Times are wild and getting wilder, but a lot of us are still on deadline and have to create, produce, and imagine for a living. Here are some tips about how to do those things. These tips apply to working remotely as well as specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many of us are being encouraged or required to work remotely.
Category Archives: How To…
Work Life Balance – With 2 Jobs
Stress, guys. It’s not great. It can be tough having two jobs, both of which need your time, energy, and creativity. Here’s a video where I talk about some things I deal with, some strategies I have, some thoughts on false dichotomies, and the perils of TV.
3 Tips for Recovering from Creative Burnout | How to Refill Your Creative Well
Creative burnout is really common in fields of creative production and artistry — authors, youtubers, artists… we all have to find ways to refill that creative well. Here are the three things I do!
3 Weird Methods for Outlining Your Book
Bonus Blog Content:
Bonus content here for the blog! Below are some EXTRA TIPS for which outline method to use when.
Tabular Method (24-Chapter Breakout)
The 24-Chapter Breakout (Tabular Outline) is good if you like to move things around. You can do this in a table or with notecards or on a whiteboard! This method is really useful for early-stage outlining, such as when you know the BIG pieces, but you’re not sure how to connect them.
When I did this method for my Book 2, I started in excel but politely transferred it into Word before sending it to my freelance editor. She appreciated it! Then we graduated to the paragraph-level outline, which ended up being about a half page for each chapter. Sooo… if you feel like a 24-page document is your kind of outline, there’s even more riches to be won with this method!
Verbal Method (The Out-Loud Outline)
The Verbal “Out-Loud” Outline is good if you’re having trouble getting a hold of the interesting points of your story. This method will have you talking through the problems and essentially working on a high level pitch! Communication is key! It can be scary, of course, to share your ideas with another person. But I promise it is SUCH a good way to start pulling the story out of your brain and putting it in the real world.
And you can always record yourself instead of talking to another person, if that suits you better. Me, I like talking to myself. I really do. Dictating has been a wonderful addition to my busy schedule. You know how some people listen to audiobooks and podcasts so they can make their commute more enjoyable and/or productive? That’s when I dictate! Sometimes I do it for drafting and other times I do it for brainstorming.
Emoji Method (Symbolic Outline)
The Emoji Method (Symbolic Outline) is great when you have all the pieces (your characters, your places, any important objects), and you want to create an at-a-glance visual method for what happens in your book. For me, this was really really useful during revisions. I already had a good sense of my cast of characters, I already knew the major places and points.
Creating a symbol for each of them was a HIGHLY visual way of understanding who was involved and when. It forces you to think very linearly and very pragmatically. You only have so much room on the page, so many symbols, and so many ways for showing what is happening. ((When I was re-outlining Nameless Queen with emojis, that’s when I realized I had 1 too many characters being towed around and not doing much… so I cut the character!))
Thanks!
Thanks for reading and/or watching! I hope these strange and whacky methods that I came up with help you with your book! Keep writing!
Throw Away Your Writing
New video is up!
I have to scrap some work I’ve been doing lately, and it begs the question: When and why do we throw away our art?
How do Foreign Editions of Books Happen?
With the recent announcement that there will be a German edition of my book, NAMELESS QUEEN, it begs the question: How do foreign editions of books happen?
- What IS a foreign edition of a book? A foreign edition is a version of the book that is being published in a different region and/or language. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in a different language, though. For example, you may sell World German rights to a publisher based in Germany. You may sell US English rights to an American publisher and sell UK English rights to a publisher in England. Or you may sell World English rights to a single publisher. It can be broken out regionally and/or by language.
- How do you get a foreign publisher to publish your book? Depending on who has retained the ability to sell the foreign rights, (this is something specified in a contract), either your publisher or your agent will reach out to foreign publishers or agents in order to see if they’d like to pay for the ability to translate and publish your book. Sometimes these connections happen at trade shows, conferences, meet-and-greets, good old fashion solicitation, or networking contacts. Sometimes Book Spies get ahold of your book first and then the foreign agencies or publishers are the ones who reach out. Regardless of who initiates, there will be a contract. The contract will specify things like the advance amount and the timeline for translation and publishing.
- Who translates the foreign edition? If you’re working with a foreign publishing house, they will often have in-house or hired translators. This person will translate your book. In less traditional circumstances, such as if you are self-publishing or retaining the ability to sell foreign rights, you may end up hiring a freelance translator yourself.
- Are the covers different? They can be! The foreign edition is a whole different book through a different publishing house. That means they design their own cover, which makes sense! The domestic cover may have been designed in-house at your publishing house, and your foreign publisher would have to buy the rights to use it or just pay for their own. And a different region/language has an entirely different market, so trust your foreign publisher to know what will sell well in their area. If a cover really resonates or works well globally, a foreign publisher may pay to use it, giving it a more consistent look internationally.
- What if something in the book doesn’t “translate” well? There are often words or phrases that literally can’t be translated, but translators do this for a living and can handle it in stride! Sometimes there are things that won’t translate culturally. This can be anything from a sense of humor to cultural references to idioms. In these cases, they may ask you to make some changes.
- When is a foreign edition published compared to the domestic version? Most of the time, when a foreign rights deal is struck, the contract specifies when the foreign edition should be published. Most often, it is scheduled for within a certain amount of time after the original-language edition is published. This is so that the success of the book in its home market will build buzz in the foreign market. It’s all in the contracts, so it can vary from author to author and from book to book.
- Does an author get paid for a foreign edition? Yep! If you’re getting traditionally published on all fronts, then you’ll get an advance. Sometimes a domestic publish deal will pay the author their advancement in installments (part on signing the contract, part on the publication of the hardcover, etc.). Foreign deals are often all-at-once. A couple special money things to pay attention to:
- If you’re dealing with a foreign country, they may have a different currency. The contract may specify in either their currency or yours. If it’s in the foreign currency, then keep an eye on the exchange rate!
- If you have an agent, they’ll keep a percentage of what you earn through the rights that they help you sell. This includes selling foreign rights. Most often, if your agency is selling foreign rights, they’ll also work with a foreign agency who will also take a percentage.
- Does the author get any copies of their foreign edition? Sometimes a contract will specify that the author will get a certain number of the foreign editions sent to them around the time of publication.
If you have any questions that aren’t on this list, let me know! Ask in comments, or toss a message my way. I’ll be glad to answer if I can.
How to Have Ideas for Books
Since I’ve been pitching book ideas to my editor recently, I have been spending a lot of time coming up with ideas, both good and bad. Here are some of the strategies that have worked for me:
- Brute force creativity and rapid cycling
- Flow chart madness & quotes/excerpts galore
- Talk it out with someone, anyone, and/or everyone
- Research, reading, and tricking your brain into relaxing while thinking
Brute Force Creativity, Rapid Cycling
Here’s a great video about brute force creativity (by Hank Green, author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing). The gist is this: You improve much more quickly if you work iteratively (repeatedly). The more you do, the better you get. If you stress forever about achieving perfection, you’ll never get close.
That’s one of the reasons I wrote four books before I got my book deal. I kept working and practicing, improving each time.
The same goes for ideas! At the outset, sometimes it’s best to just go through a bunch of ideas and write them all down. Then, once you have a collection, you see which ones speak to you and promise the most room for growth. Be careful not to get stuck on an idea that isn’t going anywhere. In the immortal paraphrase of my editor: “It is easy to become trapped by an enticing premise with no story behind it.” (What she actually said was something like “this idea isn’t working even though you want it to; you need to move on.” And honestly, that’s advice that bears repeating in my case.)
Flow Chart Madness & Visualization
If you spiral between different options related to an idea, sometimes you need to visualize it in order to get un-stuck. For example, if you have a premise about aliens on another planet in our solar system but you can’t decide if they should be from Neptune or Uranus, toss the ideas on a whiteboard (or paper, or cork board, etc.). Then diagram it out a bit. Instead of bouncing back and forth between two choices, let both of them branch out a bit and decide which path is more interesting. This is also a good method for deciding plot choices when you’re drafting or outlining, by the way. I know it can feel wasteful to explore a path you don’t end up taking, but it is by far more efficient than spinning your wheels too early in the game.
Writers often want to spend a lot of time inside their own heads. After all, that’s where the stories come from and are built. But there’s a reason we don’t draft the book in our heads first before writing it down. Seeing is believing. Or rather, seeing is actualizing an externalizing an idea so that your brain can focus on expanding an idea instead of just holding onto it.
Say it with me: Seeing. Is. Believing.
This means that you’ve got to get things written down and out of your head, because you can’t keep the idea cooped up in your head for too long.
Quotes & Excerpts Galore
As you brainstorm ideas, if absolutely anything pops in your head related to the idea, WRITE IT DOWN. If a snappy quote pops in your head that totally just nails your main character’s voice, don’t lose it! If you want to write a quick page about the origin story of magic or the culture in your story, do it immediately! All of these things are vital to giving your ideas the foundation for being built. And none of it’s wasteful, because everything you do is an exercise in creativity and stretching your mind! And you may end up literally using a dialogue line or description in this or another story.
Talk it Out
I cannot stress enough the benefit of getting out of your own head. Even just telling someone else the basics will help, because you’ll immediately be listening to it from an outsider’s perspective. My pitches never feel quite solid until I’ve had someone else look at them, whether that’s my agent, author friends, or everyday family and friends. And an everyday person will be able to tell you if it feels right even if they can’t articulate what is wrong.
And getting outsider input is always useful. An idea is just like a pitch, because it should be digestible and comprehensible by anyone and everyone. If you’re struggling to articulate something, then it’s probably your idea and not just your pitch that needs work.
Read, Research, and Relax
Reading. Reading is great. Sometimes you just have to dive into a good book to remember why you love them and why you write. Sure, there can be distractions or the intimidation of perfection, but there is also inspiration! And proof you can do it! And examples of how it can be done well! Maybe you read a great plot twist and it sparks a plot twist in yours. Maybe you read a cool premise, and you think “yeah, that’d be even cooler if…”
Research. If you have an idea for a sci-fi book about quantum physics, get some research done! It may not be until you stumble upon the delicious fact that one of the sub-atomic quarks is named “Charm” that the idea finally clicks. Wikipedia is your friend. Research is a great way to find sparks that will help you expand on ideas in new and interesting ways.
Relax. These last couple paragraphs have all been about getting your mind a bit farther away from your body. In the end, you need to relax. There’s a reason we say that you need to “sleep on it” in order to solve a tough problem. There’s a reason relaxation is crucial during times of stress. Your brain needs variety, and it’ll keep chugging away at problems in your sub-conscious. So expose yourself to new places and experiences, new people and music, new stories and histories. It’s deceptively easy to lose yourself (and your precious time!) while staring at a blank wall.
What About You?
So. What about you! How do you come up with ideas? What methods do you use to kick-start your brain?
Pitching Book Ideas to Your Editor
I’ve been in the process recently of pitching book ideas to my editor. Back in (checks watch) 2016, I signed a contract for a two-book deal. Now that we’re wrapping up book 1, time has come to start on book 2. While they bought book 1 at face value after reading it, the second book hasn’t been written yet.
So what does that mean? It means that I have to pitch ideas for the second book so that they can green-light it before I write it. After all, while I spent nearly 10 months total on writing book 1 and then another year and a half on revisions with my editor, book 2 is supposed to come out one year after book 2. Basically, book 2 has to be written, revised, and finalized on a much tighter schedule.
It’s in the publisher’s interest to understand and approve the book idea (pitch) before you start writing. After all, you don’t want to write a whole book only to have your publisher be unsatisfied.
What Does a Pitch Look Like?
Pitches can vary, but I’d say there are typically two types of short-form pitches: a 1-2 sentence pitch and a 1-3 paragraph pitch. I hear terms thrown around like “elevator pitch” and “high concept pitch,” but they are mostly interchangeable to mean “quick and fast.” A 1-2 sentence pitch is a snappy summary that makes someone go “oh, you must tell me more!” A 1-3 paragraph pitch similar to what goes on the back cover of a book.
Of course, there are longer-form pitches that take the form of a synopsis or outline, which essentially offer proof that you have a cohesive story structure to work with.
What I was Asked For
My editor asked me to do something between the 1-2 sentence and 1-3 paragraphs, because she’s looking for that high concept pitch that will sell. And because I had already sent some earlier pitches that she turned down, she knew my areas of weakness that I should focus on: your main character is your Main Character and must have agency in the story; your worldbuilding and foundational magic system need to be rock solid and clear; and you shouldn’t get too distracted by sub-plots or side characters.
Specifically, my editor asked for “three kickass pitches,” and she asked for them in “two weeks?” I’ve added a question mark there, because I think she knew she was asking for an aggressive timeline. And I agreed, because I love a challenge and a deadline.
What I Delivered
I delivered a one-paragraph pitch for two ideas last Sunday. I can see you’re doing the math. They asked for three, and I only did two. They asked for 2 weeks, and I took 5. Ideas are hard, my friend! And I’d rather deliver two solid ideas than multiple flimsy ones.
I started with upwards of 15 ideas over those first two weeks, half of which I spent on a lovely beach in Florida (productivity vacation!), but most of those ideas never made it past the premise.
The few that survived took me another week-ish to straighten out. It’s tough for me to adequately and concisely summarize a book pitch if I don’t know the heart and soul of it. Some of the ideas never had a main character with clear enough goals. Sometimes the worldbuilding was flimsy or too cliche. Sometimes the magic system was too nebulous. So even though the end-state pitches were only 3-5 sentences long, there were PAGES of content leading up to it.
So, I’m still in the process of straightening out my last pitch. I’ve got two-and-a-half contenders at the moment, and I’m trying to do some rapid game-planning in order to figure out which is the sturdiest.
My Advice
If you’re coming up with ideas for books (or, like me, desperately trying to), I have a few tips that I’ll be expanding upon in my next blog posts:
- Brute force creativity and rapid cycling
- Flow chart madness & quotes/excerpts galore
- Talk it out with someone, anyone, and/or everyone
- Research, reading, and tricking your brain into relaxing while thinking
How To Meet Your Deadline: 6 Tips! (video!)
Obvi, I’ve been tinkering with a new editing program, Adobe Premiere Pro. Having a bit of fun in between long stretches of revisions.
Fun fact: I filmed this a week before my initial line edits were due (in order to be able to send a much-more-finished version to fulfill a foreign rights contract). And I’m posting it two days before my FINAL line edits deadline (Monday!!)
So this video a bout deadlines is all kinds of relevant. Also. I’m in a cave right now, so someone please send a flashlight, chocolate, a three-course meal, and coffee.
See you on the other side of the deadline!
Camp NaNoWriMo 2016: How to Track Revisions, Short Stories, and Unreliable Word Counts
WHO. IS. READY.
I am TOTALLY ready.
Ready-ish.
Camp NaNoWriMo (what this is) is a way for me to jump into a month of solid productivity. Typically, I use that space to work on the novel I started in the previous November’s Nano. Since Camp is so flexible, it’s really something you can use at any stage of the writing process.
Here are their categories for writing projects this year:
- Novel
- Nonfiction
- Poetry
- Revision
- Script
- Short Stories
- Other
So not only are they directly giving you the option of revising for the month, it also allows for different projects like Short Stories and Scripts. And like the fallen cherry, on the bottom we have “Other.” That means that this month of April is YOURS to personalize, individualize, and dance around!
*pauses in moonwalk*
But wait, how do we track “revisions”? What if we’re starting the month with a chunk of our novels already written?
Fear not, tireless crusader!!
Abnormal Tracking Methods
| Revision |
| Scattershot Revisions, Adding Scenes, Query Letter, etc. |
I used last year’s April to do revisions (yeah, that time I forgot until April 1 that it was happening), with the specific goals of adding four scenes, writing a query, receiving and acting on beta reader materials, and focusing on a polish for the first and last chapters.
So for me, I listed 10k as my goal for the month last year. I figured that would give me some wiggle room for writing/revising the query, adding scenes, and revising on feedback from beta readers.
Ask you can see, it was a step-wise process. (haha, get it? cause it looks like stairs). Each time I completed something—the query letter, the first chapter revisions, etc.—I added the final word count of that section. And later that year is when I joined Pitch Wars, which led to me getting my agent, so Camp Nano was a big part of that!
The case of the disappearing word count in day 1 and 2 was due to the fact that I wrote a query and then heartlessly crushed it with fire. That’s right. Crushed with fire. Totally a thing.
| Revising Entire Novel/Work |
This one’s pretty easy. I did it in 2014 with one of my longer-standing projects (The Amateur Witch) which is now tucked safely in a lovely trunk.
All you have to do is start revising at the beginning of the story and however many pages you get through, just highlight/word count the ms up to that point.
Quick Tip:
To get the word count of the story up to your current location, hit “Ctrl+A” (this selects ALL the text), then hit “Shift+ Right Click” on the page where you want the word count to stop at. That will leave you with all of the document selected up to your current location.
That’s how you get your current “revision” word count!
And don’t freak out when your word count shifts between sessions or by the end.
I got through the ms in about 1-1/2 weeks, then I spent the rest of the time trimming and cutting down.
Revision for some people involves adding meat to the bones, and for some it involves trimming away the fat. The end goal of revisions is really to get to a muscly golem creature who is more than skin and bones, but not too flabby. And that’s probably the weirdest analogy I’ve ever made for revisions, so I’ll leave it at that.
| Poetry & Short Stories |
This is where you want to know how much work you see for yourself. Are you writing a set of 35 poems for a collection? Are you writing a series of 5 stories or 20? Are you doing flash fiction or longer stories?
This is when you want to take a look at your previous works of poetry or stories. What’s your average word count for each? Do you work in longer works, where your stories are regularly 10k+ or where your poems are 100+?
Either way, all you have to do is a bit of math.
Multiply what you expect your number of stories/poems to be by the average word count. That gives you your goal for Camp!
Final Word Count Issues
So what happens if you get your 6 stories or 20 poems written, but your final word count is short of the estimated goal you set at the beginning of the month? Or if, through revisions, you cut a bunch of words, and now you haven’t met your “goal”?
Unlike November’s NaNoWriMo, the monthly goal is totally flexible. You can change it at any time!
The spirit of Camp is to get the work done and put in your time and effort. Given the nature of poetry, short stories, and revisions, it’s tough to nail down a prospected word count. Keep in mind that for Poetry & Short Stories, it was an estimated word count goal, but it was grounded in a more specific goal of how many pieces you’re producing.
The same goes for the revisions! Your word count “goal” was your current word count. That is of course going to change throughout the month. At the end, all you have to do is adjust that Word Count Goal to match your splendid accomplishments!!
Join Me!
I’m always more than willing to have writing buddies throughout the NaNo process! My username for Camp is ink.weaver, so shoot me a buddy request or an email if you want to hang out or chat throughout the lovely month of April 2016!
Rebecca McLaughlin 