Second Book Success: better writing or business savvy?

Many debut writers find success through a second book.

On my first book still, this is a premature post.

Adding the finishing touches to my first project, I’m not saddened by the prospect of this wrapped-up chapter of my writing journey, more frightened by the next.

I thought about why that is. I’ve been researching MSWLs and submission guidelines, dos, don’ts and don’t you dares.

And I wondered, how much success can we account to our writing improvements and how much is down to our awareness?

Quick example. You write a paranormal romance, inspired by Twilight.

On a side note here . . .It has been said that many writers and readers are inspired by this series. But if you said your book was to sit next to it on a bookshelf? Well, then your agent/publisher may not be the Edward to your Bella. Generalisation or reality?

So, you write a paranormal romance.

You research agents.

And when you do, you might find it’s a difficult sell.

After another 100 to 200 queries, would you write another paranormal romance? No vamps or werewolves wanted here . . . would this be your next MS??

Maybe you study what is selling, the dreaded ‘writing to a trend.’ Or maybe you stick to what you love and the love bleeds through, eventually bleeding all over an agent to the point they say, er, let’s clean this up and sell it!

But in the end, we become more ‘business intelligent’ as writers. It may be hard to separate that knowledge from improving as a writer. . . but in the scheme of things, when publishing is a tight corner to turn, is it bad to be business savvy?

Writers, we are all at different stages of our journey.

So I love to know how other writers are chugging along. And let’s be honest, we love to know we feel normal. It’s okay, you can agree. There is nothing wrong with relating to others.

We are such a supportive community, but I just want to say this:

We are all at different stages of our journey. To me, a full request would be like: WTF did you READ my sample? You just said FR without an exclamation mark? Are you not dancing?

Of course you are dancing!

It’s just where I am in my journey. It’s all good. Because I’m the sort of person who if you asked, are you okay? I’d respond with, I’m fine . . .  I’d need to add the ellipses. If I didn’t, I’d worry I’m just being terse. That’s just me. Where I am.

I watch querytracker. Stalk, whatever. But I think about the sample of people who enter their data. As a psychology major, I think about samples. Look. Requests are great. Partials, fulls, some feedback. All of these outcomes are great.Give me the great!!

But just consider your journey. Everyone feels insecure.

And hard work will be rewarded.

 

 

 

When you can’t wait any longer to query. . .

Have you ever looked back on a decision and thought, ‘Geez, I should have waited before doing that,’ but at the same time thought, ‘If I don’t do this now, I’m going to make everyone regret it?’ You heard me, everyone…Family, critique partners. They know when you’re getting that itch because you become so darn demanding. And the justifications? I love the justifications. They just keep coming until you wear everyone down and they too agree. Because then you become less annoying . . . All jokes aside, I love my family and my critique partners, and without my own ‘raid’ team, I don’t think I’d be able to even write this blog, let alone rewrite my MS…

I’m going to introduce you to Leeroy. If you have a minute, please watch this video and you may draw comparisons to your querying journey. While this raid team is planning, crunching numbers and eliminating risks, Leeroy says, ‘I am done with the planning and the calculations and the predictions, and I just want to get amongst this and get something done!’ And yeah, Leeroy kills the whole team and is, to quote one gamer, ‘as stupid as hell,’ but he makes me laugh and reminds me of myself.

So have you ever ‘Leeroyed’ throughout your publishing journey?  And is flailing, and dying horribly, against a horde of somethings better than feeling nothing?

 

 

When should you move on from your first MS: two writing camps

I love this camp-flavoured direction. I might even make it a once-a-week thing. No more pretty pictures and borrowed gifs ( just once a week anyway, we all like nice things every now and again). Let’s just pick a camp, sit down, and start eating! Because we can all spend three hours making a meal, but at the end of the day, it takes five minutes to eat, regardless, and we are still full.

So upon thinking about my inspiration for writing camps, the first thing that came to mind is this: dumping your first MS baby vs moving onto something else.

And I came up with a relevant analogy that doesn’t bode well for us baby-MS hoarders, but I found it thought provoking all the same.

Imagine two camps, two physical camps. It’s cold and it’s wet.

Camp one refuses to move on from their first MS. Stubborn and determined, they find the wet stick in the rain that is their original MS, and they try to light it. Even though it doesn’t burn, they try time and time again but are still cold.

Camp two finds this same wet stick. It’s the same wet stick they know won’t burn, but they try a few times, because, well, because you never know. And that’s a great stick. And after a few attempts, they put this wet stick in a dry area and go looking for a useful one. This new, dry stick burns. Not as bright, but it warms all the same.

Camp one has had enough of this wet stick!.It refuses to burn, even when they will it to, so they throw it away, into the wet. They are cold. They wake up in the morning and can’t find the stick. It’s gone, and disheartened, they give up and go home and don’t care. They never want to camp again.

Camp two awakens, warm to a beautiful day. They find that wet stick. And although this stick was not useful the night before, it will have a use that upcoming night. They will be warm two nights, and will never fear camping again.

So I’m in Camp one at the moment. Anyone else?

 

 

 

Write when you can vs Write when you must.

 

It’s been a while. I’ve been stressed, building the new start to my MS that will wow the world.

Writing is hard, and the more I learn to plot more than pants, the more I realise that writing is HARD. And no longer can I write 2K a day aimlessly, getting lost in banter-flavoured exchanges and plot-irrelevant quirkiness.

The time I write is a time of concentration. I can’t even listen to music while I kill my darlings; yes, their screams are so loud, I hear nothing anyway. So writing while my kids are in the vicinity is a challenge, and it’s one I accepted with ugly consequences.

I’ve thought about a few writing ‘camps’lately, but the one  I’m thinking of now is the ‘I’ll write when I must’ camp vs the ‘I’ll write when I can’ camp.’ Hand on my heart, massive respect to anyone who has a non-writing parttime/fulltime job and THEN comes home to write or writes before breakfast. I’m not sure I could do this and stay sane. Although my style does have a mental edge. . .

Does that mean I shouldn’t write? I don’t know. Maybe it’s more about finding the right time to write, for me, for my family – like when the kids are in bed for example.

After all, they are the reason I write like I do, and an ogre glaring at them is not the fairy-tale life children are looking for.

 

Personalising Queries

So I’ve been hounding my CP’s lately about personalising queries. I spend a fair amount of time researching agents to see if they are a good fit for my MS. Sometimes, I find agent interviews that help me understand what they are after and can mention these at the start of my query. But often, when I look at successful queries online, they get straight to the point.

And then when I do find a compelling reason, like they are after a strong female protagonist, I worry that I’m sounding too arrogant. Oh, really, Lorelle? Well we will be the judge of that…So should we be limiting our opening sentence to include books they currently represent? But even then, we have to be careful that we aren’t insinuating that ours will compare.

So there is a fine line between gaining the edge and falling over it, and I’d love to know what writers think about personalising a slush-pile query.

Do you have success without it? Do you find you have a template that is successful and adaptable to most agents for that first sentence?

I don’t have a problem diving straight in, but you do hear that agents are wary of a query that looks like it has been sent to 50 agents at once.

Of course, I use the agent’s name in the salutation, but is that, as well as meeting submission guidelines with sample pages etc, enough? Or in this day and age of quick and accessible communication, is brevity beauty rather than beast?

When writers edit – why we keep missing errors

I was pretty harsh on hindsight about 9 months ago in one of my posts. I might have mentioned the word hindsight alongside words like acid, fire and brimstone. I may have also likened it to a pointy-edged object. But I’ve grown lately, and I’ve come to understand that there are reasons I miss editing errors the 1st, 10th and even 40th time around.

I think it has something to do with my capacity to hold new information. Now writing veterans don’t have the same learning curve as I, but there are probably still moments where they fly over an error because they can write without having to be so conscious of mistakes. It’s the nervous performer who often succeeds.

But in my case, when my information funnel is full, I can only fit more in when the contents start filtering through the bottom. And the bottom of my funnel is pin sized and the information is like mud….

So I’m going to take it easy on myself this time around. I wanted to berate myself for sending off queries too early. But I had done my research, am continuing to research and am learning from research. So each round, I’m going to tweak – change the first paragraph of my MS, change my query blurb, take out unneccesary words and scrutinise further.

Why didn’t I do this first time? Well, I did – as far as I could tell. But with queries looming over my head and time dragging on from my final draft ( I needed that belly laugh) I had to send those queries out.

Have you even felt that?

And now that they are out, I feel like the bottom of my funnel is now marble sized, and with that extra room, I can see things I couldn’t before.

Surely, I’m not the only one…

 

 

 

First queries are out! And how I feel about that . . .

It’s never as simple as just being excited. I think Sue from this SNL skit sums up how I feel about my first round queries. So if you have two minutes, or even one, please watch this video. Sue has me in stitches. Why? She is one crazy woman. Excitement turns to panic attacks, overzealous joy and inappropriate reactions…And I think you may be able to relate to these emotions she suffers while excited.

So what am I most excited about? Is it the hope? Am I proud of myself for finding the courage? Am I seeking validation?

All of these. But I’m also excited about the prospect of finding someone who will appreciate my eccentric characters. And when a connection to my characters is a connection to me, finding someone who understands me is pretty exciting on its own 🙂

How important is a blurb to readers?

I had an itty-bitty blog break – just like on my 40th, I’ll have a ‘few’ wines. But like any comeback, I wanted to return with a bang and say, ‘Yeah, that’s right! This is why I blog: because I love to get stuck in, not because I have to.’ And I was bogged down in query hell where Blurb is a king who rules with an iron fist alongside his younger, less important but also unforgiving brother, Synopsis.

But since Blurb and I have had such a close relationship, I thought I would look into the true power that it wields. Does the king become the pauper when you take  it away from this kingdom of hell? Or will it shine because what makes it king will make it influential wherever it is?

So as a reader, how important is a blurb? As a writer, I’m trying to get the attention of an agent. But do the integral components I’m including, bonded together with a voice meant to create interest, translate to a reader as well? If I took this query blurb and used this on a self-published book, would it hold up?

We know there’s a time for creativity when you’re selling and there’s  a time for sticking to the rules. Even with contemporary music, over all the years, we still have a verse and a chorus. And dissonance, while some people don’t mind it, we still prefer the sound of music that is harmonious – in general. So with a blurb, I guess the creativity can be included with your voice, but you can’t add this to sacrifice character, conflict and consequence – in a query.

So when you pick up a book, do you read the blurb, and if so, what is it about a blurb that pulls you in? I have to say, most times I’m halfway through a book before I even look at a blurb; my reads come from recommendations.

But when you do look at a blurb, you expect it to start like this:

Like anyone, Nancy puts her pants on one leg a time. That is, until she wakes up and finds out she has 60 legs, and the only way she’ll make it to school on time is by doubling her efforts.

So there must be a reason a blurb follows a pattern. But how important is it these days? And when you are in a book store, is it the blurb you rush to, or the first few pages?

 

 

 

 

 

When nothing shocks us anymore

Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages, just Rock of Ages. . .  Is there anything that will shock us these days? And it’s not just the material available in books, it’s the reality we’re faced with as a world. Atrocities and destruction have always been present. But today, with media, we get a bird’s eye view. Are we becoming desensitised?

And, what does this mean to writers?

1) Your unique concept may be as unique as a teenager cuddling a One Direction pillow after a Facebook frenzy.

You’ve heard it all before: it’s been done before, and then again as a space opera where the MC is a 105 year old goat herder. And I know, your goat herder has been raised on the blood of sacrificial virgins, and their goat herder hasn’t. I’m not suggesting you change your concept or try to create a new one; I still believe in write what you want to write. But we need to accept that this ship has been sailing for a while. And the more writers there are, the more likely it is we are all going to drown in an abundance of overflowing ideas as we hug each other for safety and support rather than grab the damn life raft.

Which brings me to:

2) Selling yourself – with clothes on/off depending on whether you like to write in the nude.

The writing community is so supportive, but we have to accept the reality that we have to work hard to differentiate ourselves. Maybe it’s important to clarify that we can do this with each other rather than in spite of each other. Whether it’s a twitter contest, a standout query or a title that hits the spot. You might have to sell your book as ‘Honey I Blew Up The Kid’ meets ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer.’ And although you’ve almost run out of words for a tweet, you’re creating a unique idea that might have people thinking, “How much money would you have to pay Buffy to kiss Rick Moranis?”

3) Characters you love vs characters you could take or leave, or leave for dead.

I’ve heard that for a death to make impact, you have to invest in that character as a reader. But how about investing in the character that’s left standing? The MC’s mother dies after years of toiling and trouble. Make that double! And to feel empathy for that MC, you want to be thinking, “I want to be here to see how he/she get through this,” not, ” Why the hell wasn’t it them!”

4) Building up suspense: charge for the milk and they may want the whole cow, too.

This one has been the latest eye-opening addition to my revelations repertoire. Being a lover of urban fantasy, I’m always conscious of getting to the action. Get to those reveals, get people interested in your concept. But how about the get-people-hooked-by-suggesting-something-and-hinting-at-this-and-that-and-revealing-at-the-end strategy. It looks long and cumbersome, but trust me that counts as one word when you’re pitching, but it might be that we need to work harder on suspense and less on the action. Look at ‘Flowers in the Attic.’ How long did we get dragged through the mothers despicable behaviour, wondering whether she could possibly be that evil? We were all on that journey, knew there was something going on. But we all keep watching, waiting for the reveal.

So, we may have to work harder, but isn’t that generally what makes us more proud of what we do? And doesn’t that also translate in our work?