Writers in the Storm

Kourtney Heintz

In 2014, I was in the middle of line edits when my publisher shut down the imprint publishing my book. A few months later, my agency and I parted ways. Everything that I had worked for over the past nine years disappeared. I hope nothing like this ever happens to you. But we’re all prone to disasters, big and small. Here’s how I got through mine:

• Remain Professional

Emotions are flooding through you. That’s 100% normal, but makes it really easy to flip out on your agent or editor. Don’t do it!

Screaming at your agent or your editor won’t change the situation. And that temporary release will have serious long-term consequences that hurt you because you still have to work with these people to get the next steps done.

All you have left is your agent and you need her to help you navigate these unchartered waters. Scream into a pillow. Call a friend and rally against the injustice of your life. But when you talk to your agent or editor, remain professional. To keep your emotional distance, have a pen and paper handy and take notes, or interact via email. You can edit the emotion out of an email—make sure you write a few drafts and never fire off your first one.

• Focus on the Next Step

Doing something is movement away from what just happened. Unfortunately, the next steps can take months to get through, so you want to get things set in motion as soon as you can.

If your book hasn’t been published yet, you need the publisher to give you back the rights to the book and deliver the most recent version of your manuscript to you. Emails have to be drafted. Documents require signoff. Your agent can take care of most of it for you, which is why #1 is so important. This process can take 3-6 months.

If your book is already published, the publisher has more work on their end including removing the book from sale on all the platforms, reverting the rights to you, and conducting a final accounting of all the royalties. That process can take 6 months to a year.

• Mourn the Loss Privately

Getting an agent and a publisher is like winning the lottery, so being this close to publication and having it all disappear is a huge blow.

Give yourself private time offline to process everything you’re feeling. Mourn the loss,  be angry at the industry, feel betrayed by all you believed in. Vent about everything you’re feeling to friends and family—the people you trust. Don’t post anything online during this time because what you feel in this moment isn’t for public consumption.

The outbursts of emotion that feel so good with a friend, can haunt you online forever. Resist the urge to post your pain. If you want to write about it, open a Word document and pour everything into it, but don’t share it, not yet.

• Be Honest About What You Can Do Next

Can you start the query process all over again? It’s okay to admit you can’t. Maybe you need to take a break from querying. Maybe you need to work on a new project. Maybe you need a sabbatical from writing. Do what you can do.

If you love the book and believe in the book and don’t want to give up on the book, this is not the end. As long as you keep trying, there is always a possibility for this book. But you may not bounce back so much as slowly crawl out of it.

• Share Your Story When You Are Ready

When your emotions are under control and you can write a balanced post about what happened, it helps to share your story. Just wait until you are ready to field questions. People will try to be supportive, but sometimes they will say things that make you want to scream.

There is so much shame tied up in losing a publishing deal. But after you share what happened, author friends may surprise you by emailing their personal horror stories about agent and publisher losses and you realize you aren’t alone. It can give you the strength to push onward to the next bend in your publishing journey.

• Take the Knowledge and Use It

At first it feels like that time spent negotiating the contract and working on revisions with the first publisher was wasted. But it wasn’t.

You learned so much about the publication process and editing. You will take that knowledge forward with you. You will be better prepared when the next opportunity comes along. You know what red flags to look out for and what questions you should ask up front. You know that despite the best of intentions things can fall apart and now you know what to do if that happens.

In 2015, my line-edited manuscript ended up with a small press, which let me have cover input and gave me more attention than a big publisher. Last year when I was unable to work for two months because of severe vertigo, this same small press worked around my health issues and pushed back deadlines on Book 2 for me. I’m not sure a big publisher would have been willing or able to do that for me. I’m a firm believer than in the end, everything is okay. And if it’s not okay, you are not at the end.

What disaster have you survived? Have any tips for us?

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K.C. Tansley lives with her warrior lapdog, Emerson, and two quirky golden retrievers on a hill somewhere in Connecticut. She tends to believe in the unbelievables—spells, ghosts, time travel—and writes about them.

 Never one to say no to a road trip, she’s climbed the Great Wall twice, hopped on the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, and danced the night away in the dunes of Cape Hatteras. She loves the ocean and hates the sun, which makes for interesting beach days. The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts is her award-winning and bestselling first novel in The Unbelievables series.

 As Kourtney Heintz, she also writes award winning cross-genre fiction for adults.

 You can find out more about her at: http://kctansley.com

Last Wednesday my post suggested several possibilities for a job description for writers. If you missed it, you can read it here.

Today I was going to share ideas on how to incorporate those bullet points in your writing. Only four days have passed, but I've moved from very specific items to a much broader view in the interim. 

I've been thinking about all the people who re-read their favorite books, who have shelves filled with "keepers" that they regularly revisit—or just look at the cover and sigh with fond memories. I must admit, I have a big selection of  keeper books, but I don't re-read them. Ever. Why would I do that, because I know the plot by the time I finish the book.

Years ago, in the days when we had WITS throwdowns, I took the side of plot-driven stories versus Laura Drake, who chose those that are character driven. (Did you know that Shakespeare is commonly described as a plot-driven author by scholars? Nice for my ego!)

After a week-end plus two days of re-reading my favorite keepers, I've got to admit a shocking fact. I picked my all-time favorites, but when I began reading I found that I didn't remember the plot. In some cases I remembered almost nothing of the plot, in others I remembered the big stuff, but I forgot the smaller, more intimate details. In every case, I remembered how I felt while reading the book, the rollercoaster ride of emotions from anticipation, fear, wonder, relief, and joy. Now I understand why I enjoy genres besides science fiction. Now, I read for emotion, not plot. 

Sacrilege! All four of the books I've written began as plot-driven stories. In the revisions—at times, painful revisions—the emotions my characters felt finally made it to the pages. I remember one of my first critique partners, Marie Sparks, asking, "But what are they feeling?" on every single page. Well, those feelings are on every single page now. And as I'm beginning to write PRISM 2, the characters' emotions are a driving force. Instead of thinking of "outside" factors being turning points, for the first time I'm considering making my characters' emotions, their "inner lives," front-and-center from the get-go. (This will save me a boatload of time in revisions!) 

Think about the highlight of your last vacation. Maybe you were camping by a stream, or hiking on a mountain, or eating an amazing meal, or wandering a museum when you saw something that wowed you. If that experience wasn't in the last couple of years, I challenge you to come up with the specifics-the name of the stream or trail, the exact menu, the artist. But I'll bet you remember how you felt at your epiphany. Joy, wonder, or happiness might describe your emotion at the time.

Our bodies feel—and remember—emotion. We have that felt sense of awe, fear, anxiety, love, and the whole range of emotions because that's how we stored emotions before we had words. And our emotions—or the memory of them—often saved our lives. That's why emotions are so powerful. That's why readers read fiction—for the emotion. We have genre fiction so readers can easily find a book that has the emotion they want to feel, whether it's terror (horror), fear (suspense), love (romance), surprise (science fiction), tension (mystery)...You can finish the list.

The cool thing is, we can feel more than one emotion at a time, which amps up the power of our reaction and our memory of the event. You've probably walked into a room that a child or pet has "destroyed" only to find the child or pet sleeping in the midst of the mess. The anger you feel is immediately mitigated by the love you have for the sweet "innocent" sleeping so peacefully—before you start screaming. Those two emotions are melded together in your memory of the event. You won't be able to recall the memory without feeling both emotions. That's some powerful juice.

So, the job of a fiction writer is simply-defined: Write a story that forces your reader to feel emotions.

Easy to define, not so easy to accomplish. 

Those fifteen bullet-points in Part One can serve as starting points if you're boarding the NaNoWriMo train today. The first Wednesday in December, I'll finish our exploration of a writer's job with specific writing craft tips and examples to give your readers an emotional response, a felt-sense response, that makes them run for more of the same in your next book.

Can you share an example or a way you convey a specific emotion without naming that emotion in your manuscript? What emotion do you have trouble getting on the page?

ABOUT FAE:

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes  that she can live anywhere but the present. As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules.

Punished, oh-no, that’s published as a co-author of a math textbook, she yearns to hear personal stories about finding love from those who read her books, rather than the horrors of calculus lessons gone wrong.  She is grateful for good friends who remind her to do the practical things in life like grocery shop, show up at the airport for a flight and pay bills.

A “hard” scientist who avoided writing classes like the plague, she now shares her brain with characters who demand that their stories be told.  Amazing, gifted critique partners keep her on the straight and narrow. Feedback from readers keeps her fingers on the keyboard.

P.R.I.S.M., a young adult science fiction romance story of survival, betrayal, resolve, deceit, lies, and love.

When she’s not hanging out at Writers in the Storm, you can visit Fae at http://faerowen.com  or www.facebook.com/fae.rowen

Sue Ward Drake

I recently spoke on a panel at Romance Writers of America national conference on writing disabled characters. I was asked to present because I had previously worked with the conference for permission to have a transcriber at workshops because I’m deaf.

At my recent presentation, an audience member asked if I thought I wrote "inspirational porn." I’d never heard the expression, but I suppose presenting a disabled person as a ‘normal’ romance heroine with the same sort of worries as any other woman might well be categorized this way. By other people, mind you. After the conference, I realized I’m actually an inspirational junkie, but not because I have trouble hearing. Or maybe that’s why. I don’t know, but I have to face the truth.

Say your goal is to write a book.

You can’t turn around without running into a self-help book on goal setting. In the beginning of the 20^th century men like Napoleon Hill wrote inspirational books about success with a focus on becoming rich. There are still plenty of people giving how-to-succeed-in-business books. Now there’s life coaching and SWOT analyses.

What will help you reach your goal?

The number one quality a writer must have is stubbornness. The will to sit yourself down and write every day. The will to keep marching through the muck (which is what failure feels like).

The next is a belief in yourself. Because you’re going to be writing a lot of words before you write something others want to read. If you enter contests there will be plenty of people who will tell you what’s wrong with those words.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard professor, says of her book Confidence: “Confidence isn’t optimism or pessimism…It’s the expectation of a positive outcome.” So how do you develop the confidence to keep moving toward that goal?

I have a folder full of newspaper and magazine clippings dating back to 2000, which means I must have had this in my office because my house was flooded during Hurricane Katrina. A lot of these are about how to be happy (from SELF magazine) but most are about how to achieve goals. I have a whole year of Gail Blanke’s columns for the magazine REAL SIMPLE about motivation, syndicated newspaper articles by Jeff Herring on taking action toward a dream, interviews from the New York Times business section and even the Vows section. One wedding I clipped mentioned the bride who, when she wanted something, would go after it with a “sort of mythological force.” That’s the type of confidence you need to be a writer—or just to live a happy life.

What specific process will help you reach your goal?

Athletes use visualization to win their races. They visualize every turn down the mountain, every  flip at the end of the pool until they’ve reached the finish. Writers can use the process to achieve their goals.

Make a vision board with clippings or photographs of yourself or make one on Pinterest. Write down what you want, even if it’s as simple as finding a place to write. In Henriette Anne Klauser’s Write It Down Make it Happen: Knowing What You Want and Getting It she describes how she and others have used this method to finalize their dreams by writing down what she wanted step by step and why. She suggests writing about those times when you successfully went after a goal, any goal, big or small. This doesn’t have to be New-York-Times-bestseller-list stuff.

Story board your steps to success. When your confidence hits the skids, write down those defining moments when you went after something because you wanted it more than effort.

Often the most important type of confidence isn’t self-confidence, but that nurtured by others. So find your cheerleaders, your tribe. Don’t have a writing group in your town? Get one long-distance via contacts you made at conferences or through social media.

Reinforce your goals with affirmations every day. Use the word ‘I’ and your name. One of my favorites is about having unlimited creativity, naturally. Another example might be: Because I am a talented author, I easily create my own opportunities. Paul Norris, former CEO of W.R. Grace & Company who also had a handicap said in a New York Times business interview: “Always create situations that will create opportunities in the future, even if you decide not to take them.”

Remember there is an unlimited supply of success, whatever that means to you. Nora Roberts is quoted as saying: “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never get it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” 

How about you, WITS readers? How do you manage to stay positive?

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 Sue Ward Drake grew up in an old house full of dark windows, with a passion for writing, travel and international spy thrillers. Her early literary efforts include submitting a short story to a national magazine at the age of eight and writing a fictional advice column for her high school newspaper.  After a year of study in Spain and a stint living in a farmhouse on a Greek island, a location she used in her first traditionally-published romance, HEAR NO EVIL, she returned to New Orleans where her gradually worsening hearing led to a career as a computer analyst for a bank and a local university.

A survivor of the devastating hurricane Katrina, she currently resides in Nevada with her husband of thirty-eight years. When not writing, she enjoys hiking, swimming, and cooking low-density meals. You can visit Sue on Twitter and find out more about her writing and her books at  www.SueWardDrake.com.