Month: April 2020

Recently a young writer on Twitter lamented the fact that they were, perhaps, at thirty years old and still unpublished, too old to achieve their dream of becoming a published writer. The myth that a writer must publish in their 20s or risk being over the hill, too old, too irrelevant, is a pervasive one. Perhaps it is fueled by the popularity of Young Adult fiction, which would, perhaps, being catered towards young people, favor a more youthful voice. Perhaps it is simply authors’ networks on sites such as Twitter and Goodreads skew young, creating the overall impression that writers are being published at greater numbers in their 20s than in their 30s and 40s. Whatever it is, the myth of the young prodigy is just that, mostly a myth. If you are approaching 30, or, like me, 40, and haven’t been published yet, there are a great many reasons why you should not lose hope. In fact, sometimes being published later can even be better than being a young prodigy.

Writers get better with age

Wait, don’t roll your eyes at me yet; this is not the meaningless platitude that it sounds like. Whereas other creatives — painters, musicians, sculptors — can produce brilliant work while very young (call it a fluke of talent, or the genius of a prodigy), a novel relies far less on sheer talent and much more upon skill and experience. An inexperienced writer may hit upon a few brilliant lines, an entire poem, but the amount of brilliance required to create a truly brilliant novel is generally something that takes time. Now, let me add, before some 20-something takes offense, that of course great young talents do come along every now and then; however, the majority of us are going to need more time to hone our craft. With time we acquire not only more writing skills and techniques, we acquire lire experience. The “write what you know” adage can be fairly limiting if you’re 24 in ways that it will not be when you are 44.

You can publish too young

You are never too young to start writing, but I do firmly believe that you be too young to publish. I don’t believe there is any magic number, for it will vary from person to person, but if you publish before you are ready you may find yourself piegeonholed before you even really know yourself as a writer. The stuff you love at 25 might not actually what you wish to base your entire career on. Take the example of Terry Brooks, who was pigeonholed early on as a Tolkien clone and struggled for years to shake that label. If you publish before your skills are up to par you may also find yourself in the unenviable position of having published a dud. If your first book is a flop, or at best a mid-lister, will you be given a second chance? Perhaps. Some authors change agents, or even genres, and make a successful second go of it. However, there is no denying that it is much easier to keep momentum going than to regain lost momentum.  Think about those people you knew who were ultra successful in high school, but sort of fizzled out later in life. There is simply something to be said for the idea that success often sits more comfortably on the shoulders of those with a bit more experience and maturity.

Your capacity to accept criticism is better when you get older

Taking criticism can be hard. I read a Goodreads review recently in which the review writer mentioned how the young author whose book she was reviewing had a propensity for mentioning and calling out her negative Goodreads reviews in social media. This made the reviewer highly uncomfortable, feeling like if she spoke honestly, she was running the risk of being put on blast by someone with a larger following and more social capital than she, a regular person reviewing a book for other readers. While it can be hard, authors have a strong responsibility not to interact with their negative reviews, and to take criticism, provided it is  given in good faith, with grace. Grace, however, is often something that develops later in life (I myself was not a very gracious 25 year old). A young writer who finds themselves unable to handle criticism may alienate the very reviewers who are responsible for hyping a book and driving sales. On the other hand, praise can be a heady thing. The older we are, the more we learn to handle praise without allowing it to go to our heads. Young writers who get too used to lavish praise may find it harder to grow as writers, feeling like they have no reason to improve. While many authors will warn other writers, don’t read the reviews, ignoring reviews altogether takes a certain amount of self discipline that few young people have.

The myth is simply untrue

About 10 years ago writer Jim Hines did a survey of over 200 novelists and found that the average age at publication for an author’s first novel was 36. Not 25, not even 30, but 36. Now, that’s the average, which means that many published younger than that, but many published older. It seems that, overall, the majority of novelists were about 30-40 years old when they sold their first book. So the idea that you must be a wunderkind, be published in your 20s or not at all, is simply not true.

Now, my disclaimer, lest young authors take offense

If you’re a young published writer reading this, please understand, I’m very happy for you and wish you all the success in the world. This is not meant as an attack on young writers, but rather, I hope to give those writers who are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, or even older, a bit of encouragement. Youth is not everything, and writing is perhaps one of the few creative industries in which youth is not always an advantage. Of course there are plenty of reasons why publishing in your 20s is great, and perhaps even better than publishing later in life, but if you’re a published writer in your twenties, you’ve achieved the dream. Writers in their 30s, worrying that it might never happen, are the ones who, at the moment, need this boost.

So if you’re an older writer? Keep writing, keep learning, and keep improving. It is never too late, and you are never too old, and as long as you have something interesting to say, and can say it in an interesting way,  no matter how old you are, there will be someone out there who wants to read it.

I admit, as a writer, I have a bit of a “thing” when it comes to writing endings. While overall I do not consider myself a perfectionist, the ending is something that I will re-do again and again — on first draft, mind — in order to get it it just perfect.  The final page, the final paragraph, right down to the final sentence, each need to pack not only an emotional impact, but they need to set the stage and make the reader eager to keep reading. There are many ways that a chapter can end, and depending on where you are in your overall narrative, you will find yourself using different techniques at different points in the chapter. If, like me, you sometimes find yourself struggling to end things, here are a few suggestions for writing the end of a chapter that I have picked up along the way.

Cliffhanger ending

Most readers find books that end on a cliffhanger to be irritating, particularly if they have a long wait in store for the next book in the series. However, ending a chapter on a cliffhanger can be a great way to keep the reader interested. The advantages are obvious — your reader needs to keep reading in order to find out what happens. However, if your chapters consistently end on cliffhangers you risk irritating your reader, who will soon catch onto your (let’s face it, rather cheap) trick. The other problem with a cliffhanger ending is that you do not necessarily end the narrative arc of the chapter, meaning that you will have to begin the next chapter where the first one left off. Personally, I prefer to treat each chapter like a short story, making sure that I see it through to the end. There can be exceptions to this rule, and at times a cliffhanger chapter is exactly what is needed for maximum tension, but use it sparingly.

Ambiguous ending

A close kin to the cliffhanger ending is the ambiguous ending. The ambiguous ending has a slight advantage over the cliffhanger ending in that the author can end ambiguously while also having wrapped up the narrative arc of the chapter. In one of my chapters of my current manuscript, at the end of all of the chapter’s action the main character has to have an conversation with her husband. She is going to tell him something that will not make him very happy, but rather than show the conversation, I end the chapter with the first words of the conversation. Later on, in the next chapter, we learn what his reaction had been. This isn’t exactly a cliffhanger — it is reasonably clear from context that the husband won’t like what the wife has to say. However, we leave on that slight note of ambiguity, leaving the reader curious about how everything ended up between the couple. You can create ambiguity by introducing a puzzling line of dialogue. I find the ambiguous ending to be a compromise between a cliffhanger and what I call a neat ending. You can wrap up the threads of the chapter, but still introduce question that needs to be answered next chapter.

Introduce a new conflict or question

Sometimes the very end of a chapter is a great place to introduce a new problem or conflict for your characters. In one of my early chapters, in the last few paragraphs my main character learns that her mother was murdered but she does not know who did it. This complicates things, obviously, for my character, and creates a mystery that must be solved. On a lower stakes note, in a later chapter, in the final sentence my main character invites her cousin to stay at her home, despite knowing that her husband strongly dislikes the cousin. This sets up a potential conflict between the husband and the cousin as well as between husband and wife. The conflict that you introduce does not have to be a high stakes game changer. It can be any kind of fly in the ointment, something that will vex your character in the coming chapters.

Introduce a new character or setting

While quite the same thing as introducing a new conflict or problem, introducing a new character or a new setting can have a similar effect. It creates a question in your reader’s mind: who is this person? How will they effect the story? What is this place? How will being here be different from being elsewhere. Aside from arrivals often being a good natural stopping point, arrivals which introduce a new setting give the reader something to anticipate. Ending which introduce a new character into the mix likewise can be intriguing to the reader. This can be a particularly effective way of introducing both love interests and antagonists, people who will change things for the main character in a big way. Introducing new elements at the end of the story draws attention to them, and signals importance, so do not use this technique on inconsequential characters or places. In one of my chapters my character meets her cousin, who she has not seen in more than a decade, at the end of the chapter. His appearance at the end of the chapter is a signal to the reader that this person is important, and will play a major role in the narrative. Introduce a new character at the end of a chapter and your reader will automatically take note.

The neat ending

This is the chapter that ends on a satisfying note. It completes the narrative arc of the chapter, and signifies a point in the narrative where all is well. The neat ending is more likely to be found in the first half of the story than the second. This could be the point in the story where the characters have what they think they want, when they are moments from losing everything. This could be the moment before everything changes, or, it could be a moment later in the narrative, building towards a happy ending. If your story involves romance, this could be the chapter ending where the characters are happy and together. This could be the moment when your characters defeat a major foe on the battlefield. The neat ending could also be simply the natural stopping point for those particular scenes. Maybe your characters are on a journey, and they’ve stopped and made camp for the night. That’s going to be a fairly natural place to stop a chapter, and if they get ambushed in the middle of the night, well, you’ve got the perfect beginning to the next chapter. A note of warning however: readers will get bored if every chapter ends with your character going to bed, and begins with them waking up. Once in awhile is alright, but vary things a bit.

The philosophical ending

Every chapter should have a central theme, the message that the chapter is conveying, in addition to the overall theme of the novel. Strengthening the theme of your chapter or novel is one of you duties as the author. You may not incorporate the theme into every sentence, and some chapters will have a clearer theme than others. Deeply thematic chapters often call for a philosophical ending in which the final words of the chapter reflect upon the theme in some way. I have a chapter in my manuscript that reflects upon the relationship between bravery and pride — what pride makes us do, why it is important to some, and why it is ultimately unimportant, and how true bravery often means giving up one’s pride. Towards the end of the chapter the narrative is mostly within the mind of the main character as she reflects upon what pride has cost her, and decides the truly brave people in her life are not the proudest ones. A chapter that comes to a sort of thematic conclusion can be very satisfying to read, and both gives us greater insight into the inner minds of the characters and adds overall depth to the narrative.

One last note about chapter endings

Remember, the way that you end the chapter will have a direct effect on the way that your next chapter starts. Starting or ending at the wrong place in the narrative can have a disastrous effect on the narrative. Occasionally, I have become so enamored with a final image or final line that I have forced myself to end a chapter at an inappropriate place, leaving unfinished action to carry over into the next chapter. This can create a thematic disconnect between the beginning of a chapter and the end. Overall, the main job of the author in crafting a chapter is to create narrative that is cohesive and satisfying to read. A disjointed chapter, or a chapter that seems to end too soon, too abruptly, or, on the other end, one that seems to drag on for too long, can disrupt the overall pacing of your novel in a major way, so choose your ending point with care.

For me, drafting a novel is only partly about getting words down. It’s also a chance to experiment with writing habits. Recently, for example, I experimented with using existing prompts, like photos or music CDs, to help create characters. It is a new technique for me, and I was curious what the results might be.

My usual approach is begin with the needs of a plot, and keep asking questions. What kind of character might fill the necessary role? What relevant back story does the new character have? And, in some ways, most important of all, what other roles might the character play so I don’t have to invent another one? Many of the answers only come as I write, sometimes after several rewrites. From my feedback, this technique can produce colorful characters, but it’s not quick or efficient. If an alternative technique could save time, I was ready to try it.

In this experiment, I wanted a love relation for a heroic figure. More – I wanted a lover who could stand up to him, and was maybe heroic herself. Immediately, I thought of a tentative character for my next novel attempt, an older woman, a widow, who is a major figure in the Sisters, a group of vigilante women who punish predatory and abusive men. I based this character on a publicity shot of folksinger June Tabor:

In this picture, Tabor has a “don’t mess with me” look. She looks sardonic, with a flare for the dramatic in her black. She may be in her sixties or thereabout, but she is someone who can take care of herself. The only difficulty is that she is thirty years too old for the character I want. I easily found pictures of a younger Tabor, but none of them had the same look (these are, after all publicity shots, and may have little connection with Tabor herself). So I set about the task of imagining the Tabor of the original photo as a younger woman.

Tabor herself has traces of a North Country accent, and I might have given my character the same voice. However, while I developed the character, I came across a documentary about the folksinger Kate Rusby. I was especially interested to learn that Rusby lives in a village near where my father grew up – and before I knew it, my character had a Yorkshire accent. Not a thick one – I wanted to have mercy on readers – but some of the cadence and a few of the words.

Having a good sense of what the character looked and sounded like, I went to work on her back story. While I already knew she had been in the militia, I wanted some heroic proportions in her. Inspiration came in the form of “Thomas the Rhymer,” a song I first heard at fourteen. The song tells of how Thomas of Ercildoune accompanies the Queen of Elfland to her realm. The song was my introduction to medieval ballads, and what has always fascinated me is that its hero was a historical figure. Go to Scotland, and people will show you the tree Thomas stood beneath when he met the Queen of Elfland, centuries ago.

During the trip to Elfland, Thomas is given “the tongue that will never lie,” although he begs the elf queen to take it back. Upon returning home, he becomes a prophet – and some of his alleged prophecies still exist. Perfect, I thought. With such a gift (or curse), my character would speak carefully. Like Cassandra of Troy, prophecy has warped her life, except that, instead of never being believed, my character would have suffered because she tried to keep a prophecy or two from coming true.

At this point, I had enough to start writing the character. When I completed the chapter in which she first appears, I was pleased with the result, and the first critique was reasonably positive. In terms of results, the experiment of finding prompts worked.

However in terms of efficiency, I am not so sure. I did not save any time, and if I had not already had a photo as a starting point, I could have spent much longer developing the character. More disturbingly, my critique partner warned me that I seemed to have become obsessed with the character, which was quite true for a few days, and in a way that couldn’t be justified by the character’s relatively minor role.

So, a mixed result overall. While I might use prompts if my usual plot-driven character development fails, I can’t see any reason to switch to it exclusively. You might have different results.

Have you ever told someone in your life that you’re a writer? Did you immediately regret it? As with any other profession, there is no lack of misconceptions about what it is like to be a writer. Some of these misconceptions are simply annoying, but others can be downright harmful. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions about life as a writer.

You’re rich and famous (and if you’re not, you will be soon)

In 2020 one sad truth is that for many people, average people with average educations, writers are only notable if they’re famous household names. Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin are names that the average person over the age of say 20 would be able to recognize (even if they couldn’t come up with the title of one of their books). It should come as no surprise then, that most people have no real conception of the thousands upon thousands of full time writers who are not rich and famous, but who make modest incomes more comparable to that of a teacher or a nurse than that of a NFL player. This misconception seems harmless on first glance, but it does lead to some dangerous assumptions — such as the belief that pirating books only hurts the rich and that writers who object to piracy are greedy, rather than worried about how they might pay the rent. And if you’re considering writing a book as a fast track to fame and fortune, understand that you might have better luck just buying lotto tickets.

Writing isn’t a real job

Has a friend or a family member ever said something to you along the lines of “wow, it must be nice to not have to work!” Most non-writers imagine you sitting at your computer after a leisurely lie-in, a nice cup of coffee in hand, sitting down to a relaxing few hours at the keyboard, doing that a few days a week for a few months, and then boom, you’ve got a book. Very few people have any idea how much work goes into producing a novel — the multiple rounds of revisions, the re-writes, the editing, the frustrations of the query process. Then, if you are lucky enough to get an agent, comes more editing, sending your book out on submission, waiting anxiously and hoping someone buys your book. Once you have a book deal, then come the pressures of marketing, knowing that if your book doesn’t sell well you might not be given the chance to publish another. All in all the process of writing a book involves several years of intense and stressful work. Is it the same as an office job? A teaching job? No. Writers have more control over their own schedules, it is true, but they tend to have less control over their income, and a lot more uncertainty, especially when they are just starting out.

Everyone has at least one book in them

Tell someone you’re writing a book and there’s a good chance that person will tell you they’ve always wanted to write a novel too.  One of these days, they say, they’re going to do it. After all, don’t they say everyone has at least one book in them? Peek your head into any amateur Facebook writing group and you’ll see plenty of people in those groups who harbor big dreams of big book deals but have absolutely zero sense of how much skill, practice, talent, and hard work goes into writing a book. Perhaps because writing itself is a basic skill — we are all taught in grade school how to string words together to form sentences, even to write essays. “I got an A in English,” they might think, “how hard could it be?” Some of them may even have dabbled in fan fiction even, receiving accolades from fans so hungry for content that they’re willing to overlook the occasional lapse in voice or shifting POV. However, the truth is that writing isn’t easy, and not everyone can do it. Even if most educated people do understand the mechanics of writing, actually crafting a novel requires more than just an idea and the ability to write coherent sentences. A writer must understand how to create tension, how to craft believable dialogue, how to write interesting characters. Simply the act of actually completing a full length novel takes more patience than many people.

Ideas are a writer’s most important currency

This misconception seems to be particularly common among people who have had one good idea that they think would make a great book (or sometimes movie). Once I saw a wannabe writer unironically ask a group of fellow writers “how much do you think my idea is worth?” as if an idea alone has inherent value and that authors should be paying top dollar for such quality inspiration. I’ve seen amateur writers ask, in writing groups, “how do you all protect your ideas?” and other equally amateur writers suggest, in all seriousness, that you should guard your ideas tight, never let them see the light of day, lest someone steal them. These sorts of comments are a sure sign of someone who has no real understanding of what goes into making an idea into a book. Most writers will gladly tell you that the ideas are not the hard part. I have at least a dozen book ideas rambling around inside my head, and have no need to steal anyone else’s ideas. The ideas are easy — what’s difficult about writing is taking that idea and molding it into roughly 100,000 words with characters, description, dialogue, conflict, the works. In fact, give the same idea to two writers and the end result might be two entirely different books, one might be a Nobel prize winner, the other one garbage. The idea doesn’t make the book, the execution does.

All writers do is write

While it is true that the bulk of a writer’s job involves the physical act of putting words to the page, there is actually a lot more to writing than that. If I am writing historical fiction, for instance, I have to spend hours upon hours doing research, almost as if I were doing a dissertation for a PhD rather than writing a novel, and that’s before I ever write the first word. I will need to find pictures of the places I’m depicting, know the dates and timelines and people involved, and know all of the details about life in that era. If I get even one detail wrong, you better believe my readers will be ready to pounce: “This writer clearly didn’t do her research. Actually, in medieval France the type of head covering worn in 1345 would have been an escoffion and not a gable hood.” Don’t think readers are this petty? Read some of the reviews of popular historical fiction authors, and focus on the one and two star reviews. Historical accuracy will no doubt figure heavily. And research isn’t just for historical fiction writers — fantasy writers have to do research, as do contemporary writers, thriller writers, horror writers, and well, practically all writers. Say you’re writing a book set in a British boarding school, yet you’ve never attended a British boarding school yourself. Good writers don’t just “make things up,” they make sure that the details of their story are as realistic as possible, which requires a tremendous amount of preparation work.

There’s no doubt that writing is a very misunderstood profession, and one that, like many artistic pursuits, inspires at the same time both envy and derision.  The next time you find yourself making generalizations or assumptions about the profession of writing, keep these things in mind. The writers in your life will thank you for it.

Like many writers, I am concerned about piracy. I hope to see my own novel released one day, and worry about whether piracy will cost me income. However, I don’t see any point in complaining about the problem. When you publish, whether traditionally or privately, you choose a method of distribution that has been plagued by piracy long before the Internet. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise if you run into the same problems as countless writers before you. Instead of complaining, you are probably better off exploring other distribution models. While you may not eliminate piracy, you might at least dodge any effects on your income.

Granted, if you are a new writer, finding that model is likely to be hard. Neil Gaiman can point out that in countries where he is most pirated, he also has the most sales, but first-time writers seem less likely to see the same benefits — their sales are small already, and so are most likely to be more affected by piracy than Gaiman’s. Piracy may help to build reputation, but that argument sounds too close to an invitation to write for the exposure, even should it prove true.

Still, if you want to avoid the losses due to piracy, look for a way around it. One place to look for alternatives is free and open source software (FOSS), which has shut down piracy by the simple expedience of giving software away for free. In fact, FOSS often allows others to alter the software for themselves. Instead of selling software, FOSS creators may depend on support from companies with the foresight to realize that limited cooperation with others — including competitors — is cheaper than reinventing everything themselves. Some companies even give the software away while selling support and custom development. The result has been wildly successful, so much so that if you use the Internet, you have used FOSS without knowing it.

I can vouch for the validity of the FOSS approach myself. In March 2016, a non-profit called Friends of Open Document gave me an advance to write Designing with LibreOffice. The book was released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License, meaning that people could use it as they wanted, publishing their own version or even making it part of a larger work, so long as they gave me credit and released their changes under the same license. Because I had been paid in advance, the book was available as a free download, and people could tip or pay for a hardcopy. The result was over 30,000 downloads, and an income that was probably not that different than if I had published traditionally. And if I am not overjoyed to see people selling my book on Amazon, the license has also resulted in Chinese and French versions that wouldn’t otherwise have happened. Moreover, I ended up adequately compensated, so I really have no reason to complain.

A similar model has been tried by SF writer Cory Doctrow. Patreon, too, is full of writers who release their work in segments for supporters. And when I see how indie bands sell their own merchandise, I have to wonder why writers do not routinely do the same, selling t-shirts and other gear and special editions of their work. Alternatively, writers could imitate Dean Wesley Smith, who publishes Smith’s Monthly, a magazine of his own work.

Or why not enlist the power of crowdfunding? Used for technology, crowdfunding has helped numerous small companies launch successfully and create innovations. In fact, I am typing this blog on an ideal keyboard created with the help of crowdfunding. Some art books and comics are already using crowdfunding, but, so far, not much fiction.

Crowdfunding could even create a popup publisher, by analogy to the popup restaurants that appear briefly in an attempt to raise the reputation of an emerging chef or entrepreneur. Writers would be encouraged to submit their works, and contributors would have the right to vote on which work to publish. The writers would be paid up front, and any piracy would be irrelevant. As with my book, the writers would be adequately compensated regardless of any piracy.

Such efforts would not be easy. No doubt, many would fail, because what works is still mostly unknown. Still, trying them seems better than complaining. Sure, piracy is annoying. Personal financial loss always is. However, short of finding a way to eliminate piracy — which is unlikely to happen before the sun explodes — finding a way to minimize any effects from piracy is a more practical way to go.