Five Years On

Five years ago, after I decided to take on the ludicrous passion of writing, I wrote down some goals. The penultimate one was to be traditionally published within five years. For the first three years I wrote my ass off -- two novels, several rewrites, brutal critiques, humbling rejections -- but oddly I never changed my goal. I figured it was part of the process. I was talented. Other talented people told me so. It was going to happen.

But as often goes, life/career happens. The Army gave me the honor of an incredible job, responsible for the safety and livelihood of hundreds of Soldiers and their Families. Such was the job that I threw myself into it 100 percent, definately more. Between that, raising two smart-ass kids, and making it happen in a dual-career family, something had to give. Writing.

Over time I've painfully watched the success of good friends. I say painful because I'm an extremely competitive person, honed by years of competitive athletics and a profession which tends to eat the weak. I wouldn't call it jealousy.  I do not lie when I say that I am overwhelmingly happy at my friends' success, but deep down I've been quietly stewing. For months now I've been experiencing a perpetual annoyance at my own lack of effort.

My feelings right now towards my writing are probably well summed up by Cake's 1996 classic, The Distance:

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line
Engines pumping and thumping in time.
The green light flashes, the flags go up.
Churning and burning they yearn for the cup.
They deftly maneuver and muscle for rank,
Fuel burning fast on an empty tank.
Reckless and wild they pour through the turns.
Their prowess is potent and secretly stern.
As they speed through the finish the flags go down.
The fans get up and they get out of town.
The arena is empty except for one man,
Still driving and striving as fast as he can.
The sun has gone down and the moon has come up,
And long ago somebody left with the cup.
But he's driving and striving and hugging the turns,
And thinking of someone for whom he still burns.

So time to get back after it. I'm going to have to channel my inner YA fanboy and get back to writing in the appropriate tone. Two years of operations orders and executive summaries have somewhat killed my flow.

When it comes to lack of progress, I have no one to blame but myself.

A Quick Shameless Plug

I was about to title this 'shamelessly plugging a friend...' Yeah. Good author friend and author Steve McHugh probably wouldn't appreciate that, and neither would my wife. I'm sure our critique group partners will have a good laugh.

In any case, this week he released his new novel, Crimes Aainst Magic. I was able to read and critique some of the early versions of this novel, and it was as fabulous as the title. Seriously, Steve managed to come up with one of the best titles EVER.

It's on my Kindle and I plan to review it soon. I also plan to revive this blog over the next few weeks. Works been busy and this forum became a victim of my professional success. Now that things are starting to slow down a little, it's time to get back to writing.

In the meantime, go check out Crimes Against Magic. It's seriously worth your time. Did I mention the awesome title?

Changing Perspectives

So I'm querying again.

Shot that sucker right out there. So for now we'll sit back and see what we see. I hadn't realized it's been since October 2009 that I last sent out a query. Since then the novel has gone through three major revisions.

Last night, just for kicks, I took a look at the original draft from September 2009 and cringed. It's horrendous. Completely infantile. I can't believe I was arrogant enough to actually send that out into agent-land. It's hilarious when you think about it.

When you start your writing career in a vacuum, everything feels right. Your family tells you how great your stuff is. The words flow and before you know it, you think you the next great American novelist. It's funny to look back at those original words. They're awkward, overly-complicated and the writing style was so over-grammatically correct it was stiff as a board.

But what was there was passion. Probably more than I have now. There was a lot of feeling in that story, and it reflected in the plot. The basic concept was great. How do I know? More than a few professionals have told me so.

Haha, but therein lies the rub. I had to learn how to write my great story. And that took time. Make no mistake; I'm still learning to write. There's a reason the average time to publish is around eight years and a hundred queries sent. Make no mistake about it, this shit is hard.

So as I stared at the draft email containing my query, my finger paused over the 'send' button. I was fearless the first time I queried. Back then I treated the endeavor like I do with any request: the worst they can do is say no. In 2009 it took me two seconds to hit that button.

But two and a half years later, the stakes are higher. I've got a boatload more experience and learning, not to mention the scars earned from the monthly exchanges in Kelley Armstrong's Online Writing Group. In 2009 I wasn't afraid of failure because I had truly nothing to lose.

Enter 2011 and a different perspective. I am afraid of failure. Strike that. I'm not afraid of failure; I'm afraid of lack of growth. I'm afraid I'm no better than I was in the final months of my tour in Iraq in '09.

But I am better than 2009. There's no question there. Remember, I looked at that old manuscript and laughed. I have grown. This round of queries is a test to see how much. The goal is still to get picked up and published by 2015. So this time I did hit that 'send' button, it just took twenty seconds longer than the last.

Hey, the worst they can do is tell me no.

New Writer Seeks Advice

But I'm not the new writer. What? It appears I'm now an expert, or at least other people think I am. Personally, I prefer to think of myself as a student of the art. Over the last year, in the time I've gotten serious about writing and learning about the publishing industry, I've been very content to sit back, ask questions, and learn from those who did this before me, whether they were published or not.

(I think it's important to note that just because a writer isn't published, that doesn't mean an aspiring author should discount their wisdom and experience. This is a long journey; for a few, publishing happens, but for most, it doesn't. As we like to say in the military: it's the reality of the profession.)

Okay, back to title. I've blogged about this stuff in the past, but this is the first time it's hit me in real life. So, late last night dude walks up to me in that parking. (No, I'm not getting carjacked. We're both in uniform, so it's cool. I actually know the guy.) Here's how it went.

Him: "Hey, Ken, I heard you published a book?"

Me: (completely flattered) "Well, no. I'm working on it."

Him: "What do you know about publishing?"

Me: "Not enough, but I've learned a ton. What do you need?"

Him: "Well, I wrote a book. I've been working on it a while. I've tried to get it published, but I really don't know how?"

Me: "What genre is it?"

Him: "It's a series of humorous stories I've written down since I came into the Army."

Me: "Okay, that's interesting. How's your query letter?"

Him: "What's a query letter?"

Me: "How much time do you have?"

So he and I plan to get together and talk. He's a peer, so I'll do my best to help him out. The current problem is we're in the middle of a massive training event that will probably prevent us from getting together until after New Year's Day. To keep him occupied, I gave him a homework assignment:

First, find a writing group and ingratiate yourself with other writers. Second, Google 'query letter' and start educating yourself on how the publishing industry works. Last, go to a site like Querytracker.com and find agents looking for your specific genre.

Me: (military aphorism) "Know your enemy."

Him: (nodding) "Ah, target the right agents." (He meant for his book, not literally. Words matter. You have to watch yourself around Army dudes.)

All this didn't click until this morning. One of my favorite agents, Lauren MacLeod of the Strothman Agency, tweeted that about 60% of the queries she receives are, for lack a better phrase, a wast of time. Of that, she said, only 10% are good enough to seriously consider. I know the competition was stiff. I know there are a LOT of writers out there trying to get published. What I didn't know (and I'm using beer-math) was that the huge majority of queries flat out suck.

So, when I do get a chance to get back with my peer and try to pass on some of my limited knowledge, I'm going to do my best to ensure he falls more into the 10% category rather than that dreaded 60%. I have to wonder what that 60% does with their free time. Obviously not research.

Research, people, it's your friend.

...and, hey, I'm an expert!

Adventures of an Aspiring Author

It's Friday. Thankfully. It's been one of those weeks where the work/effort to payoff ratio has been skewed in the wrong direction. First, to the Texas Rangers. Boo. What the heck, guys? Score some freaking runs and try to get through the middle innings without getting shelled.

I'd thought I'd end the week with a quick play-by-play of a typical night in the life of an aspiring author. Let me rephrase, a typical night in the life of a working/parent-aspiring author. Sometimes I wonder how I ever finished a manuscript at all. Oh, wait, I was in Iraq!

5:00 pm - Horn blows, time to close up shop. Can't wait to get home and finish up the current chapter. I was on a wicked roll last night and there's some fresh ideas that need to be captured.

5:10 pm - Heading out door and phone rings. Higher ups want a copy of every purchase receipt going back to March. Wait, you need this today? Everone's already left... but I wasn't here in... I'm not... I... Oh, crap.

6:30 pm - Walked through the front door, threw stuff on the floor, kissed wife, and sat down for family dinner, a decent meal of leftover, then scolded son for playing with his during grace.

7:00 pm - Shower and change. Set up writing station. Open up Macbook Pro and launch Scrivener (if you don't have this you hurt). Review hand written notes from previous evening.

7:05 pm - Wife calls. My sh*t doesn't belong on the floor. Go and pick up. Assist with dinner clean up. Take out trash.

7:45 pm - Back to writing/man-cave. Put on headphones. I'm writing an action sequence, so I dial up assortment of Tool, Chevelle, Nickelback, and Three Days Grace. Focus Time.

7:55 pm - Tap on shoulder. It's the boy. He's holding a sheet of paper dated two weeks ago. Looks like its covered in dried juice and cracker crumbs. Apparently it's a reading project involving rote memorization, a substantial amount of illustrations, and a wing-board. It's due tomorrow.

9:00 pm - Homework completed thanks to parental intervention and large amount of yelling. Back in front of keyboard. Headphones on and tunes cranked. Another tap on shoulder. It's the daughter. Mommy requests my presence in the family room.

9:05 pm - Wife hasn't sat with me and watched TV all week. She'd like to watch some TV. Turn on TV and attempt to leave, but there's clarification. She doesn't want to watch TV, she wants to watch a movie WITH me. Power up BluRay player and sit.

11:00 pm - Wife is dowstairs getting ready for bed. Finally sit down and attempt to salvage some writing. Wait, I forgot something, something I wanted to do yesterday but didn't get around to accomplishing.

11:05 pm - Run down to garage and fire up irrigation system. I'm in the area, so pack up my sh*t and prepare clothes for next work day. While I'm in the area, trasfer wet clothes from washer to dryer, and fold batch of laundry while watching angry people on Fox News.

11:35 pm - Officially abandon writing/man-cave. Bring laptop downstairs to bedroom. Wife is already asleep. Conduct nightly hygiene regimen, then crawl into bed. Open laptop, review previous night writing.

11:50 pm - Correct numerous typos from previous session as well as some narration that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Frantically type out cool new ideas (now a little stale) in bullet format so as not to forget them before next writing session. Hack through some awkward dialogue, then realize the entire bit is not germane to the plot. Shift-Fn-Up, Fn-Delete.

12:15 am - Word count for the day, 51 words. At least we have a few cool ideas for next time. Check alarm. Wake-up time is 4 hours and 15 minutes away. Run backup software (backups, people, BACKUPS!). Fold up Macbook. Go to bed.

Not every night is so crazy, but all have the potential. I wouldn't be able to write at all if it weren't for the support of my awesome wife, so I'll just take a moment to thank her for being amazing. As a working/parent/aspiring-author, I work when I have to, I parent always, and I write whenever I have the chance. Someday, I'll finish this damn rewrite, then reach for a glass of Scotch. A really tall glass.

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.

Go appreciate a literary agent

The title's an imperative. I think agent appreciation day was back in December, so I missed the boat, but recently I've come to the conclusion that this group of professionals is forced to deal with more than an unfair share of BS. If you know or have a literary agent, do a favor for me, and shake their hand, tell them thank-you for providing us with avenues and opportunity, and for putting up with loads of crap.

There's a fairly simple vertical hierarchy to the publishing industry: Writers, Agents, and Publishers. Authors create the material, Agents represent it, and Publishers buy it and sell it to the masses. For now we'll toss aside the marketing, distribution, and sales. Make no mistake about it, that hierarchy is still very much alive and kicking. If you want to get a book to market, you still have to pay the toll.

Now, while the industry structure remains rigid and tall, the communication landscape is anything but. My Command & General Staff College buddies know what a huge fan I am of Thomas L. Friedman and his metaphors in The World is Flat. It's his fourth 'flattener', Open Source, which brings me to the title of today's entry.

Friedman's Open Source tenet is all about access. Blogs, websites, social-networking, all of which make it possible for aspiring authors to communicate with experts, learn, and improve. However, communication isn't one way.

I sent my first round of queries out late last year. At first, I viewed agents as adversaries, gatekeepers to a secret world. Since then, thanks to social-networks, blogs, and websites, I've learned there are no secrets. I've also learned that these are decent people. They put their shoes on the same way we do, are always on the lookout for a decent restaurant, and even get excited when they find a marked-down purse or BluRay player.

As a Major, I'm number three in an organization of about five hundred. On a regular basis, part of the job is telling people their work needs correction, isn't good enough, or just needs to be flat-out redone. Sometimes, rarely, I even need to tell people they're just not suited for my line of work. I've seen the disappointment in their eye when someone tells them their stuff isn't good enough. What protects me from reprisal is a system that does not allow my subordinates to send me nasty emails or post about me on Twitter, Facebook, or blogs.

But literary agents don't get that protection. Anybody with a computer and connection can fire off retaliatory hate mail at will. In spite of that, agents stick their necks out there further, promoting themselves, their clients, and the business.

For agents, it's about relevancy. They can't afford to hide. They must represent their writers and at the same time attract the best talent. My point: they're vulnerable. No thin skins, easy targets for frustrated writers who view themselves the victim of unfair rejection.

Via social networking, I've learned tons about the industry and the profession. My personal experiences with agents were brief, but positive. The one who rejected my full-manuscript only provided a singular comment, but it was a remark that changed the direction of my writing in a very positive way.

Certainly, the bad-apples among the aspiring-author crowd are few. I cannot imagine any of my peers in the writing group replying to a rejection letter with strings of angry F-bombs. Nor, to my knowledge, have any of them built websites lambasting the evils of the literary agent profession.

But those people remain out there. So, I wanted to say thanks, I appreciate what agents do. Without them, I wouldn't be where I am, or know where I wanted to go. Without them, there would be no target to shoot for, or a mountain to climb. Writers, don't give me any crap, I'm not trying to kiss anyone's ass. This will be an only-time deal. One of these days, I'll get my agent. Maybe, we'll even share a beer.

My Place to Write

"Lemme see your writing space!"

Except to the tune of R. Lee Ermy's line in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 war epic, Full Metal Jack, "Lemme see your war face!"

Yeah, it's a stretch. Lame.

When I attended the Army's Command and General Staff College a couple years ago, my instructor said we needed to create a space where we could read and contemplate in quiet. We needed somewhere away from raging kids and other home-driven distractions, somewhere we could focus on learning and expanding our view of the world.

We bought a new place back in January, first time we purchased a home since 1995. It's taken a few months, but the house is finally starting to come together. Between work, school, and extended family stuff, we only had time to seriously work on the place on every three or four other Saturdays. A pain. But I did finally got around to putting together my little workspace in the back bedroom. The way our floor plan is designed, the only thing better would be a basement or cave (it's Texas, everything is slab).

So I figured a picture was in order.



Let's break it down guy-style:

Apple 13" Macbook Pro Intel 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo ($1,400 USD), 4 GB RAM, 320 GB 7,200 rpm HDD. The 24" Apple LED Cinema Display ($849 USD) lets me tile my work across dual monitors, simplifying all my cutting, pasting, blogging, twitting, and critting.

I'm ADD, it works for me.

The Time Machine backup program goes to two external HDD's, a 320 GB Western Digital My Book and a 320 GB Western Digital Passport Elite (both available everywhere online for under $100 USD). When my laptop went down last week with a bad motherboard and RAM, the Apple Store ended up replacing the entire interior, HDD included. If I didn't have timely backups, I would have been screwed. Fortunately, I keep two, in case either external drive decides to fail (and sometimes, they do).

We all know music is critical for our writing, so hiding behind the big monitor is a pair of Audioengine A2s ($200). Designed with critical listeners in mind, these little dudes bring the Boom, Boom, Pow to your desktop, throwing more bass than anything this small should be entitled.

If speakers aren't your fare, of if you're trying to hide you tunage from a sleeping spouse or baby, hiding in my drawer is a pair of Grado Labs SR225i headphones. The 'cans', made in New York ($225), bring true high fidelity to my iTunes collection. If you've never been introduced to this level of listening, even in familiar music there would be detail you didn't know existed .

The Apple Magic Mouse. If you have an Apple, and you have one of these, you know how cool they are. If you're a PC, and you don't, well, you don't.

Software weapon of choice: Literature & Latte's Scrivener. Word processing and formatting by writers for writers. If you haven't experienced the pain of uniquely formatting your manuscript for different agents, editors, publishers, contests, etc..., save yourself the trouble and drop the $40 on this. A click of the mouse and Scrivener will compile to any acceptable standard for Novels, Short Stories, Screenplays, and more. Oh, it's only available for Mac.

If you're a PC, I'm sorry. (Catch the theme yet?)

Desk, a cappuccino-contemporary piece from WalMart, about $90 USD. Chair, an oak dining special from the original Corps of Cadets Duncan Dining Facility, Texas A&M University, circa 1930's. The candle-stick thingy with colored glass? No clue; wife stuck it there because is looked cute.

Later in the month I'm throwing out the guest bed from the room and installing my Consonance tube amps and Sonus Fabers to add some real warmth to the room. If you can't already tell, I'm a bit of an audiophile nut.

If I were doing it again, I would have added an iMac rather than the Cinema Display. The difference in price and size between the two aren't all that much, and there's an adapter that would allow my laptop to dual-screen with the iMac's monitor, adding a cool computer that the kids could use when the Macbook was travelling with Dad.

So, that's it; my place to create. What y'all got? Anyone? Anyone?

Unplugged

This weekend, I watched NCAA basketball and chased my kids around the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine, Texas. We met up with a large group of extended family, played in the indoor water park, and stayed up late socializing and reminiscing about old times. I picked Kansas to go all the way to win the national title, but with them, Villanova, and Georgetown biting the early dust, I've falling from expert prognosticator down the rungs to enthusiastic homer (Go Ags!).

What I didn't do was: think about work, the short story I have out for query, the WIP, or the completed manuscript(s) that really deserves a good rewrite. It was a nice couple days of taking a break from the normal grind.

Lately, writing has been my unplug, but as I become more embroiled in one project after another, it's moving from hobby to labor, and not in a good way. So, concentrating on family and basketball has been a nice change.

That's it for this week, nothing complicated. I'm going to have a beer, watch a movie with my wife, and continue the unplugging-mission for a little longer.

Finishing

I have a lot of ideas. Wait, scratch that, I have an insane amount of ideas. Ideas come to me with I'm doing physical training. They come to be when I'm eating my lunch. Watching TV with my wife? I'm a bit more ADD than most folks, new ideas left and right. Y'all know what I'm talking about.

I caught a whiff of inspiration from fellow OWG member, Michelle Muto, while reading her piece about revisiting older manuscripts. She found pleasure in measuring her progress from one manuscript to another, learning from past mistakes, and applying new ideas to older efforts. At the end of her piece was the question:

"Have you ever ditched one manuscript in favor of another?"

It got me thinking. Just the other day I came up with a rather unique storyline I'd yet to see in a YA Urban Fantasy (not that it doesn't exist, but until I find it, it'll be my own private unicorn). When an idea that cool comes along, I question everything else I'm currently doing and ask, 'Could this be the one?' But that was the same think I said about my last two projects.

So today I'm writing about finishing. Currently, I have one manuscript completed and submitted to ABNA, and another well underway. Each time I started one of those projects I asked that aforementioned question. The temptation is great, especially when the current project isn't moving along at the planned pace. I've found that with my current job and family obligations, writing has moved more towards the back seat. Instead of writing thousands of words a sitting, I feel fortunate to get off a couple of hundred. So when the going to get tough, the temptation to switch to a newer, sexier product is definately there.

A couple of weeks ago, Dresden Files author Jim Butcher popped into Bulletwisdom and among other things, offered the following piece of advice:

"Always start your next project when you've finished your current one."

It's sound logic and one of those mythical pearls of wisdom successful writers try to pass down to us aspiring clowns. Writing isn't easy, and writing well is, no kidding, hard. If a plot isn't developing as well as you'd hoped, and the entire project is coming apart at the seams, then jumping over and starting a new project from scratch would seem like an awesome idea.

However, doing so would miss the point. Writing is a grind, it's supposed to be. Pushing through difficulties and making difficult decisions towards your own sweat and blood is going to be a source of mental anguish and frustration. It's just like exercise: you go through pain and frustration to harden your body and get stronger. Same with writing, perservere through the difficulties and finish what you start. The greatest of athletes are known as great finishers.

Writers are no exception.

So a few days ago, when I was struggling through my current projects latest chapter and experienced an oh-my-freaking-gosh moment of inspiration, I wrote down an intro and a few notes, took about ten minutes to define a basic plot and some characters, then socked it away in my online storage vault--

Until I'm finished with my current project, and ready to start my next.