X-Raying Your Manuscript

You don't have to be from the planet Krypton to have X-ray vision. I mean, it probably can't hurt if you are, either, but it's not a necessity.

In fact, as readers, we writers have very well-developed X-ray vision, when it comes to others' manuscripts. You can read someone's work and go “Hey, you're kind of a misogynist, aren't you?” or “You must be from Stony Brook, since every single book you write is set there.” and you're probably correct.

The issue comes when we have to do it to ourselves. It's kind of like psychoanalyzing yourself—it's not easy, and all that denial is going to make it even harder. And you will deny unpleasant things, when you find them, but if your reader feels like you're preaching at them about something, even if you do get published, no one will like your book, and that's not good.

So you sit down with your manuscript and you realize, in shock, that you've been subtly hinting at the stupidity of menial labor from word one—of course, it doesn't seem quite so subtle now that you've had it thrust in your face. But what the hell are you supposed to do? Dissect your entire manuscript and fix this previously invisible preaching?

Yes.

You, the narrator, has a duty to be a bit—just a bit—impartial about your world. Now, if you have a character that thinks menial labor, Christianity, quantum physics, or the cell phone is stupid, that's fine, maybe even two characters (although that's kind of pushing it, in my opinion), but all of your characters can't possibly hate the exact same things—that's preachy, annoying, and thoroughly unbelievable.

How the hell are you supposed to fix all of that? Luckily, it's not terribly difficult, usually, just time-consuming. See, this kind of thing isn't really hidden, it's just hard for the writer to see. It's actually, more often than not, a kind of superficial fix, kind of like a snake shedding skin. You remove the offending surface from the entire body, possibly leaving a few little bits—they don' really hurt if they're diluted—and voila!

Will it make your manuscript better? I think so. Of course, if the entire point in writing the book was to preach about one thing or another, then I guess you maybe shouldn't take all of that out of the manuscript, but barring that it kind of needs to be fixed, otherwise you have an issue.

So now I scurry away to write something...not sure what, but here I go.

Tchüss,
Voss

Rules Unspoken

Now, there is no real rulebook for writing—aside from grammar, I mean—but there are things most people know when they set foot into the professional writing pond: it's not easy to sell a manuscript, editing is the devil, writers run on coffee, rejection sucks. But there's apparently some kind of secret writers' society that held arcane meetings to ban writers from sharing some of the more 'advanced' rules. Well, if there's any truth to any of this, I'm about to get a visit from pen-wielding ninjas. Hopefully I'll finish putting this up before they kill me, because I'm going to share the six biggest rules I've learned through my experiences—since five is so bourgeois. If you like them, promise you'll come to my funeral, or at least kill the next pen-wielding ninja you see in a really dramatic battle. If you don't mind.

So, the rules:

~Editors have bad days: We kind of tend to think of editors as demonic, horrible fiends that take pleasure in crushing us. But, you know what? Most editors are or were writers, and they know rejections sucks, so throw that right out the window. They also have terrible days. Friends die, spouses cheat, they get their own rejection letters, or they're just having a low biorhythm day—they're human, which means there are some days you have to be extra-impressive and pray your piece gets a fair trial.

~Rejection doesn't mean you suck: Although it does feel like that, no matter what anyone says. They could have another story like yours accepted to that anthology, or maybe you leaned too much on one style in a cross-genre project. I once got a rejection, not for the writing, but because I wrote about the big bang and they had a lot Christian fans—it's perfectly acceptable, logical, and it rolled right off my back. Of course, rejections still hurt, no matter the reasoning, and you'll normally not get the reasoning behind your rejection anyway, so it's going to hurt.

~The writing world is unfair: You might find out one day that someone just comes along, first manuscript, first time writing, and they've signed a contract with Tor. When you've been toiling and toiling at writing, gotten yourself into some small presses but nothing more—damn it's going to sting. A lot. But so much of this business is luck. You have to basically predict the future if you want to ride the trends, because by the time you find out about a trend, it's too late to write for it.

~Genre is nothing: I've shared the quote before, but it bears repeating. This is from Kay Kendron, on genre. “What we're talking about here isn't important. It's about where the book is f*cking shelved.” The first instinct a lot of genre writers have is to slap themselves into a specific genre. You shouldn't. The genre is about the last thing to consider—write what it is you want to write, and let the big wigs worry about whether it's 'urban fantasy' or 'contemporary fantasy', 'hard sci-fi' or 'space opera'. I mean, it might do you well to figure it out, if you can, but don't stress about it.

~Imperfection is awesome: In characters, worlds, even to some extent in writing, imperfection is kind of thing to include. Do you really want to read about perfect people, living in utopia, told by a grammarian? No, of course not. That's quite dull, and it's not in any of the fiction best-sellers I've read. The imperfections in your character and your world provide plot and conflict and, as for the imperfect writing, those little idiosyncratic things are called voice, and that's what writers are always looking for, it seems—why kill it?

~Fiction is not academia: Sadly, fiction writing isn't normally a focus in the public school system, and the tools are so different. In academic non-fiction, we're all taught that sentences need to be complex, running through thoughts as best they can, taking up as much as three or four lines to get out a single thought with precision—and that's what you do, because you want that high grade. However, fiction is more like poetry than non-fiction. Thoughts are best delivered concisely rather than in long, compound sentences. Think music—tension and release—rather than college lecture.

Well, since I hear the ninjas, time to post it.

Goodbye cruel world and all who inhabit it,
Voss

You guys rock. You didn't take yourself off o this blog after I went away for, like, a week or more. I was on hiatus, and more than a little burnt out, between SpoCon and my grandiose number of writing projects in the recent days. Suffice it to say I was thoroughly and utterly avoiding writing this time yesterday, ready to just give it up and move on to something more fulfilling, like sewing or crocheting.

Obviously, that didn't last, but it's fun to pretend to hate your muse sometimes, as long as it all falls back into place when it needs to.

This isn't about that, though.

This is about letting go.

I'm currently struggling with a nasty issue. I love everything about my first manuscript, "Tartaros". I love the characters, the world, the plot.

I think I have to let it go, and that prospect makes me want to rip my heart out of my chest and eat it. I've poured over a year of work into that manuscript, just to let it fall to dust? I don't want to do that, and I came to a conclusion. Do you want to hear it?

My problem, the reason I want to do all of this, is because I don't love what I'm doing with it now. Allow me to explain--I'm not editing it to make it a better story, I'm editing it to get it published, and that's wrong.

It's very easy to lose sight of why we write, especially when you start trying to make money at it. You lose that free soul and just want to cry when you have to work on things. Writers start writing because they love it, because they have a story to tell--not so they can be rich. This is just a reminder, for those of you out there wanting to give up and resign yourself to flipping burgers mindlessly the rest of your days: get back to why you first started writing. Forget about finding a market, appeasing that publisher, editing for New York--write because you're inspired, appease your soul, and edit for the sake of the better story.

Everything turns out okay, I promise. The universe has a way of turning things out the way they were always meant to be.

So I'm not letting go of "Tartaros". I'm letting go of the worry and pain of editing for something other than the story, letting go of the constant fear in my gut, and letting go of the voice that tells me I have no worth. To all of those things, I have three words to say:

F*ck.
That.
Sh*t.

Hopefully back on path--I need your love and positive thoughts now more than ever,
Voss