Author! Author!

Hello, readers –

For those of you who didn’t tune in yesterday, we’re in the middle of an exciting series on the ins and outs of self-publishing, courtesy of one who has been there: PNWA member Jim McFarland, self-published author of DO OR DIE: THE BABY-BOOMER MAN’S GUIDE TO REGAINING HEALTH, HAPPINESS, VITALITY, AND A LONGER, FULLER LIFE and and all-around good guy.

Jim has been kind enough to answer a few questions about self-publishing, for the benefit of all of you out there who have considered going the brave route. Our focus today: how does one get started? Jim has come up with some great guidelines to help you through this potentially frightening process.

Anne: How did you go about choosing a publisher?

Jim: Choosing a self-publisher is somewhat akin to selecting a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant. Why? Because unlike casual other business relationships, working with a publisher, even a self-publisher, is a very personal experience since the work to be done is of extraordinary value to you and is a statement of who you are and what you believe.

So how do you start your search? There are several methods and I recommend you pursue these avenues and more. First, talk with friends or acquaintances that have had work published. Second, look for self-publishers on the Internet and start researching their services and prices. Third, review books and literature that are available to the public.

You might wish to start by checking out a book entitled The Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print, and Sell Your Own Book, 14th Edition (Paperback), by Dan Poynter. I did not read this book when I began my review into self-publishing. And I do not believe his book would have changed my approach or my final decision. That is not to say that it is not a good book. It has received great reviews and you may want to check it out.

(Parenthetically, I should add that I had purchased a book that was designed to help authors prepare proposals for publishers. I did buy this book and found the investment to be useless. The best advice I could have received at the very beginning of my search would have been to bypass publishing houses altogether and move directly to self-publishing.)

An online search for self-publishers is a simple and inexpensive exercise. Certainly, you will have to supplement this search with more work and analysis, but it is a good way to get started.

Another starting point will be to make connections with writers through writers’ associations and groups. You may be able to make contact with people who can give you ideas and suggestions.

Anne: Good ideas, all. But how do you narrow it down to the final choice, and how do you know which companies are legit?

Jim: When you begin your analysis of self-publishers, I recommend that you utilize varying amounts of common sense, caution, research, and intuition to help guide your final decision. Here is how these three areas play out:

1. Be cautious about claims made by any self-publisher. Seek explanations and confirmation for the validity of all claims.

If you visit self-publisher websites on the Internet, you are going to be bombarded with price offers and special promotions. When I began my Internet search, I read and copied each page of every publisher website I visited. In addition, I book marked each site address so I could revisit. This gave me a good base of data and information to review. Since there is no handbook on how to select a self-publisher, I reviewed all this material and began to make intuitive judgments about what seemed believable and what did not.

I compared prices, I looked at draft contracts, I looked at publisher timelines, services offered during and after publishing, customer service and any other information that some self-publishers make available for review. I read their FAQ sections of websites and I always looked for independent third party endorsements of the publisher and any of their claims.

I emailed several of the publishers, asking them for clarification of services offered and prices. That was easy to do and I judged them by their responses. Some responded promptly and some did not. Those that did respond scored points with me and those that did not respond at all or not promptly were crossed off my list.

2. Try to make contact with authors.

I checked self-publisher websites to get the names of authors and their titles. I also searched daily newspapers for author names and their book titles. Using the titles of their books, I did searches to try to find email addresses. This worked several times. I was fortunate to be able to talk with several authors about their self-publishing experience. Through this approach, I have established a friendly business relationship with another self-help author in the Midwest. We discuss issues via email periodically.

3. Use your business instincts as a guide to help in your selection.

My gut instincts told me that there were self-publishers who were primarily interested in making money while there were others who wanted to make money and help authors be successful. Here is a classic example.

I interviewed with one local self-publishing firm in the Northwest that wanted to charge me over $20,000 for publishing 3,000 books and doing the copy editing work. I inquired about the possibility of buying the services individually since I did not have that kind of money. They told me that they did not do business that way. I found that to be outrageous because the likelihood of needing 3,000 books right up front was not very realistic.

Then, after looking at their client list, the business plan for this publisher became clear to me. Many of the authors on their client list were older business executives and educational leaders. Many of these folks were merely using books as elegant and expensive calling cards.

By comparison, the array of services from the publisher I selected would have cost in the range of $35,000 to $40,000, if I had chosen all the same services up front as one complete package. The Northwest firm said I had to buy a $20,000 package or there was no deal. However, I did not want to do that. I wanted a self-publisher that had a menu from which I could select at the time that was best for me. I was able to find the firm with the menu I wanted. As a result, my initial investment is much, much lower than $20,000.

The bottom line was that I had to find what I really felt was the right place for me to be with my book. I followed my instincts and I have been very satisfied. The idea that the final selection decision can be logical and based solely on financial and business data would not have worked for me. At some point, you have to look at all your research and say, “I think I will be more comfortable with this firm.” That is what I did.

As I look back on this process now, I believe there are several key decision points that must have resolved to your satisfaction. They are as follows:

1. The firm must have the experience to do a competent job with your work.

2. The self-publisher should have a record of accomplishment of satisfied authors.

3. The firm should have some way of validating their work quality through referrals or endorsements.

4. The firm’s prices must fit your budget.

5. Make sure the firm offers the array of services you might wish to access.

6. The firm should be able to explain how they service their customers.

Ultimately, you have to review all the information you have received and make a final judgment.

I hope some of my ideas will help you with your decision making process.

Anne: Thanks, Jim. This really helps demystify the process. Tomorrow, we’ll get into a comparison between going the traditional publishing route and self-publishing. I think readers may be surprised by some of the answers.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

I have a real treat for you over the next few days: Jim McFarland, successfully self-published author of DO OR DIE: THE BABY-BOOMER MAN’S GUIDE TO REGAINING HEALTH, HAPPINESS, VITALITY, AND A LONGER, FULLER LIFE, has very graciously agreed to answer a few pointed questions about the process of self-publishing.

Most of us have thought about it, haven’t we? It’s appealing, having control over the publication process. Yet how does one go about it? Even for those of us who’ve spent a lot of time hanging out at writers’ conferences and reading writers’ publications, our information on the subject tends to be sketchy, at best second-hand and anecdotal.

So I asked Jim to give me the lowdown on the practicalities. Over the next few days, I shall be posting the results. Enjoy!

Anne: How did you come to the decision to self-publish?

Jim: At the age of 52, I received a bone chilling call from my doctor following a physical in the spring of 2002. He told me that in addition to my problems with hypertension and obesity, I was now close to having type two diabetes, a chronic condition attacking millions of older Americans.

After the call, I went out searching for resources to help me figure out what to do. Unfortunately, my search left me empty handed. I found nothing because there was no comprehensive “health renewal guide” for older men. Such a resource did not exist. Within weeks, my searches turned into notes and then notes turned into short “how to articles.” After another six to eight weeks of introspection and contemplation, I decided that it was my job to write a guide to help older men with their health.

Entitled Do or Die, my book will help baby boomer men restore health, vitality, happiness, and longevity through fitness, faith, and food. Do or Die helps men figure out how to get out of denial and discover the inspiration and willpower to create a life-changing renewal and a healthy lifestyle.

What motivated me to write is a simple and sad fact. Middle-aged men between the ages of 45 and 64 are dying from cardiovascular disease and stroke at double the rate of women in the same age group. According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics in 2002, 79,873 men died from cardiovascular disease or stroke. That works out to 219 baby-boomer men per day. I still find that figure almost too incredible to believe. However, it is true.

Frankly, I simply reached a point in my life where I said, “I am sick and tired of watching and hearing about thousands of men giving up and dying. Men need help and I want to wake them up and tell them their lives are worth living. My book Do or Die will help men begin to make those changes.”

Fast forward to the spring of 2004, nearly 23 months following my physical. I had spent months writing and submitting proposals to agents and publishers. They were turning me down about as rapidly as I could distribute them. I was starting to believe that my idea for the book was just not going to gain any traction. Early one afternoon I opened and read my 34th proposal rejection letter from an agent. I was frustrated, exhausted, cranky, and ready to quit writing.
I decided the medicine that might help me the best was a two to three week hiatus away from anything and everything related to writing.

During this forced vacation, I began thinking about why I had started to work on this project in the first place. What I discovered in the middle of all of this was that I had become a slave to the process that every writer, literary agent and publisher talks about. You know what I am talking about. Of course you do. You may have become a slave to the process and lost sight of why you started this journey in the first place.

This is the grinding and toiling associated with writing proposals and trying to get somebody, somewhere to pay attention to your idea. You work extra hours on weekends, nights, noon hours, before work, and after Church. Whenever you can squeeze another edit out of a proposal, or make another trip to Kinko’s to copy something that has to be mailed the following day. You know the feelings. Your hopes are up; the process enthralls you, because you are making progress. At least you think you are moving forward.

Somehow, somewhere in the middle of writing I forgot about the fact that approximately 200,000 books are published every year. I forgot about the heated competition that exists for ideas that will make the cash registers ring in bookstores. I began to think, as we all do, that my book would own the real estate in an agent’s mind.

My proximity to success was palpable every day I sat at the typewriter. I could see myself on Oprah sharing my story with the masses. I could envision customers lining up in bookstores waiting to have me sign their precious copies. I could see myself on television, giving interviews to local news stations.

Yes, I had already painted the canvas with my success, oblivious to what was really happening with my writing project. I was drunk with bravado, hope, and unabashed egotism. Truthfully and sadly, I had really lost sight of my original mission, which was to write a book that will help older men get healthy again.

What helped me escape the vice-like grip of this confusing mess? It was the re-examination of thinking through why I started in the first place. I asked myself two simple, but powerful questions. Why am I writing this book? What do I want out of it? I really did think about quitting. That was a simple and very clean option. It would have been so easy and simple to delete everything about my project from my two computers at work and home. That process probably would have been completed in about an hour. I could have ordered the computer consultant to dump the backup files and the process would have been complete. It would be over. The chapter would have been closed.

As I examined the idea of dumping all these files, I found myself thinking that such an event would be tantamount to burning down a house that was 70 percent complete. Could I really do it? Just dump everything?

Whenever I get into these situations, I find that you have to let your heart lead you through this thicket of confusion. Using your mind, with all of its intended and rational processes, can often result in bad answers and results. Therefore, I led with my heart.

My heart responded to the question about why I was writing with this answer: “to help people.” On the second question of what I wanted out of it, my heart said “you are writing this to help yourself get healthy and to help others learn from your work.”

Following this trump by the heart over the mind, I resolved to go forward to finish the book. The reflection period was over. I would send out a few more proposals to mainline publishers and if those were rejected, then I would move to the world of self-publishing. And that is what I did.

Anne here again: thanks, Jim. Tomorrow, we’ll move on to Jim’s observations on how to navigate the often-confusing morass of self-publishing options.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

Yes, I know, I promised you an entry today on how to write an author bio, and I assure you that I will give you one soon. Today, however, I feel a very strong compulsion to discuss a severe disadvantage under which writers, particularly first-time ones, suffer: contract fluidity.

There are a lot of truisms in the publishing industry, so I don’t feel that I will be telling tales out of school if I mention that on average, publishing contracts hugely favor the publishing company. The publisher gets to set how much the author is paid per copy, when the deadlines are, when and how the book is published, how it will (or won’t) be promoted, and, to a very great extent, the content. It’s like that old joke:

Q: Where does a 300-pound gorilla sit?

A: Anywhere he wants.

From the author’s point of view, until she is well-established, any publisher is a 300-pound gorilla looking for festival seating at her concert. Few of the salient contract points are truly negotiable, unless the author is already well established or a celebrity in her own right. You could not, for instance, decide unilaterally that since the contract specifies that the author will receive a 12.5% share of the cover price for hardback and a 7% share for trade paper, that your book was going to come out in hardback. The publisher makes all of these decisions, with few exceptions; the contract just codifies them. And we writers, by and large, accept that.

What comes as a shock to most writers — myself included, I’ll admit — is that while the parts of the contract that specify what the author must perform tend to be adhered to with praiseworthy rigidity by all parties, the parts that specify what the publisher will do in return and when tend to be treated as mere guidelines.

An author could not, for instance, refuse to deliver a manuscript by the date specified in the contract, or neglect to perform requested revisions, or back out of touring to promote the book, without being in breach of contract and sued accordingly. A publisher can, by contrast, change or ignore contracted deadlines, not honor agreements set forth in the contract about presentation specifics, and/or not pay the advance and royalties in a timely manner.

Yes, you read that correctly; one of the best reasons to work through an agent is to have an enforcer for the money part of the contract. A standard publishing contract specifies that 1/3 of the advance will be paid on signing, 1/3 upon delivery of the manuscript, and 1/3 when the book is released. However, it is far from uncommon for the advance check not to show up for months after the contract is signed, or for six months or a year to pass between royalty checks.

Let me ground this in practical terms. In my own case, my publisher bought my book just under eleven months ago. Nine months ago, I delivered the manuscript — two weeks ahead of schedule, as a matter of fact. The first installment of the advance arrived three weeks after that, roughly two and a half months after signing. And not a kopeck since.

Shocked? Don’t be. This is a relatively normal state of affairs.

While that’s sinking in, let me hasten to inform you that the contract also specified that the publisher would furnish me with editorial feedback on the book by August 15, two months after receiving the manuscript. I would then have two months, until October 15, to formulate a new draft, after which my publisher could accept or submit new revision requests by December 15.

Tell me, what is today’s date?

The dates I had set my watch by simply haven’t applied. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, except to declare the contract broken and cancel publication.

There’s the rub, you see: how many writers would actually cancel a book contract? Would you stop publication on a book you have been slaving over for years, just because of a technicality? Or even something major?

Exactly. Think the inmates of publishing houses aren’t aware of that? Good answer; you’re starting to get a feel for the logic of the industry.

Nor is timing the only common bone of contention. Contractually, as I mentioned back in the fall, I had consultation rights over the cover design and title approval.

You can see this coming, can’t you?

I was simply presented with a new title by the marketing department — which, in case you don’t know, is the norm for first books — and although I kicked and screamed about it, it stuck. I did not even know that a final decision had been made until my book appeared for presale on Amazon under that title, with a book cover that I’d never seen before. And, of course, the release date — which I also have historically learned first from Amazon — has changed so many times that even my relatives have stopped boasting about when my book will hit the shelves.

And this, incidentally, is for a book that everyone at the publishing house purportedly LIKES. They keep telling me what a good writer I am, how compelling the story I’m telling is, and how little revision it needed. I have every indication that they even like me personally, in fact. But that hasn’t necessarily made them stick to the contract, or stopped them from adding conditions to it after the fact.

And how trained are writers to tiptoe around the 300-pound gorilla? You will note, please, that I am still referring to these people as my publishers. Which means that I have not put my wee foot down and said ENOUGH.

Why? Because none of this is particularly unusual, although having all of it happen on one book is. As I said, contractual fluidity is proverbial, at least insofar as it applies to the publishing house’s end of the deal. Because authors do get sued when they don’t live up to their end of the contract; publishing houses, by and large, do not.

You probably already know why. It’s all about reputation. A writer who insists upon the letter of the contract is “difficult,” a surprisingly hard moniker to shake. Difficult behavior runs the gamut from not turning in manuscripts when promised (which particularly annoys agents) to fighting with editors over piddling changes to not answering e-mails. A difficult writer flies into a fury when telephoned a request. Things like that.

Basically, if you’ve ever heard of Norman Mailer doing it, it’s probably what the industry would consider difficult behavior in a writer. If you want to talk proverbial.

They are not nearly so easy to offend as writers’ conference-circuit gossip would have us believe, though; after all, most of the people making the judgment are New Yorkers, who are used to people getting in their faces. Contrary to popular opinion, no one is going to hold a grudge against a writer who picks up the phone and calls an agent who’s had her requested manuscript for two months, for instance. A difficult writer would have called in a week, and every day thereafter, using language generally debarred from PG films.

(In case you’re curious, the reason you have always been told at conferences NEVER to call is that the agents who say it are speaking to a crowd. They want EVERYBODY not to call; in other words, their lives are hell when every writer who sends a submission follows up with a phone call, as if they were selling aluminum siding. They don’t like the hard sell, so it seldom works. But individual writers who have a legitimate concern that the three-week exclusive the agent asked for on the manuscript elapsed two weeks ago certainly should call.)

What will get you dismissed immediately is being unprofessional, not difficult. You generally have to push someone’s buttons mightily to be labeled difficult, like screaming into a telephone, whereas being labeled unprofessional can be as simple as handing someone a manuscript printed in the wrong typeface.

Having a reputation for being difficult can make editors reluctant to pick up your work, certainly. Since writers know that, we tend to be afraid to rock the boat at all. Still, even with all of us holding stock-still in rowboats all over the nation, every so often, a soft-spoken writer will find that she has inadvertently offended someone, simply by innocently asserting that since the contract exists, perhaps it ought to be honored.

Welcome to my day.

Today, I had a vivid flashback to a college production of Peter Pan. I played Nana, the nursemaid dog, in a costume that makes me blush to think of now; because it was one of those highly experimental productions that youthful exuberance makes seem plausible, I also played a pirate on Cap’n Hook’s ship (I was known for my hornpipe), the Never-Never Bird (defies explanation), and a mythical sea sprite who capered in the waves.

You kind of had to be there.

As Nana, as you may perhaps imagine, I spent a whole lot of rehearsal time scuffling about on my unpadded hands, knees, and elbows. Painful, even for a 19-year-old, especially when we moved into our performance space, which for reasons best known to the architect had concrete floors. Naturally, I asked for gloves and knee pads, but somehow, they never materialized. Oh, by dress rehearsal I had some mittens tarted up as paws, but they had no padding.

(Actual quote from the knee specialist who regularly treats Seahawks, gazing intently at MRI pictures of my knees a decade and a half later: “No kidding? I’m amazed you were able to walk after that.”)

The director told me that my requests were unreasonable, that padding was expensive and bulk would spoil the line of my costume. I stood it as long as I could, but eventually, the pain would become too great, and I’d ask again. And thus, my friends, did I attain the reputation of being a “difficult” actress: because I pointed out that permanent damage was being done to my knees.

Not that this has anything to do with my book or anything.

I wish I had some words of wisdom about how to handle contractual fluidity, but today, I honestly don’t. All I can do in this instance is to let you know about it as a phenomenon, so you don’t feel singled out if it happens to you. Which I hope and pray that it doesn’t.

As nearly as I can tell — and this is the voice of experience gleaned over a decade of marketing my own writing and observing the progress of my friends and clients — most people in the publishing industry simply don’t understand that heaping stress upon writers is counterproductive. As any artist could tell them, stress interferes with the creative process. We’re not copy-generating machines; we’re living, breathing people who would like to be treated with respect, not sat upon by gorillas.

This is definitely a business where it behooves you to bring your own knee and elbow pads from home.

My, I’m gloomy today, amn’t I? I’ll try to snap back into cheerful mode again by next week. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

Many, many thanks to the kind souls who have been writing in to let me know how my recent contest postings have (or have not) been helpful in getting contest entries out the door. Part of the difficulties of writing for a nebulous audience with a broad range of experience is that it’s hard to tell if I’m telling readers what they already know, so the feedback’s been very helpful.

For those of you who missed yesterday’s post, a novel of mine is just passing into the submission phase of its existence, the nail-biting period where editors shake their heads over it and, I hope, guffaw from time to time. I thought you might like to hear about what happens to a novel after an agent takes it off the author’s hands. So greetings from the Novel Project, Day 3.

Have you ever wondered what that notation in the agents’ guidebooks, “charges for photocopying” means, and why some agencies seem to do it and some don’t? Are some just nicer to authors than others? And what precisely are they photocopying? The book contract, or the Manhattan phone book?

Actually, the distinction is not between an agency’s charging for photocopying and not; it’s between whether the agency DOES photocopying or not. This may not seem like a major issue, but think about it: these people are dealing with many, many manuscripts. Where does each submission copy come from?

An agency that charges for photocopying will handle producing all of those necessary copies itself. Rather than asking for that money up front (copying deposits from writers used to be not uncommon), the agency will wait until the book is sold, then subtract the copying costs from the first part of the advance. (Depending on the agency, similar arrangements may exist for postage and/or messenger costs.) Basically, this kind of agency is demonstrating its faith in its clients’ books by fronting office expenses.

From the writer’s POV, there are definite plusses to this arrangement. It’s a lot less work, for one thing, than when the author handles making the copies herself. In most cases, if the book does not ultimately sell, the author never gets a photocopying bill. And often, the per-page price is quite reasonable, perhaps a bit more than your local Kinko’s, but then, you save the cost of shipping all of those copies across the country.

Do check before you sign, though, because sometimes it’s quite a bit more. (This is a perfectly legitimate question to ask an agent who is interested in representing you.) I have known authors who have opted out of the arrangement, choosing to make the copies for themselves, because it was cheaper.

There’s another reason that you might want to consider opting out. If you are a writer who is prey to last-minute qualms, rewriting and rewriting, it is not beyond belief that at some point, you will want to make a change after your agency has gone ahead and photocopied a previous draft – which would leave you with a double charge. And if we’re talking about 15 copies of a 300-page book…well, you do the math.

The other kind of agency does not photocopy, except in cases where instant production of a copy is deemed essential. Your agent was pitching something else, realized she was having lunch with the perfect editor for your book, but you were deep-sea diving off Costa Rica and could not be reached…that sort of thing. When this type of agency wants to submit your work, your agent calls you up and says, “Gee, can you send me 20 copies of your book proposal?” You make the copies yourself, then ship the whole shebang to the agency.

Yes, it’s more work, and yes, you do end up paying the shipping costs, which can be considerable. Paper is heavy. However, you have control over the type of paper used, the print quality, and even the number of submissions. When your agent has to ask, you can negotiate. You have absolute control of how much you are out-of-pocket — and even though all of these expenses are tax-deductible (even if you have a day job, writing can technically be your small business), you may very much want to make sure you don’t go too far into debt for them.

I’ve been with both types of agency, and I have to say, I prefer the latter. But then, I don’t feel that the paper generally used for photocopying is high enough quality to present my work well. Unless I’ve been asked to provide a zillion copies, I prefer to print them myself.

My writer friends have a name for this: obsessive. And perhaps it is. But something happened when I photocopied my master’s thesis that shook me to the core: unbeknownst to me, a copying machine ate pg. 42. So I turned in a thesis that was missing a page, one that I like to think was rather important to my argument. Woe and uproar ensued.

At the risk of making everyone paranoid, tell me, when you photocopy a long document, do you generally go through it to make sure that all of the pages are there? That none of them are smudged? Or that there aren’t extra blank pages tucked inside?

So that is why today, after yesterday’s little chat with my agent, I spent today printing up eight copies of my 395-page novel on bright white 24-lb. paper and stuffing them in a great big box. (In case you’re curious, it required an 18” x 12” x 10” cardboard crate.) Yes, it would have been substantially quicker just to run up the hill to my adorable little neighborhood copy store, but do you have any idea how much they charge for higher-grade paper? Or how they look at you when you want to go through each copy, page by page?

Okay, so maybe it IS a tad obsessive. But these copies are gorgeous. They feel good in the hand. The paper is blinding white; every letter on every page is dark and sharply-defined. I was able to catch that typo on pg. 361. And I assure you, pg. 42 is in each and every copy.

Besides, all of that printing time gave me leisure to punch up my author bio, which needed to accompany each copy. Of that, more tomorrow.

In the middle of the process, watching myself check margins for stray ink smudges, I had to laugh: after all of my months of urging you all to pay attention to the cosmetic details, this is probably how many of you picture me spending every day. No, just when a submission has to get out the door, but then, I truly do practice what I preach.

Ah, the glamour of a writer’s life…

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

I’m going to operate under the assumption that a lot of my regular readers are spending this prototypically gray PNW day frantically proofreading their entries, searching wildly for an envelope large enough to fit two copies, and generally freaking out because it’s deadline day for the PNWA literary contest. (For those of you Seattle-area members who are truly panicking, there’s a post office down near SeaTac who postmarks later than the average – until 8 p.m., if memory serves, but do call ahead of time and make sure. It’s in Burien.)

Remember the feeling of this day: after you win (as I sincerely hope you will), people will ask you about how confident you felt as you passed your entry into the tender care of an overworked postal employee. Just so you know, “I wondered why I put myself through this hell” does not play well as a response. Make up something you’d like your biographers to reprint a hundred years from now.

So now the long wait to hear back begins. Category finalists are generally notified in late May or early June, early enough that they can get good airfares to attend the conference. If your entry does not make the finals, you will not hear back until after the conference, when you receive your feedback sheets.

If you are a finalist, PLEASE, for your own sake, try to make it to the conference. There are scholarships available (check the PNWA homepage for details.) A finalist ribbon dangling over one’s stomach is like a backstage pass at a sold-out rock concert: if you’re brave about it, it really does allow you much more leeway about buttonholing agents and editors in the hallways. Not to mention making it substantially easier to meet other contest attendees; it’s an instant conversation-starter, a variation on the contest-ubiquitous, “So, what do you write?”

In case you’re curious about what will happen to your entry between now and then, first, it will be processed by wonderful, charming volunteers who don’t get nearly enough credit for the hours they put in on all of our behalves. They do the bureaucratic part, separating the entry form from the entries, arranging them by category for blind judging, assigning numbers so they can later figure out whose anonymous entry was whose. Then they go to the category chair, who in turn will assign them to the first-round judges. Two first-round judges will read each entry, filling out complex rating forms. After the entries are ranked, the category chair will tabulate the findings, make ultra-sure that all of the top-ranked entries met ALL of the entry requirements, and come up with a list of finalists. The bureaucratic end will then figure out who those entrants were, and then the finalists’ entries will go on to the category judge, usually either someone prominent in that particular field or one of the agents or editors attending the conference.

With the exception of the final judge, every single person who touches your entry is a volunteer. You should stand and cheer for these people; they are doing us all a great big favor.

If you did not enter this year’s contest, you might want to consider contacting the PNWA and offering to be a first-round judge in your favorite category. I can think of no experience that will educate you faster (short of being a query screener in a top-ranked agency) about what does and does not look professional in a manuscript. You will also get an unparalleled view of the kind of competition you can expect if you enter future contests. It’s also quite interesting, and the joy a judge feels upon discovering a hit-it-out-of-the-ballpark entry really isn’t like anything else. (Except, perhaps, watching your favorite ball player hit a home run. But that lasts for a mere second, while the elation of reading a truly superlative entry lasts for hours. Or maybe I’m just more enamored of good writing than most people.)

As it happens, I am beginning a waiting phase today, too: yesterday, my agent and I decided that the time was ripe to start marketing my novel. Yes, I write fiction, too: very mainstream fiction with a comic twist. Since I’ve been able to fill you in from time to time on the bizarre side journeys a memoir makes on its way to publication (although admittedly mine has had a stranger trip than most), I thought it might be interesting if I tracked the novel’s progress here, too. That way, you could get a sense in real time what it feels like to have a really good agent out there shopping around your work.

Since the decision was made yesterday, let’s call that The Novel Launch: Day 1.

But it’s far from a new book, in real terms. My agent has had a draft of THE BUDDHA IN THE HOT TUB since early September, 2004; when I was deciding between agents for my memoir (such a luxury; it really IS wonderful to win a major category in the PNWA contest!), I asked each of them to read the novel, too, to make sure that they would be open to representing ALL of my work. I took it through another two drafts after that.

So why didn’t it hit the market immediately? This may come as a surprise to some of you, but that there is often long-term discussion between a writer and an agent about timing. (The discussion often runs something like this: the author says, “Is it time yet? Is it time yet?” and the agent says, “Not quite.” Repeat often.)

Remember all of those publishing world planned lulls I told you about last fall? The end-of-summer vacations, which can last from the middle of August until after Labor Day; the Frankfurt Book Fair in October; the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas holidays, when everything slows to a grinding halt, so agents and editors can get back to everything they’ve put off from the rest of the year, and the January combination of “Help! We’re buried under every unpublished writer in North America’s New Year’s resolution submissions!” and “Help! All of our tax information for last year must be in order by the end of the month!” All of these affect timing, as does conference season. One week might be a far smarter time to start shopping a book around than the following one.

Also, in my case, the memoir obviously took precedence. It is quite rare that a writer’s agent will be marketing different projects for her simultaneously, and these two projects are very different indeed: one is a memoir about my relationship with a long-dead science fiction writer, and the other is a comedy about the adult lives of children who grew up on a commune in the Oregon Cascades. Or, as my writing group tends to think of them, my beatnik book and my hippie book. Can flappers be far behind?

We’re going to do a limited submission the first time around, which means 6 to 8 hand-picked editors will get to take a gander at the book, people at publishing houses so perfect for me that my agent and I would dance a little jig if they wanted it. (Not all agents who handle fiction do it this way; in fact, it’s more common for agents handling first-time novelists to send out only one submission at a time.) It may be days, weeks, or months before we hear back from any of them.

In the short run, though, I have a million things to do to prepare for this submission, so I am going to run off and do them. Tomorrow, I shall tell you what they were, so you can see for yourself just how much work goes into getting a novel out the door to editors.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

I’ve gotten SO many e-mails from stressed-out contest entrants, responding to my weekend posts about formatting, that I’m not going to write about anything contest-related today. I suspect everyone could use the rest, after (or in the midst of) getting that entry postmarked on time. So today, I’m going back to mega-problems, a little number I like to call the Plot Flare phenomenon, something I can tackle in a fun and nonstress-inducing manner.

Before I move on to nice, soothing manuscript mega-problems again, though, I do want to apologize to everyone who had already entered by the time I mentioned a title page for the entry. Let me be clear: the contest rules do NOT require a title page; a judge will not maul your entry if you did not include one with your entry. Relieved? In this instance, the title page was a cosmetic measure, designed to make your entry look more professional.

However, I do have to say, the reason that I did not mention it until this weekend’s posts was that it actually wouldn’t occurred to me NOT to include a title page in ANY packet that included a manuscript of mine or a portion thereof. All of my elementary short stories had title pages, even. Now, admittedly, I grew up around so many professional writers that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that home sweet home was insulated primarily by paper, but in retrospect, I had to wonder: whence the title page impulse?

When in doubt about the source of my literary prejudices (which, as you may have gathered, are legion), I did what I always do: ask my friends who’ve had success hunting down agents and selling books. Without exception, they were all nonplused by the notion of sending out a piece without a title page, too, unless it was a commissioned article for a magazine, but none of us could recall where we’d picked up that useful little habit. But every writer we know does it. Perhaps this indicative of creeping egomania, but even in a contest entry, where the author is not allowed to display her name, all of us felt that the “Ta da!” of the title page was still advisable, and even necessary.

Which leads me to a corollary question, one that had not occurred to me before: have you all been sending title pages with your requested material submissions to agents and editors? I can’t remember ANY instance where an agent’s submission guidelines actually specified its inclusion, but it does most definitely make your work look more professional, if it’s in standard format. (See last week’s posting on the subject, if you’re in doubt.) And, as in a contest entry, anything you can do to your submission to make it resemble what the pros do gets your work taken more seriously.

Okay, on to Plot Flares, an early screaming indication that something specific is going to happen later in the plot. From the author’s POV, these hints are generally subtle, mild foreshadowing of events to come. As character development and background, small hints are often advisable, or even unavoidable. If these hints aren’t AWFULLY subtle, though, they can give away the rest of the book, deflating suspense as surely as helium comes out of a balloon when you jab a needle into it. And to professional readers, who see every plot twist in the book, so to speak, on a literally daily basis, a poorly-done foreshadowing hint glows in the middle of a page like a flare set up around a midnight highway accident: don’t go there.

Once again, this is a phenomenon familiar to all of us from movies: the eventual startling plot twist is revealed in some small way within the first twenty minutes. There are, of course, the classics: if the female lead faints or mentions putting on weight, she’s going to turn out to be pregnant; if any man announces that he’s counting the days until retirement, he’s going to be killed (and, heaven help us, “Danny Boy” will be played on the soundtrack); if our hero is a sad guy, he will inevitably turn out to have had a beautiful (and often, in the flashback, silent) wife and possibly cherubic child who were slaughtered before his eyes while he watched, helpless. Pathos, pathos. And if you don’t believe me that these clichés transcend genre or even writing quality, that last example was the backstory for the Sidney Poitier character in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061735/”>GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNERONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO (courtesy of Bad Men with Guns). It gets around.

The list is practically endless. In a television detective story, the actor with the best résumé (who therefore cost more than the other players) will turn out to be the murderer; so will Ray Liotta, John Malkevich, Ice-T, and/or Christopher Walken – unless, of course, the directors have elected to incorporate what I like to call the Liotta Lapse, where they use an actor so habitually typecast as the guy you’re SUPPOSED to think did it, so the twist can be that someone else did.

Actually, I’ve always found it rather amusing that people in the movie industry continue to think that we’re all surprised by plot twists set up three miles in advance — in manuscripts, these cliché set-ups tend to be dismissed in the first read-through. I once attended a memorable preview of a forgettable thriller where one of the actors, unfortunately, had shown up to speak to the audience. A fairly well-known TV actor, he swore up and down that the first time he had read the script, he was stunned by the eventual plot twist. When several audience members laughed uproariously (including, I’ll admit it, me), the actor was unwise enough to ask us why. I spoke up: “Because ten minutes into the film, someone mentioned that the guy who turned out to be the murderer ‘had a tough childhood.’ The screenwriter might as well have erected a road sign with a big arrow that read ‘psychopath here.’”

The actor looked at me as if I had just spontaneously derived the theory of relativity from scratch on the spot. “I didn’t catch that,” he claimed.

Now, because I prefer for the sake of the republic to assume that most adults are reasonably intelligent, I assume the actor was lying about his own perceptions in order to protect his film. For such a cause, I can cut him some slack. However, in book form, agents, editors, and contest judges tend not to cut the author of a manuscript any slack at all. Remember, these are not charitable readers, as a rule, but business-oriented ones. They’re looking for plot twists that are genuinely surprising, not set up by plot flares a hundred pages in advance.

Keep your foreshadowing, when you use it, SUBTLE — which means, of course, that unless you’re writing comedy, you might want to avoid having characters say of your politician protagonist in early childhood scenes, “That Harry! Some day, he’s going to be president.” For a hilarious peek at the kind of plot flare to avoid, take a gander at the cult favorite TV series STRANGERS WITH CANDY, a parody of those heavy-handed 1970s Afterschool Specials where a wee Helen Hunt would try drugs once, freak out, and plunge to her death from a second-story window, all to teach us, children, that Drugs are Bad. In STRANGERS, if a pet is going to get killed in order for the protagonist, Jerri Blank, to learn an Important Life Lesson, the script will have Jerri say to her pet, “I would just DIE if anything ever happened to you,” reinforcing it just before the inevitable denouement with “I would like to reiterate that I would just DIE if anything ever happened to you.”

Yes, this is bald-faced, but it’s a fine reminder that good writers let the circumstances lead naturally to dramatically satisfying conflicts and resolutions, rather than sending up plot flares every few pages to make sure that the reader is following along with the point. Because, ultimately, that’s the motivation for plot flares, I think: the author doesn’t trust that the reader is going to be able to figure out the irony.

As a writer, I have to assume that every one of my potential readers is as sharp as I am at picking up those clues. Admittedly, I was the person in the theatre who whispered to my date fifteen minutes into THE SIXTH SENSE, “Why aren’t any of the adults consulting with Bruce Willis about the kid’s case? Totally unrealistic, either in the school system or with the parent. He’s gotta be a ghost,” so we’re talking a rather high bar here, but I like plot twists that make readers gasp ALOUD. If the reader’s been alerted by a flare, that gasp is never going to come, no matter how beautifully the revelation scene is set up. At most, the reader will have a satisfied sense of having figured the twist out in advance.

Keep it subtle, my friends. If there’s a cat in that bag, keep it there until it’s startling for it to pop out. There’s no need to have it meowing all the time first.

And coming off that rather distasteful little metaphor, I bid all of you stressed-out contest entrants au revoir. Get some well-earned sleep, and keep up the good work.

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

I am going to revisit standard format again today, to make absolutely certain that every single reader of this blog who plans to enter the PNWA literary contest next week is aware of it. I had dealt with it in December, but those archives aren’t posted yet. So here we go again.

Yes, yes, I know: those of you who are regular readers of this blog now exhibit a conditioned response to the term standard format; Pavlov’s dogs salivated at the bell, and you suddenly sit bolt upright, wondering if there was some unreported technical reason behind your last form rejection letter. You may, in fact, be tired of hearing about it.

However, violations of standard format cost precious points in literary contests; it is often the difference between an entry that makes the finals and one that doesn’t. Put another way, do you honestly think I would be spending a sunny Seattle Sunday inside, going over it one more time for my readers, if it weren’t absolutely crucial to their success?

Here are the rules of standard format, gussied up a bit for contest use. I’ve just quadruple-checked the PNWA contest rules, and I’m going to point out below every area where they are more specific (or different) from standard format.

(1) All manuscripts must be typed and double-spaced, with at least one-inch margins on all sides of the page.

No exceptions, unless the contest rules SPECIFICALLY ask you to do otherwise. Which, lo and behold, the PNWA rules don’t.

(2) All manuscripts are printed on ONE side of the page.

Again, unless you are asked to do otherwise – and yes, this is wasteful of paper. The entire publishing industry is one vast paper-wasting enterprise. Deal with it.

(3) The text should be left justified ONLY.

A lot of writers squirm about this one. They want to believe that a professional manuscript looks exactly like a printed book, but the fact is, it shouldn’t. Yes, books feature text that runs in straight vertical lines along both side margins, and yes, your word processing program will replicate that, if you ask it nicely. But don’t: the straight margin should be the left one.

(4) The typeface should be 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier.

These are plain, not-too-pretty fonts, but they are in fact the standards of the publishing industry; it’s a throwback to the reign of the typewriter, which came in two typefaces, pica (a Courier equivalent) and elite (Times). As I’ve explained before, queries and manuscripts printed in other fonts are simply not taken as seriously. The PNWA rules make this point even more stringently: only entries in these typefaces will be accepted.

If you want a specific font for your finished book, you should NOT use it in your manuscript or contest entry, even if you found a very cool way to make your Elvin characters’ dialogue show up in Runic. That is a matter of discussion between you and your future editor. For the purposes of contest entries and queries, stick to looking like a professional.

If you write screenplays, you may ONLY use Courier. Most screenplay agents will not read even the first page of a script in another typeface – which means that most contest judges will follow suit.

(5) No matter how cool your desired typeface looks, or how great the title page looks with 14-point type, keep the ENTIRE manuscript in the same font and typeface. Do not use boldface anywhere but on the title page.

Industry standard is 12-point. Again, no exceptions, including your title page. You may place your title in boldface, if you like, but that’s it.

There is literally no reason, short of including words in languages that have different scripts, to deviate from this. If you are a writer who likes to have different voices presented in different typefaces, or who chooses boldface for emphasis, this is not a forum where you can express those preferences freely. Sorry.

(6) Words in foreign languages should be italicized.
Including Elvish. You don’t want your judge to think you’ve made a typo, do you?

(7) EVERY page in the manuscript should be numbered.

This one is generally an automatic disqualification offense. The standard way to paginate is in the header, so see point #8.

The PNWA’s contest rules deviate from standard format in one significant respect: they ask that the first page of the manuscript NOT be numbered. (This was more common back in the typewriter days, when the header had to be typed manually onto each page. Skipping one of them actually saved the author some work, back then.) If you don’t know how to tell your word processing program to have a different first page, see yesterday’s blog for instructions.

(8) Each page should a standard slug line in the header, listing ABBREVIATED TITLE/PAGE #. The safest place for this is left-justified, but you can get away with right-justifying it as well.

Okay, here is another area where PNWA rules differ from standard format, which has a strong but not binding preference for left-justified slug lines. But the PNWA’s rules SPECIFY a RIGHT-justified slug line. And since contest rules also specify that the title of the work be on every page, but no number on the first page, your first page’s slug line will simply be the title of the book.

For those of you meeting standard format for the first time, it dictates a slug line that runs thus: AUTHOR’S LAST NAME/ABBREVIATED TITLE/PAGE #. So the third page of my memoir manuscript reads: MINI/A FAMILY DARKLY/3. In contest format, however, the slug line would look like this: A FAMILY DARKLY/3.

(9) The first page of a chapter should begin a third of the way down the page.
That’s twelve single-spaced lines, incidentally. The chapter name (or merely “Chapter One”) may appear on the first line of the first page, but then nothing should appear until a third of the way down the page.

(10) The beginning of each paragraph should be indented five spaces.
Yes, I know that published books — particularly mysteries, I notice — often begin chapters and sections without indentation. Trust me, that was the editor’s choice, not the author’s, and copying the style will surely get your work knocked out of serious prize consideration.

(11) Don’t skip an extra line between paragraphs.

This one is for all of you bloggers out there. The whole darned manuscript should be double-spaced, and paragraphs are all indented, so there is no need to skip a line to indicate a paragraph break.

The ONLY exception is that you may skip an extra line to indicate a section break, but here, too, the PNWA has something specific it would like you to do instead:

* * * * * *

That’s at least three asterisks, centered on the page (which I can’t do in blog format, so you’ll have to use your imagination). No line skipped above, no line skipped below. I use five, because actually, the standard to which this rule is a throwback WAS five, not three.

Again, this is a typewriter-based archaisms, a way to show those crotchety old manual typesetters that the skipped line was intentional; no agent or editor I have met in the last ten years would actually expect you to have asterisked inserts in your manuscript. But where contest rules lead, entrants must follow.

(12) All numbers under 100 should be written out in full: twenty-five, not 25.

Again, this was for the benefit of the manual typesetters, but I actually think this one makes sense. When numbers are entered as numbers, a single slip of a finger can result in an error, whereas when numbers are written out, the error has to be in the inputer’s mind.

(13) Dashes should be doubled — hyphens are single, as in self-congratulatory.

Yet another signal for ye olde typesetters, archaic but still honored. It was so they could tell when the author intended a dash, and when a hyphen.

Yes, I know that your word processing program will automatically change a doubled dash to a single one. Change it back, because you never know when a real stickler for format is going to end up as your contest judge.

(14) Dashes should have spaces at each end — rather than—like this.

Again, I know: books no longer preserve these spaces, for reasons of printing economy, and many writing teachers tell their students just to go ahead and eliminate them. But standard format is invariable upon this point. It’s a pain, true, but is it really worth annoying a judge over?

(15) The use of ANY brand name should be accompanied by the trademark symbol, as in Kleenex™.

If you catch a judge under the age of 30, you may get away without including the trademark symbol, but legally, you are not allowed to use a trademarked name without it. Writers — yes, and publishing houses, too — have actually been sued over this within the last couple of years, so be careful about it.

There you have it. If you adhere to these standards in your contest entries (except, of course, where the contest rules specify otherwise), your work will sail past that scourge of entries everywhere, the hyper-nit-picky judge. A manuscript in standard format looks to the critical eye like a couple dressed in formal wear for a black-tie event: yes, it is possible that the hosts will be too nice to toss them out if they show up in a run-of-the-mill casual suits or jeans, but the properly-attired couple will be admitted happily. By dressing as the hosts wished, the couple is showing respect to the event and the people who asked them to attend.

Dress your work appropriately, and it will be a welcome guest in the finalist ring.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

I don’t usually post on Saturdays, but this isn’t just any weekend – it’s the last weekend before entries in the 2006 PNWA Literary Contest are due! I know a lot of you will be spending the long weekend polishing up your entries, so I wanted to get a few last words in before you did.

(Can you tell that I would really, really like for blog readers to take the contest by storm this year?)

First, an oversight in yesterday’s post that several sharp-eyed readers (well done!) pointed out to me: when I refer to skipped lines, I am referring to single lines, not double-spaced ones. And in the two standard title page formats, the name and address info is single-spaced. So thank you to those of you who let me know that I had neglected to mention that.

Okay, let’s assume that you’ve finished the basic writing and paperwork for your contest entry – if not, I can only assume that you are either the world’s fastest writer or an incurable optimist. You’ve read and reread your chapter, and it is both grammatically impeccable and one hell of a good story; John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and Dorothy Parker would all gnash their venerable teeth, if they still had them, in envy over your storytelling skills. Now it’s time to start asking yourself a few questions, to weed out the more subtle problems that can make the difference between making the finalist list and being an also-ran:

(Some of you may recognize this list from my earlier series on contest entering; yes, I have run it before. However, I noticed that my December postings are not yet archived, so I wanted to make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that everyone who could benefit from this checklist gets to see it.)

(1) Is my entry AND the length specified by the contest rules? Is it double-spaced, in 12-point type, with standard margins?

Yes, I know – I’ve been harping on standard format for months. I’ve also seen a whole lot of contest entries in odd formats, or with standard format in the chapters and single-spaced synopses — to be precise, I have seen them be disqualified. Unless the rules specifically state otherwise, keep EVERYTHING you submit to ANY professionally-geared forum in standard format.

(2) Is every page numbered? Does every page (except the title page, or as specified by the rules) contain the slug line TITLE/#?

This is sort of a trick question for those of you entering the PNWA contest: quick, which page do the rules specify SHOULDN’T be numbered?

Kudos to those of you who said pg. 1. How, you ask does one PREVENT a page number from appearing on the first page of a numbered document? Well, in MS Word, under FORMAT, there is a section called DOCUMENT. Under LAYOUT, you may select “Different first page.” Then go into the HEADER/FOOTER and make sure the first page header doesn’t have a page #.

Alternatively, you could just copy the first page of the entry into a separate document and print it from there. Just because technology is rigid doesn’t mean you have to be.

But no matter how you do it, NUMBER YOUR PAGES.

(3) Does the first page of the synopsis SAY that it’s a synopsis? Does it also list the title of the book? And does every page of the synopsis contain the slug line TITLE/SYNOPSIS/#?

Again, this is nit-picky stuff – but people who volunteer as contest judges tend to be nit-picky people. Better to over-identify your work than to under-identify it.

(4) Have I included all of the requested elements on the title page? If it asked me to specify genre and/or target market, have I done that? And is it in the same font and type size as the rest of the entry?

This is not the time to experiment with funky typefaces or odd title page formats. Unless the contest rules specify otherwise, put the whole thing in the same typeface AND TYPE SIZE as the rest of the entry. List only the information you are ASKED to list there. (Although if you want to add something along the lines of “An entry in the X Category of the 2006 Y Contest,” that’s generally considered a nice touch.)

(5) If I mention the names of places, famous people, or well-known consumer products, are they spelled correctly?

Okay, if no one else is willing to call foul on this, I will: writers very often misspell proper nouns, possibly because they tend not to be words listed in standard spell-checkers’ dictionaries. In a contest, that’s no excuse. Check.

And when I say check, I don’t mean just ask your spell-checker. To revisit every editor in the world’s pet peeve, most word processing programs are RIFE with misspellings and grammatical mistakes. I use the latest version of MS Word for the Mac, and it insists that Berkeley, California (where I happen to have been born) should be spelled Berkley, like the press. It is mistaken. Yet if I followed its advice and entered the result in a contest, I would be the one to pay for it, not the fine folks at Microsoft.

Double-check.

(6) Have I spell-checked AND proofread?

Again, most spelling and grammar-checkers contain inaccuracies. They can lead you astray. If you are tired (and who isn’t, by the time she finishes churning out a contest entry?), the path of least resistance is just to accept what the spell checker thinks your word should be. This is why you need to recheck by dint of good old proofreading.

Yes, it is wildly unfair that we writers should be penalized for the mistakes of the multi-million dollar corporations that produce these spelling and grammar checkers. But that’s one of the hard lessons all writers have to learn: the world is not in fact organized on a fair basis. People whose job it is to make sure the dictionaries and grammar-checkers are correct are collecting their hefty salaries and cashing in their stock options without apparently being able to spell Berkeley or hors d’oeuvre. Sorry.

Before you boil over about the inequity of it all, though, think about misspellings and grammatical errors from the contest judge’s perspective. The judge cannot tell whether the problem with the entry is that the author can’t spell to save his life, or he hasn’t bothered to proofread — or if some Microsoftie just couldn’t be bothered to check Strunk and White to see when THERE should be used instead of THEIR. (My grammar checker routinely tells me to use the former instead of the latter in cases of collective possession, alas. Is there no justice in this world?) From the judge’s point of view, the author is invariably the one who looks unprofessional.

This doesn’t mean not to spell-check electronically: you should. But you should NEVER rely solely upon a spell-checker or grammar-checker’s wit and wisdom. They’re just not literate enough, and again, it’s just too easy to accept an incorrect change when you’re over-tired. In my undergraduate thesis, my spell-checker saw fit to change my references to “longshoremen’s coalitions” to “longshoremen’s cotillions.” Lord knows what my readers would have made of that, had I not proofread, too. As it is, I have never been able to get the image of burly stevedores mincing around in sparkly Glinda the Good ball gowns out of my poor brain…

(7) If I use clichés for comic effect, have I reproduced them correctly?

As a general rule, I frown upon the use of clichés in print. (You can’t see me doing it, but I assure you, I am frowning right now.) Part of the point of being a writer is to display YOUR turn of phrase, not the thought of others. Occasionally, however, there are reasons to utilize clichés in your work, particularly in dialogue.

You would not BELIEVE how common it is for writers to reproduce clichés incorrectly. (I would not believe it myself, if I had not been a judge in a number of literary contests.) And an incorrectly-quoted cliché will, I assure you, kill any humorous intention deader than the proverbial doornail. So make sure that your needles remain in your haystacks, and that the poles you wouldn’t touch things with are ten-foot, not 100-foot. (Both of these are actual examples I’ve seen in contest entries. How would you pick up a 100-foot pole, anyway?)

When in doubt, ask someone outside your immediate circle of friends — your own friends may well be making the same mistake you are.

(8) Does my synopsis present actual scenes from the book in glowing detail, or does it merely summarize the plot?

The synopsis, like everything else in your contest entry, is a writing sample, every bit as much as the chapter is. Make sure it lets the judges know that you can write — and that you are professional enough to approach the synopsis as a professional necessity, not a tiresome whim instituted by the contest organizers to satisfy some sick, sadistic whim of their own. (Even in those instances where length restrictions make it quite apparent that there is behind-the-scenes sadism at work. Believe me, writerly resentment shows up BEAUTIFULLY against the backdrop of a synopsis.)

Don’t worry about depicting every twist and turn of the plot – just strive to give a solid feel of the mood of the book and a basic plot summary. Show where the major conflicts lie, introduce the main characters, interspersed with a few scenes described with a wealth of sensual detail, to make it more readable.

(9) Does this entry fit the category in which I am entering it?

If you have the SLIGHTEST doubt about whether you are entering the correct category, have someone you trust (preferably another writer, or at least a good reader with a sharp eye for detail) read over both the contest categories and your entire entry. Yes, even this close to the deadline. This is a crucial decision.

(10) Reading this over again, is this a book to which I would award a prize? Does it read like finished work, or like a book that might be great with further polishing?

It’s a very, very common writer’s prejudice that everything that springs from a truly talented writer’s keyboard should be pure poetry. Even first drafts. However, there are in fact quantities of practical storytelling skills that most of us poor mortals learn by trial and error.

Although contests tend to concentrate on as-yet unrecognized writing talent, they are simply not set up, in most cases, to reward the writer who is clearly gifted, but has not yet mastered the rudiments of professional presentation. And this is very sad, I think, because one of the things that becomes most apparent about writing after a judge has read a couple of hundred entries is that the difference between the entries submitted by writers with innate talent and writers without is vast. An experienced eye — of the kind belonging to a veteran contest judge, agent, or editor – can rather easily discern the work of what used to be called “a writer of promise.”

In the past, writers of promise were treated quite a bit more gently than they are today. They were taken under editorial wings and cherished through their early efforts. Even when they were rejected, they were often sent notes encouraging them to submit future works. (Occasionally, a promising writer will still get this type of response to a query, but the sheer volume of mail at agencies has rendered it rare.)

Now, unfortunately, writers of promise, like everybody else, tend to have their work rejected without explanation, so it’s extremely difficult to tell — even after months or years of patient querying — where one’s own work falls on the talent spectrum. To put it as kindly as possible, until you have weeded out all of the non-stylistic red lights from your contest entries, you truly cannot gain a realistic feel for whether you need to work more on your writing or not.

If you are indeed a writer of promise – and I sincerely hope you are – the best thing you can possibly do for your career is to learn to conform your work to professional standards of presentation. This is one of the best reasons to enter contests like the PNWA that give entrants feedback, just as is one of the best reasons to take writing classes and join a writing group: it gives you outside perspective on whether you are hitting the professional bar or not.

Oh, and it helps to be lucky, too.

Best of luck, everybody. Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

Here we are at our last installment of book category choices, the nonfiction array. Granted, most of the sections of the PNWA contest are devoted to various flavors of fiction, but as a memoirist myself, I would be the last to slight all of you brave and excellent writers of nonfiction.

Like genre, NF categories are the conceptual boxes that books come in, telling agents and editors roughly where it would sit in a bookstore. By telling an agent up front which category your book is, you make it easy for her to tell if it is the kind of book she can sell.

In a way, nonfiction writers have an easier time boxing their books, for the nonfiction categories give a much rougher indication of shelf location than the fiction. In fact, the categories used in the publishing industry are not necessarily the same as those used by bookstores. In my own area, for instance, I have noticed that Barnes & Noble tends to shelve biography, autobiography, and memoir together; Amazon lumps memoir into the autobiography category. Go figure.

As when you are querying fiction, the category designation belongs in the first paragraph of your query letter, as well as on the title page of your book and as part of your verbal pitch.
As an aside, do bear in mind that the first things an agent or editor now tends to look for in a NF book query is not just a great idea, but the platform of the writer. Platform is the industry term for a writer’s credentials or background to write a particular book. Your job in the query letter will be to sell yourself as the world’s best-qualified person to write this book.

So if, hypothetically speaking, you were entering the nonfiction/memoir category of a major regional writers’ contest, do you think it would be to your advantage if your synopsis gave some indication of your platform?

On to the categories. Fortunately, most of the them are pretty self-explanatory.

ENTERTAINING: no, not a book that IS entertaining; one ABOUT entertaining.

HOLIDAYS: a book about entertaining people at particular times of year.

PARENTING AND FAMILIES: this includes not only books about children, but books about eldercare, too.

HOUSE AND HOME: so you have a place to be PARENTING and ENTERTAINING your FAMILIES during the HOLIDAYS. This is for both house-beautiful books and how-to around the home. At some publishing houses, it also includes GARDENING.

HOW-TO: explains how to do things OTHER than house- and home-related tasks or cooking.

SELF-HELP: a how-to book for the psyche. If you have ANY platform to write one of these, do so. These are the books that can land you on Oprah if you’re NOT James Frey.

COOKBOOK: I suspect that you’ve seen one of these before, right?

NARRATIVE COOKBOOK: where the recipes are presented as part of a story, most often a memoir. Ruth Reichl’s COMFORT ME WITH APPLES is the usual example given, but my favorite narrative cookbook is Sylvia Thompson’s FEASTS AND FRIENDS.

FOOD AND WINE: where you write ABOUT the food and wine, not tell how to make it.

LIFESTYLE: Less broad than it sounds.

HEALTH: body issues for laypeople. If your book is for people in the medical professions, it should be classified under MEDICAL. Diet books are sometimes listed here (if there is a general philosophy of nutrition involved), sometimes under FOOD (if it is less philosophical), sometimes under COOKBOOK (if there are recipes), sometimes under FITNESS (if there is a substantial lifestyle/exercise component).

FITNESS: exercise for people who consider themselves to be out of shape. Usually includes diet tips, as well as exercise.

EXERCISE: fitness for people who consider themselves to be in relatively good shape, and thus do not need many diet tips.

SPORTS: exercise for competitive people in all shapes.

HISTORICAL NONFICTION: Your basic history book, intended for a general audience. If it is too scholarly, it will be classified under ACADEMIC.

NARRATIVE NONFICTION: THE hot category from a few years ago. Basically, it means using fiction techniques to tell true stories; while IN COLD BLOOD is the classic example simply everyone gives, it would today be classified as TRUE CRIME.

TRUE CRIME: what it says on the box.

BIOGRAPHY: the life story of someone else.

MEMOIR: the life story of the author, dwelling on personal relationships.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: the life story of the author, focusing on large, generally public achievements. The memoirs of famous people tend to be autobiographies.

ESSAYS are generally published in periodicals first, then collected.

WRITING: technically, these are HOW-TO books, but editors love writing so much that it gets its own category.

CURRENT EVENTS: explanations of what is going on in the world today, usually written by journalists. In this category, platform is especially important. Why? Well, if you are not already a recognized expert in a current event field, your book probably will not be rushed to market, and thus perhaps will not be on the market while the event you have chosen is fresh in the public mind. Bear in mind that most books are not published until over a year after a publisher buys the book. This really limits just how current the events a first-time writer comments upon can be.

POLITICS: About partisan ideology.

GOVERNMENT: about the actual functions, history, and office holders of the political realm.

WOMEN’S STUDIES: a rather broad category, into which history, politics, government, and essays related to women tend to migrate. Logically, I think it’s a trifle questionable to call one book on labor conditions in a coal mine in 1880 HISTORY, and call a book on labor conditions in a predominantly female-staffed shoe factory in 1880 WOMEN’S STUDIES, but hey, I’m not the one who makes the rules.

GAY AND LESBIAN: Much like WOMEN’S STUDIES, this category includes works from a varied spectrum of categories, concentrating on gay and lesbian people. Again, were I making the rules…

LAW: This includes books for the layman, as well as more professionally-oriented books. Some publishers compress this category with books about dealing with governmental bureaucracies into a single category: LAW/GOVERNMENT.

ARTS: a rather broad category, no? Books on the history of painting or ballet go here.

PHILOSOPHY: thought that is neither overtly political nor demonstrably spiritual in motivation.

RELIGION: books about the beliefs of the major established religions.

SPIRITUALITY: books about beliefs that fall outside the major established religions. Often, the Asian religions are classified under SPIRITUALITY, however, rather than RELIGION. Go figure.

EDUCATION: books about educational philosophy and practice. (Not to be confused with books on how to raise children, which are PARENTING AND FAMILIES.)

ACADEMIC: books written by professors for other professors. Tend not to sell too well.

TEXTBOOK: books written by professors for students. Tend to sell quite well.

REFERENCE: books intended not for reading cover-to-cover, but for looking up particular information.

MEDICAL: books for readers working in medical fields. (Not to be confused with HEALTH, which targets a lay readership.)

ENGINEERING: I’m going to take a wild guess here – books written by and for engineers?

PROFESSIONAL: books for readers working in white-collar fields that are not medical, legal, or engineering.

TECHNICAL: books intended for readers already familiar with a specific field of expertise, particularly mechanical or industrial. Unless the field is engineering, or computers, or cars, or medical…

COMPUTERS: fairly self-explanatory, no?

INTERNET: again – speaks for itself.

AUTOMOTIVE: I’m guessing these aren’t books for cars to read, but to read about cars. (Sorry, I couldn’t think of anything remotely funny to say about this. I’m pretty stressed today.)

FINANCE: covers both personal finances and financial policy.

INVESTING: finance for those with more than enough money to pay the rent.

BUSINESS: this is another rather broad category, covering everything from tips for happy office interactions to books on executive manners.

CAREERS: books for people who are looking to break into a field. Includes books on how to find a job, how to interview, how to write a resume…

OUTDOORS AND NATURE: again, rather broad, as it logically encompasses everything outside a building that does not involve SPORTS, EXERCISE, FITNESS…

TRAVEL: books on how to get there and what to do when you do get there. I used to write these, once upon a time, so if you want to know how to scrawl copy for a tight deadline while balancing a camp light on a rickety picnic table and simultaneously watching out for bears, I’m your gal.

TRAVEL MEMOIR: first-person stories about someone who went somewhere.

PHOTOGRAPHY: both books about and books of.

COFFEE TABLE BOOK: books with big, gorgeous pictures and relatively little writing.

GIFT BOOK: small books, intended as impulse buys.

Looking at this list, it strikes me as rather incomplete set of categories to explain all of reality. However, these are indeed the major categories – and as with fiction, you definitely need to specify up front which your book is.

One final word on the contest front: typically, nonfiction categories are underrepresented; most of the entries in your garden-variety NF contest will be either memoirs, history, or narrative nonfiction. Where are the cookbooks? the contest judges cry. Where is the really well-written how-to book?

I just mention. Don’t write off literary contests just because your work may not be, well, traditionally literary. A well-written book is a well-written book, and I, for one, would not be inclined to sneeze in its general direction.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Hello, readers –

Crikey! You’re very lucky, my friends, that a client of mine alerted me yesterday to a SIGNIFICANT omission in my pre-contest pep talk: I hadn’t yet discussed how to format a title page for a contest entry, had I? Mea culpa.

Most contests do require submissions to include title pages; as I read the PNWA’s rules, they do not, but still, it’s a nice touch. Among other things, it minimizes the possibility of your entry’s being mixed up with the one directly on top of it in the stack (need I even say that I’ve seen this happen?), and honestly, after you’ve agonized for months over the perfect title, don’t you want to showcase it?

To maximize the usefulness of this post, I’m going to go through the basic title page first, then show you how to narrow it down for a contest entry. Yes, I know: title pages seem pretty straightforward, right? Surely, if there is an area where a writer new to submissions may safely proceed on simple common sense, it is the title page.

Wrong.

In any submission, the title page of a manuscript tells agents and editors quite a bit about both the book itself and the experience level of the writer. There is information that should be on the title page, and information that shouldn’t; speaking with my professional editing hat on for a moment, virtually every rough draft I see has a non-standard title page, so it is literally the first thing I will correct in a manuscript. I can only assume that for every ms. I can correct before they are sent to agents and editors, there must be hundreds of thousands that make similar mistakes.

Here again is an area where I feel that writers are under-informed. Writers who make mistakes are their title pages are very seldom TOLD what those mistakes are. Their manuscripts are merely rejected on the grounds of unprofessionalism, usually without any comment at all. I do not consider this fair to aspiring writers, but as I have been bemoaning all week, I do not make the rules, alas.

On the bright side, properly-formatted title pages are rare enough that a good one will make your manuscript (or your excerpt, if an agent asks to see the first chapter or two) shine preeminently competent, like the sole shined piece of silver amidst an otherwise tarnished display.

In the first place, the title page should be in the same font and point size as the rest of the manuscript – which, as I have pointed out before, should be in 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier. Therefore, your title page should be in 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier.

No exceptions, and DEFINITELY do not make the title larger than the rest of the text. It may look cool to you, but to professional eyes, it looks rather like a child’s picture book. You may use boldface, if you wish, but that is as fancy as you may legitimately get.

“Oh, come on,” I hear some of you saying, “the FONT matters that much? What about the content of the book? What about my platform? What about my brilliant writing? Surely, the typeface pales in comparison to these crucial elements?”

You’re right — it does, PROVIDED you can get an agent or editor to sit down and read your entire submission. (Or, in the case of a contest, provided that your entry is not disqualified on sight for using a different typeface than the one specified in the rules.) Unfortunately, this is a business of snap decisions, where impressions are formed very quickly. If the cosmetic elements of your manuscript imply a lack of knowledge of industry norms, your manuscript is entering its first professional once-over with one strike against it. It may be silly, but it’s true.

Most of my clients do not believe me about this until they after they switch, incidentally. Even queries in the proper typefaces tend to be better received. Go ahead and experiment, if you like, sending out one set of queries in Times New Roman and one in Helvetica. (But for heaven’s sake, don’t perform this experiment with your PNWA contest submission.) Any insider will tell you that the Times New Roman queries are more likely to strike agents (and agents’ assistants) as coming from a well-prepared writer, one who will not need to be walked through every nuance of the publication process to come.

Like so many aspects of the mysterious publishing industry, there is actually more than one way to structure a title page. Two formats are equally acceptable from an unagented writer. (After you sign with an agent, trust me, she will tell you how she wants you to format your title page.) The unfortunate technical restrictions of a blog render it impossible for me to show it to you exactly as it should be, but here is the closest approximation my structural limitations will allow:

Format one, which I like to call the Me First, because it renders it as easy as possible for an agent to contact you after falling in love with your work:

Upper left-hand corner:

Your name (real name, not pen name)

First line of your address

Second line of your address

Your phone number

Your e-mail address

Upper right-hand corner:
Book category
Word count (approximate)

(Skip down 10 lines, then add, centered on the page:)

Your title

(skip a line)

By

(skip a line)

Your name (or your nom de plume)

There should be NO other information on the title page.

Why, you may be wondering, does the author’s name appear twice on the page in this format? For two reasons: first, in case you are writing under a name other than your own, as many writers choose to do, and second, because the information in the top-left corner is the contact information that permits an agent or editor to acquire the book. Clean and easy.

If you are in doubt about which category your book falls within, read one of my last four postings.

Word count can be approximate — in fact, as I have mentioned before, it looks a bit more professional if it is. This is one of the advantages of working in Times New Roman: in 12-point type, everyone estimates a double-spaced page with one-inch margins in the business at 250 words. If you use this as a guideline, you can’t go wrong.

Do not, under ANY circumstances, include a quote on the title page. Many authors do this, because they have seen so many published authors use quotes at the openings of their books. Trust me: putting your favorite quote on the title page will not make your work look good; it will merely advertise that you are unfamiliar with the difference between manuscript format and book format.

While the Me First format is perfectly fine, the other standard format, which I like to call the Ultra-professional, is more common in the industry. It most closely replicates what most agents want their authors’ ultimate manuscript title pages to look like:

Upper right corner:

Book category

Word count

(Skip down 12 lines, then add, centered:)

Title

(skip a line)

By

(skip a line)

Your name (or your nom de plume)

(Skip down 12 lines, then add in the lower right corner:)

Your real name

Line 1 of your address

Line 2 of your address

Your telephone number

Your e-mail address

Again, there should be NO other information, just lots of pretty white space. After you sign with an agency, your agent’s contact information will appear where your contact information does.

Obviously, such a wealth of information is not desirable for a contest title page; in fact, it might get your entry disqualified. The trick is to put all of the information the contest rules require on the title page, and leave out the rest. For instance, the PNWA contest’s rules specify that each entry should be clearly labeled with the category in which it is being entered. For the genre categories, you are also asked to list genre; for the nonfiction categories, market and readership. Piece o’ cake.

Let’s say you are entering a gothic thriller into the Adult Genre Novel category. Your title page should look like this, centered on the page in Times New Roman or Courier 12-point:

TITLE

(skip a line)

(Gothic Thriller)

(skip 3 lines)

An entry in the Adult Genre Category of the 2006 PNWA Literary Contest

That’s it. Leave the rest of the page absolutely white.

For an entry where you also need to list market and readership, it might look something like this:

TITLE

(skip a line)

A How-to book aimed at Gen Xers

(skip 3 lines)

An entry in the Nonfiction Book/Memoir Category of the 2006 PNWA Literary Contest

Yes, I know it’s simple, and even a little boring. But it looks professional – and for those of you who missed my December-January three-week series on how to better your chances in a literary contest already know, professionalism is the first criterion contest judges note.

Good luck, everybody. And keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini