In the early days of indie, before “real indie” was a thing when people were simply getting better at self-publishing, a route opened up from that to high-list trad.
Write a book. Sell five thousand copies, somehow, in person. Be taken far more seriously than any mid lister. Yes, I know that’s what Larry Correia did. The difference between him and most people using that route is that he had the craft, talent and work ethic to make that leap stick.
Most of them didn’t. I started seeing them in panels at cons, well before Larry broke in. It went something like “I’m Anarantha Elf Princess, and my book was just bought by Ace, and they say,” said in a breathless voice. “They’re printing for a laydown of sixty thousand.” Blink blink. “I don’t know if that’s good, but I sold ten thousand off the back of my car at my amateur strip shows.”
Okay, I’m being mean. However that’s probably because my not being mean was anchored in my eyeballs, which fell off and rolled away during these spiels. Also because as, then, a published writer with 20 years experience I kept looking at these people and wondering who was dumber: them or the editors thinking they’d take them to glory.
I’ll note that I only know two people who came in this way who made any success of their career. (Not that I followed everyone of them. Also, this is not much different from buying by any other method.) I’ll also note that I’m SURE Baen did due diligence of reading MHI and realizing it was gold. I’m not sure anyone at the other houses read the elf princesses (they were always female) they hired this way.
I knew the little princesses were doomed when I heard the following sentence come out of their mouths, usually with a giggle thrown in for good measure: “I decided to self-publish because I didn’t want anyone changing my words.” Usually this was followed by any number of self-aggrandizing explanations of their amazing artistry and how no mere “editor” (by which they usually meant copy-editor) could understand it.
Look, yeah, there are people who would be destroyed by a bloody-minded copy-editor. They’re those writers that are very hard to imitate and who depend on style a lot. Right now the only names in mind are Bradbury and Borges, but there are others.
And there are bad copy-editors, including the one who almost gave me an aneurism by translating random phrases of Sword and Blood using google translate. (You only think I’m joking.) To, you know, make the book more “authentic.” Or the ones who correct invented languages. Or–
However, if you think that a good editor/copy editor (by preference both, and yes, if you ping me I have recommends) can’t enhance your books, you might not be thinking of this as a career.
I have, at this point, somewhere around 40? full length novels under my belt. Sixty if you throw in the ones I don’t admit to some of them because I can’t, legally. I have a lot of story telling muscle memory. MOSTLY — mostly — I avoid ridiculous mistakes.
But I am human and subjected to the frailties of the flesh (bah. Who designed this meat-suit? And why isn’t it actionable under lemon laws) and in at least two of my last books before leaving Colorado, I made major plot mistakes I should not have made, but my mind wasn’t working right. And I almost made the same mistake last year with Bowl of Red, on account of starting it while sick, so the mind-image was flawed. It took me and my editor looking at it and going “tilt, tilt, tilt, that’s not…. right” to fix the ending, and spin Lights Out And Cry out on its own, which made BOR much stronger, and LOAC has its own fans.
This was facilitated because Indy is its own thing, with its own rules, and its own market place. More on that in a minute.
Also, in recent memory I made a mistake that is by definition newby: I started a book 50 pages before the story begun. This is something I’d never done in reality as a newby, but I invented it to make it as a seasoned pro. (No, it didn’t go out that way. In fact, it’s one of the almost finisheds waiting.)
So, no one is really beyond editing, though many of the books I write don’t, in fact, need editing in the structural sense. (They all need copy-editing. I’m lysdexic. Also prone to start a sentence and get lost in the middle of it. AND to make things worse, if I’m sick I catch verb tensitis in which verb tenses change without warning.) But then I’ll throw one that does, and it’s always unexpected, and what causes me to do it causes me not to see it. If the beta reader I’m married to either can’t do it, or can’t see it, well… it needs an editor. Again, this is why I have one even in indie. And why I pay a copy-editor.
Which probably has some of you scratching your heads and asking yourselves what the point of indie is.
Well, besides the fact that you make more money (yes, there is some more work, too) there would not seem to be much, right? It would justify the sneering lip curl that relegates indie to those who don’t want to work for “the real” thing of getting traditionally published.
Except that’s wrong. Perhaps the only people who know how wrong it is are those like me who have done it both ways. (Get your minds out of the gutter, or at least buy them a snorkel. The poor things are drowning.)
Pull up a rock.
I’ve said that if it weren’t for indie as an option, I’d have finished my two collaborations with Baen (Uncharted and Guardian) and my contracted last book (Darkship Revenge), taken the office down and put up a really nice craft room. By now I’d have some sort of business selling at farmers’ markets and such. And my writing would be probably only for friends’ benefit.
Why would I do that?
Because I was tired. There is a treadmill and a lack of control of schedule with traditional publishing that’s a problem, yes.
But what I was tired of, more specifically, was not writing the things I wanted to write: stories I’d carried in my head anywhere from 10 to 40 years or more. While writing stories that, while I didn’t have anything specific against writing them, were not the ones clamoring to be written, sometimes quite loudly.
I’m not throwing stones at traditional publishing in this. Yes, I know, it’s one of my favorite hobbies, just like dissing Europeans. But in this case it is not what I’m doing.
Trad Pub is a business model that requires the publishers to buy what they think will sell. Since they’re advancing money for the books, they’re entitled to put their mouths where their money is (yes, I mean that.) If they’re convinced that the only thing that will sell this year is troops of can-can elves on spaceships, well, that’s what they think will sell. And if you can come up with one of those, you can write for them. If you can’t, they won’t buy it.
Most of what they’re looking for is deluded, and based on flawed models and what they heard another house is doing well with, or what some article on PW was persuasive about selling. Their mind-set is demonstrably flawed, proven by steeply falling print runs. BUT it is their business, and they are not your mom or your patron. They can run it any way they want to.
But my thinking their running their business the way they want to is valid, doesn’t mean it’s ideal for some writers to work with.
Probably the writers that most benefit from going indie are, weirdly, the ones who could do very well writing whatever the publishers think it’s hot this year. Only, you know, these writers come from a marketing or business background and can look at markets and understand them. Then go and write books to order so they catapult to the top of underserved markets.
That’s fine. I’m slightly envious of them, but only slightly, because more and more it looks like those authors spend most of their time researching and businessing, and only like 25% writing. And I’m in this because I want to write.
And I don’t actually hire people who can do the businessing, because I’m the second type of authors who should go indie: I don’t do it to business better, but because I get stories handed to me, which come with the force of obsessions and which I must write or I will stop eating, sleeping, or functioning.
Note I’m not saying this is good. It just is. And postponing stories for 40 years is ultimately very, very bad for me.
Also, indie allows me to make a living this way, at least if things stop breaking/cats stop getting ill, and I can write 8 hours a day. (It’s the goal this year.)
Now, because I’m me, and I grew up reading whatever fell on my lap when I was bored, so that my middle name is Eclectic (actually Aecletic. It’s the A.), my tastes are weird, and whatever passes for my plotting brain (I think navel lint, really) comes up with the weirdest fusion dreams, most of my stuff is at best odd, and at worst Odd.
But it’s mine. And I’ve been waiting a long, long time. And I want to write it.
I don’t work in indie to keep my words untouched (words can get very odd in the middle of a novel) or so that I can be a bonehead about plot.
I write indie because these things need to see the light of day at last. And I’m going to let them.
Mad Genius Club 
38 responses to “Writing What You Want To Write”
should we be afraid of excited?
*or
Inclusive OR
Um…. I don’t know. i have a gut feeling my best writing is ahead of me. of course could be the illusion of a senile brain.
I went indy after a couple of years of trying to get an agent interested – I did get feedback from one agent, who loved-loved-loved the MS for my first novel, but who regretfully conceded that he didn’t think he could sell it to Big Publishing. A handful of other agents said complimentary things about my writing, but pretty much the same. Ah well … on to Plan 2. Grumpy Old Bookman, who was a book blogger in England back in the day, advised giving the trad-pub route a year. If no joy, then go indy.
I am forever grateful that digital printing of small runs was technologically feasible, then. That and Amazon developing the Kindle reader, and opening it up to anyone who wanted to submit their books. That was a game changer, and us indies were happy enough to grab with both hands.
However, if you think that a good editor/copy editor (by preference both, and yes, if you ping me I have recommends) can’t enhance your books, you might not be thinking of this as a career.
Probably too old to make a career of it now. That’s my question. When to find a copy editor? How many revisions should you do before looking? As a retired beginner, I don’t have money for it. I may not have the talent to actually write something anyone would want to read, I don’t know. I’ve done multiple revisions of short stories and submitted a few, but not one published. Maybe all the places tried to contact me at the same time and jammed up the internet?
A beta reader told me my writing’s not at the point someone would spend their money to buy. This person has published, so I have to think they are correct. How do you know when you’re ready? How many words/stories do you have to write? I don’t know.
You should get a copy editor when you’re ready to actually publish.
Um…. you need six beta readers, before you know if something is wrong.
Heh, I don’t even know six people who would read my stuff. Sarah, are you talking about novella and novel length works, or short stories too? The person who told me my stuff wasn’t ready is a published author, so I give some weight to that.
What genre does he or she write in? That can make a difference. And what did the person mean? I’ve read work for people that “wasn’t ready to publish” because of one or two fixable problems, things I provided ideas about fixing. I’ve also read stories that lacked an actual plot, although the descriptions and dialogue were better than anything I’ve ever managed to produce. That would be a more difficult flaw to correct. Or, in that case, have a good copy-editor work through the piece, then sell it as literary fiction, because that genre is far more forgiving of weak plots with beautiful language.
TXRed, the reader does SF, same as my story. Reader liked my dialog and grammar/punctuation. Maybe had too much “business” in it – characters doing things while speaking to identify who it is. I do that to keep from saying said, said, said when characters are talking. I hate said, said, said. I know a lot of writers say “said” becomes invisible to the reader, so use it. I just can’t, at this point anyway. Mostly it was characters sounding the same, no variance in action, same pacing throughout the story. The other things were probably just getting used to showing, not telling. I certainly appreciated the advice, as I’m just three years into trying to write. Of course, I had only roughed and done some editing on it, so maybe it just needs more work.
You could always throw it out there to the wolves… I mean public. There are several free sites out there where you can gather eyeballs to your work and get feedback from actual readers.
I do that with some of my stuff. Dunno what they see in the stuff- I also write sci-fi- but several of them seemed to like it.
If you want to get better, it starts with actually doing the writing, which seems like you’re already hip deep in. You’ll make mistakes. Sure you will. Everyone does. Bradbury did. Heinlein did.
What matters is what you do *after* you identify a mistake, even if you just have a feeling. That’s where the knowledge and experience come in. What Miss Sarah does on reflex comes because she’s got the experience to know.
Good luck to you, and write often.
Thanks for the advice. I need to figure out which wolves to send it to….
Have you looked at Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer? His guide to pacing is excellent, and very clear. Orson Scott Card’s book on Characterization also has lots of examples, and is easy to read. I go back to both from time to time.
What Dan suggested can also work. I post excerpts on my blog, but there are other sites that allow you to post things and to get comments. Some won’t be helpful, but others may point out something that gives you an idea for changing things, or tightening up pacing.
I sympathize with trying to avoid “said.” Elmore Leonard used nothing but said – when he used it at all. Otherwise he used vocabulary, body language, and and other things to describe the tone and speaker without using tags at all. Most of us aren’t Elmore Leonard. (Wish I was. He sold a lot of books!) I found that using a few “saids” and then using tags, descriptions, and other things helps.
I second the recommendation of Dwight Swain. not only did he take me from unpublishable to published consistently and professionally, but did the same for my husband and, later, our kids.
I’ve never heard of Dwight Swain, I’ll look it up.
I try to use things other than said, but I guess sometimes it comes out as a stage direction. I generally like a person to lean forward or back in a chair before speaking so I insert the speakers name. I only do things like that when there’s more than two people speaking.
The book Techniques of the Selling Writer is responsible for my having a career.
Scott is it short story? If it is shoot it to me at my hotmail? If not, shoot me the first 2 chapters. Unless I’m the one who told you to abandon all hope. Sorry, I should be reading in group, but I’ve been …. a little busy.
No, Sarah, it wasn’t you. 🙂
It’s a novel. I’ve split it into scenes, haven’t decided on chapter breaks. How many pages would you like?
25 or so.
Got it. I’ll send it in a few minutes. Thanks.
I’ll try to get back to you by Monday. I’m about to do instapundit posting and go to bed. Truly horrible night last night.
No problem. I’ll send it in odt and docx format.
docx is best.
Just sent. odt and docx.
or have a structural editor take a look and tell you how to fix, though that will cost more than copyedit.
novel. Um…. WHY do you have to give weight to that? Unless this person writes exactly what you want to write, it means nothing.
The first published author I ever met almost convinced me to give up writing, because her writing and mine were so different, she was screaming at me about geology and I was going “just because there are caves? You do realize there are places with caves in the world?” But she kept telling me I wasn’t ready.
And then I sold my first book, and happened to give it to her to read. She send me a thing on how it was horribad and no one would ever buy it. It had already sold, and was published in hard cover, which she never achieved.
So, you know? No, I don’t think you should give ANY weight to “this person is published.” Published doesn’t mean a good critiquer. Heck, it doesn’t mean they know anything about other subgenres, let alone other genres.
Honestly, in the beginning the best thing is to find a group of newbies and trade critiques, till you figure out who you can trust.
We had a group of ten completely unpublished people in the nineties. And yeah, we sucked, and so did our critiques to begin with. But we grew. Eventually we were all professionally published, and a couple are bestsellers….
And some of the opinions I tuned out because some writers think there’s only one way to write something.
Honestly, in the beginning the best thing is to find a group of newbies and trade critiques, till you figure out who you can trust.
Thus, the creating of A Literary Horde. It’s been a bit slow there lately.
And I haven’t been very good about it.
I’m indy because I knew what I was writing was so Odd no publisher would mess with it, and because I was very lucky. Amazon had just made indy semi-easy*, I fell into MGC, ATH, PG’s blog and a few others so I learned some of the things to do, and I’d written a lot of fiction and non-fiction, so I had the ability to park rump in chair to write for, oh, up to 10 hrs per day if needed.
Lightning didn’t strike with my first book, or my first series. It wasn’t until the first of the Merchant books that I got amazing lucky. But hard work and long-tail sales have made a sort of luck. And I can’t get the stories to leave me alone, so I write.
*Put Word document into Caliber, convert to HTML, fix everything, convert to MOBI, run through Amazon’s previewer, fix the HTML and try again, then upload. Convert HTML into EPUB, upload into NOOK previewer, fix and repeat. Still easier than the SmashWords “Meat Grinder.”
A good editor/reviewer/collaborator/guy who reads your stuff while you’re writing and makes creative comments/spouse can make a story twice as good before it finishes getting written. A bad (see above) can wreck a story 900mph into a bridge piling. Had an editor/reader once feed me a suggestion about *not* killing a character that made the whole end of the story turn upbeat with happy readers, and my wife (of all people) suggested the full-circle-returns-to-the-origin for Lazy Dragon far more appropriate for young readers. I’m not as bad at endings as a certain horror writer of great renown, but as a ‘discovery’ writer, sometimes the trousers need a little adjustment at the end. Ok, a lot of time.
Yes.
“I’m lysdexic. Also prone to start a sentence and get lost in the middle of it. AND to make things worse, if I’m sick I catch verb tensitis in which verb tenses change without warning.“
I do these things. Not on purpose. Also, write tiny sentences sometimes because the temptation to write the mother of all horribad, sprint-on (because its faster) sentences which is a symptom of too much academia (I got better) in the past then turn into an entire nearly page length paragraph that leaves the audible reader out of breath.
I need to write more. Because the plot bunnies will be the end of me (originally, that was the Ned of me, which strikes me as too funny on lack of sleep).
I kind of take the attitude of “sentence first, periods later,” and the only thing dabbling in dictation has done is make me more industrious about breaking those paragraph long critters into something manageable.
Well I certainly bees eclectic: SF, westerns, mens’ adventure, horror (that only if extremely well written). Never could get into romance though did edit one Regency for a friend of a friend and didn’t hate the experience.
My forte is copy edits as grammar and typo bobbles seem to leap off the pages at me. With betas it’s all about continuity, flow, and that indescribable yet palpable “feel” that this is a good read. Also have served as a subject matter expert for certain technical details, stuff like exotic weapons or space operations in low Earth orbit.
Sadly my best authors all seem to have hit slumps at the same time. This results in my combined fears that the dams will all burst concurrently and swamp me or that I will reach the end of my string and leave them all hanging.
Note: most definitely not a solicitation for new work though in this dry period I did find myself copy editing a published work by one of my favorite authors and sent the markups off to her editor. Of course she hasn’t spoken to me since, and so it goes.
I figured it out.
It was the adderal. I find myself in the weird position of having to take adderal to sit butt in chair, but adderal interfering with words. I’m going to try…. habit. Heaven help me.
May heaven grant you sufficient constitution and endurance to weather what trials may come. May there be sufficient respites between to support sanity and coffee habits. And may you always find sufficient strength, or at the very least, bloody minded determination to continue on the path you’ve chosen.
How I started self-publishing: https://jaglionpress.com/2022/03/30/where-did-that-come-from-the-self-publishing-gig/
I would go traditional publishing but I was never sure I could make it through the slush-pile. Self-publishing was easy, but I suck at the sales part, which is why I haven’t sold much. I know my books would be far better if they were edited but again, I don’t think my stuff would make it through the slush-pile and I cannot afford to pay for editing. It’s a conundrum.