Top 5 Mistakes For First Time Queries & Making Yourself Write

First of all – if you haven’t already realized this I’m going to say it again – we all generally hate ourselves when we sit down to write. I’m currently holed up in a hotel room working on this podcast instead of writing, because it seems I have completely forgotten how to.

I’ll remember, maybe after a nap, but I have the luxury of knowing that I will remember how to write. I’ve been here before, in this doubtful place with a blank screen and a cursor staring at me, a gulf of indecision and inadequacy opening up inside.

I’m sure that feels familiar to you if you’re a writer, but like the listener posing the question on Twitter, you might not have that resource to fall back on – knowing that you have done it before, and will again. Eventually.

Maybe after a drink.

Or perhaps petting the cat.

For an hour.

Also, I have to pee.

This is called procrastination. Writers are excellent at it. It’s an answer to our problem of fear – being afraid of failing. We can’t fail at something we don’t actually attempt, can we?

You also can’t succeed.

Making yourself write is most definitely the way to put it. It truly is a forced endeavor, at times, and often I meet aspiring writers who feel like they aren’t writers because it’s such a struggle, because they have to force themselves to do it.

For example, just last night in the elevator with writing friends I squared my shoulders right before the door opened on my floor and said, “Okay, I’ve got to go write.”

To which one said, “Don’t do that to yourself.”

Yep. In an elevator full of traditionally published, successful authors, absolutely everyone – including myself – was in pain just at the thought of writing.

If this is you, take heart.

But Mindy, if it’s truly a passion, truly a love, truly a creative instinct and drive – shouldn’t you want to?

No, not necessarily.

I absolutely love my boyfriend. I don’t want to be with him every moment of every day. That’s emotional work.

So is writing.

Work, hard work, work embroidered with your soul – work that someone else might hate, work that – when shared – feels like disrobing, an intimate moment. If you don’t want to do it, the best thing to move yourself is to ask yourself why?

Is it because you are afraid of failing?

Realize that you might. Then ask yourself if you’re okay with never trying.

Is it because you aren’t feeling inspired?

Me neither. Writing is not (usually) a disembodied fever dream that flows from your fingers. Those moments do happen, but they are rare and I don’t question them, or dissect how they came to be for fear of killing it through observation.

I’ll add that those fugue state words are often ones that need a lot of heavy lifting after the fact – serious editing to – in some cases – inject logic into what they are trying to convey.

On the other hand, those tedious paragraphs that took me hours to deliver? They don’t need a lot of polish because I spit on each word and gave it a serious side-eye before moving on to the next one.

Two weeks ago I talked about word vomits – getting words out while not overly considering quality. Quantity is the aim in a word vomit. You’ll clean it up later.

What I’m talking about right now is a dry heave – painful excretions of each syllable. And – much like a real dry heave – less to clean up.

Are you not writing because you have other, more pressing things in your life?

Is it your family? Valid. Is it your friends? Valid. Is it your day job? Valid. Is it Netflix? Is it your bladder? Is it an excuse?

Are you not writing because you don’t know how?

Answer – do you read books, watch TV or movies, or go to plays? Then you know how. Do it.

Are you not writing because when you put down five words they look so small on that white page?

Put down five more. That’s ten. Do it.

Are you not writing because someone told you there are rules and a right way to create a novel and you’re afraid of doing it wrong?

They’re wrong. Do it.

You probably picked up on the refrain – do it.

That’s the best possible advice I can give on writing. You just have to do it. When I first started writing, I would put myself in front of my laptop and say, “Alright Mindy, make some shit happen.”

If it helps to swear at yourself – do it.

This question came from Facebook, a poster asked me to share some common mistakes for first time query-ers and submit-er’s.

Can do.

First – don’t bulk email query. Many agents prefer a personalization in queries they receive – a reason why you are querying them. This will definitely get their attention, but I do like to stress that it’s not a necessity. I landed mine with the simple, Dear Ms. Ranta, followed by a hook. But what they don’t want to see is a BCC in their email, knowing that they were just hit with a query that not only wasn’t personalized – but the writer didn’t even bother to send it to them as an individual. What’s worse? Not BCC’ing, so that everyone can see who else got the email. It’s like getting a prom invite that says, also, if you say no, I’ve already asked Sherry, Jana, Emily and Darlene, so, no pressure, but also don’t feel special, kay?

Second – don’t respond to a rejection. A simple thank you for your time is fine, but also unnecessary – hopefully that was your closing line in the query or submission, anyway. Most rejection responses are inherently defensive in nature, border on passive aggressive – or, are flat out aggressive. I’m going to assume you are smart enough to not do any of those things, and move on to the next point. Let’s be honest – why are you responding? Because there was a minor compliment in the rejection and you want to hear more about what’s working in the manuscript? Of course you do – but, that’s also not the job of this agent… that’s the job of your agent, yes. But this person isn’t your agent – they just rejected you. You’re asking them to do their job for free… nobody likes that. And again – why are you responding? Because you are hoping that your response will be so eloquent and beautiful or witty and moving that they change their minds. That’s why you’re responding. They’re not going to. Move on.

Third – DO follow query and submission guidelines. Yes, I know. They are hoops you don’t want to jump through. It’s arbitrary. It’s annoying. It’s not part of your creative process. When I first started doing the processing at my library job, one of the things that the woman who held the position before me did was handwrite the barcode on page 25 of every single book. That’s ridiculous, I thought. I’m cutting that step out. Then a book came back to the library with the dustjacket (therefore, the barcode) torn off. I couldn’t return it. I didn’t know whose it was. I couldn’t put it back in the system. Oh… so this is why she did that. Guidelines and processes exist for a reason. It may not be obvious to you why they exist, but it’s not arbitrary, and it’s not a game to see if you’ll do it right, only to buzz you out if you don’t. Going rogue and doing your own thing is cool on the creative side, not so much on the business side.

Fourth – Don’t slam someone already established in the industry. Yes, you may think you are a better writer than they are, in fact you might actually be. It doesn’t matter. They are successful for a reason – one that you haven’t figured out yet. Maybe they had an awesome hook, or a high concept plot. Maybe a frantic bidding war made that book sell for way more than what you deem it worth. Maybe you just don’t like them, personally. Doesn’t matter. Publishing is small, and if you are trashing a writer on Twitter, their agent will see it. And you might want to query them.

Fifth – Don’t tell an agent or editor in a submission that if they pass they will regret it. It will be the biggest mistake of their lives. You are a genius who is breaking down creative walls and history will remember them for being the person who held their sledgehammer for them. Quite frankly – don’t be a dick. Flip side – Don’t tell the agent or editor that this is your first novel, that you don’t really know what you are doing, that if they pass you will understand, because honestly, it’s probably pretty bad. In other words – don’t sell yourself short. Yes, these queries DO happen and either way, you’re presenting yourself as someone they don’t want to work with – the diva or the needy.

Hope that helps – some of these things are obvious, I know, but you’d be surprised how often they happen.

As always, if you have a suggestion for something you’d like me to address dealing with writing, publishing, or questions for me in general – feel free to ask! Email me at Mindy@MindyMcGinnis.com or ask me on Twitter.

Mary Crockett On Using True Crime to Pursue Fiction

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

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Today's guest for the WHAT is Marcy Crockett, author of How She Died, How I Lived and the coauthor with Madelyn Rosenberg of Dream Boy. A native of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Mary grew up as the youngest of six children in a family of misfits. She has worked as everything from a history museum director to a toilet seat hand model.

In her other life, she's an award-winning poet and teaches creative writing at Roanoke College in Virginia.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I was following the story of a young woman from my community who had been reported missing. When she was found dead, I felt… I think the closest word is gutted.

I know it’s a story that plays out over and over again in our headlines--a young woman raped and murdered, left for trash beside the road. But somehow I felt all the outrage, all the grief for those countless acts of violence, in this one young woman’s death.

I don’t know why it hit me so hard. I think the word “friend” might have been used to describe the killer. He was her “friend,” whatever that could possibly mean. She was kind to him, and he had used her kindness against her--to lure her into an isolated spot where he murdered her.

How She Died, How I Lived is a story sparked to life by grief and rage. It’s also a story continually seeking the solace of healing.

I had so many questions that I needed to write--about the far-reaching effects of violence in a community; about friendship; about how young women can face the world knowing with certainty that someone out there, given the chance, would kill them.

This books doesn’t really answer those questions--but to my mind, it at least puts them out there. Which is about the best I can do.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

For me, it’s all about character. I did my best to get inside the head of my narrator--or maybe I let her inside my head. Then I followed where she wanted to go.

And I have to say, where we ended up surprised even me.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

I have never had the plot firmly in place. At all. Ever. Haha. Not kidding.

But oddly enough, though I’m an eternal pantser, the novel I’m dreaming about now has a pretty good plot arc already established, though I haven’t written a word as of yet.

So maybe I’m changing! And that’s a good thing. If I’m not growing as a writer, I’m not really writing.

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Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I have more ideas than I have time to write them. I’m a slow writer, so the issue for me is finding the story I will want to stick with through for several years to get it into its final form. That’s a big commitment. I need to feel an important connection with the story. I need to believe it matters in some way, even if only to me.

I’m really lucky that I’ve had that connection with How She Died, How I Lived. It’s a story I truly believe in, and for me, the years it took were worth it.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

It’s not easy! I have one story, for example, that is burning a hole in my brain, but I know I’m not ready to write it yet. It’s going to take a ton of research. So the plan is that while I write my current WIP, I’ll follow through on the research for my next project. That way, it’ll be ready to go when it’s time for the next thing.

I also have an idea for a funny contemporary that I want to write with a coauthor. I think humor is much more fun to write with a partner, so I’m just waiting for someone to be open at the same time I’m open to take me up on that! Hopefully, that’s something I could juggle while pushing solo projects ahead simultaneously.

I have many cats and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

Cat-butt-face is an actual medical condition, and I have it. My face attracts catt-butt. The doctors cannot help.

That said, I have three excellent writing buddies--Mr. Paws, Lady Grey, and Daisy, my enormous hound who thinks she’s a lap dog.

 

 

Do You #Nano?

Welcome to November. It’s National Novel Writing Month, known as NaNoWriMo, NaNo for short well… shorter. If you aren’t familiar with NaNo, it’s a writing challenge that takes place over the entire month, the idea being that if you write 1,667 words each day, you’ll have 50,000 by the end of November. Whether that’s an entire novel for you, the beginning of one, or the ending, it’s a heck of a challenge and a good lesson in powering through.

I wasn’t always a NaNo fan. I never liked the idea of being beholden to a word count that someone else set for me, or checking in with a website on a daily – or if I’m feeling particularly needy – hourly basis. I partially resented NaNo simply because it was something everyone else is doing, and I tend to be suspicious of things that other people like.

Then, in 2016, I needed to finish Given to the Earth. That’s my longest book, clocking in at nearly 100,000 words, and while I loved the story and was motivated to work on it, I knew my usual word count goal of 1000 a day wasn’t going to put me near my deadline. This book was a mammoth, and I felt like I was attacking it with a toothpick.

The Nano requirement of 1,667 words a day would push me to do more, and so, needing a boost, I signed up. The Nano site is free, easy to use, and offers more than just a word count accumulator. You can have writing buddies, check in with them for accountability, hop onto the forums if you need a break from your isolation, or even check out some pep talks from famous authors.

And while community is great, what I needed in 2016 wasn’t that. I’m a goal driven person, and suddenly I had something in front of me that appealed directly to that aspect of my personality. A progress bar. I’d get lost in what I was producing, take a quick assessment, then dump that number into Nano to watch my brown bar turn blue. It was rewarding, even on days that I struggled for a hour only to produce 200 words, that blue still crept forward, even if only minutely.

You “win” Nano by hitting the 50k word count goal by the end of the month. Winning means that you get a little rosette that says WINNER and weirdly, those pixels make you feel pretty awesome. I not only “won,” Nano, but finished Given to the Earth by writing a whopping 56,235 words that month. That’s an insane output, and I’m happy to say because of the nature of it being a sequel as well as already halfway finished when I began Nano, the first draft was fairly clean for being written at such a breakneck pace.

2017 found me in the same situation. I was promoting my newest release – This Darkness Mine – traveling, putting together this podcast, maintain the blog, and trying to hit a deadline for my upcoming book, Heroine. It was tight, it was tough. So I NaNo’d again. And while I did not “win” Nano – I only wrote 34,245 words that month – I did what I set out to do, using Nano to finish the manuscript and hit my due date.

This year is a little different. I’m not on deadline, or under contract. For the first time since 2010, I found myself working on a project that is just for me. It’s an adult historical novel with dual timelines, an audience jump for me. I don’t know if it will sell. I have no guarantees with this one – and I admit, that does take the motivation out of the project a little, as I write for a living now. But there is something freeing in writing only for myself, allowing time for experimentation and not beating myself up for every word I delete, and every minute I simply stare at the computer, not typing.

Okay, that’s a lie. I’m still definitely beating myself up about both those things.

But, returned to this new space of writing only for myself was weirdly intimidating, and I found motivation somewhat lacking. November 1st rolled around and I thought – why not?

I signed up on the first and promptly decided to defrost the deep freeze and make cinnamon rolls from scratch. These are not normal Mindy activities. This is called procrastination. I didn’t write a word on November 1st, which mean that my goal to catch up on the 2nd was over 3000 words. That’s a lot for one day.

I chipped away at it, got it knocked down a bit, went to a book festival on the 3rd where I peddled my wares all day, drove home, and sat in front of my computer to face a blinking cursor and a feeling of failure. I was back at needed to put in around 3 thousand words, actually more like 3 thousand three hundred. It was 8 pm. It felt insurmountable. So I wrote a little bit, and plugged it into my progress bar. It was about 200 words.

They were good words, but there were only 200 of them. I stared at the last sentence, unhappy with it. Here it is :

Her panic was tame; what was passing through the crowd gathered in front of the Archer’s Ferry schoolhouse was a wild cousin, its presence made known not through frantic movement or rippling screams, but rather a stillness of limbs and silenced voices, paired with questioning eyes that asked each other – what do we do?

Wait – does that sound like that’s my left eyes asking MY right eye what do we do? Or is it my eyes asking someone else’s eyes, what do we do? I flicked my pen up and down for a minute, then carried the laptop into the kitchen and read it to the boyfriend, followed by my question about pairs of eyes or individual eyes.

He looked at me over his coffee and said – maybe you’re over thinking this?

It was a valid question, but I still didn’t have an answer so I texted my extremely reliable critique partner RC Lewis with my query. She replied within a minute – I read it right the first time. You’re overthinking.

Yep. I was. Instead of plowing forward I was overanalyzing what little I’d done, picking away at what I’d produced – which wasn’t pushing that blue bar any further ahead. This is also called procrastination, by the way.

Fine.

FINE.

I took my laptop upstairs and laid down in bed – my preferred writing spot – and gave myself a pep talk you probably won’t find on the Nano site: Mindy, write some fucking words.

So I did. I wrote in the spirit of Nano, plowing forward in what I have always called a word vomit – just letting it all come out. Not editing, not staring, not over thinking. Just writing. It was 1 AM by the time I finished, but I did make up the deficit to hit my goal, a total accumulation of 5 thousand words in the first 3 days of November.

In fact, I’d like to brag a little and say my actual count at the moment is 5 thousand and twelve.

I had two somewhat related questions come from listeners last month. One asking, how do authors stay motivated throughout a book, not getting discouraged by rational thoughts? How do you power through? And the other stating: Sometimes reading too much on craft stunts my creative process and I worry too much that it’s all shit.

First of all – me too. Seriously. I absolutely read what I wrote the day or hour before and believe that it his horrible, unpublishable dreck. I’m usually typing away at something and shaking my head at the same time, because I think it sucks.

It’s true. I’ve got eight published novels and receive complimentary emails and tweets and have fans tell me to my face I’m their favorite author and guys – it just doesn’t matter. Whatever I’m creating right now is going to be the book that reveals me as a fraud and a hack. I have no confidence when I’m creating, so if you’re in the same place – congratulations. You’re a writer.

Every good writer I know thinks they are terrible.

Every writer I’ve ever met who thinks they are gifted is… not.

If you’re bored, Google the Dunning-Kruger effect.

But to answer the first question – how do you power through?

First of all, recall my moment this week when I was analyzing a handful of words, wondering if they indicated that one eye was questioning the other, or a pair of eyes questioning someone else’s eyes. That’s editing. In fact, that might even be copy-editing. It’s not actually writing. Now – don’t get me wrong, editing IS writing, but I’m talking about the actual act of getting something down, producing a first draft that you can go back and fix. I needed to move my characters forward, give them something to say or do, instead of – literally – stranding them just staring at each other.

One of my favorite quotes from this podcast has been in an interview with middle grade author Liesl Shurtliff who said – “I can’t edit nothing.” Truth. Stop those rational thoughts while you’re drafting. Get the words OUT before you question them. Move on. Move forward. That little blue bar on the Nano site will motivate you to charge ahead, instead of look back.

The first draft is not a time for rational, analytical thought. Earlier I called it a word vomit. I mean that. Think of the actual physical act of vomiting. You are incapable of thought at the moment, you have one goal and one purpose – GET IT OUT. You’ll clean it up later, right? You’re not cleaning it up while you’re still puking, are you? Nope.

Yes, I’m disgusting.

Yes, it also works.

People often ask me about my process and I’m often at a loss to describe it beyond that really horrible graphic notion of vomiting out words. I sit in front of my computer and try to move what’s inside of me – out. That’s my process. I know it’s a simplification, but I don’t know how else to describe it.

Will you find the term word vomit in a book about craft. No. Does it work? Yes.

To address the second listeners thought on craft stunting her creative process – yeah, I get that. I can’t even tell you for sure what craft actually means. To me, it sounds a bit stuffy, a term used to make some of us feel accomplished, while make others feel inadequate.

I feel inadequate when craft comes up.

I once had a friend who writes adult literary novels tell me I could teach a class on structure. I told her I couldn’t, because I don’t actually know what it is.

That’s the truth. I’ve never taken a writing class in my life. Seriously. Not a single one. Not in high school, not in college, not as an adult or at writer’s conferences. I majored in English literature studying what others have written – not creating my own.

However, that study – and a lifetime of consuming stories, novels, plays, movies and television – had taught me structure. I absorbed it subconsciously as a viewer, and it shows in my writing.

Craft is an intimidating word, and I urge you not to think about it too much. Write your story, see what comes out of you. Fearing that you aren’t good enough will follow you no matter what, so set that aside as well. Inadequacy will dog your heels whether you’re a high school drop out of have an MFA – trust me, I know writers in both those situations and they’re both really, really good. And neither of them believes it.

Trust your gut. Trust your instinct. Write what’s inside you.

Just get it out.