Are there conditions under which you simply CANNOT write?

I’m in one right now. We’re in a motel on the way home from visiting grandkids and I'm trying to catch up on my blogging. But here’s the thing: Husband has to have background noise while he’s reading and talking and computing. I can’t function at all in front of the TV. This paragraph took one show segment and six commercials to complete.

Husband is the master multi-tasker. He can read Forbes, check his email, play chess, and carry on a conversation – all while watching one of those TV shows where loud music with lyrics fights the actors’ dialog. Now, as much as I wish I could be that way, too, there's simply no getting around it. I'm a person who works best in silence, or at least in a distraction-contolled environment.

Once I did make a max effort to tap away through gunshots and sirens. Unfortunately, I was so successful at blocking out the world around me that I missed something Husband said. Oops.

So...what would take maybe 15 minutes cloistered in my computer room at home, has run through a complete episode of “Castle” and the news. Sigh.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who has trouble with distraction!

And I thought publishing fiction was rough! Ever try writing a textbook?

On a cruise back in May, our table assignment landed me next to a fellow author. But she was no mere novelist. Dr. Ann Moseley produces such ponderous tomes as Strategies for College Writing: Sentences, Paragraphs, Essays and Interactions: A Thematic Reader. One has gone to five editions. Talk about suddenly feeling two inches high!

Of course, that’s not all she’s done. Besides achieving multiple degrees in record time, teaching college level English, and penning the above-mentioned texts, she’s also working on a comprehensive Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. OMG.

Once I recovered from open-mouthed awe, we began comparing notes. I have one editor. She has four: (1) acquisitions editor (who works out contract details), (2) developmental editor (who manages pre-publication reviews of a new edition, which involves about 30-40% change, and includes proposals and advice throughout the process) (3) permissions editor (who negotiates permissions and fees to use copyrighted materials), and (4) copyeditor who checks for errors and problems in style. Gasp.

My process is basically 3 steps: manuscript review, revision, production.

Dr. Ann’s current work consists of eight units. After all receive final revisions (she has just submitted #3), she must then create the Instructor's Resource Manual, some brief comprehension quizzes, and additional student instruction for the website.

Well, I bet she’s never had to deal with a Third World press writer...

Submitting a manuscript - You DO realize it’s hopeless, don’t you?

The frustration continues. One publisher that I really, really wanted for Book Five of my series set their word limit at 100,000. I stressed for weeks trying to cull and rewrite so it would still make sense at that length (how the heck does Reader’s Digest do it?). Then, checking back on their guidelines before submitting, I find they’ve lowered it to 90,000.

Another publisher that I really, really want for my sci-fi only takes submissions on certain dates. Given the deluge of manuscripts out there, that certainly seems reasonable. Only trouble is, when I go to that date outlined in heavy red Magic Marker on my calendar, I find they’ve moved it up a couple of months.

Then there’s the specter of the slush pile. Forever burned into my brain is a pic I saw once of people sitting around on piles of manuscripts having lunch. Behind them were stacks reaching to the ceiling. Of course, most submissions these days are electronic, but you get the picture.

To add to your depression, here’s excerpts from an article by former slush reader, Patricia Chui: (BTW, I strongly urge aspiring writers to follow this link…)

Every editor's inbox is piled high with mail from big agents, small agents, writers met at conferences, friends of his wife's dentist and people who plucked his name off a book's acknowledgments page. Some of these submissions, generally the ones sent by respected agents, will be read carefully; some will get little more than a glance. There's really no other way to do it.

The sad thing is that I have this attitude now toward authors who send in unsolicited manuscripts… Now, I consider every unagented author to be slightly psychotic and deranged, and every unsolicited manuscript to be bad.

Was it cruel of us to make fun of the slush? Sure, maybe. But we were overworked, underpaid assistants at the bottom of a lofty totem pole, and putting down bad writing was our way of lifting ourselves up… To our credit, we readers did give every single submission, no matter how ludicrous, a fair and honest appraisal. During my reign as slush handler, a few projects garnered further consideration from our editors; one was even published.

I moved on to other jobs. And these days, as a freelance writer, I am chagrined to find that the worm has turned. Suddenly, I'm the desperate one, the hopeful neurotic who waits impatiently only to be met with rejection or no response at all. Interestingly enough, my background in slush sometimes works against me: I am less persistent than I could be, worried that editors will find me annoying and pathetic. In my weaker moments, I wonder if my story pitches are being passed around, ridiculed and ignored. I wonder if the people I'm querying even exist. Maybe what goes around really does come around.

So what are the chances? Slim and none. Well, I got lucky once. And hope springs eternal, as they say.

Note to Patricia Chiu: if you happen to Google yourself one day and run into this blog, please be advised I did my level best to get permission for this quote. I used the contact form from salon.com and checked Facebook and LinkedIn.

Take every opportunity to sharpen your skills

There's a reason I haven't been posting lately: namely, Ammanon Book Three, The Deliverance.


After it had been competently edited (thanks again, Mary!) I submitted it. And OMG. My publisher's manuscript reviewer, hereinafter referred to as the MR, about tore me a new one. She preferred the old school use of commas, for one thing. No real argument there. Then there's my writing style. If you've ever read my Ammanon books, you know I have adopted a sort of Old Testament narrative style to immerse the story in it's ancient setting. And you know that Biblical authors and translators quite frequently begin sentences with "and". Total no-no.

Worse, the format in which I had submitted it was all wrong. Again, I certainly can't argue. Publishers should demand that an author meet their requirements in order to facilitate review and production. Obviously this is no excuse, but the only rules I ever saw were 12 pt. Times New Roman, double spaced. And that was Book Two. Book One was 12 pt. Courier. Double spaced, of course. I was horrified that I'd made such an errors like indented paragraphs and page numbers when they weren't allowed, but I swear I never saw these specifications. Honest. Not in the contract; not on their website. Not that I'm the best searcher of sites...

The point is, I should have asked at the outset.

Anyway, bottom line, I've been slogging through the manuscript virtually letter-by-letter to correct such things. Invariably, one also finds many, many things to improve when one does this. Which brings me to the title subject.

For heaven's sake, stay sharp on the rules of grammar. I don't care how unconventional your chosen style, if the verb doesn't agree with the subject you're not saying what you want to say. A misused adverb can confuse or change the meaning entirely. Trust me, you don't want to confuse either your editor OR your MR. Know what you're doing! Even the automatic grammar prompts on your Word program can throw you if you don't know the mechanics of your language. It's especially important to know when the prompts are wrong!

I got caught once before when I discovered my grammar skills had become antiquated. In the process of updating, I discovered this online goldmine: www.grammarbook.com. Just using the free services can be a huge help. Pic your bugaboo (apostrophes, commas, etc.) read the rules, and take the quizzes. I took them all. I was amazed at the way colloquial usage can erode your recognition of proper form.

Check out other authors. Many use their blogs to help writers sharpen their skills. My favorite at the moment is Aaron Paul Lazar. He's turned me around on several points. But there are many others. Google topics like "Writing Essentials" and you'll find them.

Meanwhile, I'm truly indebted to both my editor and MR for forcing me to look again at my writing - this time with all the critical fervor necessary for perfection.

Okay. I've gotta get back to work.

“There is Nothing New Under the Sun”

Over 397,000 works are published annually. Creating something non-litigiously new can be a real problem.

Yes, plagiarism does happen and it shouldn’t. But when you consider over 397,000 works are published every year in the English-speaking world alone (Wikipedia’s stats for UK, USA and Canada), it’s inevitable that ideas are going to be repeated.

The title quote is Ecclesiastes 1:9, attributed to King Solomon: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (NIV version).

Obviously, if there’s been a verbatim lifting of text without documentation, that’s one thing. There have been some very public furors when authors are caught at this. Roots, that towering work by Alex Haley was found to have paragraphs lifted from a work he had used in his research: The African, by Harold Courlander. Another accused of fraud is famed historian Stephen Ambrose. I found quite a list of examples in a New York Books article by feature writer David Edelstein (May 6, 2006).

But when one is accused of similarities, I have to wonder. Famous on this score was Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan whose work How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life was yanked from the shelves because of similarities to other authors, most notably Megan McCafferty. Now, I really have no idea just how similar. None of the articles I found expounded in detail. Obviously it was similar enough for the publisher to pull something like 55,000 copies out of distribution which had to be a significant dollar loss for them.

Face it. If you ever become rich and famous, someone’s going to sue you. How hard could it be for someone to get hold of CopyGuard (academic plagiarism-detection software engineered by iParadigms for Turnitin of Oakland, CA); screen your work, and find a way to score a few bucks in court? Granted, famous folks are more apt to have total strangers yell: “Hey! He hit on me!” rather than: “Hey! He stole my work!” but the latter plainly stands a better chance of being provable.

So the Big Problem is this: how do you create something non-litigiously new considering the overwhelming amount of work being produced?

You can’t. King Solomon said so.

Maybe it’s like this: every thought in the universe wanders through the cosmos on a cyclical basis infecting mortals at random. That’s why, when you’re so sure you’ve come up with something either new or distantly retro, it suddenly pops up everywhere. Everybody’s doing a story, a movie or a lunchbox on that very theme. Multiple minds being infected by the currently migrating thought. Think a judge would buy that?

Given this cosmic premise, your worst enemy is the length of the process. It can be years between inception and publication. Even if you’re the first to “catch” a thought, others with more speed, clout or sheer dumb luck will get out there first.

When Ammanon finally stopped being a daydream and came tumbling out on paper – well, the computer screen – it was 2003. It was a fictional place, a fictional race, but it had an ancient Greco-Roman feel to it that hadn’t been done since Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical epics. No one was doing anything remotely similar.

Then suddenly it was everywhere. It started, near as I can figure, with “Gladiator”. Then came “Troy”, “Alexander”, “Pompeii”, “300”, etc. PBS started running “I, Claudius”, “Rome”; and there was a remake of “Spartacus” as a TV movie. The History Channel reacted with factual documentaries for all of the above. It was saturation plus.

Nevertheless I plugged on. By 2006 I’d found an agent, a publisher, and begun the lengthy process of editing and rewrites. Then I found a bigger problem than genre: names for fantasy places and people. Oh, it’s easy enough to come up with the words. But you can bet you’re not the first to invent them.

“Ammanon” for instance, passed muster both on Google and in the big, fat dictionary I keep by my side. But the first time I looked up my book on Amazon.com guess what! The entry just under mine was the very intriguing Within a Sheltering Darkness – The Log of the Ammanon Deloré by Alan Havorka. OMG. Who could’ve thought up a name like that besides me?

Then I went to register a domain name for my website. My web designer, Al Miller of Kwikit, and I decided on a simple, straight forward ammanon.com. But between telling me the name was available and getting it registered - wham! It got snapped up by a genetic testing/genealogical group. OMG. Someone else thought up that word, too! And none of us could’ve possibly copied from the other. It was original with all of us. You’ve got to believe that, Your Honor!

Character names, while not as dangerous as title names, can get sticky, too. In Ammanon, Book Five: The Souls of Many I dreamed up a nice, strong name for a boy warrior: “Pardis”. My dictionary wasn’t using it for anything so I thought it was OK. But guess what. “Pardis” is a girl’s name in India. For that matter, so is “Partha” the name I gave a country in my story. Sigh. I changed the boy’s name, which doesn’t sound at all masculine to me anymore. But the kingdom of Partha, may all those Indian ladies forgive me, remains.

There are many more examples from my own experience. For instance, I named the emperor’s magnificent, legendary steed “Maxor”. Great, huh? Some months later I discovered that Maxor was the name of my mother-in-law’s mail order pharmacy.

And so it goes.

Another problem is the fact that we writers generally weave our worlds in relative isolation. It never occurs to us that someone else is acting on the same thoughts until we emerge years later.

The bottom line is simply this: there is nothing new under the sun. The universe is just too big a place. Of course outright plagiarism will ever be unfair and unacceptable. But for heaven’s sake let’s be reasonable about coincidence!