Are Your Family and Friends Sabotaging your Writing Dreams?

Writers participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) may discover that friends and family aren't entirely enthused by your decision to disappear into your computer for a month. (I have a secret suspicion that Chris Baty invented NaNo in order to escape those painful family Thanksgiving dinners.)

But at any time of year, some people in your life will find it difficult to relate to your passion to write. A few will even sabotage your progress, often subconsciously, but sometimes with the deliberate intent of steering you onto another path "for your own good."

Kristen Lamb wrote on her blog this week about a minister of her church who told her she "had a better chance of being hit with lightning than becoming a published author." And that she "needed to be an adult and pursue a 'real' career."

Squelch.

What's a new writer to do?

One thing that can help a lot is networking with other writers. That's where blogging and social media can be helpful. Kristen's "WANA tribe" (We Are Not Alone) is a community where writers can find mutual support. Another is Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writers Group, which he wrote about on this blog a couple of months ago.

Online or in-person, writers' groups can be a godsend. I'm lucky enough to live in a town with a fantastic writing community called the SLO Nightwriters. It has members at all writing levels, from fledgling first-timers to New York Times bestsellers. National organizations with local chapters like RWA, SCBWI, and Sisters in Crime can also provide welcome support.

A good writing group will also save you from the mistake so many new writers make: asking friends or family members to read a work in progress.

The urge to share your work with loved ones is natural. I did it myself early in my career. If you're lucky, you may get some helpful suggestions, but you're more likely to get evasive looks and polite platitudes—or worse. Much worse.

Here's my cautionary tale: my WIP was having problems with flow, so I gave it to a friend who had praised my published work. I thought he might be able to pinpoint what wasn't working. But as a non-writer, he had no idea what “rough draft” meant. After he finished the typo-strewn ms., he phoned immediately, telling me to toss the book because it was a “mess that nobody would ever want to read.”

I tried to get him to tell me exactly what he didn’t like, but he kept ranting, giving no specifics. After he screamed "show, don't tell" about ten times, I have to admit I hung up on him. (Years later I realized I'd asked him at a very bad time in his life. He'd just lost a beloved job and my career was on the rise. His own dreams were in shatters, which made him into a Dream-smasher.)

I shelved the book. I figured whatever was wrong, it must be pretty terrible.

Years later, when I opened the manuscript again, I realized it wasn't that bad. I'd let one uninformed person's opinion kill a project I'd spent years of my life creating. I did a quick polish and sent it to my publisher. The editor suggested a new opening chapter and a handful of tweaks. It's now part of my boxed set that's been a humor bestseller on Amazon for 20 weeks.

But the friendship died. And since then, I've never let a non-writer see a draft of anything.

Critiquing and editing require experience and expertise. Anybody can say "I hate it," but it takes an expert to say. "This doesn't work because of ___ and____."

Recently freelance editor Holli Moncrieff wrote about the problem of friends critiquing friends on Michelle D. Argyle's blog. Holli and Michelle think even friends who are writers may not be the best people to critique your work. As Holli says, "there are enough people in the world who will tell you that you suck without having to hear it from a friend."

No matter how much you want to share your WIP with your real-life friends, it's not a good idea. Do try to enlist emotional support—although even that is not always forthcoming—but realize that finding a friend who's also a fan of your writing is a stroke of good luck, not something to expect.

And the truth is, a lot of people in your life may find your new interest threatening. If you’re not emotionally prepared, they can derail your project, stifle your creativity, and undermine your self esteem.

They may not be as heavy handed as Kristen Lamb's minister or my Dream-smasher friend, but they’ll work to sabotage your confidence in dozens of subtle—or not-so-subtle—ways.

They can do it for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is that your new passion can feel like a rival. Writing robs your loved ones of time you used to spend together.

Or your friends may be secret wannabes who have stifled their own creativity out of fear of failure. People like this may try to make you feel like a failure in order to justify their own fears.

Or they can just be at a bad time in their lives like my friend. In any case, it's best to be prepared.

Here are some non-supportive types to watch out for, and tips on how to deal with them:

Dream-smashers

These are the know-it-alls who specialize in discouragement.

• Like Kristen's minister, they’re full of statistics showing the odds against being successfully published. 

• They’ll send links to articles with dire warnings about carpal tunnel syndrome and back injuries due to long sessions at the keyboard.

• They have an unending supply of stories about suicide and depression in writers.

They may appear to be supportive at first, and may even express an eagerness to read your WIP—only to give entirely negative feedback.

• They always “know” some rule that you’ve broken—probably mis-remembered from their 5^th grade grammar class. (Like my "show don't tell" friend.)

• They’ll criticize your premise in a way that’s also a personal attack: “nobody wants to read about women over 50/washed-up athletes/teenagers with disabilities.”

• They often try to hijack your story. They'll criticize anything in your work that doesn’t promote their own world view, and suggest the story would be much better if the hero were more like them.

These people have given up on their own dreams and want you to do the same. Encourage them to write their own books, take an art class or start a new creative hobby.

Crazymakers

Creativity guru Julia Cameron described these people as “storm centers…long on problems but short on solutions.”

They are the drama queens, emotional vampires, and control freaks who crave your full-time attention and can’t stand for you to focus on anything but their own dramas.

Writers are magnets for these people because we tend to be good listeners.

• You tell your Crazymaker friend your writing schedule, but she’ll always “forget,” and show up at exactly the time your story is on a roll. She’ll draw you into a weepy tale of woe, saying you’re the “only one who understands.”

• Have a deadline for a difficult article? That’s the moment Crazymaker will stomp into your office and confess the affair he had four years ago when you were on a relationship break. 

• Got an editor waiting for a rewrite? That’s the week Crazymaker calls to beg you to babysit her sick child because she can’t take off work. After all, she has a REAL job

Crazymakers need to be center stage, 24/7. Nothing you do can be of any importance: your job description is “minion.”

Politely resign from the minion department. If they're capable of real friendship, they'll get the message. If they don't, you're probably better off.

Groucho Marxists

The Groucho Marxist manifesto is, to paraphrase the great Julius Henry Marx: “I do not care to read a book by a person who would accept me as a friend.”

Groucho Marxists are your family members and buddies who assume your work is terrible because it was written by somebody they know.

These are the folks who feel compelled to ridicule and belittle your work, whether they’ve read it or not. No amount of success will convince them you’re any good. Their entire world view is based on the premise that success is impossible, so why bother? By aspiring to something more, you're violating their belief system, and no matter what you do, they will feel compelled to treat you like a failure

• You get a story published. Groucho can’t be bothered to read it. But he’s always bringing you stories by other writers in your genre, “so you can see how a REAL writer does it.” 
• You get your big call from that agent. Groucho will try to convince you she’s a scammer. Why would a real agent represent a nobody like you? 
• You sign with a publisher. Groucho thinks he's heard a rumor the company is about to go under: look how desperate they must be if they’d publish your book.
• You self publish a book. Groucho will give you a heated lecture on how self-publishing is destroying the culture with a "tsunami of crap." 
• You get a good review. Groucho doesn’t have time to read it. But he has lots of time to research other pieces by that reviewer to show the reviewer has terrible taste. 
• You win a Pulitzer. What? No Nobel?

 These people are highly competitive and feel your success will make you “better than them.”

Remind them of their own skills and accomplishments and reassure them that any writing success you achieve won’t change your relationship.

It’s hard enough to live with the constant rejection we have to deal with from agents, editors, and reviewers, so when you’re attacked in your personal life, it’s tough to hang on.

We need to erect strong boundaries and be fierce in defending them.

But if you’re serious about your work, the people who really care about you will learn to treat your time and work with respect.

The others will evaporate. Chances are you won’t miss them.

The best way to get good feedback on your work is from other writers, through critique groups and beta readers. Even if you're not lucky enough to live in an area with good in-person writing groups, the Internet age provides wonderful opportunities to find good critiquers online. Two great resources are CritiqueCircle.com and SheWrites. And GalleyCat has a great new sign-up system for finding the right critique group.

What about you, scriveners? Have you run into any of these negative types in your writing journey? How did you deal with them? 

Previews of Coming Attractions!

Ruth and Anne have a boxed set coming out this week!

Chanel and Gatsby: A Comedy Two-fer

Available RIGHT NOW for  NOOK and KINDLE. 
Kobo and iTunes to come shortly

Smart chick lit for chicks who weren't born yesterday.
Ruth Harris and Anne R. Allen: together again for the first time!

Need something to keep you entertained while traveling home for the holidays? Ruth and I have put together two of our most popular comic novels for the price of one!

Due in December

The Lady of the Lakewood Diner
a comedy

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

Who shot Morgan le Fay? The Lady of the Lakewood Diner is the story of a six-decade friendship between an aging rock star and her childhood best friend--the owner of a seedy diner in Central Maine. She just might be the only person who can figure out who's been trying to kill the rock diva. Think Beaches meets Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

How to be a Writer in the E-Age: a Self-Help Guide

Advice for writers from Anne R. Allen and Amazon #1 Bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde

Updated edition with all new-material.

Not another guide to self-publishing. This is a fun, friendly book about how to plan your writing career and make the publishing choices that are right for you, as well as take care of yourself along the way.

Opportunity Alerts

Glimmer Train Press Short Story Award for New Writers Entry Fee: $15. A prize of $1,500 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories is given quarterly for a short story by a writer whose fiction has not been published in a print publication with a circulation over 5,000. The editors will judge. Using the online submission system, submit a story of up to 12,000 words with a $15 entry fee during the month of November. Visit the website for complete guidelines. Deadline: November 30, 2013

J.F. POWER PRIZE FOR SHORT FICTION NO ENTRY FEE. The winner will receive $500. The winning story will be announced in February, 2014 and published in Dappled Things, along with nine honorable mentions. The word limit is 8,000 words. Deadline is November 29, 2013.

DRIFTLESS REVIEW ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST $15 ENTRY FEE for up to three stories. Each short-short story limited to 500 words. $500 prize. Deadline December 31

The Lascaux Prize for Short Fiction: Stories may be previously published or unpublished. Length up to 10,000 words. Entry fee is $5, and authors may enter more than once.The editors will select a winner and nineteen additional finalists. The winner will receive $500 and publication in The Lascaux Review. Both winner and finalists will earn the privilege of displaying a virtual medallion on blogs and websites. Deadline December 31, 2013.

CRAZYHORSE PRIZES IN FICTION, NONFICTION, POETRY $20 fee (includes subscription). This is a biggie, well worth the fee. This venerable literary magazine has published the likes of John Updike, Raymond Carver and Billy Collins. Winners in each category receive $2,000 and publication. Submit up to 25 pages of prose or three poems. All entries considered for publication. Submissions accepted in the month of January 2014 only.

Ready to be a Wrublisher? A Priter? Some Caveats for Self-Publishers from Bestselling Author Jeff Carlson

Guest Post!

When my post on three questions to ask before you self-publish went viral last week, Thriller and SciFi author Jeff Carlson  asked to join in the discussion. I think you'll find this account of his experiences eye-opening. Thanks, Jeff!


Using Both Sides of the Sword by Jeff Carlson

Anne and I go back to the 1990s and my days on California’s Central Coast, where we both belonged to SLO Nightwriters, the San Luis Obispo writers’ organization. These days I follow her blog. Her slogan “KINDLE NO BOOK BEFORE ITS TIME” struck a chord with me. We got to corresponding, and Anne has graciously allowed me to expand on the subject.

These are chaotic and exciting times in the writing game, but it’s important to remember self-publishing means you’re not only the writer, you also need to wear an entirely different set of hats.

My first three novels, a series of apocalyptic thrillers known as the Plague Year trilogy, were published by Ace/Penguin Group USA. They did a nice job not only with the cover art but in packaging all three novels with a “look.”  They edited and typeset the books and handled the conversions to ebooks on all platforms.  Heck, they also bought display space in the major chains, placed ads in genre and trade magazines, ran specials on the Penguin web site and generally did a bang-up job.

Did I come anywhere near the New York Times lists? No, sir. Did I exceed the expectations of everyone involved (except me!) from Penguin itself to some critics to booksellers? Absolutely. 

Plague Year is currently in its seventh printing in North America and, in Spain, became a hardcover bestseller due in part to my Spanish publisher’s enthusiasm not just for the book but for the treatment it received in the U.S. Like it or not, New York still leads the way in the corporate world. Other countries such as Germany, Russia and the Czech Republic have also fallen in line with their own excellent campaigns. Of course I take most of the credit – I wrote the books – but it can’t be argued that a fair level of support from Penguin helped convince some minds overseas.

Why am I bragging?  Because I’ve begun to self-publish on Kindle and elsewhere myself, and: it’s harder than I was promised by the e-revolutionaries!   

Ha ha. There are hurdles I hadn’t anticipated. Identifying and solving those issues has become my own personal revolution.

Anne spoke eloquently on quality writing and professionalism, so all I’ll add to those ideas is the old truth that most of us average 1,000,000 words of garbage before we learn enough craft to write superior characters, dialogue and plotlines. That learning curve hasn’t changed.

In today’s world, especially on the ’Net and with all e-things, we expect instant gratification. Everyone hopes to skyrocket onto the charts. Personally, I want a zillion love slaves to FaceBook me and then gather on Skype to sing pirate shanties about my greatness.

What’s stopping them?

Cover art

People do judge a book by its cover.

One thing I’m not is a graphic designer. When I geared up to republish my short stories in mini-collections on Kindle and Nook, I wanted to spend as little money as possible.

99 cents is the lowest price on which Kindle and Nook will pay royalties. I didn’t see any point in selling my collections at 75 cents if Kindle and Nook pocketed 100% — and below the $2.99 price point, Kindle pays only a 35% royalty, not the vaunted 70% you tend to hear, so I calculated how many copies I’d need to sell to break even. 

The best artists command as much as $400 per cover. 

People like to say ebooks are forever (i.e., you and your descendants will earn royalties until the sentient raccoons take over the world in 6400 A.D. and place humankind in chains), but I really didn’t believe I’d sell 1143 copies before the raccoon apocalypse. The average ebook sells, uh, nothing? More on that in a minute.

I went cheap with the covers. Was that a mistake? Yes and no. Go ahead, take a peek. They're not great. But there are years of evidence to support the idea that short story collections sell poorly compared to novels, so that’s an additional factor.

Are those covers holding potential readers back?  Or is the material not generating word-of-mouth? All of these stories were professionally published, btw, most of them in top anthologies and magazines. I like to think that means they’re good stuff, and yet three of my e-collections have yet to pay for their inexpensive covers.

Here’s where I’m wrestling with conflicting data:

My fourth ebook is a stand-alone novella called “The Frozen Sky.” It’s sold 8500 copies since January. That’s not a staggering number, but it’s enough to meet my wife’s car payment and most of our utilities. What’s interesting is the simple, stark, ominous cover was designed at zero cost by a superfan who gained permission from NASA to use a photo taken by the Cassini probe.

What I’m learning is that ebook cover art shouldn’t be busy, and, in fact, can be very basic, but it still needs to have a “look.” Finding someone who can deliver that look is the whole battle. If you’re not an artist, don’t kid yourself. Hire the best. My feeling now is that going halfway is wasted time and income.

Upfront Expenses  

“The money flows to the author." This maxim is a venerable standby in writing, but it's changing.

If you’re self-publishing and you don’t know PhotoShop (or want something more spectacular), need editing, and need your work converted into e-formats, it’s easy to burn through several hundred dollars in a hurry.

Referral lists aren’t always reliable, either. It’s also maddening to wait for the hired help to get organized when the whole point of self-publishing is to make your book public now, not next month.

Depending on your free time, it might pay off in the long run to teach yourself all of the above. Me, I’d rather be writing, so I’ve learned to plan ahead. I try to get each ball rolling before I need it. This can be a lot like herding cats.

I’m no longer just a writer, I’m a “wrublisher.” (A “priter”?)

My advice is to ask around for personal recommendations.  Once you find a service provider who’s reliable and affordable, love them.

You want a product that will to wow people, not a book that’s half-baked.

The Race to the Bottom

Right now there are 900,000 ebooks on Kindle.

500 of ’em are selling great; 1,500 more are selling well; the next 10,000 are doing all right; another 20,000 sell a steady trickle;  and the other 868,000 are selling zipperooni, maybe 15 copies total to Aunt Mavis and the author’s buddy Steve.  That’s right.  The vast majority of these writers are exactly where they’d be if they were banging at the gates of the evil elitist gatekeeping gatekeepers — on the outside.

I don’t like being a big fat negative-nancy, but the idea that we’re all going to upload our Great American Novels and sell sell sell is crazy, crazy, crazy.

It’s a swamp. Buyers are bees. They find the flowers and swarm.

What this has done is create enormous pressure on writers to undervalue their work or give it away free. 

Even then, most of the time, nobody’s buying. What can you do? Writers control what they’ve always controlled: their stories. Keep at it. Do the work. Patience and persistence will always be the names of the game.

Most successful first novels are not that writer’s first novel at all. I know nobody wants to hear it, but few of us are gifted enough to write a well-crafted book with our first effort. If you’d told me when I was seventeen that my derivative Stephen King rip-offs weren’t good enough, I would have argued heatedly that you were a nincompoop. But it was true. Plague Year was my third-and-a-half novel, and that’s a very, very normal trajectory. 

Remember why you got into this crazy business in the first place. Presumably it was for the love of language and storytelling.

Good writing is hard. E-publishing has subverted some of the rules, but the difficulty of finding commercial success isn’t something I predict will change. There are no shortcuts. So do the work. You’ll get there, but it may be a long haul. That’s just my pragmatic advice.

E-Revolution Now!

Having said all of that, there are break-out exceptions every week. If you think you’re ready, take your shot. The best part about ebooks is you can fix, expand or completely rewrite ’em at will, then post new versions in a matter of days instead of haggling with the corporate machine for three years to fix one freaking typo.

If there’s a negative reaction to your book (or if there’s no reaction at all), you can remove it and improve it – and if people love it, you’ve already arrived.

Readers can find free fiction, videos, contests and more on Jeff’s web site at http://www.jverse.com Find the ebook of THE FROZEN SKY on Amazon.com and both electronic and print versions of THE PLAGUE YEAR TRILOGY here. 

*********

What about you, fellow scriveners? If you've been thinking about self-publishing, does Jeff's experience give you second thoughts? Are you on the fence about self-epubbing? Totally gung-ho either way? Have you paid for professional services and not earned back the expenses in sales? Jeff is happy to field questions and comments, so fire away!

Should Writers Kill Our Televisions?

I figure this is an appropriate post for the #1 TV-watching day in the U.S. Enjoy the chicken wings, football fans!

But first, congratulations are in order. In Nathan Bransford’s Most Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Contest last week, 2 of the 17 winners (out of more than 1500) are regular followers of this blog!

Congratulations, Ann and Ben. Maybe some of that good writing mojo will rub off on the rest of us.

Memoirist Ann Best got an hon. mention for her wonderfully evocative piece, and Beniot LeLièvre placed among the six finalists with a powerful opening that contained the line—

“It’s local custom to shell up in a living room and anesthetize your dread of the coming week with a massive dose of televised entertainment.”

It gave me chills—not only the great writing, but the timeliness of the message. I realized I’ve been doing just that—anesthetizing my dread. I watch about three hours of TV a night—sometimes more, as I zone out and numb my brain to all my lurking fears.

Strangely, I’d often rather read a book, but I feel a bizarre obligation to watch—as if regularly going comatose in front of a cathode ray tube is a requirement for membership in modern civilization.

I guess this is because I belong to the first generation to grow up with TV. Everything that made Boomers who we are came from television—from the chirpy mind control of the Mickey Mouse Club, to the first-ever televised horrors of war, to the astro-turfing of the Tea Party.

Boomers’ psyches were formed in a time when TV dominated American lives. Everybody we knew watched the same shows. Missing an Ed Sullivan show on Sunday night meant you couldn’t join in the conversation on Monday morning. The average Boomer has spent two years of life just watching TV commercials.

And even though I lived for long periods far from television—a decade or so traveling the world as a hippie vagabond, and more in the theater as an entertainment provider rather than consumer—I came back to it every time.

TV-watching is my default mode.

But I’m about to put an end to that. I’m having a birthday in a couple of weeks and my gift to myself is—NO TV. My Direct TV service ends on February 22.

OK, I’ve gotta admit this is partly out of financial necessity. Direct TV has tripled its fees in the last month and my health insurance has gone up twice in the past six. It’s easier to do without TV reception than a house, which I would lose if I got sick with no insurance.

But I’m embracing the change as positive because I’ve been feeling for a long time that TV is standing in the way of my success as a writer. It’s wasting my ever-dwindling time—time I could spend writing and (just as important) reading.

And there’s what Ben LeLièvre said: television anesthetizes us. I’ve read it reduces your metabolism to a lower level than sleep.

Writers need to be fully alive. We need to be paying attention. We can’t do that if we’re hypnotized drones offering up our free will to corporate advertisers.

We also need to get our plots and characters from our own original observations of life—not old TV scripts.

Plus, when your head is stuffed with teleplays, your fiction suffers. As editor Victoria Mixon said in her great post, 6 Ways to Shoot Yourself in the Foot : "Far, far too many aspiring writers these days are trying to write fiction the way they see storytelling done in television and in movies. But fiction isn’t screenplay. The page isn’t film. They’re not the same medium.”

They say if you want to be a success at something, act like a successful person. If you ask most successful writers how they do it—writing a couple of novels a year, doing the publicity, marketing, reviewing, and social networking—plus staying connected with family and friends, they almost all start by saying:

“I don’t watch a lot of television.”

The television age is fading. It’s becoming a medium for people who have given up on their own lives in favor of watching Snooki’s.

“Nobody watches TV but old people,” my twenty-something nephews told me recently. They won’t watch one even if it’s on in the same room. They’ll boot up their laptops or grab a book—as if they could catch geezeritis just from glancing at the screen.

Statistics say they’re right about the TV demographic. According to an article in Gawker last August, Television has become seriously engeezerated in the last ten years: The average age of a TV watcher is now 55. The most decrepit watch Fox News, and the merely middle-aged watch the other Fox—the one with the Simpsons. And the Superbowl.

(I wonder why network executives don’t notice this and give older actors and un-botoxed newspeople work—instead of doing pathetic stuff like hiring unfunny hotties du jour like James Franco and Anne Hathaway to host the Oscars. Execs—go ask Grandpa if he’s ever heard of Franco or Hathaway—I dare you.)

I’m not saying giving up TV will keep my brain cells from aging, but my looming birthday reminds me I have a limited amount of time on this planet—and I think I’ve already offered up enough of it to the television gods.

I know I’ll go through a little cold turkey. I’ll miss my ritual of eating dinner with the local newscast (I know—how geezerific is that?) And I won’t be able to watch the much-anticipated second season of Justified, or next summer’s Mad Men, until they come out on Netflix. But I’ve got a library nearby (until CA shuts them all down, anyway) and a pile of unread books and literary magazines waiting for me—not to mention all those BBC radio dramas I can listen to on my laptop. I’ll be fine.

In fact, I think my home entertainment is about to get an upgrade.

So what about you? Anybody still watching the boob tube? Have you given it up recently? Did it affect your writing?

*********

A final note: I belong to a fine organization called the SLO Nightwriters (SLO stands for “San Luis Obispo” and is not intended as a description of our mental functioning.) Every year we hold a 500-word flash-fiction contest, and recently there’s been a poetry category as well. This year’s theme is “illumination.” There are cash prizes. Info is at the Nightwriters Website.