Judith Post's Blog, page 129

In writing, never kill a cat or a dog–people are expendable

I’m reading Anthony Bellaleigh’s Firebird right now, and I’m enjoying it.  He builds lots of tension by putting humans in danger.  I just finished reading a scene where the “firebird” goes after a little girl, but a dolphin saves her life.  It made me think.  When I first started writing, I chose mysteries for my genre, and I went to a mystery conference where one of the wise authors on a panel said, “Never kill a cat.  Your readers will never forgive you.”  “What about a dog?” someone asked.  “That’s better,” another author said, “but it’s safer to kill people.”  Anthony’s a science fiction writer.  He kills whatever he wants to, but it feels a little odd, as I’m reading, to feel as sorry for a goat’s death as I do for a minor character’s.  Part of good writing.  Fear and death are horrible, no matter who or what’s suffering.

Now that I’ve turned to writing paranormals and urban fantasy, the rules have changed a little.  Agatha Christie swept blood and gore under the library rug to keep murder cozy.  Thrillers work hard to peak murders at key parts of their plots.  Just like horror, they can use shock value to tighten tension.  That’s why, often, they show the victim before the villain kills him/her.  That way, the reader has a vested interest.  Urban fantasy tends to operate on the same strategy as Shakespeare–blood and pain add drama.  Bodies don’t have to litter the last chapters of their books, but it’s allowed.  Battles are pretty much required.

For deaths to have clout in a novel, though, they need to be personal.  We need to care about the person…or goat…who meets his end.  Either that, or the death is simply a plot point.  We rarely meet the first victims in Agatha Christie’s novels because they’re not important.  The death is simply the starting point for an investigation.  It’s someone’s death, later in the novel, that has emotional impact, because we’ve met that character and we have an opinion about whether he deserved to live or die.  So…what do you use in your stories to crank up tension?  To keep the reader turning the page?  In romances, it’s “will they get together or not?”  In spy stories, it’s “will the spy complete his mission and survive?”  In quest fantasies, it’s “will the hero succeed in his quest…in one piece?”  In literary fiction, the battle’s internal.  Can the hero give up drinking?  Get past a personal flaw?  Lots of things work.  Just don’t kill a cat or a dog.

 

Rewrites

Every writer has to find what works for him.  I was on a writing panel a while ago, and one of the authors said that he always works on three projects at a time, because when he gets bored with one and runs out of ideas, he can pick up the next story until the first one tugs him back.  Another friend of mine always rotates between two novels.  Me, I’m a one-at-a- time type writer.  I might start a new story while I let a draft sit, to let it “cool” and gain some objectivity before I polish it, but I don’t jump back and forth between chapters and scenes.  Come to think of it, though, I can’t multi-task all that well either.  Just saying….

My friends and I have different approaches to rewrites too.  Paula writes these deep, layered,  power house scenes, then does rewrites to connect them.  Two of my friends think BIG and words flow from their fingertips.  They use rewrites to cut and shape ”too much” into order.  I tend to write sparely–if I get the basics of the scene right, I’m happy.  My rewrites are adding all  of the things I didn’t put in the first time around.  Don’t get me wrong.  I still think about word choice–did I use the exact word I needed where I needed it?–and verb choice–did I use active instead of passive?  I look at grammar and sequence, but those are the basics.  After those, I hit the things I’ve been known to overlook.

Did I set the scene?  And I don’t mean does the reader know where my characters are standing or sitting.  I want the reader to feel like he’s standing there too.  I want him to be able to picture the room he’s in or the field he’s crossing.  I want him to squint his eyes because the sun’s too bright and inhale the scent of crisp air and freshly turned earth.  If my character’s cooking, I want my reader to smell onions sauteeing and the spices on the sizzling meat.  Not every scene, of course, but enough that my reader is grounded in place.

Did I deliver emotion?  Tension?  By this, I mean–why is this scene important to my POV character?  It’s not enough to just have things happening in my story.  Those things have to impact my character.  Why does she care?  What difference does it make?  To do this, I often use internal dialogue or deep POV.  So many times, I look at a scene and everything’s right, but it just doesn’t work.  It should–important things are happening, but it’s flat.  Then I know that it’s not what’s there, it’s what’s NOT there that’s tripping me up.  And that’s almost always my character’s emotions.  What does she think about what’s happening around her?  Does it make her happy, sad, or frustrated?  What’s her take on it?  That’s when internal dialogue can make a scene significant.

And finally, for me and my rewrites, I check my story for transitions.  Did I jump from one place to another too abruptly?  Did I leave out a scene that would add to the story?  And lastly, the dreaded “show, don’t tell.”  Did I gloss over something, tell the reader what happened, when I could let him experience it along with my character?

This is my list of things I look for when I rewrite a story.  They’re things I know I tend to rush over or forget on my first draft of getting things on paper.   Each author has his own style and habits, so I thought I’d add a link that probably gives better information than mine on critiquing (for me, that includes how I critique my own stories to make them stronger).

When I first started writing, I dreaded rewrites.  Now, I recognize them as the difference between a good story and a great one.  I hope this link gives you even more ideas to make your stories better: http://www.crayne.com/howcrit.html

Writing a Series

I’ve been told that, for marketing, it’s smart to write a series instead of stand-alone novels.  If people like the characters in your first novel, they’ll want more stories about them.  They’ll want to see them grow and change.  Adding a romance helps.  The protagonist and his/her romantic interest can butt heads for a book or two, get together in the third or fourth, and become a team after that, with the usual complications that come with coupledom.  I have to admit, my favorite mysteries are almost all series.  I loved Nancy Pickard’s Jenny Cain, even though the author finally moved on to someone else.  Elizabeth George has shamed Thomas Lynley, married him, killed his wife, and emotionally beaten him up.  Once in a while, I wonder if she still likes him.  Same with Martha Grimes and Richard Jury.  It must be hard to come up with book after book with the same characters. Maybe sometimes, you’re just irritated with them.  But look at J.D. Robb or Sue Grafton.  Series characters are done all the time, and as readers, we like going into a world we know with characters we like.

My favorite urban fantasy authors write series.  A few of them write more than one.  Maybe that’s a good thing–when you’ve had it up to here with one protagonist, you can switch to a different one.  For urban fantasy, not only do the characters grow in each successive book, with more intense relationships in more complex arrangements, but the world they inhabit becomes more detailed and real too.  With each book, I learn more about Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock and how she and her puma share the same body, but I also learn about vampires and their society, the politics of “others” who dwell in the same city, and the origins of how vampires started.  The paranormal becomes more real the more books the author writes.

When I decided to write my novellas, I kept those things in mind.  I wanted to write at least four stories for each series.  But I wanted to use more than just settings to distinguish them from one another.  I wanted a different focus for each series too.  So, I put a strong detective slant to the Babet/Prosper stories and gave them Agatha Christie-type plots.  For One Less Warlock, I wrote a locked room mystery–with witches. For A Different Undead, I wanted to write about a person who’d died and suddenly appeared on the streets again–but instead of faking his/her death, I wanted to put a magic twist on the tale.  For Magrat’s Dagger, I wanted a stolen, prized relic, like the Maltese Falcon.

I won’t bore you–I hope–with too many details for each series, but I wanted the Loralei and Death series to have more of a poignant feel, while I tried to focus more on light and quirky romance, with a smidgeon of magic, in the Emerald Hills series.  For Dante and Ally, I made an effort to incorporate more mythology into the plots, but I let the medieval castles set the tone for the Christian and Brina stories.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that when you sit down to write, it doesn’t hurt to have a series in mind.  And settings help define a series, yes, but most have the same tone of voice too.  Is it humorous?  Dark?  Melancholy?  Or adventurous?  And they not only have the same character or characters, they often have a similar, underlying theme or feel.  Minor characters can grow into bigger parts.  So leave yourself some wiggle room.  At the end of your book, which is a big enough feat to accomplish in and of itself, what else could happen to those same characters in that same world?  Because you might have to live with them for a while.

Writing about Place

I got the brilliant idea (at least, it seemed like it at the time) to write four or five different series of novellas, and I wanted each one to have a slightly different flavor.  To achieve that, I used settings to distinguish one set of stories from another.

For the Babet/Prosper series, I set the stories in River City–a place of gumbo, po’boys, and magic.  Witches and Weres feel comfortable on its streets.  A succubus runs its bordello.    Voodoo mingles with juju, and a bogeyman might stop for a visit.  There’s an “anything goes” type of vibe to the place.

I wanted my gargoyle/gorgon series to have a different feel.  Gargoyles are guardians of cities and churches.  They take themselves seriously.  River City would scandalize them.  So I put them in an urban area, filled with good, solid citizens who need protected from the “others” who are up to no good.  Paranormals shift to look like mortals, to blend among us.  And no bad deed goes unpunished.

For my Loralei/Death series, I wanted a smaller, more personal setting, so Loralei lives in a cozy, stone cottage at the end of a long, winding drive.  If someone visits there, it’s because they’re desperate.  And they’re willing to pay a price for Death’s favors.

The point is, when you choose a setting for whatever story you’re working on, the setting becomes an integral part of the plot and characterization.  Why does the protagonist live there?  Why does he stay instead of leave?  What sort of flavor does the setting have?  Does it suit the tone of the story?  In my Emerald Hills novellas, the town itself becomes a minor character that drives the stories.  It has magic tucked in different tourist shops.  It calls people to it.

Cozy mysteries usually take place in small towns, whereas P.I. novels favor big cities.  There’s a reason.  Settings contribute to the pulse of a story.  Choose them carefully.  And make them real–so that we can smell the gas fumes or the cinnamon and sugar at the donut shop.  Are there wide expanses of cement and skyscrapers or striped awnings and brick streets?  And why is this particular setting important to the protagonist?  Does he love it or hate it?  Feel at home or trapped?  The setting and how the protagonist responds to it helps to create the mood of the story.

http://www.judithpostswritingmusings.com/index.html

Writing: Fast and Furious

I can’t write fast.  I know some people do, and they’re good at it.  Not me.  The reason I’m thinking about this is because some of my friends are gearing up for Nano writing in November–50,000 words in 30 days.  It’s so tempting!  Live, eat, and breathe word count.  But I’ve tried it before, and it wasn’t pretty.

When I put my first novel, Fallen Angels, online, I wanted to have a follow-up, in case readers liked it and wanted a series.  I typed my little fingers thin for two months until I had a second novel.  And then I gave it to my true, blue friends and beta readers, and the consensus was pretty much the same.  What the heck did you do?

What?  In my mind, the second novel was brilliant.  It had everything–battles, romance, drama, and angst.  Thankfully, for me, my friends are brutally honest.  “We don’t care.  We got tired of the battles.  The romance didn’t grab us, and your writing wasn’t its best.”  I went back and rewrote, pitched some things, polished others.  It was better, but nothing to brag about.  By now, even I could see that.  When you first give birth to your masterpiece, all you feel is the afterglow.  Give it a minute, and it spits up with cholic and keeps you awake at night.  Then reality sets in.  This novel might be too flawed to fix.

And that’s my problem with speed writing.  I tend be the tortoise, not the hare.  My brain doesn’t work fast.  I’ll never win a debate.  I think of the perfect answer a few days after the discussion.  So for me, the plodding method works better.  I write a scene.  The next day, I rewrite that scene and write the next one.  The day after that, I rewrite the new scene and pound out another one.  I rewrite as I go.  And hopefully, after a few tries, I have all the right ingredients.   The first draft is always the plot, getting what happens right.  The next time, I might add description, some internal dialogue, more characterization.  I’m not capable of getting it all in there at one time.  I’m a bare bone writer, and it takes rewrites to flesh scenes out.

Believe me when I tell you that I know the  plot points for every novel I write.  But even when I know what I’m aiming for–the twist at the end of the first fourth, the new twist at the middle, and the final tweak at the three-fourths mark, I still write from one point to the next, and any subtleties come later.  I used to wish I could get it all right the first time.  Now, I’m grateful if the thing just comes together.  But it doesn’t for me if I rush it.  My brain gets tired.  I settle for ideas that aren’t as strong as I’d like.  I get bogged down and I don’t add the details I usually would.

I’m not trying to talk anyone out of pounding out pages.  But be aware of how you work best.  And adjust for that.  I can tell when an author I love has to rush to meet a deadline.  The writing isn’t as good.  Sometimes slow and steady does win the race.  If you pump out pages, give yourself extra time to do rewrites.  Ideas need to incubate.  So do novels.  Pop their corks and let them breathe before you taste them.  And go from there.

Write What You Read

You know the saying, “You are what you eat.”  *shivers* (Makes me think of Patricia Briggs’ vampire in Silver Borne, who took that very literally).  Sorry..I digress…my brain does that, but I think it would be appropriate to describe most writers as “you write what you read.”  I started out reading mysteries…lots of them.  So, when I wanted to write my first book, that’s what I wrote.  That’s the form that I intuitively felt comfortable with.  My friends who devoured one romance after another write romances.  One of them reads romances and watches tons of horror movies…and she writes both.  Odd combo, right?  Write a romance with a happy ending.  Write a horror novel and go dark.  Might balance things out.  Sci/fi readers tend to write sci/fi.  It makes sense.  We write what we love/what draws our minds and imaginations to it.

Another reason I advocate to write what you read is that each genre (and I include literary novels in this category–they have their own rules and structure too) has its own rhythms and intricacies.  We “learn” them while we read one book after another.  They become an internal compass that guides us from page to page.    We can feel when a red herring should appear or a twist in plot should occur.

Years ago, when I was trying to find a “home” for a mystery I wrote, I sent the manuscript to Tor, and the wonderful editor who worked there at the time, wrote me back and told me that she loved my writing, loved my characters, but she’d just been moved to head up the paranormal romance line for the company.  Did I have one?  Now, I had lots of spare mystery manuscripts stuffed in file drawers, but I had no idea what a paranormal romance even was, so I wrote and told her so.  And bless her, she said, “Here’s a list of the things that make a paranormal romance.”  There were no books on shelves for me to look at, nothing to go by but her list, but hey–I have lots of creativity, right?

I’m a writer.  I read the list and said to myself, “This doesn’t look too hard.  I can do this.”  And I tried.  Needless to say, my first attempt was maybe a good book, but it sure wasn’t a paranormal romance.  So she sent me another list and a few titles to look at.  I stuck the ideas on a solid mystery plot (something I knew), and she liked that one–wanted to buy it, actually–but she got shot down because the sales department had just pedaled a book with Tarot cards in it and didn’t want another one.  Such is the world of publishing.  And then she left Tor, and her type of paranormal romances morphed into the type I read today.  And I was behind the transition again.

The thing is, once more paranormal romances reached the market, I discovered I’d never be good at them.  I’m not romantic.  Have a heck of a time writing it.  But urban fantasy–now that I not only loved, but got hooked on.  And it took lots and lots of reading until I felt comfortable there.  Now, I never want to go back to writing mysteries.

My point is, even with a list of “this is what’s in an urban fantasy,” you won’t get it right.   There are lots and lots of small, key elements, rhythms, nuances that you only learn by reading…and reading more.  How you label your book or story matters, because readers come to your work with set expectations.  I learned that on Goodreads.  If you say your book is a paranormal romance,  the romance has to be the key ingredient that turns your story.  If you label it as urban fantasy, romance is a subplot and a battle between a good paranormal and a bad paranormal drives the plot.  So my advice?  Once you decide what you want to write, read as many books in that genre as you can.  And then read some more.

http://www.judithpostswritingmusings.com/

Writing: The Great and Wonderful What-Ifs

My grandson came to spend the night on Tuesday, and he asked me if I could help him write a story.  Nate’s 16, and when he’s serious about something, he delves into it.  I have no idea if he’ll follow through or not, but he was in the mood to get answers.  “What do I do first?” he asked.

“What kind of story do you want to write?” I asked.

And he gave me an in depth idea he’d been playing with–a guy who could call back any of his ancestors in time to pick their minds.  Pretty interesting.  He knew the setting.  He knew what each ancestor did in their previous lives, and he wanted lots of atmosphere.  All good, and it would make a great opening hook, but it wasn’t a story.

“Why not?” he asked.  Every detail was vivid in his mind.

“What does the hero want?” I asked.

“To talk to his ancestors.”

“Why?” I persisted.

He didn’t have a clue.

“Every story starts when some event knocks your protagonist off course, changes his life for the worse, and he has to DO something to fix it, to get his life back to normal.  Your protagonist needs a problem, a problem big enough that he can’t ignore it.  That’s called the inciting incident.”

Nate thought about that.  He decided that his hero should like a girl, but she didn’t like him.

“Not good enough,” I said.  “Like isn’t a strong enough passion.  The more the protagonist cares about the problem, the more it affects him, the stronger the emotional impact when he can’t have it and the harder he’ll try to achieve it.  The stakes have to be high, almost impossible.”

“Okay, maybe he loves the girl and something’s keeping them apart if his ancestors can’t give him a way of keeping her.”

“Great,” I said.  “What’s keeping them apart?”

Again, no idea.  So we played the game of “What if?”

Finally Nate said, “What if she catches some disease and one of the ancestors was an alchemist and might know how to cure her?”

Aaah, now that could work.  But there had to be more, or this would be a very short story.  “How could this go wrong?” I asked him.  “You never want to make it easy for the protagonist to achieve his goal.  What if he tried calling the ancestor, but something messed  up?”

“I know!  What if he called the wrong one?  What if one of his ancestors was a bad guy, and when Andre (we were making progress-he had a name for the guy) brings him back, he doesn’t want to return to the grave?”

Now, we were talking.  The protagonist has more problems than he knows what to do with.  Nate had the beginnings for a story.  He had enough ideas percolating for the opening hook, the inciting incident, the internal motivation, and the first story twist.  A good beginning.  Enough to get him through the first fourth of his pages.  Where he goes from that, I don’t know.  We’ll have to play another game of “What ifs.”  But along with that, “What can go wrong?” is another useful tool when you’re stuck for ideas.

I hope your protagonist finds an almost insurmountable problem that drives him all the way to the end of your story or novel.  But if he doesn’t, ask yourself, “What if?” and “What can go wrong?” and have fun.

Writing: Trying to Connect

People start blogs to connect with other people, to share their thoughts and passions, so I want to thank Chelsea at http://thejennymacbookblog.wordpress.com/ for nominating my blog for the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award.  Sounds cool, doesn’t it?  Looks cool too.

There are rules that go along with the nomination.  I need to tell you 7 things about myself:

1.  I’m a Libra who’s hooked on horoscopes, especially Jonathan Cainer’s webpage.

2.  I love Greek/Roman and Norse myths.  They work their way into my stories.

3.  The idea that magic might lurk in nooks and crannies of our world appeals to me.

4.  My grandsons think that I rode dinosaurs to a cave and painted on its walls when I attended grade school.

5.  I collect cookbooks and try to find one as a souvenir whenever we travel.

6.  I belong to a writers’ group that has the most wonderful people you could ever meet.  Writers make awesome friends!

7.  I live in northeast Indiana, and actually love the Midwest–hot summers, lousy winters, and all.

I also need to nominate 7 other blogs that I admire.  I know this is a sisterhood, but some of these are men–because I admire them and because I’d like to introduce you to their blogs.  If they decline the nomination, I understand.  Most of them are overworked, but at least you might get to meet them this way:

http://lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/2010/04/outlining.html

http://blog.thepriyas.com/2012/03/24/blogging-the-series.aspx

http://www.karensnovels.com/index.html

http://ashsilverlock.com/

http://susanbahr.com/blog/

And I know, for sure, that these two bloggers have been nominated before, so have already done all of this, but it’s worth anyone’s time to find them and read them, so I’m nominating them again (even though they probably won’t respond):

http://unikorna.blogspot.com/

http://jmgoyder.com/

 

There.  That’s my list of 7 blogs I enjoy and hope you try out.

And thanks again to Chelsea at http://thejennymacbookblog.wordpress.com/ for nominating me.

 

I’ll write a regular blog later.  This was more work than I expected.  In the meantime, happy writing!

 

 

 

 

Unicorns & Writing

For me, writing is chasing a dream.  It’s like the elusive unicorn, that magical experience only bestowed on the pure of heart with the best of intentions.  It doesn’t always work that way.  I’m not totally naive, but it works that way for me, even when the heady flow of words and ideas are tempered by the reality of markets, twittering, and Facebook pages.

Unicorns are a great symbol for the ideal of writing.  One of my daughter’s friends used to collect unicorn figurines.  Her room was full of them, but I never really got the appeal until I read Theodore Sturgeon’s short story, The Silken Swift.  The squire’s sly, spoiled daughter intrigued me, and the author’s use of language mesmerized with its magical imagery and lyrical flow.  The message of the story inspired.  If you’ve never experienced it, it’s well worth a read.  (I’ll put a link below).

The other  story that swayed me to the beauty of unicorns was The Unicorn And The Lake, a children’s book by Marianna Mayer and illustrated by Michael Hague.  It’s buried in religious symbolism, like C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe–as a matter of fact, the two stories have a lot in common–but the beauty of the telling appealed to me.

Authors have long used unicorns as a symbol of purity.  And sometimes writers forget, while we struggle with trying to find an agent, trying to increase our sells,  and trying to become a “brand name,” that we also need to encourage and celebrate the pure joy of putting words on paper–writing just for the sake of expressing yourself.

http://www.e-reading.org.ua/chapter.php/83050/68/Isaac_Asimovs_Worlds_of_Fantasy._Book_6__Mythical_Beasties.html

What Makes You Write

This blog might meander more than most.  And be a bit longer, so be warned.  But people write for different reasons.  I belong to a writers’ group, Summit City Scribes, an eclectic mix of people whose main focus is to make our writing better.  After we discuss active and passive verbs, repetition, characterization, or pacing..etc., we might discuss a market for whatever was read.  The point is, we put writing first, marketing a dismal second.   I’ve gone to other groups that flip the two.  Selling is the major focus, and what to write that sells is the main discussion.  They talk about writing too, but it’s more about making the perfect product that will catch an editor’s eye.  And to be honest, I think more people sell in those groups than in ours.  Why?  Because they’re better writers?  No, because they’re more realistic.  They don’t just sit down and write whatever strikes their fancy.  They look at the market, study it, and write for a specific publisher.  They write smart.  Does that mean I wish our group would change?  No, because our group encourages writers, whether they’ll ever sell or not.  But if you want to sell, you should know the markets.  Study them and tailor your novel or short story or article to them.

I’ve said before in this blog that I never thought about writing until my husband enrolled me in a class called Writing For Fun and Profit.  My girls were still in diapers, and it was a gift from him (he babysat each week so that I could go), a time for me to get out of the house and away from being a Mommy.  The teacher liked one of my articles enough to encourage me to try to sell it.  She even suggested a market for it, Byline magazine.  So I sent it with a little note and didn’t expect much.  I got a letter a month later offering me $25 for it.  And I remember being thrilled and telling my husband, “I think I’ll write more.  This is easy.”  And I wrote and I wrote, and discovered that NOTHING about writing is easy.  I’d had beginner’s luck, and the rest of the process was tricky business.  But by then, I was hooked–an addict, so I wrote anyway.  Writing for some, like it was for me back then, (probably is even now), is an outlet–a spigot that offers release when too many thoughts and energies build up and gush forth on paper.  Only I couldn’t just stop at journaling or scribbling in a diary, I wanted to control those words and jostle them into stories.  And then I wanted those stories to be more powerful, and I began to take writing very seriously.

I’ve known people who read hundreds of romances, sit down and KNOW the rhythm and internal rules of romance enough, to whip off a forty, sixty, or eighty thousand word manuscript and sell it on the first, second, or third try.  I am not one of those people.  I’ve never thought of myself as a race horse or thoroughbred.  I’m more like a pack mule or a work horse–the tortoise instead of the hare.  I’m the type who dips my toes in the water, works my way up to my knees, then my shoulders before I take the plunge.  Some people dive right in.  They start by writing novels, gong to conferences, making connections.  I started with short stories, sold some to small anthologies and got paid in copies, before I sold to major magazines and anthologies.  Then I started thinking about novels.  And I had a unique knack for writing what no one wanted to buy.  “Sorry, cozies are a glutted market right now.  Good writing.  If you write something else, please keep us in mind.”  And did I take the hint?  Stop writing cozies?  No, not me.  I thought the pendulum would surely swing back, and then I’d be sitting on a treasure house of the stupid things.  See what I mean?  Marketing matters.  I was a slow learner.

A person joined our group once, came for a short while, and then quit coming because he told us, “I don’t want to waste my time writing unless I’m going to be paid big money for it.”  And we told him, “Good luck.”  If you think you’ll get rich by writing, I hope you ARE one of the lucky ones.  It still hasn’t happened for me and most of my friends.  I do have a friend, who writes romances for Harlequin, who’s selling like crazy.  But she’s also a marketing whiz, one of those rare writers who’s good at writing AND good at selling herself.  Another friend put her book on amazon and was at the right time with the right thing and sold lots of copies.  But the general rule?  It takes a lot of work and time to make a name for yourself.  The writers I know who write for money do nonfiction and are regular contributors to magazines, work for businesses, or write “how to” books, or teach classes on how to write.  They write fiction on the side.  I’d be living on the streets if I had to live off of my writing.  Right now, I’ve spent more money putting my stories online than I’ve made off of them.  My agency doesn’t pay for them, I do.  But when my agent sent out each novel, it took a year before I heard back from big publishers, all rejecting it, and my agent wasn’t interested in small publishers…and I got restless.  I wanted to try e-books.  I think of it as an investment.  Hopefully, someday, people will discover them and buy more of them.  But that hasn’t happened yet.  Many, many writers’ blogs say that it takes time to be an “overnight” sensation.  I can’t tell you.  It hasn’t happened to me yet.

Anyway, the good news is that Lauren just approved four more of my novellas that I can put online.  I love writing them.  I love urban fantasy.  I have all kinds of freedom to try new things.  I hope one or more of them strikes a chord with readers.  Once they’re up, then I need to start marketing them, because marketing IS a part of writing these days.  You need to blog.  You need to twitter.  I made an author’s Facebook page and joined Goodreads.  You should too.

I didn’t write this blog to discourage anyone.   I love writing, but a few people have asked me questions about marketing and selling, and a few new people have joined Scribes, and I can tell their expectations aren’t very realistic.  So I hope you guys are smarter than I was.  But if you’re not, I hope you enjoy every part of writing as much as I do.  And good luck to you.