You're not all going to make it

At one point in 'The Gift', episode 100 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy turns to Spike and says, 'We're not all going to make it.' What she means by that is that some of her friends may die that night as they try to fend off an apocalypse. While those circumstances are dramatic, the line sometimes seems appropriate when I think about the legions of hopeful writers out there in the world.


So here's the blunt truth: you're not all going to make it. (And by 'make it' I mean 'get published', but you knew that.) The numbers alone suggest that, because there are arguably more writers than there are book-buyers in every single market around the world. And most book-buyers don't buy lots of books each year.


Does that mean you shouldn't try? Of course not. The trying is the thing. The trying is what makes you a better writer. In the great ever-shifting ratio of talent:application that is the difference between getting published and not, application is the more influential component. There are lots of talented writers out there. The ones who 'make it' are usually the ones who keep trying and learning as they go. But not everyone will. And nor should everyone expect to.


My example, for comparative purposes, is this: not all musicians expect to get a record deal, so why do all writers expect to get a publishing deal? I am yet to come across a writer who says they're doing it for their own enjoyment - they all seem to want to get published - but there are lots of musicians who do it just for the love of music (I'm speaking from personal experience). It could just be the circles I run in. But those circles are crowded with people who are constantly disappointed because they haven't been published. Some of those people - many, perhaps - will now self-publish a digital book. What's going to happen if they don't turn out to be self-publishing superstars? Statistically, most won't. So then there will be more disappointment. And this disappointment is completely preventable, because the sole cause of disappointment is expectation.

So here’s what I’d tell you if you were my friend and I was your bossy agenty friend:

Write without expectations.
Write because you love it.
Write because you have a story to tell.
Write because it makes you feel alive.
Write because that's where you're most present, in the moment, in the flow.
Don't write because you want to get published.
Don't write and then focus all of your energies on getting published. Just use some of your energies, if that’s what you want to do, and keep writing with the rest of your energies.


Getting published is a separate enterprise - it's a different undertaking altogether to writing. There are some authors who will get published because that's just where their writing falls: in the publishable stream. It doesn't make it better or worse than the writing that doesn't get published. Quite often it's just about the planets aligning for that writer at that time. When I take on an author, I have to love the writing, yes, but I also have to think hard about whether or not I can get the author published. I've rejected a lot of manuscripts that I loved, just because I didn't think I could get them published. In my ideal World of Me, where all the writing I love gets published, things would be different. But they're not. I have to live in this world. And, as Buffy also once said, this world is 'hard, and bright, and violent'.


Now, in the words of Dan Savage, 'I'm gonna get so many caaaallllls ...'

Why Your Novel Won't Get Published (Ten Reasons)

That is the title of a post by Chuck Wendig at his blog Terrible Minds. The post is very funny as well as being very useful. Please read it, if only for entertainment:

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/01/10/why-your-novel-wont-get-published/

Common writing mistakes #2 – What is the narrative voice?

A big question for any writer is: who is my narrator? And are they talking in the first or third person? Or, sometimes, second person (but make sure you can carry it off à la Jay McInerney in Bright Lights, Big City or don’t even bother attempting it)?

In first novels the narrator – whether in first or third person - is often the novelist, and this is understandable but it’s usually a mistake, because it means the writer ends up producing something for an audience of one: him- or herself (see Common writing mistakes #1).

The narrative voice needs to be immediately engaging and consistent throughout – although that doesn’t mean you can’t have an unreliable narrator (i.e. one who is concealing things from the reader, like Lionel Shriver’s Eva in We Need to Talk About Kevin). It just means that the unreliable narrator’s voice needs to be reliable. We need to trust that, when we open that book up after a three-day absence, we’re being told the story by the same person who was telling it to us three days ago.

A consistent, appealing voice is difficult to attain and takes practice, and yet more practice. Quite often it helps to read your work aloud – humans were originally oral storytellers, so a good story should always be read-aloudable, and difficulties with the narrative voice may be revealed by a read-aloud exercise. But once you’ve got the voice – once you can hear the narrator chattering away in your head – then you can tell your reader anything. Plot is important, characters are important, but that narrator … well, there’s no story without them.

Common writing mistakes #1 – Who is the reader?

There are some common problems (or iss-ewes, if you watch Kath and Kim) that pop up in manuscripts – usually more in fiction but, as most aspiring writers are writing fiction, it could be relevant to some of you. The principles apply for fiction, non-fiction and children’s writing, though. So I thought I’d identify some of these problems/iss-ewes in the hope that it may help some of you with your writing.

The first one is: WHO IS YOUR READER? It becomes quite obvious early in a manuscript if a writer has addressed the story only to him or herself. This is a problem that usually arises with a first novel, but it’s a killer, because if you’re the designated reader of your own novel, who else is going to want to read it?

There is nothing wrong with writing a novel only for yourself; the difficulty arises when you send it off to agents and publishers and then become distressed when they don’t want to see your story published. But they’re just being pragmatic – if they can’t identify who your reader is, they’ll logically assume the reading public won’t be able to either and thus won’t buy the book. So if you’re hoping that a publisher will invest some money in publishing your pride and joy, you need to make it easy for them to identify who they’re going to sell it to. Quite early on in the writing process, identify your target readership and keep them in mind while writing. This is no different to a musician deciding whether they’ll write a pop song that lots of people will like, or whether they’ll record a three-hour chord progression that only they understand.

You may need to give your novel to trusted friends and readers, or investigate some professional development programs, in order to work out if you have this problem – let’s face it, if you’ve written the novel for yourself, you’re unlikely to truly see that it is a problem. Remember also that it’s only a problem if you want to get your book published – if you just want to read it to yourself, don’t worry!