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Guest Post: Rachel Grinti on Collaboration and Publishing

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(Editor’s note: For our last post of 2011, Alpha graduate and soon-to-be debut author Rachel Grinti is here to talk about what it’s like to co-author [and publish!] a novel. Happy holidays, and we’ll see you in 2012!)

My husband Mike and I sold our debut novel this year. It’s a middle grade fantasy called Claws, and it’s the second book we wrote together. We came up with the idea together, plotted, wrote, and rewrote together. One of the most common questions we get is: What’s it like to write together? The short answer is that it’s awesome.

Mike wrote his first novel on his own, but found he hated the process of submitting, and he got discouraged quickly. I wanted to help, so I took over the querying, record-keeping, and market research. Then, when we didn’t get any interest, I got more involved with the editing and we went over the book together, line-by-line, The Eye of Argon style (meaning we read it out loud and cracked up at how awkward some parts were).

I started working with him on the editing, and he let me stomp around and do whatever I wanted with his book. He offered me co-author credit at some point, which I turned down because I didn’t feel the book was really mine. I didn’t really like the book, and it just wasn’t my thing. But we decided to start a new novel and work together from the beginning.

We had to learn to write together effectively and learn how each of us worked. Alternating chapters or scenes was too strict. Mike got impatient when I was taking too long, and I got frustrated when he took over a section that was supposed to be “mine.” Now we plot together and pass the manuscript back and forth whenever one of us is stuck or needs a break. Sometimes we also write side-by-side, usually with Mike typing and me watching and discussing. We have meetings when we’re stuck on something, which usually involves leaving the house and going somewhere less distracting, which helps us focus.

One of the best parts of working together is that we can use each other’s strengths. For a long time, Mike was better at putting a lot of words down quickly, and I was better at cleaning it up after. That’s evened out as we both learn (though Mike is still the typo king). I’m still better at the business side of things, and when we queried, I did the query letter writing and submission tracking.

The other great thing? This business can be so stressful, and it’s so cool to have someone else be a part of every step. We can mope about rejections together and celebrate success together. Neither one of us ever feels like we’re being ignored for the writing, because when things get crazy busy we’re both a part of that.

If you’re thinking about working with a writing partner, I think there are a few things to keep in mind. First, you have to trust each other completely, with both the writing and business aspects. Second, you have to let go. The book isn’t just yours (or theirs). You both have to be happy with what goes into the book, and that means you can’t justify a decision just because “it’s my book”. Sometimes that means having to drop something. Sometimes it means working that much harder on an idea in order to prove it’s worth it. In either case, the result is usually a stronger book.

You also have to thicken your skin. No more hiding drafts of the book from all eyes until it’s ready — until you’ve let the literary concrete settle, in other words! You have to let someone in when it’s still completely rough, when it’s a lot easier to change direction and try new things. That can be hard, of course, but it can save you so much time. And for every time you feel frustrated that something you were trying got critiqued as you were writing it, there are so many other times when your partner comes up with something and you realize you never would have thought of that yourself.

I actually think that more writers should try this full-trust method of writing with someone else, even just once. You’d be amazed how much you can learn, about your own writing and writing in general, by working in complete openness with someone. (But of course, I’m completely biased!)

Don’t Undervalue Yourself: Get Paid

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Your writing is valuable.  Your time, your words and your skill have gone into honing a story, and that story is worth something.

Getting published is hard.  There are a lot of unpublished authors in this world, and only so many paying markets.  This gives publishers a lot of power.  They can ask for things, and fledgeling writers have no bargaining chips to fight them with.  There are always more stories coming in through the submissions pipeline.

Due to this power imbalance, some markets will do underhanded things to writers.

Do not undervalue yourself.  Do not send your stories to markets that do not acknowledge that your writing is worth money.  Markets that promise exposure, readership or a line on a resume without promising payment are, in reality, telling you to give them your story for free.

This isn’t fair, and no matter what they say, it doesn’t look good on you.  When you go to markets, asking them to publish your work, you have a choice in where to send it.

Don’t let someone publish your stories for nothing.

There’s an excellent previous post on this blog that goes into specifics, and is especially helpful in deciding which markets you would like to submit to first, here.  As a general rule, SFWA-recognized professional markets are the best places to publish.  These markets have been in existence for more than one year, and pay at least 5 cents per word.  They also count towards your three sales to gain SFWA membership.  Some semi-pro markets with reputations for high quality, such as Electric Velocipede, Psuedopod and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, are also good places to send your work.

Places like Duotrope are a good way to gather concrete information on markets.  Duotrope lists the pay category of each market, response times, and, importantly, acceptance rates.  Most professional markets have extremely low acceptance rates.  This is okay—remember, getting published is hard.  Markets that do not pay have much higher acceptance rates; some markets publish over 90% of what they receive.  These markets are not selective and giving them your work does not distinguish you from the rest of the slush pile.

Other editors know the market world—they know who’s paying and who’s not.  The likelihood that editors are actually reading what these non-paying markets are printing is very slim, which means that the exposure you’ve been promised in lieu of actual payment is not happening.  Putting a market with no redeeming features on your cover letter is, in the best case scenario, not going to impress anyone, and at worst will convince an editor that you don’t know what you’re doing.

There are other perils of the publishing world, many more sinister.  Entire websites are dedicated to warning you about them; see Preditors & Editors and Writer Beware for information on scams that are after your money and your reputation.  You can find more arguments against non-paying and low-paying markets, seen in the dust-up over Black Matrix publishing a few years ago, here, from respected author and blogger John Scalzi, which contains links to the entire debacle.

Aim high!  Gather some really high-profile rejections, read Sarah Brand’s market list and get paid for what you do.

Recent Alphan Publications

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This post is short, but exciting! Two Alpha alumni, Allison Jamieson-Lucy (2009 & 2010) and Evelyn Wang (2010) have recently published short stories.

Allison’s story, “To Soothe Ravaged Throats,” can be found at Daily Science Fiction, and Evelyn’s story, “Tippler’s Bane,” is available in podcast form over at Pseudopod. Congratulations to Allison and Evelyn!

You can see other Alphan publications on our Publications and Awards page.

(Note to Alpha alumni: if you’ve published any fiction that isn’t listed on the Publications and Awards page already, we want to know about it… contact us and we’ll put it up!)

The Single Most Common Problem with Application Stories

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…is manuscript format. Every year.

Why manuscript format?

Because it makes things easier.

You can write in whatever format you want. Write in pencil at the end of your Algebra notebook, scribble in pen on receipts, write white-on-blue on the computer, dictate to a person or a program, use the defaults for your word processor, whichever one it is. Write however you want.

When you show other people, though, you have to make certain changes.

Proper manuscript format makes it easier for the editor or slush reader to get through your story. That’s really what it is. There aren’t boxes or squidgy characters where your computer’s apostrophes failed to turn into their computer’s apostrophes. The text is large enough to read and well-spaced. No one has to change the font.

When you don’t use proper manuscript format, you make things harder on the slush reader, which, consciously or not, is a tick in the ‘no’ column. More than that, you mark your story as belonging to someone who doesn’t care… or you mark your story as a bad story. You care enough to write it, to edit it, to figure out markets and editors and SASEs, don’t you care enough to use Courier? Or perhaps you didn’t actually care to edit it and figure out the right market, as evidenced by your lack of proper manuscript format.

Manuscript format is important. It won’t kill your story, but it gives a strong first impression.

So how do you accomplish it?

The links at the beginning of the post are to manuscript format pages. I won’t repeat everything in them– I’m just going to handle a few of the weird and worrisome questions you might have. Many of these are things I saw while reading application stories– don’t worry, I couldn’t tell you any specific story that did them, so this is not a direct reaction to any– but some are weird personal peeves.

Header
Somewhere in your word processer, there is an option of Header and Footer. Use it. The first several stories I sent out had the header in the main text, which is just a pain.

I also like to see the header in the same font as the story, perhaps in a smaller size. Some word processers don’t default to this.

Also somewhere is a Page Setup or Page Layout, which gives an option for a Different First Page Header. Use this. It’s a personal peeve, but your first page is obviously your first page.

About that first page….
Do you need your address, phone number, email, and Social Security number? Except the last, yes. I’ve never been notified of an acceptance any way but email, but it does happen.

Do you need your word count? Heck yes. Use whatever method you prefer– I go with Word– and round to the nearest hundred. Don’t make the editor do this extra step.

Font
DO NOT USE A FANCY FONT.

DO
NOT
USE
A
FAN
CY
FONT.

Times, Courier, Dark Courier if you’re printing. If it looks different enough that the reader can tell, it is different enough to throw the reader off a bit. If it’s not different enough but you just love Baskerville Old Face, why bother? You run the risk that the reader doesn’t have that font installed and now your story is interesting in a bad way.

You are not typesetting your story for publication. That happens later and by someone else.

Not My Peeve
Somewhere in your word processer, probably on the ruler at the top, is something called a tab stop. This automatically puts an indent at the beginning of a paragraph. I am told that judicious use of this feature makes life better for the eventual typesetter and/or copyeditor, whoever it is who has to take out all those tabs they don’t want in the story.

End?
If your ending is completely unambiguous– the last page is three-quarters blank and the text ends with a sunset being ridden into– you do not need a signpost. If it’s ambiguous, it’s worth a line of END.

But how do I…?
Some questions can be answered without familiarity with a given word processer. Some cannot. Try us in the comments– if you know how to scoot the word count to the right without using six tabs, if you have a template set up, if you are curious about Dark Courier, let us know!

Learning to Love Your Rejection Letters

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I have a confession to make: I love rejection letters. My heart skips a beat every time one appears in my e-mail inbox, and before I click to open it I revel in the delicious sensation of not knowing what the e-mail contains. You may imagine that this anticipation is due to wondering whether the letter may be an acceptance, but really, I just like rejection letters. In this post I will attempt to explain what it is about story rejection letters that fills me with an odd sort of joy in the hope that you too will come to view this fact of writing life with anticipatory glee instead of what I gather is the usual dread and subsequent soul-crushing disappointment.

Rejection as an achievable goal

The very first guest lecture I attended at Alpha was given by Tobias Buckell, and in it he conveyed one message that has stuck with me ever since: Story submissions are an achievable goal; getting published isn’t. Many beginning writers getting ready to send things out on submission set themselves a goal along the lines of “Get story x published” or “Get a story published by the end of the year.” However, this sort of goal is absolute rubbish, because it’s not really something within your control. All you can do is create the best stories you are capable of producing and send them out. The rest is in the hands of the editors. Toby told us that when he was a beginning writer, he set himself goals for number of submissions, and I think that’s quite a good idea. Every time you send a story out on submission, it means that you have put in the effort to make sure that the story is as good as it can be, you’ve researched markets, you’ve formatted your story, and you’ve carefully crafted a cover letter. If you follow those steps and are persistent in continuing to follow them over and over, I can almost guarantee that you will become a successful writer. It may take a while, but you’ll get there eventually. So every time I get a rejection letter, I know that I’m one step closer to becoming a successful writer. It seems odd, but it’s true.

Plan for rejection.

When you are considering sending out your story on submission, come up with a list of markets to which you plan to submit. Plan to send your story to all of them, one at a time. Don’t think things like, “If this market rejects me, I’ll send the story to the next market.” Think, “When this market rejects me, I’ll send it to the next market.” As you receive your rejections, check off the market on your list. For me, the act of checking markets off my list makes rejections seem like accomplishments, and the only time I’m ever really disappointed (well, mostly) is when I get to the end of my list and have to set a story aside. Remember, rejections are progress in disguise.

Rejections exist on a spectrum.

Many writers and editors warn against “rejectomancy,” the practice of writers overanalyzing their rejection letters to try to divine hidden meaning in the usually generic text. For me, however, a certain amount of rejectomancy is a positive thing. This is because I have learned that for many markets, rejections exist on a sort of spectrum. That is to say that there exists more than the binary of acceptance and rejection, and there are often many different types of rejection letters sent out by each market. Some markets send different forms for different levels of rejection (for example, Realms of Fantasy has two different photocopied forms, the so-called Blue Form of Death [BFOD] and the longed-for Yellow Form of Promise [YFOP]), so getting a “higher-level” rejection is a step up the ladder. Some markets have slush readers who pass stories up to senior editors, so it’s especially exciting to get rejected by a senior editor even if you still get a form rejection because it means that the senior editor at least saw your work. Some markets will send personal rejections (rejections that actually comment on the substance of your story) only if they feel your story was almost good enough. So every time I get a rejection I’m crossing my fingers for a yellow slip, or a sentence explaining why my story wasn’t accepted, or a senior editor’s signature, or a line inviting me to submit something else, because those too can be markers of progress. (Note that rejectomancy is a dicey art best practiced once you’ve had some experience with the various markets or with the aid of someone who does, because you can’t generalize across the board with any of these things. Some markets always provide personal rejections, some never do, etc.)

Putting yourself out there

In conclusion: Rejections are good. They mean you’re putting yourself out there, getting your stories in the hands of editors, and progressing as a writer, even if you’re not getting published. I’ve heard multiple editors tell stories about writers they saw improve over the course of years and many submissions until they finally were good enough for publication, and I’ve heard these same editors tell stories about writers who seemed to be getting better but then dropped off the face of the earth, presumably discouraged by too many rejection letters. If you show promise and you keep submitting, the editors will remember your name and look favorably on future submissions. You might even bump into them at a convention sometime and be surprised to discover that your name actually means something to them, or that they remember your most recently submitted story when you describe it. There’s a lot more to the process of story submission than the always-hoped-for acceptance letters, and the process itself has its own rewards.

Where to Submit Your Stories

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If you want to become a published author, the first step is to send your work out to paying markets. For novelists, that means writing query letters and proposals and a bunch of other stuff we’re not talking about today. Short story writers have it a bit easier. Finish your story, choose where you want to submit, format the story according to the magazine’s guidelines, perhaps include a brief cover letter, and drop it in the mailbox (or more often, just hit “send”).

But as you might imagine, there’s more to it than that. There are lots of different short story markets. They pay different rates, have different response times, and (most importantly) want slightly different kinds of stories. So, where should you send your story?

For my part, I keep a speculative fiction markets cheat sheet with basic information on my favorite magazines. If I’m happy with a story, I submit it to a few markets on that list where I think it might fit, in an order determined by what the markets pay, whether they’re SFWA-qualifying (more on that below), and what the response time is like. There’s not one right way to go about submitting, though, so I asked some of my fellow Alpha bloggers about their submission processes.

Elena Gleason:

Now that I’ve been submitting stories for almost five years, my process is pretty fluid and relies on a vague combination of which markets I think would be a good fit for a given story, average response time as given by Duotrope.com, how much the market pays, and my perception of the market’s prestige. However, before I’d been around long enough to get a really good handle on what markets were out there, what types of stories each one preferred, and how each market was regarded by the speculative fiction community, my process went a little something like this:

Look at the list of SFWA-qualifying markets (pro-paying markets that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have deemed appropriate venues for accruing the three pro sales necessary to get SFWA membership). Eliminate any that don’t accept work in my story’s genre. Look up response times on Duotrope.com. Submit to each appropriate SFWA-qualifying market beginning with the one with the shortest response time and ending with the one with the longest. When all SFWA-qualifying markets have been exhausted, do a search on Duotrope.com for markets paying semi-pro rates within my genre. Again, submit by response time. (If Sarah Brand’s cheat sheet had been around back then, I would have used that instead of the Duotrope search–it’s much simpler than wading through Duotrope search results, and you can be reasonably sure that the market has been vetted by trustworthy writers.) Do this until the story has been submitted to every appropriate paying market, at which point, alas, the story is trunked.

Rachel Halpern:

I’ve learned two methods for how to decide when to submit what where — work down from the most prestigious markets, collecting great rejection letters as you go, or work up from small markets where you’re more likely to get published. I can understand both sides — just getting published at all would be amazing, to me, but if I’m not going to be I’d like the best rejection letters possible. And if I wrote a story that could have gotten accepted somewhere great and got accepted for less money and prestige, that would be sad, I guess. So that makes the prestigious markets sound best. But if your story is exactly good enough to get published in a fun but less famous publication, you don’t want to miss out. Since you just can’t know that, I like starting at markets where I’d be thrilled to be accepted but where I feel there’s at least a faint theoretical possibility, and then places that aren’t as dazzling but sound like they might take the particular story I’m offering, and then I aim for prestigious places because why not?, and then I aim less prestigious/lower paying/etc.

Cassie Krahe:

I haven’t sent out anything new in a while. I mostly get a sense of where I think the story should go as I write it, and since what little short fiction I read these days (and it is a very little) is entirely online, those are the markets I know best and can best recognize a story for. A lot of it is mood/tone, being able to tell a Strange Horizons story from a Beneath Ceaseless Skies story–SH is more litty, BCS a little more adventurey, things like that. Then I just go through the list according to fit more than anything.

One thing about having a story that is going to sell, dammit, is that I do look at market listings more, and that spurs me to send out more. If I don’t continuously check things and remind myself that yes, submitting is something I do, I slow and stop. It’s been that kind of while.

I’m really unlikely to send anything to a paper-needing market right now, if only because I am out of printer paper. Data point.

Rachel Sobel:

I write so slowly that I’m sort of a spoiled brat about markets, and thus tend to prioritize by the haphazard calculus of pay rate and response time weighed against prestige and suitability.  Generally, pay rate wins over everything else, because, being a starving student, I feel like the impossible is even more awesome if it makes you rich.

As a tiny baby writer, selling stories is such an infrequent thing for me that it still feels sort of like free money for something I’d do anyway, and as such it’s often hard to justify prioritizing on that count.  On the other hand, I’d like to put in a word for rank commercialism: even if you regard writing as an untoward hobby, if it’s the untoward hobby that finances your book habit, that’s probably not entirely a bad thing.

The takeaway:

Familiarize yourself with the markets before you send anything out. Read their submissions guidelines carefully. Know what they’re looking for. Don’t be afraid to send your work out to great magazines that lots of people read, as well as to smaller ‘zines that carry prestige. (If your work can’t get accepted by a well-regarded market, do you want the public seeing it?)

Want more advice on submitting? Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or check out these posts from Shimmer magazine: Mastering the Cover Letter and Short Stories Are Not Novels.

Best of luck!

Submitting Stories for Publication as a Young Adult

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As a young person, you are likely to get a lot of writing advice along the lines of “practice makes perfect,” implying that you are still young, you have your whole life ahead of you, and you should focus on “practicing” your writing, stashing it all away someplace where no one other than friends and family will ever read it and honing your skills for the day when you will magically transform into a Real Writer.

This is a load of hooey. If you write, you’re a writer, regardless of age. And age should not be a barrier to sending out stories to short fiction markets or novels to agents and publishers. There are plenty of reasons not to submit, of course, but none of them should be simply that you’re too young. I have a secret for you: Nothing happens overnight when you turn eighteen, or graduate from high school (or college), to make you into a pro writer.

However, it is true that not all writers are ready to embark on the journey of story submission. In this post, rather than focusing on the circumstances under which you shouldn’t submit, I will instead focus on four criteria you should meet before you start sending your fiction out into the world.

  1. You and others see pronounced improvement in your writing since you started writing seriously. The reason people are always telling teenagers to wait until they’re older to think about sending stories out is that most of them have only just started writing. And only one or two absolute geniuses are brilliant when they first get out of the gate. If you haven’t been writing for at least a couple years, you probably should wait a while to develop your skills. This is true for adults as well–not every writer gets started young, and adults aren’t magically good at writing straightaway either. However, if you’ve been writing and finishing things for a few years and you are at the point where you look back on your early writing and cringe in horror, and your long-term readers start remarking on how good you’ve become, it might be time to think about letting some of your recently completed stuff loose.
  2. You have had your writing critiqued, and have revised with these critiques in mind. Every story can always be improved upon, and critiques are absolutely critical for being sure your story is actually saying what you want it to say. Read my post on getting critiques for further advice in this vein.
  3. You are proud of your finished product. If you find yourself hesitant about a particular story or scene, trust yourself. There have been innumerable times when I’ve sent out a story with the niggling feeling in the back of my head that perhaps the ending wasn’t quite strong enough, or the main character’s personality not strongly enough defined, and inevitably my rejection letters reflect this. If you read your story through and finish your read-through thinking, “This is awesome,” that is the story to submit. If you don’t think your writing is any good, editors aren’t likely to see things differently.[*]
  4. You are ready for rejection. It is a fact of writing life that you will be rejected. Repeatedly. Probably multiple times for every story you send out. You cannot submit a story expecting it to be grabbed up by the first editor who lays eyes on it. Or the second, or third, or fourth. Most of your stories probably won’t be fished out of the slush pile at all. There are enough writers out there churning out the stories that editors need to be extremely picky, and a lot of perfectly good stories are never published. I try to treat story acceptances as bizarre, almost random events that just happen to sometimes crop up at the end of the submission process in place of the normal rejection. If you think your writing self-esteem will suffer if your stories are rejected, wait a while longer before you start submitting.

If you’ve met those criteria, you should probably pretty up your latest masterpiece and send it off. But before you do, keep the following in mind: When you submit, do not call attention to your age. In fact, avoid including any information in your cover letter that might clue the editor in to the fact that you’re younger than the average submitter. If an editor reads in your cover letter that you are only sixteen (fourteen, eighteen, twenty-two) or infers your age from the fact that you mention publication in your high school or college literary magazine, she or he might approach your story as amateur writing, knowing that you can’t really have been at it all that long. For this reason, it is not a good idea to include your age in your cover letter if you do decide to submit your fiction as a young adult. Some young writers think that this will impress editors (“Only fifteen and s/he can write this well? Wow!”), but the fact of the matter is that no editor will purchase your story unless it impresses him or her when judged against every other story they receive, and including your age might just make the editor want to pat you on the head and tell you to send them something when you’re older, before they’ve even read the first line of the story itself.

One last thing to keep in mind: Don’t treat story submission as an activity having the end goal of getting published. You are young, you do have your whole life ahead of you, and while getting published at such an early stage in your writing career might be exciting, it’s not really necessary. When I first started submitting stories at 18, I considered it practice. I just tossed a few things out so that I could get a handle on the process and start getting a feel for the various markets and their editors. And it worked. Now, at the ripe old age of 23, I have what I consider a pretty good idea of the types of stories most speculative fiction (or at least fantasy, since that’s my genre) venues like, and I’m much better able to tailor my submissions accordingly. (I don’t really think it needs saying, but just in case: This does not mean you should submit stories you aren’t proud of to editors in the name of “practice.” If you repeatedly send editors bad stories just to see what happens, they will remember you, and will approach future submissions with considerable apprehension.)

There will be posts here in the future on such topics as proper manuscript format and finding appropriate markets, and one from me expanding on my views on story submission as a goal in and of itself. So hang around for lots more practical advice on getting your stories out into the world.

[*] There is an exception in the case of writers with writing self-esteem issues, of which there are many. If you are one of those writers who never thinks their writing is awesome, find trusted critique partners who can advise you on whether you should submit your stories, and which one(s) to submit.

***

I’m Elena Gleason, Alpha alumna of 2005 and 2006. My stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, and I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree in Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can visit me online at http://www.elenagleason.com.