Category: submissions

First, before I forget…  Folks in the Los Angeles area, this weekend is the Writers Coffeehouse. Sunday, noon to three, at Dark Delicacies in Burbank. It’s free and it’s open to writers of all levels—from bare-bones beginners to seasoned professionals, and even a few mid-list hacks like myself.  Stop by, ask questions, have fun.

Speaking of writing advice…

This week I wanted to prattle on for a moment about one of those off-topics I tend not to talk about much.  It’s more of a mindset, and it applies to writers of prose and scripts alike.  I’ll give you a hint—it’s not a good mindset to have.

Let me toss out a hypothetical situation for you.  More exact, a hypothetical person.  I’ll call her Phoebe.  If you want to substitute a different name or gender, please go right ahead.

Just for the record, I have never known a Phoebe. I know two or three folks who’ve changed their names, and they weren’t a Phoebe before or after. That’s why it’s one of my four fallback names I use here all the time (the other three belonging to the Animaniacs). If I randomly referred to a woman in one of these examples as Colleen, Becky, Jennifer, or Katie, for example… I would get many calls/messages from people I know asking “is this supposed to be me?”

So… Phoebe.

Phoebe is, for the record, my dream woman. She’s what every man aspires to in a significant other. Smart.  Funny.  Kind.  Sexy.  Gorgeous. I can’t think of anything I’ve wanted more than to be with Phoebe. Feel free to take “be with” any way you like–you’ll be right.  She is, in all ways, perfect.

Well, perfect might be overstating it.

Just a bit.

To be honest, she could use one tiny improvement in the facial region. Her chin is kind of sharp. Makes her face a bit too triangular and pointy. A rounded chin would bring out her cheeks and her smile more.

Also… slight overbite.  You can’t really notice it until you’re close to her.  That’s when you can also see one of her incisors has this little twist to it.  Nothing braces couldn’t fix, though.  Maybe those transparent ones.  Invisalign?  Something like that.

Plus, she’d be much hotter if her hair was a bit lighter.  And not so long.  If she was more of a platinum blonde, Phoebe would be unbelievably hot.  So really she’s just a haircut and a box of dye away from being my perfect woman.

Speaking of which—please don’t judge me for this—Phoebe is a touch on the small side. Not flat, by any means, and they’re nicely formed. Really nice.  I’m not talking about anything grotesque, mind you, but something in a B-cup would give her an absolutely killer figure.

Again, though, that’s minor. Really minor. Heck, I think it’s just outpatient surgery these days.

Y’know, thinking about it, if she wore some nicer clothes, it’d help show off that figure, too.  Everything Phoebe owns is that kind of frumpy-baggy look.  It was kind of cute in college, but come on.  Dress up a bit now and then.  Would it be so wrong to wear something eye-catching?  Once we’re together, I’ll take her on a nice shopping spree before we go out anywhere.

Although I don’t know where we’ll go out.  We don’t have many of the same interests. She can’t stand superhero movies.  Or shows.  Or books (which is a bit of a sore spot).  I’ll work on that, get her to watch something better and stop subjecting me to that crap stuff she likes to watch.

And, I mean… I sit in a chair nine hours a day and she makes me look kind of athletic. She’s still got that young metabolism, lets her eat half a pizza before bed and she actually wakes up weighing less than she did the night before.  That’s not going to last forever.

At least, with that body—well, the potential body we’re talking about—the sex will be worth it.

As long as she doesn’t make that same weird noise she makes when she’s excited. That sound creeps me out.

Still my dream girl, though, and I’d love to be with her—in any sense of the phrase.

So, at this point I can guess what a lot of you are thinking.  Why the hell is Phoebe my dream girl? She sounds like a good, solid person as she is, but it’s pretty apparent she’s not what I’m looking for, despite my insistence that I want to be with her. I mean, why would anyone want to be involved with someone just to change everything about them?

Which… is the point I wanted to make.

Between this ranty blog, conventions, signings, Twitter, Facebook, the Coffeehouse I mentioned up above… I meet a lot of writers. Several of them are so far past me I’m astonished when they strike up a conversation. A couple…I think it’s safe for me to say I’m on the same level as them.

Most of them are beginners, though. Maybe they’ve got a small sale under their belt, but often not even that much. You probably know some folks like this, yes? Maybe you’re one of them. These folks will talk about how much they want to be writers, how it’s been a lifelong dream to see their name on a shelf in a bookstore, or to hear actors reciting their dialogue.  There’s nothing they want more, and they’ll do whatever it takes, to make that dream become a reality.

However…

Just after this, some of these folks follow it up by explaining how biased and unfair the publishing industry is. Or maybe listing off all the things that are wrong with Hollywood.  Don’t even get these folks started on agents. Agents of all types need to be a lot more open, especially considering they usually do nothing and then take a cut of your money.

Or maybe they swing the other way.  Perhaps they’ll  point out how much self-publishers are screwing things for everybody. It’s not even real publishing, right?  They’re just oversaturating the markets with all their crap and making it harder for good stuff—my stuff—to get noticed.

As a finale, these people will announce all the things they’d change about the industry.  All the things they’re going to change once they’re in that position of power.  In fact, the industry’s changing now and they’d better watch out!  We don’t need any of those dinosaurs anymore, right?!

By what I’m sure is a complete coincidence, very, very few of these people have ever sold a book. Or a screenplay. Or a short story.

Which only shows how corrupt and broken the system is and why it needs to be fixed. Right?

Y’see, Timmy, I can’t go into any sort of relationship thinking I’ll be the one to change her! Or him. Or them, if I’m feeling adventurous. Those relationships are always doomed one way or another. Either they fail horribly or they “succeed” with one person or the other becomes a twisted, compromised version of themselves (and probably hating the other person for it).

Likewise, I can’t expect to have any sort of success in the publishing world or in Hollywood if I’m starting from the mindset of “they’re all wrong.”  Definitely not if it’s my main focus.  It’s no different than my mad pursuit of Phoebe just so I can change everything about her.  I’m either looking for a relationship or I’m looking for someone to be my Eliza Doolittle-esque test subject.

My main focus as a writer should be (ready for this?) my writing. It needs to be my main concern. It’s very good to know about different forms of publishing, about marketing and networking and social media… but first and foremost, I’m a writer. Personally, when someone introduces themselves as a writer and the first thing they want to talk about is everything wrong with traditional publishing… I get a little cautious.

What’s your first concern? Do you want to date Phoebe… or do you just want everything on your terms?

Next time…

Oh, almost forgot! This Tuesday, Ex-Isle is finally out on audiobook after delays that are pretty solidly my fault. And they brought back the whole cast for the production. Check it out!

So… next time, if I may, I’d like to talk about your purpose.

Until then… go write.

Yeah, this is a day late.  Lots going on this week, so I thought I could make an exception…

Which, by coincidence, is what I wanted to blabber on about this week.

If you hang out with enough writers (or musicians, or filmmakers, or other artists), either online or in the real world, you’ve probably heard a story about someone who broke the rules and got away with it.  And Wakko didn’t just break the rules, mind you… he shattered them.  Every one of them.  They had to write new rules for him to break.  All those people who tell you do this, don’t do that—he ignored them all.  And that’s how he got where he is today, with his fame and fortune and living the life we all dream about

People like these tend to get sort of a mythology around them in their respective circles.  Which is kind of sad, because these folks—unintentionally or not—tend to make things a lot harder for the folks coming after them.  Once I buy into the idea of being the exception, my chances of success drop drastically.

Let me give you an example…

Most of you have probably heard of Cormac McCarthy.  He’s a brilliant writer who’s done some wonderful books like The Road and Blood Meridian, among others.  He’s also famous for using almost no punctuation, sometimes to the point that his books become difficult to read.  Seriously, you’d think the guy got beat up  by a pair of quotation marks every day after school when he was a kid.

Now, McCarthy decided a while ago that he wanted to write a screenplay.  But, being Cormac McCarthy, he didn’t bother to learn how to write one.  He just started throwing dialogue and settings down on the page in whatever format looked right to him.  And several accounts say the script was…well, a complete mess.  Naturally, though, when word got out that he’d written a script, Hollywood went nuts.  The script was grabbed, Ridley Scott directed, and it’s coming out in just a few weeks ( The Counselor).

Now, a lot of would-be screenwriters who believe in ignoring the rules saw this as validation.  How can anyone say formatting matters after a format-free script sells and becomes a major motion picture?  It’s undeniable proof that sort of thing just isn’t important.

Except, well… not exactly.

Cormac McCarthy’s been a legend for twenty years, and was still famous for twenty before that. He could’ve turned in a script written on a used paper plate and the bidding would’ve started at fifty thousand. His status as a novelist made him the exception to the rules of screenwriting. Just because he can do it doesn’t mean I can. Or you can.  Or she can.

Here’s the thing…

Exceptions to the rule tend to be rare.  Exceptionally rare, you could say. That’s why they’re the exception and not the rule.  McCarthy’s script was snatched up by Hollywood despite its poor formatting, but dozens of them are tossed aside every single day for that very reason.  Because that’s the rule.  Formatting does matter.

And it’s not just screenwriting.  For every person who sold the first draft of the first novel they wrote to the first publisher they showed it to, there are millions of people who did not.  Yes, E.L. James, Diablo Cody, J.L. Bourne, and a triple-handful of other writers started out by giving their work away for free and then spun that into successful, paying careers as writers.  And that sounds fantastic until you stop to consider there are over two billion people on the internet these days.  Even if only one percent of them are trying to make money by writing on a blog or website, that puts the odds of success somewhere in the neighborhood of  20,000 to 1 (about 0.0005 % if my math is right).  And that’s with a very generous estimate of how many successful writers have followed this path.

I can’t use an exception to the rule as a basis for how things should be done.  By it’s very nature, the exception is the freak chance, the aberrant behavior—it’s just not the way things work.  Think of the stories you’ve heard about people who survive falling out of airplanes or getting shot in the head.  They’re amazing and true and took almost no effort, yes, but they shouldn’t make anyone rethink using parachutes or gun safety.

If I want to succeed, the best thing I can do—whether I’m jumping out of a plane, getting shot at, or writing a story—is to follow the established rules.  The absolute worst thing I can do is scoff at those rules—rules like spelling, grammar, or wearing body armor—and  decide they don’t apply to me.  No matter how amazing my writing is, I need to follow the basic guidelines for my craft.

The reason I should follow them, before you ask, is because the person reading my work is expecting me to follow them.  The publishers, editors, and producers who see it before my chosen audience definitely will, and those readers or viewers will assume I’m going to, too.  They all have certain expectations they’ve built up, and these expectations all tend to fall in line with the rules.

Now, does that mean amazing, rule-bending things won’t happen or can’t be done?  Not at all.  My writing may be so spectacular that no one notices the abundant typos.  The basic idea could be so clever that nobody will pick up on the fact that all of my characters have about as much depth as a puddle on the kitchen floor.  Heck, the structure of my story could be so rock-hard the reader will forgive and forget those incredibly boring opening chapters.

But you know what?  Let’s say on page one of my manuscript I introduce school newspaper reporter Tomm Truth and Joanie Justice, and show them straggling with staph editor Barry O’Bama who doesn’t want them running a article about the poor campus seckurity.  After a paragraph or two of that my editor’s going to groan out loud.  I know when I was a script reader seeing stuff like that made me roll my eyes and add more rum to my glass.

Y’see, Timmy, the minute I see a bunch of clichés, misused words, poor grammar, and misspellings, I’ve rendered a judgment on that writer.  Possibly two or three, depending on how many things I see that look wrong.  And they may not be wrong for this story—each one may be carefully chosen to set up certain things for later on.  But on page one or two or three, they look wrong, and that’s how they’ll be interpreted and that’s going to color my view of the manuscript from here on.

If I assume I’m the exception, that I don’t need to follow certain rules, I’m setting an obstacle between me and the people who are going to pay me to keep writing.  Maybe even multiple obstacles.  They’re not insurmountable and they don’t guarantee failure.  But it does mean I’ve just limited my potential audience.  Some readers will toss a manuscript in that big pile on the left after seeing two or three things that look like mistakes.  Others will read ten or fifteen pages before setting it aside.  And if I can’t prove I am the exception before that happens, I’m going to get a lot of rejections.  My story may be loaded with promise, but if my initial foundation looks weak and poorly designed, why would anyone risk the time to see if the rest of it’s structurally sound?

So try to be the exception.  Just don’t automatically assume you are.  You need to earn it.

Next time… I want to talk about Guido.

Until then, go write.