Wednesday, January 6, 2016

IWSG: Advice for the New Year.


I always catch myself attaching significance to the first time I do something every year.  This happens despite my best efforts, even though I remind myself over and over that it doesn't actually matter.  Granted, I made sure the first thing I ate in 2016 was a piece of really good chocolate, but still.

As for the first IWSG of 2016, I figured I'd continue my attempts to start the year off right, and share a little advice.  Some of this may be relevant to you, some of it surely will not.  But it beats the hell out of another month of me complaining.  :P  I'll start with something I recently had to re-learn:
  • Find a routine and stick with it.  This routine might vary with different aspects of writing; what you do to get yourself into the right head-space for plotting might not be the same as your preparations for actual writing, and the routine itself might have variations for different books.  But nothing works quite as well to help get things started as starting from a familiar place.  And remember your routine - stick to it when you find one that works.
  • Always be ready to scribble down notes.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I have my best ideas when I'm not sitting here at my monolith of a desk.  I always keep a notepad handy at my desk at work, and I've made great use of the notes function on my phone to make sure I never forget those character and story ideas that occur to me out of the blue.
  • If someone sends you a rejection letter that says your work isn't right for them "at this time", do not reply to ask when the time will be that your work will be right for them, as you'll gladly re-send it then.  I didn't do this, but I thought about it very hard.
  • Remember that it's okay to take days off.  Sometimes the words don't work, sometimes you've had too much shit to deal with and anything creative just isn't happening.  That's fine.  It happens to everyone.  Take a deep breath, let it go, and get back to work tomorrow.  (This might not be great advice if you're on deadline.)
  • Sometimes you know all of how the story goes from the beginning, and sometimes you discover it along the way.  But remember that every story changes in the telling.  I've plotted and re-plotted and re-worked things so many times, and in the end, they're never exactly what I thought they would be when I started.  This is fine.  Don't force yourself to stick with an idea or plot or character that no longer works for the story just because that's what you started with.
  • When sending the same query letter (plus synopsis and/or part of your story) to multiple agents in a short period of time, make very sure to change the agent's name to the correct one before sending it off.  Check at the start, check before you send it, and before you click 'Send', check it again.  While a kind agent might not reject you outright for putting the wrong name on a query, I wouldn't blame any who saw that and just said "Nope".
  • Don't ever be afraid to be weird.  There are dozens of books out there that can be summed up as the same sort of thing, so make sure that when you summarize yours, it sounds interesting and unusual.  Whatever you're writing, make it uniquely yours, and give those ideas from the deeper parts of your mind a fair shake.  A story with something new to offer is, I believe, always better than something too familiar.
  • Finally: whatever you're working on, and however you work on it, finish it.  Because once you know how it ends, once you know how everything happens and how it's changed from your original idea, then you can make the changes from the beginning and all the way through that will make the entire thing that much better.
That's all from me for now.  Hope someone out there finds this useful, at least a little.  ^_^  So, what advice do the rest of you have for the rest of us?

14 comments:

  1. Awesome advice, Mason.

    Heh, and *definitely* make sure you've got the right name on the query. I hear that's quite important...

    My advise is the same as it's always been, and it's borrowed from Ray Bradbury: "You only fail if you stop writing."

    Happy New Year!
    C.G.

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    1. I'll definitely keep that quote in mind. That's one of those things I'll have to remind myself, over and over, on my bad days.

      And happy new year! ^_^

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  2. A couple of those made me chuckle. You mean you can't ask when would be a good time?
    And days off are perfectly fine.

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    1. It's weird how many people I've seen point out that we get (and need) days off. I repeated it here because clearly it's something we need a reminder about.

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  3. Check the name. Check it again. And again. Let me add to that, don't send out so many queries in a single day that your brain doesn't function well enough to discern the actual agent's name. =)

    Great advice.

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    1. If I can't find the agent's name, then either I've been at it waaaaaay too long or there's something seriously wrong with their website. ^_^

      And thanks.

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  4. My phone is my notepad! I actually have an app called Jotterpad. I really like the interface for it, and I can upload it to Dropbox when I'm done, so I can copy and paste it into my writing later. :)

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    1. Interesting. I've never liked the idea of storing writing stuff on a cloud, as it seems like it's less secure or more vulnerable to someone else seeing it. Not that anyone's going to try to hack me and read my writing stuff now, but who knows, maybe someday. :P

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  5. Great tips, and I don't want to admit how many I've messed up on over the years. . . and probably still will.

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    1. We all mess up something at some point, and I think more of us mess up everything at least once than any of us want to admit. ^_^

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  6. I love the good time one. I've often thought that, especially from publishers. I know what they mean, but the wording is like a tease "sorry schmuck, if you wait for six months, this'll be perfect!" (like querying a space opera the year before Guardians of the Galaxy came out, sigh)

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    1. I don't know how many times I've had the "at this time" line show up in my rejections, but this past week was the first time I thought about asking when the right time would be. It was really hard not to reply with that. ^_^

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  7. I think this is all excellent advice. The only thing I'd add is to HAVE FUN with the writing. If you aren't enjoying what you're putting down on the page, you're heading in the wrong direction.

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    1. Very true! It's amazing how easy that is to forget. There are so many other things to think about, especially while working toward publishing, but if you're not enjoying it, then there's something wrong.

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