Guest Post by Andrew Leon: Damn It, Jim...

I'm taking it easy this week, so enjoy the insightful wisdom of the great Andrew Leon.
  

“Damn it, Jim, I'm a writer!”

Yeah, that's how I feel an awful lot of the time when it comes to dealing with things related to writing. I feel this way because I self-published, but my understanding is that, really, this is how writers are feeling more and more these days as even the big publishers leave the writers to fend for themselves once the book has been published. Unless you're a Rowling or a King or a Martin, the publishers don't have the time to deal with you and selling your book. After all, more than 80% of books that are traditionally published never make back their advance or sell through their first printing. Why should a publisher put out money on marketing and other things for something that's never going to make them any money?

So they leave it for the authors themselves to do.

Some publishers, even large publishers, want the author to take care of all the editing themselves, too.

Looking at the state of the publishing industry, why would I want to pay them (since they keep most of the money once the advance has been earned back (and it can take an awful long time to earn the advance back since most of the money coming in doesn't count toward the advance)) for my work?

The problem, then, is that I'm a writer, and I don't really know that much about marketing other than to know that most of what most people are doing doesn't work which leaves me with a problem: how do I sell my book?

I mean, I thought writing the book was difficult, but that was so much easier than everything that comes after the writing is completed. Fortunately, I'm a (really) good editor, because there is no way I would have been able to hire anyone to edit for me, but most writers can't say that. Most writers do need an editor, and a good editor costs.

Then, there's the cover. Man, that was a tough one. When I first released my book, The House on the Corner, I blew off the whole cover thing. Naively, I thought, the writing should be able to stand on its own. Ideally, I suppose, that should be true, but that's not how it works. I discovered very quickly that people didn't take the initial release of my book seriously because of the lack of art. They'd ask me, “When's it coming out?” and I'd say, “It is out. This is it.” This, with it's plain gray cover and black lettering. They'd give me that “Oh...” look. So I found a great cover artist that would work for cheap! (Actually, he does covers for me, and I edit for him, so it works out, although I owe him a lot more editing!)

After all of that, after you finally have a product in your hand, you have to sell it, and that's the point where I really just want to say, “No! Someone else please do this! I'm a writer, damn it!” Selling is hard, and the skills that go along with selling are completely different from those that go along with writing, but it's something you have to be able to do if you want to get to the place where you don't have to do it anymore, which is kind of unfair, but there it is. In some ways, it's like asking an EMT to do open heart surgery right there on the street.

I've been at this a while, now (the current edition of The House on the Corner is just turning 1), and, still, I have no good advice for anyone out there trying to sell their books. Well, that's not true. I have one piece of advice: keep writing. Seriously. I don't know for sure, yet, but I'm almost convinced that the only real way to sell your book is to show your audience that you have more than one book in you. People seem to want authors they can follow, not just individual books. The biggest reason, though, that you should keep writing is you're a writer, damn it!

You can see a complete list of what I have available hereor on my blog.

Birthday!

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be (gasp) 26. So I’m going to turn the blog over to whoever wants it for the next week while I party my nose clean off my face engorge on cake and totally not do anything illegal.

See you in September!

Language of Confusion: Even-ing

Remember when I used to do funny subtitles? Man, did that get old fast.

Even is one of the words I use too much in my WIPs. It seems to slip in there as a pause, an intensifier, even a replacement for words like “and”. But there’s more than one even. There’s the one I like to use, the beginning to evening, and the one meaning level or equal.

Equal even comes from the Old English efen, with pretty much the same meanings we use for it today. Efen comes from the Proto-Germanic ebnaz, but no one’s sure which definition it started as. The adverb intensifier I like to use so much is more modern, from the sixteenth century, and arose as a way to emphasize identity.

But the other even (from evening; even is a mostly obsolete way to describe the end of the day) is quite different. That particular even comes from eve, which showed up in Old English as aefen and came from the Proto Germanic abando. These days we usually only use eve to describe the day before a holiday, like Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve since evening has become the dominant word for the time around sunset. That evening is from the Old English aefnung (yes, it’s from aefen), which comes from aefnian, a word that literally means “becoming evening”.

As for why we say evening for late in the day and not even, I haven’t been able to find a good answer. But it’s worth noting that equal evening usually has three syllables pronounced (eve-en-ing) while sunset evening is usually just two (eve-ning), whereas you can only say even one way. It’s possible that for once, people opted for something that was easier to distinguish in conversation. Of course, this means language evolution actually favored the lessconfusing option, so this rampant speculation is probably wrong ; ).

Sources

Dictionary.com

Online Etymology Dictionary

Tony Jebson’s page on The Origins of Old English

University of Texas at San Antonio 

Quick Reviews

There are a lot of factors that make a book “good”. Well-crafted writing, fleshed out, complex characters, good plot, and an engrossing story to name a few. Because I’m bored and being judgmental is always fun, here’s a sliding scale of good with some quick reviews.

10: Read to the end, keep to reread at least once a year

            Example: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. The shear effort alone is inspiring, and shows what ten years of effort can create. Hint: a diamond that mesmerizes people into obsessively combing your book for hidden messages.

            Plot: 10 Characterization: 10 Writing: 10

9: Read to the end, keep to reread when I have the time

            Example: IT by Stephen King. One of my favorites. Good story, good characters, threatening villain, and masterful writing.

            Plot: 9 Characterization: 9 Writing: 10

8: Read to the end, keep to reread sometime in a couple of years

            Example: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. A great book that I enjoy and am in awe of. I might not need to reread it fifty times, but it’s still fun.

            Plot: 9 Characterization: 6 Writing: 8

7: Read to the end, keep to reread although probably not for three or four years, if that

            Example: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane. Actually, any of his books would go here or above. He’s got some of the best characterization around, although this book was weaker than the others. Good, but not a rabid-reread.

            Plot: 6 Characterization: 4 Writing: 10

6: Read to the end, keep because although I didn’t like it a lot, I might conceivably want to reread it again in the far distant future

            Example: The Thirteenth Warrior by Michael Crichton. It was interesting, but not something I’d read over and over again. I might take a peek at it because the style and story are worth noting.

            Plot: 5 Characterization: 6 Writing: 6

5: Read to the end, throw somewhere and probably forget about it

            Example: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. Honestly, it wasn’t a bad book. I wasn’t a huge fan of the “White people solve racism” thing, but it was well written and had okay characters.

            Plot: 3 Characterization: 5 Writing: 6

4: Read to the end, throw somewhere if I can’t give it away

            Example: The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker. It was interesting enough to read once and I know I still have it around here somewhere, but I doubt I’ll ever read it again. The characters were very weak and the rest was only marginal.

            Plot: 5 Characterization: 2 Writing: 4

3: Read to the end only if I have to

            Example: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It would be less painful if the author threw the book at my head. Nothing happening isn’t an issue if there’s still substance to the overall work, but there’s none of that here. Good writing, yes, but nothing but page after page of symbolism and talking about symbolism. Maybe it’s just me, but the characters don’t seem realistic, and that’s kind of an issue when it’s a character driven novel.

            Plot: 1 Characterization: 1 Writing: 6

2: Forget this. I don’t care.

            Example: Hannibal by Thomas Harris. He’s not a bad writer at all, but it’s like it took everything that was good about The Silence of the Lambs and crapped all over it. He took strong, interesting characters and made them weak. The plot was solid in the sense that an igloo in Florida during the summer is solid for a while.

            Plot: 1 Characterization: 1 Writing: 4

1: Burn every trace of the book from the Earth.

            Example: The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner. The story was filled with tension and conflict. It just wasn’t focused, believable or interesting. And the characters…they were just words on a page, not “real” people.

            Plot: 1 Characterization: 0 Writing: 1

0: I hope I never have to find out. I might have to nuke the site from orbit, just to be safe.

If you don’t get that reference, you need to watch more movies.

Random Thoughts

---One week and one day until my birthday. Wheeeeee!
---Anyone want to guest post? I’d really appreciate it.
---So. People who watched the Olympics on NBC. You’re kind of getting my point about why they suck, right?

---If a tree falls in a forest, does it make any sound? Yes. Yes it does. My high school physics teacher explained how it works.

---I have to say, 50 Shades of Grey did something I never thought possible: it made me hate TWILIGHT less. So, kudos for that.

---Sometimes, when I hear/read an amusing quote, I write it down on whatever Word document I happened to have open (because there’s always one). It makes for some interesting reading if I haven’t opened one in a while. The one heading this page? “And YES, I understand that of all the things in the world to get worked up about, maybe poverty and climate change are above one soul-crushing shopping experience downtown. But man! The Mall!” Courtesy of Dinosaur Comics.

---Random Note: I don’t think I’ll ever get the proper spelling of courtesy down in my head. It’s like a mental block.

---The third Hunger Games book is going to be split into two movies because money-money-money!

---I guess they need the extra cash for Philip Seymour Hoffman's salary.

---A cat is mayor of a town in Alaska. I had a cat who would have made a good mayor. Too bad he had a heart condition. He was tough. Never backed down. He would have finally cleaned up this upper middle class hellhole.

---Attention people running for election: stop calling me. Seriously, I will not vote for you out of spite. I’ve done it before. Do not f’ing test me on that.

---No matter how much sunblock I put on, I always get burned if I stay outside for too long. Ninety percent of my physical traits are from the French Canadian side of the family, but my skin is very much Irish.

---You know how the SciFi channel changed its name to SyFy to put itself out to a non-hardcore sci-fi audience? Yeah, the History Channel really needs to do that. Their current name just isn’t accurate anymore. I’m not begrudging them that. I’m just saying when you have shows about aliens and lobster fishermen, you’re not exactly in the history business anymore.

---Maybe the Hystori Channel would work.

---Hm. I complain about television a lot.

---At the store, I noticed they have medium eggs, large eggs, and jumbo eggs. They can’t just call them small, medium, and large? I feel like I’m in an episode of Seinfeld or something.

---“Oology” is the shortest ology. It’s the study of eggs. Maybe an oologist can tell us why there are no “small” chicken eggs.

More Words That Are Easy To Confuse

Yep, here’s another one. Because it’s fun?

Sure, why not?

Discreet/Discrete

I am terrible with these words. They’re so similar, the only difference being two letters switched around. Discreet is subtle, close-mouthed. Discrete is separate, different, and also a branch of mathematics. When you want to be quiet, you’re discrete. When you want to be apart, you’re discrete.

Secret/secrete

For some reason, the word secret (as in confidential) always looks like it’s spelled wrong to me. I add an e and then when editing, realize my characters don’t exude ooze to each other. However, the most frustratingly confusing part is that there is another definition of secrete, which means to conceal or hide away (they secrete you away to an undisclosed location). That does not make them easier to tell apart! Lucky for us, secret is either a noun or an adjective, while secrete is a verb. You can remember which one to use by knowing which part of speech you need.

A while/awhile

This is what happens when a word is created by combining two words, and we still use the two separate words as a common phrase. Like the above, you can remember this by knowing parts of speech. “Awhile” is an adverb: “I have awhile to write”, where awhile describes the amount of time I can write for. “A while” is a noun. You would say “I have to go write for a while” or “In a while, I’m going to start editing”. A while is often used after a preposition, like for and in, so be sure to watch for that.

Past/passed

Passed is past tense of pass (Yes, I’m aware three forms of the same verb are in that clause, but bear with me) while past appears as an adjective, noun, adverb and preposition (basically, every form but verb). So pay attention to how you use it. Past tense verb is always passed. Everything else is past. That sounds like a deep saying, but it’s not.

Who/whom

In order to gain some understanding on the who versus whom debacle, I suggest reading the Grammar Girl’s several postson the subject. I know I can’t explain it as well as she can, and it took her three posts to get all the details. Basically, who is for subjects, whom is for objects.

Bonus tip for the last one: write first person YA like I do, that way you can blame any errors on an uninformed teenager.

Breaking Up

I am currently in the process of finding the absolute worst place to end my chapters, namely, where it hits the fan.

First of all, a little background. Although I’ve made scene breaks, when writing this book I made no effort to divide up by chapters. Previous books have taught me that I move stuff around or change things quite a bit. I decided doing it in this book would only create more work later, and it was better to save the chapter breaks for when I was analyzing the tension in scenes. And, because I can’t resist an opportunity to toot my own horn, I was right.

I’ve spent the last week color coding my book to highlight the conflict (as well as dialogue, description, and action). As I did so, I realized many of the scene breaks ended on a weak note, which did not bode well for the eventual chapter breaks. So I moved them. Right in between the areas where the biggest conflicts were going on.

Will it work? Yeah, I think it will. These are the areas where sh!t is going down and the reader will (I hope) have to see what’s going to happen next.

Thus ends another story about how this jumble of words is very slowly forming something I would allow you to read. How do you end your chapters? How important is tension and conflict before your breaks?