My NerdCampMI session

Did you attend my NerdCampMI session about creative writing activites and clubs that truly get kids focused on creativity? Wish you'd been there?

Click here for resources I shared via Dropbox.

Treat Your Art Like Something Valuable

I'm blogging today from a pretty cool place -- the SEA (Self Employment in the Arts) Conference in Lisle, Illinois.

There's a lot of artists and a lot of talk about art, but my final takeaway, and what I'd say to anyone who didn't make it here today, is simple: if you want people to value you as an artist, treat your art like it is something valuable.

It's not a coincidence that this comes in the wake of the backlash against Huffington Post not paying their writers and the exploitative lie that attention and visibility for your artistic output alone will help your career.

This past year, I've done a lot of artistic things. I'm prepping for my debut book launch, I'm doing school visits, recording an original soundtrack for a book, and somehow managing to be a halfway decent parent and entertaining teacher all at the same time. This is all hard work, and I think my time and output is valuable.

I think art, as a a whole, is something worth supporting. This doesn't mean I send someone a bill for every time I draw a stick figure or write a sentence in a notebook. I write a blog for free, run a Guys Read book club at my local indie bookstore for free, and do a whole host of other things because I feel compelled to do them and organize them on my own terms.

But my time and art are valuable. I've worked really hard at writing for many years, and if I don't treat it like something valuable no one else is going to do it for me.

I still fight my inner critic on a daily basis, but I go to sleep feeling like I am worth something.

My art is valuable, and I will treat it as such. You should too.

A Theory on George Lucas as an Artistic Prisoner (AKA Writing Lessons Learned From The Force Awakens)

I don't know how good stories work.

I could rattle off random tidbits pulled out of a hat, but half of them, at best, would be conditionally true, and null in alternate circumstances.

The truth is that the only way to know if a story works is to experience it. If you enjoy the experience, it's good. If not, it's either for someone else or destined to stay in someone's desk until an estate sale long after they're gone.

That's what I was thinking after seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens earlier today. The movie works so well that it's restoring the faith of millions in a franchise that has long been a running joke among its most devout fans.

Tone, action, dialogue, acting, set pieces, story. Any aspect of film you can name, this movie does it better than the prequel trilogy. But as for specifics on how J.J. Abrams has handled George Lucas's universe better than the master himself, you would be hard pressed to identify how. Narratives tend to have their own personalities, and respecting what they require in order to be successful and complete is mystifying even to the greatest of writers.

I personally think the hardest job of a writer is identifying a good story while in the drafting process. How do you know you're going in the right direction? If we're always making decisions, how do you spot when you've made a bad one before it's too late? If you're on the right track, how do you convince yourself of this so you don't throw in the towel?

I've come to believe there is only one truth about good writing: when it's good, you can FEEL IT.

I know. I sound like I'm using The Force to craft fiction. But that's kind of what it's like. Watching The Force Awakens, I could sense the presence of a cog missing from the prequel trilogy the moment the opening crawl floated across the screen. An intensity in the dialogue. A feeling of dread within the story's conflict. A sense that the actors really were who they were playing. Making that happen comes down to so much more than the order of twenty-six letters and an assortment of spaces and punctuation. You have to view the work in its entirety, and cut, edit, and paste together a holistic something that is bigger than its parts.

How do you know when you've accomplished that? You don't. You just let go and hope the end result is good enough. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it's not.

That leads me to my theory -- I think George Lucas has long been an artistic prisoner. I think he has always loved and hated the masterpiece that made him rich and famous. It's been a lucrative monster that has destroyed any and all dreams he might have achieved in an alternate life.

Making the prequels was his attempt to accept his fate as the tortured leader of one story that usurped every other script he'd written. He was forever fated to explore this world, and because it was his, he didn't want anyone else to ever put their hands on it, even when it had become clear his heart was no longer there. I don't think it was his fault, necessarily. I have an agent and editor who have given me guidance in my writing career, but no one had the power to tell Lucas his hold on the story was gone, save for a raging army of fans whom Lucas had come to loathe. I suspect that if I had written Star Wars I would have burned out managing the subsequent explosion, too.

Then, in his own words, Lucas had his "divorce" with Star Wars when he sold it to Disney. I'm sure it's both frustrating and a relief to see it in the hands of someone else, but it was the right choice. He arguably should have made it sooner.

Meanwhile, after years of having sworn off this series, I'm excited about Star Wars again.

Why I Stopped Caring Who Was a Bestseller

So you may have heard of this little book series called HARRY POTTER. Its explosion of popularity was followed by the voices of  writers angry that you had to write about boy wizards to be successful in the publishing industry. Why can't there be room for their unique masterwork?

Then Dan Brown arrived (or was he before Harry? I can't remember), and his explosion of popularity was followed by the voices of writers angry that you had to write conspiratorial mysteries to be successful in the publishing industry. Why can't there be room for their unique masterwork?

Then TWILIGHT happened, and its explosion of... oh, whatever, you get the point. After TWILIGHT came HUNGER GAMES, and then 50 SHADES OF GREY, and so on. I'm missing plenty of hits, of course, but the general pattern is there.

Those are all very different books. Yes, you can make loose connections, like "love triangles" and your subjective opinions about each author's writing style, but they remain their own reading experiences with their own unique audience.

I'm not writing to tell you those books are good, bad, under or overrated. Who am I to make that decision? Read them yourself and form your own opinion. I'm just here to suggest that maybe reacting to those books and authors with anger is the wrong response.

I hit a huge turning point when I made the conscious decision to stop being mad about not being published. And no, I'm not saying I hate or hated any of the above writers - they're just common targets of literary shaming.

Submitting your work out into the world is a grueling and often self-destructive experience. You suffer intense feelings of worthlessness about your work. Your self-confidence crumbles and reassemble itself all the time. Why add hatred for other writers onto a plate already full of negative feelings? So I stopped being upset about other writers, especially the ones making huge amounts of money. And when I stopped being upset and saw the industry from a distance, I realized how silly I was being in the first place.

Let's first identify a huge fallacy echoed by many prospective writers, including myself at one point in time:

"IF A BOOK BECOMES REALLY POPULAR, PUBLISHERS WILL ONLY RELEASE BOOKS EXACTLY LIKE IT." 

Agents and publishers get really sick of tropes, just like you do. More than you do, actually, because they spend long hours wading through slush piles full of boy wizards and sparkly vampires and sexy business men with fetishes and whatever other book everyone is trying to recreate instead of finding their own literary voice.

When TWILIGHT was at its peak, very few literary agents were accepting submissions for vampire novels. Most said flat out in their submission guidelines that if it was anything like TWILIGHT, or even read a tiny bit like it, to go somewhere else or be form rejected.

The reason why is because the next big thing in publishing is rarely a copy of its recent predecessor. Look at my original list if you don't believe me. DA VINCI CODE was nothing like HARRY POTTER. 50 SHADES was nothing like HUNGER GAMES. Agents and editors are not looking for the next version of anything. The next big blockbuster book is usually something nobody was expecting.

Let's tackle another fallacy:

IF PEOPLE KEEP BUYING THIS CRAP, THERE WILL NEVER BE AN AUDIENCE FOR MY WORK!"

Yes, it's easy to cast stones at a writer making bundles of cash. Stephen King has written two-million books, so at least a few of them won't be up to your standards. Why celebrate mediocrity (a subjective statement, considering every author is considered mediocre by somebody) when there are so many unpublished writers with masterpieces waiting to be read?

There's one huge problem with that mindset. Nothing any of those bestselling writers releases has the slightest effect on your ability to publish or sell books. In fact, I would argue that big blockbuster bestsellers create a healthier industry with more money to spend on new authors who present a risk. And when you finally do land a book deal, do you really think your book's success will have anything to do with what Stephenie Meyer is working on? She doesn't care what you're writing, and you shouldn't care what she's writing (unless you're a fan, in which case I hope you enjoy her next book).

I don't mean any of this to be smug. I also know it's easy for me to stand on Book Deal Mountain and preach to everyone still fighting the good fight to get their book a proper home. I don't mean to be that way, and please know I took this stance many years ago, long before the first sentences of I AM DRUMS were written.

There's nothing healthy about creating a fictional idea (see what I did there?) of an industry that is intentionally locking you out. That's not what's happening. If you truly love this whole making words thing and understand it's not a get-rich-quick scheme, you could break in just as easily as the next guy. Bestselling authors shouldn't make you feel left out.

Besides, hating other writers is baggage. Let it go, and I promise you'll immediately feel better.

Post Book Deal Writing and the Six Week Wait

LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES is done. The first draft, at least. Any writer, published or aspiring, will tell you first drafts do not really equal "done", but it feels good to use that word right now. I have a complete manuscript and an official follow-up to I AM DRUMS.

It feels especially good because LIBV gave me a lot of trouble. I almost abandoned it for another project multiple times. I thankfully discovered through my fellow debut authors at Fearless Fifteeners that the second book (or, in most cases, the first book post book deal) is usually a terrible process. Expectations are all over the place. You want to assure everyone who has invested in you that you are not a one trick pony. This is all ridiculous thinking, but try telling that to me several months ago.

Some articles by fellow writers have helped me feel less insane about the whole thing:

N.K. Traver wrote an excellent blog post called "Second Book Syndrome". She discusses this whole thing with better words than I am using in this post.

Robin LaFevers wrote an article, The Crushing Weight of Expectations, which covers almost every fear I've experienced since the book deal went through.

In reality, the worst thing you can do is worry -- all it does is freeze you in place and make you question the authenticity of your writing when what you should really be doing is WRITING WRITING WRITING and seeing what comes out. I've never benefited from expectations, genre-chasing, or questioning my literary credentials. I've benefited from putting my ass in a chair and writing.

Now that LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES is done, I have set a date on my calendar exactly six weeks from the moment I finished. That is the minimum amount of time I must wait before reading through and spotting all the silly grammatical and plotting mistakes I've made. It provides distance from your role as writer and helps you to see your work through an objective reader's lens. Last time I used this model, I ended up with a book that was bought by a real publisher. It probably won't hurt to do that again.

I Don't Know What I'm Doing, and I Never Do, and I Like it that Way

Yes, the subject of this post is a run-on sentence, and yes, I enjoy using them in a tasteful manner. And I also like beginning sentences with "and", but that's another post entirely.

On to what I really wanted to write about:

So just like that, I'm switching writing projects. My previous manuscript was starting to feel forced. I was pushing ahead at a snail's pace, and churning out scenes that worked alongside ones that didn't work at all. And the whole thing felt like a battle.

Writing takes a lot of discipline, but I've never felt like it was a battle. For me, it only works when you're engaged in something you feel compelled to finish. So what happens, then, when you realize, mid-sentence, that your brain has another idea it's more prepared to tackle?

My guess is you work on whichever manuscript feels right. Not that I'm an expert. I have tons of unfinished work (mostly ill-conceived short stories, but a few novels), and whenever I go back to them I usually find a solid reason why I left them in the first place. The problem here is that I'm not sure I'm leaving the first project out of distaste. I really like the idea I set out with. It's not perfect, and there are a lot of questions about where it's going that I don't have answers to, but that's kind of how I work. I don't outline, and the only times I've tried to outline I've only succeeded in procrastinating on the actual writing part. This time, though, I suffered a horrible lack of confidence in my ability to pull out a lofty idea that I'm not in the right frame of mind to accomplish.

Then again, maybe I'm just quitting. How can you really tell if a novel is bad before it's even finished?

The Waiting Game

Trying to get a novel or short story published is a waiting game. Patience is rewarded. Impulsiveness is not. And the waiting game doesn't end, even after people in the field start showing an interest.

Let me give you an idea:

I started writing with the intention to publish in college. But really, ignoring semantics, I started writing with the intention to publish in high school. But really I started in grade school, when I set out to write the longest story in my third grade class -- an epic eight-part adventure with swords and monsters that was a thinly veiled attempt to novelize Zelda II for the NES. I never finished it, but the idea and the inspiration were there!

Whichever starting point you pick, I've been "writing with the intention to publish" for anywhere from 10-25 years. Granted I went multiple years where I didn't write a thing and lost all sense of my writing voice, but that's still a long time, and it seems like more and more people look at writing as a means to have one's genius discovered rather than a craft to practice and polish.

As a teacher, I tell my students to practice things like math facts, orchestra instruments, and their writing, reading, and proofreading skills. Almost everyone agrees an instrument takes time, but aspiring writers often falsely believe that writing is born solely in the minds of prodigies.

Okay, maybe I'm overgeneralizing.

What I really wanted to get at is that every step you take in the process of becoming a published writer requires waiting. When you finish a story, you have to wait several weeks (at a minimum) so you can read it with fresh eyes. Once it's polished, you have to submit it to an agent (novel) or editor (short story) and wait for a response. Then you have to spend years collecting form rejection letters and waiting for your first personalized rejection (these can be brutal, but put on your rhino skin and take their advice -- they read a lot more than you do) that actually gives you some ideas on how to not suck. Then, you finally get someone who thinks your writing might be worth putting out there. But you're still not done.

Then your work gets shared with others, and someone else finds something wrong with it (they're right).

Then you find a group of people who like it, but they still think it can be improved (they're right, too).

Then you wait for a confirmation that says yes, your work will be published.

Then you wait for the day, far in the future, when your work is finally published.

So yeah, writing means waiting. A lot of it. If you're getting anxious because you're collecting rejection letters, you're already a part of a pretty cool club. There's a lot of frustration and self doubt involved, but if you can stand the heat you'll eventually become part of an even better club of people who worked, improved, and set their ego aside and risked judgment of their most vulnerable side.

Even now I'm waiting. Not on nabbing an agent (DONE!) or on finding people who believe in my work (also done, and isn't this what we all really want, more than money or fame?). I'm now waiting on a submission list of editors my excellent agent put together. Waiting for them to get back to us with what I hope is an offer is the scariest part yet. It's entirely possible that still, after all this work, every editor will say no, and I'll be back to square one. That's a lot more waiting.

The only thing you can't wait for is time to write.

Writing Goals

As I write this, the final touches are being made to my pitch letter. Once that goes out to editors, I have to prepare myself for another round of the waiting game while focusing on writing goals that will generate a new project.

Last summer, I had half a manuscript completed and a lot of positive feelings about it. I made my writing goal to complete a rough draft of my current submission. It wasn't easy with an eight month old at home, but I made great use of nights and nap time and had a completed first draft by the time I went back to work in mid-August.

At the beginning of this summer, on the other hand, I had less to work with. I had ideas floating around in my head and a couple botched attempts at finding my main character's voice. I knew I wasn't going to finish a whole draft by the end of summer, but I figured I could at least start nailing down the manuscript's voice and have a solid grasp at what I might be writing.

This idea is tricky, though. I am not an outliner. I hate them, in fact. I want to discover the story and characters as I work. I want things to happen that I wasn't expecting, as those are usually the most realistic moments in my work. This makes it hard, however, to define whether or not I've made my goal. How much do I have to have done on the page versus done in my head? Case in point, I'm not sure whether or not the five-six thousand words of workable scenes I've completed and not pitched in the trash constitute "nailing down the manuscript's voice."

Either way, I do have the early rumblings of a new manuscript. It's just weird to be building on what worked previously rather than correcting what agents told me didn't work last time. When I let go of the pressure to keep my imagination flowing, it can be a really good feeling.

Jumping Back Into Blogging

I am the type of person who benefits quite a bit from a blog. What's odd is this idea runs contrary to the fact that I feel silly about blogging -- it takes a great leap of faith to assume that electronic journal entries are worthy of going public.

So why start one now?

Writing has always been a part of my personal life, and now it may become a part of my professional life as well. I've shopped around a handful of novels for the past eight years, and over these past few months I've joined up with a genuine literary agency with a vast amount of knowledge on how to sell my work. That means I might really be on my way to doing this writing thing for people other than myself and a handful of friends and family.

That also means, more than ever, that writing regularly will become mandatory (not to say it ever wasn't). With a year-and-a-half old at home, finding time to explore my latest work can get pushed to the side when he requires thirty hours of attention in each twenty-four hour day. Blogging can be spur of the moment, and while there will certainly be overarching themes, I am not required to start where I left off. If I feel the desire to blog about komodo dragons, I can do just that.

There's another side, of course -- tracking my own path towards (hopefully) publishing my current book will keep me writing in some form or another, even if it's just to reflect on where things are going.

So that's where things are at. If I do this right, there will be more posts to come, preferably before the end of the week. Setting goals is more important than ever now.