Inkpunks

Stories are like meals. Some I tear through the way I attack a greasy mountain of chili cheese fries. I slurp them down, satisfying guilty cravings that sometimes leave me regretting the experience.  Others are like expensive sushi, and I let each morsel linger on my tongue, willing it to melt slowly into memory.

I think I’ve always written like a short-order cook. Only recently has it occurred to me that maybe I can learn to craft gourmet prose. I have little formal training, but I can discover verbal delicacies that delight me and try to deconstruct and duplicate them. Here are three, and I hope you will share your own favorites in the comments:

From the opening paragraph of Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan:

Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven.

When I read this, I find that the structure and rhythm and imagery of this passage reinforce the description of rambling vines and the chaotic, crumbling urban sprawl. The words Peake uses to capture the Tower of Flints hints at the nature and character of the people and events that will rise out of the slowly decaying ruins of the Groan dynasty.

This next excerpt is from Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. This Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Sidewise-award winning novel is set in a world where a temporary Jewish homeland is founded in the Alaskan panhandle. I love the following passage because Chabon manages to convey Landsman’s sister’s unique character while also reinforcing the Jewish yearning for Palestine in combination with features of the Alaskan setting. He makes his words multitask for him:

It was from an early boyfriend that she had caught the itch to fly. Landsman never asked her what the attraction was, why she had worked so long and hard to get her commercial license in the homoidiotic world of male bush pilots. She was not one for pointless speculation, his dashing sister. But as Landsman understands it, the wings of an airplane are engaged in a constant battle with the air that envelopes them, denting and baffling and warping it, bending and staving it off. Fighting it the way a salmon fights the current of a river in which it’s going to die. Like a salmon–that aquatic Zionist, forever dreaming of its fatal home–Naomi used up her strength and energy in the struggle.

The final sample is from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

This prose is perfection. I can’t help but read this out loud; my mouth wants to feel this string of syllables, and my ears envy my eyes if I don’t sound them out. I would like to learn to write with this rhythm.  It’s hard to believe that this man, one of the greatest masters of the English language, wrote his first nine novels in Russian. The narrator is as much in love with his words as he is with the underage Dolores.

It’s your turn now! What passages do you as a writer find the most delectable, and what have you learned (or hope to learn) from them? (Note: please limit any excerpts to no more than a few sentences.Deli)

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For the last week and a half, the Inkpunks have been in a pretty serious discussion of our work-life-art relationships. As artists, it’s almost impossible not to struggle to find some kind of balance between the need for money and the need to create. Sometimes it feels like the two needs are completely inimical and impossible to balance, while at the best of times, the two needs can support each other. None of us has the right answer, but all of us have been living with the question for a long time.

One of the most difficult aspects of working in writing and the visual arts (all of the Inkpunks are involved in one, the other, or both), is that they are arts people seem to only value when they are earning money. No one asks a knitter if they’ve ever sold a sweater, but people tend to smirk at authors who haven’t sold any books. There’s a lot of pressure to measure your success as a writer by the amount of money you’ve made. As Erika Holt pointed out:

People want proof. How many stories have you sold? How much did they pay? Oh, you’ve written a novel—where can I buy it? If you’re not earning a respectable income from this silly writing business, you’re wasting your time…. Be prepared for this. There is a loss of status in the eyes of others, and maybe even in your own eyes. Ironically, my lowest point coincided with when I started achieving demonstrable “success.” I got a few stories published, and a couple of anthologies. Problem? Though I’d spent countless hours working on these projects, I’d earned mere hundreds of dollars. People would literally laugh in my face when I told them this.

It is all too easy to call yourself a failure if your art isn’t earning your living. And that’s an amazing pressure on all of us. We’ve all daydreamed about staying home and being full-time writers, but how much of that urge comes from our own hearts, and how much from our egos? There’s nothing wrong with having another income source if that makes you a more productive writer.

Erika and Christie Yant know from experience that staying at home to focus on writing isn’t always completely fulfilling. They both tried it, leaving their outside employment to live on savings and the support of a partner while they tried to break into the writing business. Erika says of the experience: “It requires serious discipline. You have no real deadlines; no pressure. At first I was very diligent; sticking to a firm word count each day and churning out a finished novel in less than a year. But I knew it wasn’t good enough and became discouraged.”

Christie found that as things changed in her own living situation, writing became more difficult: “I got some freelance work, but it was never enough. The stress of both the divorce and my financial situation was too much, and I couldn’t write.” It’s hard enough to balance life and work when things are going well, but if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t cope well with a lot of uncertainty, life without a regular paying gig can cripple your artistic muscles.

But life with a regular paying gig can be awfully stifling. It’s hard to cram writing into the corners of your life, especially if you have a lot of living to do! There are families to raise, books to read, art to see, adventures to be had. We all have to give up a lot of time for these things when we choose to work on our paintings or our books. And of course, creative projects feed off of life, so by giving up living time to work, we lose opportunities to stimulate future ideas. It’s hard not to want to more time for life and art, even if it comes at a price.

Galen Dara is taking the leap. After years with a part-time job, she’s turned in her notice.

It has just become time for something to give.

I was struggling to keep up with illustration deadlines, spending a good amount of time at my day job doing freelance work (it’s a slow job, I am usually able to get away with that), and constantly worried about how I was neglecting my partner and son to keep on top of it all. I’d hoped to wait till my freelance income matched my day job income. I’m not quite there yet. But still, it is time.

Galen points out that she’s lucky: she’s not the primary breadwinner in her family, and her job wasn’t providing their health insurance. She’s at a point in her life where the best way to support her family is to turn her back on that part-time job and leap more deeply into the waters of creative activity.

John Remy knows he has years to wait:

A few years ago, I gave up hope of earning a living off of writing any time soon after reading this post by John Scalzi. In Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer, Jeff Vandermeer details the all writing he did while working full-time. He said something to the effect that, “the will to write is what matters.”

Individual circumstances factor in as well. I’ve been the primary wage earner for most of my life. I have kids to support through college. I don’t have the luxury of throwing my career away any time soon … For these reasons, I’ve chosen the chicken before the egg: I won’t quit the day job until I’m making enough off of my creative efforts to support myself and my loved ones.

I don’t think it’s an easy choice, but it’s the one that’s right for John and his family.

For some of us, we’re looking for ways to balance creativity and money by first cutting back our expenses–sometimes, drastically. A wonderful blog exploring ways to live life more cheaply is Pocketmint. Karawynn Long and her partner Jak Koke are taking extreme steps to make their lives affordable on a writer’s salary, and I recommend studying their practices to see if any will fit in your life.

Others are exploring a wider variety of money-making strategies. Sandra Wickham has a lot of experience working outside the day job comfort zone:

Back in 1997 I competed in my first fitness competition and I was hooked. The more I competed, the less I wanted to work a normal day job because it interfered with my training. I backed off my hours as much as I could, and after a couple of years I reached the National level and decided to quit my job and work for myself….On average, I train 25 competitors a year and have promoted my own show for nine years now. The key is, we’re doing what we love, but finding a related way to finance it.

Now that I’ve retired from competing (oh, how I hate how that sounds) and am focusing on my writing, I do have the ability to make my own schedule, including carving out time to write.

Working 9-5 isn’t the only way to make a living–it just takes creativity to think outside the box and find those opportunities. If you’re like Sandra, you might tap into your entrepreneurial genius to make ends meet.

Me, I’m still working part-time (18 hours a week) at a job that sometimes drives me crazy. I rely primarily on my partner, who is a painter who would love to quit his day job, to make ends meet. Having a 9 year old daughter only complicates things. We’re still exploring our options and sorting out our needs. I know that writing can fill the role of part-time job for me, so I’m excited to build my career up enough to take the place of my current job. But I’m also looking to the future to develop a plan that will allow my husband to “retire” as well. What I do know is that I’m not afraid to explore working more at either end of the job continuum–toward more self-employment as an artist or toward more hours in the working world.

Maybe, like Ramsey Campbell, I’ll find myself inspired to write a successful novel about my dayjob!

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John Klima is the Assistant Director of the Waukesha Public Library. He also edits the Hugo Award–winning magazine Electric Velocipede. As of 2010, the magazine has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four years in a row. In 2007 Klima edited an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories based on spelling-bee winning words called Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories. Klima edited a reprint anthology of fairy tale retellings called Happily Ever After that came out from Night Shade Books in the Summer of 2011. In 2013, ALA Editions will publish his Readers Advisory book on Steampunk. You can follow him on twitter at @EV_Mag.

It happens to the best of us. We’re working under the guise of everyone’s favorite writing maxim: “Write what you know,” when crap, you run into something you don’t know. What do you do? Do you wing it? Do you skip it and write around it? Do you just stop working on that piece and move onto something else? Do you research the topic to flesh out the details?

Well, given that most of us have never flown in space, fought a dragon, cast a spell, or traveled to an alternate dimension, there are many occasions when you write things you don’t know. But when faced with something that exists—we’ll use circuses as an example—chances are you’d be well served in doing some research. But before you fire up Google, let’s talk a bit about research.

You see, doing research can be difficult. For example, you have a scene set in a circus but you don’t know much about them so you decide to do some research. Where do you start? How long do you look? If you just throw the word ‘circus’ into Google you’ll get things like the Ringling Bros. Circus, a Wikipedia page, Cirque de Soleil, maybe a news link, and another couple million hits.

The Ringling site might be just what you need. The Ringling circus can serve as a backdrop and you’re scene writes itself. Or maybe the Wikipedia page might give you just enough to get through the scene you’re working on; the book’s not set in the circus, just this scene. But then again, it might not. What you need might be more elusive than that.

This is where your local library can help.

Now, I understand that getting to the library isn’t necessarily convenient. The library may not be anywhere near you, it might be open hours that don’t mesh with your schedule, it might not be on a bus route so getting there is difficult, or a multitude of other reasons for why you haven’t been or don’t plan on going to the library. But it’s worth the time and effort to make the trip.

When you arrive, first take a look through the reference collection. Libraries typically have all sorts of reference material that you can read and photocopy at the library. (Unfortunately, you can’t take these books home with you; that’s why I told you to go to the library) In the reference section you’ll find all sorts of things: census information, your state’s legal code, medical reference texts, encyclopedias on everything from rock ‘n’ roll to poetry, national electric code, zip code directories, and more.

I’ll use my library as an example for what you might find at your local library when searching for information on circuses. When I search just the word ‘circus’ in the main catalog, I find more than 550 books. But I can see from the first few titles that I’m getting quite a few fiction titles. When I restrict the search to reference material, I only get three books. All three are about circus parades and their history. That could be interesting and useful given that they include historical photographs. And there’s a bonus: all three books have circulating copies that you could check out and take home.

Expanding the search to nonfiction titles, there are almost 50 titles (if that gets expanded to the entire county there’s almost 200, but let’s focus on what’s in the building for now), but it’s a mixed bag. There are collections of Family Circus comic strips, biographies of LeBron James, and at least one book on the Civil War. But, the very first result is The Rise of the American Circus, 1716-1899 by S. L. Kotar which sounds like research gold if you need any historical information about circuses. Also on the first page are books about tattooed ladies, circus elephants, and one on sideshow performers. You’re already on your way to having some great stuff for your research by only looking at the books in the library.

Those searches you could do on your own. If you went to a librarian for help, that would be your starting point. Depending on what you needed, the librarian might look into the library’s databases (which you might be able to access from home, just make sure to leave the library with a card in good standing) for newspaper and magazine articles as well as more encyclopedic information that’s been through a vetting process (which means the content has been verified by an expert) so that you can trust what you find. If you were in my library doing research on circuses, I would point out to you that the Circus World Museum is only about a two-hour drive away. If you didn’t want to/weren’t able to make the drive, I would make sure you had the museum’s contact information so that you could get in touch with them with follow-up questions.

You see, librarians are trained to do research. We’re trained to understand how people search. We’re trained to know how search engines work. We’re trained to know where the resources are. We take all of these skills and combine them together into what’s called the reference interview. This is where the librarian does her best to learn exactly what it is you’re looking for. The more detail you can provide, the more specific her answer will be. Obviously if you don’t have a lot of details, your search results will be more generic. Either way, the librarian will work to find you answers that you can use.

When doing research, it should go without saying that the library is your first stop. But that’s no longer the truth. So much basic information that people use everyday is available online which leads people to believing that everything can be found with Google or whatever their favorite search engine is. But take a trip to the library instead. You’ll likely find wifi so Google’s available to you, great reference books, cool databases, a quiet work environment, and really helpful librarians who want to teach you how to use these resources.

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I recently finished watching the movie Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. (It’s a great movie about a fascinating woman in a fascinating family–I recommend it highly!) If you don’t know, Louisa May Alcott was the J.K. Rowling of her time, growing so successful from her children’s books that she became, in adjusted figures, a multi-millionaire. Little Women was published in 1868 and 1869 (it was originally a two-volume set) and has never gone out of print. But someone (Geraldine Brooks, I think) in the documentary pointed out Alcott’s fatal flaw, the flaw that has kept the bulk of her work from achieving even one-tenth the recognition of Little Women: she almost never took time to revise.

Revision. For me, the weirdest part of the writing process. The other day I was writing a poem and by the time I’d reached the last stanza, I had an entirely new vision for the piece. When I typed it up, fifteen minutes after jotting it down on a piece of paper, it was a whole new animal. Other pieces, I write the first draft and when I reread them,  I know they’re wrong, but the solution to them wriggles away. I have to set them aside and wait and wait for a new conceptual framework to present itself.

I find that most of the time when things don’t work in a piece, it’s because my original vision doesn’t fit with my execution–not because of lack of skill, but because I somehow lack the proper set of perspectives to see deeply into the original, generative idea. A work might have to be put aside for a long time while I absorb new experiences and new ideas that can refocus my thoughts, as if my mind were building a lens of ideas to refit over my impaired authorial vision. Bifocals for the writing brain, perfect for re-visioning my work.

Of course, the question remains: where do I get the materials make those new lenses? Like the ideas that inspired the work in the first place, my corrective ideas must come from my life and my reading. Today, I’m excited because I’m going to take a teaser class from The Attic Institute called “Poets! Read to Revise!” I’m hoping it will give me new insight into the revisioning process.

This will be the first formal writing class I’ve gone to since I was a college student, and I’m hoping it will be a good experience. But it’s just one evening’s worth of material, and I’m sure I have a great deal to learn about revision. Do any of you have any books or websites you’d like to share with me (us all, really!) on the topic of revision? I’d love to see them!

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So.
A few weeks ago, I took my receipts, pay stubs, and pages and pages of handwritten notes to an accountant to see about filing taxes as a freelance illustrator. It was my first time doing this and I was nervous the accountant would take one look at my stack of tattered papers and tell me to go play with my paint-by-numbers kit, or something. (I was wondering myself if this wasn’t just a glorified hobby). He didn’t laugh. He sat me down, walked me through my first Schedule C, gave insights into a few deductions I had not thought of, and complimented me on my record keeping. I had spent more than I had earned, but the IRS expects that in the first few years of freelancing/independent employment.  I have the next few years to see if I can close that gap and start making a profit. *gulp*

Which will, of course, bring its own set of challenges.

For this post I reached out to a few people who are making a living as writers, artists and freelancers, to get their input on the subject: Much appreciation to Robert Jackson Bennett, James L. Sutter, Steven J. Scearce, Lisa A. Grabenstetter, Evan Jensen, and Jacob Ruby for sharing their expertise.

I’ll start with a cautionary tale from Robert Bennett:

“When I got my advance for my first novel, my feeble hope in the justice of the monetary world assumed that I’d be losing, like, 10%. Or maybe 15%. My father in law is a smart man who is also a retired lawyer who specialized in government payments to the individual – IE, Medicare and taxes. He does his whole family’s taxes, and since I got my first contract when I first started dating the girl who would be my wife, he offered to do mine, too.

My feeble hope got a little bruised when my then-girlfriend-later-wife later asked, rather frantically, if I had kept any receipts. I had none, of course. I then got unsettling reports that her father had been staying up all night working on my tax return. He had been seriously putting in overtime – for little old me, who had always been below the poverty line on all my taxes before. I was used to getting money back from the government. Not giving it.

Finally he sat me down and said he’d looked at it a lot, and he’d figured out exactly how much I had to pay. He told me to be ready, and to be calm about this.

He took out a post-it note, and wrote down a figure.

(You know it’s bad when they have to write it down – it’s as if the number is the name of Hades, and to speak it out loud invokes a number of terrible ills.)

I looked at the number.

There were four digits to the number.

And most of them were higher than 5.

To writers, and artists of all kinds, tax season is a circling shark. It is waiting to strike – and it is going to strike. You have to be prepared for this. You have to consider your yearly budget in advance, and take taxes into account. Because if you don’t, you will get your fucking teeth kicked in. I can promise you that.”

Heheh, scared yet?  Steven James Scearce put it this way:

“Taxes. Yes. Very simply. Save all your receipts for everything you can manage. Hire a tax/accountant person who understands the unique needs of the small, home-based business person (‘cause that’s what we are), and pay them to keep you out of trouble.”

It would be easy to stop right there with that bit of advice (none of the individuals I approached are accountants). However, if you are interested, here are some additional tidbits from folks who have been around the block a few times:

Lisa Grabenstetter revealed that there are various cities that have been designated as art districts:

“If you live and work in one, then any income made off of your art is tax exempt. Maryland has several and I know there are a few other states that do this, DC for one, Rhode Island, and Louisiana I believe. Ohio lets you count revenue that charities gain from any artwork you’ve donated to them as a charitable donation now. It’s more common outside of the US that tax accommodations are made for artists, but wherever you live it’s worth checking into.”

Lisa, Jacob Ruby, James Sutter, and Evan Jensen weighed in on all the many things that are tax deductible: miles on your car; “research” like books, movies, video games, exhibits, and comic book collections;  The clothing and personal products you need to look nice and shiny for client meetings; conventions, retreats, workshops, training (all the food/lodging/travel/etc expenses those incur); promotional stuff; software, hardware, (there are even ways to calculate the deductions of costlier pre-purchased tools like your computer or your car based off of depreciation.) If you have a home studio/study you can deduct the percentage of rent/mortgage/utilities based on the size of the studio. Even if it’s only the few square feet your desk occupies in the corner of your bedroom, as long as it’s your dedicated work spot, it counts. However, if you do most of your work from, say, the kitchen table, or the bed, or the couch, it’s best to just let that deduction slide. An alternative to meticulous record keeping is to just take a standard deduction. After a few years of doing this you’ll have a better idea which works best for your situation.

While “it’s a Tax Deduction” might be tempting as justification for spending, James Sutter had this to say:

“I’d point out that, while writing purchases off is great, it’s still means you’re spending money–and if you’re a professional writer [or other creative], you probably don’t have a lot of that, right? I’ve never bought into the “spend to save” bit–I’d rather pay slightly higher taxes and have a nest egg than avoid taxes by making a bunch of big purchases and end up in debt.”

I’m trying to keep that in mind as I balance out which conventions I’ll attend, new software I’m tempted by, an aging laptop, etc.

A big decision that must be made is if you will file quarterly or end of year.  Evan Jensen recommended:

“While you’re supposed to file quarterly taxes based on estimates of income, we all know freelancing isn’t usually reliable in that way. But, if you can estimate and pay quarterly, do so.”

James Sutter went on to explain:

“Unlike the money you get from your day job, which likely already has taxes taken out, money you make from writing contracts doesn’t get taxed ahead of time…if you made a significant amount of money–a novel sale, a game book, lots of little bits for a single company…get ready, because that money you made is going to disappear fast.  As an independent business, you get whacked for a significant chunk of the cash you make by writing (I think it’s something like a third), and it all happens at once, because you haven’t gradually paid out of each paycheck the way you probably do with your normal wages. I was astonished the first time I found myself facing thousands of dollars of taxes just for writing. And to add insult to injury, because the government normally makes you file quarterly and considers it a special favor to let you pay all at once at the end of the year, you may be penalized with an underpayment fee.”

(There are ways around this, James is able to avoid underpayment fees by having a little extra taken out of his wages throughout the year.)

While talking this all out with an accountant may be optimal, that is also an additional expense. Balance that out with how comfortable you are with the additional tax forms. I was glad to have had professional assistance this first time around but do hope to eventually be filling out my own schedule C’s.

And there you go. Some suggestions, some advice, some tidbits of information you may or may not have had before. If you have some of your own PLEASE share them in the comments section! That would be much appreciated.

Now, go create something awesome. And keep your receipts.

by Gavin Aung Than. click image for full comic

Thank you Gavin Aung Than, ((and Erika Holt, too <3))

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Robert Jackson Bennett’s 2010 debut Mr. Shivers won the Shirley Jackson award as well as the Sydney J Bounds Newcomer Award. His second novel, The Company Man, is currently nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award as well as an Edgar Award. His third novel, The Troupe, arrived in stores on February of 2012. His website is robertjacksonbennett.com and you can follow him on twitter @RobertJBennett

Steven James Scearce works as a freelance ghost writer.  He also is the creator of the science fiction web series Unknown Transmission. His printed work appears in a number of anthologies including Rigor Amortis, Cthulhurotica and In Situ. He has just completed his first novel-length manuscript, a horror story called Cottonwood. His website is stevescearce.com and you can follow him on Twitter @ShinkaiMaru5.

Lisa Grabenstetter  is a freelance illustrator who was raised by trees. As a youngster, she had great hopes of becoming a Paleontologist and her love of dinosaurs and other monstrous and winged things continues to show up in her work. She draws inspiration from artists of the symbolist movement, from art nouveau, and from contemporary fantasy and comic book illustrators. Her work is primarily in ink, graphite, and watercolor. Her website is magneticcrow.com and you can follow her on twitter @magneticcrow.

Jacob Ruby is an artist by education and a freelance 3D illustrator/animator by trade who spends most of his time forging darker thoughts into twisted stories. His work appears in a number of magazines and anthologies including Black Static, Rigor Amortis, IN SITU, Fish, and Slices of Flesh. He recently completed his first novel, a young adult horror story called The Arrival. His website is jacobruby.com and you can follow him on Twitter @JacobRuby.

James L. Sutter is the author of the novel Death’s Heretic, which Barnes & Noble ranked #3 on its list of the Best Fantasy Releases of 2011. He’s also the Fiction Editor for Paizo Publishing and co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game campaign setting. You can find him at jameslsutter.com or on twitter at @jameslsutter.

Evan Jensen is a freelance illustrator whose repertoire includes hedgehogs, children’s books, roleplaying games, alien rabbits, collectible card games, treasure hungs, genre magazines, and paperback fiction. He drinks coffee, tea, and thaumaturgic elixirs. His website is fathomlessbox.com and you can follow him on twitter @eimhinart.

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taxes

By far the most useful thing I’ve ever done for my writing career is getting into editing. Being the Fiction Editor for Paizo Publishing has helped me make connections with amazing editors and authors, taught me the business side of publishing from contracts to distribution, and helped me recognize common writing mistakes and cliches before making them myself. Yet as useful as all those are, none of those hold a candle to the most important lesson.

Editing teaches you how to avoid pissing off an editor.

I can’t stress enough how important this is. If you accidentally piss off an editor (or publisher, or agent, etc.), it no longer matters how good your stuff is. Editors are people–often relatively stressed-out, overworked people–and if they find working with you irritating, they’re naturally going to try to avoid it, consciously or otherwise. When an editor picks up your manuscript, you want them to be looking for reasons to accept you, not reject you. And a big part of that is making sure that you as an author are a joy to work with.

With that in mind, here are just a few ways I’ve seen authors shoot themselves in the foot.

Overconfidence

So you’ve had a few books published, or won an award. That’s great! As an editor, that gives me confidence that you know what you’re doing, as well as something useful to put on a back cover or in an author bio. Hopefully it even brings some fans. When new authors contact me, I want to know what they’ve done, and there’s no need for false modesty. Roll out that credit list–you’ve earned it.

The problem comes, however, when folks let their successes go to their head. No matter how successful you may be as an author, you’re never too big to fail. If you treat an editor in a disrespectful manner, or act like you’re doing them a favor by submitting a story, or don’t take them seriously because they’re younger/newer to the business than you, don’t be surprised when that editor decides to reject your story. Sure, maybe you really are big enough that you can come in swingin’ balls (to use an appropriately colorful term) and get away with it. But I’ve had to reject major award winners and New York Times bestsellers in my time as an editor, and I’ve only been at this for a few years. If you’re a big name and treat your editor well, he or she will jump at the chance to keep you happy and fast-track you through the process. But if you come in demanding special treatment, you lose more points than you gain.

Underconfidence

Remember how I said hubris was bad? Well, the truth of this industry is that a little hubris is necessary. At its heart, publishing is hubris: it’s assuming that the stories you tell are more entertaining than the stories other people can tell. If you want an editor to believe in you, you first need to believe in yourself.

In a practical sense, that means not being afraid to cite your credits, to proactively approach editors and publishers, and to present your work in a positive light. Self-deprecation went out of style in middle school, and I cringe every time an author sends me a story and says “this is crap, but hopefully you’ll like it.” How am I supposed to respond to that? You’re either telling the truth–it’s crap, and you’re either untalented or presume I’m desperate enough to buy it–or you’re lying in order to sell yourself short. Both are huge red flags, and as an editor my immediate response is to send it back, with a note informing the overly humble author that I only want to see a story when it’s ready.

In short: humility is good, but if you tell the world your work isn’t very good, the world is likely to take your word for it.

Being a Pretty Princess

This is the worst one, hands-down. With apologies to actual attractive princesses, what I mean by this term is the writers that are overly needy, argumentative, or otherwise difficult to work with.

Since all the fiction I purchase for Paizo is commissioned media tie-in for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, I suspect I deal with this less than most editors, because I do my best to make sure that authors understand that work-for-hire does not include any promise of creative control. Yet even then, there are still the authors who freak out when you change one of their painstakingly chosen words, or tell them to rewrite the ending, or ask that they cut that long rambling diatribe in the middle of the action sequence.

Now, I’m an author as well, and I understand that ultimately it’s the author’s name on the cover, and that if an editor changes a work for the worse, the author has to live with the consequences. But the flip side of that equation is that if you constantly argue with your editor or publicly decry the way he or she treated your manuscript, you’re guaranteed to get future books exactly how you like them–in manuscript form, in your desk drawer, unsold.

Business means compromise. While I’ve questioned edits plenty of times as an author–we’ve all got our blind spots, and I’ve certainly made mistakes that my authors kindly pointed out–the important thing is to do so in a respectful manner, and to pick your battles. Do you want five published books that are 95% the way you intended, or one published book that’s 100% the way you wanted it? Editors buy books from those writers who are easiest to work with, and talent only gets you so far.

A final word of warning: Editors talk. Our community is small, and if you have a knock-down, drag-out fight with your editor, or write them scathing emails about how they massacred your baby, other editors are going to hear about it. There are authors that I continue to hold at arms length despite perfect professionalism toward me, simply because of stories I’ve heard from other editors.

Failure to Thrive

The days when an author’s job ended once she typed “the end” are over–if indeed they ever existed. These days, if you want to sell books, you need to hustle. As an editor, I’m invested in you in your book, and I’ll do everything I can to help promote you–but ultimately, you need to take responsibility for how your book sells. That means interviews, podcasts, blog tours, etc. It doesn’t take money–in fact, the most effective marketing can be done in your pajamas on a laptop–but it takes initiative. When I hear an author I’m excited about say “Oh, I hate talking to people and promoting myself, I just want to sit in my house and write,” I die a little inside. It’s not that I don’t sympathize–believe me, I do–but that hermitical approach reflects a fundamental disconnect from the business of writing.

Here’s the deal: Selling books is really, really hard, and everyone at your publisher is busting his or her ass to try and make you a sensation. If you aren’t willing to meet them halfway and promote your own book as hard as you possibly can, there are other authors who will.

No Website

This ties into the last one. As an editor, the first thing I do when contacted by potential authors is google them. If I can’t find them online, my gut reaction is that they’re not really professionals yet. This doesn’t mean you need to blog all the time–frankly, I think there’s more value to doing guest posts on other people’s blogs, or simply writing and selling stories–but you should at least have an online presence with a little bio and links to your published works. You can make one for free, and it’ll take you an hour.

This is 2012. Get a damn website.

Going Dark

Communication between authors and editors is key. Not only does it help build a personal connection–like every other editor I’ve met, I like to think of authors I work with as my authors–but it makes it far more likely that we’ll be able to work through minor issues as friends and comrades, and that you’ll get what you want out of the final book. While that doesn’t mean being online constantly–in fact, that probably hurts your productivity–it does mean checking your email and replying in a timely manner. Most publishing folks I know run on tight deadlines, and when I email an author with a question, I probably needed the answer ten minutes ago. If an author regularly takes more than a day or two to reply to simple emails, that makes my life difficult. And authors that go dark–meaning they simply disappear and are unreachable for long stretches of time–just aren’t worth the hassle.

(At the opposite end of the spectrum, however, is a personal pet peeve of mine: the phone. Why do so many authors and agents feel the need to talk on the phone? We’re writers, dammit–I want to communicate by email, where I can think about my words, and have a paper trail I can refer to later to prove what we agreed upon. Calling me on the phone doesn’t build a personal connection, it forces me to stop what I’m in the middle of, interrupt my coworkers with a loud conversation, and answer your question on your schedule.)

Stalking

I love getting to know my authors, and I like it when prospective authors familiarize themselves with my company and my personal work. But it’s possible to go too far in your effort to ingratiate yourself. For example, I’m always a little creeped out when an author I’ve never spoken to before leads off an email with, “Hey, how are you and Margo? Wedding planning going well? I saw those Facebook pictures of you guys doing X.” When in doubt, start out professional, and let things evolve from there.

Similarly, hanging out with authors and editors at conventions is one of the greatest joys of this job, but it’s important to be able to read social signals. Every editor has at least one author (probably one she doesn’t want to give work to) that latches on like a remora and follows her around for the whole convention. I’m not above a little strategizing–“Oh, fancy seeing you here, at that panel you’re listed on in the program booklet!”–and invitations to join you are great, but don’t think that hugging an editor’s leg all convention is going to get you a book deal. (Especially if all you talk about is your book–turns out, everyone at that convention has a book to sell. It’s why they’re there. If it comes up, by all means mention your book, but otherwise talk about other things and try to make friends like a normal human.)

Carelessness

Aside from being a jerk or a prima donna, being careless is the worst thing an author can be. I can’t tell you how many “professional” authors don’t bother to proofread or spellcheck their stories or writing samples before sending them in, and it always boggles my mind. If you have a typo in the first paragraph, how do you expect to land a gig as a writer? Equally bad are the authors who ignore explicit instructions regarding submissions or revisions, either through inattentiveness or somehow thinking it’s not worth their time.

Listen: Editors only have a certain amount of time with each book. I can take an adequate book and make it good, or I can take a good book and make it great. By not taking basic steps like proofreading and spellchecking, you’re making me focus on basic mistakes and keeping me from helping you fix the bigger ones. And ignoring instructions shows a fundamental disrespect for the editor and the process. Every editor has stories of those rare and magical manuscripts that require so little work they’re like reading for pleasure. Your goal as an author is to produce that manuscript. (And remember, editors talk–when someone rhapsodizes about an author’s clean manuscripts, her friends take notes, and that author gets more gigs. Having a reputation for clean, instruction-following manuscripts is the publishing equivalent of having a reputation for being great in bed.)

Missing Deadlines

You know how I said being a pain to work with was the worst thing an author can do? Well, the only reason this last one doesn’t take the cake is that it’s over quickly. In the same way that a nuclear blast is over quickly.

If you blow your deadlines, I will drop you.

Understand that this isn’t just out of spite (though there’s some of that). As an editor, I’ve got a schedule I’ve got to stick to. If I say that your book is coming out in June, and you’re still writing it come May, I’ve got a big hole in my revenue stream for that month. I’ve got distributors and readers who think I can’t keep my act together. Writing may be art, but it’s also a business, and I literally can’t afford to have authors who fail to produce when they say they will.

The best way to avoid this label is to be honest. If you think you can write a book in six months, ask for nine–if you actually finish in six and turn your book in early, I can use that as a shining example of how awesome my authors are. And if something happens and you do start to slip, for the love of all that’s holy, let your editor know immediately. With forewarning, schedules can often be shuffled. But if you wait until the deadline rolls around before revealing that your novel actually stalled out at ten percent, you might as well pack up your laptop and go home, because most editors would rather set themselves on fire than get betrayed like that twice.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve been inundated with a flood of negativity, remember that most editors are actually very nice people. They spend their professional lives trying to discover new authors and polish them until they shine, often receiving very little recognition for all their hard work. Treat an editor well, and he or she will do everything in their power to turn you into a superstar. But cross them at your own risk.

So speak up, editors: what do authors do that drives you nuts?

James L. Sutter is the author of the novel Death’s Heretic, which Barnes & Noble ranked #3 on its list of the Best Fantasy Releases of 2011, as well as the co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game campaign setting. His short stories have appeared in such publications as Escape Pod, Starship Sofa, Apex Magazine, and the #1 Amazon bestseller Machine of Death, and his anthology Before They Were Giants pairs the first published stories of SF luminaries with new interviews and writing advice from the authors themselves. In addition, James has written numerous roleplaying game supplements and is the Fiction Editor for Paizo Publishing. For more information, check out jameslsutter.com or follow him on twitter at @jameslsutter.

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Awhile ago I read this post at Nature titled “Goal-Setting for Scientifically Minded People.” It talks about how the goal of science isn’t something that can be easily measured or projected for, because a big part of science is discovery. While goals in science aren’t completely useless, you can’t say that Newton had the goal of inventing calculus, or that Einstein had the goal of uncovering relativity. These are things which simply arose through the process of doing science, of exploring and discovering.

I feel like a lot of this logic can also apply to the creative process. Like many of you, I’m one of them scientifically-minded folk, along with being a creative-type. I’m an engineer by day, and I attack most things like an engineer. I scope, I sub-task, I work iteratively, I test as I go, etc. As I’m trying to revise my novel and get it into some readable shape, I found myself having to say approximately when this hot mess would look presentable. At first I made some fretting sounds, but then I became an engineer who likes to scope her projects, and set an approximate date of when this thing might be done.

But how can I know for sure? Of course I can make up a great plan, something like: “If I write 500 words a day, every day, even weekends and holidays, then I’ll have a draft by this date. Then if I edit 20 pages a day I can get edits done by this date. Then betas, then revise from betas, then send it in!” But how can I possibly know it’ll be good enough by then? How can I know that after writing it, a set of edits, a round of betas, and then a bit more editing, I’ll have a manuscript that’ll make me happy?

At this point, I might be inclined to despair, wondering if goal-setting is completely useless. I mean, what’s the point of setting goals, if there’s no real way of knowing how the novel will look once I’m done with my projected work? I’m just flailing in a direction, and waiting to see how I land when I get there. So why bother?

Well, the article goes on to say that there’s a lot of good in setting aggressive goals. When students set high-reaching goals for themselves, goals which may be just outside their grasp, they tend to perform better than when they set realistic goals.

This makes me think of the phrase “Aim for the moon, because even if you miss, you’ll still be among the stars.” Although I think whoever said that did not have a very strong grasp on astronomy, I see the intended metaphor, and I’m willing to go along with it.

In the article, they describe two different types of goals: process goals, and outcome goals. They’re two different kind of goals, and keeping both in mind helps me deal with the angst of goal-setting. The outcome goal is probably the type of goal we’re all very familiar with. “I’m going to write a great novel.” “I’m going to get an agent.” “I’m going to publish with one of the big six.” These are end-point goals. And while they’re good to have, on their own, they can turn into a kind of personal kryptonite. When these goals prove elusive, it can be incredibly frustrating. You’ve worked so hard! Why haven’t you reached your goals?

But that other type of goal, the process goal, complements outcome goals in a great way. The process goal says “I’m going to write three hundred words a day.” It says “I’m going to outline three chapters this week.” Or “I’m going to do a writing exercise every day for the next month.” These are attainable goals that are fully within your control. While they may not get you a publishing contract or get people fighting over film rights, they are an integral part of working towards your outcome goals.

Eventually, the article comes to five points for scientists to keep in mind when it comes to setting goals:

1. it’s generally good to set goals, even if you’re a scientist

2. even if the ultimate result of scientific work, such as which specific discovery, or how you will make, is not clear, you can set process goals to at least make your behaviour helpful into becoming a scientist of high quality.

3. The best way to learn something seems to be by layering process goals with outcome goals; outcome goals helping to select the skills you need to work on, and the process goals giving you the skills to reach the outcome goals.

4. If a goal is far away in time, having smaller milestones helps

5. If you still have difficulty moving towards a goal, decide when (what day/time period) you are going to work on it, and what the first discrete (smaller) action is

So I decided, I’m going to re-write these, for creative types:

1. It’s generally good to set goals, even if you’re a writer/artist/musician/creative type.

2. Even if the ultimate result of writing a book/drawing a comic/painting on canvas/composing a song/designing a book cover is not clear, you can set process goals to at least make your behaviour helpful into becoming a writer/artist/musician/creative type of high quality.

3. The best way to learn something seems to be by layering process goals with outcome goals. Yep.

4 and 5. If a goal is far away in time, having smaller milestones helps. Break it up into small pieces, and decide when you’re going to work on each piece.

So now I just have to keep all of this in mind and not go completely insane with rewrites. So far it’s been helping me, and I hope it helps some of you too.

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I wrote this post and then realized that I’d read it somewhere before. It was on the blog of my friend and fellow Inkpunk Andy, who had a very similar experience to the one I just had: We both found out we could write science fiction.

No, really! It’s a real discovery.

One of the first debates my husband and I ever had was over the definition of science fiction. (Need I even mention that this was not an evenly matched debate, given that he’d been editing the stuff for nearly a decade?) I had always thought that science fiction had to have the science at the heart of the story, which is why I didn’t try to write it–I didn’t have the science. He told me no, it’s basically anything speculative that doesn’t involve magic, and that it included things like the social sciences, so dystopian fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction both count. Sometimes steampunk does, too, as in Genevieve Valentine’s “The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball.” Okay, I conceded, it’s a broad field that houses a lot of subgenres. I can see that. But I stubbornly clung to the belief that I did not know enough about science to write science fiction.

Then an opportunity to write something for Armored came along.

And I thought: I don’t know anything about power armor. I don’t know anything about military SF. I don’t actually know anything about the military, period. I had an idea and a character, but I kept telling myself I didn’t know enough real stuff to make the fake stuff work. I went into Research Mode–I sought out advice from lay-experts on military SF, power armor, and related things. Nothing I was hearing was allowing my idea to work. Frustrated, I nearly gave up on it, convinced that I really needed to just go back to fantasy where I can just make things up.

And then the revelation: I’m the writer. I can decide how much military strategy goes in (none). I can decide how much of the initial mission is revealed (none). I can decide whether or not it’s important how the suit is powered, or what it’s made of, or whether the reader actually needs to know those things (they don’t). I can just make it up.

It just had to be internally consistent, and I’m pretty used to that because magic is actually really hard to write. You have to know the rules (which you make up), and you have to make sure they make sense and don’t contradict one another. So I wrote the story, from a tight first-person perspective that didn’t need any of the background that I don’t know a damned thing about. John liked it a lot, and included it in the anthology. Most people seem to like it so far.

I wrote science fiction! Without knowing anything!

This sounds like a post about science fiction, but I think it’s really about limits: the kinds of false limits that we put on ourselves, the way we tell ourselves I can’t possibly do this thing and here are all of the completely false reasons why which I choose to believe because it’s safe.

We’re the writers. It’s our universe. We can take control of it, and once we have, there may be no limit to what we can do.

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Today’s guest post comes from Tracie Welser, a graduate of Clarion West. Many thanks to Tracie for her contribution, and congratulations on the subject of her post!

Scenario: a seemingly Impossible Thing occurs, and you freeze. Then your body ceases to behave normally, and your jaw works up and down but no sounds escape.

The first time I believed an Impossible Thing, it only lasted for a moment. I was sweeping the front porch. I heard a loud noise inside the house and turned to the window. There I caught sight of a four-wheeled chair rumbling past on the hardwood floors of the living room. I’d just purchased a new home, and the seller had suggested to me that the house was haunted by the ghost of its former owner. As the chair rolled five feet or more across the room, I froze, and my mind struggled to reconcile the evidence of my senses with logic.

For one bizarre moment, all true logic left me, and I believed an Impossible Thing: my lips actually formed the words, “It’s real!”

Now the punchline: I opened the door to discover my fat black-and-white cat, Eddie, standing on two legs and still dragging the battered chair as he tried to extricate his front claws from the side where he’d been scratching. He looked up at me and mewed forlornly.

I felt pretty stupid, and I was glad there were no witnesses.

The visceral frozen sensation (followed by dawning realization of the truth of things) brought on by the seemingly impossible is almost exactly like my reaction to first acceptance as a Real Writer.

Last week, my first sale to a professional publication happened. While I waited for yet another rejection, an editor across the pond at Interzone composed a lovely acceptance and sent it to my inbox. When I opened, voila! and whoa!

“I’m delighted to say that we like […] very much, and would like to publish it in Interzone as soon as we can.”

My reaction? I can’t believe it. I sat back in my chair and stared, looked away, and then read it again in disbelief. Maybe the room spun a bit.

I know I’m not the only writer who feels this way. Why I am surprised that an editor likes my work? Am I not a writer?

What did I expect would happen, after all the hard work of ideation, drafting, revising, desperate appeals to fellow writers for critiques, revision, and finally, the supreme effort of hitting “send”?

I expect to fail.

I send subs out, collect rejections, conduct rejectomancy, send submissions out again, expecting to fail.

At some point, I think I learned a defense mechanism to withstand the reality of rejection: I numbed myself to the possibility that my darling creations actually stink, and someone Out There is going to read my story and laugh or toss it aside, bored to tears. Or, my worst fear, that someone will tell me in explicit detail just how terrible it truly is.

What I’ve gradually come to accept is the reality that acceptance isn’t an Impossible Thing. It’s a probable Thing, likely even. I have talent that’s been nurtured and encouraged, and I’ve fought through the crippling imposter syndrome that kept me from submitting for years. I’ve even developed some of the discipline that’s required to get the work done and out into the world.

On a side note…

What NOT to do right after you receive an offer of publication:

Rub it other peoples faces, even if you really want to.

Expect your mom to get why this is so exciting even though you still can’t quit your day job.

Quit your day job.

What to DO:

A crazy dance in your living room, call/text/tweet your friends and fellow writers to celebrate.

And then, start all over again.

You still have work to do.

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