I am offering the Antagonist class tomorrow (use WANA15 for 15% off) and more classes that compliment this one next month. I no longer have the time to mentor the way I did with Piper, but I was able to create curriculum that can help reproduce the same effect.

I also highly recommend workshops offered by Bob Mayer, Candace Havens, James Scott Bell, Larry Brooks and Les Edgerton. Yes, it might cost money, but your time is valuable. Invest in your future.

Have you had a Bookpocalypse? Did you mourn the loss of your characters? Was it hard letting go? Are you happy you did?

I LOVE hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of July, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

NOTE: My prior two books are no longer for sale, but I am updating them and will re-release. My new book, Rise of the Machines–Human Authors in a Digital World is NOW AVAILABLE.