Lessons Learned

Last week, writer Julie Klumb, tagged me in her Lessons Learned post. Today, I was going to attempt a humorous spot at summarizing this week's failed attempts at writing, but since she was gracious enough to mention me, I'm going to answer the mail. So, this year I learned:

1. Writing is hard. Anyone can write. The physical act of putting pen to paper or keyboard to screen is easy. For the latter, at least for most, although I have some friends that might be more efficient with cave drawings, but that's another discussion. Point here, is that there's a myriad of factors that go into telling a successful story, not the least of which is coming up with words compelling enough to keep the reader turning the pages for the next twelve hours of their life. As with any profession, there are rules, gimmicks, tricks, tactics, and techniques. The writer has to know which is the right tool to use and when.

2. Life happens. At this point in my journey, I feel like I'm on the right direction. The goals I laid out for the year and ticking off nicely, and the rewrite of my manuscript is slowly progressing. That said, it's not progressing fast enough. My wife got a job, the kids go to school, and my job takes up about 20 more hours a week than I originally planned. The Army puts food on the table, the kids need help with homework, and I have to put more effort into taking care of the house. After all that's done, the writing gets squeezed out. For now I have to be happy with a couple hours of quality writing time a week. For now it's just the way things are.

3. Writing is a learning profession. I mentioned tools earlier. For years I was taught that passive voice was bad, evil, burn, burn. Now, I've learned that the right placement of passive voice in the right situation make the difference between 'I took the one less travelled by' and 'I chose the less travelled road.' Point is, you have to research the craft. It's that simple. Great writers are experts on grammar. I want to be a great writer, ergo I have a lot to learn.

4. Find and befriend other writers. This goes back to number three. And don't be above or below anyone. Help other writers when they ask, and don't be afraid to ask for help yourself. Usually, you don't know what you don't know until someone points it out.

5. Keep a sense of humor. Rejections hurt, critiques can be painful. You won't make the progress you wanted. You'll have doubt. It's a profession where success is often not attained for years. At some point you'll have to reevaluate to determine if it's worth continuing. Because of that you have to laugh. One way or the other, the ride is going to eventually end. You have to keep your spirits up.

That's it. I tried to stay general as much as possible. In the great Army tradition of Blue-Falconing' our buddies, I'm going to reach out and tag fellow OWG member Danielle LaPaglia.

You're it. No pressure.

WriteOnCon Day 1

My first Con! Granted, it's an online writer's convention, but what the heck? I have plenty of time. My day job only takes up my time between the hours of 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wrong. At this point, travelling to a writer's convention is a pipe dream. So, the awesome folks at WriteOnCon developed what may be a first: A distant learning writer's convention.

My friend, writer Julie Klumb, showed me the link a few weeks ago. I signed up and happily waited. Gradually, I forgot all about it until she shot out a reminder. Good thing I registered early.

Yesterday was the first day. Forums opened for submissions for query's, WIPs, and finished products. All day long, the forum hosted events and discussion drawing in some awesome talent to share their industry wisdom. What did I learn?

1. Nothing new. Huh? What? Let me elaborate.

2. All the information you need is out there to be a successful writer, but you have to listen to the advice and be able to apply it. That's two very different, and difficult, things.

3. You need a professional-grade query letter. It should be simple: Present the story, introduce yourself. Be bold, be brief, then be gone. Don't overstay your welcome. The query letter is about your story. Save the extraneous life story stuff and how great you are for an actual phone conversation. If you get one. Jump over to Twitter and take a look at agent comments at #queryfail. Did it make you laugh? I did. What's funnier is I've made a good chunk of those mistakes.

4. Be professional. For some folks, this is hard. This is an industry practically invented the 'don't-call-us-we'll-call-you' tactic. Last night, literary agent Mark McVeigh gave a fabulous presentation, and at one point lamented about the poor behavior of some aspiring writers. I thought the best point he made was about following simple instructions.

Mark receives around sixty queries a day. Attachments take about a minute each to open and process. If each query and included excerpt was attached via word document, that's an additional hour a day just spent opening documents. Multiply that over a month and you have a lot of lost productivity. Follow instructions listed on the site, it's the professional thing to do.

5. Mark also said, 'know the agent you're querying.' I'm paraphrasing badly, sorry. His recommendation, if the agent your querying recently sold a book in a genre similar to yours, say so. I found that quite bold. Makes sense, but still. I think it goes back to the 'know the agent' statement. If you do your homework, you'll know when you can get away with a bold move, and when you can't.

6. Online presence, do or don't. The panel didn't really seem to care one way or another. I think this goes back to the most important mission of an aspiring writer: First, learn to write. If you're spending hours and hours weekly on your blog, you're probably taking away hours you could be doing research and writing for your story.

7. Critiques. Standards vary wildly and you need to pick and choose what to use, and what to discard. I'm used to the monthly line-by-line trashing I get over at Kelley Armstrong's Online Writing Group (OWG) Forums. For WriteOnCon, I'm noticing a paragraph or two of, 'I really liked this.' To someones credit, they flat out told me to scrap my first paragraph. I think they're right. If you want to write successfully, find a writing group that will routinely tear your stuff apart. You'll be better for it.

To me this is all common sense, and the kind of info pushed by publishing professional in every blog, interview, social media, and convention (all one of them) I've come across. If I had to pick something to impress upon everyone?

Write something great.

Huge thanks to the folks at WriteOnCon for putting on a fabulous platform for those of us who might never have to opportunity to travel to a Con.