In Sony's Flubs, a Lesson for Writers

Entertainment giant Sony [SNE], creator of innovative products such as the Walkman and Playstation, has a market capitalization of 18.5 billion dollars. But not all of their products have been successes. Remember BetaMax? Yeah, that was Sony.

There were other Sony attempts that have since fallen into obscurity: AIBO, PSX/PlayTV, the eVilla Network Entertainment Center. The list is long.

And yet, Sony has not only survived, but grown ever more successful. Why? Because they didn't let their failures define them.

December Monthly Rejection Roundup

Happy 2011!

OK, so still no news on the YA undergoing developmental edits. Expected to hear back by middle of Dec, but not surprised when I didn't, this being the holiday season. Even twitter has been quiet.

Some exciting news. Different MS that I'd thought was a no-go with another house turns out to still be alive and well. Reader report returned as very favorable. Editor requested revisions, which will be done end of Jan. So, I get to take that one off the R list and put it back in the active list.

Also, subbed a third YA to the Delacorte. Slim chance, but just getting it polished really improved it and brought out some great new tropes.

Not many R's; everyone's taking the holiday to catch up on important stuff, I guess. Like being with family.

Total manuscripts out: 16
Unique PB titles: 11
> New subs this month: 0
Unique MG/YA titles: 3
> New subs this month: 1

Total rejections: 1
Form/No response means "No": 1
> Personal*: 0
> Positive: 0
> Negative: 0
* anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 1

Offers: 0
PB: 0
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 4.2

Change from last month: +0.4

OK, so radio-silence on the one YA, but a +0.2 after hearing back on another I thought was dead, plus a +0.2 on a new sub I'm very optimistic about.

2011 has got to be the year.

November's Monthly Rejection Roundup

Happy December, everyone. Hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving.

YA book is undergoing developmental edits. Should hear back in a couple weeks. Yay!

Agent Two also rejected the MS, citing exactly what I thought was the reason Agent One gave me the R: publisher is small and likely not to budge much on terms. Double Phooey. Had hoped not to have to review and negotitate the contract alone (well, if it comes to that).

No new subs out. Nearly halfway through writing my YA fantasy (no, it's NOT not for NaNoWriMo!).

As always, most of the "rejects" are actually "no responses" on old subs.

Total manuscripts out: 16
Unique PB titles: 11
> New subs this month: 0
Unique MG/YA titles: 1
> New subs this month: 0

Total rejections: 5
Form/No response means "No": 4
Personal: 1
> Positive: 1
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 0

Offers: 0
PB: 0
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.8

Change from last month: +0.1

Getting excited to hear back from publisher, tempered of course by the constant radio-silence on all my other subs. Looks like January will be another round of subs. So hate to do this after NaNoWriMo and PiBoIdMo Wondering if I should put on the envelope: "This is not a product of NaNoWriMo."

Hoping for an early Christmas.

October's Monthly Rejection Roundup

November already? Sent requested revisions back to publisher on my YA. Agent One replied with a turn down. :( Possibly because the publisher is small and likely not to budge much negotiating terms. Phooey. Still waiting on the other agent.

One new sub out. Dumped trying to outline my new dystopian (well, my old dystopian than I'm now getting back to) and started outlining a fantasy (not for NaNoWriMo).

Most of the "rejects" are actually "no responses" on old subs. Et... voila:

Total manuscripts out: 21
Unique PB titles: 13
> New subs this month: 1
Unique MG/YA titles: 2
> New subs this month: 0

Total rejections: 13
Form/No response means "No": 11
Personal: 2
> Positive: 2
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 0

Offers: 0
PB: 0
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.7

Change from last month: +/-0

No change, even though I had to mark off nearly a dozen MS's as rejects due to no response (hate that) and even got a reject on one PB after a couple rounds of revisions; but positive news with publisher interested in my YA, so still in "wait and see" mode. Also, it's Thanksgiving month. Gotta be happy for that.

Will November will be the month?

ETA Dec 1, 2010: how did this not get published? Must have saved as a draft. Oh well. Better late than never.

September's Monthly Rejection RoundUp

Well, yet another month has passed. Still waiting to hear from two agents. Finished upgrading my MG to YA (publisher requested revisions); just letting it sit for a few days before I go back and polish. Plan to send it to the Publisher by middle of October. Same MS is also being used to teach editing and revision at a major university's lit program this fall! Exciting. More details to follow. Also finished revisions on a second YA and critting my reading partner's MS.

No new subs out as I've been focused on revisions and outlining my new dystopian (well, my old dystopian than I'm now getting back to). Most of the "rejects" are actually "no responses" on old subs. Et... voila:

Total manuscripts out: 34
Unique PB titles: 20
> New subs this month: 3
Unique MG/YA titles: 2
> New subs this month: 0

Total rejections: 20
Form/No response means "No": 16
Personal: 2
> Positive: 2
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 0

Offers: 0
PB: 0
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.7

Change from last month: +/-0

No change, even though I had to mark off a lot of MS's as rejects due to no response and even got a reject on one PB after a couple rounds of revisions; but positive news with publisher interested in my YA, so feels a lot like "wait and see."

Crossed fingers that October will be the month.

August Rejection Roundup

Wow, is it September already tomorrow? Where did August go?

Actually, August was a pretty good month, all-in-all, even though it's still quiet. I finally got word back on an tween novel from a superstar agent; though she declined, she really liked it and offered some ideas on how to revise it and asked to see other material (which I took advantage of). The very next day, I got an email from a publisher on the same MS saying they were very excited about it and suggested only one very minor revision and would I be interested in revising and resending? You bet I would! Also, sent in two novels to fantastic agent who loved a PB I'd sent.

Not a lot of new subs out (only 3), but the ratio of personal positive rejections to forms is very good (3 personals:4 forms), so I'm pretty happy about that. Here be les numéros:

Total manuscripts out: 54
Unique PB titles: 24
> New subs this month: 3
Unique MG/YA titles: 2
> New subs this month: 0

Total rejections: 7
Form/No response means "No": 4
Personal: 3
> Positive: 3
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 3
Partials: 0
Fulls: 3

Offers: 0
PB: 0
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.7

Change from last month: +1.2

Even though August was a quiet month (everyone still getting over the summer conference schedule and back-to-school), the positive feedback more than made up for it.

Hope to be back next month with good news.

On Being a Good Storyteller – Luck and Perseverance? Instinct? Gift? Or Skill?

There’s an old saw that posits, “Stick a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters for a million years and they’ll type every book in the Library of Congress.” Every book, huh? Does that include every single revision of every book? Because I’ve written about a million revisions of each of my own stories. Multiply that by the 130 million books already published and you’ve got 10e6 x 130*10e6 or about 130 trillion possible books and their revisions. (Of course, if you disregard all the ones Sarah Palin hasn't banned - they can't be that good if she thinks they're okay - then the number of good books is probably closer to 100 trillion.)

It’s got me thinking about what it takes to be a good storyteller, if maybe it’s just chance and persistence, that if you work long enough at it, a good story will eventually be produced. Because, yeah, sometimes I do feel like little more than a monkey, picking away for hours at my unworthy manuscripts. Obsessing over one particular word or phrase. Correcting misspellings. Inserting commas and colons and removing misappropriated apostrophes. And that’s not even talking about any major structural edits.

Persistence? Okay, I got that. Patience, too.

Luck... well, if it’s like flipping a coin, then there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.

Okay, but what if you don’t have a million monkeys and a million typewriters and a million years to write a good book. What then? The answer to that question haunts me.

Many others before me have talked about our natural proclivity to tell stories. It’s part of our social DNA and is woven into our evolutionary fabric as human beings. But does that mean anyone can be a good storyteller? And if so, what’s keeping each one of us from doing so? Societal blinders? Self-censorship? The third grade teacher who told you lacked the skills to write a decent obituary? I don’t feel like an instinctive writer. In fact, if I had to pay for every letter I typed and retyped, I’d be in as much debt as Bill Gates is worth.

Maybe it’s a gift. Maybe you either got it or you don’t got it. Honestly, though? I don’t even want to go there. I don’t like thinking that there’s nothing I can do to control whether I can write a good story. Outside of renting a few million monkeys and typewriters, that is. No, I can accept that for some people, writing comes naturally, but I refuse to believe the rest of us are just flapping our gums in the wind.

So that leaves skill as the last resort of the determined storyteller. Well, I can deal with that. Skill is just something you acquire by dedicating yourself to becoming better at something. I once asked an old buddy of mine who had this amazing ability to run a pool table— that’s how he made his living— what it took to be a good pool player, and he told me, “Skill, simple as that.”

“Yeah, but what exactly is this thing, skill?” I asked.

“Dude, skill is nothing more than luck, perseverance and instinct. Oh, and you have to have been born with it.”

Great. Anyone know where I can rack up a million monkeys?


What do you think? What does it take to be a good storyteller?

Little Bunny Foo Foo: An Example of Good Intentions, but Poor Editorial Advice

Most of you are familiar with the children's poem, the one where a mischievous rabbit abuses a tribe of supposedly innocent field mice whilst on his way to whatever unknown and undocumented nefarious woodland activities little bunny foo foos engage in:

Little Bunny Foo Foo
Skipping through the forest
Scooping up the field mice
And bopping them on the head

The story starts off well enough. The main character is introduced early and the conflict is clearly established. The tension begins to build when the antagonist intervenes:

Down came the Good Fairy, and she said:
"Little Bunny Foo Foo I don't want to see you
Scooping up the field mice and bopping
them on the head.
I'll give you three more days, and if you don't
behave, I'll turn you into a Goon."

The tension rises to fever pitch as Little Bunny Foo Foo continues his abusive ways for two more days, apparently entirely undeterred by the fairy's threats (though we can only guess at this, as there's no internal dialogue to help us understand our MC better).

But then, having run out of time, what does our deliciously naughty protagonist do? Defies the Fates, of course, leaving that meddlesome G. Fairy with no choice but to turn our poor defenseless friend into a goon (which, by the way, wiktionary defines as "a thug." I mean, isn't that a bit redundant?). Anyway, the point is, that's how the story ends, all just so we can say (go on, I know you wanna do it):

"Hare today, goon tomorrow."

But, really, is there anyone else who thinks this is just gratuitous word-play at the expense of good story development? Don't you feel cheated? Didn't you want LBFF to just bop that obnoxious fairy do-gooder on the head and shut her up once and for all? And maybe those field mice deserved it. Ever think of that? Hey, maybe they liked it! Maybe they asked the darn bunny to bop them. He was set up! And we'll never know if money exchanged hands because, well, the story ended too soon.


My grandfather, rest his soul, thought it wise to provide his own editorial touch when he recounted the tale to me many years ago. A former boxer-turned-Baptist minister, he was, paradoxically, probably one of the gentlest men I ever met (he preferred to let my grandmother carry out the fire and brimstone activities), but despite his good intentions, his version of the story was even worse than the established one.

First, he had the fairy threatening to turn our MC into a broomstick. Er, say what?

Then, LBFF actually becomes reformed just before the witch's - excuse me, the fairy's - spell can take hold. His story ends with the bunny patting the field mice on the head. Blech. How perfectly bland.

I never knew the real ending until I came across an old dusty record of it when I had my own children to tell it to. Imagine how cheated I felt, all because my beloved g-pa thought I wouldn't be able to handle fluffy Foo Foo getting turned into a "thug."

But perhaps my biggest argument against any of the established and nontraditional versions is that they all lack one thing: Sequel Potential.

Really. I mean, think about it. What if LBFF set a trap for G. Fairy? He captures her and makes her do his bidding, magically bopping all the field mice in the entire world, not just the forest, so he can concentrate on further developing his evil plans to take over the world? Hey, who wouldn't like to see their favorite evil politician bopped on the head by a rabid rabbit?

And think of the possibilities! Book Two has LBFF and G. Fairy teaming up against their will as they struggle not to be bopped by mutant field mice in a televised game for the entertainment of the priviledge few. Call it Mockingmice.

And the third book? I don't know. Maybe something with vampires, perhaps.

The point is, whoever came up with "Hare today, goon tomorrow," wasn't looking at the big picture.

July's Rejection Roundup

Back by popular demand, the Rejection Roundup. I've decided to go once a month as things have been moving ve-e-e-e-ry slowly this summer.

I reported in my last post that I'd turned down an offer to pub one of my PBs. Since then, I've subbed a bunch more (over 30 new subs went out). Here be los nombres:

Total manuscripts out: 54
Unique PBs: 23
> New subs this month: 36
Unique MG/YA: 2
> New subs this month: 0

Total rejections: 15
Form: 12
Personal: 3
> Positive: 3
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 0

Offers: 0
PB: 0
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 2.5

Change from last month: +1.7

(Last month was a low point, but I'm convinced I made the right decision. +0.5 for that. Another +2.0 for getting out another 30+ subs. -0.5 for not hearing anything back from anyone. IS EVERYONE AT CONFERENCES? Also, -0.3 for not going to #LA10SCBWI)

Been a busy month with the kids, too, so I'm not feeling I got much writing done. Once the kids go back to school, that'll change.

Weekly Rejection Roundup

Okay, skipped another week, but that's because I have a good excuse. really. I do.

After the excitement of getting my first contract on a PB, the past two weeks have been rather quite the downer. That's because I turned the offer down. I'll explain why tomorrow. Anyway, here're the nombres:

Total manuscripts out: 33
Unique PBs: 17
> New subs this week: 0
Unique MG/YA: 2
> New subs this week: 0

Total rejections: 2
Form: 2
Personal: 0*
> Positive: 0
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 0

Offers: 0
PB: 0
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 0.8

Change from last week: -3.5

(-2.0 for what I went through that led to my declining the PB offer; -0.2 for the form rejects; -2.3 for having whooping cough and not getting anything done; -1.0 for not having written a damn thing for the last month)

Barely managing to stay on the plus side of total apathy. If I don't get some positive news or accomplish something positive in the next few days, I'm really not going to be that nice to be around.

Just sayin'.

Weekly Rejection Roundup

Erm, actually, this would be the Semi-Weekly Roundup. After a week at the Happiest Place on Earth, I returned with a nasty case of whooping cough. Four days straight in bed and saved only by prescription-strength cough medicine. I feel funny....

A rather up and down two weeks. And, no, I'm not just talking about the rides at California Adventure. Here's the tally (pay attention this time, because there's NEWS):

Total manuscripts out: 35
Unique PBs: 18
> New subs this week: 0
Unique MG/YA: 2
> New subs this week: 0

Total rejections: 7
Form: 5
Personal: 2*
> Positive: 2
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total manuscript requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 0

Offers: 1
PB: 1
Novel: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 4.3

Change from last week: +1.1

(-0.5 for the five form rejects; +0.2 for the nice personal rejects; -2.3 for having whooping cough and not getting anything done; +3.7 for getting an offer)

Woot!

Weekly Rejection Roundup

Going radio silent until Friday (taking the kids to the Happiest Place on Earth to deal with the Grumpiest Parents on Earth).

Another slow week. Feels like the dark side of the moon. Here's the tally:

Total manuscripts out: 42
Unique PBs: 21
> New subs this week: 0
Unique MG/YA: 2
> New subs this week: 0

Total rejections: 1
Form: 1
Personal: 0*
> Positive: 0
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total requests: 0
Partials: 0
Fulls: 0

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.2

Change from last week: +/-0.0

Still ruffling feathers; still plugging away.
Keep on RoadTripping!

Paradigm Shifts - Epilogue

I'm always amazed whenever the subject of paradigm shifts comes up, people seem to be in one of three camps: there are those who are aware and open to the idea of the "book" evolving, those who seem, by virtue of their knee-jerk reaction to decry it, and finally those who seem to think this is old news.

Some comments from Absolute Write members my post on the subject:

Quote: Originally Posted by JudScotKev
I think people love to shriek about one medium REPLACING another, but in reality that doesn't often happen. True, TV makes more money than radio, but people are still listening. Even in the iPod age, radios are still included in every new car.

My first graders love a website called starfall.com that has interactive books. But I've never had a single student complain about "real" books. They LOVE picture books. They LOVE reading. AND they love video games.

My son has an iPod Touch, an Xbox, a PS2, and satellite TV. And he reads every day, over 2 million words this year alone. He will actually turn off the TV to read.

I don't think it's a competition. I think it's a smorgasbord of choices. Some stories and activities work well in one medium; some work better in another.

Personally, I thank my lucky stars I'm alive in an age that gives me Google, iTunes and Harry Potter, all at once.

My response:
I hope my post didn't come across as alarmist. In fact, my intent was not to bemoan the evolutiontoion, but to 1) celebrate the changes we're seeing and 2) to inform and encourage providers of children's content to think beyond the printed word (and, as I've blogged about before in the case of picture books, the illustrated page). I don't think anyone can deny that information content is reaching us in new and varied ways; our children will have access to more knowledge brought to them in more forms than we enjoyed as children. This is a good thing. But as providers of content, we must evolve as well in order to stay relevant.

Anecdotal claims to the contrary aside, these new forms do compete with one another for our attention. To put it in modern terms, it's about bandwith. Believe it or not, our ability to take in information is limited, and when the preferential mechanism for doing so shifts, it does so at the expense of something else. This is not a bad thing, but it is real. And while I do believe (and have consistently stated in the past) that traditional forms of the book will be with us for a long time to come, we cannot simply recite History and claim that these new paradigms won't change anything. That is simply naive.

Quote: Originally Posted by Ineti
I think it's pretty much a given, and business as usual. Books compete against movies, television, video games, and plenty of other forms of entertainment. Electronic readers that can do color and sound and so on are just the latest hotness. Some new technological marvel will come out, and print books will have to continue to compete. Nothing really earth-breaking here.

My response:
It's a disservice to those new to the business, as well as veterans firmly entrenched in traditional written forms, to understate the significance of the phenomenon by implying only earth-shattering events warrant notice. The evolution of literature, and especially children's content, is an on-going process. It's not something that happened at some point in the past and we've moved on from, but rather something that is happening and continues to happen. Children's lit is especially susceptible to flux as its forms are so varied, from picturebooks and videos to GNs to novels; children today are much more keyed into digital (NOT, I firmly believe, at the exclusion of analogue), which means that they are actively seeking content in these forms. It is our responsibility to meet those expectations.

A thorough read of my blog would have shown that it's not a call to arms against change, but a call to embrace changes, to broaden our horizons as content providers and to stretch those boundaries.

Fusion of Image, Audio and Word - Paradigm Shifts and the Future of Children's Lit

I just finished two books that incorporate innovative forms of content beyond the printed word (and no, I'm not talking about digital ink, either). I'll get to those titles in a sec, but first I wanted to take a litle trip down Memory Lane, to the good ole days of 2007 and a little known book called The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Of course I'm being facetious. If you're one of about a dozen people who haven't heard or read this book, do it. But the point I want to make about Brian Selznik's "massive," 533-page middle grade novel is this: it won the Caldecott. You might recall that the Caldecott is awarded for illustration of a children's book.

Wait a minute. A novel winning an award for illustration? Well, yeah. And at 25K words, it's an easy guess (if you haven't read or seen the book yet) what fills those 500+ pages.

Selznik's book wasn't the first to mix word and image, but I think with the Caldecott win, it really ushered in the idea that the novel as we know is evolving to become more mixed media. (This ignores, for the moment, that graphic novels, or GNs, have been becoming more and more popular and complex of late. But GNs are separate thing altogether. I'm talking more about how the traditional novel is changing.)

Without a doubt, we are well along in a revolution where the written, printed word is becoming heavily encroached upon by images, video and audio content. And while traditional novels (both paper and ebook) will be around for a long time to come, they will have to compete more and more with stories that incorporate mixed media.

For example, I just finished Malice, Chris Wooding's paranormal 68K-word mixed novel/graphic novel. The interesting thing about this book is that, while the story could easily stand on its own, the graphic novel really adds a new dimension that children today will connect with, especially boys. And if that gets them to read, great. Remember, to publishers more readers means more sales.

The other book is Patrick Carman's Trackers, released last week, about a group of four teen tech geeks. The story follows an interview of the MC as he recounts the events leading to the present (I'm being purposefully coy here to avoid giving anything away). The book could be read from cover to cover without leaving its pages, but the reader is cued to logon to a website, enter codes, view videos and crack codes, thus becoming a participant in the story.

It's an interesting concept and a challenge for the traditional writer to consider. Will it be successful? In my opinion, as long as the reader has to physically leave the comfort of their chair/bed/hammock or whatever, no. But we are fast approaching an age where all these sources of content will soon be available all at once and from a single device. I think stories where the reader (soon to become "audience participant") can seemlessly shift between the active experience of reading and the passive experience of watching/listening, while also enjoying a little bit of both in interactive ways too, will become more popular.

Why is this happening?

I don't think this has anything to do with shorter attention spans or being bombarded with information from a hundred different sources all at once, or sensory overload. I think it's only natural to want to experience things more fully. And if a story can be experienced more fully (which is not to say totally passively, as films do), then it will succeed.

What does this mean to the author of next generation stories?

Well, first and foremost, I don't think it has to mean anything to any one author. As I said before, traditional books will be around for a long, long time. But they will compete with mixed media going forward. I think authors of children's lit content should keep all this in mind. Writers should think about whether and how they should access these new media to assist them in telling their stories, whether through image, video, audio or whatever comes next (olfactory?). Do you see an opportunity to turn your novel into a mixed novel/GN or tie-in the internet for expanded experiences?

Before You Query - Epilogue

Apparently my checklist on querying was a huge internet sensation (I even found a rapper reading it on YouTube, but I seem to have lost the link. Hem).

Anyway, found this post at GotYA (WHAT JANET REID IS REALLY THINKING: TOP FIVE REASONS (THERE ARE MORE) WHY JANET AND HER AGENT-POSSE-FRIENDS TURNED YOU DOWN) and thought it was priceless, a perfect antithesis to my post.

Enjoy.

Weekly Rejection Roundup

A so-so week. No snail mail or ejections, but I marked off two subs as soft rejections based on the "No word means no interest" policy of those houses. Won't list all the numbers, as there's been so little change.


Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.2

Change from last week: -0.1

Took a -0.2 drop due to expiration of two subs, but a +0.1 raise as I figured out what was tying me up with my WIP.

Weekly Rejection Roundup

Happy Mother's Day!

A good week, all in all. Here's the tally:

Total manuscripts out: 47
Unique PBs: 21
> New subs this week: 4
Unique MG/YA: 2
> New subs this week: 1

Total rejections: 2
Form: 2
Personal: 0*
> Positive: 0
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total requests: 3
Partials: 2
Fulls: 1 (YA)

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.3

Change from last week: +0.1

Feel like I'm gaining momentum.

Everything I Know About Writing, I Learned in Kindergarten

Here's a challenge: write a story in 600 words or less, one that'll make me laugh or cry (or, even better, make me do both in quick succession). One with fully developed characters, a mature plot and a complete story arc. And then make it the kind of story I'll want to read six dozen times in as many nights, laughing or crying each and every time.

That's what makes writing a good children's picture book so challenging.

It's also what has helped me become a better novelist. No writer agonizes over every single word - not just the meaning and appropriateness of the word, but the sound of the word as well - as the writer of the successful picture book. No author is so attuned to the melody of a story, the tightness of the plot, the bare essentials-yet-completeness of the characters.

Now, to be honest, I don't give my novels the same level of scrutiny as I do my picture book manuscripts. It would be impossible to finish anything if I did. But the habits I learned in writing picture books have conditioned me to more readily recognize weaknesses in my longer works, to listen to the sounds of the language, to write tightly.

Writing is, to mangle a phrase, ten percent inspiration and ninety percent constipation. We all know how hard it is to produce good writing. For me, developing the skills and habits to write a good picture book has helped (ahem) loosen the process of writing novels.

And if you don't believe me that shorter is harder, then why is it so damn difficult to synopsize your novel in just a few pithy sentences? Well, PBs are pretty much like that.

Weekly Rejection Roundup

Last day of April. Can't believe it's May already. Yikes!

Not a bad week overall. Here's the tally:

Total manuscripts out: 44
Unique PBs: 22
> New this week: 0
Unique MG/YA: 2
> New this week: 0

Total rejections: 7
Form: 4
Personal: 3*
> Positive: 3
> Negative: 0
* meaning anything that directly references my submission by more than title

Total requests: 1
Partials: 0
Fulls: 1 (YA)

Mood Meter (on a scale of -5 to +5 with -5 being downright rotten and +5 being ecstatic): 3.2

Change from last week: +0.1

Getting more feedback, all positive, and the req for a full is a great boost, but feeling strangely unproductive.

Total Face Transplants and the Art and Artifice of Revising

Last week, Spain announced that it had performed the first total face transplant. Shucks, I've been doing them for years. Whole body transplants even. Everything from minor cosmetic surgery to replacement of all vital organs and systems, right down to the heart and spleen.

Okay, admittedly, my transplants weren't on actual human beings, but it doesn't mean my subjects weren't soulless either. I'm talking about my WIPs.

I've always sort of thought of the revision process as the messy underworld of writing, the thing everyone knows about but doesn't really care to think about how it's done. Sort of like embalming. I mean, as writers, we think of ourselves as artists - or, rather, artistes. A work is produced by sheer creative force, a process as wonderful and painful as giving birth - or, in my case, passing kidney stones. It's a beautiful thing.

The process of revising is not beautiful. It's messy. It's - yes, I'll say it - mechanical. We take a completed work of art, the Draft, and descend upon it with hammer and chisel and we begin to chip away, patch, discard, replace and otherwise disfigure until the next iteration may or may not look anything like the original.

And yet, it's better. And because it's better, we make another go at it. And another. And another. To take the analogy one painful step beyond reason: For me, the writing and revising process is like starting out with the idea of sculpting Napolean on a horse, coming up with SpongeBob SquarePants sitting astride Gary the Snail and then, after revisions, getting George Washington crossing the Potomac. What happened to the original vision?! It's still there. It's the soul of a work.

Not a single one of my writings has escaped this process. True, I have stories that retain the heart or vision of the original idea and so are fully recognizable as the work I set out to create, having perhaps only changed in a few minor ways. But the vast majority of my writing undergoes iteration after iteration of revision where pretty much every word has been changed at least once, every sentence painstakingly agonized over, every paragraph, scene and chapter pulled out and replaced. It doesn't feel like art, it feels like surgery.

But surgery is a skill.

And as with any skill, you can only refine it by doing it.