Yes, more about the novel I dug out of its grave to breathe life into it and reshape it and publish it. I have kindle-lized my so-called “dead” novel that would never see print according to the powers that be—the people who determine for you and me what is bestseller material, what they will get behind, what they will put on shelves for our reading pleasure. I am still waiting for a green light from a traditional publisher for Bloodroot which is now Children of Salem, but now it is a different book as a close friend and fanatical reader on finishing the last rewrite of this cursed book said to me, “This is an historical romance, Rob.” And she gave me a number of points in the novel where the romance could and should come to the forefront and such things as the geography of a witch hunt needs find the backdrop. She was right, of course, and I changed the title thereafter from Bloodroot to Children of Salem and subtitled it “Romance in the time of the Witch Trials.” And thereafter on the final final rewrite, I transformed this opus (160,000 words that breaks down in three books – another reason for its being a cursed book in the eyes of agents and editors I have known).
I transformed Bloodroot from a seriously wrought historical novel pitched on the fork of one attitude on my part to an entirely different pitchfork…the attitude of the writer of romance and intrigue, and a far less serious-seeming attitude it is.
I use the term serious here to describe my approach, my internal dialogue with myself about the nature of the novel that changed so much over the years from a dissertation –literally as it was my dissertation at Northwestern University in first draft in 1972 that set me to work on this accursed journey to craft a truly worthwhile novel that would go well beyond the famous play, the Crucible written by Marilyn Monroe’s husband as an allegory for McCarthyism. Arthur Miller did his homework and crafted an amazingly close to the truth play, and I suspect he read Francis Marion’s nonfiction work on the subject in order to write his play. I was determined to write an expose to shed light on every aspect of the event, something no play could do but perhaps a novel might.
Of course while putting the novel away and taking it out every couple few years to rewrite it, I wrote other titles—in fact over forty-five—and I honed my craft, and in writing my Chicago City series begun with City for Ransom and the award-winning Shadows in the White City, and the trilogy ender City of the Absent, I realized that what I took to 1893, I needed to take (this attitude) to 1692. Finding the right attitude toward the work and going back in for a final time to rework it as a thriller yes but a romantic thriller and a romantic historical changed everything down t the title – Children of Salem.
Not that the curse has been lifted as it sits on the desk now of one agent for what will be a year in February….and it has continued to be turned down with a lovely note attached but now I KNOW it is not the work that is cursed but the so-called business of traditional publishing that is cursed. And so it was with absolute confidence that I set myself up as my own digital publisher and published Children of Salem via the Kindle store where it is available on the Kindle and in many another format for a modest price. And I have also placed it on the paperless, virtual shelf at www.thedigital-bookstore.com
Admittedly, in its earlier permutations and form, Bloodroot should most certainly have been rejected but not Children of Salem. I had every reason and the some to give up on this novel; I even began to believe it had a curse on it and did not want to be told—that perhaps the villains in the piece, based on real historical people, were working against me. But by the same token, Jeremiah Wakely would not let me off so easily; he kept coming back at me and demanding my attention and time and devotion to this story. A good thirty years later I don’t need traditional publishers to finally get this tome, this opus, this book I was born to write out of my bottom drawer forever and into the hands of readers. It is outselling all my other ebooks put together, including the HarperCollins pubbed City Series books that have been priced to high for the typical kindle reader’s liking. Bottom line is that technology I could not have imagined even a year ago has given me a platform and a publication springboard for Children of Salem. And now a first review of the book has popped up on Amazon and it is vindication balm for its author—a FIVE-STAR review. You can read the review and see the great artwork at:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Title-CHILDREN-Romance-Trials/dp/B002GU6LIC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257400408&sr=1-1
Thanks for reading this obsessed author’s blog and happy reading and writing to you. Do leave a comment and let me hear from you.
Rob
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
Showing posts with label Dead on Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dead on Writing. Show all posts
Friday, November 13, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Raising the Dead Manuscript from Its Grave: Part 1 by Robert W. Walker
I published myself after a lifetime of eschewing any sort of vanity press. And I did it using a “dead” manuscript about a “dead” subject filled with “dead” historical characters in a “dead” time period which one editor, a true pro, said of: “It is the hardest time period to write about, to make come alive, and especially to display any sort of sexual encounter, but in your hands Rob, if anyone can pull it off, it’s you.” That sort of trust and confidence in my writing and even rejection letters laced with lovely and positive remarks has kept me going back and back to the grave to unearth this dead manuscript. Rejected hundreds of times and stowed away off and on for some thirty years or more. I had every reason to lower it into the ground of my past writing attempts and leave it buried and chalk it up to part of that large graveyard of previous work that stays in the grave but represents lessons learned, craft-building, and I am a firm believer that book X could not have come into being as it is had I not failed on book Y from which I learned so much of what to do and what not to do.
Recently as July I began putting up ebooks on the paperless bookstore called Kindle (for the Kindle reader) and I put up a number of out of print titles, and a book of short stories, and a how-to book that is doing well there, and then I decided to place up an original never before seen anywhere else title – Children of Salem, one of my books that had been buried by a stack of rejections so heavy as to be used as the headstone.
Why put it up on Kindle, a book rejected by EVERY New York publishing house twice over in various permutations? A book turned down in fact by any and all publishers, editors, and agents who ever took a look. Was I just being arrogant and publishing the work out of anger or angst or what? No frustration is the word. Fed up with traditional publishers who could not SEE the possibilities of this novel, a novel I had kept faith in for over thirty years, with agents who loved it but couldn’t sell it…with editors who could not turn it down without writing personal notes about how it affected them, etc., etc., I saw the new technology as a godsend for Children of Salem and decided to take the bull by the horns and put it out there. My risk? Only my reputation.
Maybe all those people who had rejected the novel were right, but I didn’t think so and I trust that readers will agree with me, and at least one has! One who has given it a Five-Star review on amazon.com now finally. It feels freeing and great to have taken control and vanity or not, whatever you call digital publishing, for me it was and is VINDICATION as Children of Salem is outselling all my other ebooks save my how-to (Dead On Writing). To see the review and the fantastic cover art my son, Stephen, designed for Children of Salem you need only click here:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Title-CHILDREN-Romance-Trials/dp/B002GU6LIC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257400408&sr=1-1
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
I kid you not, I never give up on a novel idea once I have determined it is a worthwhile project, worthy of my time, energy, blood, sweat, and rewrites. This goes for this manuscript that may even be thirty years old, rewritten countless times, given the “drawer” countless times, but never thrown into the flames or fed to the landfill. Is this a good or a bad thing? I suppose it depends on the idea and the execution of the novel, the crafty crafting of the craft.
I bring this up because my Children of Salem, which for decades went by the title of Bloodroot, and I tenaciously held onto the title until I changed my attitude toward the novel. Bloodroot as a title for me was a double entendre: poisonous nightshade or bloodroot posed the idea of a poison in the blood of Puritanism, and it held the image of a rooting in the old world, a poisonous idea that followed mankind on the ships that led us to America and the Bay Colony of Massachusetts.
The title simply felt like a good fit, and the novel was a serious, heavily-heavily researched and layered tale of the Salem Witchcraft episode as it was never portrayed before—a unique look at the economics, the politics, the theology of witchcraft, as well as the geography and history and sociology of the belief and use of that belief during an election year to condemn and thus win reelection. I saw so many connections to modern life in what happened to “us” in 1692.
I can’t count on two hands the number of editors and agents who turned the manuscript down with the proviso that it was a great book “But I can’t sell it.” So it was stashed away again and again, trotted out every couple-few years and rewritten again and given its chance with a new agent or another editor only to chalk up more rejections than Babe Ruth strike outs. But always with the warmly worded, “I can’t get the scenes out of my mind and I loved the book BUT I can’t sell it.”
Again to the bottom drawer, literally. It fit no “commercial” needs or cubby holes, no pigeon holes and no category. It was historical but scary as in real—reality-based terror in which neighbor hangs neighbor but it was also a sociological tract that shed a light on human activity that points a finger at us all. No one was safe and everyone was guilty, and even our hero, Jere Wakely, had unspoken issues that only helped to fan the flames; and it was a condemnation of church and state in bed together, and it was multiple point of view, and somewhere in there a romance was at work….
Little wonder it has always been a hard sell; loved ones considered my angst with this novel as simple—the book had a curse on it, and it had control of me, and it would never give me my freedom. It was a deep well and I was its ghost with chains upon my feet. Loved ones confused my passion with obsession, and at times I too decided it was all a cursed foul matter that I should burn in the nearest roaring fire. Instead I would pull on something within me that insisted this story could be reshaped to get something other than a wonderfully kindly gently worded rejection.
I intend to carry on this discussion NEXT FRIDAY here at Acme so do return. There is a great well of resolve required to have faith in your own work for as many years as I held this belief for my Salem Opus. And so this blog needs be split. Hope to see you back here then and in the meantime do leave me a comment as we make it soooooo easy to leave a comment here.
Rob
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
Recently as July I began putting up ebooks on the paperless bookstore called Kindle (for the Kindle reader) and I put up a number of out of print titles, and a book of short stories, and a how-to book that is doing well there, and then I decided to place up an original never before seen anywhere else title – Children of Salem, one of my books that had been buried by a stack of rejections so heavy as to be used as the headstone.
Why put it up on Kindle, a book rejected by EVERY New York publishing house twice over in various permutations? A book turned down in fact by any and all publishers, editors, and agents who ever took a look. Was I just being arrogant and publishing the work out of anger or angst or what? No frustration is the word. Fed up with traditional publishers who could not SEE the possibilities of this novel, a novel I had kept faith in for over thirty years, with agents who loved it but couldn’t sell it…with editors who could not turn it down without writing personal notes about how it affected them, etc., etc., I saw the new technology as a godsend for Children of Salem and decided to take the bull by the horns and put it out there. My risk? Only my reputation.
Maybe all those people who had rejected the novel were right, but I didn’t think so and I trust that readers will agree with me, and at least one has! One who has given it a Five-Star review on amazon.com now finally. It feels freeing and great to have taken control and vanity or not, whatever you call digital publishing, for me it was and is VINDICATION as Children of Salem is outselling all my other ebooks save my how-to (Dead On Writing). To see the review and the fantastic cover art my son, Stephen, designed for Children of Salem you need only click here:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Title-CHILDREN-Romance-Trials/dp/B002GU6LIC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257400408&sr=1-1
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
I kid you not, I never give up on a novel idea once I have determined it is a worthwhile project, worthy of my time, energy, blood, sweat, and rewrites. This goes for this manuscript that may even be thirty years old, rewritten countless times, given the “drawer” countless times, but never thrown into the flames or fed to the landfill. Is this a good or a bad thing? I suppose it depends on the idea and the execution of the novel, the crafty crafting of the craft.
I bring this up because my Children of Salem, which for decades went by the title of Bloodroot, and I tenaciously held onto the title until I changed my attitude toward the novel. Bloodroot as a title for me was a double entendre: poisonous nightshade or bloodroot posed the idea of a poison in the blood of Puritanism, and it held the image of a rooting in the old world, a poisonous idea that followed mankind on the ships that led us to America and the Bay Colony of Massachusetts.
The title simply felt like a good fit, and the novel was a serious, heavily-heavily researched and layered tale of the Salem Witchcraft episode as it was never portrayed before—a unique look at the economics, the politics, the theology of witchcraft, as well as the geography and history and sociology of the belief and use of that belief during an election year to condemn and thus win reelection. I saw so many connections to modern life in what happened to “us” in 1692.
I can’t count on two hands the number of editors and agents who turned the manuscript down with the proviso that it was a great book “But I can’t sell it.” So it was stashed away again and again, trotted out every couple-few years and rewritten again and given its chance with a new agent or another editor only to chalk up more rejections than Babe Ruth strike outs. But always with the warmly worded, “I can’t get the scenes out of my mind and I loved the book BUT I can’t sell it.”
Again to the bottom drawer, literally. It fit no “commercial” needs or cubby holes, no pigeon holes and no category. It was historical but scary as in real—reality-based terror in which neighbor hangs neighbor but it was also a sociological tract that shed a light on human activity that points a finger at us all. No one was safe and everyone was guilty, and even our hero, Jere Wakely, had unspoken issues that only helped to fan the flames; and it was a condemnation of church and state in bed together, and it was multiple point of view, and somewhere in there a romance was at work….
Little wonder it has always been a hard sell; loved ones considered my angst with this novel as simple—the book had a curse on it, and it had control of me, and it would never give me my freedom. It was a deep well and I was its ghost with chains upon my feet. Loved ones confused my passion with obsession, and at times I too decided it was all a cursed foul matter that I should burn in the nearest roaring fire. Instead I would pull on something within me that insisted this story could be reshaped to get something other than a wonderfully kindly gently worded rejection.
I intend to carry on this discussion NEXT FRIDAY here at Acme so do return. There is a great well of resolve required to have faith in your own work for as many years as I held this belief for my Salem Opus. And so this blog needs be split. Hope to see you back here then and in the meantime do leave me a comment as we make it soooooo easy to leave a comment here.
Rob
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
Friday, October 30, 2009
The Magic of a Facebook Reunion by Robert W. Walker
Confession: I FREAK OUT a little whenever I see someone from my checkered past suddenly dropping in on me unnounced—or rather announced—online. Suddenly “in my face” on my computer “in my living room” – whoa! OUT OF THE BLUE, seeking “only” to say a hardy HI-HO hello, and I’m immediately circumspect and wondering for what reason is this happening? Why and how come? AS MY FIRST IMPULSE (MY BAD) IS TO ASSUME THE WORST. Did I fail to pay a debt? Did I hurt someone’s feelings? Does she wants to know why I put her in my last book and slandered her—despite the fact it’s NOT her. Or is it someone desperate and seeking a loan? Relatives are good for this one. And on and on my fevered mind runs; yet another part of my brain is shouting, “Nah, man, this is cool! This is no Trojan Horse; this is a gift as when I heard from Owl Goingback, the only Native American I know who writes horror novels. So….Open that package. This is a gift. Someone who thinks enough of you to make first contact, and what are the chances it’s not good news?
Well in all instances of such contacts that I have indeed opened and read, they have all worked out wonderfully, and perhaps I have been lucky but those from my past who have either looked me up or stumbled upon me on Twitter or Myspace or Facebook have turned out to be great friends who merely wished to renew an acquaintance; folks who at some time shared moments with yours truly and it is complimentary that they wish to know how you are doing years later. Says something about you actually. Something good.
Most recently a wholly great reunion was made, one that has taken ten years and still Steve and I picked up as if it were yesterday –and in fact, we are throwing in with one another to collaborate on a novel. Oddly, it came about slowly and without a plan, and it was the last thing on either mind as we had chatted over months about all the trivia and news one expends time and energy on on Facebook. The idea to collaborate came about as an afterthought. But think about that. Two friends reunite online, one in Sweden, one in America, one a Brit, the other a Chicagoan, and whamo they are in business together.
Ten years ago I said yes to an online contest wherein the winner won the dubious honor of becoming a character in my next Instinct title. Steve Savile won the prize, knowing my stipulation—that I’d have to create his character free of any stipulations, and so I made him a London cop’s peg-legged snitch whose nickname was Dot’n’Carry for the noise he made coming and going with that wooden leg. Steve loved it; so much so that he read passages from the book to his students, despite the poking fun at him. He took it so well but I always warn people to “be careful or your might wind up in one of my novels”—so he wasn’t a complete innocent on arrival.
I also knew that Steve aspired to be a writer of thrillers, suspense, and horror as well, and when he showed up at DragonCon Atlanta one year maybe eight years ago and found me at my signing, we had a warm first face to face meeting. I was so impressed with Steve that I decided to revive Dot’n’Carry in City for Ransom and its two sequels a couple few years ago. I contacted Steve to warn him that the Dot man was back but set back in the 1800’s. He was again thrilled and a sport about it.
Now on the tenth year anniversary of Steve’s debut as a character in Blind Instinct, we have teamed up—due to conversations on Facebook—to do a collaboration on an idea we began kicking over online. How cool is that? Really?
Then I hear from Adam Pepper—another great young writer. We met at Love is Murder years ago—maybe five or six years. Again Adam simply wanted to give me a shout out and to say hello. It was great to reminisce about our meeting in Chicago as we shared an adventure there—getting lost on a snowy night in my own damn city; we had a wild ride that night, one that I still call Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. I was told by Steve that he felt “honoured” to be working on a book with me, honored with a U. Then Adam boosts my ego by calling me “Royalty” with a capital R. They both have told me that despite what any publisher decides as in ending a series with my name on it, that they know from whom they have learned…who they read in order to master their own skills. You can’t buy that kind of thank you from readers who became writers in part inspired by you.
I have always said the same was true for me when reading John Lutz, Ed Gorman, William Bayer and certainly Dean R. Koontz, and a long, long list of other authors ranging from Martin Cruz Smith to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. Two lessons or morals of the story here: Don’t fear old friends looking you up online unless you know them to be psycho, and secondly: learn all you can from the authors who came before you.
Happy Writing and Reading everyone,
Rob
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://www.amazon.com/kindlebooks
http://www.smashwords.com/
http://www.wordclay.com/
http://www.digital-bookstore.com/
"Dead On takes the reader's capacity for the imagination of horror to stomach turning depths, and then gives it more twists than a Georgia backroad that paves an Indian trail." - Nash Black
Well in all instances of such contacts that I have indeed opened and read, they have all worked out wonderfully, and perhaps I have been lucky but those from my past who have either looked me up or stumbled upon me on Twitter or Myspace or Facebook have turned out to be great friends who merely wished to renew an acquaintance; folks who at some time shared moments with yours truly and it is complimentary that they wish to know how you are doing years later. Says something about you actually. Something good.
Most recently a wholly great reunion was made, one that has taken ten years and still Steve and I picked up as if it were yesterday –and in fact, we are throwing in with one another to collaborate on a novel. Oddly, it came about slowly and without a plan, and it was the last thing on either mind as we had chatted over months about all the trivia and news one expends time and energy on on Facebook. The idea to collaborate came about as an afterthought. But think about that. Two friends reunite online, one in Sweden, one in America, one a Brit, the other a Chicagoan, and whamo they are in business together.
Ten years ago I said yes to an online contest wherein the winner won the dubious honor of becoming a character in my next Instinct title. Steve Savile won the prize, knowing my stipulation—that I’d have to create his character free of any stipulations, and so I made him a London cop’s peg-legged snitch whose nickname was Dot’n’Carry for the noise he made coming and going with that wooden leg. Steve loved it; so much so that he read passages from the book to his students, despite the poking fun at him. He took it so well but I always warn people to “be careful or your might wind up in one of my novels”—so he wasn’t a complete innocent on arrival.
I also knew that Steve aspired to be a writer of thrillers, suspense, and horror as well, and when he showed up at DragonCon Atlanta one year maybe eight years ago and found me at my signing, we had a warm first face to face meeting. I was so impressed with Steve that I decided to revive Dot’n’Carry in City for Ransom and its two sequels a couple few years ago. I contacted Steve to warn him that the Dot man was back but set back in the 1800’s. He was again thrilled and a sport about it.
Now on the tenth year anniversary of Steve’s debut as a character in Blind Instinct, we have teamed up—due to conversations on Facebook—to do a collaboration on an idea we began kicking over online. How cool is that? Really?
Then I hear from Adam Pepper—another great young writer. We met at Love is Murder years ago—maybe five or six years. Again Adam simply wanted to give me a shout out and to say hello. It was great to reminisce about our meeting in Chicago as we shared an adventure there—getting lost on a snowy night in my own damn city; we had a wild ride that night, one that I still call Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. I was told by Steve that he felt “honoured” to be working on a book with me, honored with a U. Then Adam boosts my ego by calling me “Royalty” with a capital R. They both have told me that despite what any publisher decides as in ending a series with my name on it, that they know from whom they have learned…who they read in order to master their own skills. You can’t buy that kind of thank you from readers who became writers in part inspired by you.
I have always said the same was true for me when reading John Lutz, Ed Gorman, William Bayer and certainly Dean R. Koontz, and a long, long list of other authors ranging from Martin Cruz Smith to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. Two lessons or morals of the story here: Don’t fear old friends looking you up online unless you know them to be psycho, and secondly: learn all you can from the authors who came before you.
Happy Writing and Reading everyone,
Rob
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://www.amazon.com/kindlebooks
http://www.smashwords.com/
http://www.wordclay.com/
http://www.digital-bookstore.com/
"Dead On takes the reader's capacity for the imagination of horror to stomach turning depths, and then gives it more twists than a Georgia backroad that paves an Indian trail." - Nash Black
Friday, October 23, 2009
Waxing Philosophical: Life's Beginnings, Endings & All of That Lies Between by Robert W. Walker
The subject on my mind this day is what happens when we stop to think about the hard face of reality in questioning our birth, our beginning, our personal GO on the Monopoly board of life? Gawd but that is an awful metaphor….life as a monopoly game, and yet had I paid a good deal more attention as a child to the absolute truth of it—how to crush others and become a profit-driven human being in the process, perhaps I would have a good deal more money in the bank today; might own a property or two, charge rent, get that extra income and ignore my renters when they call about the busted widgets.
Can you guess that I was the kid in the family of five who always stank at Monopoly and Parcheesi and other cut throat games like Sorry? That I spent a lot of time in jail? That I loaned money to my little sister when she was completely depleted of the green stuff? I lost a checkers too. I lost at Chess. I was a born loser, and I can recall as a child feeling sorry when watching baseball or tennis or football or Roller Derby Queens because I hated the thought that someone must lose—one player or one side wins, the other loses. The only sport I didn’t feel so bad about was golf as I could see no clear sides; it was every man for himself and amid the ensemble anyone could win but the loser could not be pinpointed so clearly as when two opposing teams hit the field of battle.
I was born with such empathy in fact that when someone—a school bully or gang member—decided to wail on me, I’d pick up the stick with the nail at its end to defend myself yet I couldn’t bring myself to use it, as I could imagine the pain it would inflict. I could feel it and see the blood gush before it gushed. As result, I soon learned the only way I could win a fight was with my mouth, with words. So that was my initiation into the power of words—make ‘em laugh and walk away. Not that I didn’t also learn to ingratiate myself with the biggest kid in class, help him with his homework, and enlist him as my bodyguard. It’s how I survived Skinner Elementary, later Carpenter Junior High, and still later H.G. Wells High as I called Wells High, inner city Chicago.
This was the fifties and sixties, a rough place to be born and raised, but I hadn’t been born in Chicago, so I fought it the entire time growing up. I was born in Corinth, MS and some of my siblings in Tuskegee, AL. Mom from Alabama, Dad from Mississippi. so I learned how to spell these magical faraway places with their strange-sounding names, and I dreamed of escape from Chicago, and a couple of times I tried, once with plans to escape with a friend to his hometown of Hazard, KY. Finally, I got on a train and did escape midway through my high school years, winding up in hardscrabble, tiny Screven, Georgia. I climbed into life with my cousins, my wonderful Aunt Sadie and equally wonderful Uncle John and a lifestyle totally remote. Still, their home was a haven, a place to heal for as long as I wanted. It was a new beginning and in their home, listening daily to my cousin Dennis’ drawl and Deep South accent, I decided to create my first novel using his voice and basing the character on Dennis Hodges. It became Daniel Webster Jackson & The Wrongway Railroad, a mix of homage to my spiritual mentor and hero, Mark Twain, and an historical novel about the Underground Railroad.
Talk about Beginnings…it began as an exercise I set for myself to see if I could write one page and pull off sounding like Mark Twain…but one page evolved into a scene, and soon I realized it was not going to let me off so easily. It became a chapter, and what happens when you write a first chapter? Of course it begs for the second, and the second the third, and so on. Just as Twain’s tale of Huck Finn is episodic, I followed the episodic method I had learned from reading Dumas, Doyle, Dickens, Stevenson, Hawthorn, Poe, and of course The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. In fact, the entire idea came about when I went searching for the third in Twain’s boys’ adventure “series” and learned there was none. Unable to accept or believe it, and armed with the arrogance of youth—what is more powerful? Youth being what it is, I sat down to determine if I could write that third book which Twain had simply failed to produce.
And people wonder why I love writing historical fiction, why I turned from doing serial killers to my Chicago Inspector Alastair Ransom trilogy and more recently Children of Salem, “love in the time of the witch trials”. Here is the answer: From time to time, I remind myself of my reasons for getting into writing fiction—my passion for it, why it sustains me more than winning awards or passing Go or making a bundle of money or hobnobbing with Matt Lauer or Ms. Oprah. I remind myself that “in the beginning” I wrote for the sheer love of putting words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters down to see—to literally SEE—on paper what I had already spilled over in my mind. I face it— nothing else I do on the planet pleases me more than the precisely NAILED down images, dialogue, setting, plot, character with all the accoutrements…and to see it all come alive and dance from my head to my fingers to the page or rather the stage which the page represents. I adopted the novel? Well yes, but it also adopted me. Here was something that from the outset I was in charge of; here I rigged the game, made the rules, and won every race, fight! Every Monopoly game I laid out. Here I could be as slick, elusive, and deadly as a James Bond or as filled with as much joy as a Civil War vet who has managed to save one of his legs!
Endings in life and in fiction need be as perfect as we can make them, and while I am not contemplating ever ending my writing career—“You will have to rip my cold dead hand from this computer!”—I do continue to believe that there’s a reason beyond the pettiness of making a “killing” in the “writing game or casino” (it’s hardly a business like you find in Monopoly, this crazy roulette wheel we call publishing with its inherent defibs and heart murmurs and cardiac arrests; it’s only a business if you have a shtick or a TV or film tie-in, then you are welcomed into the board room end of things and only then.).
My own writing middle years have been a roller-coaster to say the least. One step forward, three back, and the “game” is never won-won, and one can never make enough money to satisfy the needs of home and ego if a midlist author. No your life is far closer to Van Gogh’s than the commercial artists whose fifteen minutes of fame net them large dividends. You write for food on table and to feed spirit. In my case, I keep reminding myself again and again what were my passions as a young, starry-eyed wanna-be newbie author, the kid whose first rejection came from Scholastic? What did the kid want? Where is the kid now? Is he worth unearthing to tackle yet another project? Can his passions be revived? Can the curious, easily fascinated kid be got at and the cranky, jaded, cantankerous old veteran be controlled so the kid can get back in the ring to fight another day?
Well sure he can and damn right! The eternal optimist, the eternal seeker. That’s what a writer is despite all his innate and deserved skepticism and cynicism about the playing field in publishing and in the broad world that Shakespeare warns us so often about—the one filled with slings and arrows; the one that overtakes us all at times, and in the end we are left with what? —two dates on a tombstone with a dash between. It is what we do with the time that this dash represents that is most important. Getting back to one’s inner child, one’s roots, one’s early powerful passions, and dealing with where one is at this moment—in the NOW—and determining a good outcome—an ending one can live with…these are all such important and huge questions to ponder and come to terms with. Wax and wane.
When I was at my deepest, darkest depression as a young unpubbed author the fear I would never be a published author controlled me and my work! Finally, I asked myself one question: Will you write if you never see publication ever? Will you continue to write? I answered that question and in doing so I got the monkey off my back and lightened up and soon began publishing even though my answer was YES as a conviction that I would NEVER see publication. Does it make sense? Now I am a goodly bit older and one might imagine wiser, and guess what question I am asking myself nowadays?
Yes, same question, same answer. I am what I am, as Popeye so oft said.
Re-invent yourself as often as necessary to sustain yourself as a writer but never forget why you took up the pen to begin with. I will shut up on that note.
Happy Writing Everyone – see you at the Kindle Store, Digital-Bookshop, Smashwords, Wordclay
Rob Walker
Facebook, Twitter, LinkIn, Plaxo, Myspace, Crimespace, DL., Five Star, HarperCollins
Can you guess that I was the kid in the family of five who always stank at Monopoly and Parcheesi and other cut throat games like Sorry? That I spent a lot of time in jail? That I loaned money to my little sister when she was completely depleted of the green stuff? I lost a checkers too. I lost at Chess. I was a born loser, and I can recall as a child feeling sorry when watching baseball or tennis or football or Roller Derby Queens because I hated the thought that someone must lose—one player or one side wins, the other loses. The only sport I didn’t feel so bad about was golf as I could see no clear sides; it was every man for himself and amid the ensemble anyone could win but the loser could not be pinpointed so clearly as when two opposing teams hit the field of battle.
I was born with such empathy in fact that when someone—a school bully or gang member—decided to wail on me, I’d pick up the stick with the nail at its end to defend myself yet I couldn’t bring myself to use it, as I could imagine the pain it would inflict. I could feel it and see the blood gush before it gushed. As result, I soon learned the only way I could win a fight was with my mouth, with words. So that was my initiation into the power of words—make ‘em laugh and walk away. Not that I didn’t also learn to ingratiate myself with the biggest kid in class, help him with his homework, and enlist him as my bodyguard. It’s how I survived Skinner Elementary, later Carpenter Junior High, and still later H.G. Wells High as I called Wells High, inner city Chicago.
This was the fifties and sixties, a rough place to be born and raised, but I hadn’t been born in Chicago, so I fought it the entire time growing up. I was born in Corinth, MS and some of my siblings in Tuskegee, AL. Mom from Alabama, Dad from Mississippi. so I learned how to spell these magical faraway places with their strange-sounding names, and I dreamed of escape from Chicago, and a couple of times I tried, once with plans to escape with a friend to his hometown of Hazard, KY. Finally, I got on a train and did escape midway through my high school years, winding up in hardscrabble, tiny Screven, Georgia. I climbed into life with my cousins, my wonderful Aunt Sadie and equally wonderful Uncle John and a lifestyle totally remote. Still, their home was a haven, a place to heal for as long as I wanted. It was a new beginning and in their home, listening daily to my cousin Dennis’ drawl and Deep South accent, I decided to create my first novel using his voice and basing the character on Dennis Hodges. It became Daniel Webster Jackson & The Wrongway Railroad, a mix of homage to my spiritual mentor and hero, Mark Twain, and an historical novel about the Underground Railroad.
Talk about Beginnings…it began as an exercise I set for myself to see if I could write one page and pull off sounding like Mark Twain…but one page evolved into a scene, and soon I realized it was not going to let me off so easily. It became a chapter, and what happens when you write a first chapter? Of course it begs for the second, and the second the third, and so on. Just as Twain’s tale of Huck Finn is episodic, I followed the episodic method I had learned from reading Dumas, Doyle, Dickens, Stevenson, Hawthorn, Poe, and of course The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. In fact, the entire idea came about when I went searching for the third in Twain’s boys’ adventure “series” and learned there was none. Unable to accept or believe it, and armed with the arrogance of youth—what is more powerful? Youth being what it is, I sat down to determine if I could write that third book which Twain had simply failed to produce.
And people wonder why I love writing historical fiction, why I turned from doing serial killers to my Chicago Inspector Alastair Ransom trilogy and more recently Children of Salem, “love in the time of the witch trials”. Here is the answer: From time to time, I remind myself of my reasons for getting into writing fiction—my passion for it, why it sustains me more than winning awards or passing Go or making a bundle of money or hobnobbing with Matt Lauer or Ms. Oprah. I remind myself that “in the beginning” I wrote for the sheer love of putting words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters down to see—to literally SEE—on paper what I had already spilled over in my mind. I face it— nothing else I do on the planet pleases me more than the precisely NAILED down images, dialogue, setting, plot, character with all the accoutrements…and to see it all come alive and dance from my head to my fingers to the page or rather the stage which the page represents. I adopted the novel? Well yes, but it also adopted me. Here was something that from the outset I was in charge of; here I rigged the game, made the rules, and won every race, fight! Every Monopoly game I laid out. Here I could be as slick, elusive, and deadly as a James Bond or as filled with as much joy as a Civil War vet who has managed to save one of his legs!
Endings in life and in fiction need be as perfect as we can make them, and while I am not contemplating ever ending my writing career—“You will have to rip my cold dead hand from this computer!”—I do continue to believe that there’s a reason beyond the pettiness of making a “killing” in the “writing game or casino” (it’s hardly a business like you find in Monopoly, this crazy roulette wheel we call publishing with its inherent defibs and heart murmurs and cardiac arrests; it’s only a business if you have a shtick or a TV or film tie-in, then you are welcomed into the board room end of things and only then.).
My own writing middle years have been a roller-coaster to say the least. One step forward, three back, and the “game” is never won-won, and one can never make enough money to satisfy the needs of home and ego if a midlist author. No your life is far closer to Van Gogh’s than the commercial artists whose fifteen minutes of fame net them large dividends. You write for food on table and to feed spirit. In my case, I keep reminding myself again and again what were my passions as a young, starry-eyed wanna-be newbie author, the kid whose first rejection came from Scholastic? What did the kid want? Where is the kid now? Is he worth unearthing to tackle yet another project? Can his passions be revived? Can the curious, easily fascinated kid be got at and the cranky, jaded, cantankerous old veteran be controlled so the kid can get back in the ring to fight another day?
Well sure he can and damn right! The eternal optimist, the eternal seeker. That’s what a writer is despite all his innate and deserved skepticism and cynicism about the playing field in publishing and in the broad world that Shakespeare warns us so often about—the one filled with slings and arrows; the one that overtakes us all at times, and in the end we are left with what? —two dates on a tombstone with a dash between. It is what we do with the time that this dash represents that is most important. Getting back to one’s inner child, one’s roots, one’s early powerful passions, and dealing with where one is at this moment—in the NOW—and determining a good outcome—an ending one can live with…these are all such important and huge questions to ponder and come to terms with. Wax and wane.
When I was at my deepest, darkest depression as a young unpubbed author the fear I would never be a published author controlled me and my work! Finally, I asked myself one question: Will you write if you never see publication ever? Will you continue to write? I answered that question and in doing so I got the monkey off my back and lightened up and soon began publishing even though my answer was YES as a conviction that I would NEVER see publication. Does it make sense? Now I am a goodly bit older and one might imagine wiser, and guess what question I am asking myself nowadays?
Yes, same question, same answer. I am what I am, as Popeye so oft said.
Re-invent yourself as often as necessary to sustain yourself as a writer but never forget why you took up the pen to begin with. I will shut up on that note.
Happy Writing Everyone – see you at the Kindle Store, Digital-Bookshop, Smashwords, Wordclay
Rob Walker
Facebook, Twitter, LinkIn, Plaxo, Myspace, Crimespace, DL., Five Star, HarperCollins
Friday, October 16, 2009
Taming the Beast - Selling Yourself, not Your Book by Robert W. Walker
Recently someone asked what I meant about selling “yourself and not your book” or selling it with a look, a wink, a smile and a nod. We were talking books at a virtual bar, having a virtual drink; she had a martini, I had a Jack Whiskey Sour. I proceeded to explain in more detail; did so over the juke box wailing out “Don’t be Cruel” and Elvis was at his best. We had been discussing what a writer has to do these days to gain attention for his work since there are now in the pool of writers everyone who thinks he can write whether correct or not, everyone who acts on the thought ‘I can write better’n that’, in other words: everyone with half a mind to write a book, unfortunately DOES. Leaping in with both feet.
Almost anyone and more people can afford to self publish nowadays, and anyone can digitally publish at NO cost to the author, and besides more people can afford the huge mistake of publishing with some major vanity presses that do nothing in the way of screening or editing even when paid to edit. In fact, there are far more publishing outlets and possibilities now than in the history of publishing EVER. So… while competition for shelf space in bookstores in the real world has always been difficult and tight, nowadays, it appears even greater competition for space in the mushrooming “Digital Stores” where shelf space is also stiff as stiff can get stiff.
So what’s a writer to do? Nothing? A Dan Brown, Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell need do nothing as their books are bestsellers even before the book sees print (preorders). No one apparently needs to read said books to know that they are “worthy” of becoming bestsellers. (It’s about numbers, not quality of writing). Go figure. That aside, ninety nine percent of authors are without a budget and are told by their publishers: (1) ads for books do not sell books, so we’re not going to advertise your book like we do Dan’s or Steve’s or Patti’s (they do not explain this much to the Dan Browns, to Stephen King or Patricia Cornwell as they probably would gasp and insist that their publisher stop this practice and instead advertise all their titles using their budgets—Disney said if you can imagine it, you can do it…).
Number 2 remark mid-list authors hear always: You have to commit to selling your book on your own in any way you can, anywhere you can, anyhow you can at all hours of the day and night. 3) You need to create an online presence. Some publishers will even create a Myspace or a Facebook page for the fledgling author to get her or him started.
And so I have been creating my online personae (my juggling act; on unicycle juggling ten plates at once from the edge of a diving boad) and doing for something in the neighborhood of five years now. I began with various chat groups like DorothyL.com, and I added others as I found them; I began with Myspace where I blog and try to keep up and place bulletins; I added Facebook, Crimespace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Twitter. All in an effort to build a fan base, and to sell not myself but my books, but a strange thing happened on the way to selling a million copies. I have learned that people respond less and less to the overwhelming number of appeals to “read my book” and “buy my book” and “you gotta really read this, my book!” and far more to other things like a smile, a wink, a nod.
Being online as much as I am nowadays, I have come to a full arc from hawking my book to hawking interest in my dull life! HA, to THERE! There you have it…or rather there my eyes were opened. I have always considered my personal life a total BORE, but NOT SO….apparently. It has been quite a metamorphosis within my brain pan, and it has not come easily or quickly but that look….that wink…that smile…the shot of me and Pongo up on my profile page, my jokes, my picture with the cardboard Capt. Jack Sparrow with Miranda flanking his other side, my photo with a similar Will Smith, my having had to neuter Clark Kent—SuperCat—my cat….now that’s what people respond to. Leave ‘em laughing has always been my watchword at conferences and speaking engagments, and it is twice as true on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and elsewhere. But it took me a loooooong time to figure this out. Call me thick.
I am convinced that going direct to a sales pitch is never a good idea, not even at a book signing where it is expected, right? No ask the potential customer what he does for a living, make a remark about the cute grandchild, remark on apparel, the weather, point out when a lady comes into the store with three children that perhaps she needs the “relief” offered by a good story to escape into—then speak of your story, of course.
And the same appears to be true of the internet social networking connections we make. I want to spend some time making responses to the potential reader or fan online by answering their tweets, replying to their Facebook remarks—whether on the weather or about the kitchen fire they’re recovering from or the loss of a pet, or Or OR…. And while the progress appears slow….hey I have been at this for years—it is a way to gain new readers, all of whom have access to others and to review sites and their favorite chat rooms.
I don’t sneak up on people with the wink and the nod and the smile; I am quite up front with the fact I am a writer with books in the trunk of my virtual car as I drive on through what’s being said by whom on Facebook and elsewhere. I still often make direct appeals as when I have had a review or when someone has interviewed me, and I often continue to make an appeal to “read this book!” but the lion’s share of my posts nowadays—as the arc has arrived—go to social remarks, political rants, personal tales of terror as when my stepson broke his nose (talk about bloody), and what’s the deal with Miranda’s deciding to rip up the carpeting and strip the floor, and on and on. What I have learned, which so surprises me, is that people in general love to hear about the mundane backdrop in a writer’s life as much as they might a photographer’s life, a sculptor’s life, a CPA’s life, or a teacher’s life….nurse, doctor, lawyer, candlestick maker. Not to mention a puppeteer or marionette operator. These online sites are like an insatiable unquenchable WE or US magazine only the stars are, well, us’ns.
And so we finish our drinks, and I explain to the stunning beauty on the bar stool beside me, my wife, that it is worthwhile to continue to focus on meeting folks all across America and overseas online and to meet them with a smile, a nod, and a wink. We toast to the brilliance of just being ourselves and know we needn’t be working so hard as we have in the past. We have come of age in the virtual world, old enough to down our virtual drinks where you don’t have to reveal your age.
By the way, there’s been a great review posted regarding my how-to for the disorganized writer in you, a book entitled DEAD ON WRITING at a terrific eZine begun by several young ladies who believe in the power of educating oneself to becoming a writer, folks who believe in craft before marketing. This is at 1stTurningPoints.com – locate the review under articles. The book itself can be found in all eFormats from the Kindle Store, the Digital Store, Smashwords, and in paper format from Wordclay.com. That’s Dead On Writing!
Happy Writing Everyone,
Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/robertwwalkerbooks.com
"Dead On takes the reader's capacity for the imagination of horror to stomach turning depths, and then gives it more twists than a Georgia backroad that paves an Indian trail." - Nash Black
Almost anyone and more people can afford to self publish nowadays, and anyone can digitally publish at NO cost to the author, and besides more people can afford the huge mistake of publishing with some major vanity presses that do nothing in the way of screening or editing even when paid to edit. In fact, there are far more publishing outlets and possibilities now than in the history of publishing EVER. So… while competition for shelf space in bookstores in the real world has always been difficult and tight, nowadays, it appears even greater competition for space in the mushrooming “Digital Stores” where shelf space is also stiff as stiff can get stiff.
So what’s a writer to do? Nothing? A Dan Brown, Stephen King, Patricia Cornwell need do nothing as their books are bestsellers even before the book sees print (preorders). No one apparently needs to read said books to know that they are “worthy” of becoming bestsellers. (It’s about numbers, not quality of writing). Go figure. That aside, ninety nine percent of authors are without a budget and are told by their publishers: (1) ads for books do not sell books, so we’re not going to advertise your book like we do Dan’s or Steve’s or Patti’s (they do not explain this much to the Dan Browns, to Stephen King or Patricia Cornwell as they probably would gasp and insist that their publisher stop this practice and instead advertise all their titles using their budgets—Disney said if you can imagine it, you can do it…).
Number 2 remark mid-list authors hear always: You have to commit to selling your book on your own in any way you can, anywhere you can, anyhow you can at all hours of the day and night. 3) You need to create an online presence. Some publishers will even create a Myspace or a Facebook page for the fledgling author to get her or him started.
And so I have been creating my online personae (my juggling act; on unicycle juggling ten plates at once from the edge of a diving boad) and doing for something in the neighborhood of five years now. I began with various chat groups like DorothyL.com, and I added others as I found them; I began with Myspace where I blog and try to keep up and place bulletins; I added Facebook, Crimespace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Twitter. All in an effort to build a fan base, and to sell not myself but my books, but a strange thing happened on the way to selling a million copies. I have learned that people respond less and less to the overwhelming number of appeals to “read my book” and “buy my book” and “you gotta really read this, my book!” and far more to other things like a smile, a wink, a nod.
Being online as much as I am nowadays, I have come to a full arc from hawking my book to hawking interest in my dull life! HA, to THERE! There you have it…or rather there my eyes were opened. I have always considered my personal life a total BORE, but NOT SO….apparently. It has been quite a metamorphosis within my brain pan, and it has not come easily or quickly but that look….that wink…that smile…the shot of me and Pongo up on my profile page, my jokes, my picture with the cardboard Capt. Jack Sparrow with Miranda flanking his other side, my photo with a similar Will Smith, my having had to neuter Clark Kent—SuperCat—my cat….now that’s what people respond to. Leave ‘em laughing has always been my watchword at conferences and speaking engagments, and it is twice as true on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and elsewhere. But it took me a loooooong time to figure this out. Call me thick.
I am convinced that going direct to a sales pitch is never a good idea, not even at a book signing where it is expected, right? No ask the potential customer what he does for a living, make a remark about the cute grandchild, remark on apparel, the weather, point out when a lady comes into the store with three children that perhaps she needs the “relief” offered by a good story to escape into—then speak of your story, of course.
And the same appears to be true of the internet social networking connections we make. I want to spend some time making responses to the potential reader or fan online by answering their tweets, replying to their Facebook remarks—whether on the weather or about the kitchen fire they’re recovering from or the loss of a pet, or Or OR…. And while the progress appears slow….hey I have been at this for years—it is a way to gain new readers, all of whom have access to others and to review sites and their favorite chat rooms.
I don’t sneak up on people with the wink and the nod and the smile; I am quite up front with the fact I am a writer with books in the trunk of my virtual car as I drive on through what’s being said by whom on Facebook and elsewhere. I still often make direct appeals as when I have had a review or when someone has interviewed me, and I often continue to make an appeal to “read this book!” but the lion’s share of my posts nowadays—as the arc has arrived—go to social remarks, political rants, personal tales of terror as when my stepson broke his nose (talk about bloody), and what’s the deal with Miranda’s deciding to rip up the carpeting and strip the floor, and on and on. What I have learned, which so surprises me, is that people in general love to hear about the mundane backdrop in a writer’s life as much as they might a photographer’s life, a sculptor’s life, a CPA’s life, or a teacher’s life….nurse, doctor, lawyer, candlestick maker. Not to mention a puppeteer or marionette operator. These online sites are like an insatiable unquenchable WE or US magazine only the stars are, well, us’ns.
And so we finish our drinks, and I explain to the stunning beauty on the bar stool beside me, my wife, that it is worthwhile to continue to focus on meeting folks all across America and overseas online and to meet them with a smile, a nod, and a wink. We toast to the brilliance of just being ourselves and know we needn’t be working so hard as we have in the past. We have come of age in the virtual world, old enough to down our virtual drinks where you don’t have to reveal your age.
By the way, there’s been a great review posted regarding my how-to for the disorganized writer in you, a book entitled DEAD ON WRITING at a terrific eZine begun by several young ladies who believe in the power of educating oneself to becoming a writer, folks who believe in craft before marketing. This is at 1stTurningPoints.com – locate the review under articles. The book itself can be found in all eFormats from the Kindle Store, the Digital Store, Smashwords, and in paper format from Wordclay.com. That’s Dead On Writing!
Happy Writing Everyone,
Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/robertwwalkerbooks.com
"Dead On takes the reader's capacity for the imagination of horror to stomach turning depths, and then gives it more twists than a Georgia backroad that paves an Indian trail." - Nash Black
Friday, July 24, 2009
Story Web Structure by Robert W. Walker
When is a story going to get unwieldy and out of your control? When you begin multiplying; as in multiplying the number of characters to beyond the limit; as in multiplying the time shifts, geographical shifts, settings, and of course threads. Not always easy to tell where to draw the line, and every story makes its own demands but a recent call from a client I am doing editing and ghost writing work for brings one sure point home – any time too much of anything takes the reader out of the story or the flow as it were, it’s a bad choice. Now Steve was just talking about three pages wherein he feared he had unconsciously done alliteration atop alliteration. So let’s take that as an example of what not to do and how to recognize it when you see it.
Too much drinking water can’t be a bad thing right? But too much forced down your system at once becomes a poison. Too much of anything in real life is poisonous—yes, even chocolate or milk shakes, my friends. Take the same common sense approach to your number of themes your book is covering—main storyline with six sub-sets of storylines? Come on. Maybe you are trying to write two books in one, so separate them out and write two books and not one. Too many characters? We hear a lot of readers moaning and complaining about this, and if it happens in your story that you have creating too many storylines and threads, it is most likely you have also latched on to too many characters to carry the weight of so many themes and plots.
The danger is in not seeing when a novel is “all over the place” and not just with settings and the timeline but with the sheer number of characters we ask a reader to pay attention to—especially in a multiple viewpoint novel. We need to think Chief Characters keep to a minimum as in you can count them on one hand, and if not, if we are getting into two hands, that’s when readers then look for and want a flow chart or a listing of “principle characters” and maybe some idea of how they are related by blood or circumstance. Ever open a play and gasp at the cast of characters? I generally feel that when I open a novel, I don’t want to see a family tree on the inside cover directing me to where little Nel falls on the tree branch near the bottom. Once when I went off on a tangent about a character’s grandfather’s story within the pages of my main character’s “action” and “thoughts”, my then editor, a wise fellow indeed, said of this tangent, this five page flashback, “Write the grandfather’s story some other time in some other book but not here.” That stuck with me.
Being brief in a novel is like saying military intelligence, an oxymoron…so how do we stay the course of the main character and objective or thread of the book, sticking to the main storyline and allowing for a controlled one or two sub-sets of characters and storylines?
Think of the Soppranos TV program wherein many, many storylines evolved over the years of the show, and many, many characters came and went, and often went out—as in dead. That’s complicated long term but it is over years. Fast-forward to today’s hot show Trueblood based on Charlaine Harris’ series surrounding Sookie Stackhouse—and again you see a successful story with many many sub-sets of storyline and characters “fleshing” out those storylines, and as these are so successful whatever can Rob Walker be talking about! However, even in these stories that appear to go hither, thither, and yon guess what—all the separate storylines encircle like the spokes of a wheel ONE character and always come back to the magic number one: How does it relate to and affect one Tony Sopprano as it is HIS story, not anyone else’s. How does it relate to and affect one Sookie Stackhouse as it is not her boss’s story, although he figures in her story, and it is not even her vampire lover’s story, although he figures quite heavily into her story. No Trueblood is all about Sookie.
Picture Sookie’s face at the center of a universe of her making, and surrounding her are all those she surrounds herself with – friends, family, loved ones, necessary ones, and add the world she lives in—the setting—and those who come at her. All those secondary characters are encircling her – her brother, her grandma’s ghost, her shape-shifting boss, her friends at the bar, her enemies, and they are all only in the story as foils for her. Every divergent storyline, no matter how tangential, comes back to her and the story always reaffirms that this is not the cook at the diner’s story but Sookie’s story. All others in the tale are satellites that impinge and impact Sookie.
We flip the channel to House and guess what?
We switch to Grey’s anatomy and it gets confusing whose story it is, I grant you, but in the end Grey has her name in the title!
Mobey Dick, okay, it’s not so much about the whale as it is Ahab’s story but Ismael is telling the story…but truly this surprisingly poorly organized story with hundreds of pages of nonfiction on the whaling industry embedded proves my point. For all of Melville’s talent, he didn’t follow the simplest of precepts of organizing a novel so as to not allow it to get out of hand. Ever read Moby Dick in its original entirely? War and Peace for that matter? Classics are made of this—books no one can take for long and many of our greatest classics are flawed as in the ending for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn wherein Twain loses sight of the fact that this is and was and should have remained Huck’s story and should never have been turned back over to Tom Sawyer!
A novel that shifts sets needs connective tissue between settings, shifting time needs connective tissue to let the reader know you are shifting, shifting point of view needs carefully placed connective tissue embedded, but turning over your novel to a secondary character begs the question why don’t you write HIS or HER story then? Keep asking yourself as you work through your novel “Whose story is it anyway?” And especially if you are crafting a multiple POV tale, “How soon can I get back to my #1 character and in his/her POV and out of #2’s head?”
Picture the character web on a page or in your head – your main guy or girl is at the center of this web, closest confidants, relatives, lovers, friends close in to the center of the web (picture their smiling faces) then an outer web of associates, fellow crime solvers, bullies, bosses, jerks (picture these) and at the outer edge dangerous types and enemies of one sort or another and especially the antagonist(s) and picture these wanting to get to her through her closest allies. No matter how far your story roams, she remains at the center of the story web.
I have been doing some updating of early stories and putting some original work up at the Kindle store, acting as my own publisher, but these details discussed here have been bandied about on some chat groups I belong to, so this is my take on them, and I follow this practice, and it makes for a far tighter, stronger story. If you were doing short stories this is even TRUER still.
Rob Walker
Dead On Writing at the Kindle Store
Dead On the novel is available now (herein a two-star lead, female and male, share the center of the web)
Too much drinking water can’t be a bad thing right? But too much forced down your system at once becomes a poison. Too much of anything in real life is poisonous—yes, even chocolate or milk shakes, my friends. Take the same common sense approach to your number of themes your book is covering—main storyline with six sub-sets of storylines? Come on. Maybe you are trying to write two books in one, so separate them out and write two books and not one. Too many characters? We hear a lot of readers moaning and complaining about this, and if it happens in your story that you have creating too many storylines and threads, it is most likely you have also latched on to too many characters to carry the weight of so many themes and plots.
The danger is in not seeing when a novel is “all over the place” and not just with settings and the timeline but with the sheer number of characters we ask a reader to pay attention to—especially in a multiple viewpoint novel. We need to think Chief Characters keep to a minimum as in you can count them on one hand, and if not, if we are getting into two hands, that’s when readers then look for and want a flow chart or a listing of “principle characters” and maybe some idea of how they are related by blood or circumstance. Ever open a play and gasp at the cast of characters? I generally feel that when I open a novel, I don’t want to see a family tree on the inside cover directing me to where little Nel falls on the tree branch near the bottom. Once when I went off on a tangent about a character’s grandfather’s story within the pages of my main character’s “action” and “thoughts”, my then editor, a wise fellow indeed, said of this tangent, this five page flashback, “Write the grandfather’s story some other time in some other book but not here.” That stuck with me.
Being brief in a novel is like saying military intelligence, an oxymoron…so how do we stay the course of the main character and objective or thread of the book, sticking to the main storyline and allowing for a controlled one or two sub-sets of characters and storylines?
Think of the Soppranos TV program wherein many, many storylines evolved over the years of the show, and many, many characters came and went, and often went out—as in dead. That’s complicated long term but it is over years. Fast-forward to today’s hot show Trueblood based on Charlaine Harris’ series surrounding Sookie Stackhouse—and again you see a successful story with many many sub-sets of storyline and characters “fleshing” out those storylines, and as these are so successful whatever can Rob Walker be talking about! However, even in these stories that appear to go hither, thither, and yon guess what—all the separate storylines encircle like the spokes of a wheel ONE character and always come back to the magic number one: How does it relate to and affect one Tony Sopprano as it is HIS story, not anyone else’s. How does it relate to and affect one Sookie Stackhouse as it is not her boss’s story, although he figures in her story, and it is not even her vampire lover’s story, although he figures quite heavily into her story. No Trueblood is all about Sookie.
Picture Sookie’s face at the center of a universe of her making, and surrounding her are all those she surrounds herself with – friends, family, loved ones, necessary ones, and add the world she lives in—the setting—and those who come at her. All those secondary characters are encircling her – her brother, her grandma’s ghost, her shape-shifting boss, her friends at the bar, her enemies, and they are all only in the story as foils for her. Every divergent storyline, no matter how tangential, comes back to her and the story always reaffirms that this is not the cook at the diner’s story but Sookie’s story. All others in the tale are satellites that impinge and impact Sookie.
We flip the channel to House and guess what?
We switch to Grey’s anatomy and it gets confusing whose story it is, I grant you, but in the end Grey has her name in the title!
Mobey Dick, okay, it’s not so much about the whale as it is Ahab’s story but Ismael is telling the story…but truly this surprisingly poorly organized story with hundreds of pages of nonfiction on the whaling industry embedded proves my point. For all of Melville’s talent, he didn’t follow the simplest of precepts of organizing a novel so as to not allow it to get out of hand. Ever read Moby Dick in its original entirely? War and Peace for that matter? Classics are made of this—books no one can take for long and many of our greatest classics are flawed as in the ending for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn wherein Twain loses sight of the fact that this is and was and should have remained Huck’s story and should never have been turned back over to Tom Sawyer!
A novel that shifts sets needs connective tissue between settings, shifting time needs connective tissue to let the reader know you are shifting, shifting point of view needs carefully placed connective tissue embedded, but turning over your novel to a secondary character begs the question why don’t you write HIS or HER story then? Keep asking yourself as you work through your novel “Whose story is it anyway?” And especially if you are crafting a multiple POV tale, “How soon can I get back to my #1 character and in his/her POV and out of #2’s head?”
Picture the character web on a page or in your head – your main guy or girl is at the center of this web, closest confidants, relatives, lovers, friends close in to the center of the web (picture their smiling faces) then an outer web of associates, fellow crime solvers, bullies, bosses, jerks (picture these) and at the outer edge dangerous types and enemies of one sort or another and especially the antagonist(s) and picture these wanting to get to her through her closest allies. No matter how far your story roams, she remains at the center of the story web.
I have been doing some updating of early stories and putting some original work up at the Kindle store, acting as my own publisher, but these details discussed here have been bandied about on some chat groups I belong to, so this is my take on them, and I follow this practice, and it makes for a far tighter, stronger story. If you were doing short stories this is even TRUER still.
Rob Walker
Dead On Writing at the Kindle Store
Dead On the novel is available now (herein a two-star lead, female and male, share the center of the web)
Friday, July 17, 2009
Writerly Musings on Writers and Writing by Robert W. Walker
For some occupations, most in fact, not knowin’ where you’re goin’ from the outset of a project is the kiss of death. Organize, outline, plan, storyboard it…all necessary for many forms of writing as well but a novel? Not entirely true, no, and in fact even now, writing this blog, I dunno where I’m going until I get there. An old saying has it that “I don’t know what I think until I see what I say.” With writers in general, I suspect that is true.
Another thing about writers, as with any artistic types, there’s constant self-analysis and self-criticisms of our work; if reviewers only knew. They don’t have to tear us down; we do a fine job of doing that number on ourselves.
Another issue about writers is the notion that for money, even fast money without any hope of returns on that money, as in pay for hire, we will never say no. In general, I subscribe to the never say no to a writing job or an editing job or any job that pays you for putting words on paper or helping someone else to do so as in ghost writing. But there are limits after all. The term pay for hire is a circumstance wherein an editor or publisher wishes to pay you a flat say one or two thousand for a writing job and you are never to darken their door again. You have no rights to the work. You were hired to write it for another. Yet it is to be a book on shelves in bookstores. It may or may not have your name on it. Most of the Idiot Books, those reference works like The Fool’s Guide to whatever are done as pay per hire. I say if you really need the money, go for it, but as a general rule, try to avoid such deals.
When you are hired to do a ghost writing job, it’s about take the money and don’t expect or pursue any additional funds. When you edit someone else’s work it remains their work, not yours, and you should expect no more funds accruing to you unless you have worked out a contract that stipulates this down to the percentages. Else all you can expect if that is a mention in the acknowledgments.
Now getting down to when an editor gives you a green light on a spec manuscript. If you are given a go-ahead based on a spec script (speculation), the nature of the beast is no money changes hands until which time spec becomes contracted script. If you are lucky enough to have a correspondence or any sort of relationship with an editor and you are talking about ideas with said editor, you don’t own ideas, and anyone can take up that idea and run with it, so you want to do your best to convince an editor that this idea is not only great but that you are the perfect person to write it. When an editor in a publishing house asks you if you can write such and such a book, THEN I go by you never say no to an editor.
Once way back in early 80s, I was turned down by an editor I had worked with on a previous couple of books. I was amazed at the rejection of this work. I got on the phone and got Jane, and I pushed her on giving me some real reasons as to why it was rejected, something other than the vague generalities in the letter. She said, “It’s too short; we’ve moved from doing 60 thousand words to 80 thousand, and we’re up to our eyeballs in mysteries. We are in need of horror.”
I shot back without hesitation, “Give me a contract and I’ll add a monster and 20.000 words!”
Jane said, over the phone, “Yes, okay, I’ll put the contract in the mail. Go to work!”
That is the exception but I have also had editors contact me to ask if I could run with an idea the house was kicking over for a series. After two or three sentences on the idea, I stop listening and say, “I can do it, sure!” My four-book Decoy Series came of that. My Instinct Series came about the opposite way—I proposed it as a series idea to an editor who fell in love with the concept. Same with my Ransom series.
I’ll leave it at that this week as am quite busy working on bringing out more work on Kindle. Thus far, I have Children of Salem, Cuba Blue, Deja Blue, FleshWars, a how-to that could have been entitled 20,000 words and a Monster…but I instead call it Dead On Writing, and a short story collection entitled Thrice-Told Tales. Working on Abaddon (horror) and The Serpent Fire (horror-thriller).
Rob Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com
also at Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Plaxo, LinkedIn, DL, MMA, and more
Another thing about writers, as with any artistic types, there’s constant self-analysis and self-criticisms of our work; if reviewers only knew. They don’t have to tear us down; we do a fine job of doing that number on ourselves.
Another issue about writers is the notion that for money, even fast money without any hope of returns on that money, as in pay for hire, we will never say no. In general, I subscribe to the never say no to a writing job or an editing job or any job that pays you for putting words on paper or helping someone else to do so as in ghost writing. But there are limits after all. The term pay for hire is a circumstance wherein an editor or publisher wishes to pay you a flat say one or two thousand for a writing job and you are never to darken their door again. You have no rights to the work. You were hired to write it for another. Yet it is to be a book on shelves in bookstores. It may or may not have your name on it. Most of the Idiot Books, those reference works like The Fool’s Guide to whatever are done as pay per hire. I say if you really need the money, go for it, but as a general rule, try to avoid such deals.
When you are hired to do a ghost writing job, it’s about take the money and don’t expect or pursue any additional funds. When you edit someone else’s work it remains their work, not yours, and you should expect no more funds accruing to you unless you have worked out a contract that stipulates this down to the percentages. Else all you can expect if that is a mention in the acknowledgments.
Now getting down to when an editor gives you a green light on a spec manuscript. If you are given a go-ahead based on a spec script (speculation), the nature of the beast is no money changes hands until which time spec becomes contracted script. If you are lucky enough to have a correspondence or any sort of relationship with an editor and you are talking about ideas with said editor, you don’t own ideas, and anyone can take up that idea and run with it, so you want to do your best to convince an editor that this idea is not only great but that you are the perfect person to write it. When an editor in a publishing house asks you if you can write such and such a book, THEN I go by you never say no to an editor.
Once way back in early 80s, I was turned down by an editor I had worked with on a previous couple of books. I was amazed at the rejection of this work. I got on the phone and got Jane, and I pushed her on giving me some real reasons as to why it was rejected, something other than the vague generalities in the letter. She said, “It’s too short; we’ve moved from doing 60 thousand words to 80 thousand, and we’re up to our eyeballs in mysteries. We are in need of horror.”
I shot back without hesitation, “Give me a contract and I’ll add a monster and 20.000 words!”
Jane said, over the phone, “Yes, okay, I’ll put the contract in the mail. Go to work!”
That is the exception but I have also had editors contact me to ask if I could run with an idea the house was kicking over for a series. After two or three sentences on the idea, I stop listening and say, “I can do it, sure!” My four-book Decoy Series came of that. My Instinct Series came about the opposite way—I proposed it as a series idea to an editor who fell in love with the concept. Same with my Ransom series.
I’ll leave it at that this week as am quite busy working on bringing out more work on Kindle. Thus far, I have Children of Salem, Cuba Blue, Deja Blue, FleshWars, a how-to that could have been entitled 20,000 words and a Monster…but I instead call it Dead On Writing, and a short story collection entitled Thrice-Told Tales. Working on Abaddon (horror) and The Serpent Fire (horror-thriller).
Rob Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com
also at Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Plaxo, LinkedIn, DL, MMA, and more
Friday, June 5, 2009
Dead On Writing - A Book for The Successfully Disorganized, Down & Dirty, Functionally Challenged Fiction Writer in You by Robert W. Walker
Can minor characters remain minor? What’s needed to craft a truly villainous villain? How much is too much detail? When is setting another character and should it be? How are characters created out of the blue? What is a fully-realized character, and what is the opposite – a not fully realized character? Is that like a cardboard character? How long should a writer work at his craft? What is meant by execution? How important is it to get the grammar right? Is spelling still such a big concern? What is an unofficial PhD in Writing and Letters?
And when you’re done with those questions of dialogue, the how and why of it…character building, motivation, use of the five senses, use of the sixth sense, the very metaphysics of writing, what do you do to sell the finished manuscript? How does one go about selling the idea to an agent, an editor, a publisher?
Once the manuscript is sold and a book is made, what can we do to market it to the public? What avenues doe we have online? What should our attitude be? Does anything work?
Up to this point all I have done is list questions. These are the questions that try writers’ souls. To help out best I can, I have “published” for the Kindle Reader at http://www.dtpamazon.com/ -- the Kindle method of publication my how-to on the subject of writing craft, execution, and more…much more. Some of it even funny. Some of it deep. Some of it light. Some of it “sacrilegious” and some of it just truly useful exercises—writing exercises that have been tested and that WORK.
For anyone who does not HAVE a Kindle reader, I understand there’s an option to have the book sent to your Iphone. For anyone who does not have either but would like to get the book, contact me and I’ll see what I can do. As the book is only 2 dollars from Kindle Store…not sure how you can pay me except to say TALK up the book and any of my other titles like my Five Star suspense novel DEAD ON.
DEAD ON WRITING is a compilation of useful and pointed advice on writing. I hope you will at very least go to the Kindle Books section on Amazon.com and search for my name to see all my Kindle titles and let me know what you think of the artwork on my DEJA BLUE (psychic detection novel with woo-wooo!), CUBA BLUE (a Qui Aguillar Havana Cuba suspense-thriller), and SNAKE FLESH WARS (science fiction suspense & horror – there’s a monster involved, and spontaneous human combustion is also involved!). I am hoping to put up a book of short stories here. Kind of cool to be my own publisher!
Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
And when you’re done with those questions of dialogue, the how and why of it…character building, motivation, use of the five senses, use of the sixth sense, the very metaphysics of writing, what do you do to sell the finished manuscript? How does one go about selling the idea to an agent, an editor, a publisher?
Once the manuscript is sold and a book is made, what can we do to market it to the public? What avenues doe we have online? What should our attitude be? Does anything work?
Up to this point all I have done is list questions. These are the questions that try writers’ souls. To help out best I can, I have “published” for the Kindle Reader at http://www.dtpamazon.com/ -- the Kindle method of publication my how-to on the subject of writing craft, execution, and more…much more. Some of it even funny. Some of it deep. Some of it light. Some of it “sacrilegious” and some of it just truly useful exercises—writing exercises that have been tested and that WORK.
For anyone who does not HAVE a Kindle reader, I understand there’s an option to have the book sent to your Iphone. For anyone who does not have either but would like to get the book, contact me and I’ll see what I can do. As the book is only 2 dollars from Kindle Store…not sure how you can pay me except to say TALK up the book and any of my other titles like my Five Star suspense novel DEAD ON.
DEAD ON WRITING is a compilation of useful and pointed advice on writing. I hope you will at very least go to the Kindle Books section on Amazon.com and search for my name to see all my Kindle titles and let me know what you think of the artwork on my DEJA BLUE (psychic detection novel with woo-wooo!), CUBA BLUE (a Qui Aguillar Havana Cuba suspense-thriller), and SNAKE FLESH WARS (science fiction suspense & horror – there’s a monster involved, and spontaneous human combustion is also involved!). I am hoping to put up a book of short stories here. Kind of cool to be my own publisher!
Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
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