OddRocket is an extraordinary vehicle for story creation. In our Seattle-based studio and online, we're co-creating and developing quality commercial fiction in a team environment--and having a blast! Our authorial teams give writers a much-needed break from solitude while tapping into the energy and speed unleashed by collaboration. Want to jump in and join us? Submit a 3-5 page writing sample to [email protected]
10 Commandments of Writing Collaboration – Drafting Edition
Thou shalt abandon thy darlings. If you wrote a line that you’re damn proud of and the editing sword smites it, speak up by all means… but if you’re the only one who was feeling that line, let it go. Better yet learn to forget who wrote what—that way lies heaven.
Thou shalt obey thine outline only as long as thine outline serves thee… then feel free to chuck the damn thing. It’s only a blueprint after all.
Thou shalt be patient and trust that thy comments will be read and heard, even if it takes a while [esp with an asynchronous collaboration, where team members may be in distant time zones—or just juggling many priorities].
Thou shalt not micro manage other people’s process. Don’t assign other people tasks (“Hey, while I write this fun dialogue, why don’t you go look up synonyms for the word ‘look’”) unless they’ve empowered you to do so. In a shared doc, avoid cursor tail-gating.
Though shalt establish a shared protocol for edits introduced during drafting. In our OddRocket Studio team where 5-6 people are drafting simultaneously in Google Drive, all edits are fair game while in session… but we use track changes when individuals edit between sessions. In my other collaboration, where it’s two of us writing a screenplay after months of pre-writing, we ask before changing so much as a comma.
Though shalt keep the fire burning. Collaborations run on passion. Show up as fully as you can, with a positive attitude and an open mind… you’ll likely inspire your teammates too. I find there are times when I truly can’t give it my all, and then I have to decide if it makes more sense to do a short session or just reschedule so I can rebuild my energy and have more to give next time.
Though shalt hold group storytelling standards high. You need to feel 100% comfortable saying, “Hey, I’m not satisfied with this line/page/chapter as is because of X. (It doesn’t make sense, it’s boring, it's oppressive, it’s oppressively boring, doesn’t feel big enough, doesn’t ring true to life, etc.) Let’s make it better.” And for your team’s response to be NOT a chorus of lalala, fingers in ears.
Thou shalt choose as collaborators only those with whom thou sharest a vision and some basic values. You’ll still have to compromise and debate with the people you share vision and values with. But it’ll be fruitful in the end, while a mismatched crew can never succeed because they don’t even agree on what success is.
Thou shalt keep the prose flowing. Gotta love research! It’ll make your book better in the end, but it can also vacuum up precious collaborative drafting time. I’m one to talk, I just spent six minutes trying to track down precisely which flowers would likely be blooming on a spring night in rural Massachusetts (for our heroine’s garden, naturally). The goddess gave us brackets < > so use them. As in <MA spring flower>.
Thou shalt have fun and meet some really cool fellow creatives.
What goes through your mind as you watch amazing illustrator Marcello Barenghi pencil-draw this bottle of "Oddka" (a delightful word!)? For me, it is an awe-inspiring reminder that, with tenacious devotion, creative talents can be honed to a world-class level. If you spent less time doing stuff you're not passionate about... and more time in your zone of genius, doing what you do better than anyone else... what might you create?
So you’ve decided to try an in-person writing collaboration. Congratulations, brave author!
Now, what do you need to bring to the big event? Besides your genius, of course. And your brilliant ideas. And your near-genius, almost-as-brilliant friends.
Below is a list of practical things and supplies I either had or WISH I had at past collab parties. I’m writing this entry largely to remind myself of what needs to go in my car-kit in future:
- Timer -- Time is the classic creative restriction that generates positive stress (ie alertness), kills perfectionism, and fosters a sense of “we’re in this together.”
- Index cards – For sketching out (and assigning) scenes, of course, but also great for passing around when doing group writing exercises in which each person adds a few words.
- Stapler or Clips – Useful when you have a million index cards.
- Easel / Pad or White board – It’s the best for group brainstorming. Ideally one of you has readable handwriting. (If not, you could opt for a laptop and projector setup.. but it’s harder to carry around, so you might need to learn to read each other’s scrawl.)
- Pens – Duh, you say. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to beg a barista to borrow his crappy ballpoint… Bring a whole bag of high quality extra pens, because in any collaboration you’re likely to encounter people like me. And we'll probably accidentally steal your pen too. (Sorry.)
- Individual pads of paper -- For each writer
- Post its – Endless uses!
- High quality folders -- With secure pockets
- Phone camera – Record what’s on the whiteboard, record a particular arrangement of index cards, take pics of the group working to share with the press later when the whole nation's buzzing with the question of how 24 people managed to co-write a bestseller.
If you can think of something I’m forgetting, please add it. We’ll tackle sharing software next time!
You’ve seen them on the TV. The TV writers. The movie dudes. Eight of them, around a table with coffee cups and pizza cartons and mountains of paper. Flipcharts and whiteboards and sticky notes everywhere. Outpourings of creative energy, driving to a looming deadline, shouting, arguing, bouncing ideas off one another, bouncing off the walls. That’s how the creatives work, right? That’s what they do on TV.
Except, do you know a single writer who works like that? All the writers we know are owlish coffee-shop creatures. They talk to themselves but nobody else. They go on retreats.
So what is this TV thing? A myth? A fundamental gulf between the screen and the novel? Or a model we might use? What happens, we wondered, if you bring a pool of people together to write a novel? We decided to find out.
We put together a pretty precise framework for our November OddRocket Writers In Progress session at White City Library. We over-planned it, in fact--because we were worried. What business did we have exposing these bookish recluses to awkward realities like conversation and compromise? It was destined for disaster, surely? Though admittedly quite a number signed up, even though we made it clear how idiotic and unusual we were going to be. The framework was meant to give us somewhere to go as soon as the first embarrassing silence crippled the room. We could always cut it short. Write it off as a stupid idea and go back to keeping ourselves to ourselves.
Here’s what happened. The precise framework didn’t last long. Of all our Writers In Progress sessions this was the most animated yet. Vibrant. A joy. You know what happens when you put a bunch of novelists in a room and ask them to work together? No embarrassing silences. They generate a storm of ideas. A rush of clashing colors, a hilarious collision. We ran out of time. We only got through a fraction of what we had planned. People were simply enjoying it all too much. And after, we had a flood of emails asking for more.
So it seems the unlikely TV thing actually works.
And it made us think. Where do we take it next? How far? What if a future OddRocket novel could be the work of a roomful of people with coffee and whiteboards and tempers?
Well, we’re planning to find out. Our next OddRocket Writers In progress session is Wednesday December 11th. We’ll be extending and formalizing the experiment. Seeing how far it goes if no one calls a halt with their silly framework.
Interested? Come along. It may be a bit odd. But odd is what we’re about.
Last month at Seattle’s Geek Girl Con, Suzanne and I ran our panel on Pitch Practice and got to listen in on some truly tempting pitches from the audience (what a talented bunch!). For those of you who weren’t able to attend, here are some tips we shared about pitching your work in person to agents and editors.
Though it can feel nerve-wracking, like a final exam combined with a job interview, pitching is really just a conversation. As in all conversations, how you connect and interact matters more than perfectly chosen words. After all, what they care about most is what’s on the page, which they haven’t seen yet. And what they care about second-most is that you care enough to be professional.
To the latter point, there are two sentences, or general ideas, that you need to be able to rattle off cold:
The sentence where you introduce your genre (and thus prove that you know what your genre is). What does genre really mean? It’s the label on the bookshelf you intend your book to live on, or the Amazon subcategory you dream of to be #1 in. You can change the verbiage around all you like, but you need to express something like: “My novel is a YA supernatural adventure.” Or, “I’ve written a YA supernatural.” Or, “My YA supernatural novel is complete at 80,000 words.” If your story is complete, say so—it’s a point in your favor.
The sentence where you summarize your story. Sadly most writers, when asked what our books are about, don’t know when to stop. “And then…?” we say, “And then? And then…?” breathlessly spoiling all sixteen plot twists. It’s too bad because that one-sentence summary is potentially among your sharpest marketing tools, handy as hell in myriad situations both before and after your book’s publication. Countless schools exist on how to produce That Sentence. My two favorites are The Mad Libs Formula (by way of Nathan Bransford) and Holly Lisle’s method. Lisle’s includes a <30 word summary containing the protag, the antag, their conflict, the setting, and the twist (ie what’s special about this story). Each is better suited to certain genres.
Finally, be ready to respond to the inevitable follow-up questions from the pro. Some I’ve often gotten include: Is it finished? How long is it? Is it funny? What year does it take place? How significant is the romantic element? What’s the tone? Is it part of a series? Can you compare the style to any other writer’s? By far the most common follow-up is, “What can you compare this to?” So if you want to be streets ahead, do your research and have an answer ready regarding comp titles.
For best results, team up with some fellow writers to practice and add beer (or coffee, or your drink of choice). Have fun!
Who do we serve? As an emerging indie publisher we find we have a choice, and perhaps some traps to avoid. Our person-to-person engagement is largely with writers. It’s exciting. We’re able to offer encouragement and validation to artists who have rarely, or never, received it. Those writers fall into two groups. Those who have never published before, and those who have. To each of those groups we find we are something different. To the newcomers, we are a potential bridge to the breakthrough they’ve long imagined. We may or may not deliver, but the possibility is there. To the more established, we’re a business vehicle. They’re looking to understand what we can do that is different and better than whatever experience they’ve had to date. The former group are wide-eyed and optimistic. The latter are anything but. In both cases we find ourselves negotiating what we will do for the writer. What we will pay for, how much we will take from their profits, how committed we will be to marketing and selling their work for them. And right there, as much to our surprise as anyone’s, we no longer resemble the vibrant future of independent art. We look like every hesitant, risk-averse traditional publishing house.
It’s a little depressing.
So what are our choices? Should we publish only the books that fit in? Accept that selling books has become an unprofitable lottery? Leave it to others?
We choose to say no. We choose to be optimistic. To find a way, however odd that makes us.
There are so many thousands of books looking for readers. Many deserve them. Many do not. The process of creating a book and making it available is no longer a barrier. Just click to post.
The challenge today is finding the writing that really deserves to be read, and getting it in front of the readers. And there are many more readers than writers, let’s remember. Readers who face a problem they never used to have. How to sift through unmanageable numbers of new books for something that is done the right way, written well, properly edited, professionally packaged. Our vision when we launched OddRocket was a service to the reader. To find and make available the stories worth shouting about. A full year of business has taught us a thousand lessons. We have followed some tangents. We met some goals and missed a few others. We’ve done a pretty good job of staying up to date with an industry that changes direction on a monthly basis. And we see very clearly that despite our inevitable focus on finding and working with excellent authors, it remains the reader we really want and need to serve. When we find and publish work that makes our readers excited, we sell books. Our obligations to the authors are automatically met. It’s a subtle distinction. It’s largely invisible to anyone but us. We’re seriously committed to offering writers a package that makes OddRocket their best option. But our single most important customer is the reader. After all, that’s where every one of us started out.
The distinction now is no longer between “traditional publishing” versus “self-publishing”. The distinction now is between PROFESSIONAL versus UNPROFESSIONAL publishing. –James Altucher
If this statement is true and relevant—and I think it’s becoming more so each year—then what exactly does it mean to publish professionally, versus unprofessionally? Leaving out quality of your story itself, which I’m assuming is top-notch, here’s what I view as the three pillars of professional publishing.
Design and packaging. Pop quiz: a successful book cover A) doesn’t matter; it’s what’s inside that counts B) is an intricate work of art, akin to a Van Gogh painting. C) Looks crisp as a thumbnail and clearly indicates the book’s category by its imagery, fonts, color palette, etc.
You know it’s C. But to those who answered A, I love your beautiful soul and would never, ever hunt you for your valuable single horn. (Now please stop trying to sell books and trot away behind a rainbow so the world doesn’t crush your innocence.) Unless you are a graphic designer with her finger on the pulse of book cover trends in your genre, hire someone who’s done this before. Copy editing, proofreading and formatting are also a key part of packaging. I don’t believe anyone should copy edit and proofread his own book, ever—even a professional. Our mistakes become invisible to us. Formatting, however, is a skill you can learn and may be worth it if you’re technically savvy.
Marketing. How do you make sure your book isn’t lost in the crowd? Lost books can get lonely, or trampled to death… much like your dreams? But I digress. You know you need reviews to get sales, but isn’t that a catch 22? Well, you could pay for guaranteed 5 star raves--/ding!/ NO. BAD IDEA. You could enter a Starbucks, grip random coffee-drinkers by the lapel and growl at them, “Do YOU like romantic super-hero fantasy with a comic tone? What about you?” Or you could get smart and try a targeted, ethical approach that will ultimately help more of your ideal readers locate your book. The possibilities are endless. Research book blogs, join blog tours, participate in organized new-release giveaways, trade ads (such as end-of-the-book sample first chapters) with other authors in your genre, get interviewed by a relevant podcast, record a vlog series on your subject… whatever you’re good at. One of the best ways to market your books is to publish multiple books in the same category, so you always have a new release and each book supports the others. But don’t just release one book and then sit there waiting for readers to come to you. Unless you’re writing about sexy male vampires who spank people, they probably won’t.
And now the most important and most often neglected one: Listening to your readers. I don’t mean spending the rest of your life on Twitter. But do you make your products (books) available to your customers (readers) to consume and experience the way they actually want to? Or are you frustrating and inconveniencing them to do things your way? This covers timing of publication (we all hate cliffhangers that won’t be resolved for years). Also pricing (readers grumble at having to pay $12.99 for an e-book) and format (what, your novel’s only available as an iPhone app… or the physical copy won’t ship from your website for weeks?). Do you know how your readers prefer to buy and consume books? Ask them, or ask veterans in your category. This can feel personal: Maybe you grew up with the dream of producing substantial cloth-bound tomes, serious door stoppers to be proudly displayed in your readers’ homes—only now it’s 2013 and you’re working in a genre where today’s readers prefer e-serials. Or maybe you’re writing high fantasy with luxuriously elaborate maps, and your readers would appreciate the inclusion of a poster. Or you’re doing a how-to or self-help manual with multi-part graphs, and your readers crave it in the form of a workbook they can write in. Maybe a high percentage of your readers prefer audio (as with business books). Outside the box thinking is vital here: perhaps your book would serve people better in the form of a gift set or bundled with a game. The point is, care enough to find out. Care more about your readers’ experience than your own personal ideal of what “being published” means.
Short answer: No, Hollywood is doing that all by itself.
And yet--while firmly in the Salon and Slate tradition of waxing alarmist about fake problems--a recent Slate piece accusing STC does make a super solid point:
You can't rely on Blake Snyder's beat sheet to make a bad movie (or book) good. You can't rely on three-act structure--or any other structure--to make a bad movie (or book) good. If you try, you'll just end up with a boring, rigid, predictable, unnatural-feeling story.
Do many Hollywood scripts fit that description? Absolutely they do. But it's illogical to blame Save the Cat; because the average blockbuster sucked just as much in 2001 as it did in 2009.
Instead blame a risk-averse industry environment where each script gets drafted and re-drafted by so many writers, and bogged down by so many commercial constraints and taboos, that the end product lacks any coherent vision or soul.
Screwing my curmudgeon hat even tighter on my head, I'll add that when I'm watching a mediocre movie it's hard to imagine some writer somewhere was once stay-up-all-night-excited about this tale and his artistic vision for it. Often it seems more likely the damn thing was conceived by a process involving surveys, committees, and focus groups. Focus groups made up entirely of boys 12 to 13.
That said, most stories /are/ somewhat formulaic even in their most natural forms (think folk tales). I'm ok with that. I don't look down upon sonnets for being formulaic either. Or blues songs. Or wedding rituals. Frankly, it's a feature. And Save the Cat, like many similar books including Syd Field's Writing The Screenplay, doesn't actually invent new structure, only new names for the parts of stories that have been there all along. Which is why you can watch an older, classic film and fill in the beats. Try it--it's fun!
Now let's move away from bashing Hollywood--and its over reliance on winning formulas to make a buck--and talk about novels instead. In my experience, the average novelist has the opposite problem from a Hollywood studio. Myself included.
Who am I kidding? Myself especially!
Whenever I read a mediocre novel, it's all too easy to imagine some writer dude's fingers typing away--because that writer is often standing between me and his story!
The average novelist starts off with nothing /but/ personal vision: my cool ideas, my symbolic images, my persona and shadow characters, my fantasy scenes, my deeply personal themes, my snippets of meaningful dialogue, my messages. ME. What most of us authors need is a shred of structure to guide us, so we in turn can hook up our mind to the reader's by our shared understandings, and guide his or her experience. Put another way, we want to prevent that moment of doubt and confusion, where the reader begins to suspect that this ride of ours is off the rails and may in fact lead them nowhere good. We want them to recognize our work as a real, understandable, logical, satisfying story. To be lulled into the same story-trance they were as children hearing fairy tales at bedtime. Once, upon a time.... A story with a beginning, middle, and end. In a land far away, there was a kingdom... A story with a logical progression of rising events stemming from the central conflict.
Unless, say, we are writing an experimental novel where every fifth noun is "chicken." Who knows? In this scenario, we the author may have the explicit chicken of inducing dismal panic and confusion in the reader. In fact, experimental fiction is a wonderful chicken and some of it I dearly love. But this is a blog entry about storytelling.
If you also are in the business of writing stories, then I recommend you get familiar with as many methods and schools of structuring as possible. (Feel free to comment below for specific suggestions based on your project.) You don't have to marry any of them. Just go on one little coffee date. I swear, learning about them makes us better writers--even the ones that don't speak to us personally... yet. (I'm looking at you, Snowflake Method.)
Most importantly: unless we have no vision or internal drive for our work, and are purely trying to milk a cash cow--NOT you, or you wouldn't even be reading this blog--we needn't fear that our novels will turn out rigid and awful if we use a beat sheet. Just remember, structure holds up stories, not the other way around.
Because the latter would be preposterous. Like someone tailoring her blog entry to justify posting a cute pic of a kitty befriending baby chicks.
How to Make Writing in Time and Space Less Wibbly Wobbly by Suzanne Brahm
How to Make Writing in Time and Space Less Wibbly Wobbly
Tips and tricks for writers on how to balance work, life and creativity by Suzanne Brahm, OddRocket co-founder and published Young Adult writer
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you. – Zadie Smith
It's 5:30 in the morning and the house is quiet. I'm not a morning person, but here I am, up with the sun and my computer hoping to squeeze a few solitary writing moments out of a soon to be busy day.
I'm a writer and a publisher. If the list stopped there, I might be blissfully asleep right now, but I'm also a mother, a partner, a sister, and a daughter with a day job. There are simply not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on my list and it's easy to find myself sliding into a kind of fearful paralysis filled with self-doubt.
I know I'm not alone here. So, how does a creative person find time for their art without becoming a sleep deprived stark raving lunatic.
Full disclosure. I do not have all the answers, at least not yet. I have found a few ideas that have helped me make progress on my personal manuscripts without losing my marbles and feeling like I'm competing for the worst mom at daycare award.
1. Find one day that is yours
My day is Thursday. Part of that day is always mine. Thursday's I'm in a coffee shop as close to 5pm as possible. I have two hours before my critique group and I write. Sometimes it's the only time I have to write and I'm learning to accept that this is okay. Sure, I grab more hours if I can, but carving out one night for myself makes a difference. I've found that when I consistently make this creative date happen, my story gets louder and it gets easier to crank out those pages on a weekly basis.
2. Don't beat yourself up over word count.
A book is written page by page. The days of me spending blissfully uninterrupted hours at a coffee shop with nothing but the internet to lure me away from my plot are over. This is okay. I can't write as much as I used to, but I can write and I've found when I do I move consistently towards the finish line I get there one word at a time.
3. Build yourself a creative playlist
If you are like me you don't have extra hours to leisurely transition your brain into creativity. I use my alone time during the commute to work my story. If you're in a car, on a bus, walking to work, or waiting for your rocket ship countdown, listen to that playlist of music that transports you into your character's world. I have found this time preps me for my writing and sometimes inspires a frenzied bit of note taking that helps a later chapter.
4. Be kind to yourself.
Say goodbye to guilt and most importantly, tell your inner critic to shut it. We can't bend the laws of space and time, but we can fight for our creativity and inch towards that finish line. Remember first and foremost that you are not alone, you are brave, you are doing your best and you deserve applause for having the courage to share yourself with the world.
And it's 6:25, I hear a door click open…..and the pitter patter of little feet. Game on. Wish me luck.
I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we’re not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
Maurice Sendak, subject of today's Google Doodle
Sendak insisted that he didn't write for children or adults, that he just wrote.
Do you harvest the fruits of your writing labor—or leave them to rot?
At every stage of novel-writing, certain challenges (and anxieties) reliably appear and any of them can stop you from harvesting a finished manuscript. Does this sound familiar? Most writers I know--including me--have gotten stuck in these "almost finished" parts of the process. Below is what usually works to get me unstuck...
1. Do you abandon your stories before you reach The End?
Solution: Become a structure geek. No, you don’t have to turn into a compulsive story-boarding maniac, index cards and Pentel markers spilling out of your pockets. (Though that’s undeniably hawt.) But understanding story structure gives you all the tools to get yourself unstuck while drafting. Chances are your story’s missing beats, your character’s conflict and story theme suffers from inconsistency, and/or your three acts are off-balance… and as a result you’re spinning your wheels. Structure guides to the rescue! My favorite is Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat books. Runner up, Alicia Rasley’s The Story Within Plot.
2. Do you write a complete(ly) rough draft and then drop the ball in revisions?
Solution: First, understand that revision is always tough—for every writer and every book. We all feel overwhelmed thinking about the mountain of work ahead. We all question whether our stupid story’s even worth it. About half of us cope by moving onto an exciting new project. You too? Well, guess what? Your exciting new project will one day mature into a $#!^^% rough draft, too, and revising it will feel just as daunting as this. The only way out is through.
Second, zoom out your perspective. From words… to chapters. Revising is not polishing. To quote author Holly Lisle, “Most writers do revisions like a cosmetic surgeon trapped in an ER. They're doing their thing on a patient who isn't breathing, who has bled from everywhere, and whose heart has stopped…and they can't figure out why that nose job isn't bringing him back to life.” Make it pretty later. Now make it breathe!
Third, enlist fresh eyes. There are two kinds: other people’s eyes (now) or yours (later). Trade manuscripts with a friend, or pay an editing service. If you must revise solo, put the manuscript away for 4-8 weeks (don’t even peek at page 1) and during that time make a hobby of re-reading your structure books.
3. Are you putting off polishing your novel to publication standards?
Solution: Soul searching. Your book's almost finished, and that’s scary. What if people hate it? What if it sucks? As your idea (which used to enjoy a private life inside your mind) gets closer to becoming a book which other people can click and purchase, you may start to feel the tiniest bit HYSTERICAL. At the fact that your most intimate dreams are being exposed to strangers. Cruel internet strangers. Yelpers and that kind of low scum. Why would you do this to yourself? Come to think of it, why are you doing this—writing a novel, that is? Ask yourself. Be honest with yourself. This is a good time to find out if you’re novel-writing for the wrong reasons.
Some right reasons: To express myself, to have fun, to share my stories, to learn something, to earn something.
Wrong reasons: Because if I’m an author everyone will love me, or at least respect me. And I’ll be a zillionaire and I’ll finally show those high school people.
Do you feel the difference? Can you handle the probable reality that finishing this book is not going to make you perfect, invincible, mega-famous? I hope you can. Because I bet some people would dearly love to read it. Pause. If you’d only finish it. Second pause. Hey, you know what’s a great outlet for your perfectionistic leanings? Your final draft. ;)
For most authors, final drafts are the heaven where we get to mess around with paragraph makeovers and word choice upgrades. Set yourself a deadline and share it widely to keep yourself semi-accountable. And have fun!
When I wrote my first novel, I felt like I was launching myself into space. In one of those tiny, ridiculous pods. Without enough food or fuel to get back home.
I wasn’t new to writing. As a professional magazine writer who’d sold a few short stories on the side, I'd battled the blank page before and saw myself as a veteran. Hell, one November, feeling ambitious, I’d even typed up a document of 50,000 word salad and called it “a novel.” None of that prepared me, of course… no more than sprinting a single mile would ever prepare you to run a marathon.
People often say that writing a novel is a marathon. But if a running coach told you that the only way to train for marathons was to just go run a few marathons alone, you’d say, “No thanks! That sounds like a long, lonely road.”
It was. And yet, all that summer and into the fall, I wrote. And wrote. In cafes. In bed. In my solitary escape pod hurtling through the galaxy. I was demon-fueled and unpublished. Unagented. Comically disconnected from the world of books-as-business. Worst of all, inexperienced in the art of writing fiction for readers (as opposed to writing it for other writers in my critique group!). No one was advising me or guiding me. No one was holding me accountable to my goals except (gulp) me. No one was counting on seeing my first draft, or my second or third drafts for that matter. I stoked my willpower with self-hatred because I knew no other way. But I wasn't COMPLETELY alone. My crack team of sadistic inner critics took turns whispering sweetly in my ear, “You suck.” “I bet you’ll never even finish the draft.” “It’s not too late to go to law school.”
Did it help that I had writer friends facing the same problems? Was it kinda nice, lifesaving when we bought each other beers and read each other’s chapters? Of course. But—though we were pros when it came to critiquing word use and sentence structure—it was rare that any of us could actually help each other figure out why our stories didn’t quite work. Or how to get from stuck, overwhelmed, and confused (SOC) to a completed manuscript.
Against the odds, I did finish that first novel, BE MY YOKO ONO. It scored me my first offer for a book deal in 2005… and in 2006 earned me the chance to work with an agent I’m today still thrilled to call a partner in publishing, Jim McCarthy at Dystel and Goderich Literary Management. When it came time to write my second and third novels, WHISPER and GLIMMER, life was a hundred times easier. Why? Not because I was rich and famous or something (I’m still just a working author). But now suddenly I had help with every step of the process. I had partners. Anytime I felt SOC, I could talk to my wonderful agent. Or my wonderful editors at Harper, Jill Santopolo (now of Penguin) and Kristin Rens. I had sophisticated editorial feedback on my project as it was growing. Guidance from people who truly know books and who are invested in my book’s success.
While some are indie to the core, the majority of authors thrive in healthy working relationships with editors, agents, or other publishing professionals who believe in them and are invested in their work’s success. But (catch 22) to attract an agent or editor’s attention, you must first turn in a polished, complete novel manuscript. And often it takes several polished, completed manuscripts before an agent or editor sees saleability. Given how swamped agents are with manuscripts, this makes sense. But is it a GOOD thing?
No one likes to think they suffered needlessly. Like any victim of hazing, I spent years trying to convince myself and others that it was Good For Me. That toiling in isolation—stabbing in the dark really—to get that first saleable MS, is a smart and efficient way to spend years of your writing life. That the intense isolation makes your books better. Makes you better--as a writer and as a person. Tougher. Crazier, too, but insanity’s underrated, right? And all those people who fail to finish their books because they just can’t face the long, lonely road any longer? Who needs those books and those voices anyway?
In hindsight, it’s clear to me that this aspect of the system is a drag, not a feature. It doesn’t help us get the potential out of people, and indeed slows progress exponentially.
I believe the most defining decision we’ve made at OddRocket is choosing to work with authors still in development. Not just authors who come to us pitching a polished product but those whose first works are still being created. Those who are on page 64 and not 100% sure where to go next. Those who are SOC. We want to give those creators a partner in their process. Someone to brainstorm with. Someone who’ll sit across the table from them (or Skype for hours) and share thoughts on their first draft to help them shape their second draft. A developmental editor, a project manager, and a guide. I want to give them what I wish someone had given me back then: a dream team.
Want to write for OddRocket? Send us your submissions, finished or not, today!
Have you checked out the OddLog on our website recently? There are new entries about the crew's adventures. The OddRocket crew (pictured above) is made up of Pernicious Kiss, Krash Sideways, and Solar Blast.
The New Hybrid Author... Whatever That Means By Phoebe Kitanidis, Author and OddRocket Co-Founder
Note: This blog post is a short version of Phoebe's recent guest talk in a University of Washington Creative Writing class.
So last Fall at Northwest Bookfest, I was lucky enough to sit on a panel with some pretty fab YA paranormal authors. (Video here, starting ~3:45.) We were wrapping up Q&A when a younger audience member asked, “So, are any of you guys self-published?”
Five years ago, her question would have been laughed out of the auditorium. Not only did all six of us have multiple books out from big 6 Big 5 NY houses, but a third of panelists had climbed all the way up to the bestseller lists. But in late 2012, no one was laughing at indie pub.
It turned out that two of us panelists had already dipped our toes into the indie pool, writing in different genres and/or a pen name… both with encouraging and profitable results. A third was currently producing her first indie book. A fourth was flirting shamelessly with the notion. A fifth had gone so far as to co-found a new publishing company. (That was me.)
Yet what’s significant here is not that so many of us were trying non-traditional publishing. What’s significant is that we were all still interested in the traditional stuff as well.
We were starting to become hybrid authors.
From Hybrid Publishing Strategies to Hybrid Publishing Companies
If you have no clue what I mean when I say “hybrid author,” don’t worry. By the time you read this article, you will be an expert. Unfortunately, by the time you read this article the meaning will probably have changed.
Kidding.
Mostly.
Publishing’s changing so quickly, even the shiniest of shiny new concepts and terms will undergo shifts in meaning within a couple of years.
The “hybrid author” today: from endangered to dangerous
So what does being a hybrid author mean today?
If blending strategies and experimenting with new forms is the new normal in publishing, does that rapidly aging term still hold relevance?
It does. Absolutely. And here’s why.
Because authoring may never again be the same pure, specialized, and isolated craft that it was (or that we liked to imagine it was) fifty years ago.
Don’t worry, this isn’t doom-saying: writing is still “a thing.” But it’s time to finally bury the remnants of our old cultural myth about writers.
We can no longer see ourselves as disconnected savants, awkwardly trapped inside our lovely sentences, deep in our cerebral shells. Observing life (and business) from a safe distance while our agents and publishers handle every detail.
Nor can we be glamorous literary divas who expect everyone to hang on our every tweet and line up around the block for our readings.
The market is fragmented enough, and audiences overloaded enough with free entertainment, that few will achieve the dream of superstardom. So that can’t be our primary dream. And since mega-fame isn’t just around the corner for most of us, and big publishers aren’t offering too much support for the midlist, then if we want to keep releasing books we’re going to have to educate and empower ourselves in two major ways:
Build on secondary skills and talents. Here are just a few skills, other than writing, that most authors could use: Book promotion. Accounting. Creative branding. Portrait photography. Developmental editing. Copy editing. Social media presence. Presence in general. Dramatic reading. Event planning. Marketing. Website creation. Graphic design. Metadata optimization. I could go on for pages, but you get the idea. Unless you are omni-skilled, you will not be able to do everything yourself, and unless you are wealthy you will not be able to hire pros to do everything for you. So pick one or two secondary skills you’re naturally good at and invest in their development. You can sell your secondary skills in the open market, of course, but you can also trade them with other artists you know and reap triple the benefits.
Nurture connections and affiliations with other artists. I live with two musicians, and the struggles they complain about are strikingly similar to mine. I would go so far as to say that the challenges of the 2013 author are, more or less, the challenges of the 2013 painter, DJ, bass player, photographer, sculptor, or you-name-the-art. We are artists too. Start reaching out beyond your genre and format, and even beyond your medium, to access diverse perspectives and skillsets. Hosting a critique group is great, but try a monthly craft night or salon—and don’t be surprised if becomes your brain trust and your sanity saver. Invite people whose work ethic you admire as much as you do their art. Also, include folks who love and are involved with art like small publishers, music promoters, independent store owners, and publicists. Consider forming (or joining) a local artists’ coalition to chip in for services like PR or to score group discounts on courses, printing costs, or ISBNs. With some artists whose work complements yours, it might even make sense to share a booth at a relevant trade show, or create a shared catalog or website.
As you value and invest in building meaningful connections with other artists, not only will you boost each other up but everyone’s creativity will shoot through the roof. You may decide to collaborate on creative projects together—a web comic, a series penned by a team, a Youtube music video, a limited edition art book. You may even discover that one of your secondary skills is another art form. (Don’t be surprised too if you find many artists whose other art is writing; post to an artist community board offering to trade a book cover for a manuscript critique and you’ll likely find takers.) The possibilities for community and creativity are endless.
“But all I want to do is write. Alone. At my desk. And be famous.”
Well, there will always be some people who go that route. And maybe you’ll be one of them. But until you make it big, whether you’re traditionally published, Next Gen, or indie, you will need support. What do you have to lose by nurturing a secondary skill or talent, and contributing to a strong community of artists?
My prediction: in five years, we will all be hybrid authors.
And then the term won’t mean anything anymore.
OddRocket Goes to NorWesCon - See Mission Control Touch Down March 28-31
NORWESCON 36
March 28–31, 2013, Seattle
OddRocketeer Phoebe Kitanidis is thrilled to be serving as the Editing & Publishing Track Lead for Norwescon 36. She’s designed a really cool list of panels that focus on emerging publishing challenges and technologies like “Podcasting 101: Authors with Volume” and “How I Learned to Relax and Love Ebooks.
In addition to being a pro critiquer at the Writers Workshop, her panel schedule is as follows:
Friday: First Page Idol (3-4 PM Cascade 3&4), Liar’s Panel (7-8 PM Cascade 6)
Saturday: The Power of Free (11-noon Cascade 5), Practice Your Pitch (3-4 PM Evergreen 1&2)
Sunday: What’s Unique About Writing for Young Adults (12-1 PM Cascade 3&4)
OddRocket cofounder Kevin Scott will read from Shackled at Norwescon 36, and will talk about OddRocket and its mission in panel appearances.
His schedule is:
Friday: So You’ve Finished Your Novel. Now What? (6-7 PM Cascade 12)
Saturday: Kevin Scott reads Shackled (10.30-11 PM Cascade 1)
Sunday: Writing Groups: Good Idea or Waste of Time? (3-4 PM Cascade 7)
Media Manager Maven, Lola Watson, will be attending NorWesCon both in her capacity of marketing consultant for OddRocket as well as nerd culture blogger at Nerd 2.0.
Her schedule is:
Friday: Fangirls: Who Are They and What Do They Want? (10-11am Cascade 2), Comic Adaptations (Noon-1pm Cascade 8), Gay Superheroes of the Future (1-2pm Cascade 7), Grimm and Once Upon a Time (4-5pm Cascade 2)
Saturday: Deconstructing the Superhero (1-2pm Cascade 5), Marketing for People Who Hate Marketing (6-7pm Cascade 8),
Sunday: Fandom In Daily Life (10-11am Cascade 5)
Join our event on Facebook to let us know you'll be there!
