Tag Archives: writing

Big Six publisher, small-time author: A Rant

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So Fifty Shades of Grey – the best-seller that started life as Twilight fanfic – is the book of the moment, which means that newspapers and blogs are filling up once more with death-of-the-traditional-publisher stories. One of the blog posts doing the rounds in my reading circles recently is this deeply cynical satire of the evolution of the Big Six publishers, which the author went on to defend in a later post:

As for editing, the brutal truth is that most books from the Big Six aren’t edited at all. Please bear in mind that acquisition editors are not line editors. Line-editing of manuscripts used to be part of their job description, but nowadays they are so vastly overworked that they simply don’t have time for it. (I have heard of a case where a single editor had an annual workload of one hundred books. It is not uncommon for an editor to be responsible for thirty titles a year.) In consequence, they will reject any work not by a name author unless the copy is clean, virtually error-free, and without any issues of consistency or continuity sufficient to annoy the target audience. …

In fact, if you are submitting to a Big Six publisher, you are advised by many experts to pay a professional editor to vet your manuscript before you submit. This is a service that some agents offer to their clients; Donald Maass, for instance, touts this as an important reason why one would sign with his agency. Unagented writers, or those whose agents are not skilled editors themselves, often hire freelance editors to do this work. But in no circumstances can you expect the ‘editor’ at a Big Six house to do it.

… ooookaaaaaaaay.

This was the point at which I became full of incandescent outrage, which demanded that I brew a strong cup of tea and sit down to compose a stiff letter to the editor blog entry.

(I’m a middle-class Brit. This is the way we handle outrage)

My first novel, FANG GIRL, is about to be published by one of the aforementioned Big Six publishers. Specifically, HarperCollins (or even more specifically, by HarperTeen, which is the Young Adult branch of the publisher). Now, I am not one of those star-like six-figure-advance debut authors that get their names splashed all over the news. I’m a small first-time author with a funny little book in a peculiar subset of a crowded and increasingly unfashionable subgenre (at least, that’s how I’d describe YA paranormal comedy, which is the answer I give when anyone asks what genre I write). I do not have a movie deal and a book tour and whatever other else you want to take as signs of superstardom. I am, in short, a deeply ordinary debut.

So… what did HarperTeen do for me?

I have not one but two editors (a senior one and her assistant) who have read my book so many times and so closely I suspect it’s probably printed on the inside of their eyeballs by now (sorry for that, Erica and Tyler…). I got a ten page editorial letter – single-spaced, no less, and in a small font – which covered everything from character arcs to plot holes to a complete dismantle-and-rebuild of the final 20% of the book. Which came on top of the line edits and queries in the manuscript itself. Which were… numerous. Seriously, I punched the air in triumph when I found a single page that didn’t have any purple pen on it (my editor uses purple, not red, possibly in an attempt to stop it looking like my manuscript is bleeding to death). I think my editors felt the same way, as one of them had drawn a little smiley at the top.

By the way, in the edit letter, my senior editor complimented me on producing such a clean draft. I don’t think she was being sarcastic.

(also by the way, that manuscript? Which took up an entire ream of paper? Express Fed-Ex’d from New York to me here in the UK, within a few working days, at my publisher’s expense. Considering it costs me £7 to send a single paperback book air mail to the States, I do not even want to consider the cost of that.)

So I removed all that suck and turned in a shiny new draft… and within a month had back a mere five page editorial letter of further comments and clarifications, plus a whole new set of line edits on the new stuff. Oh, and some more line edits on some of the old stuff, since both editors went through it again. But then that was the end of editing. Final version. Hooray! We’re done!

… oh, no, wait, now it goes off to the copyeditors. Two of them. So that they can check that every word of my weird British grammar has been correctly translated into American, and carefully make footnotes on anything that is in the slightest bit in doubt. Copyeditors, I have discovered, like to make footnotes.

Oh God, how they like to make footnotes.

(my absolute favourite one was the footnote featuring a serious and entirely straight-faced discussion between the two of them on the correct spelling of the word “n00b”)

So, some oh-God-I-don’t-even-want-to-count hundreds of footnotes later, both me and my editors get back the manuscript. I read it and manually approve or contest each and every change. My editors – both of them, remember – read all the copyeditors notes plus my comments and engage in a gentle cycle of beating me over the head with my own infelicities of style persuading the two parties into some form of agreement. The final final version of the manuscript is complete. Hooray! We’re done!

… no, wait, now it goes off to the typesetters. Who lay out the book, deal with all those weird places where sentences look too short unless you hyphenate the words, find good typefaces for the chapter headings, inset the first letter of each chapter in funky style, work with the designer who is producing the custom typography for the title page and spine, make sure that there’s space for the as-yet-unwritten acknowledgements and end advertising pages, and send the whole thing back. Hooray! We’re done!

… no, wait, now both my editors read the whole thing again (as do I, but frankly at this point I have lost the will to live and would not notice if they’d randomly replaced one of my main characters with an iguana) and send it off to yet another completely independent proof-reader, who still manages to find things that the preceding five sets of eyeballs who’ve scrutinised this damn thing have missed (six sets, if you include my agent as well, who did the very very first set of line edits for me before we even started submitting the manuscript).

Now we’re finished.

… apart, of course, from the cover design (which takes two goes, each with very different concepts and multiple iterations), the back-cover copy (no, I don’t write it), the marketing copy (again, I don’t write it, and it’s a good thing too because I would be so terrified of giving away spoilers that it would end up saying something like “It’s, er, a book! About stuff! Please buy it?”), getting the ISBN and all that legal jazz, starting up the publicity machine (no, I’m not getting posters up in train stations and glamorous book tours, but rest assured that those publicity guys are not just sitting on their hands. Not even for a very minor debut author like me), and probably other stuff that I don’t even know is going on.

Let me just say once again: I am not a rockstar (and, er, I like to think that I am not a remarkably incompetent writer who needs to be patiently hand-reared into readability). I am not a celebrity with a guaranteed mega-hit kiss-and-tell biography. I am not the next Harry Potter or Hunger Games. I am a perfectly ordinary debut author.

With a lot of people working invisibly behind the scenes to stop me from sending a half-baked book gambolling out into the free market like a lamb into a flamethrower.

Yes, if I was self-publishing, I could hire all those people directly myself. If I could find them. And negotiate contracts. And had the money up-front to pay them. Or if they were unhinged enough to agree to only be paid based on future sales of the book (Here’s a fun experiment: Go find a professional artist. Ask them to do you a book cover. Suggest that they get paid a percentage of sales. Flee from the echoing peals of sarcastic laughter). And if I could navigate the legal and tax implications of hiring all those people to work on my commercial project. And if, frankly, I wanted to project manage all of that, on top of my day job and writing more books.

Some people can do it (hi there, Amanda Hocking!). I can’t. I know that I can’t. I am profoundly grateful that a system exists whereby I don’t. And, looking at the numbers on the account sheet, I think I am reasonably paid by my publisher for the work that I do, and they are reasonably paid for the work that they do. Because they do a hell of a lot.

Of course, this is just my personal experience, and the plural of anecdote is not data. But when I hear statements about greedy Big Six publishers not doing anything to justify their existence? The pungent scent of bovine excrement wafts past my delicate nostrils.

Ahem. And breathe…

In which there is pacing, and footnotes

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First of all, a quick reminder that you can still enter the prize draw to win an advance copy of FANG GIRL! Competition closes at 8:00am (GMT time, as that’s my local timezone) on Friday, and I’ll announce the winner in a blog post that evening.

I finally handed in the first[1] draft of the second book, tentatively titled NO ANGEL, to my agent last night, and then promptly messaged various friends to celebrate this achievement. One promptly[2] replied: “That must be a relief!”

Indeed, it was.

For six minutes.

I counted.

See, handing a piece over to a reader for the first time is a bit like opening Schroedinger’s box. You know the one. Box, cat, cunning death trap with 50% chance of going off, evil half-dog scientist who doesn’t hold with merely doing “thought experiments”. No idea if cat is alive or dead[3] until box is opened, thus proving something-mumble-waveforms-quantum-mumble[4].

Anyway, unread writing is like the Cat. It could be Good. It could be Bad.[5] You can try to get something of an idea — rattle the cat treats and listen for meows, as it were — but there is always the possibility that pages will be opened and the writing will drop dead at the reader’s feet. Which is embarrassing for all concerned.[6]

(and yes, I speak from experience here. Alas)

So. Now begins the anxious pacing…[7]

[1] that should really be “first draft readable by anyone other than me”, as it’s actually gone through two rough drafts already. But neither of those even remotely resembled a coherent story, so Do Not Count.

[2] Even though it was 2am, my local time. Friends in other timezones are the greatest asset a neurotic writer can have…

[3] I think it was Terry Pratchett who added the now widely-accepted corollary that the possible states of the cat are Alive, Dead, or Bloody Furious.

[4] My late grandfather, who must have been over eighty at the time, once asked me about the significance of Schroedinger’s Cat. I rattled off the standard everything-is-a-wave-and-a-particle sentence. “Yes,” he said. “But what does that mean?” In the end I went and got him a textbook, and left him happily studying it while I went for a quiet lie down in a darkened room to restore my grip on the universe. He returned the textbook a few weeks later, with a thoughtful, “Yes, that makes sense now.” I really should have asked him to explain it to me.

[5] It is thankfully unlikely to be Bloody Furious, unless you happen to be writing magical grimoires.

[6] Please bear in mind that I am British. If you are not, then when I say “embarrassing”, you should translate this as “A CATASTROPHE OF UNSPEAKABLE HORROR WHEREIN NATIONS WEEP AND THE SEAS BOIL WITH BLOOD” to get an approximation of what I mean. Fellow Brits, of course, will appreciate that this is an understatement.

[7] As you may have gathered, excessive footnotes are one of my nervous habits. Apologies.

Life after rough draft completion

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Day 1: It’s early evening. The baby is in bed. I don’t have to rush off to madly get my daily wordcount done on the rough draft, because I finished it yesterday. This is weird. What am I supposed to do with myself?

Day 2: Wow, you have a lot of free time when you’re not writing a novel. Hi husband! Hi human race! I have rejoined you! Let us engage in edifying and meaningful interpersonal experiences!

Day 3: I wonder if there’s anything good on tv?

…

Day 7: Hmm. I suppose I should start working on those edits.

Day 8: I should really start working on those edits.

Day 9: I’m sure those edits can’t be too bad. I’ll probably be able to knock them out in a couple of weeks. There’s plenty of time to watch a movie. And play a computer game. And read a book.

Day 10: Husband away for the evening. Nothing on tv. Friends aren’t online. Finished my book. Might as well start re-reading…

Day 11: There’s a plot hole in chapter 1. But I can fix it!

Day 12: There’s a plot hole in chapter 2. But I can fix it!

Day 13: MY GOD, IT’S FULL OF PLOT HOLES

Day 14: Okay. Deep breaths. It’s okay. I can fix these plot holes… if I fundamentally alter the metaphysics underlying the entire novel, and radically re-write 26 out of 30 chapters. I see no drawbacks whatsoever to this excellent plan.

Day 15: After three hours of work, I have rewritten six paragraphs. OH GOD THIS BOOK IS NEVER GOING TO BE DONE AND I’M GOING TO MISS THE DEADLINE AND HAVE TO GIVE BACK ALL THE MONEY AND THEN NINJA WILL COME AND BEAT ME WITH STICKS OH GOD

Day 16: I cannot face my computer. I am going to clean the cat litter tray and scrub the toilet and do a million other things that are more fun than facing my own ineptitude at writing.

Day 17: I am totally not thinking about that towering excrescence of a novel.

Day 18: …there’s a really obvious way to fix those plot holes that improves the narrative flow, illuminates character, raises tension, and only involves re-writing three chapters.

And breathe…

(yes, the editing is going well. Finally)

Why the long silence…?

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Because, o gentle readerbeings, I have been desperately hammering out the first draft of my next novel (working title: NO ANGEL). My actual deadline for handing it to my ever-lovely editor is the end of March, but I needed to get the bulk of it done before February. Why? Because, o delightful blogfriends, I return to gainful employment next week after a year of maternity leave, and it did not seem like a Good Idea to try to combine that with the ever-painful process of putting words onto blank (virtual) pieces of paper. So all of my free time has been spent frantically scribbling story, leaving neither time nor headspace for blogging.

But! Good news! (or bad news, if you were enjoying the restful silence) The first draft of NO ANGEL is complete!

… for a definition of complete that includes “I only fully worked out the Bad Guys’ Evil Plot(tm) while writing chapter 28 out of 30″. Which means there are currently a lot of conversations like this:

Character A: There is a nebulous bad thing going to happen!
Character B: We must stop the bad thing from happening, for it would indeed be bad!
Character C: [witty and/or sarcastic remark]

Just as well the witty and/or sarcastic remarks are the main point of my books, really.

Still, it is not as bad as the first raw draft of FANG GIRL (or, as it was truthfully titled back then, SUCKY FIRST NOVEL), which involved two characters showing up in one chapter, only to inexplicably merge into a single composite character in the next. Erm. Let us just say that my technique is to write first and edit later, okay?

Anyway, editing now commences to turn this raw lump of words into something which is actually readable. Fortunately editing is faaaar less time/brain-eating than first drafting, so I should be more chatty in future. Let the Monday/Friday updates resume!

And now for something terrible

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This week, in the spirit of morbid curiosity, I did a terrible thing.

I went back and re-read my very first draft of FANG GIRL. Yes, the NaNoWriMo speed-written draft.

Um.

Yeah.

Just as well I rewrote the heck out of that thing.

It’s interesting that even with half of the main characters being different, and a radically divergent plot, there are still certain key scenes that survived all the way from first to last draft. Of course, by “survived” I mean “were totally rewritten, but still took place in vaguely similar ways”.

In the spirit of encouraging all those even now struggling with their Crappy First Drafts (for NaNoWriMo or otherwise), I now present to you the Very First Draft Of The Very First Scene, with bonus commentary!

Continue reading →

I live!

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Forgive me, oh blog readers, for I have sinned. It has been, er, a month since my last post.

… my, doesn’t time fly when you’re frantically drafting a new book pitch.

Anyway, after one month of effort, countless scrappy text documents filled with random plot brainstorming, three hastily-written chapters and a much-sweated-over synopsis, I have approval from my editor! So I can now reveal that my second book will be a YA angel romance comedy, working title NO ANGEL.

(a friend of mine pointed out that all my working titles seem to be NO SOMETHING — FANG GIRL was originally called NO SUCKER — and suggested that my next book should be about the trials of a hapless teenage would-be Bond villain, just so that I could use the working title NO DOCTOR NO. I am of the opinion that this sounds more like a really dubious romance…)

I’m still planning to go back and do a proper sequel to FANG GIRL at some point, but I actually think it’s no bad thing to have a stand-alone novel next; I suspect there are quite a few people who are burned out on vampires, but who might be tempted to pick up a funny angel book. Hopefully they might then enjoy the humour enough to go back and take a punt on FANG GIRL, despite the subject matter. I can but hope!

As well as working on NO ANGEL, I’ve had all sorts of fun stuff happening with FANG GIRL. Marketing questionnaire! Copyedits! Author photos! Even a cover, though I’m not able to share it with you all yet. Expect to see more about all that soon — now that I’m not in so much of a mad rush scraping together the NO ANGEL proposal, I’m planning to get back into my Monday-and-Friday update routine.

In the meantime, I leave you with the opening paragraphs of the new book…

The shiny new sign above the towering wrought-iron gates said St. Mary’s Boarding School for Girls and Boys, which, as it turned out, was wrong by one letter.

“Wait,” I said, staring at the Headmistress with a slow-rising sensation of dread. “You mean I’m just the first guy to arrive, right?”

“If you fail to understand the meaning of the word ‘only’, Mr. Angelos, then I cannot imagine how you possibly passed our entrance exams,” replied the short, severe woman. “But to make it crystal clear, you are indeed the first, sole, singular member of the male gender here.” Her tone clearly stated that in her opinion this was at least one boy too many. “I trust you will be a worthy representative of your species. Welcome to St. Mary’s.”

Declarations of outright war had been uttered in friendlier tones.

Sometimes you just have to move on

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Well.

It’s time for the blog post I hoped I wouldn’t have to make.

You remember my proposal for my second book? The one that I was waiting to hear back from my editor about?

Yeah.

You know when you have an exciting new romantic interest, and you proudly take them to meet all your friends, and then later get together with said friends and eagerly ask them what they thought, and everyone… sort of avoids your eye and waits for someone else to say something first?

Piece of advice: If you ever find yourself in that sort of situation, listen to your friends. They’ve seen what your exciting new catch is like when he or she isn’t trying to get into someone’s pants, which is much more likely to be what they’re really like.

(… actually, if he or she was trying to get into your friends’ pants, that’s also a pretty good indication that they’re not great date material).

Anyway. Yeah.

It’s like that.

The book’s got some good bits, definitely. But when your editor gently explains that this protagonist and this viewpoint and that plot element are kind of out of keeping with the first book, and maybe not exactly what your target audience might be looking for… well, listen to your editor. She can see the book much more as it really is, not as the idealised shiny perfection you’ve got in your head.

(there are times when one might want to fight back against editorial changes on artistic and moral grounds — see the recent YesGayYA thing for many examples — but this is not one of those times)

By the way, if I sound all serene and philosophical about this stuff… that’s for two reasons. Firstly, because I got the rejection letter last Wednesday, and have thus had nearly a week to work through the stages of grief, call all my writing buddies and sob into their virtual shoulders, and consume every chocolate-based foodstuff in my household.

And secondly, because… well, have you ever gone to your nearest wine bar after a disappointing break-up, and sat there staring into your cocktail feeling woeful, and then out of nowhere someone catches your eye and smiles a slow, lazy smile, and a little voice in your head goes, “Oh, my…”

Oh, yeah. It’s like that. Exactly like that.

Goodbye old book. Hello new book. I think I’m in love with you already…

How to reduce me – wait, I need to check my email – to a gibbering wreck

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I’m currently a little distracted, as I’m –

Oooh! Email!

… eh, just spam. Anyway, I’m currently finding it tricky to focus on, well, just about anything, as I’ve just sent off my proposal for my second book to my editor. And now I am waiting for a response to see if she likes it.

Hang on, I just need to refresh my email manually, just in case.

A novel proposal generally includes three things: a pitch paragraph, the first three chapters (or about ten thousand words), and a full synopsis. With FANG GIRL, I’d already written the book before having to pitch it, so writing the synopsis was easy (as easy as boiling down an entire novel into three pages ever is, at least). And I at least knew that my friends and beta-readers had enjoyed the story. But with this new book, I’m having to do the proposal in advance of the actual writing (to an extent; I have had to write a sizeable chunk in order to get a handle on the characters and plot). It’s taken me quite a bit of work to get this far — about three months of thinking, in fact — but now I have the whole thing floating in my head, in a sort of ideal Platonic form. And oh, how I love this story…

(Drums fingers on desk, checks email)

The problem is, I haven’t had anyone to test the plot on before sending it to my editor and agent. I can’t show it to any of my usual beta-readers, because I need to them to be unprejudiced and fresh when they first read the actual manuscript. The result is that, having sent the whole package off to my editor, I am now struck by mortal terror that I have just emailed her ten thousand words of utter garbage.

I suspect it will take my busy editor a fair amount of time to get back to me. In the meantime, I’ll just be here quietly gibbering in the corner…

100 words about me

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Following on from the previous post, here’s my current draft for my back-of-book bio for FANG GIRL:

Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a teenager. She grew up partly in America and partly in England, which has left her with an unidentifiable accent and a fondness for peanut butter crackers washed down with a nice cup of tea. She now lives in West Sussex, England, with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a variable number of fish. To the best of her knowledge, none of the fish are undead. You can read more about her at www.helenkeeble.com, where her bio does not have to be under 100 words.

(to explain the curious statement about undead fish, there is one in the book)

After some reflection, I decided not to mention my short fiction (or awards nominations for it, heh), as it’s not really intended for a young adult audience. I’m also not talking about my engineering background; I might if this was a SF book, but I don’t think paranormal comedy requires technological/scientific credentials (and I’ve noticed in my perusal of other people’s books that authors who have day jobs – i.e. don’t make a living writing – don’t tend to mention that fact in their bios, possibly to avoid not seeming professional enough).

So I’m just sticking with stuff that’s relevant to this particular book – I speak American (as it’s being sold in the States), I live where the story is set, and I am incurably silly. I am currently a little undecided on the last line; might just have the link to this website.

I have to submit this tomorrow (Tuesday), so any opinions gratefully received…

Update: It’s submitted, and my editor likes it! I tweaked it slightly before sending it off; for the curious, here’s the final version:

Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a teenager. She grew up partly in America and partly in England, which has left her with an unidentifiable accent and a fondness for peanut butter crackers washed down with a nice cup of tea. She now lives in West Sussex, England, with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a variable number of fish (none of which are evil undead goldfish). If the above hasn’t told you everything you ever need to know about Helen, you can find out more about her and her work at www.helenkeeble.com.

Summarising your existence in under 100 words

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I am currently staring at a blank page. One hundred words should not be this difficult to compose. I do, after all, know the subject matter fairly well. Yet still my fingers hover helplessly over the keyboard, stuck.

Yes, I am currently trying to write the dreaded Author Bio, that snappy little paragraph of text that goes at the back (or front, sometimes) of the book.

What on earth do I put? Does someone picking up a funny paranormal adventure really want to know that the author has an engineering degree and two cats? Should I mention my short fiction, or is that too much the wrong target audience? Can I get away with just listing ten random facts, LiveJournal blog-style? Argh.

I’ve been leafing through a few of the books on my shelves in search of inspiration. Terry Pratchett has hands-down the best bio ever (and I will bet one shiny Euro that he wrote this himself):

Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 and is still not dead. He started work as a journalist one day in 1965 and saw his first corpse three hours later, work experience meaning something in those days. After doing just about every job it’s possible to do in provincial journalism, except of course covering Saturday afternoon football, he joined the Central Electricity Generating Board and became press officer for four nuclear power stations. He’d write a book about his experiences if he thought anyone would believe it.

All this came to an end in 1987 when it became obvious that the Discworld series was much more enjoyable than real work. Since then the books have reached double figures and have a regular place in the bestseller lists. He also writes books for younger readers. Occasionally he gets accused of literature.

Terry Pratchett lives in Wiltshire with his wife Lyn and daughter Rhianna. He says writing is the most fun anyone can have by themselves.

That’s from Jingo, circa 1997; I must dig out one of his later books and see how the bio has changed. Anyway, isn’t that a thing of beauty?

Over in the YA genre, Sarah Rees Brennan’s bio is fun too (from The Demon’s Lexicon):

Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it’s not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. The books most often found under her desk were by Jane Austen, Margaret Mahy, Anthony Trollope, Robin McKinley and Diana Wynne Jones, and she still loves them all today.

After college she lived briefly in New York and somehow survived in spite of her habit of hitching lifts in fire engines. She began working on The Demon’s Lexicon while doing a Creative Writing MA and library work in Surrey, England. Since then she has returned to Ireland to write. The Demon’s Lexicon is her first novel and she is currently working on the sequel.

Though, for sheer economy, I am rather fond of China Mieville’s bio (from Perdido Street Station):

China Mieville lives and works in London.

What more could you need to know? You have Wikipedia and Google, don’t you? Can’t you see how thick this book is already? Adding any more words would probably make our printer cry, and involve inventing a new method of bookbinding.

I am kind of tempted to have the sum total of my bio be:

Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a teenager.

… which seems to me to sum up the most pertinent facts, but I don’t think my editor would approve.

Feel free to make suggestions in comments, and come back Monday to find out what I ultimately end up with…