Let’s Talk Career Direction

Want to be published? Want your book out in the world to be read by a bunch of strangers? If you’re serious about writing, then the answer is probably, “Uh, yeah. Duh.” Sure we love the stories we craft and we love the act of writing itself, but the point (for most at least) is that other people read and enjoy that writing. *Okay, so how do you do it?

Well, there’s a tricky question. Back in the day, it used to be easy. Take it to a publisher. If it’s good they’d publish it. Then publishers got too busy and too big, they had too many submissions rolling in to address them all.  Enter agents. Gatekeepers of sorts. Today, most publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts–meaning it has to come through an agent. If you look at the “Big Six,” Hachettte Book Group, HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and Random House all require a literary agent. MacMillan and Penguin do not. (It will be interesting to see which way Random Penguin goes–yes, I will always call it that). Smaller and indie presses, like Dalkey Archive Press, Press 53, Entangled and Month9Books don’t require an agent, but having one can get your manuscript read sooner. There are also publishers like Angry Robot and it’s imprint Strange Chemistry that have open submission windows for unrepresented authors once a year (please note that AR and SC’s links go to last year’s open door. They haven’t announced one for 2013 yet).

So what does this mean? Basically, if you want to publish traditionally, you should look into getting an agent. If your dream, like mine, is to see your book on shelves in major stores, an agent is the way to go. It is almost impossible to get a store like Barnes and Noble to shelve your books if you self-publish or go with a tiny publisher.

But.

If you don’t care about that. If you just want your book published and out in the world, there are a lot of other options. Musa Publishing, for example, is an e-book only press if you still want the backing of a house. OnStage Publishing is a small press that produces both print and e-books. Or, you can self-publish. Amazon and Create Space are frequently used formats for self-publishing e-books. The problem with them, though, is the volume of self-pubbed books they have available. How do you make yours stand out? How do you ensure it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle?

This can also be a matter of concern if you go to a small press. Small publishers may not have the time or money to market your book. You may have to do most, and in some cases all, of the legwork. This means literally going to stores and libraries and begging for your books to be shelved, school visits, blog tours, websites, tweets, Facebook–getting a presence online and in the real world. Online, obviously, is more important for e-books. For every self-published e-book that makes it big (I mean Amanda Hocking and, yes, E.L. James big), there are millions of others that are barely read.

There’s something else to think about if your long term goal is seeing your books on shelves in major stores. If you have already published on a small scale, low sales numbers could scare potential agents and big houses away. I’m not saying it definitely will, an excellent book is an excellent book, but there’s always that chance. So I caution you to think about that if your plan is to start small and go bigger.

It boils down to this: where do you want your career to go? There is no right or wrong way. Each person has their own path and what works for one may not work well for another. Timid and shy people (like me) may have a hard time self-promoting, they may need the marketing of publishing house, or an agent backing them. Outgoing folks may be able to market up a storm.

My recommendation? Imagine your book. Dream as big as you want. Do you see it on shelves in big stores? Do you see it on the top of Amazon’s e-book list? Do you see it in local libraries and in the hands of friends and family? Whatever it is, go do it. Query agents if that’s the route you want to go, or hire an editor and self-publish, or send it out to those small publishers. It doesn’t matter how big the dream is. Go make it happen.

I leave you with the song that’s been playing in my head as I wrote this post. Runnin’ Down a Dream. Now quit procrastinating on the internet and chase that dream!

*This is by no means an all inclusive guide to publishing, and doesn’t even come close to listing all the publishers out there. I intend this as something to get you thinking and maybe highlight some options or issues you hadn’t previously considered. Do your research. Google is your friend!

Um…What’s An Agent?

It turns out blogging isn’t easy as I initially thought it would be. I started with the grand idea of blogging twice a week, then twice a month, and then, well, life got in the way. I may have neglected my little blog here, but I haven’t forgotten it. I’ve been so caught up with revising my manuscript that every time I’ve thought about a blog post my brain has rebelled. “No!” the cells holler. “We can’t think of anything else! Our limited supply of witty and clever and interesting things has been used up. We’re a dry inkwell, leave us be!!”

Well, today I gave those brain cells a what-for and returned to my dear blog. Take that brain!

So, yeah, I’ve been immersed in revising my manuscript, which inevitably comes up any time someone (usually Hubby) mentions my writing. The conversation usually goes like this:

Hubby: “I can’t wait for Sarah to finish her revisions and get a big book deal so I can quit work and play golf all day.”

Me: “Yeah, that’s not how it works.”

Friend: “Revisions, what for?”

Hubby: “Her agent wanted her to rework some things.”

Friend: “Agent, what’s that?”

Since I’ve signed with a literary agent (still not old, squeeee!!), that last question is the one I encounter second-most. (The first being, “what’s your book about?”) Friends, family, people I don’t even know that Hubby mentions my writing to (I know, I should be glad he’s proud of me, but quiet, mousy Sarah usually just wants to stand against the wall and not be noticed, so Hubby bringing up my writing induces an “eek! hide!” response. I’m working on it.) none of them know exactly what an agent is or what one does. Now, I could talk at length about what a good agent does, especially my agent, who is fabulous beyond words, but with the average attention span growing shorter and shorter, I find myself with a one to two sentence window to break it down for them.

“It’s kind of like a real estate agent, except they choose you, and it’s really competitive. They’ve got all the industry contacts and shop your book around to the right publisher.”

This answer usually gets the “Oh, you’re getting published!” response. People hear publisher and run with it, despite my, admittedly quiet and soft-spoken, protests of “No, not yet, but hopefully” before letting it go. (I can’t help it, I just don’t have a loud voice and I’m easy to talk over. At work when I pass someone in the hall and they say “hey,” I always end up doing this embarrassing thing where I say “hey” back, but no sound comes out, so I’m really just making some weird mouth movement).

I’ve tried a different approach. “It’s like a sports agent.” Which brings blank stares from people who don’t know how a sports agent works, or nods and smiles from those who are pretending. Honestly, I’m not surprised the sports comparison doesn’t turn on cartoon light bulbs. The closest most people have come to a sports agent is Jerry Maguire which, let’s face it, doesn’t really compare to the literary world that much. (I’ve yet to hear my agent yell “Show me the money!” Although, I have to admit, it would be kind of cool).

I’ve even tried “It’s sort of like Greek mythology. Publishers would be the gods on Olympus, writers–mortals–can’t get to them, so they need agents–demi-gods–to act as intermediaries. The agents get lots of requests, though, and can only represent a small number of mortals.” That’s not so great either, though.

Frustrated with my lack of a good response, I asked some *writer peeps. “What is an agent?” Here are some of their responses (with their permission of course):

“A substance that can bring about a chemical reaction or a biological effect.”

Hmm, perhaps I should have been more specific.

“They pick you based on talent and represent you because they have connections and the publishing companies don’t have time to deal with loads of peons. A talent agent gets you gigs and a literary agent gets you publishing deals.”

Closer, but let’s go deeper.

“They’re sales people (to publishing houses), lawyers (contracts), editors (self-explanatory), psychics (predicting market trends), accountants (fees and royalties), marketing assistants (this will sell/this won’t sell/this will this more palatable), translators (the editor means this…the contract means this…) and babysitters. As well as gods/goddesses.”

Yes, yes, yes to all of this. Agents wear many, many hats and roll sevearl jobs into one. I think it’s hard to wrap your mind around how much they do if you’re not neck-deep in the publishing world. How to break this down more simply, though?

“An agent is definitely a middle man. But I kind of think of mine as a representative.”

I love the word “representative.” I think it combines a lot of those hats into one big, ten gallon Stetson. Someone else used the term “advocate.” Love it.

There were a lot of excellent responses, but I think these capture an agent best.

A literary agent is someone who spots a talented writer with a great story, takes what the writer created and shows the writer what needs to be done to make their book the best they can write, what needs to be done to make it marketable, and pushes the writer in that direction. Then the agent takes that best book to the publishers and tries to show them the beauty they saw in the work. If things go well, the agent negotiates the resulting publishing contract, then sees the writer along through their career.

Of course, this varies slightly from agent to agent. Some are more hands on, they like to be involved in the writing and editing process. Some are only interested in one book, or one series, not the writer’s whole career. Some don’t do much at all (I recommend staying away from these–See Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors when you’re looking for agents). A writer has to decide what they want in an agent, what sort of relationship they’re looking for, and seek out the agents who fits them best.

If I have to boil it down to future people Hubby may blather about me to (he means well and I love him for it, even if I may want to sink into the furniture at the time) I think I’ll say this: agents are advocates, who believe in the writers the choose to take on as clients enough to devote their time and effort into helping those writers succeed. They have the publishing experience and contacts the writers lack and represent the writers to the publishers to sell their books.

It’s not some jazzy dressed up metaphor, but I think it conveys the gist of what an agent does. If the person I’m talking to is interested enough, I’ll keep going and explain all the hats the agent can wear, in particular my agent.

What do you think? How do you see an agent?

For some common misconceptions about agents, check out Literary Agent Carly Watters blog post on the subject.

*Special thanks to the writers at AW who contributed their thoughts, especially “SomethingOrOther,” “Maramoser,” “The Ink Goddess,” and “missesdash.”

Randomness #7- Christmas of “Oh Well”

About six months after Hubby and I got married we had our first big disagreement: what do for Christmas.We both had our own traditions with our own families and neither wanted to give them up. It was my dad who suggested a compromise. We would see one family before Christmas, one family after, and do our own thing Christmas Eve and Day.

Then Daddy was diagnosed with cancer–Stage IV. So the compromise went out the window. We spent our first married Christmas with my family celebrating what would turn out to be Daddy’s last Christmas. We also spent the next year, the first Christmas without my dad, with my family. To balance things out, we spent the next two Christmases with Hubby’s family. So this year, our fifth married Christmas, we were evened out, back on track of our compromise and ready to put this plan into action. Spend Christmas together starting our own traditions.

We had great plans. Hubby wanted to build a gingerbread replica of our house on Christmas Eve, then we’d drink hot chocolate and watch Christmas movies, eat finger foods, open a couple presents, go to the eleven pm church service to ring in Christmas, wake up Christmas morning and open presents, eat breakfast, play, cook lunch, watch Les Mis, and chill that night with leftovers and the Grinch. The day after Christmas, we would hit up Lowe’s early and buy next year’s decorations cheap.

Oh, how naive we were.

Let me break down how this really happened.

Christmas Eve

We woke up kind of late. Oops.

We didn’t have all the ingredients we needed for gingerbread and lunch, so off to the store.

Finally, around 1 pm, we made it home and started the gingerbread. And by started, I mean we looked at the recipe and realized we’d have to double it to make a replica of our house. I began mixing dough while Hubby went back to the store. Then we realized our replica would mean an 11 inch wide house. 11 inches! Yeah, I put the kibosh on that idea. We scaled back to a more manageable 8×6 sort of replica–okay, it would have a porch. Hubby drew the pattern while I rolled out the dough. We cut each piece, which was way more time consuming than I thought. I made icing while the gingerbread baked. Then finally, finally, we got to the construction part.

Except the pieces didn’t all fit. So Hubby filed them down with a microplane. We put the house together (wrong the first time), decorated, and realized it was already 5:30 and we had grumblies in our tumblies (as my grandfather used to say). Oh, and we forgot that one of our finger foods, lil’ smokies in bbq sauce, was supposed to simmer for two hours. Oh well, at least we’d finished our first ever gingerbread house.

Around 6:30 we sat down to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” while we ate, then realized we’d forgotten the hot chocolate. Oh well again. Two hours later we decided to watch “White Christmas.” Then we remembered we’d forgotten to bake cornbread for the Christmas lunch dressing. We only had an hour before the Christmas Eve service, so I mixed the batter and popped it in the fridge. Bad move. When we got home. the batter was too thick. I glopped it in the iron skillet and baked it. Did I mention it was after midnight? The cornbread looked weird, lumpy and white, but tasted fine, so we decided to roll with it and go to bed.

Christmas Day

We woke up and opened our presents from Santa. (You better believe Santa came! What’s Christmas without toys?). We ate some cinnamon rolls then opened our presents to each other. Hubby did FANTASTIC by the way. He surprised me for pretty much the first time ever, with an antique typewriter. I’ve wanted one for years. It’s SO. COOL. The original ribbon still kind of works, well enough for me to type some random sentences.

Then we got to making lunch. Well, I started making lunch. Hubby forgot he’d planned to make egg nog. So he looked up a recipe while I started the dressing.

Except, my dressing recipe didn’t look right. In fact, it looked…oh no. I’d been going off the wrong recipe. No wonder the cornbread didn’t turn out right. I had to make another skillet of cornbread (the right cornbread) while cooking the rest of the dressing items.

Meanwhile, Hubby still worked on his egg nog. I pestered him to start the creme brulee, which had to chill for three hours. He made egg nog. Did I mention I don’t drink egg nog? I also asked when he needed to start the cranberry sauce. Didn’t it need time to set up? “It only takes ten minutes. I’ve got this,” he said.

I finally got the dressing together and in the oven. Hubby finally finished his egg nog and started clearing the table for lunch. Then started the creme brulee. We’d just have dessert after our Les Mis. No biggie.

But he beat the custard too long and it was, well, really foamy. As in, all foam. Oh well, we’d try it anyway. (It was turning into the Christmas of “Oh well”). Out came the dressing and in went the creme brulee.

I started cutting the ham, a pre-cooked Honeybaked Ham that we’d taken out of the freezer the day before. It was still frozen. Hubby started the cranberry sauce, then remembered it only took ten minutes to cook. He’d forgotten it had to chill.

So, by the time we sat down for lunch, the dressing had gotten kind of cold, the ham had to be microwaved twice, and the cranberry sauce was literally steaming. We decided to try it anyway, only to realize Hubby hadn’t added enough sugar. Talk about tart!

All we could do was laugh. We sat there with our hot, tart cranberries and cool dressing and just laughed. Oh well.

We cleaned up lunch and had a great battle with the lightsabers Santa brought Hubby, then with the Bop It game Santa brought me. Atticus roamed around in his Santa suit Hubby had found on sale and tried to eat the toy mice we’d gotten for the cats.

Then we bundled up and trekked to the movies to see Les Mis. The parking lot was pretty full, but we didn’t wor–Holy crap the line was out the door. Did I mention it was raining?

We decided to got to a different theater. I bought tickets online, reserved our seats–back row!–and we drove across town, bought our popcorn, found our seats–uh oh. Not the back row. The front row. We couldn’t even see the top of the screen! Frustrated at the theater’s poorly designed seating chart, we tried to swap our tickets for a later show, one that wouldn’t involve cricks in our necks from looking straight up for three hours. Sold out. Hubby got a refund and we decided to go back to the other theater.

On the way, Hubby realized we’d forgotten we were going to make gingerbread cookies for the neighbors. I’d mixed the dough the day before, all we had to do was bake it. So Hubby drove me home and I baked cookies for an hour while he bought the tickets in advance this time. (My first gingerbread cookies. They were delicious, I might add!).

We finally saw Les Mis, got home around 9:30, and settled in with a plate of leftovers and the “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” The real version, the cartoon, not that crappy one from a few years ago. We’d recorded it while we were at the mov–nope. Some stinking basketball game ran over and cut into the Grinch’s time. We saw five minutes of the Grinch before the recording cut off. At least Hubby’s creme brulee turned out, and it was pretty good!

It stormed something awful last night. The wind howled, our decorations blew across the yard, ribbons and bows came loose. There were tornadoes in some parts of the state. Neither of us slept. This morning, Lowe’s had already put away most of their Christmas decorations, so we didn’t really find anything we wanted for next year.

It wasn’t the Christmas we’d planned, but it was definitely one to remember. Our first Christmas on our own. Next year, we’ll plan better. We now know just how long gingerbread houses take, and that cranberry sauce needs to be cooked in advance. We’ll buy movie tickets ahead of time and probably just buy the Grinch. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but, for me, it was kind of just right.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas, or a Happy Hanukkah, or at least a good vacation. For me, the vacation is over. I have a lot of revising left to do and I can’t wait to start writing again!

Featured! Agent-Author Chat

Hey guys! I’m really honored to be featured on Krista Van Dolzer’s latest Agent-Author Chat. Scoot over there and check out my query for DOOR NUMBER FOUR, the manuscript that caught my agent, Mandy Hubbard’s eye, as well as some great advice from Mandy herself.

While you’re there, follow Krista, because she’s pretty awesome.

What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been- My Agent Journey

As I’m sure you guessed from the title, I’ve got some pretty big news. Okay, that’s putting it mildly. I’m freakin’ ecstatic! I have an agent! After several manuscripts, lots of queries, tons of tears, and a boatload of perseverance. Here’s how it all went down:

Back in May, I had this crazy dream one night. I don’t remember the date, but I remember the day. It was the day my orthopedic surgeon removed Carl (my leg brace) for good and cleared me to drive again. My brother, and chauffeur for the day, went to lunch with me (lunch buffet at Pizza Hut–just in case you were curious), and I told him about my weird dream. Now crazy dreams are nothing new, but this one…it felt special.

Soon as I got free time, I transcribed my dream idea into words. First, a synopsis, then a first chapter. Then the words just kept coming. I kept writing and next thing I knew, I had 30k or so written and started sending it off to my amazing critique partner. I wrote and edited and finally got it done, then edited some more and got it ready to send to betas. They liked it okay but had some concerns. So I edited some more, went through another round of betas, drafted my query, compiled a list of agents to submit to, researched those agents (i.e. stalked), whittled it down, then, finally, I was ready.

Four months after my dream, on October 12, I decided to submit a round of queries, not really expecting anything to happen, but hoping I would at least see the kind of responses I got to my query. I submitted to twelve wonderful agents, any of which I would have felt extremely lucky to have in my corner–although I must say, I did have a couple favorites.

Because I’m my own special sort of weird, and OCD, I put the agents and their submission info in a color coded spreadsheet, alphabetized by name, grouped by submission requirements, then alphabetized within the groups. See? Kind of crazy. Okay, and maybe I was really nervous about submitting and the more I played with the pretty colors, the longer I put off actually hitting “send.” But send I did, finally. Then I did that thing where I tell myself not to get my hopes up, no that blinking light on my phone is not an email from an agent, agents don’t respond that quickly, they’re busy people and–

Holy crap it’s from an agent! Just two hours later, I got a response, from one of my top choice agents. Not just a request for a full, but a literal “YES, PLEASE!” written just like that, in all caps. I couldn’t believe it! I did a happy dance in my chair, completely forgetting my office door and window blinds were open, and that I’m in a high traffic area of the building. When I collected myself, I started to read over my manuscript again, stopped myself, and submitted the full. I marked it down on my spreadsheet, colored the cell green, then I tried to put it out of my head.

I got another couple requests, but none made me quite as excited. Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled with each request, but there was something special about that first email, about the level of excitement for my work. My work! Then I got some rejections. My attempts not to think about it failed. I still jumped every time that green light on my phone blinked, even though I kept telling myself it could take months for the agent to respond. Sometimes they have fulls for–

Nope. Four days after I submitted the full, the agent responded. I took a deep breath, opened my spreadsheet, and clicked the email, ready to mark “Rejection 10/16/12″ down and color it in red (of course). But it wasn’t a rejection. It wasn’t an acceptance either. The agent said she found a lot to love, but had some concerns. She asked if I would be up for exclusive revisions. Uh…yeah, of course I would! I did another happy dance and tried to call Hubby, but he was in California for work and didn’t have his phone. The most exciting news of my writing career and the one person I wanted to tell was in Cali-freaking-fornia. I had to sit on the news for hours, then practically squealed in the phone when he finally called. It’s like all that excitement just built, and built, like Mentos in Coke, then came spewing out all at once.

The agent and I exchanged a couple emails, then the next night I received her notes. All six pages of them. Six! Yeah, it was a bit overwhelming, and I didn’t know quite what to think. Then I read a blog post she referred me to by Imogen Howson. Her experience was similar to mine: five or six pages of revision notes, and a lot of trepidation. It worked out well for Imogen, so I decided to give it a shot.

The agent wanted the first seventy-five pages revised. Full of excitement and nervous energy, I opened my manuscript, laid my fingers on the keyboard, and sat there. All of a sudden, I was completely petrified. “I can’t do this. How did I ever think I could do this?” I opened a new document, and found the blank page too intimidating. I went back to the original manuscript and tried writing a new first chapter. Then I deleted it and went back to the blank screen. Nothing.

So I closed everything and tried to breathe. The revisions weren’t just big, they were world-altering. Literally. I had to move the story to an entirely new planet. Problem was, I didn’t know the planet yet, and I was still too close to the original story. I needed space, in all sorts of ways. (The great folks at Absolute Write helped me realize this too).

I turned off the computer, and turned on the television. Finally, I had an excuse to make Hubby watch all the nerdy science shows! “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking,” “Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole,” all the space shows I could find! Coincidentally, the Sunday before I received the revision request, Hubby and I had watched “How the Universe Works,” perfect timing, eh?

Instead of going back to the computer, I pulled out my trusty legal pad, and began drawing: a planet, continents, oceans. I named the planet, the continents, and the countries, wrote back stories for how the people found the planet and how they terraformed it. I figured out how far it was from the sun and how many hours there were in a day. I named other planets in the solar system.

Then, I finally turned my computer on again, and started to write. Those first couple chapters were the hardest. I tried jumping ahead in the story, but had to go back to the beginning. When I finally had something (that I thought was crap) I sent it off to my CP. Shockingly, she loved it! She suggested places I could expand the world-building, and I was off again. Writing like crazy.

I wrote and tweaked and edited and fretted for a month. Exactly a month, although I didn’t plan it that way. Then, November 16, when I thought I couldn’t possibly edit any more, I bit the bullet and submitted, jumping every time that stupid phone light flashed. After a couple other emails, twenty minutes later, she responded. She’d read a little and liked it so far and would get back to me when she’d read the rest.

If you follow this blog, you know I’m the self-deprecating sort, so I prepared myself for her to hate the rest. Readied myself for rejection. Two hours later, I was at lunch with Hubby and the green light blinked. I saw it was from the agent and held my breath.

She loved it. She’d read the whole thing and enjoyed it so much she offered rep right then! Yes, I jumped up and down in my seat in the restaurant. Yes, strangers gave me weird looks. No, I didn’t care. Nor did I care when I jumped more in the parking lot. I still can’t believe it. I have an agent. I don’t think those words will ever get old.

We talked on the phone Monday night and although I was nervous and I’m sure I sounded like some kind of country bumpkin (nerves tend to deepen my already thick Southern drawl), I soon felt totally at ease talking to her. She’s everything I wanted in an agent, but didn’t dare to hope for. She gave me the chance to go back to the other agents who had my manuscript and give them a chance to offer. Instead, I withdrew my submission from them. Let’s face it, I knew as soon as I got that first email I would accept if she offered rep. The excitement she showed from the outset, and continues to show, well, it sold me. I have someone as stoked about this story as I am, how could I say no to that?

Who is that someone? Well, I’m thrilled to say I’m now represented by Mandy Hubbard at D4EO Literary Agency!!

So, dear reader, I want to thank you for going on this journey with me so far. I still have a long way to go to my dream of publication, and a lot of revising left. But dreams can come true. Just ask my main character in this story. One night she was a wacky dream, the next, a character coming to life on the page. I can’t wait to finish telling her story, and I can’t wait to see how it weaves in with mine. Thank you, Mandy, for having faith in the story and in me, and thank you readers for being interested in what a quiet girl from Alabama has to say.

Why Scientists Should Be Looking To Writers

When you think of a happy family, what image comes to mind? A mother and father, two or three kids, maybe sitting around the dinner table, laughing, one of them slipping a veggie to the family dog?

What about romantic relationships? A couple walking through a park, holding hands? Perhaps a midnight swim in a cool lake, or leaning across a table in a low lit restaurant?

When you think of war, what do you see? Tanks? Explosions? Men in camouflage running across sandy terrain with bulky packs? Those same men around a fire at night, this time in their undershirts, joking with each other and thinking about their loved ones at home?

Think of anything: spaceships, a company office, a baseball team, a band, an animal shelter, a Hollywood movie set, an African safari.

How much of the images that come to mind is based on what you’ve seen on television, or in movies, or read in a book? I would hesitate a guess and say most of it. That’s my experience anyway. I’ve never experienced war, or been on a spaceship, or gone to Africa. Every image I have of these things, every preconceived notion has been told or depicted to me by someone else.

I was thinking about this the other day and realized that writers play a pretty big part in shaping our world. Not just our world, but our idea of the world. This realization was little intimidating at first. I mean, the ideas and pictures in my head could possibly influence the ideas and pictures of someone else.

How many of you, when thinking about the distant future, immediately picture flying cars and metallic clothes? Sky high cities and robots? Even if that image is displaced by something else, was it the first thing that came to mind? Did you imagine something like the Jetsons? I do. Because that’s what I’ve been told the future will look like. Popular culture has ingrained it in us for decades.

But this idea, this notion that writers set the molds, it’s not just intimidating, it’s freeing. I’m currently revising a manuscript and setting it, literally, on another world. When I first sat down and looked at the blank page, I was scared to death. Then, slowly, I began to grasp that this new world could be anything I wanted it to be.

No longer am I constrained within the realm of plausibility. I can shape continents, create technologies, craft skylines, and build cities. A couple days ago, I was describing this weapon I thought of to my husband. Hubby, always the engineer, looked at me and said “That wouldn’t work like that. It’s not realistic.” I turned back and said “So? Just because it wouldn’t work now, with the technology we currently have, doesn’t mean it would never work.”

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick are a great example. Look at “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Computers that were small screens and operated by touch, flat screen monitors, voice activated systems, video teleconferencing. All these inventions that were, in 1972, a mere dream, implausible, not realistic. Yet, we have them today.

You may have heard about Apple suing Samsung for patent infringement of their iPad design. Here’s what I find most interesting about the suit. Samsung argued they couldn’t infringe because the ideas all came from Kubrick’s film, and from another called “The Tomorrow People,” not from Apple. Did these films influence Steve Jobs? Well, I don’t know, but I think the argument is there that it could have. Did “Friends” influence the way any of you saw life in New York City? Did “Sleepless in Seattle” influence your thoughts on love? Did “Platoon” influence how you saw war? Or “Apollo 13″ how you viewed space travel?

What I do know is this: scientists, researchers, engineers, and a slew of others have the job of thinking outside the box within the constraints of plausibility. But writers…writers get to push further. We get to expand our minds and create whatever we want, and dare the scientists to catch up. Clarke, and then Kubrick, created these technologies, and forty years later the world made his ideas a reality.

Arthur O’Shaughnessy famously wrote, “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” I say, that’s exactly what writers are. The ones who dare to dream. Who knows, that scene you’re describing now may be the first image someone else thinks of when they hear of that place, that couple you just wrote may shape another person’s view of a happy marriage, and those “implausible” inventions you’re creating in your mind today, might one day become a reality.

Characters Are Basically a Snoopy Balloon

A writer friend and I were discussing characters today. She asked me how I make my characters’ voices unique. I had to stop and think about it for a while. I’ve mentioned this before, but I usually just see a character in my head and write them down. It’s not so much that I create them, rather, they find me.

Of course, that’s not a helpful answer, so I thought harder. In the post I linked above, I said I see characters as real people, but the question is, how do you get to know those people? Well, I get to know them by writing them. That’s the most unsatisfying answer ever, isn’t it? It’s the best one I’ve got though. I get an idea and write a couple chapters. I get a feel for the character.

Then I make a list of each character and their traits. What are their flaws? Their strengths? Their quirks? Do they have any scars? How did they get them? Do they chew pen caps? Are they sarcastic? Quick tempered? Easy going? I make a big list, then I make sure I write them in a manner that is consistent with those traits. Sometimes the character changes and morphs over the course of the story, or over the course of the drafts and I have to go back and reevaluate who I thought the character was. The more I write, the more I get to know them and how they would react to different situations.

I imagine having conversations with the characters. What would they say? How would they sound? How would they move as they talk? I observe people and combine different mannerisms into a single character. Then I write some more. Each draft rounds the characters out and adds more dimension, breathes life into them. It’s almost like inflating a balloon. You start with a flat piece of rubber or Mylar. As you pump air into it, it starts to take shape, until you have the finished product. Then it can float around Times Square, or wherever, knocking into buildings and creating all sorts of drama in your story like a runaway Snoopy balloon on Thanksgiving.

I read a blog once (and blast it, I can’t remember where. Yes, I just said “blast it.” That’s how I roll) that compared writing to drawing. An artist starts with a basic shape, then goes back and adds detail, then color, then more detail, until they have a final drawing. It’s the same with writing, especially with characters. I start with a short, red-headed, teenage girl, then I add her quick temper and determination. Part of the way through the draft, I realize she wears glasses. In the second draft I notice she has trust issues. In the third, I give her a scar on her right knee from a bicycle accident as a kid. Each draft adds detail and dimension.

I’m not saying I’m the best at creating good, memorable characters or anything, or even that I’m great, but when I go back and look at the first manuscript I wrote, it’s pretty plain I’m getting better. The more I write, the better I get. So that’s my advice. Keep writing, keep tweaking, keep adding that detail and listening to your characters. Listen hard enough and you’ll hear their voices. Write long enough and they’ll jump off the page.

What about you? What’s your process for writing characters? How do you inflate them?