pbray

You'd think this would be obvious, but recent evidence suggests not.

First, never assume that your cover letter is going to stay attached to your manuscript. This is especially true for electronic submissions, where your attached file may be downloaded and stored separately from the email. Always include your contact info on page 1 of the submission.

Second, always include page headers with the page number and either your name or the story title, preferably both. I received multiple submissions without page headers of any kind, and it was a freaking pain in the butt when the printer spit pages on the floor and two of those stories got mixed up. Not to mention that later I'll wind up adding page numbers to make it easier to discuss the story with my co-editor, e.g. "The scene that starts on page 4 is..." What makes it even more inexplicable is that these stories were submitted in Microsoft Word where adding page headers is a basic function.

Even stranger was the story where the author had forgotten to put their name anywhere in the manuscript. Just a bare title, no name, no contact info, presumably they assumed that I'd be happy to hunt back thru the emails to figure out who had sent it in.

Finally spell check is your friend. Proofreading is your friend. Take that extra hour for one last pass before you send your story in. And if you know you're terrible at catching your own mistakes, have someone else take a look at your work.

Remember, first impressions count. A poorly formatted story sends the signal that you can't be bothered with the details, and will be difficult to work with. Don't give the editor a reason to be cranky before she reads a single line of your story. Because if it comes down to a choice between two stories that are equally good, the editor is going to pick the one that didn't make her sigh with annoyance. Trust me on this one.

Really thoughtful post on the "Strong Female Characters" trope. I hate Strong Female Characters by Sophia McDougall. Thanks to Juliet for sharing the link.

The narrator of the upcoming audio book emailed me to request pronunciation assistance, commenting that I had created a specific and vibrant world. I'm pretty sure that's a code phrase that means fantasy novels with invented languages are a freaking pain in the ass :-)

In any case, I'll be putting together a pronunciation guide for him to use. And once again having to face the fact that the villains in this story sound an awful lot like Silver-rats when read aloud.

Could be worse. As I recall, buried in the Devlin series is a minor character whose name I pronounced differently each time I read it aloud. When it comes time for that one, I'm thinking dealer's choice will be the correct answer.

Thanks to a friend who introduced us via email, I met up with two area sf&f writers last night. It was fun to hang out and talk shop, and the chosen venue of a local brewpub was ideal.

My people are a simple people-- we like to talk about writing, craft, what's going round the internets, the latest sci-fi movies, the endless submission/rejection/submit again game. And, oh, yes. Beer.

We found out that we'd all been at Boskone last month, and even had mutual friends there, but hadn't met up. Next time I go to a con, I'm wearing a shirt that says "New Hampshire resident" on both sides, to make it easier for fellow Granite Staters to spot me.

Hopefully we can do this again soon. Among the many things I miss about Binghamton is the loss of my local group of writers. The internet is a lifeline, cons are great fun, but there's nothing like being able to regularly meet face to face.

Now if I could only convince jpsorrow that he needs to move to a New England college town....

I've spent the past week working on a synopsis, which has been behaving in the way they typically do. Over this morning's coffee, I found myself considering why it was that writing a six page synopsis is so much harder than writing an entire chapter of a novel.

And then it hit me. A synopsis is to a novel as dog years are to human years. Each page of a synopsis carries the weight of fifty or more pages of story. A superdense form of prose, each paragraph of a synopsis must do the work of at least a scene, if not an entire chapter. It's as if I went to do my normal workout only to find that someone had swapped out my five pound handweights for fifty pounders. No wonder it's taking me so long to make progress.

The important thing is that I am making progress, so rather than beating myself up over having created only five good pages, I should recognize that these five pages are worth many times their weight in ordinary prose.

Now all I need is more coffee, and I'm ready to tackle that one last page.

Oh, and if someone wanted to return the hour that was stolen from me last night, I wouldn't say no to that either.

Yesterday, in the span of a half-hour, I came up with not one but two new story ideas. Different genres, different tones, even different POVs, the only thing they have in common is me.

I drove to the Cybercafe, whipped out a notepad (silly me, I'd left the laptop at home since I was supposed to be running errands) and wrote them up.

This is the part of being a writer that most folks don't understand, as they sidle up next to me at parties and offer to let me have the privilege of writing up their great idea. Having ideas is never the problem, the hard part is picking just one to work on.

When you go to the shelter, you can't take home every puppy you see-- you've got to pick one. And the same goes for story ideas. Even if I live to be five hundred years old, I'll never have time to turn all of my ideas into stories. So I have to choose carefully--adding up all the disparate factors from my passion for the story to market conditions and timing-- a cool idea for a short story can be tucked in between contracts, a three book series can not. I'll ask friends and colleagues for their advice, and then, when brain and heart agree, it's time to start writing.

And to hope that this puppy will be easier to housebreak than the last.

Yesterday I finished the chapter I've been working on for a while. I'd been stuck for over a week at the same spot, making one false start after another as I tried to finish one scene and then begin the next.

I finally realized that the problem was two particular paragraphs. I'd worked hard on them. They were well-written, and had information that is critical for understanding one of the central character arcs.

And this was absolutely the wrong place for them. They functioned like speedbumps, slowing the pace down to a crawl. I hated cutting them, but once I did, the scene flowed the way I needed it to, and I was able to write the next scene and finish off the chapter.

The chapter isn't perfect, but it's solid, so I can keep moving forward. I've saved those paragraphs in my story notes file, pretending that I'm going to use them, but in reality we all know that I'll just visit them from time to time, pet the perfect prose, and somewhere in the new chapter or the next, I'll figure out a different way to get this information across.

Ah, it's the end of summer. The favorite time of year for any writer, due to four little words...

Sale on office supplies! (I know, you thought I was going to say "kids back in school.") And for some, that is indeed a blessing, but for those of us without rugrats, now is the time to pick up pocket folders, notebooks and all those other necessities of the writing life. Indeed, I'd been distressed when I ran out of pocket folders earlier in the month, but now I have a fresh new supply which instantly makes me feel more organized and efficient, even if all I've done with them so far is to pet them.

I don't actually have to do the research, I just need a folder labeled "Story Research" and I feel as smart as if I'd stayed in Holiday Inn Express last night. While the folder labeled "STORYNAME - WORKING COPY" starts off pristine, then becomes satisfactorily worn as completed chapters begin to bulge out both sides, until ultimately it's held together by rubber bands.

Is this story worthy of the rare purple folder, or is a blue one good enough? Should the research be in the same color folder as the completed manuscript pages, or in a complementary color? Do I want to make notes in a notebook or on a yellow legal pad? Decisions, decisions. It's these crucial nuances of the writing craft that they don't teach in school, but that can nonetheless make or break you as a writer.

And let's not even get started on the pens.

I had a great time at Odyssey last week.

( Click here for trip report )

As announced on the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop's webpage I'll be one of the guest lecturers for the 2009 workshop. Odyssey is well-known for both the quality of the program and the success of their graduates, and as you can imagine I was honored when Jeanne Cavelos approached me about participating. I'm looking forward to a great time.

Other lecturers for 2009 are writer-in-residence Carrie Vaughn, and fellow guest lecturers Jeffrey A. Carver, Melissa Scott, Jack Ketchum and Ginjer Buchanan.

If you're interested, the workshop runs from June 8 through July 17th, 2009. Early admission deadline is January 31st, 2009, with regular admission applications due by April 8th, 2009. Details are on their website.