What an Editor Wants . . .

Well, it's happened. After 8 weeks of Red Pencil Thursdays, I find myself in the position of having no volunteers.

Several writers have contacted me and I'm waiting for their material, so I feel confident this feature will continue. (If you'd like to take a ride in the RPT hotseat, please contact me through my website!) But this week we'll do a more general critique based on some of the things I heard directly from editors during RT.

Here's what an editor wants:

1. A clean manuscript. This means proper formatting (12 pt. Courier New font, one inch margins all around, author/title/subgenre/word count in the header, pages numbered). It means you've run the spellcheck. It means you've made several passes through the manuscript, looking for proper use of there, their and they're and other common errors. It means you've enlisted the help of a beta reader who's a solid grammarian if you're not. If you turn in a manuscript riddled with little errors it says you don't respect the work, the editor or yourself. (That last sentence dropped verbatim from an editor's lips.)

Make sure your punctuation is correct and appropriate. Heather Osborn, editor for Tor-Forge, has an intense dislike for overused exclamation points. According to Heather, "Everytime you use a ! you kill a kitten."

Lots of careless mistakes mean more work for an editor. Put yourself in the editor's shoes. If you have a choice between two roughly equivalent manuscripts and one is clean and the other is not, which would you choose? Why give them a reason to say no to you?

2. A tight manuscript. Angela James, editor of the Harlequin's Carina imprint, says, "Not every noun deserves an adjective." Don't pad your word count with extras. A tight manuscript does more with less.

Use the Find function to search out these space wasters: too, even, just, only, almost, nearly, that, still . . . You get the idea. They become a "writer's tick," flowing out our fingers without our conscious knowledge. Cut them wherever you can. Qualifiers suck the life out of your prose. Descriptive verbs and specific nouns get the job done without the niggling little hangers-on.

3. An on-time manuscript. There must be a rash of late authors out there because I heard this from several editors. If you sign a contract, you make a promise to deliver a product by a certain date. If you fail to deliver, you are in breach of contract. Worse, you've potentially hurt other people's careers.

A publishing house has a schedule to keep to bring a book to market. If you fail to deliver, you may lose your slot and cause someone else to be hustled in to fill it. And if you're given a new slot, you may be bumping someone else. I lost a spot in the Historical Book Club for one of my releases because a lead author failed to deliver her manuscript on time. She wasn't a historical, but the reprint they shoved into her slot was, so it bumped me out of the Book Club and several thousand guaranteed sales. No light matter when you live or die by the numbers.

And no. Nothing will induce me to give you that other author's name. I'm sure she has no idea her action (or inaction) affected anyone else. But now you know what happens when you miss a deadline and I know you don't want to muddle things up for others.

So even before you sell, set a deadline for yourself. You may as well get used to delivering on schedule since it will be part of your creative life later. Get a calendar. Figure out what's a reasonable daily page count for you. I have a project planner on my computer and have set a reminder for myself each Friday of where I need to be in order to stay on schedule. Factor in some fun time. If you don't have a life, you don't have anything to write about.

Project the whole thing out and set the date on which you will actually type "The End." This is not the date you should agree to as a deadline. Pad your estimate with at least a week and a half. Send it to your beta reader as soon as it's finished, but give yourself a week to set the manuscript aside so it leaves the forefront of your consciousness. Then after a week, read it in one sitting, marking places that need correcting as you go. Take a day to fix the boo-boos and send it off, basking in the glow of having made your editor proud.

Now sometimes life intervenes in the best laid plans and everyone understands emergencies. What editors don't understand is that you're late because you had to go to Italy for a month on vacation. Or because you were working to meet a deadline for another house and that's why you're late for them. (I kid you not. Someone actually told their editor this. And we wonder why we don't feel the love.)

4. A wonderful story. Several editors told me they want to forget to edit because the manuscript is so compelling, they become readers instead. They want the same things readers want--to be surprised and delighted at every turn.

So our goal should be to make our editor's job easy. We should give her a clean, tight, on-time story that sweeps her completely into our fictive dream.

Sounds a little daunting, doesn't it?

As Blanche Thebom, a celebrated operatic diva, once said to me: "Hey! If it was easy, anybody could do it."

A Foot in the Door

When I was a kid, I learned about the parts of a business letter (for a refresher click here). Today I'm taking it a step further. I'm going to share the parts of a business query letter.

This is an author's first chance to show the editor/agent that they can put together coherent sentences and follow the rules (an important consideration for starting a relationship based on the ability to deliver a polished product and willingness to discuss and implement revisions.) You've worked hard to finish the manuscript. Don't skimp on putting together a dynamite query letter.

I learn best from studying an example. Here's the query I'd send if I was shopping out STROKE OF GENIUS (coming May 25th to your local bookseller!)

My Real Name
Mailing address
City, State, zip (I'd add an email and phone number as well. Make it easy for the agent/editor to reach you.)


Agent/Editor's Name (Pick a specific target! Know who's buying/representing your type of fiction.)Company
Mailing Address
City, State, Zip

Date


Dear Mr./Ms. Last Name; (You'll never go wrong with too much formality. Later you'll be on a first name basis. No need to be pushy here. Make sure you've got the gender right. If you send something to Ms. Chris Keeslar, he might be amused, but you'll feel pretty silly. If you are doing multiple submissions, make sure you match up the name with the right mailing address. Nothing will get you "File-13'ed" faster than sending a query to one person with the name of their competitor here.)


I enjoyed meeting you at the NECRWA conference last weekend. Here is the proposal for STROKE OF GENIUS you requested. (If you have pitched the project, this short opening is the place to remind them. It also allows you to go ahead and include the three chapters and synopsis or full manuscript they've already asked you for. If you haven't pitched, here's where you show you've done your homework. If they represent/buy books similar to yours, demonstrate that you are saavy enough to connect the dots. For example: I enjoyed your author Lisa Kleypas's latest release, Tempt me at Twilight. I hope you'll be interested in my light-hearted historical as well.)

STROKE OF GENIUS is a 90,000 word, sexy historical romance set in the heart of the Regency. It's Pygmalion meets Cyrano De Bergerac. (This is the "tell 'em whatcha got" portion of the query. It's essential to give them an approximate word count, sensuality level and romance subgenre. Don't say your work defies classification. They need to know where to shelve your story in order to sell it. Don't offer them a 150,000 word manuscript and tell them you wouldn't know where to cut it because it's all too beautiful. Be sure you've checked the submission guidelines on their website to make sure your offering fits their parameters. If you have a one sentence way to give them the gist of the story, insert it here. Then follow it up with a short--no more than three paragraphs--blurb style description of your story. Help the editor/agent envision the back cover of your book.)

Crispin Hawke is revered by the ton. His artistic creations are celebrated in every fashionable parlor, tales of his fiery bed skills whispered behind every fashionable fan.

Grace Makepeace is determined to wed a titled lord, but her Bostonian bluntness leaves her least likely to succeed. To be accepted by the ‘high-in-the-instep’ crowd, she has her hands ‘done’ in marble by the incomparable Crispin Hawke.

Crispin schools Grace in flirting and the delights of the flesh. But when she catches the eye of a marquess, Crispin regrets helping her. Can an artistic genius transform an American heiress into the most sought-after Original without falling for her himself?


A partial and synopsis of STROKE OF GENIUS is available upon request. (If you are a first time novelist, you must have a completed, polished and thoroughly sanded manuscript. Until you finish the book, you have nothing to sell. Once you're published, you may be able to sell on three chapters and a synopsis, but until then, only query completed works.)


(The next portion of your letter deals with your publishing credits. Contest wins go here. If you've had a non-fiction book published, share that info. If you earned an MFA or journalism degree, that doesn't hurt. If your day job relates to your fiction, be sure to point it out. Demonstrate that you have a platform--a group of people who will be interested enough in your work to buy it. Do not share how much your mother loves your work or what being published would mean to you. Keep it professional.)


My most recent release, A CHRISTMAS BALL (October 2009 Leisure Books) was listed in the top 100 romances on Bookscan for 8 weeks. I have a frequently visited website, http://www.emilybryan.com/, an active blog, http://www.emilybryan.blogspot.com/ and a vibrant web presence on the major social networks. I am represented by Natasha Kern. (A caveat here: Natasha wouldn't let me query my own stuff. She'll do it for me, but I help her pull together the same sort of material you see here. Other agents may want you to send editor queries.)


Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Your Real Name
w/a Your Pen Name

Then you wait.

And wait.

After a couple months, you may drop a quick email just to make sure your package was received. Do not press them for a decision or I promise you it will be "no." If you are submitting to multiple parties and receive a request from one of them, as a courtesy to the others, you may wish to let them know you've granted an exclusive to X for a certain length of time. This is a gray area since most agent/editors hate multiple submissions, but the wheels of publishing grind with such glacial slowness, it's a fact of life.

If someone has asked for a partial or full manuscript based on a face-to-face pitch, it's good manners not to submit elsewhere till they've had time to review your work. If you're a newbie, after six months with no response, I'd think it would be logical for you to send the party a note letting them know you're ready to start submitting elsewhere. This may move your work up the TBR pile, but maybe not. Be prepared to move on.

And of course, while you're waiting you're busy writing the next Great American Novel, because once they buy the one you've queried their first question will be: "What else have you got?"

Remember what you're looking for is not just the sale of one book. You are looking for an agent or a publishing home that will help you grow a career. Good things take time. And finding the right agent and publishing house are both good things.

Ok, now it's your turn to ask questions, correct my mistakes or offer your own advice! I look forward to hearing from YOU!

Reasons for Rejection

There are many reasons a manuscript may be rejected, but given the number of submissions they receive, editors rarely have time to tell the writer why.

Sometimes, it has nothing to do with the writing itself. Perhaps the editor just acquired a story with similar elements and the list doesn't have room for two.

Maybe the story isn't right for the line or imprint to which you've submittted it. For example, erotic romance author Dalton Diaz recently told me there are no babies in any Ellora's Cave stories. So if you have a secret baby in your manuscript, one of the Harlequin lines would be a better fit.

Editors are people too. Sadly, your story might just land on their desk on a bad day.

But quite often, the rejection is all about the writing. I was checking the Carina Press blog and Angela James has listed a number of common problems there. I thought I'd elaborate on a few of them here for you.

POV problems~As a general rule, a writer should stay in one head per scene rather than pinging back and forth between characters. You risk giving your readers whiplash.

But wait, I hear you saying, Nora Roberts head-hops! Yes, she does. But she does it with such skill only those of us who look for point of view tells realize it. If you must switch POVs mid-scene, write a POV neutral paragraph before you place your readers into a new consciousness.

Overuse of Adjectives~There's no substitute for using specific nouns and descriptive verbs. Why say 'small bird' when you can say 'wren?' Don't let your characters walk when they can stride, shuffle or glide. I especially love using nouns as verbs. In STROKE OF GENIUS, my heroine's mother 'swans' across a room. In one word, you get a vivid image.

Telling rather than Showing~Readers read because they want to bring something to the experience. They want to use their imaginations and read between the words for the real story. If I say "John was angry enough to be violent" I'm insulting my readers by telling them something they could figure out for themselves if I say "John was a tornado boiling over the horizon."

Awkward Dialogue~Dialogue in a book cannot be totally realistic. You have to ping back and forth and leave out the boring stuff that clutters real life. And you absolutely cannot let a character give an information dump disguised as conversation.

Internal dialogue~If you invite your reader into your character's head, make sure it's real. A person's secret thoughts should be eye-popping, relevatory and unique. Don't bother inserting a thought that a reader could infer from the character's actions. A double no-no is having your character think something and then say the same thing.

Full of clichés~Simile was a Victorian parlor game. At that time, the point was to name the common saying--quiet as a mouse, smart as a whip, etc. No one wants to read them now. Make sure your writing is fresh.

Grammatical errors and misspellings~Don't give your prospective editor/agent a reason to say no to you. If you don't have the grammatical skills, find someone who does. Spell check is your friend. Writing is an art and a craft. Grammar and spelling is the easiest part of craft. A writer's job is to make her editor's job easier. A clean manuscript means you understand your job.

Poor Characterization~From the first page, your characters need to breathe on their own. Don't introduce too many all at once. Give them unique names. Tolkien may have been able to get by with Eowyn and Eomer, but most of us give our characters names that start with different letters.

Hope this helps you. These are all things I remind myself of with regularity. When/if I receive a rejection, I want to make sure the problem isn't with the writing.

One of the things I have to watch for is sentence length. I never met a clause I didn't like. Commas are my favorite punctuation. Part of my editing process is going through and splitting my over-long sentences into more manageable short ones.

What do you have to work on?

Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Was Published . . .

Everything about the publishing biz has a steep learning curve, from mastering the writer's craft (a never-ending proposition) to the "dollars-and-sense" decisions that shape an author's career.

Just to give you a little background, I've had titles on the shelves since May 2006 but I got "the call" in May 2005. I'd been scribbling away furiously for 4 years prior to that. As of May 25th of this year when STROKE OF GENIUS comes out, I'll have 8 books to my credit, with multiple foreign sales of all my titles. I'm the first to admit I've been incredibly blessed.

But if I could have had a "fairy godmother" to come alongside me and whisper wisdom in my ear right after "the call"--or better yet, before it--my journey through Published Land might have been smoother.

So if you're a pre-published writer, let me strap on my wings and be your fairy godmother for a moment today as I share . . . things I wish I'd known before I was published.

1. Make friends with the internet. Before I got the call, I barely had an email address. All of a sudden, I was expected to have a website, a blog, a presence on the social networking sites . . . Fortunately, my kids were able to walk me through setting up a MySpace and my DH (AKA The Computer Whisperer) figured out a way for me to have a website I could update and maintain on my own. After many incarnations, I'm finally happy with its appearance and functionality. In hindsight, I probably should have had the website professionally designed. But I'm the thrifty sort and I like being able to change the content whenever I want.

Why do I need to be online in such a big way? I hear you asking. Because of Number 2.

2. Build a platform. This is about developing a pool of people who are interested in your work and will be excited enough about it that once you sell, they'll run out and buy your book on the day of its release. (Incidentally, I didn't realize before I sold that the NYTimes list is not a function of the number of books actually sold. It's a measure of the velocity at which they fly out the bookstore doors during the first week of release.)

So an author needs to network (I know, I know. Most of us who spend our days huddled over a computer do so because we're basically shy, but this is the time to punch out of our comfort zone.) Join writers' groups. Attend conferences. Talk to your bridge club about your writing. Offer to speak at the library. Do everything you can to spur sales on that first critical week of your release.

Your fairy godmother wishes she could sugar-coat this, but then she'd be lying to you. And that's not nice. We like to think it's all about our lyrical prose, but publishing is a business. We live or die by the numbers.

3. Your first agent/editor may not be your last agent/editor. Publishing may move at glacial speed most of the time, but there is a constant--Change. Once you step into Published Land, you'll discover it's really a very small world indeed and the deck chairs are rearranged with regularity. Editors change houses and authors are orphaned. This has not yet happened to me. I've been blessed to have Leah Hultenschmidt as my editor for all my work. But plenty of my friends have been shuffled or cut off when their editors' careers take a turn. If/when it happens to me, I promise not to be surprised.

But if I've been blessed in the editor department, I've had some odd turns in the agency realm. I've only been published since 2006, but I'm on my 3rd agent. Lest you think I'm the demanding client from hell, let me assure you this is not so. A couple weeks after I got "the call," I got another call from my agent and her jr. agent, who was the one who actually signed me. The jr. agent wanted to branch out and form her own agency. I had to decide if I would stay with the original firm or go with the person who offered me representation in the first place.

I should have been only excited about my sale and my career's upturn. Instead, I was thrust into an intra-agency squabble. And I made a business decision based on emotion and friendship, which led to a couple years of wrangling with both parties. What I should have done was decide to leave them both for putting me in the position of having to make that decision in the first place.

Now I have an agent who's established enough to focus on my career instead of hers. Live and learn.

4. Rejections still come, even once you're published. This is the last piece of advice, I promise. On the flight home from 2005 RWA Nationals in Reno, flushed with the excitement of meeting my editor and feeling like a real writer, I was seated next to a woman who'd written straight Regency romances for years. The market for those sweet stories had shrunk so, her publishing house was closing the line. She was out of a contract for the first time in 20 years.

"What am I going to do?" she asked. "Write erotica?"

Obviously not. But the world still has room for cozy mysteries. If she could reinvent herself as a mystery writer who set her stories in the Regency era she loved, couldn't she keep writing? Or what about inspirational romance? I asked. The woman could obviously write. Why not try another genre?

I don't know if she did. But the encounter taught me something.

A writer writes. She invents. Sometimes that means reinventing herself as well. When my editor told me I needed a new name because DISTRACTING THE DUCHESS was such a departure from my Diana Groe books, I didn't bat an eye. This is not an unusual situation. If every author who had multiple names turned purple tomorrow, there would be a lot of purple authors in the world.

NYTimes Bestseller (and my good buddy) Bobbi Smith gave me this advice when my debut book came out. "Stay published."

To do that, I had to learn to be flexible. Roll with the changes that come your way because they assuredly will come. But above all, enjoy the ride!


Now, I'll slip off my fairy godmother wings and go back to my WIP. As always, I welcome your comments and questions and if I don't know the answer, I promise to make something up.

Death of the Slush Pile

I just saw an article on The Wall Street Journal warning of the death of the slush pile. For those of you outside the world of publishing, the slush pile is the hundreds and thousands of unsolicited, unagented manuscripts that are sent in to publishers in the hope that they will be discovered by an editor or editor's assistant.

I have seen slush piles. When I visited Dorchester's offices on Madison Avenue last October, my editor Leah Hultenschmidt showed me hers---a neat pile that only stood a few inches tall on one shelf. But not all editors work through their submissions and make decisions so quickly. Some of the other editors' piles were waist-high and ringed their entire office.

Forget about getting a response in a timely manner.

The main thrust of the WSJ article was that publishing houses are not spending any time on slush piles and many are refusing to accept non-agented material because of concerns over plagiarism lawsuits. For example, if someone submitted a story about vegetarian vampires before Stephanie Meyers' Twilight books came out, they might have a case to make for a cash settlement.

It underscores the importance of having an agent. I know there are still some publishing houses that allow unagented submissions, but take a good look at that slush pile. Imagine you are an over-worked acquiring editor and have limited time to spend looking for new talent. Ask yourself if you'll wade into the slush pile or leaf through the manuscript that's been vetted by an agent with whom you've worked successfully in the past?

Finding an agent is arguably as difficult as finding an editor, and finding the one who's right for you is almost as challenging as finding the right spouse. But if you've completed a manuscript (and polished it to within an inch of its life) this is your next task if you want a writing career. It's an important milestone and worthy of its own blog post.

Tomorrow, I'm hosting Helen Scott Taylor here on my blog. She has a new title out ~ THE PHOENIX CHARM! And she'll give away a copy to one lucky commenter on Tuesday. But on Wednesday, I'll post my 10 Commandments for finding the right literary agent. Hope to see you both days!

What do you think about WSJ's prediction about the slush pile? Have you submitted an unsolicited manuscript? (I did very early in my writing career. I sent off my sad little western and it came back rejected with astonishing speed! Good thing. It deserves its obscurity.) Have you been plucked from the slush pile and found success?

What Is She Thinking?

Ever asked that question about the editor you're targeting? Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to peek into her head?

My editor, Leah Hultenschmidt of Dorchester, has made it easy for writers and interested readers to do just that. She posted some of her newest book deals at www.romanticreads.net. (Yeah, my next story is one of them, but checking this list gives you an idea of what she's looking for!)

You'll want to bookmark the site. Leah used to be in marketing, so she's saavy about a broad range of topics in publishing.

Oh! And while you're out surfing the web, please stop by www.emilybryan.com to enter my new contest! You just might win a PLEASURING THE PIRATE to take to the beach!

Meriwether (one of my pirates) says, "Shiver me timbers, it's a ripe good read!"