Blog on the Lillypad
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
 | What? More Advice?
A reader has written to thank me for my thoughts on writing. Oh, I have so much advice to give on writing! I don’t even know where to start, and where’d that darn soap box go? While I look for it, I’ll tell you this: People succeed in getting published by one of two methods: they are excellent copycats and can produce a stream of derivative stuff. In other words, they figure out what sells and produce more along the same lines. There’s a narrow boundary between crap and quality here, with most attempts at derivatives being on the crap side of the line. Publishing houses weed through a lot of failed stories to find good mass market books. But some of it is really, really good. Every now and then a writer who is writing in the same trend as a successful book will top the original and produce something even better. Don’t dismiss derivatives (which in the business are called mass market books) writing. It’s what most writers do, including the successful ones. Louie L’Amour and Agatha Christie were both mass market writers. |
Then there’s the writer who has a type of story in mind, and it’s original, even innovative. Being successful at mass market stuff is very hard, and being successful at this type is even harder. The writer writes according to a private type, a new type of story that doesn’t fit market genres. Publishers are looking for what sells, so unique books are always a risk. But books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the entire Foxfire series were uniques, and they sold tremendously well in their day.
I wrote derivatives for BJU Press, fitting my books to a pre-determined norm of book type. When I couldn’t take it any more and realized I was rewriting the same story again and again, I stopped. Then I started writing what I wanted to read, and I wrote Doctor Who stories and tried to make them better and better. (These are also derivative, but much more complex than what I had been doing.) Somewhere in there (starting in late 1989 and continuing through 1996) I wrote VALKYRIES, which is a unique book. It’s not really a teen book, not really YA, not an easy book to fit into a slot. And it’s certainly not like anything else that’s out there.
That’s one reason that VALKYRIES sat on the web for six years. People read it on the web and responded very enthusiastically, but it’s not the type of book that a publisher sells. And then a rep from Moody read it twice and decided to take a risk on it. So for me, writing a “unique” was successful, but it was 12 years from the time I started it to the time I was approached by a publisher.
But in terms of what I have just described, there’s (1) derivative writing (mass market) and there’s (2) unique.
Almost everybody starts with derivative writing, and almost everybody stays with it. It sells; some of it is very good; a lot of skill, efficiency, and expertise go into making some of the mass market paperbacks out there.
Now look at writing another way, and you can say there is (1) writing that seeks publication and (2) writing that seeks to communicate vital material.
Some writers just want to get published, and they try to make it any way they can: derivative, unique, even ghost writing or having a ghost writer. A few succeed, but a lot get burned out. Some writers in this group are really looking for approval and validation. That makes trying to get published even more stressful for them.
| After I bailed out of commercial writing with BJU Press, I took a few years off and then returned to fiction writing to write stories that were just good stories. I wasn’t trying to satisfy another person’s requirements for what a book had to be. I wanted to write something that was pure adventure, full-tilt pacing, some humor in places, and lots of danger and rescues. I wanted to write Doctor Who stories, and I did. On the side, I worked on VALKYRIES. But most of my learning took place writing Doctor Who. For one thing, I was spared having to impress an editor. These stories, posted on the web, went right to readers. And readers gave me feedback on what they liked and didn't like. This direct feedback taught me to eliminate wasted words and thin gimmicks. |  |
As I’ve written, unpublished from 1987 until 2001, I gradually learned to follow in the footsteps of my Master: not to seek publication as a person who needs approval, but to use writing to speak on matters that need to be addressed. I’ve written on Mad Cow Disease, weight lifting for senior citizens, martial arts, strategy, and---of course---Christian apologetics. And more. The list is huge. But as I've followed in those footsteps I've learned that there is a great freedom in setting aside the expectations of the publishing industry. When you're not under the restrictions imposed by a market, even a Christian market, you're free to write anything you think you should write. I continued with Doctor Who fiction and built a respectable internet readership. Then I started creating non-fiction essays on the principles I discovered in Musashi and Sun Tzu.
In August 2001, Moody Press approached me about VALKYRIES. I never tried to market it to them. And this, I realized, is the pace that God has set, at least for me. It’s more important to have that crucial thing to say than to worry about securing a place in publishing.
I realize, of course, that I’m published, so I’ve got room to talk. And the Lord gave me a lot of leeway in giving me what I so ardently wanted as a younger woman and allowing me to be published. But now I’m 20 years older. And now I see the suffering that goes on right in Christianity because people don’t know their Savior. So now I see that it’s more important to have something to say that helps people than it is to secure a slot in a publishing house.
I don’t like the celebrity status that Christian book publishers try to create to market their authors. Of course it’s on a smaller scale than big publishers, but it’s troubling, just the same. Marketing the book, selling a title based on the ideas it conveys, is more honest than selling it based on the writer. We Christians ought to be a people of ideas, not a people of status followers.
My advice to writers: write what people need and put the matter into God’s Hands. That doesn’t mean don’t get critiqued, don’t put yourself out on the web to judge your product by the reception it gets. It doesn’t even mean refusing to send a query letter or synopsis, because you can use publisher feedback (if you get any) to improve your skills. I think a writer has to undergo a rigorous discipline to write with skill and accuracy. And I believe that the process of learning to write must never stop.
But if you make the claim of “being called to write,” then write. Find a way to get important information or vital stories to the people who need to get that information. But don’t be troubled by this world’s outlook on being published, even when that outlook creeps into Christian publishing. Your Heavenly Father has numbered the hairs of your head, and nothing you attain makes you more attractive to Him. He sent His Son to die for you, and that gives you a value that will exceed the station of angels. Because you have Christ, you have everything that heaven offers mankind: fellowship with God, forgiveness of your sin, the favor of God that He pours out to His Son, given to you because you are in Christ.
So write to fulfill the needs of others, and God will send those with such needs to you or help you to find them. But the way He does that may or may not be through commercial publishing.
