Writing

Work vs Inspiration

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Chadwick Saxelid made an interesting point in one of his comments on a blog post here:

It is has been my observation that the most marketing focused writers
seem to be those that do work for hire or write with the lowest common
denominator in mind. We’re not talking about art, we’re talking about
product. Creating a marketable business model. (Remember, this is
coming from a guy who reads more product writing than he does art
writing. The product is more fun.) Even Mr. Goldberg has stated he
wouldn’t write another Harvey Mapes novel unless there was a for sure
sale. That’s market focused writing rather than art focused writing.
It’s sitting down and writing something that will sell, rather than
something that speaks from the heart.

Right now I am going through that very same struggle. Do I want to be a
"hack?" Someone that works for hire, that won’t write something he
couldn’t sell. Or do I want write from the heart? Spends hours, days,
weeks, months, or even years working on a project that, in the end,
only a handful of people might bother to read, no matter how hard I
might market it?

Now, Chadwick, is when you should create something from the heart, something that really drives you to sit down at the computer each day and write. Ultimately it’s that passion that what will make your book great, not a premeditated effort to write something you think will be "saleable"… because nobody really knows what will or won’t sell.

I wrote THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE on spec — I didn’t have a contract. It was truly a "passion project" for me, a story I was burning to tell. Then again, I didn’t have the DM novels or the MONK novels to do, only my TV work. I wrote BADGE in the time I now use to write the work-for-hire stuff.

But my life has changed since then and so have my professional obligations.   I would LOVE to write another Harvey Mapes novel, but since I have to make a living as a writer, the time spent on it would take me away from my paying work. I simply can’t afford to write another Mapes now, not while balancing my script committments and the work-for-hire novels (DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK).

Once you make the leap to professional, and you have contracts to honor, it gets harder and harder to find the "free" time to gamble on writing the passion projects you can’t be sure will ever pay off financially. Does that make me a hack? No, it makes me someone who has
professional and personal committments and needs to prioritize his time to best fullfill his responsibilities.

My Book is Crap

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It’s nice to know that every writer, even the ones with lots of success, are still tortured by the same insecurities as the rest of us. Acclaimed mystery novelist John Connolly writes:

I can’t speak for other writers, but there is a wall that I hit during
the writing of every book. The point at which it occurs varies from
book to book, although it’s usually around the halfway stage or just
beyond it. I start to doubt the plot, the characters, the ideas
underpinning it, my own writing, in fact every element involved in the
process.

[…] You’d think that, by now, with eight books written, those doubts would
have become less intense. After all, I’ve been through it before. I
know that I’ve had these concerns about other books and in the end
those books have been written and published without bearing any obvious
scars from the turmoil that went into their creation. But there is
always that fear that this book, this story, is the one that should not
have been started. The idea isn’t strong enough. The plot is going
nowhere. I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and now have
to try to find the right path again.

This happens to me, too…but less often if I have a strong outline to start with (though an outline  is no insurance policy against realizing 35,00o words into your book that it’s crap and you’re a complete fraud). In talking with other writers, I’ve noticed that the ones who hit the wall the most are the ones who make up their plot as they go along, preferring to be "surprised" by their characters and the turns in the story. Of course, this means the turns may lead to a creative dead end.  I don’t know if John outlines or not, but my guess is that he doesn’t.

UPDATE:  Author PJ Parrish is nearing the end of a new book and is experiencing night terrors:

The new book is almost done. First draft, that is. I haven’t read it
through since we started the thing months ago. I am afraid to. I have
this really bad feeling that it is a heaping, stinking, fetid, rancid
pile of crap. I dream about it now, this pile of crap, almost every
night, like Richard Dreyfus in "Close Encounters." I wake up in a sweat
over it. My only consolation is knowing that I feel this way with every
book. And that I am not alone.

Joe Konrath: Anti-Christ?

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Edwardredwin
I got this email from a very successful and critically acclaimed mystery novelist I know (who gave me permission to post this as long as I removed his or her name):

How can you be friends with Joe Konrath? He’s the anti-Christ.  In his own way, he is as bad or worse than Lori Prokop. The advice he gives to aspiring writers is just terrible and, worse, he’s doing everything he can to undermine his fellow professionals. How, you ask? He’s perpetuating the myth that you should devote all or part of your advance to promotion, that you should devote yourself to making sure that the publisher makes money (even if it costs you).  What he’s doing is legitimizing the damaging corporate mindset that authors should pay for their own promotion without any investment or reimbursement from the publisher.  We’re supposed to live off our advances, not kick them back to the publisher for advertising and promotion. Joe’s latest moronic blog post was so infuriating I almost put my fist into my laptop screen. Of course his publisher loves him. But professional writers should fear him. He’s cancer.

After getting this email, I had to scoot right over to Joe’s blog to see what had pissed off my usually low-key buddy so much.  I think this is it:

My writing philosophy is simple: Make money for your publisher.

I do this by not only doing a lot of self-promotion, but by also
considering my audience even before I sit down to write a single word.

This means compromises. This means understanding the system writing
exists in (the publishing business) and weighing it against the many
reasons I wanted to become a writer.

Successful writers seem to understand this balance, and the
trade-offs required. They realize that their books are products as well
as art.

By ‘successful’ I mean that they are making money for their
publisher. You don’t have to be an NYT bestseller to do this. All you
have to do is earn out your advance.

You can earn out your advance by doing a lot of self-promotion, by
working closely with your publisher, by spending a lot of your advance
money on marketing, and by writing good books.

Let me start by saying I really like Joe. I think he’s funny, gracious, multi-talented,  and genuinely interested in helping his fellow writers. We don’t always agree, but that’s okay by me — I don’t always agree with my wife, either, but we still love each other.  Sure, I disagree with Joe from time to time, but that doesn’t diminish my respect for him or how much I enjoy his company.

I’ve always been awed by the incredible time and energy Joe puts into promoting his books. He visited something like 200 booksstores for "drop in" signings  during a promotional tour which, I believe, was paid for by his publisher. He does an amazing job getting his work noticed and I applaud him for it.

That said, I don’t agree with his frequently expressed philosophy that your job as an author is to make money for your publisher and  pump your advance into promotion. It’s nice if you’re in the financial position to do that (it’s what I did with many of my books), but most authors aren’t. They write to support their families and, from a business stand-point, it isn’t cost-effective for them to donate a significant portion of their advances to their publisher.

Joe frequently talks about how important it is to promote your books and assure that each title earns out.  For those not in the biz, "earning out"  simply means that you’ve sold enough books to earn back the advance against royalties that the publisher paid you. That doesn’t mean that once you hit that point you are making tons of  money, it just makes it more likely the publisher will buy your next book.

I agree that authors need to promote themselves and their work…and that you need to earn out if you’re going to survive in this business. But the publishers have a responsibility to do more than merely publish and distribute the book. They also have to advertise and promote. They can’t expect the author to shoulder most of that burden.

Or can they? More and more, it seems, publishers are  expecting authors to use their advances for promotion, pay for their own websites, and send themselves on tour … and if they don’t, they are seen as being "unsupportive" and "difficult to work with." And that is scary, especially with the midlist disappearing and advances shrinking. The advance is supposed to support an author while he works, not act as a replacement for corporate spending on advertising and promotion…it is NOT a replacement for the publisher’s advertising budget.

But if authors like my friend Joe keep advocating that  it’s the author’s responsibility to devote some or all of their advance for promotion, and authors and publishers buy into that thinking, we will see publishers spending less on advertising and promotion and earnings for authors shrinking even more.

I’m NOT saying authors shouldn’t promote their work — God knows, I certainly work hard to promote myself (take this blog, for instance). But I have to admit that Joe’s  "What have you done for your publisher today?" attitude often makes me cringe.  He makes up for it my making me laugh a lot, and with his many keen insights into the biz, so it evens out.

Your thoughts?

UPDATE:  Joe has responded in the comments below and also shares his views on his blog.

Read more

Taking the Mystery out of Crime Writing

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My friend Gar Anthony Haywood (aka Ray Shannon) is teaching a six week course on mystery writing for MediaBistro in Beverly Hills.

You can learn the basics of writing a crime or mystery
novel pretty much anywhere these days, but the focus of this class will
be to teach you how to write one agents and editors will find nearly
impossible to reject.

Gar is an acclaimed writer, a likeable and very funny guy, and probably a terrific teacher. If you’re interested in mystery writing, you should check this course out.

Tie Me Up

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I got this email today from my brother Tod about my buddy James Kosub, worldwide President of the Lee Goldberg Fan Club:

You’ll be happy to know that the man who once lambasted you for writing
tie-ins, is now trying to get a job…writing tie-ins. I fucking love that guy!

I had to check this out for myself. Sure enough, Jim is sniffing around for tie-in work:                         

I sent an email to a gentleman at Black Flame
today, inquiring about possible work on the media tie-ins his imprint
produces… The way I figure it is this: go where the work is… It’ll be a challenge, I’m sure. It’s always easier to work with
wholly original material than with licensed properties, but it’s a
credit and a paycheck, and that’s what matters.                           

This struck me as an odd switcheroo, coming from a man who once described me as follows:

"For a man who makes his living writing television show
pastiches for those who cannot summon the intellectual wherewithal to tackle
original mystery fiction, he’s painfully full of himself…"

I wish Jim the best of luck in his endeavors to become as painfully full of himself as I am.  If you would like to find out more about the tie-in field,  I invite you to visit the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and browse through their wealth of articles on the subject.

Burden of the Badge

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For the last few months, I’ve been one of the judges reading short stories for BURDEN OF THE BADGE, a new Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Michael Connolly that will be published next year by Little Brown. My fellow judges and I — Ed Hoch, Marcia Talley, Barbara D’Amato and Bill Crider — read hundreds of blind submissions (the authors were not identified) and picked the following winners:

What A Wonderful World – Paul Guyot

Rule Number One – Bev Vincent

A Certain Recollection – John Buentello

Burying Mr. Henry – Polly Nelson

A Change in His Heart – Jack Fredrickson

Serial Killer – Jon Breen

Such a Lucky, Pretty Girl – Persia Walker

Oaths, Ohana and Everything – Diana Hansen-Young

Congratulations to all the winners!

Big Day for Two Crime Writers

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Variety reports that novelist James Ellroy will adapt Nicci French’s thriller LAND OF THE LIVING for New Line Cinema. Literary agent Joel Gotler will be among the executive producers, presumably for brokering the deal.

Story concerns a promiscuous woman who’s
captured and tortured by a serial killer. After surviving the ordeal,
she has to figure out what happened because cops and even her friends
think she fabricated the story.

Alexandra Milchan brought the book to
Ellroy, who just adapted his own "The Night Watchman" at Paramount.
Milchan is producing that pic with Lucas Foster and Erwin Stoff.

Things not to worry about

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Novelist PJ Parrish offers some very good advice to aspiring writers under the heading "10 Things  You Should Never Worry About." Among my favorites:

7. I’m querying an agent. Should I send my first chapter or my best chapter?
If your first chapter isn’t your best chapter, you’re in deep doo-doo.

8. Who should I dedicate my book to?
Geez…

9. Should I include my picture with my submission?
Only if you’re Brad Pitt or his wife old whatshername.

A Set of Jumper Cables for Your Script

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Here’s some great writing advice from Jane Espenson:

                                                                                        SHADY GUY
                                            I promised you a half-ton of frozen fish.  That’s a
                                            half-ton of frozen fish.

When
we hear that, we know that the previous line was some kind of protest
about whether or not Shady Guy met his end of the bargain. We’ve
established the attitude of both characters by the end of line.

As
you look through your own writing, you may very well discover that
you’ve been doing this automatically, too. If not, try knocking off a
few opening lines, see if it doesn’t jump-start the scene!