FINISH IT!

Thanks for reading. I’m glad I could keep you entertained and advised. :)

~QQ

Sit down and hold onto something, my friend. Because it sounds like you need an intervention and I’m not in the habit of being gentle about it. Keep the Cheez-Its. You’re going to need them.

By all accounts your first draft sucks. Like, it really sucks. It’s a black hole of suckitude sucking all of your talent and original ideas and creativity and carefully cultivated writing craft down into oblivion and chaos. That’s how much it sucks.

You need to wrap your head around and fully embrace the magnitude of this fact. Once you’ve accepted that your first draft sucks at galactic levels, then it logically follows that anything you do to fix your first draft will only improve it. Anything you do to your first draft will only reduce the sucking.

Now you’re ready to revise.

Forget anything you’ve ever been told about how to write a story, or how to edit a story. That time someone told you a story needs three acts? Utter bullshit. When your writing workshop said your story needs a climax toward the end? Heinous fuckery. When your writing professor at college urged you to come up with a certain number of obstacles for your characters? Heinous fuckery most foul.

Now that you’ve released yourself from the burden of other people’s ideas about what your story “should” be, you are free to run rampant over your first draft. Mangle it. Maul it. Cut, move, and replace with the crazed abandon of a Hitchcockian villain.* Be contrary. Break the rules. Laugh at anyone who makes prescriptivist recommendations and poke them in the nose before running away. See what you come up with.

Now that you’ve brazenly colored outside of the lines and come up with something that callously ignores all laws of decent writing, scandalizing literary circles the world over in the process, it’s time to calm down and get methodical on this fucker.

It’s time to start your third draft. Dredge your memory for all those lessons you’ve learned and unlearned about writing and revising. Recall all the proper story structure and building blocks of writing. Remember what a story is supposed to be. Comb through your second draft and find where it’s boring, inconsistent, or illogical. Figure out where the bones of your story are just not holding up, and shore them up with the steel prostheses of tried-and-true writing technique. If this means reinstating stuff that you cut from your first draft, do so. If this means honestly admitting to yourself that your story is stronger for chucking a particular rule out the window, then for the love of Sylvia Plath’s fountain pen don’t turn around and reinstate that rule because you feel like you’re supposed to.**

Over time you’ll develop an instinct for when you should follow the rules of writing and when you should break them. It takes practice. It takes many drafts. There are no shortcuts.

Get to work.

~QQ

*It’s always a good idea to save each draft of your story separately. That way if you find you’ve cut something in error, you can always go back to the previous draft and salvage it.

**There’s no right or wrong way to write or revise. Part of being an editor is knowing what advice is going to help a particular writer and when. The above advice is what I felt would best help Anonymous with their current problem.

Poets&Writers is a great resource for authors to find publishing opportunities and writing contests. Go to their “Tools for Writers” tab and you’ll find more journals, lit mags, short story anthologies, and contests than you will ever be able to apply to in a lifetime.

They’re also a great source of news and information for writers. Basically, they’re good people. I like them a lot.

One word of caution though: some of the writing contests and publications seeking submissions require submission fees. Do not be alarmed, as this is all perfectly legitimate, but do be wary of throwing your hard-earned pennies around unless you’re really certain you have some killer short stories. On the other hand though, the contests and publications that do not require a submission fee are generally swamped with submissions. You win some you lose some.

There’s also a print magazine for Poets&Writers, and I believe you can subscribe to their email newsletter for updates on contests and such.

~QQ

Fear not. As I’ve said many times before: any writing or publishing experience is applicable in a query letter. And if you’re worried you don’t have enough experience: get some.

I ought to add this to my Frequent Queries. Anyway, don’t worry. You’re going to be great.

~QQ

If you build it, the science geeks will come. :)

Thanks for correcting my lightning metaphor!

~QQ

I love this question.

Well for one thing, acquisitions isn’t always right.

I’ll say that again: acquisitions is not always right about books.

You should be horrified but not surprised. How often do you search for a read-alike of your favorite book (“Wrapped Up In Love: The Mummy Romances, #1”) only to find something that is similar in subject but shitty in delivery? You’re disappointed, but you console yourself with the knowledge that lightning rarely strikes the same spot twice.*

Well, editors are convinced that lightning strikes the same spot over and over again until the earth is a scorched and blackened wasteland. And so we end up with “The Mummy Diaries” and “Mummy Academy” and “Breaking Dawn Over Egypt” and “Interview With the Mummy” and “Die, Mummify, Bury.” Acquisitions editors are desperate to milk a trend until it is withered and try, sometimes even longer. And I can say that, because I’m an acquisitions editor. 

So how do we justify repeatedly beating dead horses of genre? Well, we try to do our best. And honestly, we don’t know when a trend is going to stop being popular and creative. It’s true that there are very few original ideas left in the world, so it’s all in how an author handles an unoriginal idea. Maybe the writing is incredibly good. Maybe the characters are delightfully self-aware, as in “The Magicians” when the students at a magic university are constantly cracking jokes about “Harry Potter.” Maybe the author takes two very common and popular story-lines and combines them to create something new and exciting.

In essence, we try to find what’s new and different in a story we’ve read a hundred times. We try to look for signs of exceptional work. Sometimes we’re right, and sometimes we’re not. I know that’s not a very satisfying answer, but acquiring books is rarely a cut-and-dry formula, and more often an instinctual process that metamorphoses over time.

“Embalmed: A Love Story.” Somebody write it. It’ll be brilliant.

~QQ

*Can someone check this for me? I honestly don’t know anything about lightning. Science nerds… AWAY!

I just went through my publishing career advice tag and my Frequent Queries, and you’re right: there’s very little there for high school students. This irks me, because I’m sure I wrote some long rambling thing once upon a time about how high schoolers can hone their minds for a career in super-villainy—I mean, publishing. Alas, I can’t find the post, so I’ll just elaborate here.

The most important thing for an aspiring editor to do in high school is to read. A lot. Read metric fucktons. Read until your eyes bleed. Read anything and everything you can get your little paws on.

Once you’ve got that part down, there are lots of opportunities for you to gain experience.

You can work on your school’s newspaper or literary magazine. School doesn’t have a newspaper or literary magazine? Start one. Ask your English teacher to help you get started, and invite other students to join you.

Volunteer at your local library. Libraries are always looking for warm bodies with sharp brains who are willing to help out on the cheap. Just tell them you’re interested in learning more about the book industry and how to support reading in your community. They’ll love you.

Write to a local newspaper, magazine, or independent publishing house and ask them for an informational interview or the opportunity to job-shadow an editor for a day.

Look for opportunities to publish your writing. This might seem a little counter-intuitive if you’re interested in getting into the industry as an editor and not a writer, but the experience of going through submissions and publication will give you valuable perspective on your future career. Ask your English teacher for opportunities or writing contests.

You probably won’t be able to get an internship as a high school student, but there’s really no harm in asking.

Above all: read a lot and study hard in all of your subjects. You’re going to be great.

~QQ