The Writing Life

Off the Cuff

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The Dabbling Mum blog did a long, Q&A interview with me about all kinds of stuff. Here's an excerpt:

What is your biggest obstacle when it comes to pitching yourself as a writer and what steps have you taken to overcome that obstacle?

I haven’t been a freelance journalist in almost thirty years. Nowadays, in the television and movie business, the biggest obstacles are my age and my history. There’s a lot of ageism in Hollywood and now that I’m in my 40s and have lots of credits to my name, I have to spend a lot of time and effort proving to execs that I am more than the sum of my credits…and that am capable of doing other things than the kinds of shows I have done in the past. 

I don’t necessarily want my credits to define me…after all, there are some jobs I took because I needed the money or because they were the only folks hiring at the time. 

With books, I don’t have to pitch myself anymore. The business has changed so dramatically in the last year or so that there’s more money in self-publishing than in publishing right now. So the only person I have to query is myself.

What is your best advice for getting past writer's block?

Write. No matter how bad it is. Just write. Give yourself permission to suck. Sometimes, all it takes is just hitting that one good line or paragraph to break the creative log jam. I also recommend taking a break and reading a good book. Reading forces you to work with words and your imagination. That said, I’ve found that writer’s block usually comes from a poorly conceived story. The problem isn’t that you can’t write, but that the project you’ve sat down to work on has a crippling creative flaw.

E-Volution

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IMG_0218 The talk of the Romantic Times conference, at least among the published authors, was the e-volution of publishing. I was fortunate enough to spend time with two authors at the forefront of it all…Barry Eisler and Boyd Morrison.

Barry and I got together for breakfast and, while I can't go into details of what we discussed, he has some very innovative, creative, and ambitious plans for  self-publishing his books. He's definitely given his controversial decision to walk away from a $500,000 book deal, and how best to capitalize on the ebook/self-publishing market, a lot of careful thought and there's no question in my mind that he will be successful. 

It occurred to me that one major advantage that all of us who were published before have going for us as we enter the self-publishing world…which the newbies flooding the Amazon, Smashwords, etc. do not… is a network of other published, successful authors we can reach out to for blurbs, advice, cross-promotion, recommendations, etc. Those relationships, and that wealth of shared experience, will give us a considerable edge in the marketplace and a way to rise above the tsunami of swill for a while to come.

After our breakfast, I headed to the RT booksigning event…which was,without a doubt, unlike any booksigning I've ever attended in my career. There were hundreds of authors and thousands of fans. It was amazing. IMG_0222

I was sandwhiched between a woman who wrote "man on man erotica" and Colleen Gleason (aka Joss Ware). Colleen and I passed the three hours, between signing scores of our books, talking about — what else? — ebooks and self-publishing.  She's concerned, like many other authors I talked to, about this race to the bottom, in which authors are pricing their books at 99 cents in a desperate effort to sell books or crack the top 500 rankings.

After the big signing, I got together with Brett Battles, Robert Gregory Browne, and Boyd Morrison for a late lunch…which went so long, it almost became an early dinner. We had a great time talking shop and just about every aspect of the ebook/self-publishing/"traditional" publishing biz.

Boyd, you may recall, was the first Kindle sensation…and quickly got snapped up by a big six publisher with a rich, multi-book contract. He's now published in print world-wide. His take on the Amanda Hocking deal, from his uniquely informed perspective, was very interesting (without going into details, essentially he thinks it's a no-lose situation for her, even in the unlikely event that her books under the deal fail).  I came away from that long, liesurely lunch with a lot to think about.

I had a great time at the RT conference…it certainly exceeded my expectations. But the best part for me wasn't any of the programming…it was talking shop with my fellow authors. 

(Pictured: One corner of the vast signing hall as it was beginning to fill up. And Joanna Bourne, Stephanie Bond, and Rhys Bowen)

Home from Virginia

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Photo (2) I just got back from the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville and had a wonderful time, both as a panelist and a book lover. I was in town less than an hour before I bought my first book, a signed copy of John Casey's COMPASS ROSE, the sequel to the SPARTINA, which won the National Book Award. I was thrilled…and took that as a good omen.

One of the great things about Charlottesville is that they really, really love books. They have lots of great, independant bookstores, including four used bookstores in their historic downtown pedestrian mall. I bought so many books over the first two days (including a signed first edition copy of SPARTINA, courtesy of the wonderful folks at Read It Again, Sam) that I had to send them home in a box. So even without the festival, I would have had a great time. 

The festival is first class all the way…not just in terms of the headlines (three National Book Award winners, Scott Simon, Kathy Reichs, Jim Lehrer, Mark Childress,  Alan Cheuse, Myla Goldberg, etc) but how it's run. It's classly, slick, and exceptionally well-organized. It takes place all over the charming, colonial town, which I suppose can make it seem too sprawling, but it allowed me to get a real feel for the place and it's people. There were panels & events at bookstores, libraries, big hotel, a grade school, the University of Virginia, government offices, wine bars, and local theaters.

My first event was mixer at Read It Again, Sam, were I had the opportunity to chat with author Diane Fanning, Jenny White, Meredith Cole, Brad Parks, Andy Straka, and Louis Bayard, to name a few, before heading over to the Albemarle County Office building the Friday Night Frights panel with Kathy Reichs, John Connolly, Louis, Jenny and Andy.  I was astonished to see every single book I have in print, including my CreateSpace reprints, on sale in the lobby. I could have hugged the bookseller. Photo (1)

The panel was great, even though Kathy was felled by the tail-end of a bad cold. It's not easy keeping up with authors as smart and witty as John, Louis, Kathy and Jenny (who told a particularly hilarious story about the time her friends came close to accidentally killing her with belladonna). I hope I managed to hold my own. Afterwards, I hung out at a local bar with John, his publicist (and my old friend) Ellen Clair Lamb, and his friend Jeff, who works for the CIA. I had a blast, even if the crowd of college students made me feel like a grandfather who snuck into at a frat party.

The next morning I was up bright-and-early for a screenwriting panel with WKRP creator Hugh Wilson and  Oscar-winning documentarian Paul Wagner that drew a standing-room only crowd. Hugh's colorful and hilarious stories won everybody over, especially me. At the booksigning afterwards, a woman asked me what it was like to be married to Myla Goldberg and if we were competitive with one another.   

Photo (3) I signed a bunch of books, attended the Kathy Reichs luncheon and then scooted off to a panel with fellow Jewish authors Micah Nathan, Phoebe Potts, and Ariel Sabar, all of whom were enormously entertaining. 

That left me me with an hour or so to myself, so I did some quick sight-seeing at the University, which is beautiful, before heading to an authors reception and, finally, capping the Festival with a long and wonderful dinner at a steakhouse with Kathy Reichs and her daughter Kerry, Jenny White, John Connolly, Ellen Clair Lamb, Brad Parks, and Meredith Cole. We talked and ate and drank well past the restaurant's closing time…but the patient proprietors were kind enough not call the cops and have us forcibly removed.  

All in all, it was a terrific festival and a welcome getaway for me. With luck, the Virginia Film Festival with select REMAINDERED and I'll have an excuse to go back.

(Pictured 1. a corner of the Daedalus bookshop, 2. my books for sale, 3. Kathy Reichs, Andy Straka and Louis Bayard).

Blocking Out the Past

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Strange Lawrence Block has written a terrific piece for eFanzines.com – Earl Kemp: eI53 – e*I* Vol. 9 No. 6  about the thought-process behind his decision to release many of his obscure, long out-of-print paperbacks, many written under pen-names, in new, digital editions. He says, in part:

What other titles I decide to reissue will depend at least in part on what kind of money comes in from the ones I’ve already slated for e–publication.  If nobody’s interested in them, why inflict more upon the reading public?  But, if there turns out to be a genuine demand, well, hell, there’s more where those came from.

While I was writing the end notes for a Jill Emerson novel, A Madwoman’s Diary(originally Sensuous), I remembered that I’d based the plot on a case history from one of John Warren Wells’s books.  So I wound up writing at some length about my career as John Warren Wells and his psychosexual reportage.  And it occurred to me for the very first time that I might actually reissue those books as well.  Not all of them, I shouldn’t think, but one or two.  And if people like those—

“Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko famously informed us.  But why go all judgmental?  Greed, I’d say, is beyond good and evil.  It is what it is. 

Which might be said as well for the books I’m bringing back.  And, come to think of it, for their author.

(Hat-tip to Bill Crider for alerting me to this great post)

Getting Screwed Isn’t a Stepping Stone to Success

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I can't tell you how many times I have told aspiring writers not to pay a vanity press to "publish" their books, or not to pay an agent a "reading fee," or not to pay to enter a writing contest nobody has ever heard of, only to be told "Yeah, Lee, I know, but this is the only opportunity I have and you have to start somewhere."  My friend writer Mark Evanier has heard it, too, and thinks it's "brain dead stupid."

Imagine if your goal was to play for the Seattle Mariners…or maybe even to get on a professional baseball team. Imagine that some odorous homeless guy came up to you on the street and said, "Gimme a thousand dollars and I'll introduce you to their talent scout" and you forked over the cash and said, "Well, gee…it was the only offer I had."

Well, paying someone to submit your writing or to publish it or — the big new scam — entering a "contest" is even stupider than that.

It's getting harder and harder for me to have any sympathy for these suckers, especially when all it takes to discover the truth about most of these scams is a simple Google search and a molecule of common sense. Nobody I know, in publishing or television, became successful by emptying their bank accounts with fee-based "literary agents," vanity presses, and fly-by-night screenwriting and publishing contests. As Mark says:

First rule of professional writing: They pay you, you don't pay them.

I know times are tough. Believe me, I know times are tough. But there's never a good moment to let yourself be exploited by people who think you're so hungry, you'll work for promises…not until MasterCard accepts promises from scumbags as payment. 

Amen to that.

Another Ruthless Interrogation

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Hank Phillippi Ryan interrogates me today at the Sisters-in-Crime blog. Here's an excerpt of what she beat out of me:

HANK: When you watch TV now, or read a book—can you just relax and, maybe, enjoy? Or is your editor-writer brain always assessing? What do you see as the flaws and gaps and missteps? The successes?

LEE: With a mystery, no, I can't just read or watch. I am always very aware of the construction of the mystery.

But you're not supposed to be passively entertained by a mystery. You are expected to track the clues. Part of the fun is that the mystery is there to be solved, and if the author (or writer/producer) has played fairly, then you can and should participate along with the detective.

If a movie is really good, I can stop looking at the construction of *the story* and just be swept up in it. But if the movie is flawed, it pulls me out, and I start seeing the work/structure/component parts and then it's hard to be entertained by what I am watching. I begin to watch it like a producer watching a director's cut and thinking about what he's got to go into the editing room to fix…

 

Mysteries, Margaritas, and a Grilling

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There’s a long Q&A interview with me over at the Mysteries and Margaritas blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Mary: You write books and you write screenplays. I’ve heard they are completely different animals. Do you find it hard to do both? Or in your mind do they complement each other?

Lee: They do compliment each other. I was a reporter first… and that taught me how to write tightly, to say more with less, and to craft strong leads. It also trained me to meet deadlines and to be a ruthless editor. I became a screenwriter when one of my books was optioned for film and I got hired to write the script.

I think that being a screenwriter, particularly for TV, has made me a much better novelist. You have to write outlines for TV, so it has forced me to focus on plot before I start writing my books. I’m not figuring things out as I go along as some authors do. I know exactly where I am going…though I may change how I get there along the way.

Being a TV writer has also trained me to focus on a strong, narrative drive, to make sure that every line of dialogue either reveals character or advances the plot (or both), and to cut anything that’s extraneous or bogs the story down. I also suspect that being a TV writer has given my books a faster pace and more of a cinematic structure.

 

I also talk about what I wear in bed, so you really don’t want to miss it.

The Presumptuous Stranger

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A successful screenwriter I know recently shared with me an experience he had with a stranger that's becoming more and more common these days among my writer friends who have any kind of online presence…

A complete stranger sent me an email informing me of the glorious news that he's coming to LA to try to sell his book as a TV series, and that he wants me to have lunch with him to tell him how the business works. He presents this as something of a treat for me.

I want to be polite, so I told him that I will be out of town that weekend, but good luck.

He writes back and asks for an agent recommendation.

I told him the only agent I know is my own, and he is not even considering taking on new clients, but good luck.

So he writes back and asks me to read his spec pilot.

Now I feel like the Terminator, running down that list of appropriate responses, from "No, but thanks for asking" to "Which part of fuck off and die did you fail to understand?"

I have had this experience so many times myself  that I now believe that being polite to these presumptuous strangers is a mistake, that it's seen as an invitation to intrude even further. So now I am very blunt. I tell strangers the obvious — that I don't know them at all, that I am very busy, and that I have have no interest in meeting them or reading their work.  I get one of three responses: 1) a polite "thank you,"  2) a nasty diatribe about how I'm an ungrateful, self-centered, selfish, insecure prick or 3) no response at all.

But I do wonder what is going through the minds of these strangers. Do they really expect me to drop everything to meet someone I have never met before, online or otherwise? It would be different if we were "pen pals" and had established a relationship of some kind… but these are complete strangers I am talking about. Do they think just because we have websites, or blogs, or Facebook and Twitter accounts, that we are at their beck-and-call?

The House Name

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Author James Reasoner, the hardest working guy in publishing, talks about what it's like to have most of his work published under "house names" — author bylines owned by the publisher — like Tabor Evans, for instance. He says, in part:

At last count, novels and stories I’ve written have been published under at least 35 different names.[…]

In the past month I’ve worked on projects that will be published under four different names, none of them my own. People have asked me, “How can you write a book knowing that your name won’t be on it?” For years my standard answer was, “I don’t care as long as my name is on the check.” Of course that’s not completely true, now or then. Writing has been my job for more than three decades now, and getting paid is important. But most writers love to see a new book with their name on it, and I’m no different. If we didn’t have egos, it probably wouldn’t even occur to us that people might want to read what we write, would it? I’ve been blessed with the ability to put those feelings aside when I’m working, at least to a certain extent. When I’m sitting at the computer, the words appearing on the monitor are my words. The book I’m writing is mine. When it’s published, my name may not be anywhere on it, but that has no bearing on the writing itself. I know it’s good, and I feel a surge of pride when I see the books in the store and know that people are reading them and enjoying them. So when you come right down to it, the answer to the question “Who am I today?” is simple and always the same.

I’m a guy writing a book, spinning a yarn. That’s all I ever wanted to be.