Category: Write It

  • Q&A: Is there a place you can go to find a critique partner?

    I’ve been in the querying trenches for months and all the feedback I’ve gotten is to find a critique partner to work with. How does that happen? Is there a place you can go to find someone like?

    I don’t really have critique partners so much as I have friends who are writers with whom I exchange work whenever one of us needs an extra pair of eyes. But to answer your question, I got these friends by basically just talking to them. I commented on their blogs, liked their contest entries, engaged with them on Twitter, responded to their message board posts. Eventually, we became friends and began sharing our work with each other. 

    I’m sure there are places one can go specifically to find a critique partner, but I’ve never had much luck in that arena, so I wouldn’t know. Hopefully if someone else sees this and has ideas, they’ll chime in.

  • What Present Me pictures Future Me will look like when faced with editing this book. 

    What Present Me pictures Future Me will look like when faced with editing this book. 

  • Q&A: what does your writing schedule look like?

    what does your writing schedule look like?

    I get up way early in the morning to write. I like to get all of my first drafting done before I’m fully awake, because that’s the only time my inner editor isn’t heckling me about how badly my first drafts suck. 

    Afternoons and evenings are for editing, when I’m too tired to write but awake enough to figure out what the shit is wrong with my book and how the hell I’m going to fix it.

  • Q&A: Have you learned anything so far on your publishing journey that has changed your outlook on publishing/writing or inspired you in some way?

    Have you learned anything so far on your publishing journey that has changed your outlook on publishing/writing or inspired you in some way?

    Probably more than one thing, but the biggest is definitely that perfection does not exist, thus making the pursuit of it pointless.

    I used to think that if I worked hard enough, my books would be unrejectable. I’ve spent years on books that quite frankly peaked six months in, only to shelve them and move on because they weren’t perfect enough to not be rejected, and I did not want to be rejected. Did not want to ponder what that rejection would mean for me, my book, my time here on this earth.

    Spoiler alert: it meant nothing, except that maybe you can’t please everyone.

    Also, I think it goes without saying that you’ll get far more requests from imperfect projects you gather up the courage to submit than you will ever get on the so-called perfect ones you never send out.

  • Q&A: Do you critique often? When you come across a manuscript that is particularly bad and you know that the writer is very new, how do you give help?

    You’ve talked about giving feedback for a novel that was particularly unfortunate. (The erotic 7th Heaven one….) Do you critique often? When you come across a manuscript that is particularly bad and you know that the writer is very new, how do you give help? Specifically, how do you not hurt feelings when the honest truth is that an entire manuscript really should be scrapped and rewritten from scratch? How do you balance encouragement with honesty?Thanks!

    I do not critique often. Only for a handful of friends. Extremely patient, forgiving friends. Because I am neither good at nor timely with my critiquing. 

    Mostly because I either like something or I do not like something, and I am absolute shit at explaining why or why not. 

    (Also, my taste is questionable. I loved Sharknado. I hated The Fault in Our Stars and Casablanca. If I am critiquing for you, you should want me to hate it. That’s how you know it’s good.)

    So I guess that’s the first lesson of critiquing anything: if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. Because if you hate doing it and do it anyway, you’re likely going to do more harm than good. 

    If you want to do it but are shit at it, like me, let the other person know you are absolute shit at critiquing. Full disclosure, and all that jazz.

    OK. So.

    What do you do when you are obligated to give advice on a manuscript, and your advice is scrap it and move on? Drink vodka. 

    And then be honest.

    The vodka to honesty ratio depends on the person, but my advice is to drink enough vodka that you are honest, but not so much that you are brutally honest.

    (For those of you who, like me, cannot drink (or choose not to drink) alcohol, do the same as above, minus the vodka.)

    First things first, the whole critiquing a book thing is awkward. 

    For everyone. 

    No exceptions. 

    I have been friends with Carol and Liz for almost six years. It is always awkward to give feedback to them. It is always awkward to get feedback from them. I owe one of them feedback right now, and when I send it, it will be like the freaking ding-dong-ditch of emails. I will upload the attachment. Hit send. And then we will pretend it never happened. 

    So that part is normal. 

    Secondly, resisting feedback is also normal.

    So don’t take it personally, no matter what side you’re on. 

    Thirdly, stick to big picture stuff.

    I am a proponent of moving from large to small. So if you feel a book is conceptually flawed, or that a large chunk of it needs to be completely rewritten, say so, and leave it at that. 

    Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of line editing. That kind of editing comes later, when the book is more structurally sound. 

    Fourthly—is fourthly even a word?—if you don’t say something, someone else will.  

    And that’s why it’s never OK to lie, to say you like something when you don’t, to say that something is ready to go on submission when it isn’t. 

    Because that friend of yours who’s writing really bad books? Probably won’t be writing bad books forever. Eventually she will learn from her own mistakes, and when she does, she will look back on her really bad books, see them for what they are, and know that you lied.

    To her face.

    And fifthly, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

    Even the shittiest of shitty first drafts have some spark of life in them, some glittering something shining amongst all that dirt. If you can’t see it, you’re probably not the right person to offer comments.

  • Q&A: Have you experienced any challenges in writing for different age groups?

    Have you experienced any challenges in writing for different age groups?

    Ooh. Yes. YES.

    I won’t even say it’s confined to age groups. Different genres have different pros and cons, highs and lows, ups and downs, chunkies and creamies.

    Writing chapter books can be challenging because the intended readers aren’t seasoned readers (obviously, since they’re like 7). They haven’t yet learned a lot of what is essentially shorthand. So lots of dialogue tags, adverbs and adjectives, short snappy sentences and paragraphs, exclamation points, other explainy things.

    I had a similar learning curve with category romance. I tend to be a very plot-driven writer, and I had to go back to basics and learn how to come at a story from a character-driven perspective. So scary for me, since I look at outlines as security blankets, and it’s hard to map out feels beforehand and have them still be authentic. 

  • Q&A: how is your writing routine different now that you have an agent?

    how is your writing routine different now that you have an agent?

    Considering I’ve been agented all of 20 days, 17 of which were spent either bogged down in edits, recovering from edits, or barfing my guts out, my writing routine hasn’t changed all that much. 

    But based on the three days I’ve actually spent writing, I find I simultaneously have more time and less time than I did before. 

    I never realized how much time I spent querying, whether actively (sending things out) or passively (reading agent interviews, pitch tips, etc). So much of it had become habitual that I often find myself checking for emails that have already come, etc. I’m still in the process of reclaiming that time and allotting it elsewhere. 

    There’s also seems to be less time, because for now, at least, I’m hyper-focused on one particular flavor of book, whereas before I was more or less doing whatever I felt like doing whenever I felt like doing it. 

    There’s also that whole afraid-I’m-going-to-disappoint-everyone-slash-be-outted-as-a-writing-fraud thing, too. But I like to ignore that whenever possible.

  • Q&A: My critical critique partners is pissed I got an agent

    I’ve had this friend for years, we used to write fanfiction together when we were kids but now we write our own stuff. I let her critique my writing for years and she was always so critical. Almost mean about it. To the point where I would stop writing and move on to something else. Then I got this idea for a new book and didn’t tell her about it until I signed with an agent. Now she’s pissed bc I didn’t trust her enough to get her input. But I was afraid her input would make me stop. Help. 🙁

    First things first, congratulations on your new book! Sounds like you created something really great.

    And good for you, too, for not stopping this time when you felt insecure about your writing. That takes a lot of work, and you should be proud of yourself.

    Now. About your friend. 

    Are you sure you are, in fact, friends?

    I don’t mean that in the sense that one of you has done something un-friendly to the other, or anything.

    But sometimes writing friends aren’t really friends. They’re writing friends.

    Meaning the foundation of the relationship is writing and sharing writing and critiquing writing and promoting writing, with no other common interests. You may be friendly with each other, but you’re not exactly friends.

    Which would make her reaction make sense. Because in her mind, writing a book, getting an agent, might have been something she thought you would do together, and you cut her out of the process, whether you meant to or not.

    That’s one possibility.

    Another possibility is that you are friend friends, but are no longer compatible as writing friends. 

    Maybe you were compatible as fan-fiction critique partners because you shared a love of that particular fandom, but aren’t necessarily fond of each others’ original writing. Or maybe you grew older, and your tastes grew apart, and neither one of you are willing to admit it yet.

    I say this because it happens. Kind of like how your favorite author or favorite series one day doesn’t work for you anymore. And at first you’re mad at the creator, but eventually you realize it’s not just him, it’s you, too. You’ve changed. 

    Maybe she’s mean in her critiques and supportive of you giving up those other books because she’s trying to guide you back to a style of writing she enjoys, like what you were writing when you met in fandom all those years ago. She wants to enjoy your work again, but she can’t, and she erroneously thinks it’s your fault.

    And maybe the reason you didn’t tell her about this new book is because you knew she wouldn’t like it, knew she would try to talk you out of it, and likely succeed. Maybe in “hiding” this book from her, up until the agent stage, you were really just acknowledging what she couldn’t—that you’re not really compatible as writing friends anymore, and working together as closely as you used to only causes more harm than good.

    Which is why knowing the difference between friend friends and writing friends is so important.

    Because if you’re writing friends who are no longer compatible as writing friends…well…

  • Q&A: Congratulations on signing with your agent! 🙂 It must be so nice to have all of your hard work validated!

    Congratulations on signing with your agent! 🙂 It must be so nice to have all of your hard work validated!

    Thank you. 🙂

    Though if I’m completely honest, I still don’t really feel validated by it. I mean, it’s great, and I’m over the moon happy, and everything. 

    But I don’t feel any more valid than I did before. I still don’t really have a clue what I’m doing. And I still have days where I’m terrified someone will find out I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and call me out for being a fraud. 

    I got the agent call while I was in the middle of revisions. Revisions that shouldn’t have been so hard, but for some reason were. And there times I really did not know if I could do them or not. I felt like my book was broken and I did not know how to fix it. If it could be fixed. If it should be fixed.

    And in those times, I really wanted to be rejected. By everyone. I wanted them to tell me it wasn’t working and I should move on to something else. Because moving on to something else seemed so much easier than fixing what was broken. 

    So much easier than admitting something was broken, and I did not know how to fix it. 

    Then Jessica called, and she loved the story, even though it wasn’t perfect, even though it needed a lot of work. Loved it enough to want to represent it. And I as thrilled. 

    And then I was terrified. Because if I couldn’t figure it out, if I failed this book, I wouldn’t just be disappointing myself. I would be disappointing the editor who requested it. The agent who believed in it enough to represent it. 

    I really do not like letting other people down. 

    It took a lot of self ass-kicking to get over that. Probably it will take even more next time.

    So yes, it is a great thing, and I am very excited. 

    But no, I don’t feel validated, really, like my hard work finally paid off. If anything, I feel like the hard work has just begun. 

  • Q&A: do you/did you ever have a dream agent or editor you wanted to work with?

    do you/did you ever have a dream agent or editor you wanted to work with?

    Not an actual person, as in, “I want John Smith and only John Smith”, no. But I do get along better with some personality types than others, so that’s definitely always been a consideration.