When To Hold ‘Em…

As I prepare for RavenCon, I’m listening to “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. And watching Monty Python videos. The combination seems very appropriate. See, one of the panels I’ll be on this year is “Self-Promotion and Social Anxiety Disorder”. And while I’ve been on promotional panels before, and I’ve been reading voraciously on the topic for three years now, I still don’t really believe I have the foggiest freaking idea what I’m doing. But I have solidly learned a few items, which I’ll tie into the song lyrics just for the hell of it (not all of them, but a few particularly apt lines) and punctuate with links to Monty Python videos to avoid being too serious about all this:

On a warm summer’s evening, on a train bound for nowhere/

I met up with the gambler; we were both too tired to sleep

Writing can feel like a career bound for nowhere, and hanging out with other writers at a convention is remarkably like meeting a fellow gambler on a train. And by Saturday night, we’re almost always so tired and so wired that we can’t sleep.

He said, “Son, I’ve made my life out of readin’ people’s faces/

And knowin’ what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.

This is also called “picking up on social cues”. Every writer hoping to promote themselves effectively must learn this above all else; you can be a self-marketing genius and still piss off the people you really need to impress, thus dooming all your efforts in the long term. This also applies to online conversations, unfortunately, where the cues are much harder to read. More on that below.

If you’re gonna learn to play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right

I’m really good at Othello: simple moves, limited pieces, infinite patterns. I’m not so great at chess, because there are so many different pieces and so many possible moves that result in so many variations; but if I get in the groove I can hold several moves ahead in my mind fairly well.

Planning a marketing career, though, kind of feels like playing 3D holographic chess where the computer keeps crashing and the pieces keep switching sides and the rules have been changed recently but there’s no new instruction manual to tell you what you’re supposed to do. Meanwhile a mad Pomeranian is chewing on your ankle and a parrot is screaming obscenities in your ear.

The point is … the point is … well, the point is that a writer should never own a parrot, nor a Pomeranian. But the actual point I’m attempting to make is that it’s more effective to figure out what your strengths are and build your plan around those. Fads change, rules change, options change, opportunities change. Who you are doesn’t change nearly as fast, and if you know who you are and what you want, you’re in a better position to take advantage of whatever’s on the table at the moment.

And now for the fun chorus lines:

You got to know when to hold ‘em

You will lose faith in yourself, your writing, your agent, your publisher, your editor, your mom, your spouse, and even in the likelihood of the sun coming up in the morning. There will be times when everyone is telling you that you made a series of terrible mistakes, and that you really should pull that submission back and hire a lawyer to get out of that contract and fire that stupid editor and are you quite sure the sun’s coming up tomorrow, dear, because Fox News said just this afternoon….

Yeah. If those well-meaning folks don’t know anything about the publishing industry–or worse, if they’re just involved enough to know a little bit–it can sound right and be so, so, soooooooo wrong. And it’s sooooo hard to tell them to back off and that you know what you’re doing. But you got to hold ‘em. You have to trust that things are gonna be okay, even if the fear and the uncertainty are making you absolutely psycho crazy. You have to–very important here–you have to stay off the message boards, even your favorite totally-friendly-on-my-side-forums, when you’re freaking out. Because there is no way to phrase “I’m freaking out and I don’t trust person xyz” that doesn’t sound, by the time you’re done, just like “DON’T TRUST PERSON XYZ” . So in addition to sandbagging whoever you’re talking about, if you then take a swipe at someone wiser who tries to stop you from making an ass of yourself in a public forum, you’re in for a fast-escalating firestorm as everyone and their brother jumps into the fight. And when it’s over, you’re stuck with a ton of PR damage that’s not going to go away. Evahhhhr. Because those comment threads are all public record. So know when to hold your mouth shut, too, on and offline.

Know when to fold ‘em

There will be the exact reverse: times when a deal or situation just isn’t working out, whether that’s a partnership or a convention appearance or a publishing contract, times when everyone around you is saying “go go go!” and your instinct is saying “screeching brakes stop.” There will be times you have to trust yourself to say, “I give up. Count me out. Lesson learned.” The trick is to meet those moments will grace and dignity, because if you stomp off in a hissy fit or, again, rant all over the message boards, your blog, or Facebook…see previous paragraph for how that winds up.

Know when to walk away and know when to run

There are times for a polite, tactful withdrawal or sidestep. I’ve turned down offers to submit a story to some anthologies because they just didn’t seem the right fit for me at the time. Other people are very happy with those anthos and reportedly making very good money through them. I walked away. I don’t regret it a bit. I’ve turned down invites to conventions, same thing. Nothing wrong with the antho or convention in question; they just weren’t a good fit for me at that time. I can only do so much in a year, and that means saying no sometimes. I’ve also fended off the inevitable “Oh, you’re a writer? I have this novel I want to write, why don’t you help me write it and I’ll give you a share of the proceeds, because I’m positive it’s going to be just an awesome movie blockbuster mega hit!” (My capacity for tact occasionally strains at the seams on this one.)

There are times when a slightly faster backpedal is advisable. If you’ve already started a flame war without meaning to, or you’ve jumped in the middle of someone else’s fight, cut your losses and get out of that mess. Stop reading that thread, stop answering that person’s calls, whatever it takes. Go offline for a week and only pick up the pieces that are most important to you when you return. Actively refuse to engage in pointless confrontation, because sooner or later you’re going to lose your temper and then….see previous paragraphs. Private message or email a brief apology to the relevant people for going off the rails and stay quiet until the argument settles down. It doesn’t matter if someone’s badmouthing you or your publisher. Apologize for your part in setting things off, then shut up and stay shut.

You can’t recover ground if you never get out of the hole in the first place.

You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table/

There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

Agonizing over every dollar you spend on self-promotion will make you totally crazy. Forget it. Sure, self-promotion is important, sure, the money you spend on it needs considered. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to make money as a writer. But don’t obsess over it. Money isn’t the point. If money is ever more important than the actual writing itself, as I’ve said before, you’re in the wrong job.

As a semi-side note in the “lessons learned” column: don’t talk about the behind the scenes stuff unless someone asks, and even then, only if they’re persistent–because other people have said and are saying the same things you want to say, only better and with the benefit of more experience behind their words. Keep a list of informative web sites to hand out to people who ask you about the details of publishing. Steer discussion to you and your books, not to your publisher or your royalty checks or your contracts.

Just because you have one self-published book out there, or a book out through a small press, doesn’t mean you know what the hell you’re talking about regarding industry-wide trends and such. The truth is, beginners like me just don’t know enough to open our mouths on the subject. I try to avoid being on the “small press published authors” panels these days; I’m painfully and belatedly aware that I’m ignorant as hell compared to the real professionals.

Self promotion is about you. So get out there and talk to people face to face instead of posting on message boards. Share a meal with other convention attendees at the hotel restaurant. Go to book club meetings and local writer nights, go to art show openings and museums and nature walks. Write stuff that hasn’t a chance in hell of selling. Live a life. Love what you do. Have fun with it. True joy is the best self-promotional tool you have; it’s infectious.

Sit down at the table. Pick up your hand. Play the game, and don’t count your winnings or losses until you’re done–also known, to me, as “the day I file my taxes”. Put a new year-ahead plan together based on that, draw your cards, and set off again.

Without the Pomeranian. A parrot actually looks kind of cool. Especially if it’s an ex-parrot of the Norwegian Blue variety.

‘Cause every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser…

And I would add that a bit of silliness and laughter helps considerably when dealing with anything serious.

 

Amicable Advice

I fear clicking on links to writing-related web sites. Most of the time they’re innocuous; I scan the article, nod or roll my eyes, and occasionally post the link over onto Facebook. But sometimes… ahh, sometimes… one link leads to another, and another, and another… and I lose half my day to looking through the link trees of article after article.

I tell ya, it’s a damn dangerous place, the Internet… especially for the poor, innocent writer.

So here’s my latest source of suffering and time lost. May you enjoy it as much as I did… oh, and clear your schedule for the next couple of hours…

I started off with Anne R. Allen’s blog, which is one of the few I subscribe to (to which I subscribe? meh. Shut up, inner critic!); her post on how to query book reviewers caught my attention, as both an author and a book reviewer myself. That led me to Alan Rinzler’s post, “Good Day Sunshine For Writers“, which makes a strong case for the benefits of self-publishing–and offers an equally strong warning that self-publishing is not in any way easier than traditional:

[I]t’s just as hard as ever to write a good book that generates and sustains the buzz, a book that people want to tell their friends about, a book that produces major sales.

I also wandered off track to take a look at Ash Ambirge’s latest blog post, “It’s Okay If You Suck At This“, which offered me some much-needed perspective and which everyone should go and read right now. Even if you’ve read it already. It doesn’t get old. Really. Most of Ash’s posts don’t, for me at least…

Then it was back to Anne R. Allen’s blog and sideways from there over to Kristen Lamb’s blog, to read a post about “How to Win The Hearts of Bloggers“, which is where I started to lose some serious time. In addition to being an excellent blog post (and an extremely interesting interview of a book blogger) in and of itself, this one also sidetracked me into “The WANA Theory of Book Economics” (which is definitely worth a read by anyone even tentatively maybe possibly thinking about self-publishing or, for that matter, hoping to make a living from their writing at some point), and a discussion about spam toads (which is even more interesting than it sounds, and has some really good tips about blogging and using social media).

At that point I managed to stop the madness, because one of my dogs began insisting, not understanding Daylight Savings Time, that it was, in fact, dinner time thankyouverymuchdamnit right nowww mommmmm… and that made me look at the clock and screech a little. Just a little. Because it was a thoroughly enjoyable diversion…

…and now, set a timer… or install Eyes Relax and use it… and then go forth to learn and enjoy!

 

Professional vs. Professionalism

Where is that line beyond which you’ve screwed yourself as a writer (or, really, in any job involving the public at some point)? I’m tackling this topic precisely because I’m not an expert. I started this blog two years ago as a way to get familiar with writing articles without the pressure of an external editor. Over time, it has morphed into a chronicle of my journey into becoming a published author. I see the questions and worries I encounter along the way as issues that other new writers are probably struggling with as well, so I want to bring them up into the light and take the fear out of the process. Anxiety over how to act in public is my latest bugaboo, so the blog post by Mamatas was very well timed indeed.

Mamatas’s take on professional behavior leads me to think that the bar is a little lower than I suspected. This is not a slur. I tend to set the bar impossibly high for myself, and stories of writers behaving badly at public events abound among sf/f fans. It’s an intense relief to find out I’m worrying too much.

I’m a low-level writer; just beginning to get Known. What I do now is going to lay the foundation for the next twenty or thirty years: an awesomely intimidating prospect. But, looking back to Mamatas: “Behaving in a professional manner, for writers, is really quite easy.” His focus is on producing good quality writing, on time, honestly, and not stepping into the libel pool. Everything else is secondary if not actually irrelevant.

I agree. I remember conversations an awful lot like what he describes; I’ve probably been on one end or the other of the nonsense. The list of “do’s and don’ts” can feel intimidating and overwhelming, and it’s really easy to get sucked into the peer pressure of marketing oneself rather than focusing on being a writer. It took me up until ShevaCon, just this year, to get my bearings back on Who I Am.

The line past which a professional ought not go, however, has turned out to involve a heavy dose of common sense. A convention is business, not play. Common sense business courtesy applies, from dress to behavior; the rules are a lot looser at sf/f conventions, but not entirely dismissed.

Mamatas comments, in his post, on the absurd pressure on writers to be ultra bland in their publicly stated opinions. That point hit home for me; I learned that lesson the hard way myself. When I began writing book reviews, I gleefully shredded bad books and dutifully pointed out the flaws in good books. Then came the day I Was Published–and everything changed. I was petrified of writing a bad review, knowing that I could well meet the author at a convention, might even get to sit on a panel with them. How dare I write that a Big Name Author stunk it up on their latest endeavor? I could be blackballed for such atrociously rude behavior.

So I yanked back on the reins and toned down all of my reviews and only accepted books that I liked.

Didn’t take long before I got hammered by another blogger for a library-paste crap review. And you know what? He was right. I was being a coward. The function of a book reviewer isn’t to be nice. The function of a writer isn’t to be nice. It’s to haul out the guts of what is and deal with it in a very public fashion, no matter who that offends. Controversy means you’re being honest; it means you’re saying something real. 

Now–there’s no need to push a discussion into an argument; no need to be loud and obnoxious about your opinions.If you have the guts to, say, admit that you support Sarah Palin to someone at a sf/f convention, you’re not going to lose that three-book deal you’ve been negotiating over with a Major (or even a Small) Publisher. If you insult the convention staff and act like they’re lower forms of life compared to You The Successfully Published Writer (yeah, I’ve actually seen this happen), you won’t lose that publishing contract either–but your welcome at that convention is likely to be very thin at best next year. And word will spread, and other conventions will be sloooooow to invite you. Which will really impact your sales, and thus your future welcome with the publisher.

In short: prima donna behavior and a lack of social mores don’t go far on the ground floor. Your writing may get you a contract, but your behavior gets you fans–and without a dedicated following of readers, you have nothing in short order. That’s the one point Mamatas seems to miss. Towards the end of his post, he gets snarky: “Here’s the dirty little secret, speaking as an editor … we laugh at ‘official’ websites–get enough fans that someone makes an unofficial one and then we might care….Your bookmarks and business cards generally tend toward the amateurish….95 percent of them go right into the trash.”

Wow. That’s depressing. And this is where I head down another road, as well; speaking as a beginning writer, I’m struggling with every step I take. I work my butt off on my official website and my Facebook presence and this blog. I love the bookmarks my publisher sends me, and I love handing them out. The editors I send my work off to might not care about any of that stuff; that’s OK. It’s not their job to care about any of that. The people who do care are the readers. The fans. The people without whom I wouldn’t need an editor or a publisher in the first place.

I think that’s an important distinction: I don’t give a rat’s ass if the editor ever looks at my website, because he’s not the target audience. While I completely agree with the majority of Mamatas’s points, that last bit of his post strikes me as mean-spirited and more than a little irrelevant. Being a writer is hard enough. There’s no need to sneer at the folks trying to figure out where the rungs on the ladder are.

But he closes with a dead-on point: “Can you write well? I mean, really write well. Note, not write well enough–we have plenty of folks who can do that…Can you write well?“

That is, at the end of the day, the gold ring we’re all going after. So raise your worry threshold and lower your standards, get the book done and the next one done, and the next one after that, all as fearlessly and openly and honestly as you can; don’t throw a drink in a Major Editor’s face or widdle on the tires of his BMW, and you’ll be just fine. ;p

 

Past and Future Days….

I’ve found myself musing, as my second book launch approaches, on how I’ve changed over the past year. The new reality I live in, and where I’ll be in another year. My goal at one point not too long ago was to have an agent. Then it was to get a publisher. Then it was to convince people to come to my book launch. Then it was to book as many convention appearances as I could afford. Now I’m aiming to convince people to come to my second book launch–which is complicated by the fact that I’m running three of them this time.

Along the way, my understanding of everything from the writing process itself to the business of writing has radically shifted. I started out believing that Big Press was the only way to go, and that Small Presses were tantamount to self publishing. After signing with a small press, I turned that 180 for a while and thought Small Press was the only way to go, and that Big Press was almost universally evil. Along with that, of course, went a dislike of Big Chain Bookstores and a strident waving of the flag for independents.

In the past year, however, I’ve spoken to very happy Big Press midlist authors and very unhappy Small Press authors; very unhappy Big Press authors and very happy Small Press authors. I’ve heard C. S. Friedman publicly and privately praise DAW as an awesome house to work with, and I’ve seen Night Shade Books go under the SFWA’s disapproval. I’ve read Holly Lisle’s rant on the problems with Big Bookstore models and read through the resulting flurry of comments, many of which made very good sense, both pro and con. I’ve spoken to indie bookstores who turned their noses up at me because I didn’t have a Big Name Publisher behind me, and worked with more than one local Barnes & Noble who went out of their way (and still do) to carry & promote my books. I’ve also seen B&Ns out of state flatly refuse to even consider carrying my book because Corporate won’t give the individual stores enough autonomy. I’ve donated copies to libraries that were friendly and grateful; I’ve handed my book over to librarians who looked at me like I’d just crawled out from under a foul smelling rock.

All of which is in service of saying: it’s all individual, when you get right down to it. As a writer, I don’t believe I can afford to look at “overall” and “general” and “trend” information. I need to look at what I want to accomplish, and then find someone who will support me in that goal, regardless of what the industry and the economy and the profession at large is doing. The trends–bookstores closing, publishers failing, economy tanking–whatever you want to say is the current state of the world–doesn’t matter. Really. If I run my life by what everyone else sees, I have no business being a writer.

Holly Lisle, in her rant, makes some good points. She also depresses me mightily; because if your career can be so dead after three books that you literally have to change your pen name to continue as a writer–if the mechanized selling practices of chain bookstores can kill your books without ever giving them a chance at life–then I’m totally screwed and I’ll never make enough to pay for a can of soda, so I may as well get a day job and forget about all this writing crap.

But. 

I also see examples of writers like Michael Sullivan beating the odds through bizarrely unlikely paths. I see moderately talented authors who put advertising and promotions at a high priority (by the way, that description is not aimed at Michael) succeeding where astoundingly talented prima donnas–who refuse to lift a finger to do anything but write–fail.

This is the world we live in today. If you can’t stand to be out in public, better cultivate a friend who loves the spotlight, or hire a really good publicist. I used to be utterly terrified of public appearances, of *gulp* giving speeches and trying to convince hordes of strangers that my book is worth reading. I had to get over that. Now I’m reasonably decent at promoting myself and learning more all the time. That’s the decision I had to make: not to look at all the ways to fail, but to shove through and make a way to succeed.

So stop listening to trends and forecasts of doom. For every Big Store and Big Press and Big Name without a heart, there’s someone who’s desperate to help you–yes, you out there in the back row–I hear you thinking that I’m talking out of my ass right now. Listen: you have to go out and find the people who want to help–because they don’t even know you exist yet. Holly Lisle is an excellent source of information on writing and writing careers; her how-to books have taught me a lot. So has Writing-World. This blog is another great resource (sorry, had to plug that in there). So are dozens of other site and people and places. The tools are there. The resources are there. Never mind how Big any given Name is. They are individuals, just like you & me. Some of them will help you, if you take the steps to ask.

So stop talking about the obstacles to advancing your writing career, stop reading about it, and go do something about it…right now! And keep trying until someone says Y E S!!

 

On the Way to Writing a Speech….

I’ve been hijacked. Yes, I was sitting at my desk this morning, minding my own business, thank you, and trying to organize notes for a speech coming up this weekend; suddenly these words started spilling out onto the screen, ostensibly to help with the speech. After about three paragraphs I could see that this really had nothing at all to do with the proposed speech; I forced the attacking sentences over into their own file to see what they would do in a setting all their own. They settled down fairly quickly, and became almost tame; and as they allowed me to groom them into a much sleeker appearance, I decided to reward the former hijackers with a blog post spot. So here you go: I hope you enjoy it. I’m going back to writing that damn speech now…. 

Finishing A Novel

Having published one book sounds impressive; having another one due out next spring sounds fantastic. But the most amazing thing of all, to me, about those two novels isn’t that they were published: it’s that I finished them in the first place. That’s a huge milestone in any writer’s life: seeing a project through to the end and not allowing the demons of doubt to sabotage your efforts.

To give my two published books a certain perspective, I offer this quote from one of my favorite writing mentors, Heather Sellers, from her book Chapter After Chapter.

“Here’s the Super Secret. The book writer’s clubhouse password, what you have to be able to say to get in the room: There are book manuscripts under my bed.”

I have three novels, written in high school, each about fifty thousand words long; about eight years ago, I took them out from “under the bed” and systematically shredded every trace of them I could find. I’ve never regretted it; they were that bad. I have about six more novels in varying stages of completion (one only needs about ten thousand more words, but I am utterly and comprehensively stuck on it), and I may never finish any of them; I have two or three more finished manuscripts from the last ten years that I’m too afraid to look back at, in case they’re as bad as I think they are. So finishing a novel is the big prize, for me; it’s become easier with practice, like everything else does, but I still get a huge thrill every time I close out the last page. 

If you’re a writer, and you’re worried about what to write or how to write, listen closely: all the technique and style and profound content in the world doesn’t matter if you can’t finish the story. So just practice finishing a novel. It doesn’t matter a bit if the story is terrible, if you can’t spell, if your grammar is lousy. Those things will slow you down, sure, and make a longer road to publication; but experience will smooth over those bumps eventually.

Finish the damn thing. Then go take yourself out for the most extravagant treat you can imagine: a ‘luxe sundae strictly forbidden under your current diet, one more jungle-plant for your overcrowded living room, that ridiculously expensive pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing longingly. Make that a habit: part of a carrot/stick schtick. Over time, you can scale the rewards: finished a chapter, get a small treat. Finish a book, get a huge treat. Send out a query letter, get a medium treat. And so on. In the beginning, however, make all the rewards for finishing a short story or a novel outrageous; as each skill becomes “old hat”, scale the reward down. Then find something else that scares the crap out of you to assign a ridiculously extravagant award to. Before you know it, you’ll be saying, “Yes, I have a book published, and that is amazing, but what you don’t know is how many manuscripts I have under my bed….”

*ahem* and I believe I’ve finished this blog post now. Time to go add just a bit of chocolate to my morning coffee….