It's a hard old world out there for writers and
you need all the help you can get. I've listed some of the sites
and sources of information that helped me. I write mainly science fiction,
so you'll see a heavy bias towards that here, but most of the principles
hold true for any genre. |
CRITTERS
The second best thing any writer can do is join a writers' group.
(The first best thing is to get writing.) Believe me, you need the
emotional support as well as the critiques. Some beginners are very
self-conscious about exposing their work to scrutiny but you have
to do it sooner or later, preferably before you send your epic novel
to a publisher. This is where you build the elephantine hide you'll
need if you want to be a pro.
Face-to-face groups are great, and your local library is a good
place to start to find out if there's a writing group in your area.
But you can get together with writers anywhere in the world, thanks
to the miracle of modern technology you're using right now. There
are plenty of on-line critique groups, and for me the best of the
speculative fiction ones is CRITTERS.
I can honestly say that if I hadn't stumbled across this group,
I wouldn't be selling fiction today. It was an important, if brief, part of the growth process for me. 'Nuff said. Check it out.
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The value of Clarion - a frank view, a few years on.
I've been a big supporter of Clarion in the past and I'm on record
as saying that without it, I probably wouldn't be an author now,
because it gave me some key business contacts in the USA - no
small advantage for a Brit. I also made some of my best buddies
there. I attended Clarion East in 2000, sold stories I wrote there to major pro mags right away, and by 2002 I'd sold my first trilogy. The rest is history. But...well, you know there's always a but.
Clarion used to be regarded as the experience for those serious about
a professional career in writing speculative fiction, at least in the eyes of the great and the good of SF/F. I'm not sure how widely that view is shared in the publishing industry; I've certainly met editors who have negative views of Clarion. Either way, the opinion of editors and publishers matters most, because they sign off on the cheques.
And if you find yourself saying at this point, "How crass! Filthy lucre? This is art!" then move along, because there's probably nothing for you to see here.
The good stuff about Clarion
Unlike
most courses, where you just pay your money and show up for a few days, entry to
to Clarion is competitive and you have to convince a panel
of judges that you're up to the task, which includes being prepared to commit six consecutive weeks to the course. I still think it has unique
value simply because it's immersive, and - if you take it seriously and don't dick around for a month and a half playing the wacky student - being locked up with nothing but writing day in, day out, is going to show you what you're made of, and if it's the job for you. You might also get lucky and encounter truly inspirational tutors who strike sparks off you.
The bad stuff about Clarion
It's wholly about short fiction (unless its remit has changed recently) and short
fiction doesn't pay the bills unless your name is Harlan Ellison.
What I've learned about the real pro business of writing the hard
way since 2002 (and especially since 2004, when my first book hit the shelves) is so different from what I was taught at Clarion
that I now can't recommend it as preparation for being a novelist.
And the book business is about novels. If you don't believe me, walk into your local bookstore and and take a look at the shelves. You won't find many anthologies of Nebula winners in there, or much by way of short fiction in any genre. Short fiction is a declining market.
Again, if you don't believe me, look at Locus's annual review each February
and chart the downward sales trend of the short fiction magazines.
A large part of the business is also about licensed work - tie-ins - and Clarion has never, to my knowledge, dealt with the huge international English-language tie-in market. Lit-snobs with tiny print runs of a couple of thousand or even hundreds may sneer, but pros know the score even if they won't admit it. (Which is why tie-in work is a very competitive market. It's real writing for real audiences that pays real money.)
My six penn'th. (Or ten cents, depending on the exchange rate.)
If your ambition is to write for a living, i.e. earn most or all of your income from writing fiction, then I honestly don't think Clarion will help you at all. It might even hinder you if you don't temper it with market reality, because you might come away with the idea that all you need do is write a few short pieces for obscure but respected magazines, and then editors will then batter down your door with a fat cheque-book to recruit your genius.
If you're happy to write on the basis of an occasionally paying hobby, or you have a partner or parents who'll support you financially while you write, that's perfectly fine. Writing is a wondefully fulfilling activity, and it's up to you how you enjoy it. But my definition of professional is earning a living by doing a specific job, whatever that job might be. And the book business is getting harder and harsher every year. It's not just about novels now; it's about novels that shift big numbers, and so the mid-list is shrinking. Fact of life.
There's CLARION
EAST (the original at MSU, East Lansing) and CLARION
WEST (based in Seattle) as well as CLARION
SOUTH based in Australia. At time of writing, there was still talk
of a European one starting up. But they're still not about how to write novels, if that can be taught at all. All I can say is that by the definition of professional used in
the SF/F community - selling at least one short story for
professional rate money, nothing more - Clarion does what it says
on the tin.
But if by professional you
mean commercially successful, or even selling one novel,
then I think you'll be better off using those six weeks to actually write
a book or do a bit of living and travelling to feed your imagination.
Your call. If you're an unashamed opportunist like me, you'll get every ounce
of benefit out of every course you attend anyway, relevant or not. But Clarion is not geared towards making you a successful novelist and teaching
you about the business. I don't know any course that is - and I don't believe any creative writing degree programme can make that claim either.
(Most successful novelists haven't done any courses at all, of course.
In fact, most novelists period. Don't forget that.) Therefore, I don't think that Clarion can really prepare you for a professional career as most lay people would understand the term.
And storytelling (which is what sells books) is something you can either do or you can't. All that any writing programme can do is refine and enhance what's in you already, and enable you to understand the process going on in your head and the reader's.
So...do you apply, or not? And are you doomed to starve in a garret?
If you're determined to pay money to learn more about writing anyway, Clarion is still your best bet, I think.
But decide what you want out of writing before
you give up six weeks of your life and a lot of money (accommodation
and food costs) in the hope that Clarion will transform your
fortunes. Some very successful novelists have come out of Clarion,
but it's been pointed out to me that they'd have succeeded anyway.
Most folk who complete Clarion don't even sell their short fiction to
the big markets, and the rule of thirds often quoted to me seems to apply: after Clarion,
one third will sell at least three or four shorts in their career,
one third will carry on writing as a hobby, and one third will give
up writing altogether.
Like any competitive business, there isn't room for everyone who wants to trade. It's not a lottery, though; publishers buy what they believe will sell, not what they pick at random from a hat. Your odds of becoming a pro writer are not one in all the many thousands of wannabes submitting manuscripts. Your chances are determined solely by whether you write what will sell. (And I can actually define what that is now, but that's a whole new topic.) If you're cut out to be a writer, you'll become one anyway. Beware falling into the trap of what one editor described exquisitely as "the role-playing game of being a writer."
Writers write. Professional writers write for a living. It's your choice which kind of writer you want to aim at becoming.
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A Dozen Things You'll Wish You'd Known Before You Started
1. Writing really is like having homework for the rest of your
life.
2. Everyone goes through the same stages of anxiety and despair
when writing a novel - from wild enthusiasm through nagging doubts
via dark despair and back again. (A gem of comforting advice from
one of my Clarion instructors, Maureen McHugh.) And everyone considers
abandoning the project at the 25% mark or at 75% at some time. ( Wisdom from
Sean Stewart - a wonderful writer and lovely guy who taught my Clarion year.)
3. The competition isn't quite as overwhelming as you might imagine.
Of 100 wannabe writers, only ten will actually finish their novel:
of that ten, only five will submit it to a publisher. And some of
those left in the race will fall at the last fence because they've
submitted their manuscript in 8 point Krazy Legs font on pink paper.
(A frank insight from an editor I know.)
4. Writers write. A paragraph a day, or a chapter a day, but real
writers write regularly and without fail. (Heinlein, paraphrased.)
Writers don't talk about writing instead of doing it, and they don't spend their day blogging about it, either, unless it's part of a marketing plan.
5. When you do it for a living, there will be days when you hate writing, loathe the book and every word on the page, but you will carry on writing all day anyway, because it is your job. Waiting for the muse is what hobbyists and blokes in smoking jackets do. If this is too hard for you, think of all the people in the world doing a real job - like getting shot at in Afghanistan - and thank whatever deity you believe in for allowing you the staggering luxury of being paid for making up fairytales.
6. There are only five basic plots in the world, so don't worry
if your story has been done before - it never bothered Shakespeare, and the story lies in the execution, not in the plot points. If your story really hasn't been done before, ever, chances are that humans won't understand it. Fiction is about shared human experiences, or else it won't resonate.
7. If you want to write for the fun of it, not for publication,
write what you like. This is recreation.
8. If you want to earn a living by writing, listen to the advice
of the person who's paying you. This is business.
9. Don't surround yourself solely with writer friends. What begins
as a welcome shared experience can rapidly become incestuous and
you will lose sight of the fact that there are readers out there
- and they are much, much more interesting and important
than the collective writerly navel. And avoid immersing in cliques
that stroke your ego: take a bracing shower of cold, hard, hostile
reality at least once a day.
10. Rejection slips are aimed at your story, not at you personally
nor at your immortal soul. File them and move on.
11. The ancillary business of writing - office admin, answering readers' mail, doing deals - takes more time and energy than writing the books.
12. And finally... beware the true story. Real life doesn't have
to make sense: fiction does.
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Books For Writers
I have a shelf full of these. Few have been read more than once,
and even fewer get regular use. But there's some excellent stuff
out there.
BOOKS WORTH READING ANYWAY:
JACKSPEAK by retired Surgeon Captain Rick Jolly OBE is a guide
to Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Royal Fleet Auxiliary slang. It's
a handy phrasebook to have if you're visiting my home town, Portsmouth,
where navy patois has permeated the civilian dialect over the centuries.
JACKSPEAK is authentic and well-researched but it's also utterly
hilarious. The illustrations are by Navy
News's splendid cartoonist Tugg.
Now the serious stuff. Dr Jolly was the commander of the Ajax Bay
field hospital - aka the Red And Green Life Machine - during the
Falklands War, where every British soldier who came in alive left
alive as well. That's a phenomenal testimony to the skill of the
military medics, as well as their bravery: they even operated with
unexploded bombs around them. Read all about it in the good doctor's
personal account of the war, The Red and Green Life Machine. You
can order Rick Jolly's books from this page at Amazon UK.
GENERAL FICTION
The Writers' Book Club in the UK (and Writers' Digest in the USA)
does very good offers and I don't regret taking their book of the
month deal. Worth a look, if only to get the excellent Write Right by Jan Venolia, a quick grammar guide I recommend on plain English
courses that I teach. Click
here to see the latest titles.
SPECULATIVE FICTION
My top picks (mainly SF and fantasy):
The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction (John Clute and Peter Nicholls,
St Martins Griffin)
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Adrian Room, Casell)
And one oddity: The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency (John Seymour,
ISBN 0751364428). If you write anything that involves the gritty
detail of agrarian life, this is the book to get hold of.
It's not written for writers, of course, but it's a treasure trove
of information on everything from building a thatch to keeping cattle.
Highly recommended.
You might ask why I haven't mentioned writers' software. There's
a lot of that about, too, but I haven't yet tried anything that's
worked for me. Still, if you like the idea of plotting and script
software, the best place to go is www.scriptdude.com,
who sell just about everything and are very helpful.
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Ten reasons why writing is a great job
1. When crap happens to you, you make notes about it and think,
"Hey, that'll come in handy for chapter ten..." and it
makes Things All Better.
2. No useless fact is ever wasted. (You can never be too rich,
too thin, or have too many useless facts.)
3. Your eccentric behaviour is regarded as a sign of creative literary
genius: anyone else is just as mad as a box of frogs.
4. You can ask experts in any field for research information and
they give it generously. (So be grateful for it.)
5. You can have meal breaks when you want them.
6. You see life at an intense level of detail that others usually
don't. (Thanks to Sean Stewart for making this point at Clarion.)
7. Staring at a blank wall is actually useful work.
8. You can create any world you want. Your only limit is yourself.
9. It's free therapy, but you get paid for it too.
10. You never have to envy anyone else's job, ever.
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Ten reasons why writing isn't a great job. (Because nothing's ever that clear-cut, is it?)
1. Every man-jack and his dog think they're writers because they can use a keyboard, and will tell you all about their brilliant novel-in-progress, even if they're no closer to finishing it than they were five years ago. Given my collection of sharp objects, then, I'm a brain surgeon, and I have this great lobotomy technique in me waiting to get out.....
2. Publishing is just as full of whackos, manipulators, prima donnas, fragile egos, and pains in the arse as the television industry (or any other branch of the media and entertainment industries, come to that) - the only difference is the pace the thing proceeds at. In TV, the pain is over faster.
3. At parties, you can never tell people what you do for a living. They either don't believe you, or worse - they DO believe you and then proceed to try to shake you down for an intro to your editor/ agent/ whatever, or offer you their great idea for a novel, earnings split fifty-fifty, because they've got the idea, and all you have to do is write it.
4. Publishing doesn't operate by the logical rules of any other retail or entertainment business, and it seems to be a stranger to real market research. This is massively frustrating if you've come from ay other business background.
5. The more successful you are, the more you become a commodity - an object with a monetary value, nothing more. It's the low, quiet end of showbiz, but it's still showbiz, remember. To de-objectify yourself, you either have to be low-value so that nobody thinks you're worth exploiting, or pass the tipping point by selling 40 million copies each time so that you own them.
6. One for SF writers only: it's full of navel-gazing cliques constantly bemoaning the decline of the genre and attacking each other for killing SF. No other genre I can think of indulges in this self-destructive crap. The only thing killing SF is that fewer readers than ever want to buy it, and maybe they don't want to read it because it's lost its way, isn't enjoyable, isn't about the human condition, and has been overtaken by reality. (And by cult TV, which fills the niche that "real" SF once did in the good old days.)
7. The vast majority of readers are terrific, but some think they own you because they bought your book. They range from the entitlement brigade to borderline stalkers to complete psychos. Few successful writers manage to go through life without acquiring a small collection of them. MISERY could pass for a documentary, believe me.
8. Some readers don't read. I mean they skip pages, even whole chapters, as a matter of routine, then bitch that they didn't understand the book. Here's the deal: we write words on every page, so readers should read what's on every page. Alternatively, they can tell us which pages they won't be reading, and we'll leave those blank. Deal?
9. Writing is an isolating job by its very nature. Think of it as a long spell in solitary with no time off for good behaviour.
10. The readers who make or break your career are always unseen, unheard, and unknown. They're the huge majority, the hundreds of thousands of customers who buy your books in their local store, and never say a word in public. They just buy books and read them, then come back for more. You can only meet a tiny fraction of them, like when you do a signing. That's rather sad.
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