Burn the "How to" List--2013 Belongs to You

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Welcome back to Novel Matters. We have a great year of blogging ahead and we're thrilled to have you join us. Cheers to a new year!

I spent some time last week splashing through the info swamp of the “how to” of writing and publishing. It didn’t take long before my hip waders flooded and I was over my head. The volume of advice is more avalanche than rushing river. Micro info dumping about the industry of publishing (which is either doing just fine, or is a dinosaur long extinct it just doesn’t know it yet, depending who you read) sends writers into a panic.

Why panic?

Because the underlining message of all these articles, blogs, websites, books, and essays is this: Writer, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re getting this all wrong.

Jane Friedman, in an article called How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published? encapsulates this mantra perfectly (with help from Chuck Sambuchino):

 ‘“Good” gets rejected. Your work has to be the best. How do you know when it’s ready, when it’s your best? I like how Writer’s Digest editor and author Chuck Sambuchino answers this question at writing conferences: “If you think the story has a problem, it does—and any story with a problem is not ready.”

It’s common for a new writer who doesn’t know any better to send off his manuscript without realizing how much work is left to do. But experienced writers are usually most guilty of sending out work that is not ready. Stop wasting your time.”

This is good advice—you shouldn’t send out your work until you know you’ve done everything possible to make it the best it can be—but the way the advice is worded leaves you (and me) with the understanding that writers are just creative screw ups with no real understanding of story structure, book markets, or what’s selling.

This makes writers sad. We hate getting it wrong. We hate being industry idiots bumbling around in the dark with nothing but our imaginations to keep us warm. We just keep writing stories with problems!

Hold it.

A story with a problem . . . What kind of problem, and who decides it’s a problem? And, apparently, this will only worsen with experience. We will actually get worse at the whole writing thing the longer we write.

Goodness, we’re an unruly bunch.

Well, if we can’t please the publishing bigwigs, there’s always self-publishing, right? Surely there’s happy news and clear skies over at self-publishing info depot, that rugged station of independent thinking, or flying in the face of convention, of hitching your wagon to a star of your own creation. Ah, yes, breath the fresh air of fresh thinking.

Or not.

Typically, the advice given to self-publishing writers is identical to that meted out to writers hoping to find a home in traditional publishing. Seth Godin is the go-to guru for self-publishing writers, so I spent some time perusing his advice. A great deal of his energy is spent explaining why traditional publishing is dead. If you’d like a list, check out his site (he focuses on non-fiction ventures, but much of what he says can be generalized to other types of publication).

But.

Godin's “short list” of 19 points of advice for writers hoping to self publish reads identical to any list produced for any writer hoping to publish in any format. None of it is “bad” advice it’s just not terribly original.

Why?

Because original is impossible to categorize, list, and package. Original defies explanation, yet draws people in by touching the exposed nerve we all have but cannot name. Original is you being your unruly, creative, messy, exceptional self—no excuses, no holding back—and then releasing it all.

Are there steps to follow to becoming a bestselling novelist? Maybe. Is there a list out there that we should enslave ourselves to in order to achieve stardom? No.

I’m going to give you the best writing advice there is: 2013 is your year. That’s my advice.

You’re bigger than any list. You burn too bright. That list will burst into flames in your hands.  You are a writer—and that means you are an artist, poet, priest, lover, fighter. You feel, you live, you watch and then you turn all that over on its back, invert the whole thing, and write about a world familiar yet strange and we all just sit back and say, “Wow. Do it again.”

And it’s because you live and love and express the power of both in ways that leave us breathless that you will, in your own way, find your way—whatever that means and whatever that looks like—to the place you craft. Your place. Traditionally published, self-published, or some place in between.

You are an artist.

Stop reading lists.

Go. Own 2013 in your own way.

Write.

Be fierce.

Be fearless.

The Sweet Spot

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Seth Godin is a guru. He, of course, is the author of a dozen international bestselling non-fiction books, from Tribes to The Dip. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. There are blogs -- dozens of them -- devoted to "memorable quotes by Seth Godin." Who knew? My confession is that until a few weeks ago if given a quiz where I had to link the name of the author with the title of one of his books, unless I'd come up with a very good guess I'd have failed the quiz. I obviously haven't read Seth Godin, though I probably should.

This all came up because a writer I know recently mentioned that one of the key elements of one of Seth's books (I don't even know which) is this: if you don't identify and write to your niche, it may mean that you satisfy no one. That in itself is an intriguing concept, but on that very same day our own Karen Shravemade wrote the following comment to my post, What is True and Right:

"What I'm most interested in ... is the "sweet spot" between literary and
commercial. You know -- books that are beautifully written, but have such a big
premise and/or gripping plot that they hit a note with a broad audience.

I wonder, though, if in trying to find some middle ground between
literary and commercial, I'll end up hitting neither. That I'll write a book
nobody knows what to do with."

The coincidence was too large to ignore. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about boxes, because it seems to me both Seth and Karen are alluding to firm boundaries that we should keep in the forefront as we write. To maintain those boundaries, does that mean we must always create the same type of protagonist? Always write in first person or third, and in the same tense? Must our plot points be comparable? Is there no room for experimentation?

You hear a lot about branding at writers' conferences these days, which is sort of a new term for an old concept. It just means that you should be very identifiable as an author. For example, if I say John Grisham, you think legal suspense. If I say Elizabeth Berg, you think women's fiction that includes subtle humor and an in-depth look at relationships that are vital to women. Jamie Langston Turner has a unique style of writing that includes lots and lots of narrative. Though her novels are short on that all-important "white space," she is one of my favorite authors. We could talk all day about writers who have done an exceptional job of branding themselves. But I'd like to focus on Karen's comment.

As I read the first part, I found myself asking, "Is Karen saying that literary fiction is the "beautifully written" novel, while the commercial one has the plot and appeal that literary fiction doesn't have? Is it that well defined, or is it possible to blend the lines between the two? Can literary fiction have a dynamic plot, or commercial fiction be thought of as beautiful? Does anyone do that, and do it well? With all my heart, I hope the answer is yes.

As I read the second part of Karen's comment, I asked myself, are those of us who are trying to blend the two wasting our time? Are we writing books that, indeed, no one knows what to do with? Funny, but I just pulled a Jodi Picoult novel off my shelf -- Handle with Care -- and this is what a reviewer from Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Picoult is a rare writer who delivers book after book, a winning combination of the literary and the commercial." I could have searched a month for a suitable quote and not found one, but there this was, right at my fingertips, when I wasn't even looking. So the answer is yes, the two can be blended -- and perhaps that in itself defines Jodi Picoult's brand. But as the reviewer said, it's the rare writer who can pull it off.

Now please understand, I'm not comparing myself, or anyone else, to Jodi Picoult. She truly is an exceptional writer. What I am saying is that it's not only possible to find that "middle ground" that Karen talked about, but there's a huge audience for it. Ms. Picoult, Elizabeth Berg, Anne Tyler, Charles Martin and others have bridged the gap, and done so very convincingly. So those of us pursuing literary ficton can take hope in that. But we must hone our skills until we're the best we can be; and we must find our own unique place within the industry. I don't believe in luck; I do believe that God guides us with a steady hand. If we follow what we consider to be the call He's placed on our lives, then we'll fulfill the purposes He has for us. The results are His. Always His. And that's the bottom line for those who call themselves Christians.



What is your opinion of literary fiction, either as a writer or a reader? Who else would you add to the list of authors who have successfully bridged the gulf between literary and commercial fiction, whether in CBA or ABA?