GENREALITY

This week I was supposed to spend two days at a county quilt show that I faithfully attend every year (this is what I promised my quilter friends, anyway.) Then my daughter got the flu, my guy got stuck working late every night, my puppy sitter bailed on me, and NY decided to send me a RUSH!!-marked copy job. I was able to make it to the show for about an hour today, and I might get an hour tomorrow. Maybe. If no one throws up or works overtime or needs me to think up new and exciting ways to convince a casual browser that they simply must buy this freaking book.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could just put that on the back of novels? HEY, BUY MY FREAKING BOOK.

But onto talking about writing them instead of selling them. Since I can’t be with my quilter friends today, you guys can fill in. While I write, I’ll show you some of the photos I took at the quilt show while I was running through it this morning.

Most writers don’t quilt, so they don’t realize that writing stories is just like making quilts. (Go ahead, laugh. My quilter friends do, too.)

Consider the similarities:

A quilt is made one piece at a time, just as a story is written one page at a time. Like stories, all quilts have a beginning (preparing and cutting the fabric), middle (piecing, batting and binding) and end (quilting it all together.)

Quilts are usually made according to an established pattern or technique (just as stories are written in some type of category or genre.) Sometimes quilts are combinations of patterns (like cross-genre stories) or are made with a newly-designed original pattern (like ground-breaker stories.) Sometimes quilts are so, um, unusual that we don’t know what the heck to call them — and who hasn’t run into a story like that?

Making a quilt can be an extremely time-intensive project for which the maker gets little or no respect until they sell their quilts, win awards for them, or become known as a famous quilt maker. If you don’t and your finished quilts start piling up around the house, your family starts asking why you keep making them. Sound familiar?

Quilts are sewn together with continuous threads that have the same purpose as running threads of stories and, like a plot, follow a specific design. Some of these quilting patterns can be amazingly intricate, and some are beautifully simple. Some quilts are just loosely tied together with strategically-placed knotted threads. But no matter how it’s quilted, if there’s a break in the thread, or you leave some part of the quilt unsewn, you end up with a visible bulge or sag in the material.

The middle of a story is often the most challenging to write because often it’s not as exciting as the beginning or the end. The batting, which is the middle of a quilt, is definitely not as beautiful as the top or the backing. However, if it’s made of poor quality material, or it’s lumpy, or it shrinks, or it doesn’t support the piece, it can ruin the entire quilt. Just as a lousy middle can collapse a story.

The best quilters stay on top of what the latest trends are in their art. They can also recognize a knock-off quilt a mile away, and are just as hostile as writers when their patterns and styles are lifted by other quilters. You think RWA members get nasty with each other? Try watching two quilters square off over a copycat quilt. These women are armed with tote bags filled with razor-sharp scissors, razor-sharp rotary cutters, or they carry at least a packet of sharp needles in their pocket. We know how to use them, too, so never mess with a quilter.

Like story structure, quilt binding is very straightforward: a continuous strip of bias fabric that is sewn around the entire piece, and holds all the parts of the quilt together as well as gives it a cohesive, completed look. Although some trendy quilters disdain binding, to me no binding = unfinished. A story that has no structure = bunch of words thrown together.

Quilters play with color, texture and composition in the same way writers play with setting, characters and plot — and quilters are just as obsessive about quality, values, originality and every other little nit-picky detail that writers are. If we really don’t like something, we have been known to throw out an entire piece and start over from scratch (okay, we save the fabric. But still.)

If you make an error with your quilt’s seams (like any element of a story), you have to undo them and start over. You can try to cover up your mistakes with some quick repair work, but it usually shows.

Some quilts are made to be hung on the wall and admired from a distance, but to me the best quilts — like great stories — are the kind you can snuggle up with on a cold night.

I borrowed the magic hat from my author blog and put it to work tonight, and the winner of the Genreality Sample Me Please giveaway is:

Jennifer, whose comment began with Well that’s easy — Incarnatio!

Jennifer, when you have a chance please send your full name and ship-to information to LynnViehl@aol.com, and I’ll get this box out to you.

Thanks to everyone for joining in.

One of the ladies in my neighborhood has recently started selling Avon, and dropped off a couple of catalogs for me to look through. I haven’t used Avon products in years, but while we were talking my neighbor must have noticed how chapped my face and hands are, because she gave me some samples of skin cream.

The stuff I always use hasn’t been working very well this winter, so I tried them out. Both were so great I promptly put in an order for full-size versions, plus a couple of things I found while browsing through the catalog to see what else was in the product line.

Would I have ordered the products if I hadn’t tried them first? Probably not. For one thing, I’m cheap, and I don’t like spending money on something that may or may not work for me. The pictures in the catalog are pretty, but I can’t rub them on my dry skin to see what they’ll do.

I also liked the samples of the cologne from the Mark catalog (Avon’s line of products for youngsters) my neighbor gave me for my daughter to test. My girl is a young teen, and while I don’t mind her wearing a little makeup or cologne, I don’t want her walking around looking like a hooker or smelling like an opium den. Having access to the samples allowed her to see if she liked them and me a little parental preview (and we also ordered a bottle of one of the sample colognes we both liked.)

I’ve been an advocate of giving free books and stories to readers for a long time, and it really works the same way the Avon lady’s free samples do. If a reader gets a free read and loves it, they’re going to buy more by that author. If they don’t, there’s no sale, but no resentment, either. Now that we’re all tightening up our budgets and trying not to overspend, the opportunity to try out something for free before we buy is more important than ever.

Giving people something to read for free is one of the greatest pleasures I have as a professional writer. To me every book is someone’s gift to the world, so each time I have a giveaway, it’s like holding my own holiday and playing Publishing Santa.

Today I have a book tote filled with six books to give away; one unsigned novel from every member of Genreality plus a signed copy of my latest release:

A Long, Hard Ride by Alison Kent
Heretic: The Templar Chronicles by Joe Nassise
The Stolen by Jason Pinter
Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand by Carrie Vaughn
Stay the Night by Lynn Viehl
Primal Male by Sasha White

If you’d like the chance to win this bag of Genreality free samples, in comments to this post name the last free story or novel that you enjoyed (or if you can’t think of one, just toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST on Saturday, February 28, 2009. I’ll draw one name at random from everyone who participates, and send the winner the bag, the books, and a surprise. Btw, this giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, so our friends overseas, please join in.

At just about every other publishing blog you visit, you’ll hear writers talk about their editors. You can tell because they immediately break out and shake their biz pom poms: “My editor is great!” or “I’m so lucky to be working with him/her” or “My book is so much better because of the work my editor did.”

Not all of this gushing is false. There are great editors out there. We’re lucky so many of them are as talented as they are. And yes, most of them do make us better writers. To all of those editors, I will say a big Thank You in advance, and ask you to leave now, because I’m not going to talk about you today.

For this post, I’m going to talk about the other kind of editor. The one no one talks about openly. The editor who is not so great, who isn’t a blessing, and who many times makes us seriously consider switching our careers to something easier, like cancer research.

Once you get into the biz, you will understand how vulnerable writers are when it comes to dealing with editor problems. Because editors have so much power over our books, our advance and royalty checks and, ultimately, our careers, pro writers can’t complain openly about them. What we do is talk privately among ourselves, although even then we’re guarded, because you never know to whom that conversation may be repeated, or where that complaining e-mail might be forwarded. The end result is that very little practical, useful information is available about editors.

Not knowing who you’re working with can land you in a business relationship that makes it harder to do your job, so it pays to do a little research on an editor before you begin working with one. The best person from whom to gather reliable information is your agent, who probably already knows from dealing with other clients’ problems which editors to avoid. If you’re acquainted with other writers who work with the editor you’re researching, ask if you can give them a call or get together at a conference and talk (although inevitably most will do the obligatory pom pom shake, a few tend to be honest, as long as there will be no record of what they say.) Be wary of anything that sounds like gossip or sour grapes. Pay attention instead to real facts and tangible evidence.

See what you or your agent can find out about the editor’s track record in the industry. How much experience does the editor have in your genre? Has the editor been jumping from house to house every couple of years? Is the editor overloaded? (Finding out how many writers the editor is already editing is important, as an editor who is handling fifteen writers is going to have more time to work with you than one who is juggling thirty.)

After you receive “the call” and you have that follow-up conversation with a prospective editor about the offer and what the publisher expects of you, you can use that as an opportunity to ask how much the editor can do for you and your books. Be polite but direct – and if the editor isn’t enthusiastic, won’t offer any specifics, or becomes defensive, that’s a big red flag.

Once you’re in a working relationship with an editor who you will never cheer for, you basically have two choices: 1) request another editor be assigned to you (and it’s best to let your agent handle this) or 2) tough it out. What you choose to do really depends on how tolerant you are, and how willing your publisher is to accommodate you. It’s stressful enough trying to write and publish and promote without battling a difficult editor at the same time, so if you’re already struggling, you don’t need carry the additional weight of a strenuous business relationship. If you can do so without endangering your career, I recommend getting out of bad situations with an editor by asking for reassignment.

If for whatever reason you can’t get away from a problematic editor and must instead put up with him/her (and this is what I’ve done in the past) then you need to protect yourself. When your editor behaves in an unprofessional manner, it will likely be verbal (because editors are just as wary about records as writers) and over the phone. Keep a record of all things that are said to you (you may want to start an editor diary.) If the editor continues to be verbally abusive, you can defuse the situation by having verbal contact with your editor only when your agent can be present as part of a conference call.

Also, collect evidence in the event you need to prove the editor has been behaving inappropriately. If the editor is foolish enough to lie or be abusive to you in writing, make copies and forward them to your agent, as this may be all you need to make the switch to working with a new editor.

Two types of editors you should never tolerate:

Substance abusers – don’t work with editors you know to be alcoholics or drug users. These people are in the grip of addiction and cannot be relied upon to do their job. Substance abuse in the workplace is not romantic or understandable, nor should you tolerate it for one second.

Physical abusers – no one, and I mean no one, in this business has the right to lay a finger on you, ever. An editor who tries to have inappropriate physical contact with you or to threaten you with it through sexual harassment is a danger, and needs to be reported and removed from their job before they hurt you or someone else.

As scary as those two types of editors sound, thankfully there are very few of them in the industry. Based on my experiences and what I’ve heard from other writers, the most prevalent types of problematic editors are those who lie, and those who are indifferent. Writers have to rely on whatever their editors tell them as the truth, and an editor who you catch in a lie can never be trusted again. An indifferent editor is almost as bad as having no editor; instead of getting the help and feedback you need, you’re left out in the cold to fend for yourself.

An editor who is a liar may seem like the worst of the pair, but it’s very simple to deal with them. This is a person who you can’t ever trust, so don’t trust them with anything confidential or important. Also, it’s best to set up a system of verification — in other words, whatever the editor tells you has to remain meaningless to you until you verify it with another, more trustworthy source, like your agent.

I think the indifferent editor is tougher to handle because trying to work with them is like having a meaningful conversation with a brick wall. The classic hallmarks of an indifferent editor are 1) they don’t return your phone calls, 2) they don’t answer your e-mails and 3) they refuse to provide feedback, advice or any reasonable support.

Before you judge an editor as indifferent, be sure you’re not behaving like a pest — few editors have the time to return three or four phone calls or a half dozen e-mails per week, and you’re not the only writer they edit, so the time they can spend giving you feedback, advice and support is likely limited. But if you’re only making the most necessary contact and still get no response, chances are your editor is indifferent to you, and that’s probably not going to change. Rather than confront the editor and make a bad situation worse, first talk to your agent and get their advice on the best way to handle it.

Now let’s talk about the other ways you the writer may factor into the problem you have with an editor. That’s right, you may be the real problem, not the editor. It’s easy to blame someone else for our career woes, and why not the person who was so directly involved with our work? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a writer say, “My book would have done so much better if I’d gotten some support from my lousy editor.”

Here’s another slice of reality: editors are in the business to edit books. That’s their job description. They are not responsible for your personal success, financial situation or bestseller status. They can influence those things to a certain degree by helping you in other areas, such as getting you cover quotes, or asking for better marketing or higher print runs, but they can’t wave a magic wand and make you into a star. If they could I’m sure they would, and their jobs would be a hell of a lot easier.

Editors are also not required to be your friend, hold your hand, tell you everything is going to be all right, and listen to your latest list of problems or descriptions of your unhappy home life. Most of them do anyway, because they know only too well how much pressure we’re under and how tough it is for a writer to succeed in today’s publishing industry. Still, there are some who just cannot spare the time or the emotional room to listen to writer bullshit. This is not personal; this is how they handle working with us.

Before you decide your editor is the problem, take a good, long, hard look at yourself. Are your expectations of your writer-editor relationship realistic? Do you regard your editor as the enemy, or a co-worker? Are you cooperative or combative? Do you always blame your editor for your lack of success? Are you doing absolutely everything you can to make things work out between the two of you? Instead of always thinking “What has my editor done for me?” once in a while ask yourself “What have I done for my editor?”

I’ve worked with a lot of editors at different publishers; about a dozen total since I turned pro. Most of them have been great to work with and have made me a better writer. Some were just okay. Only two were problematic and one was a nightmare. Still, that’s a 75% success rate, which I think is pretty good considering how often and randomly I’ve been shifted around due to publisher personnel or imprint changes. For the record, I’ve never asked to be reassigned to another editor — in the beginning of my career I was too afraid to say anything, and now I just outlast them.

All writers want is a great editor who is a dream to work with and who will be our partner in success. So the next time you find yourself looking at a prospective editor, working with one who isn’t so great, or trying to decide if you should make a change, be sure you are or you’re willing to be a great writer who is a dream to work with and who can be a partner instead of an adversary. Because in reality, that’s all most editors want, too.

It figures I’d get the Friday the thirteenth post. It’s just my luck.

Right after I sold my first two novels I found and joined a local writer’s critique group. I did this because I’d never actually met any writers in person, I thought I could use some other opinions on my work, and the notice at the library said the group was open to any sort of writer.

The group was a nice bunch of middle-aged people, but during the first meeting I discovered they all wrote literary fiction. Still, I presented my contribution to the meeting, an alien birth scene that I was asked to read out loud (they required you to read whatever you brought to be critiqued.) I thought it was okay because it was an open group.

I noticed after my reading that the open group looked a little like a herd of deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming high speed passenger train. I thought some humor might lighten up things, so I told a funny story about one jackass of a doctor I’d worked with in the past, and how he had inspired one of the loathesome characters in my book. The meeting ended shortly after that.

The lady who ran the crit group called me the next day to tell me not to attend another meeting because I’d been voted out of the group. When I asked why, she said, “Well, dear, we really don’t know how to critique your sort of writing. Also, that man who was sitting next to you last night is a doctor.”

Oops.

At my first national writers conference, I received an invite to one of those exclusive highbrow publisher parties attended by the serious movers and shakers in the biz. I was extremely nervous, so I asked one of the authors who had come from my city what I was supposed to do (she had not been invited, but she had five books in print, so I figured she knew.) She told me to hand out bookmarks to everyone at the party and tell them all about my book, because that’s what all the new authors were supposed to do.

Yes. I believed her.

At the party I only handed out about ten bookmarks before I realized no one else was doing this and stopped, but the damage was done. I’d bookmarked at least three senior editors from major houses, and a superstar bestselling author whom I’d looked up to since the seventh grade.

Shortly after that disaster, a friend offered to send my latest manuscript to a friend of theirs who just happened to be at the time one of the hottest bestsellers in the biz. The friend couldn’t promise anything, but she was pretty sure the Hot One would like my work and I’d get a nice cover quote out of it.

I was so excited when I called my editor to ask if it was okay to send the manuscript. The editor told me – and this is verbatim – that I couldn’t get a quote from the Hot One because we didn’t write in the same genre. And what cover quote did I get on that particular novel? Why, one from an Amazon.com reviewer.

Those are just three instances of bad luck that I’ve had in the biz. There are many more stories I could tell you. I was such a trusting soul, and I really didn’t know anything about publishing when I signed my first contract. I always put authors and editors and publishers on pedestals, too. They were my heroes through all the lonely years I spent pursuing publication. I was so excited about meeting and working with these people. Publishing was my dream, so of course all the people involved in the business would be as wonderful as all of the books I’d treasured.

I was forgiving, too, so it took a couple more years for me to recognize that my dream had become a nightmare.

Whether I was criminally stupid or just a magnet for bad luck, I had a very rough time of it. I didn’t give up right away, either. I tried other crit groups, but I never fit in with any of them, and since the first I’ve been kicked out of three more. I did the conference thing for a couple of years, but all I got out of it was a front row seat to pettiness and pointless behavior, two knee injuries – one that put me in the hospital – several upper respiratory infections, and one really horrible dose of food poisoning. I’ve not had any luck with finding that amazing editor every writer dreams of, but most of my editors got stuck with me because of some imprint change or hiring/firing situation, so I really can’t blame them for not living up to my expectations. I probably haven’t lived up to theirs.

All this bad luck or whatever you want to call it confused me. I knew I was meant to do this thing, and yet I couldn’t get the hang of all the other-than-writing stuff I was supposed to do as an author. No matter what I did, it never seemed right. I didn’t fit in. The harder I tried, the more I seemed to screw up, and the despair over that began to suck all the joy out of writing. I was so miserable at one point I gave up, stopped doing all the author stuff, and got a day job to prepare for the inevitable.

And then something rather wonderful happened. I rediscovered the reasons why I chose to pursue publication. Not for the glam, not for the fame, and not even for the money. I worked to have my writing published because I love to write stories, and I wanted people to read them. That’s all that mattered to me in the beginning, and after going through all that misery, it was all that was left that I wanted to hold onto.

That next year was absolutely amazing. I got my game back. I sold eight books in eight weeks. I quit my new day job. Nightmare over.

I might have spent the rest of my career in blissful isolation, but by then I knew I wasn’t the only oddball in the biz. I’d heard enough horror stories to know that plenty of writers at every stage of the game were ignored, ridiculed, taken advantage of, excluded and otherwise treated badly. I wanted to do something about that, something to change the way things were. To find those writers and to talk shop, pass along what I’d learned, learn from other writers, laugh through the miserable times and party through the good ones. Even if I simply let them know that they weren’t alone, that would be enough. Because back when I was going through hell, I would have sacrificed a limb to know one writer like that.

And finally, I did something right. I decided to be that writer, and made a place in publishing for myself where I did fit in: Paperback Writer.

I still have some bad luck now and then (at the moment I’m wearing a pink T-shirt that reads “If you think this looks ridiculous, you should see the cover on my new book”) but I use it now to let other writers know how to deal with it. Maybe I’m pushing my luck by joining Genreality, but the other members haven’t talked about kicking me out yet, which after the first week is always a good sign.

Truth is, I think I’m quite lucky, even if it took a lot of misfortune to bring me here. Because this is where I do belong.