Yeah, I Wanted To Be A Novelist!

I was going to do a riff on Labor Day, but I just reread Donis Casey’s excellent piece that she posted on Thursday titled “So You Want To Be A Novelist”.   She does a good job at capturing the difficulties, the terror, the stress, and the pain that sometimes goes along with being a writer.

But yes, I’ve always wanted to be a novelist.  All my life. And, yes, there is a downside that includes hundreds and hundreds of hours spent alone in front of your laptop, your only company being the characters in your head.  The only conversations you have are the ones you make up. The only life you have are the adventures in your imagination.

It can lonely.  Luckily for me, I can take a break, go downstairs and hug my wife and pet my dog.

Obviously, there’s an upside. The joy when your editor finally signs off on your novel.  The thrill of seeing the cover of your new book.  The kick of opening up a box and seeing a dozen copies of your new mystery about to be released.

I love it when I’m out of taking a walk and someone comes up to me and asks, “Hey, are you the writer?”  Or, going into the grocery store and having a neighbor tell me how much they loved my last book.  Or, getting my haircut and see a set of my books on the shelf.

Before I was published, I’d go to book conferences and sit in the audience and listen to panels of authors talk about writing and publishing and crime. I wanted to be on those panels.

And now I am…at least I was until the damned pandemic.

Certainly, there’s a lot of work involved with writing a novel. But I love thinking about how my characters come to life in the minds of my readers, how they are captivated by stories I create, how invested they get in the plots.  I smile when someone tells me that they couldn’t put down my latest novel. And, I love doing book signings, book events, and talking to book clubs.

And I love it when my agent sends me a royalty check.  I once heard that only about 250 writers in the world can make a real living writing novels.  I’m not one of them.  But I get paid to write books.  That makes me a professional novelist and there’s a certain pride I can take in saying that.

I’ll close by paraphrasing a writer friend of mine, Jeffrey Siger.  He said, “Writing is a hard way to make a living, but it’s a great way to make a life.”

Now, a quick riff on Labor Day:

At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States in the late 1880s, the average American worked 12 hour days, seven days a week, just to make a meager living.  Children as young as 6 toiled in factories, farms, mills, and mines making even less than their adult counterparts.  Conditions were miserable.

As manufacturing overtook agriculture as the primary source of jobs, unions came into being.  As a result, organized strikes and protests erupted demanding better pay and fewer hours. On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, making it the first Labor Day Parade. It was from this that a “workingmen’s holiday” celebrated on the first Monday of September began to take form.

On May 11, 1894 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago went on strike to protest wage cuts and the termination of union representatives. On June 26, the American Railroad Union called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars, in effect shutting down nationwide railway traffic. The federal government dispatched troops to Chicago to break the Pullman strike.  The result was a wave of riots resulting in the deaths of more than a dozen workers.

Congress attempted to ease the massive unrest and attempted to repair ties with American workers by passing an act making Labor Day a legal holiday. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law on June 28, 1894.

So, will I be celebrating Labor Day and taking a day off?  Nah, writer’s gotta’ write.

Stay safe, stay healthy.

A Second Hat to Wear

This past year I've had the opportunity to serve as editor on two short-fiction anthologies. In Blood Business, a noir crime/paranormal anthology from Hex Publishers, I am the assistant editor alongside the editor/publisher Josh Viola. For the 2016 RMFW Anthology, Found, to be published by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, I am the head cheese--the vato in charge of everything.

In both cases, serving as editor has been an instructive experience. For one, I'm on the other side of the editorial desk and it's enlightening to review manuscripts as they come to me. Hex invited writers with a track record in the genre and for the RMFW anthology, it was an open submission for members only. I got to see manuscripts arrive in various stages of preparation. Some read like first drafts and others were already quite polished, both in story-telling and craft.

Since the manuscripts that arrived for Blood Business came from established writers, I had my eyes opened a little more as to how challenging it is to write a good story. Mostly because we writers are always too close to our work. In our mind, we've tied together loose ends and the narrative flows in one logical current. Tightening the story shows the value of a good editor, and I hope I've been so. In my content editing, I had to be careful that I helped the writer hone the story and that I not rewrite it. Plus, many of the submitting writers have significant authorial credentials and now I'm in the lofty position of judging their work and suggesting changes, a humbling role. That concern is weighed against the publisher's desire to release a great book so Josh and I had to call them as we saw them.

My experience with the RMFW anthology has been more encompassing because I honcho the anthology from submissions through selection, editing, copyediting, cover and interior design, formatting for publication, publication as an ebook and a trade paperback, and marketing. Since we accepted open submissions, the editorial process heavily involved the R-word: rejection. We received 89 entries and I had to whittle that number down to fifteen. What helped--or hurt if you were on the submitting end--was that RMFW published strict formatting rules that I followed to the letter. That knocked 35 submissions out of the running, which was disappointing because that included stories from friends that I was looking forward to reading. The remaining 54 stories were doled out in a blind process to eleven volunteer readers, and we assigned a score to each: 0-pass; 1-maybe; 2-accept. Nine stories received a double 2 score. That meant we had to review the remaining to decide on enough stories to fill the anthology. Although I knew how subjective the process was going to be, I was still surprised how our opinions broke on many of the entries. In sending out the rejection notices, even then I had second doubts about which were the best and wished I could have included more, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

Found will be available this September, and Blood Business will hit the streets in 2017. Buy lots of copies of each and make this editor happy.

Good Advice? or Not?

When I was peddling my first novel I acquired a wonderful agent, Claire Smith, of Harold Ober Associates. She was known throughout the industry for her wisdom. The few times I needed to call her, I was absolutely terrified of sounding really, really dumb (which I really, really was) or presumptuous for calling in the first place.

But one very memorable day I called her in a state of absolute fury. I had gotten feedback from a "book doctor" an editor had contacted on my behalf. The advice was so bad I was incensed. Mainly because this man did not know a thing about the historical background. But also because he knew so little about the intent of the book and wanted to redo mine into a romance.

I told her I didn't want to be one of those temperamental prima donnas who wouldn't listen to criticism.

What was really going on of course, was that I very young and vulnerable and this manuscript had become overly important in my own mind.

I'll never forget what Claire said. She began with "Congratulations. You're starting to acquire the first hard shell that is required to become a writer. It's the first of many, if you are going to survive."

Then she gave me this advice on advice. "You don't trust nobody, kid. You don't trust your enemies and you certainly don't trust your friends. And you don't change anything just because you think they are smart. It's only when something resonates in your gut—when you know they are right that you change your work."

Her words were very freeing. I've gone by them ever since. Nailing what's wrong with a manuscript is part of the process. Advice doesn't have to come to us directly. Some times when I'm struggling and hear a talk by another author or read someone's blog, the light flashes. I know instantly what is holding up the work. It's a terrific feeling.

By this time, I've become a  lot more objective. I'm usually capable of recognizing good advice but also acutely aware of how subjective the book business is. Even if a mystery is regarded as brilliant by the critics and the buying public, it might not be my cup of tea.

I'm very cautious about "helping" newbies with their writing. I may be dead wrong. Most worrisome is not being familiar with a genre. I don't want to ruin someone. It's hard to believe that anyone would take my advice that seriously, but they might. And I might be spectacularly wrong.

It's nothing short of a miracle to stumble onto the right editor at the right house. Even more miraculous for a book to click, create buzz and go on to be a best seller.