drafting.

I'm not a published writer.  I may never be.  But I do my homework.

Every single published writer who's taken the time to stick up a blog or an "about my writing process" page that I've read all say the same thing:  there is no such thing as a perfect draft.  Therefore, I get really vexed when someone says "oh hey, I've written a story!" and they hand it to me and say "I wrote it last month.  It's perfect."  Bgah.  It's not.

And this is where I need to stop and clarify:  there's no such thing as a bad story.  But just because you have a good story doesn't mean that your writing is up to snuff.  You can be a master storyteller on your first try, but that sure as heck doesn't mean that your book is ready to go to the publisher on the first run.  Seriously.  Don't do it.

Seriously, I'm not a professional editor, either, but there are reasons why my peers have always given me their "stuff" to edit.  I'm an avid reader.  I read books objectively.  Good story, love this character, this one's flat, a couple blaring grammatical errors in chapter three.  It's not a good book or a bad book, and if you ever hear me use those words, it is reflecting my opinion of the story and whether or not I, personally, enjoyed it.  Well-written and poorly written, on the other hand, are a completely different can of worms.

If I tell you that you shouldn't be capitalising your colours, for example, it's not because I'm trying to take away your creative license or make you look bad.  It's simply that your creative license only extends as far as content goes, and you cannot change the rules of the language.  Seriously, I know.  I regularly spell things in British English (did you see the "u" in "colour" up there?) but I live in New Hampshire and I darned well know better than to stick that in anything short of something like this - a blog entry that will account to nothing.  On my own time, I spell "a lot" as one word, and that's all fine and good, until I want something published.  If I'm too self-centered to change the spelling to something that is proper American English before sending it out to an agent, then I'm just wasting the agent's time.  Grammar, same deal.  For real, people.

Sometimes - okay, a lot of the time - I'm pretty snobby about my own writing.  I love my characters, I really want Jacob and Jessica to remain mortal enemies, not people-who-hate-eachother-at-first-and-then-fall-desperately-in-love.  However, as much as I may defend my point in the beginning, I think that you'll often find that when I go back and change things, I really do change things.  I say this because I want to make a point:  I practice what I preach.  I have been writing and rewriting the same story for the last ten years, and last year, I bloody finally finished the manuscript.  Note that word:  manuscript.  Not book.  I haven't finished the book.  The book isn't finished until it's bound and has a publishing house insignia on the side.  When I draft, I don't just fix things.  I rewrite.  So when I mark up someone's manuscript (ah!  That word again!) I don't expect the writer to do anything more than I do.

And, seriously, that being said, if you think that I'm harsh to you, you should see this page that I'm looking at right now of my own manuscript.  I think I've got something scribbled about every third word.

So, yes, you can write a very slow book (see "John Green") or a very fast book (see "Stephen King").  Your proliferation depends on who you are.  But in the end, only about 5% of that finished manuscript is going to be gold.  You know what that means?  That means 95% is rubbish.  Take the advice or leave it; it's not my advice.  It's wisdom I grabbed from John Green, from Laurel K. Hamilton, from Tamora Pierce, Jodi Picoult, and Stephen King.  If you don't like it, that's your problem, but all five of them are published and successful.  Shout "but that book totally sucks!" as many times as you like, but clearly millions of people disagree with you.  These people are doing something right.

Dunno about y'all, but I'm going to put my lot in with them.

So, here I go.  Draft X of Chapter Six of Fate, here I come.

Last Movie/TV Viewed: Lie To Me, S2Ep11
Last Song Heard: "All the Small Things" by blink 182
Last Google Search: "pizza hut" (guess what I had for lunch).

the slush pile

In a recent entry, Nathan Bransford (San Francisco agent extraordinaire) wrote about something called the "slush pile".  Essentially, he explained that this "is a repository of hopes and dreams for the authors who populate it, and a Herculean and Sisyphean task for those charged with making the pile go away to make way for the deluge still to come. The slush is full of half-baked ideas, the truly out-there, the very occasional undiscovered gems, but mostly good-solid efforts by perfectly respectable writers, who are up against simple math that simply isn't in their favor: maybe one in a thousand, if that, make it from slush pile to publication with a major publisher, and the odds are getting steeper by the day."  The image I get in my head of that is like a pile of dusty gemstones, lost and forgotten by a dragon who (rightfully) found himself interested in something bigger and shinier.

As I read his entry (which mostly touches on the expansion of e-books and equal-opportunity-publishing-thanks-to-things-like-Kindle), I found myself missing the point entirely and straying to think... I have my own "slush pile".  It's certainly smaller than the one Bransford is talking about; perhaps it would be more just to call it a "slush puddle".  It's the place where all the good ideas go.  There are plots with no characters, characters with no story, old first chapters, half-written stories, short stories I'm not fond of... all these things that will never probably see light again.  There are so many good ideas in the world that there is no way everything can be recognized.  So we writers - like agents, editors, and publishers - only pluck the biggest, reddest apples from the trees.  A lot gets lost in translation, for better or worse (usually better).

The writing world is still hard, though.  Even if you've picked your reddest apple and given it to the trickiest hag to deliver, that doesn't mean Snow White is going to want to eat it.  This week, she may be partial to kiwis.  Even people with great manuscripts and amazing agents (and I would never, ever try to publish without an agent, but that's my personal belief) may never get published, and that's the way the world works.

Even outside of being a writer, working in that industry is difficult.  It's all about the people you know.  Bransford has written a blog entry on this, too, and he says that pretty much the only way to get in is to know someone already there, or if you're lucky enough to get an unpaid internship... count your blessings.  I just did a search of agencies and I personally would have to move to New York City to even have close enough access to one.  Publishing companies?  I'd have to go to Boston.  Since I live in New Hampshire and currently work in corporate retail, there is no way I could afford to go to either of those cities and live on an unpaid internship.  Yikes.  So what then?

Then, we cut corners.  Maybe we dream of editing fantasy YA, but the closest thing we've got is a travel magazine, and that's still an hour's drive for an unpaid internship.  Still, it's better than Boston or New York (with all the love in my heart), so that's what next summer will look like for me, with a little bit of luck.  I don't want to be a person thrown into a slush pile... shiny, but not shiny enough.

Meanwhile, keep rubbing elbows with the people that you know.  Because they may make all the difference.

P.S. If you don't follow Nathan Bransford's blog and you want to be a writer... do it.