What The Heck Is Canon, & Why Is It So Important?

Please note I’m not talking about cannons (see the 2 Ns in the middle?), which is an oblong oversized gun thingy used to fire cannonballs, most commonly remembered as what pirates and merchant ships lobbed at each other in various movie scenes of ship-to-ship battles on the high seas.  I’m talking canon.  (1 N in the middle.)  The original definition referred to rules and regulations developed by a church’s governing members (usually the Catholic Church), but since this is a blog about writing, obviously I don’t mean that definition.

Instead, I’m talking about the definition of “canon” as it applies to authors and their writings:  the body of information outlining, delineating, or otherwise codifying how a particular fictional universe/world and its various systems work, as expressed in a consistent manner throughout each story set in that fictional world/universe.

I had to bold-text the important bit there, because it’s an unfortunate fact that a number of authors violate their own canon.  For many of us—and yes, I’ve discovered I have occasionally done this, too—it’s usually a minor infraction, the sort due to simple derpage over a small point.  For some, however, it instead emerges as a huge violation of established, story-pivotal facts.

Why Should Authors Care About Canon?

Because your readers will.  Allow me to introduce you to two terms which will explain why canon is so important to establish, remember, and adhere to in fiction writing:

Audience-Friendly

Suspension of Disbelief

Audience Friendly is how much your audience (aka your readers) will remain friendly to whatever you are telling them; once you take them past a certain point, however, they stop being willing to accept whatever you’re writing.

Suspension of Disbelief is what allows them to do this…up to a certain point.  If you’re writing about green-skinned people when we know there are no such things in the real world, then your audience has to suspend their disbelief in leafy-hued humans in order to continue reading.  If you make it a good, engaging story…your readers will be willing to suspend that disbelief.  If it’s a boring, absurd, or terrible story, you’ll stretch that suspension toward the snapping point.

When that happens, your audience will no longer be friendly toward what you write.

How does this all work?

Let’s take a handful of scenarios to explain how these three things work together, Canon, Audience Friendly, & Suspension of Disbelief:

1.  You’re writing a contemporary romance. (Just pretend you are, even if you aren’t.)  It’s about a gentleman barista who meets and falls in love with a high-powered executive lady over the lattés he prepares for her.

Canon in this instance is really easy to maintain, because a contemporary romance’s setting is more or less the real world.  It uses the same laws of physics, the same everyday terminology, and is in general a location and situation familiar to a lot of people.  If not personally as either a barista coffee-maker or a company executive, then at least through observation of others being those things and working those jobs.

It is very, very easy for people to Suspend their Disbelief over a story like this, because there’s virtually nothing out of the ordinary that needs the reader to be willing to believe.  High-powered execs tend to love fancy coffees made by baristas, and it’s quite possible a spark of attraction might bloom over a properly prepared brew.

Audience Friendly comes into play, however, if you have coffeehouse-savy readers who are going to spot every single mistake you make regarding coffee based terminology.  So, you’ll want to brush up on your coffeology and label that wonkapercolator contraption correctly…or your audience won’t be so friendly by the time they’re done reading about it.

2.  You’re writing a Cinderella story.  (Even if you aren’t, again just roll with it.)  We all know the storyline: impoverished young lady is denied her big chance by her cruel stepfamily at going to the grand ball to catch the prince’s eye, but her fairy godmother gives her that chance, along with a spiffy ballgown and ride, all of which will disappear at midnight if she doesn’t hotfoot it out of there in time.

Canon in this instance is still somewhat easy to maintain, because most English-speaking readers are familiar with the storyline.  Authors can deviate from it a little (such as swapping the gender roles, setting it in a modern era instead of a medieval or regency one, so on and so forth), but it still follows the same general format.  However, because you’ll want to make your version of Cinderella—or Cinderfella or whatever—different from all the others, you’ll need to establish and maintain your differences in a consistent manner.

Let’s say you’ve set the story in 800s France, around the time of Charlemagne.  Your Audience will remain Friendly because the story trope is familiar to your audiences, and a much-loved one.  Suspension of Disbelief will be relatively easy here, too, because it’s still set in a familiar Earth-type setting.  You will, however, want to research the clothing worn, the kinds of transportation available—they did not have carriages like the ones we normally associate with Cinderella, for example, but they did have wagons and so forth—and other such details to give the story a realistic feel for its setting.

But let’s say you’ve decided to go out on a limb and set it in an interstellar planet-hopping kingdom of some far-flung future universe.  Audience Friendly isn’t going to be as much of a problem in this scenario, because having established that it’s set in the twenty-eigth century, you can come up with all sorts of weird technology to explain interstellar travel from planet to planet, so on and so forth.

3.  So, Cinderella has to get from planet Zarkon to the prince’s homeworld of planet Denebulax, and her fairy godmother is actually a spaceship with Artificial Intelligence and some sort of clothing-manufacturing equipment on board.

If you’re still sticking with the Cinderella story trope, your Audience will continue to be Friendly toward it, however weird things may deviate from the original pre-twentieth century versions of the storyline.  That is, so long as they receive the love-story they’re expecting to read, they’ll remain friendly toward your writing.

Suspension of Disbelief starts to come into play once you take it out of the familiar universe/world of Earth As We Know And/Or Knew It.  Your readers have to suspend any disbelief they may have in life on other worlds, the ability to travel in a quick, safe, and timely manner between star systems, starships with Artifical Intelligence & fantastic tailoring sensibilities, so on and so forth.

People who already love science fiction (or fantasy) are usually already willing to suspend their disbelief, and are thus willing to be audience friendly toward these types of stories.  People who love romance are willing to cut you some slack if you deliver a good romance, and so they’re also willing to suspend disbelief and be a friendly audience.  Those who love both will love you if you write a good story.

…The moment you forget that Cinderella hails from the planet Zarkon, however, your readers are going to want to smack you over the head with your own book when they read how she’s suddenly from the planet Nerknon in Chapters 7 onward instead.  That’s a violation of canon.  If, however, you have a typo saying she’s from the planet Zakon instead of Zarkon, that’s just a typo, and a competent editor will catch that sort of thing…and beat you over your head with your manuscript for it.

4. Gibbula of Tersinchor is on a quest to fribbulang the Darsing Chalix, and needs the help of the dashing perogastator, Melulick the Magnificent and the zilgergeist raygun loaded with a thousand different plings!

Reader:  “…bwuh?”

Writer:  “It’s a high concept story!  You’ll love it!”

Nope.  You have completely lost your audience.  Too much bizarre terminology, too few reader-friendly concepts.  You’ve completely snapped the bungee cords on their ability to suspend disbelief, and have rendered your readers audience confused instead of audience friendly.  With a story like this, rather than being easy in making up stuff, it will be extremely difficult to maintain canon, because there are no common references in your terminology.

If a pling is supposed to be some type of ammunition, you’ll need to keep track of a thousand different kinds of it, or at least the several dozen used in the story, and you’ll need to make sure your zilgergeist raygun fires each pling in a manner consistent with every other pling type it fires.  And that’s just the one example in a story undoubtedly set with a hundred such things.

You can still write this weird story…but expect to include a huge glossary of terms, or your readers will be zilgergeisting their own various plings at your dunkerhelmet out of sheer frustration.

5.  In your 6 book fantasy action series, you established in books 1, 2, and 3 that your hero can transmute common wheat straw into gold, and only wheat straw.  This is how he makes his money as he travels around from continent to continent on the fantasy world of Tarman…and when he’s in the eastern kingdoms in book 4 where they grow only rice grains, he rapidly runs out of wheat stalks to make his money.  But then in book 5, he’s suddenly able to transmute regular grass stalks into gold, too, and is thus able to survive.  …Wait, bwuh?

In this example, there is no explanation of how your hero, Rumpy, is able to suddenly do something he could not do before.  But even if you explain it in a very good way, you’re still asking your readers to suspend their disbelief in your previously established facts—aka, wheat stalks only + spinning wheel = gold—so that they can continue on with the story.

The explanation has to be really good to get over the fact you just violated your own canon.   “The Fairy Council has said we need to diversify and look at new biogold resource materials.  We want you to experiment with sedge and other wild/margin grasses not found on farmable croplands, Rumpy, *sparklywandswish*, so we’re now letting you transmute grass into gold, too!”

And if you don’t explain it in a believable way?  Boom!  You’ve just fired a cannon shot at your readers’ heads, instead of a canon shot.

So How Do I Maintain Canon Consistently?

Take notes.  Lots of them.  Do your research on things like 800s Carolingian era clothing, food, vehicles, technology, et cetera, and write down what you uncovered, plus where you found it.

If you’re making up stuff about the planets Zarkon and Denebulax, write that all down in a seperate .doc file or on paper so you’ll be able to find and reread it quickly whenever needed, and reference it.  Repeatedly.  If your hero can spin wheat straw into gold, does that include the stalks of the closely related cousin-grain spelt, or just common wheat?

It may seem tedious and redundant, but I have seen canon mistakes in stories that were only 2,000 words long.  Single-shot stories, only 2,000 words in length, and they still had mistakes in them.  You’d think that an author would be able to keep track of details in such a short tale, but mistakes still happen.

A Note On Canon vs. Continuity

Continuity does overlap with canon, and vice versa.  However, continuity tends to focus more on the fiddly details of things like,  “Okay, on this page in this scene, he’s wearing blue jeans and a black shirt…but two pages later, still the same scene with no mention of a change of clothes, he’s now wearing black jeans and a black shirt.”  That’s a continuity error.  A canon error would be more like the straw = gold thing.

Continuity & canon error: The heroine recognizes the prince at the ball because supposedly only the prince is allowed to wear a gold sash over his clothes…and the ambassador from the next kingdom over is described as wearing a gold sash as well.  Maybe it was meant to be gold belt instead of a baldric sash in the author’s mind, but it didn’t get described right on the page, leading to the error.

This gold sash vs. gold sash moment is also a good example of a minor error which doesn’t impact the story all that much…but which some readers will still pick up on and snort over, which is where you start clashing against Suspension of Disbelief and Audience Friendly-ness.

Anything that makes your readers snort and roll their eyes, that’s a point where you’re starting to lose your readership’s interest.  That’s why you need to care about these things.

At least, if you love what you do, and you want others to love your stories, too…

Why The Heck Do We Write?

The most important reason to write fiction is because you like telling stories.  If you don’t like telling stories, the lack of enthusiasm will show, and your readers will lose interest and stop following you.  In contrast, if you love telling stories, your readers will enjoy your enthusiasm and follow you with equal interest, even if your spleling skills are trrebile.

If you love what you do, then do it.  (Provided it harms no one else and breaks no laws, of course, but that’s a given.)

But…after you’ve acknowledged the need to write, most authors feel another need, to share them with others.  To share our stories, inflict them on family and friends, offer them like free samples to strangers, and hopefully even get to dangle them like meat over a hungry lion once some of our readers are addicted to the fresh, yummy taste of our prose. 

Of course, this analogy brings up the possibility of said lions attempting to bite our arms off in the hunger for more, more, more!  Which brings us to the topic of how to behave, both as an author and as a reader.

…By the way, this is a LONG post.  I’d break it up into two sections, but it’s all important, and most of it can be applied to online or in person etiquette, so here we go!

Readers & Etiquette

Yep, I’m going after you guys, first. Mainly because all authors are readers, too.  We all started out as readers, and we still are readers.  Even if the only thing we read that we haven’t written ourselves are the comments posted by other readers, we’re readers.  But in specific, I’m talking about what readers should and should not do when posting feedback after having read a story.

You have the right to hold your own opinion.  You also have the right to share that opinion in a peaceful discussion.  You do not, however, have the right to wield that opinion like a chainsaw, brutally chopping your way through the bodies of the books and the authors in your path.  Texas Chainsaw Massacre was only a good idea for an entertaining horror story.  It should not be how you live your life.

If you did not like something in a story; that’s alright.  It’s your opinion and you are entitled to hold it.  You can even share it with friends and family.  But if you want your opinion to be respected (even if not everyone will agree with it, which not everyone will), then you need to present it in a way that doesn’t make you look like the back end of a donkey.

Ask yourself why you didn’t like the story?  What specific details did you not like? What didn’t work for you?  What did work for you?  Was there anything you did like, and why did you like it?  These specific details about what you did and did not like in a story are the sorts of things you not only could post, but should post.  Most good authors will want to read those details, because it will help them as writers to know which areas are weak and need more work.

Do not apply a gallon of gasoline to your commentary prose and set it alight with a bazooka.  (I’m speaking figuratively here, but it should also be pretty obvious that doing so literally is also A Very Bad Idea.  Don’t try this at home, folks!)  Flaming is bad.

What Do You Mean, Flaming?

I mean, writing anything that is inflammatory, derogatory, vituperative, vicious, abusive…so on and so forth.  Particularly when you shift your commentary from the story itself to a generalization of all an author’s works, or worse, when you start attacking the author directly.

This applies to private correspondences as well as to the things you post online via social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or via reviewer/commentary boxes on Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com.  In this day and age, there is very little that is actually private, because emails can be shared—again and again—with just the click of a mouse button.

Readers, one of the things you must keep in mind at all times is that the actions and opinions of characters in a story you didn’t like are just that:  actions and opinions of characters in a story.  Please do not make the mistake of thinking these actions and opinions are the same as the author’s own words and deeds.  Seriously, don’t assume that.

If you go after an author for such things, then you have to go after Stephen King first and foremost for being a perverted sick bastard who murders people and makes little kids find their bodies alongside railroad tracks…which we ALL know is patently absurd and untrue.

He’s just writing those kinds of stories; he’s not actually a serial killer.  We’re all just writing these stories as authors; we’re not acting them out ourselves.  (Remember, I’m talking about fiction stories here, not the autobiographies of serial killers.)

Another example of this, drawn from my own life:  An editor who contacted me for a short story in an anthology (all of which shall remain unnamed) asked me to write a short story.  I asked what level of movie-rating it should have, and the editor said I could write whatever level I wanted.  So I took them at their word.

I sent in the story, then a short while later received an email back.  An email accusing me of having the foulest disposition in existence, disparaging my morals, self-control, and sense of personal etiquette, and accusing me more or less of being the sort of person who would engage in drunken bar brawls at the drop of a hat, with the implication that I would endanger the health and well-being of said editor (NOT my editor at Berkley/Ace, I want to make that perfectly clear)…and that I’d do so in a bout of random violence with the implication that such random bouts are part and parcel of my nature.

…Bwuh?  o.0

Based on a story I wrote?  A fiction story?  …I’d like to point out at this moment that I almost never drink alcohol, and my personal policy as a practical pacifist is that I prefer not to start fights.  I may know how to end them, and am capable of ending them, but I prefer not to fight.  I also have not been in a bar in over half a decade…so long as one doesn’t count situations where the bar portion of a restaurant was the only location with seating available.  In short, I don’t drink, and I don’t fight.

Of course, I’ll allow that this particular editor who had contacted me for a freelance project didn’t know me that well, and so couldn’t have known whether or not I did the things they were accusing me of.  Maybe I was actually the sort of person who would get inebriated and start swinging and swearing like a stereotypical sailor.  How could they know?  …But then, that’s the point, isn’t it?  This reader (editors are readers, too; they’re just pre-readers with a say in the story) was making a personal attack on me, the writer, based on a story I had written, with no knowledge whatsoever of whether or not I personally was indeed capable of such behavior.

I am human; I know I have my flaws and I have buttons which can be pushed.  I will admit to being highly offended by this unwarranted personal attack.  I still am indignant over the fact that it was a personal attack, though this whole thing took place a few years ago.  I wanted to strike back at this perceived attack on my good character.

Who wouldn’t want to defend themselves with such an unjust and utterly wrong accusation being flung at them in an email which looked like it itself had been written in a drunken ranting rage?  (Whether or not said editor was inebriated, I have no idea; this is just an analogy of my reaction to it, since I was having a hard time accepting that a professional editor would make such baseless accusations.)

Well, I will admit I rewrote my reply email to said editor a good dozen times before actually hitting Send, striving to find a note between my indignant “oh no you di’n’t!” immediate reaction, and proper professional politeness.  What I finally sent, therefore, was far closer to professional politeness than indignation—however righteous it might have been—and I received an email of apology from said freelance work editor…but the damage to that editor’s reputation had already been done in my eyes.

Never make personal attacks against an author…or an editor, or another reviewer, or whoever.  It only makes you look like the bad guy.

On the other hand, if you did not like a story, and can express in polite terms the reasons why you did not like a particular story, you do have the right to do so.  In polite terms.  How an author—or even another reader—responds to that dislike is the other side of the coin.

Authors & Etiquette

Your reputation as a writer is worth your weight in gold.  This is because you are selling yourself as a brand.  You are like Johnson & Johnson, which is a brand of first aid supplies here in the U.S.

Any old Johnson, singular, would make an American go “meh” and maybe even shrug, not knowing who or what it referenced—especially as there are a lot of us Johnsons running around out there—but put it together with an ampersand, and “Oh, Johnson & Johnson—the bandaid people!”  The lightbulb of recognition has popped on, and voila, they know exactly who you’re talking about.  (They actually make a lot more than bandaids, but that’s their most famous product.)

The same goes for books, not just commercial products.  “Philip K. Dick? Ohhh, Bladerunner!  I loved that movie!”  “J. K. Rowling? Harry Potter, awesome!”  “Stephen King, uhhh, what did he write, again?”  (Just teasing.)

By producing a story, you are linking your name to it.  Or by producing many stories in a particular genre, you are linking your name to that.  This linking brings along a responsibility to link your name carefully.  Remember, you are promoting a brand.

With that in mind, the ONLY time an author should ever be rude to an audience or readership is if they are a Shock Jock like Howard Stern, where the audience expects the author to be rude to them.  In all other instances, authors should be polite to their readers, critics, reviewers, publishers, editors, agents, copy-editors, so on and so forth.  But there really is only one Howard Stern (thank goodness), so let’s remove him and his genre from the equation. With him removed, allow me to restate the above warning:

Authors should be polite to everyone in all instances.  Particularly in print, whether via paper or electronic media.  Doubly so with electronic media, since print usually goes through some sort of editorial process, whereas Twitter and the like are pretty much instantaneous, from foot-in-mouth to world-wide-web in the click of a mouse button.

In recent history, a handful of authors have…well, flipped and gone off the deep end with posts attacking reviewers, readers, editors, whatever.  Most were made in reply to opinions which were posted online, usually posts casting the author’s works in an unfavorable light.

I repeat: These were opinions posted online.

Authors, please remember than an opinion is simply one person’s viewpoint on a subject.  That one person does not represent the entire world’s opinion (even if the person posting said opinion claims this, it isn’t true), and there will always be at least one other person who holds the opposite view.  Mind you, the ratio of dislikes to likes could be 100 to 1, but that isn’t the thing to look at when considering how to respond to these “I really disliked Author Z’s story, X Goes to Y” posts.

No matter how searingly hot a commenter’s flames may get, do not respond in kind.  Do not flame them back.  You will trash your reputation faster than you can say, “Hey, there’s a recycle bin!” in the Pacific Northwest.  (A mouse click posting a reply takes considerably less time than saying, “Hey, there’s a recycle bin!”, however long it may have taken you to write out your flaming retort.)

You can, of course, write out your retort.  I don’t deny it can be cathartic sometimes to get snarky and horrible right back.  We are human beings, or at least are pretending to be human beings, so we do occasionally get the urge to sass right back.  Just don’t post it.

Even The President Wouldn’t Post That Online!

Abraham Lincoln was a bit of a hothead in his youth, and posted a series of letters to the editor of certain newspapers; the end result was that he was called out in a duel.  Instead of being killed at the theater in later life, he could have been killed (and very luckily was not) on a misty morning somewhere in a patch of wilderness.  Realizing this was the wrong way to go about expressing his opinions, he changed his methods.

He didn’t stop writing vituperative retorts…but he did stop mailing them, or sending them in to newspapers.  Instead, he wrote out his angry feelings as a letter, then set that letter aside for several days, until he knew he could think rationally and calmly.  Then he wrote a much different letter, a polite one, and sent that one, either as an actual letter, or to the newspaper as an editorial commentary, or whatever.  (This example can be read in more detail in a marvelous book which everyone should read, How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.  Get it, read it, incorporate it into how you live your life.  It works.)

We may not be Abraham Lincoln, but we can learn from what he chose to do.  So, while I’m not denying you the right to vent your feelings as an offended or hurt human, I am strongly advising you to not post those ventings.  Remember, anything you post online or in print will represent the brand image you are trying to promote.  As the vast majority of us want people to like us, we need to expose our likeable qualities, not dislikeable ones.

Because of this, authors have a particularly high responsibility to be polite in public formats.  If you torpedo your career by being someone who put their head where the sun doesn’t shine, you will find it extremely difficult to restore the reputation you will have shattered via your careless disdain, arrogance, or rage.

Word-of-mouth will spread bad news three times as fast as good news, so you need to be four times as careful about what sort of reputation you have.

Getting back to what I was saying above about flipping out, in the last half-year, word-of-mouth has spread news of a couple of authors responding very badly to unfavorable reviews of their works.  Now, there are tens of thousands of fiction writers in the U.S. alone, and these were just a small handful of authors who were reacting badly, but it cast a bad light on the whole community where author/reviewer relationships were concerned.

In one of the more recent of these incidents, the reviewer posted a bad review of a particular book.  In their opinion, it was simply a poorly written story, and they gave the details as to why they thought it was so.  The author attacked the reviewer personally…and within a matter of hours of the author’s retort being posted, people all across the country were chatting about it on Twitter.

Admittedly a few people will have picked up copies of the book to see if it really was “all that bad”…but many more people will now be avoiding that book and particularly that author, whereas before they might have given author and stories a fair try.  In that one act of indignation, righteous or otherwise, that author has lost many more potential book sales than they gained through morbid curiosity.

Maybe the reviewer was wrong; reviews and comments are opinions, after all.  But the author still torpedoed their reputation with their flaming response, and torpedoed it soundly when he or she attacked the reviewer personally.  It wasn’t a case of the reader accusing the author of being a drunken bar brawler, but the attack by the author on the reviewer was still just as inappropriate as it would have been the other way around.  Author or Reader, don’t do it.

Bad publicity may still be publicity, but it’s a single splash in a small bucket compared to the bathtub filled to the brim that you can get from polite actions.  That bathtub will take a lot longer to fill than the splash-in-the-bucket, true, but if you’re an author and you love what you do, you’re not in this for a splash-in-the-bucket moment.  You’re in this for the long haul.

One Big Caveat About Written Comments

Be very careful of what you accuse another person of doing or being.  It’s not just your own reputation on the line, but theirs.  And yes, you should be concerned about how you treat someone else’s reputation.  Not just because it’ll reflect back on your own, or because they may actually not have done what you accuse them of doing, and you shouldn’t be mean to people anyway, yadda yadda…but because of the risk of Defamation, aka Slander and Libel.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation)

And yes, posting defamatory comments in social media counts as a potential case of Libel.  It’s in print, it’s being broadcast, it’s posted in a tangible form that doesn’t require someone actually on hand to hear it come out of your own mouth in person…so it counts.

Now, most cases of defamatory comments can be brushed off as opinions.  “I don’t like her hair, she looks like a freaking pomeranian, ugly as sin!” is one example of a defamatory opinion.  Does it offend the target?  Probably.  Will it offend anyone else reading those comments?  Probably, and particularly if they like pomeranian dogs and think they’re adorable.

But is it bad enough to justify a legal suit?  Probably not.  Most people won’t experience grievous mental and emotional anguish over such things.  The problem comes when someone repeatedly harasses and vilifies a target.  Whatever reason you may think you have for doing so, it’s not good enough.  It’s never a good enough reason to try to ruin someone’s reputation, mental health, and life.

People will flock to support someone who is being attacked, because we like coming to the defense and/or rescue of others.  If you really want people to stop reading it, if you want interest in a particular book to die down, then just keep your mouth shut and let it die a quiet death.

You’ll be a lot closer to your goal if you handle the matter that way, and keep your own reputation healthy enough to be worth your weight in gold.

Etiquette In Person

Needless to say, ALL of this applies to encounters in person.  This is doubly vital because you don’t have the anonymity of a computer screen protecting others from seeing your face.  Readers, be polite around authors, even if you don’t like their writing.  In the U.S., the Parody Law means we can tell you “be careful, or you’ll end up in my novel!” because we do have the right to write parody, lampooning someone in many creatively indirect ways.  (Authors, try to resist doing this as it can backfire unless you really know what you’re doing…but the threat is still there.)

Authors, be very polite to your readers; they now have a face and a personality to attach to their mental images of your books, and they will talk about you after they’ve meet you.  They’ll talk about having “met Author Z at Convention ABC” for years to come.  It’s up to you as to whether or not that meeting is a pleasant memory or a horrible nightmare to be told and retold over the years.

Readers, I’m one of you.  I know how much you want to gush over your favorite author(s).  I WAS one of you just recently at a convention where the Guest of Honor was my absolute favorite author, Alan Dean Foster, where I had the distinct honor and pleasure of serving alongside him on 3 panels—squee!!  This was an incredible thrill for me.  Like a skier meeting former Olympics champion Picabo Street, or an actor meeting Tom Cruise.  Big.  Huge.  Thrill.  Zomg, Squee!

…However, I confined my squeeing and gushing to the months before and after the convention, and did very little gushing in person.  Why?  Two reasons.  One, because I didn’t want to make Mr. Foster feel uncomfortable.  And two, I wanted to present myself as a professional at all times during the convention.

As a reader, when you encounter your favorite author (or actor, sports celebrity, whatever), remember that they’re human beings.  They have flaws, they need to visit the bathroom, and they can feel crowded or overwhelmed.  Authors are often a bit introverted compared to, say, actors, and their best work is often done for hours and days at end all alone, so crowding them with enthusiasm can often invoke feelings of panic or distaste.  Not every author is going to be a “huggy type” either, so be careful with the displays of affection.  Some will, some won’t.

The worst way to approach an author?  Screaming, cursing, yelling, flailing, throwing things at them.  Second worst?  When your choice of moment is very, very awkward.  If your target is forced to say something like,  “Um…I’m trying to get to the restroom, here.  Can it please wait until I get out?  Thank you,” …then you really should be polite and wait, and don’t chase them up and down the aisle between stalls while they’re frantically trying not to burst their bladder.

The best ways to approach an author is with a smile, maybe offer a hand to shake, and offer them a direct, polite,  “You’re Author Z, right?  I’ve really enjoyed your books, thank you!”

Caveat:  Don’t grab their hand yourself and squeeze if they don’t clasp it when offered; they may have arthritis and are trying to preserve their fingers for typing, or they may have a cold they don’t want to share.  (How selfish of them; but still, it’s their right not to share.)

You can, if there seems to be a little bit of time, go into some detail,  “I liked the scene where the cat rode the dog, in your book X Goes To Y!”  but bear in mind that most places you meet authors, they’re at a convention where they’re on several panels and their time is therefore not entirely their own.  But we authors love hearing when we’ve pleased our readers, and particularly why we pleased you.

As for things that displeased you in an author’s works, remember that flames spoken in person are much more dangerous than ones printed in papers or posted online.  Libel (printed) is easier to prove than Slander (spoken), but the problem with ranting at someone in person is that it will most often be perceived as an attack, and the person you are attacking will defend themselves…most often with the same level of heat or more.

Verbal arguments can also escalate into physical ones, and attacking someone physically is never appropriate.  You can defend yourself, but don’t start any fights.  This means being smart enough to not start verbal fights, too.

So how do you express distaste appropriately?  It’s simple.  Keep it simple.  Keep it your opinion, too.  An excellent example of this which I can pull from my own works is from my first and second fantasy romance novels, The Sword and The Wolf.  I had numerous readers posting how they didn’t like the first heroine, Kelly, but loved the second heroine, Alys…and then other readers spoke up saying they hated Alys but loved Kelly!

Which side was right, in that argument?  Both sides were right.  Because these are personal opinions.  So, to give you a good example of how to express dislike properly when meeting an author in person (or even online), here’s a little exercise:

Reader Says: “I read your book, X Goes To Y.  Some of it was okay, but I didn’t like (cite specific sample here) because I personally thought (calm reason stating why you didn’t like it).”

Author Responds:  “Thank you for your thoughts on the matter.  I’ll take that into consideration with my next story.”  …Whether or not the author changes anything in the next story is irrelevant; they have at least given consideration in that moment, and that counts.  They’ll also probably think about it later, when they’re not feeling on-the-spot pressure, which can often lead them into a defensive posture.

Or an author can say:  “I’m sorry that upset you.  My reasons for writing it that way were (fill-in-the-blank in a calm and rational way…but keep it short and simple.)”

Or, if it’s a matter of errors, or a bad cover:  “I’m sorry for all the (whatever) that slipped through the editing and review process.  Unfortunately, once the book goes to print, there’s nothing an author can do to change things.”

Reader’s response to the author’s response to their comments:  “Thank you for listening to me.”

Author’s response to the reader’s response to the author’s response to…:  “You’re welcome; I do appreciate hearing from my readers, whatever their thoughts.”

Authors, the reason why you should appreciate hearing from them, and let them know you appreciate it even when they don’t have nice things to say, is because they actually got off their butts and talked to you.  In text or in person, they are taking a precious bit of time—irretrievable time, which they have chosen to spend on you—out of their day just to communicate with you.  Not more than one in a hundred readers will bother to do that…and I’m probably being optimistic when I say that.

Even if a reader doesn’t like your story, if you treat their opinions with respect, they will remember YOU gave them that respect in spite of their negative views of whatever it was they didn’t like in your stories.  If nothing else, that reader or critic or whoever will walk away thinking,  “Well, okay, X Goes to Y was a crappy novel, but that author was actually really nice!  I wouldn’t mind talking with him/her again!”  …Which can translate to,  “Maybe I’ll give their next book a chance?”

Whether you’re an author or a reader, your reputation is worth your weight in gold.  Treasure it and treat it as such.  If you love what you do, it’s worth the effort, trust me.

Stalled on the prose highway?  Here are some handy-dandy tricks that’ll work even better than AAA.  (Because AAA doesn’t fix flat plot-bunnies, just tires.  Sorry.)

We all get this.  Maybe not as a direct response to the ending of National Novel Writing Month, but we all get to this point in our writing, where the steam in our engine just peters out.  Maybe it’s just the post-rush feel you got when you were banging out a really intense, fantastic scene…and…now you don’t know what else to write, or you just don’t know how to get from point H to point K in your plotlines.  Maybe you honestly have no idea what those letters in between should be, or you may have all or most of the intervening letter-scenes lined up in your mind, but…the motivation is gone.

This is a very common problem.

I have grown to dislike the term “writer’s block” for a very good reason.  I have a very vivid imagination, and when I think writer’s block, I think of a big ol’ toy block or chunk of stone masonry thumping down on the path in front of me, literally blocking my way.  Thick trees and bushes obscure the sides of the trail, and I get mentally stuck with no easy way forward.  The more I focus on the fact that I’m stuck, the bigger and broader that block-wall grows.

As writers, most of us write visually.  We imagine in our heads how the scene goes, and we try to describe what we see.  So this “block” visualization, imagined consciously or unconsciously, becomes a serious stumbling block.

Instead, let’s consider calling it something else.  Lots of something elses.  Anything to get the mind off that huge wall blocking our mind’s way.  One example would be:

Go Without NaNo.

(For those of you still not sure what NaNo is, or WriMo as some people call it, it’s the shortened version of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.  Usually it takes place from November 1st to November 30th; you sit down and start writing, and try to write 50,000 words by the end of the month, with the goal of just writing.  This goes back to the biggest stumbling block in any writer’s life, Starting The Damn Book…which I covered in a much earlier post.)

If we call it that, then it focuses our minds on the word ”go” in a very positive way.  The path is open and clear when we think about going forward.  It’s a way to remind ourselves that we can write, if we just start moving our mental feet.  A single step forward, a single sentence or a single paragraph, is all that it takes to put ourselves in motion.

Visualize yourself traveling along that path from point H to point K.  Go back over your notes.  Figure out what you need to add to the end of the last scene to make that transition to the next one, and Go for it.  We don’t have to have a formal contract with ourselves to keep writing once November or whatever-month-you-picked has come to an end.  It can help out a lot, yes, but it isn’t necessary.  All you need to do is tell yourself you can do it, and can keep doing it.  Several times, if need be.

With that in mind, let’s discuss the next possible block-breaking way to look at your writing….

WriMo, You Foo’!

(It helps to imagine saying this one in a Mr. T accent, I think…)  The acronym variation WriMo kind of sounds like someone saying Write More.  This is a very positive way of thinking about it.  It’s also a pledge to continue the spirit of National Novel Writing Month.

Now, if you haven’t done NaNo this last November, do not despair!  Sure, December is a holiday-choked month filled with distractions, but make your New Year’s pledge to turn January into your next Novel Writing Month. (Much easier than pledging to lose 30 pounds, imho.)  Just promise yourself you’ll carve out time in your daily routine to write 1,700 words each day, and then do it from January 1st to January 31st.  And then do it again for February, or for March, and maybe for April, and…

NaNoWriMo was conceived as a way to break down the Start The Damned Book barrier.  And technically the rules say you should be working on a brand-new project when you start NaNo.  But lots of us have used it to break down the writer’s block issues keeping us from the goal of Finish The Damn Book, too, the second biggest hurdle in writing.  I myself tend to use it to get through a piece I’m already working on.  That’s why I call this segment of block-breaking the WriMo way…because Ah pity the foo’ who don’t use it to Write Mo’!

(Okay, so I can’t do a decent Mr. T accent.  Oh well…)

The Bartering System

Okay, you’ve been writing for many days now.  The plot-bunnies have been hopping about madly, biting your ankles and demanding that you write, write write…but now they’re exhausted.  They’ve flopped all over your office floor like the dirty clothes in your bedroom.  You may have neglected a few household chores and such for NaNo or whatever had you writing so hard for so long…and you reeeeeally need to do household chorse.  But that doesn’t mean you should completely neglect your writing for doing them.

Just barter with yourself,  “I have a craptonne of laundry to do.  I’ll either position the doors so I can hear the buzzer, or set myself a timer, or take my laptop to the laundromat, and do a load or three and write while they’re washing and drying.  I’ll write while I’m waiting for the next load to be processed through.”

Or maybe, “Ugh, I have to sweep and mop the kitchen floor…  I’ll do it, and while I’m waiting to dry, I’ll write 300 words.  As soon as I hit 300, I’ll put everything back in the kitchen where it should be, then write 300 more.  As soon as I write 300, I’ll get up and vacuum the living room and hallway.  As soon as that’s done, I’ll write 200 words, or until it’s 6pm, because then I’ll have to make dinner.  Once I’ve made dinner and the dinner dishes are handled, then I’ll write…”

When the writing block wall is huge and awful, sometimes you have to barter-promise yourself,  “If I write 300 words, I can have a nice treat.”  Watch a sitcom, watch a favorite YouTube video, listen to a song (though you can listen to favorite songs while writing; just try to match the mood of the song to the mood of your story), have a single cookie… Make sure it’s just a single cookie, though; writing is already a sedentary job, so you don’t want to add calories you’re not burning off.  This version is the “reward yourself for doing your work” scenario.

When the neglected chore is huge and awful, use the writing as a way to treat yourself, instead of that t.v. show or that cookie.  “Ugh, if I scrub the toilet and wipe down the counters and mirror, I can write 150 words before I have to sweep and mop the bathroom floor…and when it’s mopped, I can sit down and write 200 words while it dries, yay!”

Bartering gets your brain moving in the right direction for actual writing, associating it with treats and pleasantness.

Wordmongering, Go!

This is a phenomenon I encountered on Twitter.  It’s like a tiny seed of NaNoWriMo inserted into the soil of your day.  Usually starting on the hour and ending on the half-hour, you sit down at, say 5:00pm sharp, and write write write write write until 5:30pm.  Like WriMo, the important thing is to write.  If you get only 3 words done…well, it was a crappy effort, but at least it was an effort.  If you get 300 words done, wow!  If you get 3,000 words done…I’d suspect you of cheating, lol.  Either that, or of drinking waaaay too much caffeine for health’s sake.  (My average has been 600-900 words in the past; I have yet to break 1,000, though I’ll try to achieve that goal this coming month.)

Wordmongering is best done on an instant-text service like Twitter, because you can use the hashtag #wordmongering to find other people doing it, or to get them interested in doing it.  (You can also use #wordwar, which I’ll discuss in a moment.)  Wordmongering is a form of Bartering.  You barter half an hour of time for writing in exchange for half an hour of doing other things.

The nice thing about this one?  It reminds you to get up, stretch, look away from the computer, go do a couple chores, so on and so forth.  And if you do it properly, you can literally be stopped mid-sentence by the timer going off, so that when the next start of the hour comes around, you’ll be eager and raring to finish that sentence and start on the next, and the next, and the…

If you’re not sure what to write next?  Use the non-writing half hour to go back over your plot notes and figure out what you need to do next.  This is a very good system.

WordWar!  Huah!  What is it good for?

Heheh, couldn’t resist…  Wordwars are not only good for writing, they’re fantastic motivators.  You can use them via email, LiveJournal, Twitter (hashtag #wordwar), Facebook, whatever—and on Twitter, it’s such a commonly sought thing, you can search the hashtag list for a random stranger and challenge them or accept their challenge.  That means you can usually find someone within a single day for a good wordwar partner.  But you can still ask your writer friends.  And sometimes, they’ll ask you.

Several years back, I got stuck behind not just one but two writer’s block barriers, because I was writing both THE CAT and THE STORM at the same time, books 5 and 6 of my bestselling Sons of Destiny series.  I had to write them at the same time because while they were two different stories diverging to follow two different pairs of main characters, they did take place at the same time, in the same place, with the same ensemble cast of characters.

My dear friend Bart, chief editor for Crossed Genres, a former online anthology turned small press publishing house, had a 3 day weekend where his wife and son were going to be out of town.  So that he wouldn’t pine too much in their absence (it’s good to keep busy when your loved ones are elsewhere), and so that he could take advantage of the peace and quiet (hehe), he challenged me to a Wordwar.

That single act of friendly, encouraging, healthy competition broke down both stumbling blocks.  We raced neck and neck through all three days, posting our word counts at the end of each day, and he put forth an herculean effort…to the point where I barely beat him by less than 300 words, when each of us had easily written 25,000 words in just 3 days.  (That’d be like cramming NaNo into just 6 days instead of a nice, leisurely 30.)

And we’ll be doing it again, too.  I consider this method a very healthy form of competition, because you’re not just supposed to be trying to beat the other person’s wordcount, you’re also supposed to be encouraging them to try to beat you.  You’re encouraging each other to write, write, and write some more, and that’s always good.

One caveat: Confine your wordwars to a specific timeframe.  “The most number of words in 30 minutes,” rather than “whoever gets to 300 words first!”  The former one encourages your writing to actually involve thought concerning your main plot and current scene’s needs.  The second one just encourages you to write “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” 30 times to achieve that 300 word goal…and we all know how that turned out, yes?  Not such a good way to break through the writer’s block barrier, no.

Re-Read The Damned Book

This one is so intuitively simple, a lot of us writers derp and miss doing it.  Yes, myself included.  You get so focused on a particular scene deep into the middle of the book, you forget to look up from the road you’re paving to make sure it’s being paved in the right direction.  And then, when the steam runs out of your steampunk plot-bunnies or you’re out of Mountain Dew, you discover you can’t figure out where to go next or what to do.

The simplest solution is to go back to the start of the story and read it.  Resist the temptation to edit, though!  This is very important at this stage, because otherwise you’ll get bogged down in petty details.  Just reread it from the beginning to the point where you stopped at the mental roadblock of what-do-I-write-next, and read it for the overall story.  Then you can go back and make edits or corrections, but permit yourself to do that only once you have the whole forest refreshed in your mind’s eye, so that you can see how it all needs to fit together.

Reread the book you’re writing again a second time if you need to, or even a third.  Go over your notes.  Try to visualize the whole book in its plot arc from beginning to end.  It’s like reminding yourself of the proper order of the alphabet.  Sure, the song is silly and you might feel kinda stupid and kindergarten-ish for reviewing something so simple…but often, you’ll find that you suddenly remember that H is followed by I, and J, and…voila!  You now know how to get to K, yay!  It wasn’t going to take the 5 or 6 letters you were fearing—you only needed 2 letters, woo-hoo!  The plot-bunny is refreshed and is now nipping at your heels once more.

It’s not working!! *panicpanicpanic*  WhatDoIWriteNow??

Whoa, whoa!  Slow down there!  If you’re lucky and don’t have an appointed-by-contract deadline*, then there is a very simple solution for this one, too.  Work on something else.

Seriously.  If you want to be a writer, then you know you have more than one good story within you.  Start a new one.  Change the mood, change the genre, change the universe or the timeframe or whatever.  If you’re working on Steampunk, start a Space Cowboy adventure.  If you’re working on Romance, try writing a Murder Mystery or a Theft Caper.

Don’t want to leave the world you’re writing in, for fear you’ll never get back to the book you’re trying to write?  NOT a problem!  Write a backstory.  Grab a character out of your novel (not usually the main character) and write up a short story from their past.  Flesh them out, give them depth, personality, quirks, and a bit of history to explain it all.

Take them off on a side-quest.  Run them through a typical day that turns atypical for whatever reason.  Plop them down in an Alternate Universe (caveat: for experienced writers only, since you don’t want to mess up your Main Universe characters’ actions and reactions) and have the villain be the hero and the hero be the villain.  Or instead of traipsing off to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring, parody the story by having them sneak into Mordor to bake The Ultimate Pie of Destiny, the One Pie To Satisfy Them All, muaaAAHAHAHAHAHAA!

Have fun with it.  No, really, have fun.  When your brain struggles against the absurdity or the non-canon-ness of whatever it is you’re alternatively writing about your world and plot and characters, then you’ll know your plot-bunnies are ready to go back to work in earnest.  If not…?  Hey, maybe your strength lies in parody/comedy, and not the serious space opera you originally had in mind.

*If you DO have an appointed-by-contract deadline, write anyway.  This is what separates the pros from the amateurs, and if you have a contract, you are legally obligated to fulfill it.  Keep in mind that your reputation for professionalism is worth your weight in gold, and just push through.  If you love writing, then it’s worth the effort.  But really, just go back over these steps, review your story notes, and you’ll know that H is followed by I, J, and then you can get to K, the scene you do want to write.

I got to the end of my story—yay!—but what do I write now??

Go back up a couple paragraphs and reread what I just wrote.  It’s all right there.

Figuring out side stories and secondary characters’ quests is a great way of spinning off your urge to keep writing into new, fresh, exciting directions.  You don’t want to beat a series to death, or even a particular universe, but usually you can find good plots and expandable side-stories if you just look for them.

And if you’re tired of writing in that steampunk space cowboy stories?  Switch genres or cross genres, and go write a theft-caper romance.  You may not be as good at the new genre as you were at the old, but there was a point where you weren’t so good at combining steampunk aesthetics with space cowboy panache.  Keep writing mo’, keep trying, and you’ll get there.

That looming stone wall of writer’s block will soon develop a grand, gilded, iron-wrought gate set in a beautiful gothic-point arch.  And, with practice, you’ll learn how to let yourself through that gate to the new adventures lying in wait beyond it.

If you love what you do, it’s worth the effort it sometimes takes to keep doing it.

“Dear Jean Johnson, I have question about the german book because I read it and I find it good but the problem because there are only 2 books and in the books there are 8 brothers and my question is must I read it in English or can I read in german and how long must I wait?  ~Anonymous”

This is a very good question.

You’re not the only person who has asked this question—and it can apply to several authors and their works, so I’m answering it openly here.  (For other authors’ works, insert the appropriate name of the publishing companies, books, etc.)

RandomHouse.de bought the translation rights from The Berkley Group for the first two novels, THE SWORD, which became DIE SÖHNE DER INSEL, and THE WOLF, which became DER KUSS DES WOLFES.  As far as I’ve been told, both books have sold well in Germany, and it looks like their translator, Nina Bader, did a good job converting the story.

At this time, RandomHouse.de has stated that it does not have the intent to purchase more translation rights for the remaining 6 books.  However, most publishers are willing to change their minds if they get enough interest expressed from the readers for further translations.

If enough readers are interested in future translations of the Sons of Destiny series, they can contact RandomHouse.de and request further translations.  If enough requests are made, the publisher will know that there is a large group of people who will actually purchase the book, making the effort of translating and printing the books in another language (German in this case) worth their time, because there will be enough purchasers buying the translations to offset the costs, plus make a profit for the publisher.

Once they get enough petitions from readers interested in German translations of the remaining books…how soon those books get to bookstore shelves depends on several factors:  the number of other translation books in their production queue, the average length of time it takes for their translation department to work on translating a book, the length of time it takes for the editing process to cycle through (which has to be double-checked against the English original, adding to the difficulty and time involved), and of course, the length of the queue for getting it actually printed and distributed.

The English versions, through Berkley, take approximately eleven months from handing in the manuscript to seeing the book on bookstore shelves, but that’s with The Berkley Group, and that’s working strictly within the original language.  Random House in Germany may have a similar timeframe for its translation department, or it may differ by several months.  And that’s not counting how long it takes for the publisher to receive a high enough number of requests.

I don’t know what the “magic number” of requests to be sent in is; that’s an internal matter at the publishing house.  I also have no control over getting them to change their minds; it’s entirely up to the readership to see if they want to put forth that kind of effort.  So far, there have been several similar requests.  Each one, I have directed to RandomHouse.de.  If you’d like to see a German translation of the other books (as would I!), then please do contact them and let them know there’s another person out there willing to buy the translated versions.

In the meantime, my books are all available in English, mostly in ebooks and trade paperback (the larger format).  Nearly every book in the Sons of Destiny series is also available at this point in time (October 2011) in mass market (the normal sized format).  The eighth book, THE MAGE, is currently available only in the larger trade format, though it will be re-released in mass market June 2012.

…I’d offer to translate them myself, but my knowledge of German is rather pitiful.

Danke for your question,

~Jean

First off:  What the heck is a Con?

Cons are short for Conventions, as in large organized gatherings of people who not only have something in common, they want to share tips, tricks of their trades, sell each other neat gizmos and gadgets, discuss concerns, and in general just chat with people who are like-minded about whatever-it-is that brings them together.  Plumbers have conventions, astrophysicists have conventions…and fans of fiction books have conventions.  Usually these things take place once a year, but there are many subtle variations, which in turn lead to many possible conventions throughout a year.

Plumbers can attend a variety of conventions on plumbing, which can be ones for residential plumbing, commercial plumbing, shipboard plumbing, a trade show for the various equipment required—even clean water symposiums, septic systems and sewage treatment topics can be considered an offshoot of plumbing.  Astrophysicists might attend stellar cartography conventions, stellar exploration ones, a symposium on comets and other near-stellar debris, so on and so forth.

And, of course, there are a gazillion types of fan conventions, each one either trying to appeal to a wide varity of fen, or catering to a specific fandom.  (Fen is the plural of “fan” and can substitute for “fans” in a pinch, though I’ve personally found it being used more commonly to refer to different types of fans.  In this usage, it refers specifically to the people, so you’d say,  “The fen who attended Worldcon came from a wide variety of interests and fandoms.”  Or it could be used as,  “Doctor Who has a lot of fans, and Star Trek has a lot of fans, with a large number of fen who like both genres.”)

Since this is a blog about fiction writing, we’ll leave the plumbers and the astrophysicists to party on their own (though they’re more than welcome to join us as fellow fen), and discuss Fan Conventions.  These can range from the very general, i.e. WorldCon (Reno, NV, USA just hosted WorldCon #69) which covers all manner of science fiction & fantasy, though with more emphasis on the scifi, down to Anglicon (a convention in the Pacific Northwest that used to honor all things English Entertainment, from BBC productions through British authors & musicians), down to the very, very specific, The Con That Shall Not Be Named, which was a celebration of Harry Potter Slash Fanfiction.

…I’ll give you a few moments to scrub your brains, if you like.  But yes, there are plenty of normal, happy, well-adjusted people who like something that specific, and that specifically oddball.  Conventions on all manner of topics exist, and it’s important to know that these Cons exist.

Okay, so why are you discussing the existence of Cons in a blog about writing?  Why should they be considered so all-fired important?

Well, this is a blog about writing fiction, and usually it’s about writing genre fiction.  Tips, reasons, techinques, skills, sayings, and advice of all kinds can be found in this blog…but you’ll find more at a convention.  Some are specifically for writing, some are for the genres in which one writes.  Most of them will be very good for you to attend.

Why?  Writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  You cannot spontaneously learn how to write well; it requires instruction, feedback, suggestions, and interactions with competent editors, fellow writers, and your all-important readers.

The greatest problem is getting all these different types together for conversation that will cover all of these things.  (Okay, okay, a competent English Teacher—or teacher of whatever your primary writing language may be—will cover most of the general instruction stuff, but then I’m presuming you’ve already undergone enough schooling to be able to read and write at least somewhat competently.)  How conventient for you that Cons tend to bring together these different things, plus sometimes even agents and publishers, too.  How convenient, indeed!

You also need to know the tricks of the writing business.  Con-goers will happily tell you to avoid any so-called publisher who demands that you pay them money for services they should be including in their package—reputable publishers do not charge authors; they pay authors.  (If a publisher charges you money, they’re a scam artist.)  Your fellow Con-goers will commiserate with you over the horrors of trying to juggle home life, “real” jobs, and manuscript deadlines.  They’ll tell you what to look for in a good contract, or in a good agent, or in a good beta-editor…or even in a good story, a good villain, a good setting…

You may not always agree with what they have to say, but in listening to the opinions and experiences of others, your mind will be expanded, your pool of knowledge deepened, and your enthusiasm for writing will almost always be rekindled.  Genre Cons are almost always an encouraging environment—mostly because we’re a group of geeks banding together in the solidarity of our common fannish interests.

But I don’t wanna be a geek!

*sigh*  There is nothing wrong with being a geek.  Besides, it’s too late; you’re a writer of genre fiction, so you’re already part of the educated elite.  G is for Genre, E & E are for Educated Elite, and K is for…um…Kewl?  (Help me out, here; I’m doing the best I can.)  Anyway, it’s too late; accept it with pride and happiness, because it is your fellow geeks who are your target reader audience.

So it is very important for you to interact with your fellow geeks and future readers in a positive way.  In this business, you do want to stay on top of your readership’s likes, dislikes, preferences, interests, so on and so forth, because all of these things can have a positive (if you pay attention) or negative (if you don’t) impact on how well your stories are received.

This is not to say that, should you run across a pack of scarf-dangling Dr. Who fans, you should immediately ditch your original story and write Dr. Who fanfic.  Nor should you probably write anything involving Timelords, Blue Police Call Boxes, or immortal gits who refuse to tell you their name.  (I say “immortal git” in a loving way, because I have been a Dr. Who fan myself, but it’s still gitty of him not to tell us his actual name.)  But you can take elements from their love of British humor, science fiction, time travel paradoxes, and the constant encountering and reinventing of new worlds, old histories, and so forth, and infuse your own story with that kind of enthusiasm for funny yet serious, adventure-based science fiction.

Embrace your geekdom, go forth, and enjoy the conventions that are out there.

Okay, fine.  You’ve convinced me.  So what kind of conventions should I look for?

Picking the right convention actually depends upon a number of factors.  The first thing you should consider is what kind of a convention do you want to attend?  For example, writing workshops/conventions, whose sole focus is on the aspects of writing, will be a lot more serious than a genre fiction convention.

Are you more interested in writing Westerns?  Romance?  Steampunk?  Or are you into the hard science side of Science Fiction?  Do you like faeries and elves from some faraway world in your Fantasy, or are you more into vampires and werewolves who live down the street?  Are you hardcore Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or casual Star Wars?  Do you want serious, intensive help on your original manuscript, or are you looking for people who can write songs to complement your space opera concepts?  Do you just want a few tips or tricks to get you started?

If you’ve never been to a Con and want to dabble your toes first, I’d suggest picking something that covers a broader range of topics rather than a very specific sub-set—many genre fiction Cons will have a panel or two on writing fiction, or sometimes a whole track, aka many panels, dedicated to the craft of writing this stuff.  It could be screenplay/script writing, it could be filk music writing, it could be short story or novelette or novel writing, it doesn’t matter; most will have some sort of discussion related to storytelling, and that’s where you want to look to get instruction, information, education, opinion, so on and so forth.

If you have problems with large crowds, I’d suggest avoiding Worldcon or one of the big regional conventions like Westercon, Eastercon, Norwescon, so on and so forth.  Instead, pick something smaller and most likely local or close to local, such as—if you’re in the Pacific Northwest like me—VCon, Orycon or Rustycon.  You can always work your way up to Worldcon later.  Now, things like VCon and Orycon are not exactly small—we’re talking several hundred people—but I find the middle-sized conventions are actually quite good for an introduction to Cons.  They have a good variety of activities, panels, vendors/dealers, subjects, and so forth, without being overwhelming.

Huge conventions are, well, overwhelming.  And feet-sore-ing.  (I know, because I just got back from Renovation, aka Worldcon 69, and my feet are still sore from all the walking I did.  I didn’t get to see every panel I wanted to see, and I certainly didn’t get to chat with every single one of the 3,000+ people who were in attendance.)  Oh, for those of you who have problems with large crowds, Worldcon is actually easier to endure than you’d think, because usually these conventions are spread out over large convention centers, so it doesn’t usually look like there are 3000+ people in attendance…as opposed to something like Norwescon, which has 2000-3000 people crammed into a single (if large) hotel.

Small conventions, where they have maaaybe 50-150 people, are very small.  There will only be a few panels and some keynote speaker speeches, so you won’t have as many things to choose from, nor will you learn quite as much…but the sheer smallness of the size will allow you a chance to speak with a lot of the attendees, and get to know your fellow fans, readers, writers, whatever.  You can make connections, make friends, and make an impact this way.  Which brings me to…

How the heck should I behave at a convention? (If I do actually go to one; I’m still deciding whether or not I should actually bother.)

Your reputation is worth its weight in gold, so treat it with that much value and respect.  I cannot stress this enough.

If you act rude, condescending, superior, grumpy, mean, insulting, overbearing, self-centered, or even just over the top silly, absurd, or if you try to pull pranks, etc, people will remember it.  Usually in a negative light.  So try to be polite, respectful, listen as much or more as you speak, and be willing to accept that some people will just hold different viewpoints than your own.

When I do disagree with someone, either I’ll just keep my opinion to myself, or use some variant on this lovely phrase,  “Well, personally I’d disagree, but I can understand where you’re coming from,” and/or “I can respect your point of view,” instead of calling them an idiot to the Nth degree.  The point of conventions, after all, is to celebrate our similar interests.  Not to get into horrid verbal catfights over nitpicky little points, which would only make those involved in the fight look like an overbearing rude idiot.

Besides…the other person may actually *gasp* be right about something.  There have been times where people, including myself, have gone away from a discussion disagreeing about something, but then have given it a few days’ thought and decided the other person actually had a good point.  Later, we may have incorporated some of these changed world-views into our writing, making it stronger and better.  (Remember, it’s not just our characters on the page who need to do a little growing to make our stories better; we the writers need to stretch our boundaries and horizons from time to time, too.)

So, the important thing to remember throughout all of this is that you want to be a well-educated, well-rounded person so that the stories you tell are made even better because of your wealth of experiences and exposures to new ideas and differeing opinions.  These things you will find most conveniently located at conventions.  It’s like the one-stop-shopping store for writers, readers, genres, editors, tricks of the trade and general fandom for whatever-it-is the Con is about.

But, since fen all talk to each other—because so many of these people go to several conventions each year—you’ll want to keep in mind that the way you behave at the outset will encourage, or discourage, everyone else when it comes to helping you further your abilities, your connections, and your career.

Conventions, you see, are very important for networking.  The single most powerful form of advertising is a magical process we like to call Word Of Mouth Advertising.  That means someone likes your work so much (or heaven forbid, dislikes it so much) that they use their own mouth to spread the word of their own opinion to everyone they can get to stop and listen.

It’s one thing for a public relations maven or an ad executive to come up with a catchy slogan and then paste it all over billboards and such, but it’s another thing entirely when someone you know—and presumably trust—gives you their opinion on a particular writer’s works, based upon their own experience in reading the stories, or interacting with the author.  We tend to trust the people who have actually experienced whichever version it is over the slick ads posted everywhere.

So make sure you’re polite, kind, attentive about listening as well as speaking, open-minded, and in general fun to be around.

(Oh, and bathe/wear clean clothes.  Yes, I’m actually addressing this problem, because it has been a problem at certain times with certain people at certain conventions.  “Con funk,” also known as ”gamer funk,” contains odors you do not wish to inflict upon the masses.  Fandom and fens have actually created songs covering this malodorous malaise, poking fun at it, decrying it, and in general warning everyone not to be that person at a convention.  You don’t have to don a fancy costume if you don’t want to, but you should at least be mindful that you may one day be stuck in an elevator with a prospective editor, agent, publisher, or even a fandom reader whose Word Of Mouth advertising powers are well-known and well-respected throughout the genre fiction Con communities.)

Okay, okay, so you may have a point about going to conventions.  Why shouldn’t I just stay home, save money, and just write?  I mean, we have the internet if we want to chat with people, right?

The internet has a drawback, and it’s the same drawback as phonecalls, snail-mail letters, emails, texting, tweeting, and whatever.  You can only interact with a few people at a time.  Well, okay, tweeting you can skim a whole bunch of conversations at once…but you still have to go find it, and you may have to do a lot of searching in disparate corners of cyberspace to find most of what you want or need.  Conventions conveniently gather it into one place.  PLUS, they have the bonus of getting you away from your computer.

Yes, insert a *gaspofhorror* here, if you so desire, but I’m serious.  Getting away from the computer is a good thing.  Going to a convention focuses your attention on the learning/exploring/discussing.  You can find articles on writing online, yes, but your attention will be diverted by the cat demanding pettings, by the laundry needing to be folded, by the fact that it’s 10pm at night and you forgot to take out the garbage earlier in the day.  Going to a convention sets aside all these mundane distractions, allowing you to focus on the things which will improve your craft as a writer.

Not to mention, your cat, your laundry, and your garbage are all terrible at encouraging your efforts as a writer.  Or your dog, your vacuum, your boss…the list goes on and on.

You need fresh perspectives and fresh ideas, new tricks and new tips, to infuse new, fresh energy into your work…well, once you recover from the traveling, the staying up until the late hours of the night chatting, and all that walking.  (Oy, all that walking…)

Still, you’ll come away with new ideas, new or renewed enthusiasm, and the reassurance that you’re not alone in liking Whatever It Is You’re Writing About.  Because for every story you want to tell, somewhere out there is another person who wants to hear it, or read it, or see it, and the easiest place to find that person is at an organized gathering of like-minded fans.

Alright, you’ve convinced me.  I’m ready to pack some clean clothes, my laptop/notepad, and go.  Um…go where?  How do I find these genre conventions?

Luckily for you, there are many ways to find conventions.  You can use search engines like Google to type in the word “convention” and the genre you want, such as “Urban Fantasy Convention” and then refine your search from there.  Add in the name of your state, province, or country if you want to refine it further.  Or even the month and the year.  You can haunt your local gaming supply shop, hobby shop, comic bookstore, regular bookstore, independent bookstore, and ask the staff and/or the regulars.  You can search for book clubs at your local store and ask them.

You can even search for societies and associations, such as RWA, Romance Writers of America, or WSFS, World Science Fiction Society.  Some of these are very large organizations, but they will often have smaller, more local affiliations.

This localization can be advantageous: the more local you can get, the more likely it is you’ll get off your butt and go.  Even with gasoline prices being the way they are, it’s easy to drive to a local convention, and cheaper than buying a plane ticket and paying for a hotel room in some far-flung location.  Being near Seattle as I am, Emerald City Writers’ Conference is part of the Greater Seattle Chapter of the RWA, so that’s a convention that I, as a romance writer, would want to attend.  (Note to self: Registration’s now open, so get registered, pronto!)

Your best bet is to combine all of these search methods.  Contact people on the association or society or convention committees and ask them if they know of further resources that can be plumbed for contacts and information, and make sure you flush out every possible lead—flush as in to hunt, not just flush as in to grab and use the plumber’s helper.  Reach for the stars like a good little astrophysicist, or if not an astrophysicist, then just reach for those stars like a writer who wants their writing to travel far, far beyond the confines of their notepad or computer.

The advice gained, the tricks of the trade learned, the friendships created, the memories made, and the renewal of enthusiasm for what you love to do—write great stories—will be worth it.

Oh, Look, It’s a Card Trick!

Wanna write a book?  Pick a genre, any genre!   Money, money, money!  Steampunk is hot, shapechangers are not, 3 in 1000 gets you a contract!  Lucky lucky writers turned into authors, alacazam, right before your very eyes!  Step right up to instant literary fame and fortune! 

…

Oh, how I wish it were that easy…  I’d be right there among the carnival barkers, donning a spangly vest and jacket, gesturing with a spiffy-looking cane, shilling my skills out for all the money people could possibly toss my way.  Alas, selling a story, any story, isn’t the least bit like that.

Far too many writers think,  “Well, hey, vampires are hot right now.  I’ll just write a vampire story and I’ll be an instant, famous bestseller!”  Or they think,  “Mutant furry caterpillars are hot; I’ll write my own twist on mutant furry caterpillars and make a million bucks, just like author Ima Butterfly did!”  Or whatever the current flavor of the year may be.

Much like a carnival fairway booth, the prizes look tempting, but winning them is a lot harder than you’d think.  Those milk bottles are filled with lead to make them difficult to knock down.  The rubber duckies are constantly on the move in that pond of water, and the rings have only a centimeter of clearance to fit around their heads and beaks.  Yeah, your odds of winning are definitely going to be closer to 3 in 1,000 than most people like to think.

The trick is, in writing a good story, to pick a genre that you actually know, like, enjoy, and respect.

What the heck is a Genre?

I’m so glad you asked.  First off, it’s pronounced “John-ruh” or “Zhohn-ruh” and not “Jean-reh” or “Jean-er” since the word was originally French.  (English has a delightful way of sidling up to other, unsuspecting languages, koshing them on the head with a sock full of prepositions, dragging them into back alleys, and rifling through their pockets for loose literary change before they can wake up again.  Everyone needs a hobby, right?)

So what does that funky word mean?  “Artistic Category.”  Yep, that’s pretty much it.  It can be applied to music, drama, paintings, scuplture…but I’m here to talk about fiction novels.  So.  In regards to fiction writing, it refers to Storytelling Categories.

Naturally, I’m sure you’ve all seen bookstores divided up into sections with labels such as Horror, Western, Romance (one of the biggest fiction sections of all, since it accounts for 30% of all booksales in the U.S. every month), or Science Fiction & Fantasy, often with the two sharing a segment.

…A brief digression:  Science Fiction & Fantasy may seem like two very different categories, but they were both originally considered to be speculative fiction, as in speculating about things that couldn’t possibly happen in the modern world in our current era.  Science Fiction tends to get sub-categorized out of speculative fiction as “things which aren’t possible now, but which might be possible at some point in our future, therefore we’re going to speculate on all the possibilities”…whereas Fantasy gets sub-categorized as “things which aren’t even remotely possible under our own universe’s current rules of physics and other laws, but which might be possible in some alternate universe, and are just plain cool to speculate about even if they’re not even remotely achievable.”  Anyhoo…

So, Genres in the writing world are categories of storytelling creativity.  Easy enough to grasp, yes?  Well, sorta.

Even within this general framework of categories, with the most common being things like Mystery, Horror, SciFi, Fantasy, Romance, Western, Historical and so forth, you will find further sub-categories.  Alternate History, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Military Science Fiction, Exploration Science Fiction (also sometimes known as Planetary Romance, despite having little to do with the genre of Romance itself), Historical Romance, Steampunk, Fantasy-Horror…and many more.  As you can see, there are plenty of crossovers.

A Steampunk adventure with heavy elements of romance as part of the story could be categorized under several genre labels (a.k.a. marketed) as Romance, Science Fiction, Alternate History, Paranormal, Fantasy…  You can see how quickly this mess will degenerate into chaos in trying to figure out where the story should be aimed for marketing purposes.  After all, the best way to sell the book is to aim it at a readership that will love and buy it, right?

So how do I pick a Genre for the story I want to write when trying to market the idea?

You don’t.  No, really, you don’t.  That would be like trying to drive your car backwards down the freeway.  In theory, on paper, in simulations, you’d think it might work…but in practice, it’s hazardous at best and just might crash your career before it even begins.

But…!

Nope.  And this is the reason why:  There are too many sub-category traps for you to fall into, if you start with the marketing angle first.

If you think you’re going to write a Paranormal Western and you start talking about Cowboys & Werewolves…but it starts veering off-course with increasingly important romantic elements…is it a Western, is it a Paranormal, or is it a Romance?

Stories will veer in the course of writing them.  Around half the time that hapens, these side-track veerings make the story better…but it can also utterly ruin the genre you thought you were aiming for.  So don’t start out labeling it for a specific niche market.  Just throw in the plot elements and go.  Try to steer just enough to keep the story on plot, and that’ll help take care of the genre question for you.

Okay, so what do I do about this Genre labeling thing, and when do I do it?

Just plot out and write out the story.  If you do need a guiding genre, pick one as a guideline, and use that like bumpers in the bowling lane to keep your story trundling in the right direction.  Don’t worry if you don’t hit a strike on your first draft; you can fix that 7-10 split later.  And if it jumps lanes and hits the pins in the neighboring sub-genre lane…you can fix that as well.  Or even work with it.

But for now, just plot and write.

Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes regarding what an author should write:  Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens) once said to a young Jack London,  “Write what you know.”  This, of course, sent Jack London careening off to the wilds of Alaska, where he wrote White Fang and other outstanding books on wolves, wilderness, and wild times on the wild frontier.

Luckily, these days you don’t actually have to pack up and head to Alaska, if you don’t want to move there, yet still want to write about it.  You can access documentaries, books, videos, blogs, journals, pictures, and more.  You could even find someone living in the area you want and email them questions in the hopes they’ll answer in enthusiastic detail, to give you and your writing a flavor of what it’s like to live all the way up near the roof of the world.

Well, maybe I don’t want to write about Alaska—nice place though it surely is.  Maybe I want to write about Cowboys and Werewolves in Montana.

That’s fine…but I do have to ask you this:  Are you at least familiar with both the Western and the Horror or Urban Fantasy genres?

…Yes?  No?

There are certain tropes (translation: recurring idea or plot genres) associated with each category.  If you’re going to write a story involving each of these, know what those tropes are.

Cowboys usually have a trusty steed, a weapon slung at their side, spend much of their time wandering the wilderness, and sometimes even have *gaspzomg* cattle or sheep or six-legged domesticated alien critters to herd.  They may have a strong, tough beloved waiting for them back home, or a beset temporary employer whose space-ranch is being plagued by a clutch of rustlers or unscrupulous land barons/alien invaders/pissed-off natives, and thus need rescuing or at least cover fire while retreating to less hostile territory.  And they’re sometimes forced to act as impromptu agents of the law because they’re on the edges of civilization, the sherriff’s just been shot, and there’s no one else around to pick up the slack and be the next hero.

Werewolves usually run around shapeshifting between human form and wolf form, sometimes only to about 50% physical conversion rate or so, sometimes all the way to 100% wolf (or 100% human, if your werewolves are unique enough to start out as wolves and then turn non-furry).  They’re often contagious, spreading lycanthropy at a bite, or more rarely an infected claw-swipe.  They can be heroes, villains, anti-heroes, love-interests (they have that much in common with cowboys), so on and so forth.

Now, you can break those tropes, making changes small or great—the latter would also be known as our space cowboy herding six-legged edible critters on some far-flung planet with 3 moons, instead of cattle here on Earth—but there will still be certain things that make the hero or heroine a cowboy archetype.

Can I learn all these things from that T.V. Tropes website?

That place is a black hole vortex of fascinating, time-sucking information.  If you go there, you will find three hours have flown past when you originally intended to spend only thirty minutes at most.  You can learn what you need to know that way…but I strongly suggest *gaspzomg again* reading stories set in the genres you want to write.

Yes, I had to emphasize that.  It’s that important.  Read lots of stories in the genre you intend to write.

At some point, you’ll want to break away and write your own Western-Horror stories, or whatever sub-genre something-or-other category, but you do truly want to “Write what you know” when it comes to genre writing.

Why bother reading in a specific genre category before writing in it?

Because it’ll help steer your story down the right path.  It may be your own unique twist on the matter, like jumping ski lanes while going down the mountain, but you really want to make sure your story is gliding down the correct side of the mountain throughout the story.  If you’ve written your plot so that it’s busy skiing down the western slopes, your reader is going to blink and go “…bwuh??” if suddenly they find you skiing down the southeast side of things, with no indication of how you got there.

If you promise your readers a trip down the western slopes, you’d better give them a trip down the western slopes, or have a very good, strong, carefully-plotted series of events that end up swerving your story toward the southwest, south, and finally southeast.  Or even detouring around the north side of the mountain.  Or taking an icy, winding tunnel through the heart of it.  Either way, show the reader how you’re getting the story from plot point A to plot point Z.  Oherwise, they’re going to be mad at you for abandoning them at the bottom of the snowline, in the middle of nowhere, with no tracks to follow back and a miles-long hike to return to the parking lot where they left their car.

So which genre do you recommend I start writing in?

Whichever one floats your boat, honey.  Seriously.  Write in the categories you personally love.

If you like a particular genre or genres, if you get utterly enthusiastic when it comes to both steampunk/mad science and murder mysteries…then by all means, try writing a story about a mad scientist serial killer flying around the world on his technologically laden airship, and the plucky, leather-bodiced cowgirl adventuress tracking down the varmint with the assistance of her lycanthropic lover, as she tries to solve and stop his gizmo-assisted, six-legged-critter murdering sprees.

If you don’t like any of that, then don’t write about it.  Pick something you do love, because your attitude toward the category in question, and your familiarity with the genre tropes, well…it will show.

It will show in your writing, and that will make or break your story, even more than the genre marketing choices.

Okay, alright; I’ll go write my favorite story.  But if it does turn out to be a Western/Horror/Romance…how do I market that to agents and publishers?

For those who already have an agent, give them a synopsis and let them decide.  These people read a craptonne of stories every week, so they’re pretty darned experienced at sorting out what elements are strongest.

However, if you don’t have an agent, or if you’re utterly nitpicky and you want to pitch it right the first time, I recommend this method:  Get together several friends who also know those genres, let them read the manuscript, and have them rate it on, say, a scale of 1 to 10 as to which of the categories in question feel like they’re the strongest elements in the story (10 being the absolute strongest, so on and so forth).

Have them do that for the beginning of the story, at three or four points during the rising action, at the climax, and even for the conclusion of your tale.  Once you’ve analyzed those comparisons, you’ll probably be able to say confidently to some editor or agent,  “My readers feel it’s mostly a Steampunk Adventure story with strong paranormal and murder mystery overtones.”  Or you could end up saying,  “It’s definitely a Western Paranormal Romance novel with some really cool steampunk elements.”

Or you could just find yourself throwing up your hands and going, “It has steampunk gadgets, cowboys, mad scientists, and werewolves in it, with a plucky female protagonist. I have no clue how to categorize it, but I feel it’s an absolutely fantastic story.  If you think it’s great, too, maybe we could market it in a couple of categories, and try to appeal to several different sides?  Genre crossover novels are rather hot, this year…”

Or it could turn out to be you’ve written a straightforward Western with no werewolves, gadgets, or six-legged critters nibbilng their way through the magenta shrubbery of Proxima Centauri III whatsoever, in which case, voila!  Picking the right genre for your story is as easy as shrugging into your calf-length leather duster on your way to hit the trail, ‘cause you gotta get them cattle to Carson City before the end of the month rolls around.

…Whatever you decide to write, pick the genre you enjoy reading, the one you understand well.  That way, when you sit down to write, you can easily tweak it into your own unique tale.

Ohhh, yes, I’m going there; in fact, I live there.

If you want to become a writer because you believe you’ll be an instant overnight success and rake in craptonnes of cash…sorry, it ain’t gonna happen.  Wake up and smell the reality, please:  Of the hundreds of thousands of published authors out there, less than 100 are making Stephen King / JK Rowling / Stephanie Meyer sized incomes.

Let me put it to you even more clearly:  King, Rowling, and Meyer are not only the exceptions to the rule of how little authors actually make, they are the freaking 60-feet-tall, Cthulhu-tentacled, frikkin’-laser-beam-eyed mutant cockroach exceptions to how little authors actually make.

Let me repeat that:  How little authors actually make.

Don’t write for money.  Write for love.  That way you’re guaranteed a “paycheck” each day.

For most of us, we write stories because we love writing stories.  We love the fiddly bits of world building, we love coming up with characters who are flawed yet fantastic, and we sadomasochistically love tormenting our characters with horrible situations they have to get out of, and torment ourselves with the risk of negative feedback whenever we let someone else read our prose.  We write because we love it, and that is the biggest reward the vast majority of us get.  (The second biggest reward being positive feedback, of course.)

Sad fact:  The vast majority of published authors are one- to three-shot wonders.  1-3 books published, and then…nada.  They may have dozens of stories in mind for more books, but if the first book does not sell well, the publishers won’t buy the next manuscript.

I’m not saying this to discourage…even if it is discouraging to hear.  I’m saying this so that you can set your expectations to a reasonable level, to save you pain.  Set them too high and you will fall flat on your face, break your nose, and bleed.  A lot of people who go in expecting to get paid big bucks end up hating the system because the bucks are downright miniscule instead.

So don’t do it expecting huge royalty cheques.  If it happens, that’s great!  I’ll hoist a drink in your direction.  If it doesn’t…you won’t be hurt by 14th floor expectations shattering all over the pavement way down on the ground because they only ever climbed to the 2nd floor.

Translation:  Don’t quit your day job.

By this, I mean if you’ve published your first book (by the way, congratulations if you did get published, yay!!), don’t quit your day job.  Have other means of support.  Continue with that alternate means of support until you can guarantee about twice your current income.  Yes, twice as much…and by guarantee, I mean this:

Advance cheques are guaranteed* income, but royalties are not.  (*Caveat: If you fail to produce a publishable book, you have to pay back the advance cheque money.)  An advance cheque is a loan based on anticipated booksales, and that money is taken OUT of your royalties after the books are available for sale, so you don’t see any royalties until the book sells more copies than your advance cheque was worth.  However, if the book flops, but was published, you do not have to pay back the moneys you received from the publisher…unless you have a lousy contract.  (Always read your contract fine-print!)

But regardless, you want to make sure you can guarantee a solid income via writing before you make it your sole method of support.

For example:  My sole method of support is writing books.  I don’t have a day job to fall back on…and this is a very scary place to be, financially.  If I can make in advance cheques (not royalties, but the money you get when you sign the contract) at least $40,000 a year, I can keep my roof over my head.

I am one of the lucky ones in that I have over a dozen books under contract…but I kinda fell down on the job and didn’t produce as many books this last year as I should have.  Between that and the recession catching up with me, I’m scrambling to make mortgage payments for next year.  Royalty cheques are not reliable sources of income.  You may be writing books about dragons, and dragons may be very popular one year, but the next year they could flop in the public’s interest, and when they flop, so does your royalty income stream.

How income as an author works.

…Okay, I have to explain this one.  Making your living off of writing is not like most jobs.  Most jobs you get a paycheque every 2 weeks.  I get paid whenever I land a contract, which can take months—yes, months—to acquire.  If you’re one of the lucky authors like me who has several books out, and most are selling very steadily, then you also get royalty cheques, which are usually distributed twice a year.  This means you have to plan a year’s worth of income in advance, if not more.  Again, don’t quit your dayjob until you know you’re solidly planted in the market.

Caveat reminder from above:  Remember, the advance cheques are subtracted first from royalty income from booksales.  So if your advance cheque was $5,000…yes, it can be that “low” depending on the genre…or even that “high” again depending on the genre…you get that much for signing the contract.  Then say you make $6,050 in booksales.  They make you wait six months plus the next pay period, then you get a cheque for $1,050.  Yes, this can take anywhere from seven months to eleven months to see any money…and I’ll point out that from the point of signing the contract and getting paid, it can take nine months to two years before that book gets published, as in on the bookstore shelves, and from there you may have to wait up to another year before seeing any royalty income.  If any.

Oh, and that $6,050 total?  You have to pay taxes on it.

New caveat:  The publisher does not withhold your taxes for you.

Ohhh, yeah.  You have to physically set aside enough money for paying taxes.  (I strongly recommend getting an extra savings account specifically for this, so you won’t be tempted to spend it.)  Depending upon your income bracket, this can vary, but the rule of thumb is assume you need to set aside one quarter to one third.  Yes, 25% to 33%.

Set it aside, and do not touch it.  Go contact an accountant, and have them help you figure out how to claim business expenses, etc., and when you have to pay taxes.  You may only have to pay once a year (again, get a separate account so you won’t spend that tax money on anything else, since a year is a long time to not touch it).  Or you may end up like me, having to pay taxes quarterly.

Just like my post on prioritizing time and interests in order to have the time to write (Day job > Writing > Television, for example), you should also prioritize your budget.  Mine looks like this:

Taxes > Writing Implements (in my case, my computer) > Everything Else.

Yes, the everthing else includes mortgage, electricity and other utilities, internet, food, clothing, gasoline, car repairs, all of it.  If nothing else, I could lug my laptop to a library, borrow their electricity/internet, but first comes taxes, then comes computer repairs (I recently had to replace my monitor, ugh), and so on and so forth.

So when I plan out my income, I have to make sure I’m looking a year and a half into the future, if not farther, and plan accordingly.  You think living paycheque to paycheque is bad?  That’s every two weeks.  Try living paycheque to paycheque every six months.  That takes a lot of fiscal planning, responsibility, and restraint.  So don’t quit your day job until you can guarantee twice what you’re currently making…and even then, be careful.  Have contingency plans in place.

So how much do authors make per book/story?

This is a complex one.  You’re given that royalty percentage based on several factors, including whether or not you’re writing short stories or novels, or a mix of these, and whether or not the format is hardcover, paperback, ebook, or whatever.

Jay Lake is a famous short story author, as famous for the fact that he can make a living writing short stories (which is a real feat in and of itself) as for the fact he has written so many good ones.  Short stories usually garner a flat fee, and only some of those contracts offer a miniscule chance at a royalty cheque—remember if it’s a multi-author anthology, your royalties are usually divided by the number of authors involved, minus a percentage chunk for the publisher, etc, etc.

I haven’t written nearly as many short stories as Jay has, but I have sold a few.  In my experience, the average payment ranges from $200-$250 for something that can be 2,000-8,000 words long.  For four-author anthologies (popular in the romance industry), that pay goes up by one zero, to $2,000-$2,500, with a shot at one quarter of the usual royalty percentages for a full-length novel.  If you get lucky and are lumped in with a big-name author, there might actually be royalties coming your way…but don’t expect those to have an extra zero as well.

Genre also matters.

I put that on its own, because it does matter.  Science Fiction and Fantasy books will garner much lower incomes than Romance books.  (Most people don’t realize that about 30% of all booksales in the U.S. are Romance books, and that it is a billion dollar industry each year.)  Industry averages for SF-Fantasy starting advances range from $2,000-$5,000 for the larger publishing houses.  For romance, it is $5,000-$8,000.

This is not to say you should immediately run out and write a romance novel even if your normal purview for storytelling is all about battles with space pirates and aliens.  Remember, publishers want stories that will sell.  That means the writing has to be good, the story has to be good, and if you’re really good at writing space pirates battling against aliens…don’t just throw some smut scenes in there and attempt to call it a romance.  It won’t work, and your book will not sell.

Write what you are good at writing.  Find the right publishing market for it.  You’ll have a far, far greater chance at getting noticed and published—and get that $2,000 paycheque, low as that might be—than if you tried shooting your laser cannon instead of a cupid’s arrow, and totally crisped the heroine from head to heels instead of much more gently making her fall in love.  Write a crappy Romance story, and you won’t even get a “crappy” Science Fiction paycheque.  Write a good Science Fiction story, and you may get the contract, get paid, and get a shot at another contract.

How royalty percentages work…sort of.

Hoo, boy.  This one involves a lot of numbers, and it involves a lot of different formats.  I’ll gloss over the exact figures and just give you estimates, because it really will vary from contract to contract, publisher to publisher, book format to book format, but here are some general figures which will give you a ballpark figure.  Exact mileage may vary, consult with your doctor before attempting any strenous exercise.

Hardcovers:  Authors earn a couple bucks on a $25 hardcover.

Trade Paperbacks (the larger size ones):  Authors earn just over $1 for a $14 book

Mass Market Paperbacks (the normal sized ones):  Authors earn under $1 for an $8 book.

Ebooks:  This will vary greatly by contract, particularly the older ones though most of the major publishing houses are now offering around 25% or so of the sales price, so it can range from half a buck to a couple books per book—they still go through all the editing and advertising and formatting of the books, and setting up distribution servers, but the costs of printing and shipping have been greatly reduced.

…The easiest way to figure all of this is to say it’s roughly $1 per book…and at that, I’m probably being generous.

Why the *bleep!* do we get so little in royalties when the books are going for $8 or more??

Yeah, it’s a potential sore spot for a lot of people.  As much as I’d love to get more per book myself, I’m actually going to stand up for the publishers on this one.  You’re writing the book.  You make it all possible, yes.  Without you, there wouldn’t even be a book.  Yes, we get that.  But…

Publishers (the good ones) do all the hard work, the legwork, the behind-the-scenes work.  They polish the book with editing, offering suggestions to make it more audience-friendly, to clarify points of plot confusion, so on and so forth.  This can involve up to 3-4 people, if not more.  Then they have to find cover art and pay the artist (small publishing houses can work with authors using stock photos and stuff, but then they have less cushion to work from, so the money they’re “saving” is being kept in reserve for a cushion against a string of bad booksales).

After that, they have to advertise in wholesaler and jobber catalogues to get book retailers interested in stocking copies of your book for sale.  They have to arrange with a printer for printing jobs, which requires yet more rounds of editing, formatting, so on and so forth.  They may even want to run a very small printing (and thus very expensive, because costs go down when numbers bulk up) of Advance Reviewer’s Copies, which they can then distribute to various people for hopefully favorable advance reviewing.  And once the books are printed, they have to ship them (remember how the postage rates keep climbing?) to various locations around the nation, and around the world, to meet their buyer’s purchase orders.

And then, then they have to hang on to some of the pre-sale income in case your books don’t sell so well, because the unsold copies often come back after a few months on the shelves, and the booksellers have to be repaid the money they spent on those unsold books.  So you may have had 8,000 books shipped out, and that means you “sold” $8,000 worth of books… but you don’t get $8,000 if 1,950 of them come back.  You only actually made $6,050 in book sales.

Publishers have to keep accountants on hand to figure out all of this stuff for you, and those accountants have to be paid, too.  So you have a team of a dozen or more people working for you on every book.  (Oh, and they have to pay taxes, too.)  That’s why publishers end up with so much of the royalty percentages.

Remember:  If a publisher demands that you shell out money for any part of this process, RUN AWAY.  Do not get a contract with them; they are scam artists!

So why even bother??

Um, yeah, because we love writing stories?  We love entertaining people?  Because I’d still be coming up with stories even if you locked me up in solitary confinement with no access to a computer?  (Which is why I pay my taxes first and foremost, as I’d really rather not end up in jail for tax evasion, kthxbai.)  Write first and foremost because you love to write.  Not because you’ll get paid.  It’s great if you do get paid, even if it’s only $200 for a short story, or $2,000 for a novel, but write because you love doing it.

That love for storytelling will show in your writing.  So will the “love of getting paid”…and that will turn off your readers.  Believe me, we can tell when an author is just doing it for the money, and doesn’t care about the story.  Not so coincidentally, those are the ones whose sales will slump and their names will disappear beneath the surface of the hundreds of thousands of new books waiting to be read.  Stories which are written by people who may be no-name authors, but who care about writing a good story.

Don’t go into this expecting to make a million bucks.  If you don’t, well, at least you won’t be shattered by disappointment.  If you do…well, people might start drawing Cthulhu tentacles on your promo pictures.  But otherwise we’ll be happy for you!

Writing Is A Solitary Craft…or is it?

This is the conundrum of writing.  Most of us do not collaborate with others.  Those who do, often swap segments back and forth—he writes a scene, she reads it and writes the next scene, he reads that and…  Rare is the writing team that lives and works together, suggesting sentences and words and story ideas while constantly on the same spot.  It’s becoming slightly less rare that a team of writers collaborates through Instant Messaging services, but it’s still rare.  So the vast majority of us write stories all on our lonesome.

…Or do we?  The thing about writing is that it’s storytelling.  Emphasis on the telling:  Our eventual goal is to tell these tales to other people through one medium or another.  The screenwriter/playwright hopes to tell his or her tales through the mediums of movies, stage, and television screens.  The short story author hopes to tell several tales in several books, shouting out to the world like a shotgun of talent, peppering a wide variety of readers in the hopes of hooking in a few.  The novelist hopes to lure you down into the depths of a good, long book, and the serial novelist is hoping to lure several of you down into several depths, muahahaha and all that.

So writing stories, telling stories, is meant to be handled between an author and an audience for absolute sure.

Why write a story if no one else is ever going to read it?

This question haunts many of us.  It is a two-edged sword, with one side scaring us with, No one will ever want to read my writings, so why even bother to write?  and the other edge—if we cross that blade and do write a tale—scarring us with the fear, No one will want to read this, even though I have written it…and so all too often, we don’t share our stories.

Why write a story?  Because, bad or good, we have something we do want to share.  Even if it’s just with ourselves, we want to experience the visions in our heads and hearts.  Lots of things in the writing process can be fixed, spelling and grammar can be corrected, story ideas tweaked, characters strengthened, but the basic idea is the important thing.  With over 6,000,000,000 people in the world, chances are, if this story appeals to you, it’ll appeal to someone else.  Several someones else, in fact!

So go forth and write that story lurking in your head and your heart.  One of my dearest writing friends tells a smashingly good story.  Her spelling, grammar, and punctuation are, erm…yeah…and she knows it, but the story sucks me in every single time.  Sucks me in right past my inner editor, no less, which is high praise.  Technical skills can be learned.  You can learn how to tell a polished story.  But picking the right story, go with what your head and your heart want your ears to hear or your eyes to read.

Share that story with a trusted friend.

This is the scary zomg I have to trust my baby to a stranger waaaaaaah!stage of writing.  That’s why it’s important to pick someone you trust.  Not just someone who’ll squee and tell you it’s the bestest story idea ever, but someone who actively cares about both you and your desire to be a writer.  Ask them to be positive—phrase their comments in more positive ways than negative ones—ask them to ask you questions—did you mean to write this or did you mean to do that—and to make suggestions on how things could be improved.

This is the editing process.  It can happen at the start of the story, when you’re still bouncing around plot ideas like so many plot-basketballs or hopping plot-bunnies. (Mine are much like the Monty Python bunny; they look cute and harmless, but are more like the Ah Waaaaarned Yeww, But Did You Listen?? variety.)  It can happen at any point throughout the writing of the story—and in my opinion should.  You need that feedback to make sure you’re staying on course, that your story isn’t devolving your characters into MarySue Territory or driving your plotlines into Hackneyed Corny Plot Tropes Land.

It definitely should happen by the time you write The End at the end of your story.  Stories are living things, in the sense that they do change and grow as they go along.  They need room to grow, they need to have their horizons expanded, they need challenges to overcome, and they need a full handful of relatives looking after them to make sure they grow up right, and not just their single-parent mom or dad.

So while most of the work will be your own, don’t keep it to yourself.  Share it with a few others.

Posting it online…is/isn’t a good idea.

Okay, gotta explain this one.  First Publication Rights.  If you post it online and anyone can access it, then you’ve used up that particular story’s first publication rights.  This makes it harder to sell to publishers.  It can be done, but if you’re going the route of wanting this particular story to be your big breakthrough story…resist the urge.  Write short stories set in a similar universe with similar characters (or even the same universe with the same characters), stories which you don’t mind everyone looking at, and post those online.

I strongly recommend taking throwaway stories (fun to write but not The Big One) and posting them online in archives with commentary forums.  This is an easy way to get people reading your stories and commenting on your work.  Ignore the sugary, nutritionless squees; avoid obsessing over the outright flames.  Devour the commentary which gives you detailed discussion of what worked and what didn’t work, because both are valuable to you as a writer.

Feedback is a vital part of the writing craft.  You can get only so far by writing strictly on your own, with no comments, no suggestions, no “hey, that worked great; you had me giggling for two minutes straight!” or the lovely one of “Damn you, I just used up three tissues, how dare you do that to my favorite character!”  (Insert authorial bwahahaing here.)  You need that feedback.

Remember, out of 6 billion people in the world, you won’t be the only person wanting to read your story idea.  But since you do owe it to yourself, to the people giving you editing feedback, and to anyone who will eventually read your story idea…you really should listen to that feedback and those editing suggestions, and polish your writing to make it the best possible story you can tell.

Secondary stories, throw-away shorts, can help you flesh out background ideas for your characters and settings, too, so they’re helpful for that reason.

Going to conventions is good for you…no, really.

Writing is an awkward job with an even more awkward pay schedule.  So why add the expense of attending conventions to your already tight budget?  (I’ll discuss How Little Writers Actually Get Paid another time.)  Why do plumbers go to plumbing conventions?  Why do pizza restaurateurs go to pizza conventions/  Why do aerospace scientists go to aerospace industry conventions?  It all boils down to the same reasons:

1.  You get to hear from other professionals in your field.  And by professionals, I mean not only the published authors, but the struggling writers, the various different editors, representatives from the large and small publishing houses, beta-editors, beta-readers, and even the booksellers, from time to time.

2.  You get to hear the latest ideas in both your field and related fields.  You aren’t the only writer out there, which means you aren’t the only storyteller.  Your friends and online fans are great for giving you some feedback, but these are your fellow storytelling soldiers; they’re in the trenches with you.  They’ve stared at the Great Blank Page of Doom, scared they’ll never figure out a way to write down what they want to say.  These people know where you’ve been, and they know various different ways of how to get to where you want to go.  They know the trends, the direction in which a particular sub-genre is leaning.  In 2011, steampunk is hot, vampires are waning, angels and demons are on the rise, and science fiction is taking off once again to new flights of high, speculative fancy.  Next year, who knows what’ll be hot and what’ll be not so hot?  The only way to find out is to go to trade-related conventions.

3. You get refresher courses—panels and workshops—in things you do know, should know, or maybe never knew but need to know.  As in any sport, practice, practice, practice makes you get closer to perfect.  And with any sport, sometimes you need to swap up coaches for a bit, get a new perspective on the things you’re currently doing or are supposed to be doing.  The same thing applies to writing.  Maybe it’s been a while since you studied the ideas of What Makes Villains Poor Versus Great.  Or perhaps you’re stuck on trying to fill in the background details of your story and need a few World Building Tips.  Or maybe you just need a good laugh and want to attend Procrastination Lies: When Writer’s Block Strikes.  Whatever the panel or workshop, it’s a way to refresh your skills and refresh your mind.

4. You’ll go home with renewed energy for your work.  Well…after you recover from convention exhaustion.  Naturally you’ll want to crash and sleep for a bit.  But most conventions will send you home with renewed energy, enthusiasm, twists, turns, and ideas which hopefully can take your writing to new heights.  At a recent convention (Norwescon 34), I actually fixed some lagging plot ideas—I knew how my story ended, but I didn’t know why, and after going through some of the exercises on this one panel, I suddenly knew my characters’ motivations.  It made the story better, and I couldn’t wait to get home and plot it all out.

5.  You’ll meet new people, see familiar faces, make more friends, and gain professional contacts.  You may not always follow through—or they may not—but it’s a rare convention where you don’t walk away with someone else’s business card or email address.  As much as I’m loathe to use the hackneyed, over-used term “network”…you will actually get some networking done at conventions.  These can be readers, writers, editors, amateurs, pros, or even convention personnel.  Each one is a valuable person for you to get to know.

CAVEAT:  Always, always, always treat the people you meet at conventions as valuable people, worth of politeness, respect, consideration, and at least one moment of your time.  Particularly the editors, as there aren’t nearly as many of those as you’d think, and they all talk to each other at these conventions.  But also treat your fans and your fellow writers the same way.  They all talk to each other, too.  Your reputation is worth your weight in gold, so always be professional, courteous, and kind.

Whether it’s a science fiction/fantasy convention, a romance convention, a convention for fans of a particular television series, or whatever… if there’s anything writing-related on the schedule, consider attending it, even if they only cover fanfiction writing.  Check your local conventions first, since those will often be the cheapest.  If you’re not sure, go ahead and check the big name ones, either the conventions themselves or the organizations sponsoring them: WorldCon for Science Fiction (and some Fantasy), DragonCon for Fantasy, RWA for Romance.  These big conventions usually have links to the societies behind them, and often have links to regional and local conventions as well.

Even if you only attend one or two conventions in a year, it’s worth the time, trouble, and expense.

…While writing is a solitary art in most instances, we do not write in a bubble-wrapped vacuum.  Feedback, training, practice methods, editing, all of these things require outsider input.

What if I do actually get to co-write something with someone else?

Congratulations!  You are about to have a very fun, very frustrating experience.  Collaborators usually approach each other because you already know the two of you get along, and you believe you can each bring somethng good to a story idea.  You have an idea that your storytelling skills are a close match.  Sometimes this works out just fine.  Sometimes it doesn’t, and suddenly you’re stuck writing a story with someone whose ideas or methods don’t match your own.

Take a deep breath, remind yourself how much gold is per ounce at the moment, apply it to your bodyweight, drool over the resulting amount of money, and treat them with respect, patience, courtesy, and a willingness to at least give whatever-it-is a try.  Request—also politely—that they consider also giving your version a try, and then compare both results side by side.

Expect the process to take twice as long.  Hopefully it won’t, if both of you are on the ball about contacting each other regularly, and are willing to stick to a deadline and put in the effort to meet it.  Expect moments of hilarity as well as conflict.  Try not to let the wild ideas run amok too much, or roam too far off course for the original story idea.  And expect great things to happen in bursts of mutual inspiration.  They may not come often, but if you remember that writing is a flexible process, triply so when collaborating, you can end up with one heck of a good story idea.

One more thing:  If one of you is the better writer, and it isn’t you…don’t be upset if the other writer offers to do the actual writing.  If you’re bringing great story ideas into play, and the other person is writing them out in the best possible way, than that makes a great story even better.  Be proud of what you can create together.  If you’re the better writer, make the suggestion that you compose the prose, but be enthusiastic in considering and including your co-writer’s ideas.

…This applies to solitary writing as well.  Your beta-editors and beta-readers may give you some sound writing advice along the way, or come up with some good twists for your ideas to consider.

Writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  You may end up doing most of the work yourself, from the initial story concept all the way through to typing ‘The End’ when you’ve brought your tale to its conclusion, but you aren’t ever completely alone.  At least some of us 6,000,000,000 people want to hear your idea.  Go forth, write it down, get our feedback, polish it up, and we’ll love you for giving us a better story—a great story—to enjoy.

A lot of writers have trouble finding enough time in the day to write—or even the night. This is a very common, widespread problem, and it is one of the biggest roadblocks to being a writer. Thankfully, it is also one of the easiest problems to overcome. No, seriously. It’s not nearly as difficult as you’d think.

Make the time.

Yep, it’s that simple. What people forget is that we fill our days with various things. Obviously, some of them are going to be major priorities: Going to work; sleeping; eating; remembering basic hygiene needs such as bathing, brushing teeth, doing laundry and other household chores, and tending to a loved one such as an elderly parent or a young child. But there are other things we do, things we fill our days with, which can be set aside.

There are plenty of things we do lower on that list which seem important, but which on reflection aren’t nearly as important as you’d think. Your writing is more important than most of the things you do to fill your hours. Make a list of all the things which are vitally important: going to work, paying the bills, taking care of the needs of yourself, your house, and your family (that covers eating, bathing, sleeping, caring for the needs of a pet, et cetera). After that, prioritize, and remember: Whatever’s lower on the list can be dropped from the list.

If you can’t think of anything, I have put together for your consideration the two biggest time-fillers out there.  These are things which I decided to put below my writing in the chain of activities which filled my life before getting published, but these are also the two things which have filled up the spare hours of my various writer friends as well.

Do you watch a lot of television? This is the single biggest time-filler. My family never believed in having cable television, so we only had the basic channels. When Joss Whedon’s Firefly series was cancelled, there was only one other show on the air at the time which I thought was even remotely interesting (Enterprise), but I was so disgusted with the antics of network executives constantly cancelling creative, imaginative shows…I gave up television.

Yes, it was a bit extreme for a reaction, but it ended up freeing more than just the hour I spent watching that particular show, or the hour for the other one. There was more flexibility to my schedule. I no longer sat in front of the television “surfing for anything good” for hours on end. I could devote those hours to doing something which I knew no exec could ruin or take away or replace with some lame reality show, and that was my writing. Having that free time to pour into my writing led to my posting more stories online, which led to my writing improving through feedback, which led to my being noticed by an editor at a major publishing house. I didn’t have to interrupt my writing to go get settled in front of the television and wait for my shows to come on.

Now, I’m not suggesting you go forth, turn off the t.v. set, and ignore it completely. But be honest with yourself: Do you really, really need to watch all those shows? Turn it off, turn on your computer or pick up pen and paper, and do whatever it takes to write. Create your own entertainment. The best part of this method? You’re guaranteed to end up with something you find entertaining.

Addicted to Farmville or other similar games? Cut back on them. Seriously, it takes up far more time than you’d think. Take a timer with a stopwatch-forward function, and set it. Time how long it takes you to play that online game. It’s relaxing, it’s addictive, it’s fun…but be honest with yourself. You’re filling your hours with this stuff, when you could be filling your hours with writing instead.

If you truly want to write, you need to empty out some of your filled-up hours. However fun these games may be—and I don’t deny they’re fun; I play World of Warcrack…er, Warcraft, myself—they’re not as important as bathing, eating, sleeping, going to work, or changing the baby’s nappy, should you have one in your care. Instead, save these games for a treat. Promise yourself, “I’ll check on my farms after I have written 2,000 words, today.” Or, “I’ll only go on that raid at the end of this week after I’ve finished plotting out the rest of my novel.”

If what’s stopping you is the lack of a good idea, or a system for figuring out how to plot out your story idea…check my previous posts to get yourself started.

…Now that you’ve considered the two biggest time-fillers out there, examine the other things in your life which fill your hours. Weigh out just how important they are compared to your need to write.  There are other choices as well. Some fall into that ambiguous grey area of importance.

Are you a soccer dad/mom, constantly shuttling your kids to games? Are they and you being exhausted by too many after-school activities? Talk with your kids and see what they want to do. If they honestly want to stop, consider stopping that activity—their physical exercise shouldn’t be neglected, by any means, but consider finding them something else to do around the home. If your kids honestly enjoy such activities, consider investing in a small laptop with good backup batteries, and squeeze in some writing time while they’re at practices.

Or as an alternative, find local parents whose kids also do these things, and see if you can arrange to swap carpooling duties. When I was a kid, I did figure skating after school. My parents hooked up with the parents of another girl going to my junior high school who was doing the same thing at the same hour. One week, she would walk home with me, and my parents would do the driving. The next, I’d take the bus home with her and her parents would do the driving. This actually turned into a great, long-lasting friendship that’s still alive today.

Of course, don’t expect your kids to make lifelong friends with a similar setup; we cannot control those kinds of outcomes.  It may take a couple of tries to find a situation and a solution that works, but there are ways.

Is your family constantly interrupting you?  This one is a big one, and some days it seems insurmountable—by the way, all of this applies to roommates as well as family situations; I’m just using family as the most convenient label.

I had this problem, living with my folks.  The worst was when they’d schedule all manner of things during a Deadline Month, when they knew it was coming.  A Deadline Month is when my concentration needs to be at its most focused.  I need to get my book done at this time, and I’m usually running behind because of interruptions.

There are three main ways to get around this one.  I’m also sure other solutions might come to your mind if you think about it for a bit.

A) Escape to a different location, aka the “Coffee Shop” solution.  It doesn’t have to be a coffee shop, since that comes with its own host of distractions.  Consider escaping to your local public library.  Most of them now provide tables with electrical outlets for laptops, and most provide free wi-fi, though beware the Temptations Of Farmville style time-fillers, if you have wireless internet on your laptop.

B) Stay up after the family is in bed, or to go bed early and get up early.  Personally, as much as I loathe mornings (being a natural night owl), I’d recommend the latter for most people.  Staying up late is fine, but remember, sleep is a higher priority than writing, because good sleep is conducive to good mental alertness—which is vital for good writing—and good physical health, since being physically ill has the same negative impact on your writing.  It can be done, but only if you have the freedom to sleep in a few extra hours.  Most people have to go to work in the morning, or to class, whatever.

Tell your family you need your beauty sleep or whatever, go to bed early, and get up 1-2 hours earlier than usual.  It may take a week or two to get used to the new schedule, but persevere.  Arrange for one solid hour of writing, and do what Twitter folks call #1k1h, which is shorthand for 1,000 words in 1 hour.  Try to write one thousand words in your story in that one hour in the morning before everyone else gets up and starts making demands on your time.  You might not make it every day; you might only write 657 words, or 216 on a bad day, or as high as 988…but you know what?  You’re still X number of words farther along in your writing than you were before.

C) Have The Talk with your family.  I had to do this one myself when I was living with my parents, helping my mother with my father’s health issues.  The Talk is where you lovingly but firmly gather your family, sit them down, and Explain To Them How Important Your Writing Is To You.  Do not accuse, but do explain how frustrated you feel when they constantly pester you for little details during your preciously scheduled Writing Time.  Ask them to give you the courtesy of respecting your Writing Time, and point out that you in turn will do your best to respect their own Important Time activities, whatever those may be.

Keep in mind that this does not work very well on kids under the age of reason & remembrance, which can be anywhere under 5 to 8 years old.  Hopefully you can get the message through to the older members of the family.  You may have to have The Talk several times.  Be patient, be polite, be firm…be persistent.  Set limits, and then hold to them.  Set consequences if you need to, and hold to them as well.  Be respectful, but be firm.

Trade chores with family/household members.  Keeping your home reasonably clean is an important task, because it maintains a health living space—keeping yourself healthy is vital for keeping yourself able to write—because it allows you to move about freely—being able to get up and move around gets the blood pumping and gives you fresh perspective and ideas when writing—and because you won’t be distracted by “zomg I need to do that but I don’t waaaaant to” whinging.

If you trade chores, say every other weekend, yes you may have more work to do when it’s your turn to tidy the home since your partner isn’t helping you that weekend, but you also free up solid blocks of time when it’s the other person’s turn.  If the other person or persons in your household are old enough to do chores reliably well, but you’re the only one doing them…why the heck are you the only one doing them?

It doesn’t matter how long the situation has been going on, have The Talk with them, explain that this is their home, too, and therefore equally their responsibility to help keep it clean.  It may be a bit of a struggle for the first few months, particularly if you’re having to teach your kids how to properly clean and tidy, but remember, you’re in this for the long haul.  They will learn.  Be persistent, be patient, be firm.

…Writing is a lifetime commitment and a lifetime joy, if you make the time for it.  These are only a handful of the things you can do to find the time you need for your writing; hopefully you can figure out where the moments of your own life fall on your own importance scale, when compared to your need to write.

If you love doing it, if you truly love telling stories, then make time for your writing.  Empty out of your life some of the things you don’t need to do, compress the emptied minutes into solid blocks of time, and write.  Write, write, write.

You’ll be glad that you did, when you’re finally doing what you love to do.