Chicklit Writers Guest Blog Post

I am a member of a number of online RWA writing chapters (since I don't have an in-person one anywhere near me). The first one I joined, three or more years ago, was the Chick Lit Writers of the World. I love this group of women (and one man, Hi Chuck!). They are generous, smart, and great writers. And yes, I know that Chick Lit is supposed to be dead, but believe me, it isn't--mostly just recreated under a new bunch of names, like Women's Fiction.

The year I spent doing the writing contest circuit, I took part in the chapter's contest, "Get Your Stiletto in the Door," twice--once at the beginning and once at the end...and finalled both times. Yay! Little wonder it is one of my favorites.

Today I am guest blogging about my experiences with the Stiletto and contests in general. Go check it out. And if you do the contest thing, I'd definitely take a look at entering the Stiletto. As long as you have some humor and some romance in your manuscript, I'll bet you can find a category that works for you.

http://chicklitwriters.com/2011/08/24/get-your-stiletto-in-the-door-deborah-blakes-experience/

Guest blogger Lois Winston

One of the best parts of being a writer, for me at least, is that you get to meet a dazzling array of fascinating people along the way. In my journey from "newbie" to published author, I have made friends with many talented and generous folks who helped me get from there to here.

Not least among these is the charming Lois Winston. Lois is both an author (with two earlier books and one just out now) and an agent, so she has the benefit of being able to see publishing from both sides of the table. Since she has been doing a blog tour to announce the release of her new book, Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, a crafting mystery, I asked her if she would come here and share some advice for aspiring novelists.

I hope you'll say "thank you" by leaving a comment with a question or an observation...and maybe run out and buy a copy of her book!

Take it away, Lois--

HONING YOUR WRITING SKILLS
© 2010 Lois Winston
Would you go to a doctor who hadn’t graduated from medical school? Of course not! To work in the profession of your choice, whether it’s medicine or accounting or archeology, you first need to acquire the skill sets needed for that profession.

Yet tens of thousands of people each year think they can just sit down at their computers, bang out a book, and expect the publishing industry to be waiting for them with open arms. The truth is that 99.9% of would-be authors lack the necessary skills to write a book. I know this because along with being a published author and designer, I work for a literary agency. I spend a good part of my day reading queries from these people. Here’s an example:
I haven’t published a book before this is my first book. I’m a screenwriter (not a highly paided one) I want to get away from screenwriting and focus on books. I can expression whats in me through books more than I can in screenwriting. I get nice letters from my small group of fans who love the idea that I’m turning to writing (which I thought I would get hate mail if you like my idea please let me know. As I tell my fans. Thank you for your time of thinking of me.

I chose that query excerpt to share with you, not because it’s unique but because it’s all too common. The sad fact is that most of the population doesn’t know a pronoun from a predicate. They were either never taught proper grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure in school, let alone English composition, or didn’t pay attention when it was taught. Yet they believe they’re the next James Patterson or JK Rowling. When their lack of skills is pointed out as a reason for rejection, they often come back with a response of, “That’s what an editor is for.”
No, that’s not what an editor is for. In today’s extremely tight publishing market, unless your manuscript is nearly perfect, an editor won’t read past the first few pages.
So what if you have a wonderful idea for a book and the urge to write it but lack the necessary skills? Or what if you’ve already written the book but it’s been rejected everywhere because it lacks voice? Or isn’t polished enough? Or because you haven’t grasped the concept of point of view? Or your protagonist has no inner conflict? Or your plot suffers from a sagging middle? Or you’ve front-loaded the back-story? Or your scenes lack the proper pacing? What if you don’t know what in the world I’m talking about?
Should you just give up right now? Definitely not. Unlike brain surgery, you can learn the skills you need to hone your writing without going back to school. And unlike medical school, you can do so for relatively little money and at your own pace. The trick is to follow five simple steps:
1. Join a writing organization. There are well-respected organizations for just about every genre of fiction, and some include non-fiction. Many accept unpublished members. They offer mentoring, critiquing, one-on-one meetings with editors and agents, and networking opportunities with published and unpublished authors. Some have online workshops and online Q&A’s with guest speakers. Many hold yearly conferences.

2. Start a writing library. Treat yourself to a good dictionary and Thesaurus. Don’t rely on ones that come with your word processing programs. They’re seriously lacking. Purchase a good book on grammar/punctuation and one on editing. Read them from cover to cover. Learn the rules.

3. READ. You wouldn’t believe how many so-called writers don’t read. If you want to be a published author of books, you need to be well read in the genre in which you want to write. You can’t all of a sudden wake up one morning with what you think is a great idea for a novel, write it, and expect it to sell. You need to study the marketplace. Find out what the conventions of the genre are, familiarize yourself with what’s already been published.
4. Do your research. And by research I don’t mean relying on Wikipedia or CSI. Both are notoriously wrong when it comes to getting facts rights.
5. Finally, don’t get scammed. There are a lot of people out there who make their livings as professional freelance editors. Some of them are highly respected. However, many are not. Some are themselves unpublished authors; others are out-and-out scam artists. You need to learn how to write if you want to be a published author. Paying someone to professionally edit your work will only make the editor richer.

***
Lois Winston is an award-winning author and designer as well as an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Her latest book, ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN, the first book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. PW said, “Crafty cozies don't get any better than this hilarious confection,” and Booklist stated, “Winston has hit a home run with this hilarious, laugh-until-your-sides-hurt tale. Oddball characters, uproariously funny situations, and a heroine with a strong sense of irony will delight fans of Janet Evanovich….” Kirkus Reviews called it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

Writing something new and different

I am going to be giving my online writing workshop, "Beyond Fangs: Creating new and interesting paranormal characters" over at the FFnP (Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal) site starting June 28th. They asked me to write a blog on how I came up with the idea for my current series (and from there, the workshop). And here is what I said:


As writers, we all want to write the book of our hearts. But we also want that book to sell. As someone once said: “Writing is art; publishing is a business.” And nothing illustrates that better than the publishing industry’s tendancy to fall in love with trends. Everyone who has ever been told, “We want something that is just like what is already out there—but different,” raise your hand. I thought so. Okay, you can put them down now.

The vampire craze is a perfect example. You can’t sneeze in a bookstore without bumping into a book with vampires in it. Don’t get me wrong; I like vampires. But when I set out to write an Urban Fantasy last year (after reluctantly setting aside my two previous humorous paranormals because agents kept telling me that humor was OUT), I made the conscious decision to write something different. No vampires. No werewolves. And no zombies. Definitely no zombies. I wanted to write something that was in keeping with the current trends, but different.

Easy peasy. Not.

Luckily, I had a starting point. A few years ago, I had a short story published in THE PAGAN ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT FICTION: 13 PRIZE WINNING TALES (Llewellyn 2008). That story, “Dead and (Mostly) Gone,” featured a protagonist who was a witch-cop in a world much like ours, except that witches were another race and finally accepted in society. This protagonist, Donata Santori, worked as a Witness Retrieval Specialist, talking to dead crime victims. Since everyone who read the story asked for more of Donata and her world, I knew I would use this character and the bare bones I had laid down in the short story.

But there wasn’t much there. So I set out to do some serious world building. I knew I wanted to come up with paranormal characters that were different and interesting, so I started out by reading piles of Urban Fantasies by authors I respected—C. E. Murphy, Kim Harrison and the like—so I could see what was already out there. After all, if your intention is to do something completely different, you have to know what already exists.

Then I sat down with a stack of reference books. I’ve published five books on modern witchcraft for Llewellyn, so I have all sorts of interesting books on the paranormal that I use to research the nonficton; many of which came in surprisingly handy for creating my new world. In the end, I narrowed down the major paranormal races in my world to six, along with a number of minor ones. These included Witches, Dragons (who aren’t exactly dragons), Ghouls, Fae (who aren’t like most of the Fae in other books), and the Ulfhednar, based on a Norse shapeshifter legend. Okay—yes, you’ve counted correctly. But to find out about the sixth race, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the books to come out. It’s a secret…

But you’ll note that there’s not a vampire in sight, and that the shapeshifters aren’t your traditional werewolves at all. (And the Ghouls turned out to be almost aas creepy as the zombies I was trying to avoid, but that’s not my fault. It’s theirs. Don’t you hate it when the characters have minds of their own?)

One of the things I knew I wanted to have in the books was a cool sidekick. For this role I needed a minor paranormal creature, one that could garner some respect but still be good for the occasional bit of comic relief. Enter Ricky the Kobold. Kobolds are among the races of “little people,” in this case, ones who were said to live in caves and low places, and moved into basements and such when people came along. According to legend, Kobolds could be quite helpful if they liked you, and downright annoying if they didn’t. Perfect.

Needless to say, there was a lot more worldbuilding involved before I was done. Backstory and history, and the plot “hook,” and such. And I spent hours creating in-depth profiles on each of these races, and how they each tied into the main backstory. But I firmly believe that part of what made this manuscript succeed when the previous ones didn’t was my approach to “the same but different.”

And it did succeed. (Yay—dontcha love a happy ending?)

This manuscript, PENTACLES AND PENTIMENTOS, is the one that finally got me an agent; the wonderful Elaine Spencer from The Knight Agency. With any luck, it will be the one that kick-starts my fiction career.

So take heart. There is no need to let “We want something that is just like what is already out there—only different,” make you crazy. Well, crazier, anyway. If you’re a writer, you probably need a certain base level of crazy to keep you going. Just figure out what you like that is already out there, do a lot of research so you can come up with an interesting twist that no one else has come up with yet, and write, write, write.

Easy peasy.

Note: if you are interested in the workshop, you can get more information at my website http://www.deborahblakehps.com/olc.html