Okay, as promised, this is a short summary of my opinion about the value of going to a convention or a writer’s conference.

First off, a definition of the difference. A convention in my language means a gathering such as the World Science Fiction Convention, or BoucherCon, which is the World Mystery Convention. Conventions are attended by fans, by writers, by readers, book dealers, and many others. There are thousands of these types of conventions ranging down the scale of size around the world every year. If you are a well published writer at these conventions, you do book signings and are on panels.

A conference for this discussion is a gathering of writers, editors, agents only. RWA Nationals is the largest of these and very educational focused on the writing business, both in and out of the romance genre. But there are thousands of these around the world every year as well.

Kris and I used to go to a wonderful writer’s conference in New Mexico before it folded its tent. We then were invited for years to a conference in Vancouver B.C. until I said something that pissed off the new people running it. Last year, and upcoming this January, Kris and I will be attending another wonderful small writer’s conference in Cocoa Beach, Florida in January. As you might guess, we are pretty selective on which writer’s conference we attend.

So, to the value of attending.

For professional writers of any age, any level, you flat must get out to conferences. And if you are working tightly inside of one genre, you also need to hit one or two of the conventions in that genre. You must get out and meet the editors. That simple. But there is another reason for my opinion on this. Young writers, and older farts like me, must get out and learn.

Let me say this clearly right here: The learning never stops, no matter how many books you have published or how much you think you know it all.

You can only learn so much reading books, reading blogs, going to your local writer’s group. Kris and I offer workshops for young professionals to help them learn how to jump to the next level, but going to conferences is also a highly intense learning experience. Not only do you get face time with editors at appointments, but there is a ton of paneling you can go to where people talk about subjects you might need to know about.

Often in this business it is one tiny piece of advice, often tossed off by a speaker, that hits a bell, jumps you forward and into selling regularly. And unless you put yourself into the position of getting that tiny piece of advice, you will never know and struggle alone, maybe eventually giving up.

Saying you can’t afford to travel to learn in this modern world of writing is like saying you want to be a lawyer but just can’t afford to go to law school. You have to pay the price for your craft. Part of that price is sitting alone in a room and practicing hour after hour, day after day, but part of that price is getting out and learning from people farther down the road than you are.

Now, a caution about both conferences and conventions. The speakers are sometimes a person no father down the road than you are, or a person who is just flat giving bad advice. You must go in with your bull-sh*t meter running at full speed, watch the speaker bios, and maybe even ask when the writer broke into the field to figure out if the advice is old or modern advice. For example, this year in Denver at the World Science Fiction Convention, the person doing the programming thought for some strange reason that they needed to fill the panels with Denver people. So the older pros were often shuttled to the back or just talked over by younger people with no credits who happened to live in the area. Kris and I had two panels the entire five days. Yeah, silly, but part of the problem.

At writer’s conferences, there are all kind of scam artists as well working the crowds. So very large doses of caution are needed in which information you take or leave.

Kris and I go to conventions for a number of reasons. One, we want to see old friends, both writers and editors, who we seldom see except at conventions and conferences. Second, we want to learn. For example, I sat in a fantastic panel given by Melinda Snodgrass, the novelist and Hollywood writer. She was talking about plotting and I learned a bunch, in fact regretting I didn’t have my notebook with me at the time to take notes. I learned a ton as well talking with old friends, listening how they were handling different business decisions, getting advice on different things. I spent five days in Denver and learned a ton.

I have edited, been a publisher, and have over ninety novels sold, and I went to Denver to keep learning.

The learning never stops. I tend to go out to three events per year outside my local area. And without fail, every year I get the tapes from RWA Nationals and listen to much of it. It was eleven years since I had been to a World Science Fiction Convention, but that does not mean in those eleven years I had just sat home. Nope, I had been out all the time at difference conferences and other genre conventions. Learning.

You want to be a professional fiction writer, pay the price and get out there and learn. You never get good enough, you never know everything about this business, and this business is always changing just ahead of you. You must go out to learn, and trust me, that’s part of the fun of this business.

Cheers,

Dean

A number of months back I talked about how I came into professional fiction writing, the short story per week and such. But Laura asked a question after my last post that I figured might be helpful to talk about. In so many words, the question is simply “Did I always write in this same push/rest style?”

Nope. Along the way I’ve tried just about every work method there is. Every one. And I still lust after being more of a regular writer. And I really lust after writing fiction like a day job, eight hours a day, five days a week. I have not managed to do that for any length of time yet, mostly because I’m too lazy. But I keep thinking about it. <g>

So let me back up and talk a moment about how I wrote my first five novels. The first one I mentioned before was written on a typewriter, ten pages per day, thirty days, very rough draft, without much use of white-out. I had forced myself to do it that way because up to that point I had started a half dozen novels and finished none. The time was winter/early spring of 1985. For four years I had been pounding out a short story per week. So that was my first attempt at very consistent writing and it worked.

Second novel was started shortly after the first one and done the same way. Both were destroyed and lost in a house fire just as I was finishing the second novel in early May of 1985. I have no memory of those two books, to be honest, more than likely because they were bad, and partially from the loss aspects of not wanting to think about them.

So, time passed. Remember, during all this, I was working jobs to keep rent paid and all that. I was starting to sell short stories, but the money was always just found money to me. So after the fire, one and a half years passed until I got a letter from an editor at Bantam books asking me if I had a novel. She had seen a couple of my stories in Night Cry Magazine, the little horror sister of Twilight Zone Magazine. She had liked my stories and hoped I was marketing a novel.

Now I had no ideas that letters like that existed. Trust me, that was a very good day.

In a snail mail letter back I said, “Sure, I got one.”

A complete lie.

I went to work, pounding on my new computer as fast as I could, in pure panic mode.

“Send me the first three chapters and a proposal,” she said in a follow up letter one week later. I sent her the first three chapters, freshly off the dot matrix printer, and a suckie outline that next week. (Thank heaven’s I had been following Heinlein’s Rules up to that point and could do just that.)

Then, I went back to work, writing as fast as I could, which during those days was not very fast it seems. The fear of an editor actually reading the book slowed me down something awful and two months passed with me writing, or trying to write, and driving Kris and Nina nuts until the editor asked for the entire book. No consistency at all. None.

One month later I managed to release the book off to the editor. Winter 1987. Entire process just under four months of stop/start/stop/start/panic.

She bounced it, but in the mean time, I had another editor I met at a convention really excited to see it and he bought it in May of 1987 and the book came out of Warner. So book #3 was my first published book.

Now, the week after I mailed the book to the first editor, I was so angry at myself for taking four very long months, I decided to write another novel quickly. I took a week off of work and sat down and typed, hard, fast, and laughing, since the book was a thriller political satire that made me laugh. Ten days later I had a finished draft. Short, about 65,000 words, but a finished draft. I have never mailed that book. Not completely sure why, to be honest, since I still remember and like it. This was the spring of 1987.

Then came Pulphouse Publishing. Years passed. Here comes 1992. Five years later. I was still selling short fiction when I got around to writing it, but mostly I just did Pulphouse. Then John Ordover calls and in the conversation with Kris wants to know if we would write a Deep Space Nine novel. Two months later we turned it in and I have never stopped writing novels since.

Five novels written from the Winter/Spring of 1985 to the summer of 1992. Over 90 novels written since those first five.

Now, during the years since 1992, I have had some times where I wrote every day, like it was a job, but mostly I wrote to deadline, often pushing back starting until I had to really panic and write hard to get to the deadline, which I never missed. Ever.

In the last few years, I am working to learn once again how to be more of a regular writer, going upstairs to my writing office at about the same time every night. It is working some at the moment, but to be honest I would rather work to editorial deadline. That’s how I do my best work.

But I suppose old dogs can learn new tricks, and since I have written regularly in the past, I know how. I just don’t enjoy it as much as play/play/play/panic/write fast and long/play/play/play.

But to each his own. Try every method. You will, over the years, find what works for you. However, if you are not producing pages, then your method is not working. But that’s a topic for another post.

Cheers, Dean

I get lots of questions about writing fast and how I do it? Often the question goes something like this: “How do you put out so many books?” Or more bluntly, “I wish I could write as fast as you, how do you do it?” Or they hear I have sold over 90 novels and just shake their heads in disbelief.

They often treat me like I have some secret. Nope, no secret. I just plant my butt in my chair longer than most writers. Nothing more.

Actually, I am what is known as a sprint writer, while my wife, Kris, is a steady writer. We both type about the same number of words per hour when going, anywhere from a page to three pages an hour, maybe four when a story is really moving. But she works a set amount per day, while I tend to take large chunks of time off playing around with other things, then when I write, I do long sessions, day after day, often late into the night.

I do that because I discovered that is what works best for me. I wish I could be more like Kris, but it seems my brain likes to work hard and fast and long, then take long breaks off.

So how do I write so fast? Answer, I don’t. But I am a professional writer, so I report for work, and when I report for work, I work. Of course, that answer never really makes anyone happy, so I tell the person asking to go ahead and just do the math.

One page per day, a simple 250 words, more than likely an amount shorter than this post, will get a writer to finish a 90,000 word plus novel in one year. Fred Pohl, a grandmaster of science fiction, wrote four pages every day no matter what. And he did that for decades and decades. He often wouldn’t allow himself to do anything else until his four pages were done. That turns into three or four novels a year.

I am like almost every other writer I have ever talked to. I struggle with openings, I have to often drag myself through the middle, and I write like a mad man when nearing the end of a book. I can spend days trying to figure out an opening on a novel, writing drafts and tossing them away, until I get the right opening. I can spend chunks of a book writing one or two pages an hour, and other chunks of the same book writing three or four pages per hour.

So, back to doing the math. Let’s say I can manage an average of 500 words per hour on a novel. Let’s say I am under an extreme deadline for a publisher, so I work ten hours a day, not counting taking time off for lunch, a nap, dinner, another nap. So I do that, I manage 5,000 words a day at the pace of two pages an hour. Actually, on days like that I tend to get about 7,000 words.

At that pace, I always have down days or bad days, so figure one of those every five days or so. That means I am writing about 40,000 words a week, a novel in about three weeks, give or take. But that’s under pressure when I have been paid to write fast.

Really, I am lazy. (Remember, I do nothing else but write.) So most of the time I manage, when under an easier deadline, to get about four hours a day in. That produces about 2,500 words a day. That pace takes me about seven to eight weeks to write a book. Then, of course, because I worked so hard at 4 hours a day, I have to take a month or so off and just play around. <g>

That still produces four or five books a year and causes me to get all those questions about how I write so fast. But the reality is just simple math. Put one page on your novel every day and in a year you have a finished book. Put two pages and it will take you six months to write a book and you will be considered very fast.

Write four pages a day and you write about four books a year and you have to write under pen names or in romance, where they like that pace for their authors. It is just math, nothing more. No great secret.

Of course, there are very few of us on this planet who can do what I think is simple. Everyone has their excuses and reasons why they don’t write, why they can’t make it to the computer to write 500 words, but yet can write huge blogs like this one, and a ton of e-mail. I call these excuses the “myths” of writing, and there are a ton of them. We spend a lot of time in the workshops we teach helping writers through the myths.

Professional writers who get to the computer and finish books regularly have worked through or over or around most of the myths of fiction writing. Me, I just follow Heinlein’s Rules and keep going. They worked for him and hundreds of other professional writers, and they work for me just fine. In fact, without those rules, I doubt I would be a professional writer, and I doubt I would be known as a fast writer.

So, to answer the question about how to write fast one last time (I wish). Simply put your butt in the chair and type regularly until the book is done, then repeat on the next book and then repeat again on the next book. Beyond that, there is no right way, just the way that works for you. But until you plant the butt and type, nothing else matters.

Cheers

Dean

I got a lot of responses from my post about agents and the state of the industry right now. And most of those asked how to get an unusual book in front of editors these days if they couldn’t get an agent to bite. Well, there is one way. Go to writer’s conferences that have editors from major houses and make a five minute appointment with the editor.

I can hear the “Huh?” from many of you out there.

In this new world of publishing, there has developed a wonderful learning tool for all types of writers called a writer’s conference. There are hundreds of these around the country. Kris and I teach at a few every so often. But mostly, the reason for all of you to go is to meet editors and agents. Let me add the word “good” in front of both editor and agent.

Of course, the conferences have wonderful panels with top people speaking.  You will learn a ton about craft, about business, about plotting, about editing, everything.  Nonfiction or fiction writers.  Doesn’t matter.

Many of these conferences are set up so that the editors meet for a few minutes with people who sign up. Now this is a horrid grind for the editors, but the editors do it because they are hoping to meet that one special writer, find that one special book that will fit their line, discover that one new talent and maybe the next bestseller.

So that allows you to get your book in front of an editor.  Easy, huh?

Well, not really. First off, you have to know what type of book you have FINISHED. Don’t bother meeting with an editor unless you have a finished book. If you know the type of book you wrote, then you have to research the editors attending the conference you are looking at. Say you wrote a paranormal romance. Are there any editors going to the conference who edit those kind of books? Or even better yet, two editors.

Are the editors with major New York houses? Research the companies, the book lines as well as the editors.

Then you have to work out your pitch, boil your entire book down into a really nifty “elevator pitch.” An elevator pitch is this. You get on an elevator on the 4th floor and an editor is there. Editor turns to you as the doors close and the elevator starts down. “What are you working on these days?” You have until the doors open on the first floor to light up that editor with your book, control their interest, make them want to read it. That’s an elevator pitch. Or sometimes called a Hollywood Pitch, or a High Concept Pitch.

Before you go to the conference, have that pitch ready and practiced. And be ready to answer questions in an excited manner about your book. If you’re not excited about it, how do you expect an editor to be excited?

If you are saying, “But I can’t afford to go to conferences, or workshops, or conventions.” Find another profession. You really don’t want to be a writer. What you are saying is “I really want to be a lawyer, but I don’t want to spend the time and money to go to law school.”

Kris and I could not afford to go to conventions in our early days of writing. We once shared a room at a hotel with seven other writers. One convention I had no money to eat and didn’t really know editors enough to buy me a few meals, so I managed to get enough food by taking a cooler from home and grazing the free food at a couple of parties. If you want this career bad enough, you do what you need to do.

And one good way to get around the agents is go to a writers conference prepared with a finished book sitting at home. You might need an agent if the editor is interested in your project, and if they make an offer, you MUST get an agent. But at least you can meet editors and get your book looked at by simply going to writer’s conferences.

And don’t forget that while you are preparing to try to sell your first novel, write the second one.

Cheers, Dean

Okay, I am going to be very careful with this post. I get a ton of questions about agents, and Kris and I spend a week in the marketing workshop dealing on this topic and other submissions of novels topics. (Check out the workshop list if you are interested. The workshop is called Marketing and there is one in November.)

In the current world of publishing, agents hold a very strange place. First off, they are an employee of the writer. Yet at the same time, publishers require in their guidelines that the writer hire this employee before they will consider work from that writer.

Now by all business thinking, this is a very strange practice. How can someone come into my business and tell me to hire an employee? Yet, because of events over the last fifty years, this has become the norm in fiction publishing. And to understand all the events that lead to this takes time, but is critical to understanding how to deal with this as a new writer. So for now, just take it as a strange practice. I don’t have the week of typing here to try to explain it all.

Agents are in a bad way with these new guidelines by publishers. They are forced to look at all the crap, the total garbage that this rule stops writers from sending to publishers. They, in essence, have become the slush readers for publishing, a job that used to be done by low employees in the publishing houses.

Now trust me, as a person who has read slush for years, this is not something you ever want to do. Yet publishers, without consent from the agents, have forced this onto them. And every agent is dealing with it differently.

Most top agents have full lists of writers and thus pay almost no attention to the stuff coming at them. If they look at all, they search for something really catching and hot for the current market. Many try their best to read the query letters they get. But remember, they work for their authors and reading query letters is something that makes their other writers no money at all.

Newer agents who open up to this wave soon become overwhelmed and have to cut back. This often means they take on writers who end up getting shorted in one way or another as certain writers sell and go to the top of the agent’s list. But these new agents also try to look at every query they get.

Scam agents who couldn’t sell an ice cream cone in a heat wave make a ton of money off the hungry newer writers in more scams than anyone can imagine.

And, of course, this pounding causes the agents to be so busy, they encourage their writers to slow down, to take their time with books because the agents are just too busy, for the most part, to handle an old-style writer who does three or four books a year. Not all agents, but I have been hearing it more and more, especially from newer agents who have been slammed by this.

But for the publishers this is a two-edged sword. They don’t have to pay for slush readers, their already fantastically busy editors and assistant editors don’t have to deal with this either, and thus the tide of garbage is pushed aside. But, of course, there is one problem with this slowing of the flow and jamming of the agents. Good product is also slowed down or often blocked completely. They (the editors and publishers) don’t even know what they are not seeing. What they do see has already been preselected, pre-edited for them. Fine and dandy if book lists didn’t have to be filled every month. Somehow, editors need to see good books, yet agents have only so much time, can send out only so many books. At the moment, the balance seems to be holding, but there might come a time when the demand goes past what the agents can supply.

So, how is this new twist in the business of fiction publishing going to iron out? How is this massive road block between writer and publisher going to be solved? Not a clue. Right now it is doing what the publishers need, sort of. And more agents are pouring into the business to help take up some of the shortfall. But publishing is a growing business, with lists expanding and more and more books being published every year. And those new authors somehow have to get through this mess, get their good work in front of editors in some way or another.

And I have a hunch that editors will start worrying about what they are missing. New trends, new books, the strange, the different, do not get through this system as it stands at the moment. And that’s a bad thing for readers, for publishers, and for writers.

Okay, now that all the newer writers reading this want to slash their wrists, let me add this. In my opinion, this is the best time in my memory to come in as a new writer. And actually the easiest. You think this system is bad, you should have seen some of the earlier ones in the history of this business. This system allows a writer to help agents sell books. This system allows you to go around agents at certain times. This system does allow good books to be read by editors. But the writer has to take a ton of responsibility for having this happen.

Let me repeat that in a slightly different way. It is the responsibility of the writer to get his or her book read by either a good agent or a good editor. No one can do it for you.

Again, Kris and I spend a full week teaching writers how to market their novels (and surprisingly, there is still room in both November and May marketing workshop.) We teach how to get around this problem.

How? It sounds impossible. (I could hear the shouts <g>.)

Lots and lots of ways. To start off with, learn how to write a really good query that uses your voice, the voice of the novel, and is standard enough to fit, yet different enough to draw attention from either an agent or an editor. (Starting to see why learning this takes at least a week? <g>) You must sell your novel from word one, and I have read a ton of great novels in novel workshops that never got sold because the writer sucked at query letters, proposals, cover letters, and simple marketing.

First, to come into this business now, you have to write a good book, just as it always was. But secondly, you now must also learn how to write great query letters, great proposals, and great cover letters. And thirdly, you must understand how to market your work, how to find the right agent, the right editor. And how to even know when an agent is a good agent or a bad agent for you. A good agent for me might be horrible for you. Or the reverse. You have to understand that.

And so, so much more. After all, this is an international business you are trying to write for. If you can be stopped early in this business, you should be. It never gets easier. If you don’t know how to find the information in this information age, then maybe another business is a good idea for you as well. If you are unwilling to go out to workshops, to conferences, to find professional writers and talk to them, then just stop now. You don’t stand a chance.

But for the writers who know how to learn and have the drive to go the distance, this is the best time to come into this business and make a living with your fiction.

Agents are employees of the writers. Publishers require agents to be hired by the writer. I have a hunch that given time, this very strange practice will change. I just have no idea to what. As a former slush reader, I know that something has to be done to stop the waves of garbage while at the same time finding the new, dangerous, fresh voices in fiction. But will this current system work or will something else take its place? It will be interesting to see what the next step is, that’s for sure.

Cheers

Dean

In writing, the idea to most writers of making a series of linked mistakes is just frightening. In fact, fear of making a mistake is the one element that stops most writers.

Major writing fears in no real order:

— If I don’t do another draft on this, people will laugh at me and think my writing sucks, so I better rewrite this over and over.

— If I mail this and the editor doesn’t like me, they will remember me and blackball me (or something like that.)

— How can I write that sex/graphic torture/mother murder scene? What will people think of me?

— Fear of no one ever buying anything, so better not risk it by mailing anything because I don’t really want to know that no one will buy my story or book.

— Fear of no one liking what I do, so better not finish anything. It’s always easier to start something new and more fun.

— Fear of publishing. What happens if this actually sells? What will I do then, so better not mail it to be safe.

And so on and so on. As a professional writer, I’ve climbed over a few of those myself, and heard hundreds more, told to me in very logical-sounding ways. All fear based.

So yesterday, I head back onto the golf course for the first time in a long time. I am playing with two other top writers. One a novelist and top Hollywood writer named Michael and the second a long time novelist named David. (No last names to protect our golf games.) Nine holes was all we had time for, but it turned out to be a blast.

Some of you might know that at one point in my life, I was a golf professional. And way back in the 1970s, I played a bunch of tour stops (with no success), and then when I approached 50 I had thoughts of trying for the Senior’s Tour. Now that got stopped by two things. One, my nerves and putting just went south. A long, ugly ways south. Two, I didn’t want it bad enough to climb over the first problem. But now, here I was yesterday, eight years later, staring 60 in the face, hitting the golf ball at my old length, playing irons the same distance, missing a ton of putts. But having a blast.

I didn’t score that well, but when looking back at my round, it was as most of my golf rounds, as anyone’s golf rounds. It was a series of mistakes. (Did you watch Tiger Woods win the US Open? How often did he miss a fairway, a green, twist on a broken leg and make it worse?)

For example, my first hole yesterday. I drove into a fairway bunker out about 260 off the tee but it bounced through and under a tree. Second shot moved forward but hit an overhanging tree limb and stopped short of the green. Third shot rolled past the pin about twenty feet and I missed the par putt coming back.

Every shot had an element of mistake to it, yet every shot advanced me down the fairway and I finished the hole and walked to the next one, enjoying the day.

Writing is the same way. A writing career is a series of linked mistakes. But those of us who are still here working and writing after 25 years of being professionals, like the three of us on that golf course yesterday, we just move forward all the time. With writing, as with yesterday on the golf course, the three of us have no real fear of making a mistake. We’ve made thousands in our careers, had books go south, been late for deadlines, and written poor sentences (well I have at least. Those two are damn fine writers. <g>) Hell, I’ve written entire books that didn’t work. I once had a publisher mix my book up with another writer’s book and put my name on the wrong book. If there is a mistake in publishing to be made, I’ve made it, yet here I am, going forward, having a blast, making a nice living with my fiction.

I wish I had learned this lesson a lot earlier, especially in golf. I might have at least made the first round of qualifying for the seniors, which is all I really wanted. But for some reason, I’ve learned it in writing and in poker.

Mistakes are common in writing. No one writes a perfect story or a perfect book. No one. Just as no one plays a perfect round of golf.

The only fatal mistake in writing you can make is allowing the fear of making a mistake to stop you.

Sadly, it stops many fine writers.

Move forward, enjoy the process, stop worrying about the mistakes. Make them, write that flawed book and mail it, write the next one. No one cares if you’ve made a mistake or not, mailed it to the wrong editor or not, written an ugly scene or not. Honestly. No one cares. Just as no one cared how I played yesterday. No one. But was I still scared on that first tee?

Yup. Luckily for me, it didn’t stop me from playing and having a blast with two good friends.

Cheers, Dean

After my last post, I got a number of questions about how a newer writer could do the same thing with novels. And I have always said, over and over, that if you don’t read short stories, don’t bother trying to write them.

So, how to make the “challenge” I talked about in the last post work for novels.

There are a couple of ways, actually. But first off, you have to start with Heinlein’s Rules #1 and #2. You have to write and you have to finish what you write. The first part of the challenge or “secret” gives structure to those two rules.  But actually, just following Heilein’s Rules will do the trick.

So, here’s my suggestion. (This is too slow for me now, but it would have worked fine when I was working three jobs.)

1) One chapter a week, finished.

2) Repeat until the book is finished.

3) One week later, the book must go in the mail TO AN EDITOR (or better yet, a bunch of editors, which is allowed with novels unlike short fiction). And follow Heinlein’s Rules here as well, keeping the book in the mail until it sells.

4) No break. Start and finish first chapter of the next book the next week.

5) Repeat.

If you have to scream “But what about rewriting?” then you haven’t read Heinlein’s Rules, have you?

Okay, now to change to another topic on novels, one that I am sure will bring up a ton of questions.

Writer promotion of novels.

My rule: Besides a web site and a local signing to help out a local bookstore, don’t do any book promotion unless, and only unless, the publisher asks you to help them.

I know, I know, that’s against all the current myths about self promotion. But folks, think it through. Do the math.

First off, a job description. You are a writer. I am a writer. My job is to sit alone in a room and make shit up. I produce product, the very product that keeps this business going forward. I hire one employee, an agent, to help with some things, but otherwise, I do this alone, producing product.

When I have a finished product that a publisher would like to buy, the publisher and I have a contract. The contract says they are the publisher and I am the supplier of product. Their job is to publish, promote, and sell my product, and they take the risk with that. I took the risk in the time and money spent producing the product.

Unless asked, I NEVER step across that contract line. Ever. And most publisher’s would rather not have an author across that line messing up their promotions. That’s why they hire sales forces. When an author crosses that contract line, they are a problem most of the time, if not asked by the publisher.

If the publisher asks, a different matter. They have their reasons for asking and they will pay ALL the bills.

If the publisher is a small press, they will often ask and expect you to pay your own bills. Careful in that case as well. Your job is to write books, not promote them. But often if you have gone to a small press, and they ask, help them out where you can.

So back to the first topic, you are always better off just sitting alone in a room and writing, day after day, week after week. Follow Heinlein’s Rules, stay the hell away from self promotion of a sold book.

Of course, none of you out there will follow this advice until many, many years down into a career. But just remember I said this. I am just trying to help speed up the success and cut down the number of tragic events that can happen to you in this business.

And oh, yeah, get rid of your ego and write under a bunch of names. But that’s a topic for yet another day.

Cheers

Dean

A short story per week challenge with Nina Kiriki Hoffman was what got me moving finally from being a part-time, really-want-to-do-it writer to a full time professional writer. We bet each other the cost of dinner that we would write and mail to an editor a new short story every week. Since many of you know Nina’s wonderful work, you know that neither one of us missed much. And we pushed the challenge for almost three years until we were selling regularly.

In essence, what we did was follow Heinlein’s Rules with the challenge.

Lately I have gotten three questions about this challenge, so I figured it was time to talk about it here a little more.

When Kris and I talk to beginning writers, either at a conference, or back when we were doing what people called “The Kris and Dean Show,” we told the listeners that there was a “Secret” to being a published fiction writer, and we had never seen it miss (with one exception of one writer who just wrote the same story over and over and never worked to get better).

The “Secret” is simply this:

1) Write one short story per week.

2) That week mail that short story to the top paying market you can find.

3) Then repeat the following week.

4) When the story comes back with a rejection, send it to the second best market without looking at the story again. Keep all the stories in the mail.

5) Continue weekly for one year. At the end of the year, chances are you will have a bunch of rejections, but no sales if you are sending your stories up high. But keep working on your craft, your skills, working to make every story better. And keep all the early ones in the mail without looking at them.

6) Start a second year, and by the time the second year is finished, you will be selling short fiction to professional magazines.

That’s the Secret. Very simple, very hard to do, as hard as Heinlein’s Rules are to follow.

Okay, to question number one. “How can I ever write a short story per week with my day job and family?”

I was married when I started the challenge with Nina. I had three jobs, one of which was running my own bookstore. I drove school bus in the morning and was a bartender at night. Yeah, I had the time. Not.

But let me say this. I WANTED to be a writer, and was damn tired of just talking about it and doing nothing. So I made decisions, I carved out the time, I wrote any time and any place I could. And at the same time, I was teaching myself to type and spell and all that stuff, since I had almost finished three years of law school and could do none of that. Stunning but true. So my learning curve was steep and needed to happen fast. I did not quit any job, just carved out the time.

Bottom line, if you can’t carve out the time, you don’t really want to be a writer. Blunt, harsh, but all writers did it early in careers. You can too if you really want to. If you can’t find the time, find something else to do, you will never become a writer.

And if you can’t find the money or the time to make writer’s conferences and other places to learn from advanced writers, find another thing to do. You have to learn as well as write.

If you don’t own a dozen how-to-write books, you have a bad attitude, find another thing to do with your free time, since you don’t know how to learn.

Yup, blunt it is tonight. <g>

Second Question (combined with a third that gets answered in this answer): “With so many stories out there, don’t you run out of good markets?”

Uhhh, no. If you think you do, then you are not really learning marketing very fast. This challenge ramps up that marketing learning very quickly. I sold one story after 34 rejections, and I still got 10 cents per word for it. In 1985. Yes, it was a horror/sf story.

Here’s the problem I hear all the time. “I wrote a sf story and there are only three/five/seven good markets for it.” What that tells me is that the writer isn’t respecting his or her own work. That simple. The writer is not starting high enough in the markets, or not looking for the hundreds of great short fiction markets out there, let alone tracking all the new ones that pop up all the time.

How do you know what to look for in a market? Simple. Top circulation first. Second top money. Third top help or visibility with career.

New Yorker has all three, of course. Any of the big slicks do. Learn how to research markets, find them, make lists, keep the lists current, and don’t be afraid to fire high. Worst they can do is send you a rejection. No big deal.

And on the topic of rejection, NEVER track how long a magazine takes to reject. Who the hell cares. Always send a manuscript to a magazine with the intent of selling it. Duh. And if a magazine doesn’t buy it, it is their loss. You just mail it to the next one, expecting them to buy it.

So, that’s the secret to becoming a published fiction writer. One short story per week, mailed to a top market, kept in the mail. I had around 70 different stories in the mail when I started retiring stories by SELLING them. <g>

Follow Heinlein’s Rules every week. His rules, to remind you all are simple, with me adding in the challenge “Secret” parts.

1) You must write. (Every chance you get, all the time.)

2) You must finish what you write. (Every week.)

3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand. (Saves a ton of time and was the true thing I learned that helped me break through to selling.)

4) You must mail your story to an editor who will pay you money. (Start at the very top, respect your own work.)

5) You must keep it in the mail until someone buys it. (See rule #3, do not look at the story when it comes back, just put it back in the mail to another editor.)

Heinlein’s Rules. The “Secret.” He wrote those in the 1940’s. Nina and I used them for our challenge in 1982. They work today just as well.

Good luck. Have fun. It’s a great life, being a professional writer. You make the time, mail your work, you can get to this life as well. Hell, if I could do it, any of you can do it.

Cheers

Dean

Notice there is now a workshop page on this site. I have put a basic schedule of the next year of the professional level workshops Kris and I and others teach here on the Oregon Coast. There are no plans to go beyond the year. So about a year from now, that page might just vanish.
Our goal, when we started these back in 1999 and then fired them back up again in 2002, was to help writers working at a professional level, starting to sell, or stuck in a bad career. We figured everyone helped new writers, and when we went through this early professional stage, we had a few top professionals help us along. So since we have both been freelancing for a long time, it was our turn to help.

We tend to stop and start them, teach for a year or so, then not teach for a few years. We make no money at these and they are very tiring to do. But they are worth it, for the knowledge we learn and the great friends we make and the feeling of helping great new professionals jump forward.

So, at the moment, the workshops are back and I have put the schedule of them up under workshops. Any questions, just e-mail me and put writers workshops in the subject line so my spam filter doesn’t eat it.

Cheers,

Dean

It has been an interesting month or so.  I’ve been working on a novel that is under a fairly tight deadline, and have a request from another editor for a novel that I have a pretty rough draft finished on, but needs a second pass to bring up voice.

And both of these books are complete voice novels.

For the writer who wrote the two original Men in Black novels back ten years ago, who wrote an entire Dixon Hill Trek novel, I thought it would not be a problem.  That will teach me to assume anything.

For a large part of the last five years, I’ve worked on taking voice out of my writing, making my prose invisible to the reader.  This came from working on James Patterson-like thrillers book after book and a ton of young adult books without voice.

So suddenly, I’m having to stuff voice back into my work, and wow has this been interesting, to say the least.  And, to be honest, it felt sort of freeing as well.  At least right up to the point where I handed Kris three chapters on the rewrite novel and she beat on it with a red pen and said the voice wasn’t there.

I had thought it was there.  But when a Hugo Award winning editor says it isn’t there, you sort of slink back to your office, sit in your chair staring at the screen, and wonder just what the hell voice is exactly.

Of course, that’s the writer doing that thinking.  As an editor and a teacher, I know what voice is, can even tell another writer how to bring up voice in a story.  But me, the writer, just sat there sort of disgusted with myself.  How, in a short five years, had I managed to take all my voice out of my novels so successfully?

So, I went back to basics.  I looked at other writers using strong voices, studied what they did.  Then I went back to focusing on the character and the details the character would see, and the ATTITUDE of the character while looking at every detail.  And I climbed inside that character’s head, planted myself firmly there, and wrote a new couple of first pages.

This time Kris read them, laughed (thank God) and handed them back to me.  “Got it.”

I went back to my trusty writing office, sat down at the computer and stared at the screen and asked myself “Got what?”  And “How did I just do that?”

I have written over ninety novels, been at this business full time for over twenty years, and it never gets boring.  From day one to now it has been just as fun, just as frightening, and just as full of unknowns every time I sit in front of a blank page.

So now I go back upstairs to work, pushing voice back to the surface of my writing every sentence, and with luck, making the voice strong enough to sell.

Cheers,  Dean