GENREALITY

You may have noticed, especially in urban fantasy, science fiction, fantasy and horror, anthologies are going through something of a surge in popularity.  They’re everywhere, from year’s best to theme to reprint to original.  Anthologies are great.  For readers, they’re a buffet of different stories and authors.  For writers, they’re an opportunity to reach a new audience, to write outside one’s normal series or other milieu, to experiment, or expand on details of a book series.

How do I decide when to write for an anthology?  I have a few key criteria.

1) Do I want to work with the editor?  Is the editor someone I’ve had a good experience with before, or someone I’ve always wanted to work with?  When P.N. Elrod called me (She called me!  On the phone!  Squee!) to ask if I could write for Dark and Stormy Knights, I could not say no, not in a billion years.  If the editor is someone I really like and really want to work with, I’ll say yes.

2)  The theme/idea is intriguing and I’m looking for a challenge.  I’m in an anthology coming out in just a few weeks, Armored.  When the editor contacted me about this, I think my initial reaction was along the lines of OH HELL YES.  I usually get invited to write for urban fantasy/werewolf/etc. anthologies, so getting invited to write for something like this, so outside my usual camp, was a welcome jolt.  Of course I said yes.  Sometimes it’s a simple matter of thinking, “that sounds like fun.”   (And this is why it’s often hard to say no.  Sometimes, they all sound like fun!  So I wait for that jolt to brain to make me say yes.)

3)  I already have a story written or in mind that’ll fit.  For the Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance, I already had a story written that I adapted for the market.  I’ve used anthology invitations to give me an excuse to write stories I haven’t had time to write otherwise (that’s how I finally got around to writing T.J.’s origin story for Running with the Pack).

I’m always going back to that “learn to say no” goal.  Right now, “that sounds like fun” usually isn’t enough to get me to say yes to an anthology.  I’m trying to limit how many short stories I commit to writing each year to something like 4 or 5.  I don’t want to commit to something half heartedly, because I want to leave one of those slots open for those golden opportunities that sometimes come along.  That emergency call from a prestigious editor who had an author drop out of an anthology at the last minute and therefore needs a story right now — which is how I got into Warriors.

These days, most of the anthologies I write for are by invitation.  But my criteria weren’t much different when I was sending stories out to anthologies with open submission policies and a slush piles.  Was it prestigious?  Did I like the editor?  Did the idea intrigue me?  Not a bad set of guidelines for any kind of market, I think.

If you want to write commercial fiction, modern publishing schedules require you to be prolific — writing a book a year at the very least.  Many publishers want books in an ongoing series every six months.  Every four months isn’t unheard of.  Most genre authors I know are so grateful for the ability to make a living (or near to it) writing fiction, they throw themselves into these schedules, working as hard as they can to be able to keep on making a living.  You don’t say no, you write as much as you can, you network and self-promote like a demon.  You’re constantly hustling for the next contract, the next gig.

Which leads me, inevitably, to a discussion about burnout.

2009 – 2011 were busy, traumatic, amazing, awesome years for me.  My series established itself as consistently bestselling, I branched out into YA and stand-alone novels, my short stories appeared in prestigious markets and got a ton of recognition.  I switched publishers, traveled extensively, went on my first real book tour, and wrote a Kitty book every six months.  And the whole time, I could feel myself burning out.  When I blew out my voice out last summer, that clinched it:  I couldn’t keep up this pace and stay healthy and/or sane.

It takes awhile to get into a burn-out situation — if I say yes to every anthology invitation or writing opportunity I get right now, I’m not going to feel the crunch until six to twelve months later, when all those stories come due.  Signing three book contracts in a year seems great, until two years later when you have a rough draft, a revision, a set of copyedits, and a set of galleys for four different books on your desk at the same time.  All due the week you’re supposed to fly off to a major national convention.  (This has happened.)  I actually set myself up for burnout around 2007-2008.  Kitty hit the NYT list for the first time in 2008, and that opened a lot of doors — and I walked through almost every one of them, because I couldn’t bear to pass up those opportunities.  If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t do things any differently, but I did learn a lot about how much work I can actually take on.

A burnout situation doesn’t happen overnight, and by the same token it takes awhile to get out of it.  I feel like I’m just now reaping the benefits of my plans to keep myself from burning out, which I started putting into place over two years ago.  2009 was around the time I added “learn to say no” to my annual goal list.  Last year, when I negotiated the contract for new Kitty books, I asked for spacing the deadlines out every ten months instead of every six months.  Happily, the publisher didn’t argue.

The payoff:  I think it’s working.  I gave myself two months off in December and January — which I could do because I have an extra four months to write the next Kitty book.  I didn’t write much of anything — revised some short stories, put together a new novel proposal, messed around with some ideas.  I went on a vacation that didn’t involve books or conventions or anything, and the trip seems to have actually de-stressed and recharged me.  Looking at my list of commitments does not (at the moment) freak me out.  At the end of my “break” about a month ago, I started the next Kitty novel — and I’m already about 30% finished with the rough draft.  I also revised a novelette for a collaborative project during that time.  And I feel good! (knock on wood…)  This is way up from my usual pace of production, and with much less gnashing of teeth than I’ve felt at this stage over the last few years.  I’m torn between thinking A) something must be horribly wrong with the book, or B) maybe I really did manage to hit the reset button and get myself out of that burnout situation.  My friends have noticed a difference in my mood and general amiability — and they’ve informed me I’m not allowed to work on four books at a time anymore.  Word.

I’m taking notes and paying attention to what I’m doing so I can keep this up and have a strategy in place for if I start burning out again.  I’m not taking “learn to say no” off my goal list anytime soon.  I’ve learned that writing a book every 8-10 months rather than every 6 months is a much more sustainable pace for me.  We’ll see how this goes over the next year or so, and if I’m feeling as good at the end of the year as I do now.  Tweaking and adjustments to my schedule will be ongoing, I think.

If I had to offer advice on the subject, I’d say this:  like so much else in this business, listen to your gut.  If something feels wrong, figure out what you need to do to make it right.  Making it in this business is tough and requires a huge amount of constant effort.  But if you burn yourself out, especially to the point of making yourself unhealthy, you’re not doing your career any favors.

Over the last week I’ve gotten a couple of questions that I always have a hard time answering.  In fact, these are two of the most common questions I get, which makes not knowing how to answer them pretty laughable.  You’d think I’d have developed a canned response, or at least something short and useful I can say that delivers the information the questioner is looking for.  But every time someone asks them, I hem and haw, because the questions always startle me a bit, no matter how often I hear them.  My answers seem to require explanation.  Since I know you’re super curious, here are the questions:

How long do you spend writing each day?

I have a hard time answering this because it varies wildly, and I don’t always know what people mean by “write.”  I’m afraid they have this picture of me sitting down, putting my hands on the keyboard, and typing for x-number of hours straight, then getting up, leaving the desk, and having dinner and watching TV like a person with a standard office job.  When of course it isn’t like that at all.  I may only spend an hour or two a day actually writing — and that’s spread out over five hours, with bouts of research, thinking, making tea, walking the dog, and so on in between.  But that doesn’t count the moment when I’m at the stove making dinner and the brilliant denouement for the current novel suddenly hits me and I have to go write it down right then, or the time I spend reading a book and thinking about how a certain authors plots thrillers, or the research I do and the notes I take, some of which will make it in the book and some of which won’t, but I won’t know which part is which until I’m done writing.  Or the time I spend daydreaming scenes.

The pat, easy answer for “How long do you write?” is “All the time.”  But I know that isn’t what’s being asked, usually.  And I have to admit I hesitate saying, “Just an hour or two,” because I fear that makes the job seem easier than it really is.  So my answer, which ought to be a simple number, ends up being a long, rambling explanation, as above.

I want to write a book.  How do I start?

Hooboy.  This one.  So many people have a book in them.  Books are ubiquitous, they’re such a good way to share stories and deliver information, why shouldn’t just about everyone have a book in them?  But what if you want to write a book — and you’re not a writer?  I suspect that many people who ask this question are not really writers, because if they were they wouldn’t need to ask.

I don’t know how to answer this question because I never had to figure out how to start.  I just wrote.  I did it for school, I did it for fun, and when I realized I wanted to write for a living, I just did more of it.  I read a ton of books, so I knew how it worked.  It wasn’t a mystical thing, it was just getting words on the page and seeing how they turned out.  I wrote because I enjoyed it, because I had these amazing stories playing out in my mind and writing was the simplest way to get them out and do something with them.

When someone asks, “How do I start?”, I often wonder what the thing is that’s keeping them from putting words on the page.  I usually tell them to start by keeping a journal, so they can practice putting down those words without the mental block of having to write a novel or a book, which must seem like a vast challenge to the uninitiated.  If they’re meant to write, once they start they won’t be able to stop.  Secretly, though, I think, If they were meant to write, they’d be doing it already.

Seems uncharitable, but there it is.

A story can’t just be about a cool idea.  It has to be about the implications of the cool idea — what does it mean, who does it affect, and how?  Many writers talk about how ideas are cheap — ideas are the easy part. (Though a talent for coming up with truly wacky, out-there ideas that no one has ever seen before is a treasure.  A person with this talent must still find ways to express such ideas in a way that interests other people.) I think this is true.  I have notebooks filled with ideas — scrawled notes, a paragraph or two of description, a character sketch that must have seemed marvelous when I wrote it down.  But without a story to hang the idea on?  It stays in the notebook.

How to do that?  How to take that strange, funny idea, big or small — What if my dog could talk?  What if everyone under the age of ten suddenly vanished? — and turn it into a story?  Not just a story, but a story that other people want to read?  (I’ve started telling myself that writing is easy.  It’s writing things that other people want to read that’s the hard part.  It’s the difference between being a hobbyist and being a professional.  If I want to be a professional, I can’t forget about my audience.)

When I’m turning an idea into a story, I try to find the character:  who would be most affected by this story?  In the idea above — what if everyone under the age of ten vanished — the obvious choice is the mother of one of these vanished children.  But what if I didn’t take the obvious route?  What if I chose a father as my main character?  Or the childless local police detective who’s set on the case?  Oh, doesn’t that feel fraught?  And that’s how the story grows.  I start with a limitless number of paths leading away from the idea, and I travel down the one that rings a little crystal bell in my brain that says this is the one, this is the story I want to tell.

The story is about that childless police detective who suddenly finds herself living in a childless world.  Of course she must discover what happened to the children, and as the writer I must make decisions about what happened to the children, how they return, or if they return.  And there’s another crystal bell:  maybe the children don’t return.  The story takes place ten years later, and the mystery has never been solved.  New children have been born, but there’s an entire generation — now aged ten to twenty — missing.  Junior high and high schools lay silent.  Colleges are faced with a decade of empty dorm rooms.  What will Texas do without high school football?  And so on.  Maybe that’s the story:  have people picked up and moved on?  Is the detective still working on the case?  How does she move through this world with no teenagers?  Now my story isn’t about the idea, it’s about my character:  what does she want?  How does she grow and change?  What conflict is she dealing with?  How does that conflict resolve?  Maybe she solves the mystery of the lost children — but it doesn’t resolve her personal conflicts the way she thought it would.  Maybe she doesn’t solve the mystery, but finds an unexpected peace despite this.  I’ll probably need another plot twist — someone from a federal agency she’s been working with or against, an external disaster that prompts my character to action.

At this point, I start to encounter what the story is really about:  coping with loss, with an unsolved mystery, with survivor’s guilt, with failure.  I need to start thinking of the scenes that will best show all this, and draw the reader into this rather horrifying world.  Maybe the original story starts to change — maybe it’s only children five and younger who vanish.  Maybe that would best illustrate the story I want to tell.  Or maybe I should make it worse — children under fifteen.  Maybe I need two main characters — one who lost a child and one who didn’t — to best illustrate themes I want to portray.

In the course of writing, I’ll circle back to the idea again and again.  Both the story and the idea will evolve.  By the time I’m done, the original idea that started the whole thing will most likely be invisible, because the heart of the story — my characters and how they deal with loss and a changed world — will be the real reason people want to read it.

We have another theme week for you:  writing spaces.  Where we write, and what it means.

Here’s my space:

My office is a second bedroom in the house.  I do most of my writing at a desk, working on a desktop computer with a rather small flat screen.  The desk is full of chaos, because my brain is a bit “out of sight, out of mind,” and if I don’t want to forget about something — story outline, bills that need paying — I have to keep it right there where I can see it.  I know how to find everything, honest!  Stuff I want to keep out of the way, but still visible, I pin to the bulletin board.  My goal lists and project lists go there.

I put a lot of fun things in my office — I like having it be a warm and happy place, so that I like spending time there.  Lily the dog usually naps under the desk, which is lovely.  And my life-size cardboard Thor is quite the inspiration to me, I must say.

For a stretch of time a few years ago, I wrote a bunch on my laptop, spread out on the sofa.  I finished a couple of novels this way, because sitting at my desk was a drag and I had to change location to get things done.  Then I invested in a much better office chair — and I haven’t left my desk since.  That was a great lesson for me:  good, comfortable equipment, can make a huge difference.  Uncomfortable equipment makes me fidgety, and I won’t get work done.  So, invest in the good stuff, keeping in mind that what works for someone else may not work for me.

Lately, I’ve been trying to shake things up a little, to make working on the road easier and more productive.  I’ve done a bunch of traveling over the last three years, and I’ve learned that it really cuts into my output.  I’d like to change this, if I can.  I’m not fond of carrying a laptop with me, and I usually don’t — it’s the issue of comfort, again.  The laptop, while it has its uses, drives me bonkers, so I usually leave it at home.  This year, I’m going to try something else:  I got an iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard to go with it.  The keyboard is the size of a standard laptop keyboard, and works great.  (I never had a problem with the laptop keyboard, it was lugging the damn thing around that I didn’t like.)  I found a word-processing app that’s compatible with Word, which is what I usually use.  So far, I’ve found that this setup is much more portable than a laptop.  I don’t have to take it out of my bag to go through airport security.  I can set it up on my lap without feeling the need to move to a desk or table.  I even brought it to a coffee shop once.

Writing space and location is another one of those variables that really does make a difference, and it behooves us to experiment to find the arrangement that makes us the most comfortable and productive.