Each of the most common points of view a writer can use to tell their story has strengths, and weaknesses. Some will fit a story better than another, and some authors are better at using a particular POV. I hope, if you are serious about your work, that you try to become proficient at them all. You never know when simply changing the POV in a story will make all the difference between a weak tale, and an eye-popping epic.

For the moment let’s look at some of the strengths and shortcomings of some of the most common POVs.

First Person:

This is the most natural way to tell a story. It was the one Neolithic Man used to tell the rest of the tribe about the hunt, the one your parents used to teach you about the mistakes they made, and the first one you were taught in school. (Remember all those “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” essays?)

It is also the one most despised by literary Puritans. It is an easy POV to write in, and anything easy can’t be good. Right? Good thing Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelly, Mark Twain, and a slew of other iconic writers chose to ignore them. Other wise we wouldn’t have Treasure Island, The Telltale Heart, Huck Finn, or Frankenstein. At the very lest none of those classics would have the same flavor, or impact they enjoy.

The major drawback to First Person is its constraint. If a major turning point in the plot happens to occur when the narrator is absent, then it has to be relayed to the reader second hand. It took Stevenson three whole chapters to handle this in Treasure Island. It also leaves the story open to bogging down in too much tell, not enough show. Also if a secondary character has thoughts or feelings that the reader needs to know, the narrator must become psychic, or another story device has to be introduced to let him know about it.

Third Person Subjective:

This is the workhorse of fiction. It is the most used, and invites us to ride along with the protagonist while denying the reader the intimacy of the personal pronoun. Unless he/she happens to use “I” in the dialog, that is.
Without knowing anything about the main character, the reader forms an opinion based on the method the author uses to introduce him/her. It also allows the author to comment from outside of the character’s immediate experiences.

With it, the writer can mention how good, or bad a place/situation is without having to resort to mind reading. For example:

“Robert Dagget entered the lone tavern of Killpenny. It was a brawling kind of dive, with a reputation for a rowdy clientele.”

With that single sentence I’ve stepped outside the character, and let the reader know something First Person could not. Without the protagonist thinking to himself about a reputation he knew of before hand, he has no way to relay that information without self reflection. This isn’t a bad thing. A clever writer can come up with any myriad of ways to do the same thing in First Person. But it will totally change the feel of the work. For example:

“I entered the lone tavern of Killpenny. I’d heard it was a dive with a rowdy reputation where a brawl could break out at any moment.”

Either method works just fine for any number of reasons, but I’m sure you can feel the difference between the two methods of storytelling. The first feels like a epic adventure, the second like a Mickey Spillane detective story. I’d also say you have your personal choice as to which one works better. Truthfully, without more of the story to go on, it would be impossible to say which one would work better.

Multi-Person Perspective:

This is where the story is told by several characters, each with their own section. This is as close as modern writing comes to classic Omniscient. It is probably more familiar with our television/movie mentality because it gives the author the opportunity to switch both scene and character when one begins to grow boring, or you need to let the reader in on a secret the protagonist does not know about.

J.R.R. Tolkien made good use of this method in the Lord Of the Rings saga. Tired of watching Frodo struggle to get to Mount Doom? Switch to Arragon bringing the army of the dead under his control, or Gandalf instructing Pipin to lite the beacon tower.

The drawback here is usually related to too many scene changes. You can give the reader a literary crick in the neck faster than the audience at a Chinese ping-pong match. So you have to be extra careful with your transitions.

There are other POVs that authors use, but they are not used as often as these three. All that matters is which one can you tell your story best in. That makes all the difference in the world. You should at least have a go at them all, but use the ones that best fit your story, and you are the best at using.

Later, Gang.

Let’s face it. Ebook publishing, and POD publishing, has made it easy to get a story out there to the public. For serious writers who sweat and toil over their craft, trying to turn out the best product they can, this is damn good news. The downside, (There always seems to be a downside.), is that same ease has opened up a flood gate of pure garbage from the get-rich-quick writing-is-easy crowd. Anyone who thinks that has never tried to seriously write a grocery list, much less a novel.

The result is; there are a lot of Tara Gilesbies putting out feature length versions of My Immortal, or pretty close to it, every day. If you don’t know what, or who, I’m referring to here count yourself lucky. If you happen to Google My Immortal or Tara, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My good friend, and fellow writer, Darke Conteur, assures me that eventually these characters will fade from the scene. I hope she is right, but I don’t think she’s considered the fresh crop of Taras popping up daily. (BTW, Darke has two ebooks published, and I can 100% guarantee you that both are well worth reading. Darke is very serious about her craft and how well her stories come out. Darke writes some damn good Paranormal Fantasy and you can check her work out here at Smashwords.com. At $.99, and $1.99 neither novel will break the bank, and you’ll more than get your money’s worth.)

Our mission as serious writers/storytellers is to make certain we put out the best we can do. The truth is this has little to do with genre, or idea, but it has everything to do with how you tell your story.

To illustrate my point, what would you think if I told you I had an idea about a full length novel involving rabbits. I would even give them their own pseudo language, and there wouldn’t be a human being in the whole story. Sounds like a silly idea for a novel, or a children’s book doesn’t it? But that is exactly the idea Richard Adams had when he wrote the best selling classic, Watership Down. And it certainly isn’t a children’s book, it’s classified as a heroic fantasy.

Now, on it’s own, most agents, publishing houses, and editors would dissmiss such a concept for a novel out of hand. Naturally that didn’t happen, and the reason was because Mr. Adams knows how to write a story. It wasn’t what he wrote about that made Watership Down a international best seller for thirty years, it was how he wrote it. There in lies the rub.

All too many future authors spend too much time trying to pin down the next trend in writing, or follow the current trend all too closely. Instead they should be working on how to tell a good story. How to write fiction that sells.

True it is scarier to do so, your taking a risk. But, no more so than the risk we take by just being another faceless member of the follow-the-popular-trend crowd. Even then, if we work hard on how to tell a good story, it is possible to upset the current King/Queen of the hill, and take their spot for ourselves. Actually that last part is even harder than striking out on your own literary path. The odds of being dismissed as a “copycat writer” are better than the ones you’ll face in blazing your own trail.

So, how do you learn to write a novel that sells?

There are plenty of “how to” books out there that can tell you just that. All you have to do is be willing to listen, and apply what they have to teach. Writer’s Digest has a slew of them, and it’s worth the small expense to pick out one, or two, and learn the craft. Even the poorest of us can put a buck, or two aside a week. Maybe even hint at a birthday, or Christmas present. And there is always the library.

Either way, it’s a small investment that will pay you big dividends later on. It may also save you from becoming the Tara Gilesbie of the E-publishing world. Well maybe not that bad, but would you even want to be considered a close second in that contest?

Later, Gang;
Pete

To make matters worse, if you do decide to go the self-publishing route you will discover that everything is left in your hands. This means that you are responsible for Graphics, (your cover art); Typesetting, (the look of your book), Proofreading (finding all those niggeling little gaffs that people will point to and say, “What a dumbass.”); Editing, (I don’t really have to explain this one, do I?); Marketing, (Advertising, promoting, etc.); and Formatting, (making certain your ‘baby’ looks just as good in Kindle as it does in Mobi, etc.).

Unless you happen to have major bank to hire a pro to do these jobs for you, you are stuck with Do It Yourself, (DYI). The problem here is, not all of us are Graphic artists, Salesmen, or typesetters. (Plus one points if you know what kerning is. If you have to look it up, then you know what I’m rambling on about.)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a big bankroll to spend on any of these necessary endeavors. To be honest, with my medical bills I’m doing well to ensure we get to eat something besides soup beans once a month around the old homestead. That fact alone leaves me in pretty much the same situation as most of you out there.

And lets face it, most of us are not computer programmers. So formatting in different reader languages holds the same frustration as trying to write a gaming program in C++, Pascal, Cobal, and Assembly simultaneously. Which doesn’t take into consideration that most programs are notoriously stubborn about reading another programs files. In fact they’re downright prejudiced about it. One of the reasons that webpages view differently between browsers.

But, take heart. Although this all seems to be akin to climbing Mount Everest with nothing more than a bag of rosin and a pair of tennis shoes for equipment, there is much we can learn to make the task easier. We might not be able to do every one of those tasks that go into publishing a book, but what we can do will go a long way towards “rolling our own.”

For this round let’s focus on formatting. Since most of us are trying to make a living as writers, we need to build as large a readership as we possibly can within our chosen genres. This means that we can not rely on Amazon, or Smashwords to do the job for us. Well, we can with Smashwords, to an extent. But that seems akin to allowing someone else to breathe for us. It might work, but it probably won’t work as well as breathing for ourselves.

Unless you are proficient in HTML, XML, or Mobi, you’re going to have to find a way to accomplish this task for ourselves. As you probably guessed, this means a couple of programs to do the job for us, and a way to check our results.

First off you will need at least two separate ebook reading programs, one for Kindle and one for Mobi, (Barns& Noble use the Mobi format). The Kindle reader program is free for your PC, and can be found here from Amazon. Mobi format reader for PC can also be downloaded for free here. And if you want to make certain that you have as many possible versions to cover as many bases as you can, here is where you can find out about The Top 4 Free ePub Readers for PC.

Ok. Now that we have a way to actually see what our ebook will look like in pretty much all the top ebook readers, it’s time to get down to some serious DYI formatting.

The easiest way to get this part of the job done also involves two free programs. One is Sigil, a What You See Is What You Get, (WYSIWYG), ebook editor; the other is Calibre, an ebook manager capable of doing a pretty good job of changing an ebook’s format without messing up the book’s look… most of the time. To fix any problems you may have in this, and other areas of useing these two programs to format your own ebooks for self-publishing, here are some links to a few tutorials that can help you over those rough spots:

IT Connect/Creating ePUB Ebooks.

How To Easily Write and Publish Ebooks with Sigil.

Getting Started with Calibre.

Now, before you get to thinking this is easy, don’t. It is easier than learning HTML, or Mobi coding language, but your still going to have to do some serious work. The upside is, you will know for certain how your book is going to look to the reader. The more proficient you become in using these programs, the more professional your ebook will look.

Good luck, and I hope this makes it easier for you to get the results you want.

Ever;
Pete

Fortunately, I have help. My good friend, and fellow AQCer, Dean C. Rich.

Dean is a writer of Epic Fantasy, (Which is always a plus in my books.), and probably one of the best writer friends you should be lucky enough to meet. As his guest blog will prove, shortly. If you haven’t met a fellow wordsmith like Dean in your own particular writing community, you have my deepest sympathies. Keep looking.

So without further gilding the Lilly, (I’m betting I have him blushing right about now.), HEEEEER’S DEAN!

************************************************

It Is All in The Delivery

I met Peter over at AQC the first month I became a member. He has a really cool story. We were participating in posting and critiquing each other’s chapters. He sent me the first five of his book. I gave him feedback, and he liked the feedback. He has given me ideas for my own work.

In the forums, chats, on blogs, and in articles one theme comes up again and again, the need for good beta readers and critique partners. The authors sing praises to their critique partners and beta readers for making their stories that much stronger.

There is a fine line between a good critique and being mean and petty. Yes, the critique needs to be honest.

I remember being in a seminar, (Okay it was sales) and there was a nice cake up front and two people were selected to have a piece of cake. The first volunteer watched as the server took out a silver knife and cut a nice piece of cake and then transferred the slice to a china plate. He then got a napkin and a silver fork and gave the slice to the honored recipient.

The next piece of cake was cut with a plastic knife. Since it was a small knife the host’s fingers dug into the cake. The plastic knife was making a mess of the slice so the host gave up on cutting the cake and just reached in and grabbed a chunk of cake and slapped it on a napkin and all but slung the cake at the next recipient.

Both guests were served cake, but what was the difference in their cakes? The delivery. One was served with grace, the other with, well, less grace.

The same is true on how we give critiques. “That was the worst piece of trash I’ve ever read, you call yourself a writer?” vs, “The premise is fascinating, and I was absorbed with the story. However, you lost me with such and such. You may consider this or that.”

It is all delivery. If your crit group makes you feel like a low life, get out and find a better group. We all put a lot of ourselves into our writing. When you get your critique you should feel inspired to do better, not feel like a heal.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Look for partners that give different views, plot and grammar. Details and general view. There is a lot that goes into writing, but you need to find your voice, your style, and a group of people to help you shine.

Thanks for letting me come over Peter.

************************************************

Thanks for helping me clean the place up a bit, Dean. You can just set the couch down anywhere.

Dean can be found as DC Rich at Agentquery Connect

@deancrich on twitter

And of course you can read his time management/motivation blog entries and author interviews and other things of interest to writers at The Write Time.

Have a good one, Gang!

Peter

Being that I am something of a storyteller, I have a bad habit of mixing truth with lies and leaving it up to you to figure out which is which.

Since my dear friend, Dawn, of Write Away fame, has gotten me embroiled in another meme… hang on to your BS meters, kiddies… here we go again!

Are you a rutabaga?

No. I am a meat Popsicle.

When was the last time you ate lion meat?

A gentleman never tells. Suffice to say our high school mascot was the lions. (I know… TMI… but, I’m feelin’ ornery today.)

Upload a heartwarming picture of something that makes you smile.

Damnit… I’m on dial up you sadists! But, here goes. I’ll be back in an hour, or so.

Sorry… didn’t work. It was a pic of my wife, but Facebook won’t let the thing get linked to.

If you could go back in time and kick the crap out of someone, who would it be?

The idiot who invented legal theft… I mean taxes.

Name one habit that makes other people plot your demise.

Being a total smartass… but, it’s better than being a dumb one.

What song would you like to be playing while you are kicking the crap out of someone?

Nickleback: Next Contestant. (Probably for the same reason. LOL! BTW. To the person who started this meme… violent sucker, ain’t ya?)

Where da muffin top at?

Innuendo is one thing, but the censors won’t let me answer this one outright. Maybe on a porn site, but not here.

How many goats, stacked atop one another like Yertle’s Turtles, would it take to reach the moon?

Damned if I know… I didn’t read Dr. Seuss as a kid. (Didn’t watch Mr. Rogers, either. Both of those kiddie icons gave me the willies.)

Describe yourself using obscure Latin words.

Instictuas authorius wantabeus.

That has to be pretty obscure, since I made it all up, like the pseudo Latin they used in the roadrunner cartoons.

Why does evil exist?

So the Gods won’t get bored. (Hey, would you actually like eternity in Care Bear land?) **shudder**

What the fuck are you thinking right now?

What the fuck am I doing this for?

If you could decide whose face should go on the money, who would you pick?

No one. I’d prefer pictures of bare rear ends on the money. Mostly because in a complete economic collapse that’s about the only thing that worthless paper will be good for. (See Germany’s collapse before Hitler if you don’t believe me.)

If you had to pick between a pet squirrel and a pet iguana, which would you choose?

Honestly neither. I prefer boa constrictors like Alice Cooper. But if I had to choose… the iguana. No fleas to infest the whole house.

Tag blogger some friends, whatever random number that suits you. (My random number is 2.) Ha! You can’t say “no tagbacks” because I just made up new rules! BOO YAH. Make up your own rules or be enslaved by another blogger’s.(<–these are actually Michelle Simkin’s rules, but I like them as well, so they still apply. besides, I'm a lazy cuss and I've been copy/pasting these suckers.)

1. Dean C. Rich

2. Riley Redgate

Pick a funny nickname for number 1.

Ellie May Clampett’s new critter!

Number 2 dreams about…

Reaching the age of 21, so she can get plastered whenever she wants to.

Number 3 looks like…

Claude Reins…since there isn’t a number three. Boo Yah!

Since this is the only meme I got tagged with… Th-th-th- that’s all folks!

(Now can I plot revenge on Dawn? Huh, can I, huh? Can I, can I, can I?) ( Ya know I luv ya, Sweetie.)

Ever;
Pete

I’m not saying that there won’t be a handful of people who don’t get it, you can’t please everyone. But when there are a significant number of folks getting stuck on the same thing. Something is wrong and explaining/defending it isn’t going to make it go away.

It should be obvious at this point that for your story to work, you are going to have to follow every copy around and explain the same points to every reader. Now, I’m not the smartest guy slogging through life, but I’m pretty sure that is not a viable option. I’d also be willing to bet that the average reader isn’t going to wait for you to show up to explain your genius to them. Their just going to dump the story, experience buyer’s remorse, and cross you off their reading list.

As I said, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that just doesn’t seem like a sound business strategy to me. And make no mistake, dear readers, unless you are just writing to please yourself, this is a business. A business that depends as much on repeat customers as it does on new ones. Deliberately sacrificing repeat business for the sake of your ego is a sure trip to has-been land. If you ever make it out of never-was land in the first place.

There is a wonderful little business book by F.J. Lennon called; Every Mistake In The Book: A Business How Not To. (Yes, I read business books as well, because this IS the publishing business, and I want to succeed at it.) Mr. Lennon has made just about every business mistake you can think of, and a heck of a lot that you haven’t. So when he says to do, or not do something, I have to bow to his experience. After all, he has already paid the price for that mistake… damned if I want to pay it too!

Hear are just a few pearls of wisdom he learned the hard way, but they apply to the business of writing as well as any other. Ignore them at your own peril.

Give the people what they want, not what you think they should have.

In other words, if you are ignoring the red flags, explaining/defending every little point YOU want to keep in your magnum opus, you are giving the people what you think they should have, not what they want. Mr. Lennon lost his first company doing this, you’ll lose your career. If you ever get one in the first place doing this.

Make money, then art.

This goes right along with the above. Before you begin to make these fantastic art driven vehicles for your amazing prose, you better be a brand first. To do that you have to garner a reading public and hold onto them. Otherwise, consider a career writing fan fiction for free. (To be honest, I personally wouldn’t risk it then. Readers do not have to stay with you and there are literally millions of up and comers waiting to take your place.)

Above all else, don’t make crap.

This should be self explanatory, but I’ll bet that it isn’t. If you are just starting out, not a brand name author, turning out what you want, and shooting for high art that has to be explained/defended to more than one person… you ARE turning out crap. It’s that simple.

Readers want to be entertained. They do not want to have to scratch their heads, wonder WTF you mean by those new words you made up, or where in hell your going with this. They want you to guide them through your story as effortlessly as possible.

If you find yourself having to explain/defend large portions of your story, that is a big red flag. Pay it heed, or ignore it as you will. It’s your story, your career. Believe me, the big name authors won’t really care that much, because you won’t be taking any readers away from them any time soon.

Ever;
Pete

Post meme apologies to anyone I tag, who has already been tagged with this one. I swear on Ernest Hemingway I didn’t know. Now on to the meme.

If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be?

Seems a bit masochistic to me, since I’ve never wanted to relive the past, but OK. I would go back to the first time I ever experienced a connection to the Divine Consciousness.

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

Being born. Sorry, but after 50 some years on this planet, I am thoroughly convinced that the majority of humankind is irrevocably, and violently insane. As we are the only species who deliberately pokes holes in its only life raft, and thinks we will survive somehow. Which I really don’t mind, I just wish they’d let me out of the car before they drive it off the cliff.

What movie/tv character do you most resemble in personality?

Groucho Marx.

If you could push one person off a cliff and get away with it, who would it be?

No one really. With the exception of self defense, I leave such things to higher powers than I.

Name one habit you want to change in yourself.

Nothing. I kind of like me just the way I am.

Describe yourself in one word.

Treehugger. (Yeah, I know it’s considered an insult, but at least I’m not one of the madmen turning life raft Earth into a collective coffin.)

Describe the person who named you in this meme in one word.

Talented.

Why do you blog? Answer in one sentence.

To be read by few, irritate many, and be understood by none.

Who am I tagging?

How should I know who you are tagging? Dean’s the one who got me into this mess, and I’m pretty sure he’s not the one asking this question!

Meme The Second:

Are you hot?

Nope. It’s still early in the morning, but the temp is supposed to rise today, so I guess I will be later. No AC, don’t ya know.

Upload a picture or wall paper you are using at the moment.

Beat ya to it. Pic is already uploaded, and a part of my banner above. Besides, with a dial up connection it takes for God awful ever.

When was the last time you ate chicken meat?

Two years ago, KFC original recipe. (I prefer beef, or fish.)

The Song(s) you listened to recently?

Wytches, Inkubus Sukkubus
Ramble On Rose, Grateful Dead
Soul, Matchbox 20
Green Grow the Rushes Oh, Cherish The Ladies

What were you thinking as you were doing this?

How many people would be able to tell where I was telling the truth, and where I was bullshitting.

Do you have nicknames?

Yes.

Tag eight Blogger friends.

1. Riley Redgate
2. Dawn G. Sparrow
3. Peri Oddical
4. Darke Conteur
5. Stephanie Diaz
6. Michelle Simkin
7. Tansy Ragwort
8. Kacey Mari

Who’s listed as number one?

Silly question. All you had to do was look.

Say something about number 5.

Steph needs to come back to Marathon next week… come to think of it, so do I.

How did you get to know number 3?

AQC, of course.

How about number 4?

‘Tame way.

Leave a message for number 6.

Michelle… we need your critiques in Marathon.

Leave a lovey-dovey message for number 2.

Watch’cha tryin’ ta do? Get me divorced? My WIFE reads this crap, for the God’s sake!!!

Do number 7 and number 8 have any similarities?

Yep, they are both on AQC, and probably pissed at me for tagging them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, so much for that one, Gang. I should now have eight fewer blogging friends, and confused the heck out of anyone who still reads this thing.

Hmmmm? Maybe I should start letting the spammers through?

Ever;
Pete

After reading said article, I had to take a few hours to cool off before blogging about it.

First, let me state beyond contention that I am the last person to diss having a good agent. In my own humble opinion, a good agent is nearly indispensable, and landing one is the whole point of AgentQuery Connect. However, this particular article had me as pissed off as a Hebrew man at a Neo-Nazi rally. And, for me, that’s saying a lot.

To read the article you would think that Ms. Rowling had done little more than write a NaniWriteMo piece, and her agent did all the work on the novel. That HE was the one who made Harry Potter the mega success it became. This speaks volumes for the illusion of the agent’s role in the literary world, and like it, or not, I’m about to shatter that illusion into teeny-tiny little fragments.

The agent’s job is to find a publisher willing to take a chance on your book, and negotiate the best deal they can get for the author. That is IT! The agent does NOT sweat over plot. They DO NOT stay awake at night searching for the right scene to make the novel something special. They DO NOT spend years polishing a manuscript until it shines enough to be accepted by another agent. They DO NOT bust their brain into Excedrin headache #1,426 coming up with unique plot twists to entertain the reading public.

To imply that the agent is the person who made a writer’s career a success is not only insulting beyond belief, it is akin to saying that Leonardo Dicaprio’s agent did all his acting FOR him.

Now, I don’t know if this blog is going to totally ruin my chances at landing an agent, or not. But I can, and will say; at this point I’m not sure I really care. The only time in my 50 some odd years on this planet that I have felt this insulted was when I was working as a graphic artist.

True Story:

Like all graphic artists I also held the dream of one day having my paintings hanging in a gallery somewhere. Of turning out art that would pay my bills, and maybe leave a legacy to make my small mark on the world. A long shot, I know, but one worth taking, at the time.

One day, while channel surfing, I was halted by a news report of a brand new artist who was commanding an average of $15,000.00 per painting. I had to stop. To know that there was hope for me. To applaud another artist who had made it. Until the story revealed the artist in question.

A raccoon!

It’s the closest I’ve ever come to kicking in the television screen. It also marked the downfall of my desire to be a gallery artist, and probably my career as a graphic artist as well. The life just drained out of the whole scene for me that day.

Giving an agent, no matter how talented, kudos for an author’s success with the public is dangerously close to the same thing. I don’t care how good an agent is, if the public isn’t buying the story they are not going to be able to change that. In fact they are not even going to try. They will simply move on to the next client, and the next commission.

I’m not saying this is bad, it’s just how the business works. If an agent doesn’t earn any commissions, they can’t feed their children. They are, for the most part, hard working, intelligent professionals. But, to give an agent this much credit for a writer’s hard work is unconscionable, and in damn poor taste.

The story lives, or dies by the writer who penned it, not by the will of the agent. The agent is a broker, not the product. And that is all there is to it. No more, no less.

Besides, without a writer’s manuscript to sell, I seriously doubt the agent would be in business.

So, let’s give credit where credit is due. It was J.K. Rowling’s considerable skill as a storyteller and writer that conjured up those millions for her, not her agent.

Ever;
Pete

So, why bring it up now? Simply because it appears that I will be re-writing and re-posting chapter four. The vote stands at two ‘Yes’, and two ‘No.’ (See? If I had been crowing about my ‘stellar record’, I’d be dining on that same crow right about now.)

But, I digress. This offers me a perfect opportunity to muse about re-writing, plot holes, and editing in general. It also allows me to muse about these bumps in the road leading to published author, and the aspiring writer’s near phobic aversion to them.

If you are really serious about making a career as a writer, that’s all they are. Bumps in the road. If small things like this are major disasters for you, my sympathies when the really big things hit. You’re gonna get splattered across the literary landscape like semi-truck roadkill.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am definitely NOT saying that you have to roll over for every little nit that someone discovers in your manuscript. What I am saying is there will be things that you didn’t think of, and to let them go unaddressed simply because the reviewer, critic, or editor doesn’t see your ‘genius’ is just plain s-t-u-p-i-d. 99.99% of the time, you are passing up an opportunity to turn out something of a masterpiece for the sake of your ego.

I don’t know about anyone else, but my ego isn’t the one paying the bills, or trying to get this career off the ground. I am.

Wait a minute! Isn’t my ego the same thing as me? No. My ego is that very small part of me that has a bad habit of getting in the way and screwing up a good thing. Robert L. Ringer, in his seminal classic “Looking Out For Number One”, compared ego to a dinosaur. As long as you feed it, everything is fine. The moment you reach a point where you can’t feed it; it will step on your house.

I’m sorry to say that over the years I have tested this little theory of Robert’s. Know what? There are a few crushed houses in my wake that used to belong to me. Relationships where I just had to be right, jobs where I knew better than the boss, small businesses where I was the Boss and knew better than anyone else. Sometimes I wonder where I would be right now if I hadn’t let ego get in my way.

Think I’m going to let that little S.O.B get in my way this time? Oh, Hell no! If this is going to fail, I can do bad all by myself, thank you.

The point to all this meandering? Mostly it’s been to remind myself what letting my ego get in the way has cost me in the past. But, also to let any other, younger writers know what they have in store for them by letting their own dinosaur run unchecked.

One of the trickiest areas to deal with is knowing when something is a legitimate point, and when it actually is a story destroying opinion. Most things are not. They are simply something you didn’t notice, or a way of handling something that you didn’t think of. I’ll let you in on a little secret, too.

Even the best actor you can think of has a director telling them what to do. It’s the same in the publishing world. Editors, beta readers, agents, and critics are all doing the job of the director. Actors who puff up their ego, no matter how famous, soon find themselves without work. The actors who work with the director find themselves in demand, and very often on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. The same rule holds true for authors… in particular aspiring authors.

For myself, I’ll be re-writing chapter four, regardless. To be truthful about it, I’ll be re-writing the other three chapters as well. Even though they passed, there were many points made that I needed, and I’m sure going to use them. So, in the end it doesn’t really matter if I pass this week, or not. The only difference will be, if I don’t, the rest of the group will get to see the re-write before the story is finished.

But, before anyone thinks I’m totally wishy-washy; I will be keeping the term knight. There is ample evidence that the term could have originated with the Celts, as well as the practice of dubbing.

In The Epics of Celtic Ireland, by Jean Markale, (Which analyses the few surviving written accounts of Celtic mythology.) The Celtic God Mananann Mac Lir was often called the Knight of the Sea, and was referred to in the translations this way. Since the Celts did have a word for King, the word used to describe his title is obviously something else, and this word was translated as knight.

See? You don’t have to give up everything.

Ever;
Pete

Working through the AQC Speculative Fiction Marathon is an experience in itself. As a result some things have gotten away from me. The blog, for example. It’s probably not a good idea to let it lay fallow for such a long time. Assuming I still have any readers out there, I’ll try not to do so again.

Jumping back into the blogging fray, it occurred to me that one has to have an extreme degree of toughness to consider becoming a writer. Either that, or just enjoy the sensation of pain. It’s a small wonder that Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was an Austrian writer and journalist. The namesake of masochism couldn’t have chosen a better profession to feed his need. (Short of volunteering to be a human target for a knife throwing class, that is.)

All that said, I will say that I am not a friend of pain. The less I experience that sensation in any of its myriad forms the better. But, like death and taxes, it is impossible to avoid completely. In particular when it stands between you and something you want. Such as becoming a published author, for instance.

When I have often heard a non-writer, and on occasion an aspiring writer, comment on what an easy job writing is; I come to two conclusions. One being that they have never tried to seriously become an author. The other is, they need to stop eating those wild mushrooms before they loose all sense of reality, or accidentally kill themselves.

The truth is, the moment you decide to pursue the career you have set yourself up for more work, and abuse, than you could possibly imagine. Not only is your ‘finished novel’ nowhere near as finished as you think, but the task of polishing your baby into publishing quality is one long hard road to travel. Until the book actually sees print you will be rewriting, revising, and rethinking every nuance in it. In short both your baby, and your ego is in for one hell of a beating.

Don’t think for a moment that self-publishing will save your tail, either. Not if your serious. In many ways self-publishing is harder than traditional publishing. Especially if you ignore any well meaning advise you may receive on your work. Since you won’t have the aid of a seasoned editor to help you, you’ll have to take the advice of your beta readers and peers. Ignore that, and I guarantee your reviews are going to chew you a new one. If you are lucky enough to get a review in the first place.

Even better, none of this so far takes into account the massive amount of work you will have to put into marketing your book, promoting your book, and advertising your book. Then, when all that is said and done, it is still quite possible that you’ve done little more than waste your time, effort, and money. The book can still fail simply because the reading public doesn’t want it.

As I said on AQC recently, (A phrase Darke liked so much she tweeted it.): The publishing business is a dog eat dog world, and we are all wearing Milkbone underwear.

Now, I do have to say that it is not my intention to scare anyone away from a career in writing. Instead I’m just trying to give a heads up. This job isn’t the sweet, work-less deal that many take it for. It is hard and brutal. To have a chance of success you have to be tough. You must be willing to wade through Hell just to sandpaper a wildcat’s ass in a phone booth.

It all boils down to one thing. How bad do you want it?

For myself, hand me a sheet of #6 grit, and close the door on the phone booth.

Ever;
Pete