Publishing Then & Now
Over at David Montgomery's Crime Fiction Dossier there's an ongoing and quite wonderful series of overnight success stories from writers like Joseph Finder , Laura Lippman , Denise Hamilton and more.
The newest entry is by thriller writer Michael Palmer and paints a picture of publishing that isn't very recognizable these days and reveals how much the publishing business has changed.
"...my agent was able to sell [my outline] to a wonderful editor and teacher named Linda Grey at Bantam Books. She used several drafts of the actual book to teach me the nuts and bolts of writing a thriller. Finally, after about 5 drafts, the book was published..."
I've asked a dozen or so bloggers who are also writers and who I read daily - or as often as they succumb to the pressure and post - to answer those questions. If you are a writer/blogger and want to weigh in write me at [email protected]
Part 4 "The Blogging Thing" series: Brenda Coulter: No rules. Just write
I've long admired journalists who have the discipline and the organizational skills to crank out daily newspaper columns. How on earth do they do it? In the hour I spend dithering over the placement of semicolon, a pro can polish off her piece, drop it on her editor's desk, and go grab a cup of coffee.
Three months ago, convinced that such efficient writing must be a learned skill, I adopted a sink-or-swim strategy and hurled myself into the blogosphere. So far it's going great. I'm posting at least six entries a week, so I've got the "discipline" part down. It's still taking me longer than I'd like to do research, form opinions, and pound out short essays, but I've seen small improvements here and there.
Although I'm a published romance author, I don't believe that gaining the enormous blog readership that would be required to effect a visible bump in my book sales is a realistic goal. So I just concentrate on stretching my imagination and honing my writing skills. Doing that in public keeps me focused on the task I've set for myself; that's why I'm a blogger.
Ray Rhamey Flogging the Quill
Why do The Blogging Thing? You mean besides the groovy beat? I’ll be honest: my initial reason for launching Flogging the Quillwas attention-getting behavior. Without a day job at the time, I was busting my hump in every way I could think of to generate projects for my online editing service, editorrr.com. A sort of guerilla marketing effort to support my novel-writing habit. Yeah, I’ve reached the junkie stage.
That was the "inciting incident"…but months down the road I now realize it runs much deeper than that. It’s no coincidence that I dedicated the blog to "pursuing the art & craft of compelling storytelling;" telling stories has been the focus of my creative life for decades.
There was a run at creating comic strips (yes, I’m a cartoonist, too. Check out the May 2005 issue of the Writer magazine, page 12, for "B.C. Writer," a panel cartoon.). Comic strips are like novels in this significant way: the cartoonist is the writer, director, cameraman, the actors…all of that. Just as a novelist is. Darn near sold a strip about an actor pig. May still do a graphic novel with that character.
Then, in advertising—like M.J., I was a writer/creative director for some big agencies, although in Chicago—my most successful ads and campaigns had a story quality. You know, a beginning, middle, and end, like my Budweiser TasteBuds spots that ran on Saturday Night Live. It was my nature.
The lure of telling stories pulled me into screenwriting, so I quit the adworld and went to L.A. to dive into movies. Mixed success—did become a story editor/writer for an animation company (comic strips redux!) and earned a bunch of screen credits, wrote some spec screenplays, and there’s my screen adaptation of "The Little Engine that Could" on video store shelves, but a screenwriting career never materialized. However, I did learn a ton more about storytelling. And my thirst for story was stronger than ever.
Then came novels, the ultimate stories. I’ve written 3 and 1/3. Like many writers, I’ve put years into learning everything I could about the craft, devouring bushels of books from Writers Digest Books and the like, taking classes, and writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, writing, rewri... It may be working; I now have an agent representing 2 of the novels and a non-fiction book proposal.
And then a knack for editing surfaced in critique groups—no surprise after 15 years as a creative director. Which circles back to the real reason I blog about storytelling: storytelling. The more I think about it (from both a writer’s and an editor’s points of view), the more I write about it, and the more I see of other writer’s works and concerns, the deeper my understanding of storytelling becomes. And that cranks the caliber of both my noveling and editing up another notch.
That’s what I get out of it. A good thing, too, because the blog has yet to generate an editing client. But, I’ve discovered, that’s okay. Because one other thing I have found myself drawn to is helping other writers. I spend so many hours on an edit that I’m afraid to calculate an hourly wage because, once I see what it is, I’ll be forced to give it all up and become a migrant worker in order to make more money.
Another benefit may be in the works—after blogging (or, in my case, flogging) for a few months it turns out I’ve written a 60,000-word book on the craft. Hmmm. So now my agent is circulating a book proposal based on FtQ. Naught may come of it, but it’s another arrow into the air. One of these days I’ll hear the squeal of an acquisitions editor and know that one has found a bull’s-eye.
One other benefit occurs to me: my blog is the one place my writing can be pure me. Maybe I like that best of all. In the day job, my writing serves the purposes of the university I now work for. In my novels, it must serve the purpose of storytelling. But in the blog the language can be anything I want, and that’s a delicious freedom.
As for what blogging does to my writing…it interferes, yet it informs and motivates. For most of Flogging the Quill’s existence I’ve posted three 1000- to 1200-word essays per week. Puff, pant.
But damn, it’s satisfying, especially when I hear from readers that I’ve helped them.
I blog about storytelling because, I guess, story is the story of my life. Has been ever since Prince Valiant in the Sunday comics captured my imagination and took it with him on his adventures. Next to writing a compelling story, what I love most is reading one, and one of these days there could be a novel I helped get there through a post on Flogging the Quill.
Now that would be cool.
About the flogger, er, blogger: Ray is represented by TriadaUS in the marketing of a speculative suspense novel, We the Enemy; a coming-of-age novel, The Summer Boy; and an adaptation of his Flogging the Quill blog-to-book. His day job is with Washington State University as a writer/editor.
Recent Comments