My Blog Is Changing

 Hi Everyone,

After eleven years of not missing a week, I'm going to devote more (nearly all) of my time to writing my books rather than my blog. I have a second series in the works that will eventually join  my annual stories about Owen, Spot, and the rest of the gang. For those of you who are interested, I will send out emails when that second series approaches publication. If you're not on my email list, send a "Please add" email to todd@toddborg.com

I may still put up an occasional post when I have new books coming out, but it won't happen every week.

For you writers who have questions about writing and publishing, most of what I know is in the "On Writing" section to the right. Please scan those posts.

Thanks for your continued interest. Eleven years is a long time to pay attention to my ramblings. I appreciate it!

Todd

A Message For Writers

First, an observation, then an epiphany...

Everyone knows that literary one-hit wonders exist (writers who write one book and find attention and success). But one-hit wonders are quite rare. If you go back through history, you'll find that most of the one-hit wonders are soon forgotten. Yet would-be writers still think about writing a single book. You could write the next To Kill A Mockingbird or Gone With The Wind. But your odds of success would be vanishingly small.

In the past, I've said that writers shouldn't think about writing one book. They should think about writing a shelf full of books. If you want success, the need for this approach is increasing. And that is the point of this post. I'm beginning to think that the number of books you have, and the frequency with which you publish them, makes more difference to your success than most anything else. (Yes, the books still need to be good. Yes, you have to have professional covers. And yes, your books probably shouldn't be 140-page novellas masquerading as novels, as the bad reviews reveal that readers are unhappy with what one reviewer called "pretend novels.")

It takes very little research (poking around on Amazon will do it) to see that nearly all successful writers have a dozen or more books. The most successful writers have far more. In my experience, every successful writer I know has at least a dozen books. (Look at your own favorite writers!)

Today, writing a shelf full of books is almost a requirement to find success in the book business.

Here's where my epiphany comes in:

Writing a lot of books generates success. Every writer I know who's written a dozen or more books has found success!

In other words, if you do write many books, you will find success. Put in the work, you will succeed. That can't be said about all fields of complex work. Writing novels is a complex undertaking. But with sufficient practice, it can be learned. In fact, it has to be learned. People aren't born with writing talent. In the same way a coordinated person cannot simply strap on a snowboard and then do a triple twisting, double back flip off the half-pipe, a writer has to learn the skill. Yet writing can be learned. And with enough work, it will be learned.

The idea that every writer should stop thinking about a single book and instead think of many books may be the single most important aspect of finding writing success.

I should probably put in a qualifier and say that it would be best if those dozen books are in a single genre, comprise some kind of series or two, and need to have been written in a relatively short time frame, like a book or two a year or faster. A dozen books strung out over 40 years won't cut it.

It's possible that there are people who've written a dozen books and haven't found success, but I haven't met or even heard of one, at least not one in the self-publishing era. 

Why is this, that simply writing a dozen books will bring you success? I don't know. But it's probably that a dozen books will give you a mixture of substantial writing skills, teach you how the book business works, and, most important, you will spend thousands of hours thinking about what works for readers and then trying to craft your prose to fit what you've learned.

Should you start trying to publish before you've written a bunch of books? I think not. Readers are looking for multi-book authors. They don't pay attention to single-book authors. Why? Probably because there are too many of them. Write one book, you have millions and millions of competing authors. Write a dozen books, you have relatively little competition.

I recently read that fantasy superstar Brandon Sanderson wrote 12 novels before he showed any of them to an editor. Hugh Howey wrote 20 novels before he ventured away from his desk. 

By comparison, I only wrote six, the last two of which became the first two in my series. But that was in another era. If I were starting out these days, I would write a dozen. 

Yet another perspective is to realize that, if you're going to be a success, you will end up writing many, many novels. So why bang your head against the publication wall with just one book? Assume you'll be successful, which means you will write a bunch of books. So write a dozen of them first, and then venture forth into the book world. You will be amazed at the difference as you proceed with a substantial body of work, while you watch others struggle trying to find traction with a single book.

Is writing a dozen books hard? Yes, of course. So is studying to become a neurosurgeon or a lawyer or a competetive snowboarder or opera singer or a Shakespearean actor. All worthwhile skills take enormous amounts of time and effort to acquire. But most serious skills produce great reward, whether financial, emotional, or other.

Writing is one of those skills. If you investigate careers that successful writers have abandoned, you find all manner of occupations. It's worth noting that writers don't quit to become doctors or professors or attorneys. But if doctors, professors, and attorneys find success writing, they often quit their former careers. What does that say about the rewards of writing? It says this: Writing is a very attractive job. So get going on those first dozen books!

Self-Published Actors? Yes

The other day I heard yet another person make a disparaging comment about self-publishing. This is an interesting prejudice. Are the people making negative judgments simply repeating comments they heard in grad school, where there is a strong sense that the only valuable stories are those published by New York publishing houses? Or are they writers who are so insecure, they can't feel good about their own work unless a New York editor gives them the stamp of approval? Or do they still subscribe to the myth that being published by a New York house is the only way to make money? The reality is that except for the top tier of New York-published writers, self-published writers may well be making more money. For example, 50% of all Amazon bestsellers are now self-pubished. Those writers keep most of the money from sales. For the other 50% of bestsellers, the New York-published writers, their publishers take 90% of the income from sales. So you can see why many self-published writers may be doing much better.

Nevertheless, some additional perspective is in order. First, a qualifier: As regards self-publishing books, I’m not talking about the so-called internet “self-publishing” companies, which, in many cases, should be called vanity presses. By many measures, many of these companies are no good at anything beyond taking money from writers with stars in their eyes. If an author pays a company to publish them—no matter whether a low or high price—that isn’t self-publishing. Are they scams? Ask all the successful self-published authors who've seen their friends get trapped in the no-control world of paying for publication.

Self-publishing is publishing yourself. All the advantages that accrue to real self-publishers are dependent on the author making the decisions. All the decisions. The reasons for pursuing real self-publishing are many and obvious. You have control over every aspect of your book, which means you can pursue the best choices to enable your success. You control the story, the editing, the cover, the formatting, the marketing, the review submissions, the back copy, and—after the book comes out—the fixes and the adjustments. You keep all of the money a publisher normally keeps. You alone are in charge. And you maintain control. More than anything else, it is that control that enables you to find success.

Another qualifier: It is still very difficult to make money in the book business. Self-publishing may allow you to keep most of the money coming in, but it doesn't guarantee that there will be any income at all.

It should be noted that a few years ago, the Author's Guild reported that the average New York-published author makes $17,000 a year. That's pretty much poverty. To make it worse, the average New York-published author is dropped after their books don't hit the bestseller lists. When a New York-published author is dropped ("orphaned" in some parlance), their options are few-to-none. But it should also be noted that many resort to self-publishing, and some of them end up getting wealthy with books that their former publisher didn't want.

The detractors of self-publishing think that you need a big company’s editor to take over all these important parts of the process. In addition to their control, they also take 90% of the income. Technology has made it so more and more authors are abandoning their New York publishers because they see the advantages of keeping that control and keeping the money.

As many know, musicians and actors have had to struggle like writers to cope with big businesses who control their output, their schedule, their very careers. But, like writers, musicians and actors have now taken over their own careers, as well.

Now comes the point of this blog.

Let’s look at the change in the movie business. In the early days, actors, writers, and directors got a contract from one of the big Hollywood studios. This was similar to writers looking to New York publishing companies. But the change in the acting world may be even greater than the change in the writing world.

Perhaps more than anyone else, Clint Eastwood got the self-publishing ball really rolling. He wasn't the first to take over his own career, but he may have been the most successful.

In 1967, Clint Eastwood started a production company called Malpaso Productions. Since its first movie, Hang ‘Em High, nearly every movie Clint Eastwood has been involved with was produced by Malpaso Productions. In other words, Clint Eastwood has been self-published for over 55 years, nearly all of his career. This has given him the freedom to do the kind of movies he wants and do them the way he wants. Owning the production company means he was also able to do his own directing, no small thing, that! In addition to control over his career, he kept most of the money. (There are other directors, such as Woody Allen, who have also controlled their own output.)

This was a new approach in the world of movies. It has worked so well that hundreds of actors and writers and other people in the movie business have followed suit.

Here is a partial list of people who have their own production companies:

Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Will Smith, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrel, Kerry Washington, Tina Fey, Tom Cruise, Sophia Vergara, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Tyler Perry, Margot Robbie, Adam Sandler, Reese Witherspoon, Leonardo Dicaprio, Viola Davis, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Courteney Cox, Alec Baldwin, Drew Barrymore, Lawrence Fishburne, Lisa Kudrow, Ben Stiller, Ice Cube, Spike Lee, Warren Beaty, Queen Latifah, Jackie Chan, Natalie Portman, Danny DeVito, Charlize Theron, Ben Afleck, Alicia Vikander, Bradley Cooper, Eva Longoria, Salma Hayek, Robert Redford, Gal Gadot.

How’s that for self-publishing success? In addition to all the actors with their own companies, many actors have produced their own films (a second cousin to having their own production companies.) Jennifer Lopez, Tom Hanks, Eddie Murphy, Jodie Foster, Barbra Streisand, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey… The list is nearly endless.

In a musical addendum, I recently read that the song goddess Joni Mitchell has a $40-$100 million fortune. Yes, she is the greatest. Yes, she is a genius. Yes, her music sold, and still sells, very well. Yes, Rolling Stone called her album BLUE one of the 500 best albums ever recorded. But $40 million is possibly beyond what you'd expect from someone who sold 8 or 9 million albums. So where did all her money come from?

A little more reading explained it. Unlike most of the other musicians from the 1970s on, Joni self-produced all 19 of her albums. She took most of the control of her career away from the record companies. And with that control comes money.

How could any person who consumes entertainment of any kind doubt the appropriateness of creators deciding to take control over their creative output? Kind of a no-brainer, huh?

It gives a new perspective to people who look down on self-published artists, whether actors, musicians, or writers.

What Is Crunch Time For Writers?

 Every year in the fall, I realize that I'm running out of time to finish my next book. If you want to have a book out by a particular date, you can't stretch time. You have to simply recognize the immutable laws of publishing. As measured by the calendar, the publishing pipeline is long. But if you don't put the book in the pipe by the deadline date, you won't have a book when you want it.

But what if it still isn't perfect? you ask.

As I've said many times, you'll never make it perfect. And done beats perfect every time.

Translation: Yes, you want the book to be good, but you have to get it done. So get typing.

As I stare at the looming date on the calendar, my wife often steps in to help. She does many things that make it so I can write uninterrupted. Ten pages a day. Maybe fifteen pages a day. The typewriter gets warm from use. The ribbon needs changing. But the pages pile up. I'm enormously grateful to her for her help.

Is it enough to finish the book on time?

Tune in next summer.

Do I have a title yet?

Sort of. It starts with TAHOE...

First Reviews Of Tahoe Moon

The first reviews of TAHOE MOON are coming in. I couldn't be happier.

Tahoe Mountain News: "Borg has hit another one out of the ballpark. Doing so every year is nothing short of amazing."

Bookin' With Sunny: "Never start a McKenna mystery in the afternoon as you're likely not to get to bed until very early the next morning."

Silver's Reviews: Brilliant, very knowledgeable author. The ending will have you flying through the pages.

Kittling: Books: "No matter how much I learn or how much I enjoy Borg's fast-paced mysteries, it's the characters who always bring me back for more. When you've got your hands on a new Owen McKenna thriller, you know you're in for a few hours of sheer reading pleasure."

I'm a lucky guy...

Tahoe Tribune Story About Tahoe Moon

 Last week, I was contacted by a freelance writer named Sara Jackson. She wanted to interview me for an article on my new book, TAHOE MOON. Her article just came out in the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

Sara Jackson asked interesting questions and avoided all the clichéd questions like, "Where do you get your ideas?" 

The resulting article was very well-written. Because I'm a writer, I often notice when journalists do a good job. Sara's sentences were professional, as was the way she constructed the article. When I realized she could do a good job writing fiction, I asked her if she has ever thought of writing novels.

"Yes," she said and explained that fiction was something on her horizon. She thought she might start a novel soon.

Of course, novels take a long time to figure out, never mind writing. But I can tell she's got the chops and the desire. I'll be waiting...

Here's the link to the Tahoe Daily Tribune article:

https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/local-author-who-pens-fictional-tahoe-mysteries-set-to-release-20th-book-in-series/

How To Make Your First Novel A Success?

How to make your first novel a success?

Wait.

What?

Yes, wait before you publish that first novel. Wait until you've written two or three other novels. Or more

Seriously?

Yes. The practice will improve your writing in uncountable, unforeseen ways. In huge ways. And, perhaps more importantly, you will get vast numbers of good ideas for improving that first novel, which is a very good thing to do before you put your novel in front of readers who will judge it pro or con and make nearly permanent decisions about whether to ever read you again.

(Writers, I know that this may seem like a harsh post. And if you're not a writer, don't even read this. It's tedious and it's aimed at writers who don't follow the example of composers and dancers and painters and athletes and a thousand professionals, which is to practice, practice, practice BEFORE you audition in front of the world.)

Many writers have said this. Sit on that first novel. Write a few more. Make the thousand adjustments that will occur to you as you write books two, three, four, and five. Trust me, this is not an exaggeration. You will want to make a thousand adjustments. When you get to work on book five, or ten, that is the time to publish your first book. Or, if you listen to Hugh Howey's advice, write twenty books, then publish.

Let's just say you've finished your medical residency and performed your first complicated surgery. Would you want the entire world to watch a video of that first surgery? (Publishing makes your book available to the entire world.)

Maybe you've been learning to be a figure skater. You're going to try your first triple-twisting jump. Would you want the entire world to watch it? Or would you like to practice a bit more first?

You've been playing Beethoven's sonatas on the piano. When you finally decide to perform one, would you do it in front of your spouse and a few friends and family, or would you like to go out on stage at Carnegie Hall and play your first performance for the world, including all of your mistakes, your awkward phrasings, the unsure aspects of your performance?

You've finally painted your first set of 12 large oil paintings. You're a real live painter, living the dream. You find a company that gives you a chance to display your show on the front steps of a virtual version of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. You know that many sophisticated viewers will see it. Including art critics and reviewers. They will comment to their audience and their friends. Would you do it?

You probably know the answer to these questions. 

I know as well, because not a single successful author I know - knowing what they now know - would publish their first book right after they wrote it. Most of them waited until they had more books under their belt, because they knew that would go a very long way toward making their books successful. The ones who didn't wait? They rushed to write many books in a short period of time, hoping to make up for the too-early release of their first one.

So why would you publish your first book when statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests that you will be embarrassed by the result and by the book's reception and sales?

I think I know why. You're excited. You've written a book. It's a big deal. You can't wait to show the world.

But what's the harm in waiting? None.

In contrast, what's the harm in diving in after the first book? I can't count the ways. Mistakes and misrepresentations that could, and maybe will, embarrass you forever. A potential writing career tarnished, maybe spoiled.

Am I a giant downer for saying this? Of course.

But in the last few months, I've had several more inquiries from writers who published their first book, and they want advice on how to make it sell, because it isn't selling. If they had waited and gotten more practice, they would have likely learned what makes a book sell. Unfortunately, the world is already watching the video of them doing their first triple-twisting jump, and that world has decided not to pay 99 cents to watch more.

Am I an expert who has the one true vision? No. I'm just an ordinary guy who earns a living writing novels, a guy who feels bad for the people who dove into the deep end because they felt comfortable in the bathtub but didn't know if they could swim. Then they write me and other writers and ask for help. You launched your rocket before you knew if it could fly, and it never made it to outer space. (There's a great example of mixed metaphors, something more writing practice will teach you to delete before publication!)

It's so easy to avoid these problems. Get more practice before you launch. Do some test flights. Many test flights. Have a half dozen manuscripts on the shelf, ready to go. A bonus is that all evidence shows that launching multiple books in a short period of time greatly contributes to sales success. And you can't launch multiple books in a short period if they're not already written.

I know you think you'll be the exception. But even the one-book wonders who appear to find success with a single book are mostly a fictional concept. The publisher said, "We'll give you a new pseudonym, present you as a new author, and no one will know you already wrote twelve romance novels."

I also know that you don't want to wait until after you've written five books because, well, it takes SOOOO long to write five books.

Well, I've got some news on that front. If you're going to be successful, you're going to write far more than five books, anyway. Why not do several of them before you launch?

Look at your favorite authors. How many books have they written? Ah, there's a revealing inquiry. Nearly all of your favorite authors have written dozens of books. How can you expect to move down the road toward being someone's favorite author with just one book? Your favorite restaurant doesn't only have one entree on the menu, either.

It's likely that the single best answer to the question about how to be a successful author is to write a bunch of books. So do a portion of them before your launch. You will be amazed at the result.

Some of you are asking if I did that. Yes. My first published book was my fifth book. Am I great? No. How did I find some traction if I'm not great? I wrote five books before I published. I came out with the second book in my series one month after the first. (I wish I had done three or four in short succession.)

Cased closed. Successful writers write multiple books. Do several of them before you publish the first one.

The Hardest Writing Of All?

 Many writers would agree that one of the most difficult kinds of writing is that which makes the reader cry. To pull such emotion out of a reader with nothing but words on paper or on a screen requires a type of alchemy that is difficult to quantify or describe. Difficult-to-impossible to teach as well.

Is there any type of writing even harder to pull off? I would say that making people laugh is even more difficult. I know many writers agree with me on this, too.

The subject comes to mind because I've been reading Mark Twain's Roughing It. (I've read many Twain novels and short stories over the years, but never got around to Roughing It.)

Roughing It is his auto-biographical story (albeit very exaggerated - Twain-style) of when he headed west from Missouri in 1861. He rode the stagecoach for weeks to get to Nevada and other points west.

Twain has a somewhat peculiar - and very effective - way to write funny. Over and over I've been laughing out loud. I've tried to quantify just what makes his technique so effective. It's impossible to adequately describe. A combination of sarcasm and exaggeration and put-down, things we'd call snark today. He also has a way of making a deprecating comment about the very point he's making. Another technique he's mastered is surprise.

Take this passage from the section when he's describing just how spectacular is Lake Tahoe.

'Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mymmy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.'

Two sentences as beautiful to a writer as the lake he's writing about. While the first sentence is fun and imaginative, it is the second that carries the punch. It supplies the surprise that drives the best humor. One could imagine other writers coming up with the first sentence or something nearly like it. But only Twain could come up with that second sentence. A thing of beauty, that, and a near guarantee of generating a laugh.

If you decide to read Roughing It, be forewarned that the racism toward Native Americans is horrible. Even with the expectation that 19th century writing is going to be repugnant, it will still grate. 

But if you can get past that, the story is informative and intriguing. And very funny.

I recommend the 'Mark Twain 100th anniversary collection' version of Roughing It published by Seawolf Press. It has hundreds of interesting and humorous illustrations

Rules Of Writing

 It pays for writers to periodically revisit the basics. One of the writing gods we worship is Elmore Leonard (1925 - 2013), author of classic novels, many of which were turned into films: Hombre with Paul Newman, Valdez is Coming with Burt Lancaster, 3:10 to Yuma with Glenn Ford, Joe Kidd with Clint Eastwood, Get Shorty with John Travolta and Gene Hackman, Out Of Sight with Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney, and two dozen others!

Leonard is widely thought of as a master of dialogue.

Every serious writer has a copy of Leonard's Rules for writing. If you are a writer and don't have it, print this out and tape it above your desk.

1 Never open a book with weather.

2 Avoid prologues. (Yes, I'm guilty!)

3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry the dialogue.

4 Never use an adverb to modify "said."

5 Keep your exclamation points under control.

6 Never use the words Suddenly or All hell broke loose.

7 Use regional dialect sparingly.

8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10 Try to leave out the parts that readers skip. 

11 If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.

Does Crime Fiction Require Violence?

In most crime fiction, there is a kind of balance between the violence of the crime and the violence of the resolution.

Some crime fiction has genteel characters, plots that are mostly puzzles, solutions that are arrived at with dialogue, not guns. Any violence mostly takes place "off stage." Think Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Or Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe. The crimes can often be violent - murder, for example - but we don't witness the violence. We just see the aftermath. The solution is more a mental exercise than a physical one.

On the other end of the spectrum are stories like Lee Child's Jack Reacher books. The violence simmers throughout, serious, nasty violence that often boils over. The resolution of the Reacher stories is mostly violent. Reacher rights the wrongs of the bad guys by bringing serious violence to them, breaking bones and often killing them as well. The body count can get very high. Sometimes I think Child took as a model Shakespeare's tragedies, where nearly everyone dies at the end, onstage.

Regardless of the writer's approach, many people read crime fiction because it usually provides justice at the end. This is unlike the real world, where justice is often absent or unsatisfying in some basic way.

A writer doesn't need to have violence to tell a good story. But a writer does need a balance between the violence perpetrated by the bad guys and the violence enacted by the hero during the resolution. If the crime is presented as a puzzle, then we expect the solution to be largely mental, a thought process that solves the puzzle and delivers the bad guy to the legal system. Those stories may have little or no violence. 

If, instead, like Shakespeare, the violence takes place before our eyes, we come to expect that the resolution of the story will have violence. To be satisfying, those components need some balance.

Violence within the story should at least be partly balanced by the violence resolving the story.

We recently rented a multi-episode show on Netflix that was well-written, smart, had interesting characters, and a good backstory. (I won't say the name of the show for the same reason I don't write one-star reviews. Nothing is gained by it.)

But it was unsatisfying because this violence equation was off. The show depicted horrific crimes involving the trafficking and selling of young women. There was also murder and torture. It wasn't a blood bath, and the worst of the crimes took place offstage. In this regard it was like so many crime shows. Not a gorefest, but a realistic depiction of crimes that happen every day.

As the show went on, we "knew" that the resolution would have a kind of emotional payback. Not only would the bad guy get caught, but there would be at least some violence directed at that bad guy. Like most viewers, we didn't want the bad guy to be tortured for his crimes. But we wanted to see him make a run for it, and in the process see him experience at least some kind of pain or physical injury, a taste of what he's done to his victims.

Unfortunately, after 90 minutes of watching the good guy trying to catch the horrific criminal, the resolution was seeing them put handcuffs on the bad guy. Nothing more. The bad guy who'd caused so much terrible suffering suffered nothing. 

This left us feeling disappointed and even a little cheated. The writer/director apparently thought that despite a story about violent crime, having no violence happen to the bad guy at the end would satisfy sophisticated viewers who are "above" prosaic shows that depict violence. The show was probably realistic. But unsatisfying. And it's my guess that this approach is why this otherwise smart show was canceled after two seasons.

We writers need to remember the lessons of Shakespeare. If you want to satisfy readers and viewers, you need to give them at least a little bit of payback and bring some bring pain to the bad guy who caused so much pain.

The scales of justice in the world of fiction need to have more balance than those in the real world.

Church For Books - Beautiful!

 The Library of Congress is the closest thing we have to a National library. Its location is off the east end of the national mall. It serves congress, but that is only part of its job. It is often considered the world's largest library.

Among a thousand duties, the library of congress issues cataloging numbers to books it deems sufficiently significant. I'm lucky in that it considers my books in that category.

The building and its rooms are spectacular. What a wonderful monument to books!

Inaugural Poet - Great Writing...

 The inaugural poet made me cry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ055ilIiN4

A Writer's Job During Harsh Times

I get a lot of mail. If I were to sum up the essence of what motivates most people to send me a note, it might be that people crave entertainment that distracts them from real-world stresses. Those stresses range from national and international problems down to personal and family difficulties.

People like to read fiction that - for all the trouble that takes place within stories - depicts a world where there is more justice and reassurance than can be found in the real world. In most fiction, the bad guys meet justice, and their evil deeds are neutralized.

The harsh events in the real world take their toll on creators the same as they do with any other group of people. But we need to keep our focus on our purpose, which is revealed in our mail. Soldier on. Readers are waiting for more stories. Turn off the news, pour another cup of coffee, and get back to work.

Progress Report On Next Owen McKenna And Company

 In the world of writing novels, there are few axioms that apply all the time.

One of them, perhaps the most important, is that the first job of writing a novel is to finish the first draft. Wait, let me put in some emphasis: Finish The FIRST DRAFT.

This sounds easier than it is. Countless writers get well into the first draft of their new novel, whether it is their first or 50th novel, and hit so many dead ends and seemingly inscrutable problems that it's easy to give up and quit. Or you think, I'll just put this monstrosity aside until it seems more clear to me.

Putting it aside for a few days or even a week or two is fine. But you always have to remind yourself that it is only when you have finished a first draft that you can begin to really understand the shape of the thing you're building.

Another rule of writing novels is that good writing comes from rewriting over and over. Your first draft is just a draft. It will be filled with crapola (technical writing term). But of course, you can't rewrite and start making consistent nice sentences and paragraphs and chapters without first having a First Draft. You can't shape your characters into living breathing people who have hopes and dreams and fears and worries until they've been roughed out in your First Draft.

So I'm very pleased give you a progress report. I've finished the First Draft on Owen McKenna #19.

It is rough the way crushed limestone is rough. It is awkward the way a kid making his first phone call to ask someone out on a date is awkward. It is filled with unfulfilled hopes for future good writing. It is like the Winchester Mystery House, with doorways that open onto thin air, and staircases that go nowhere. It contains bad writing, adolescent writing, purple prose writing, melodramatic writing, boring writing.

But that is the nature of a First Draft.

Now that I've completed that daunting First Draft, I can move onto the easier stuff of making it a little better on each page and each day. I can identify all the exposition that simply needs to be deleted. I can fix the mixed metaphors or get rid of them. I can make the hero more heroic and the bad guy waymo bad. I can add some intelligence. I can get rid of my faulty attempts at cleverness. I can take out what Mark Twain disparaged as twenty-five cent words and replace them with nickel words. I can endeavor to have every bit of dialogue do double duty as both showing what the people said but also revealing their character.

Tune in come May or June after the book has been through four editors and endured seventeen rewrites. I'll send out an email as publication gets close.

Thanks again to all of my readers who care about these stories. I owe my career to all of you. 

Future Book Progress Report

While Tahoe Hit (Owen McKenna #18) is leaping forward in ideal book launch fashion and I couldn't be more pleased with its reception, the writing of Owen McKenna #19 is lurching forward like a literary ancient sloth trying to extricate itself from the La Brea Tar Pits.

Of the many presumptions about the life and schedule of a writer, one of the most persistent is that writers must first and foremost write religiously every day until they produce two or five or ten pages, whatever is their predetermined production level. This is assumed to be a given for successful writing.

However effective such a schedule is for many writers, it is inapplicable for perhaps most. There are too many other tasks for writers to do each week to always be productive. (One can't write well if one is in the car all day traveling to and from an event.)

So it seems that with most events shut down, this would be a boon for writing production. And to some small degree, it is. But the surprise for me is that while I'm not spending time giving talks and attending events and festivals, I'm spending much more time with correspondence and phone calls, communications that are often about accommodating the cancellation of all my events!

So my schedule is relatively unchanged. I can't write five pages a day when I'm doing ten hours a day of other tasks.

That doesn't mean I don't have a production schedule. I do. It just isn't a daily schedule but a yearly schedule. Every year, I have to have a book out if I want to continue to have a writing career. 

So the next McKenna, which I have had simmering in the back of my mind for a year or so, is gradually taking shape. I've developed what I think is a viable story line. And the pages are beginning to gather.

Stay tuned...

Creative? Trapped At Home? Read This

Thoughts for creative people on being forced to stay at home:

Some people talk about writing, others do it.
Same for painting, composing, dancing, drawing, jewelry-making, pottery, clothing design, etc.

These times of pandemic stress, staying home and such, can be hard to get through.

One thought that has helped me is to imagine myself ten years from now, looking back, thinking about how I spent my time during the pandemic. Did I lose a lot of time to stress and worry? Sure I did. But did I also seize the opportunity to be creative?

When you look back from the distant future, you will almost certainly want to think that you didn't squander the time. You will want to recall that you didn't just talk about writing, you wrote. And wrote.

Another helpful thought for me is that I've often had the idea that it would be wonderful to be able to take a sabbatical and stay home from most of my obligations. I've imagined all that I could get done if only I were given the gift of extra time. Well, here it is. Is it all easy? Of course not. But could we use the time productively if we were focused? Definitely.

Every writer who's seen Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton remembers the haunting line, "Write Like You're Running Out Of Time." That line is the stuff of anthems, and one of the most memorable from a show that won every theatrical award including the Pulitzer for Best Drama and Tony for Best Musical.

Another line with a similar message comes from Jonathan Larson's musical Rent and the song No Day But Today. Give it a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-w_RNchAsk

Like Hamilton, Rent won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Original Score, Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, Obie Awards for Outstanding Lyrics. The list goes on. Why was the show such a huge hit? The message of that song - that NOW is what matters -  helped propel the raves.

The song, and message, can make you cry. But it can also make you get out of your funk and create something valuable.

It's a compelling concept, this notion of turning distress into productivity, this idea of writing like you're running out of time. Don't put it off. Don't wait to start. Don't wait for inspiration. Don't wait for the right feeling or the right place or the best approach or the perfect company. And never ever think to yourself, 'I'll get going on that good idea tomorrow.'

Clive Cussler - A Great Storyteller

There are great writers (think beautiful, creative sentences and paragraphs, thoughtful intriguing characters) and great storytellers (think fascinating story subjects, larger-than-life characters, dramatic action, riveting tales that prevent you from sleeping). Great writers and great storytellers are not mutually exclusive concepts. But writers often fall into just one of those camps.

Clive Cussler was in the second category. His stories entertained millions. And all writers who pen stories with an adventure component probably owe him a debt.

Cussler wrote a couple of dozen bestsellers and - with multiple co-writers who were eager to join him in his writing projects - he directed the writing of several dozen more novels.

Cussler died February 24th, 2020. He was 88. The world of entertainment writing has lost an icon.

Second Edit On Next Owen McKenna

The book production pipeline is long. For me, about 18 months.

Each significant step stands out. I finished the first draft of my next book some months ago. My first editor (my wife, an expert at story flow and finding my sometimes-adolescent BS that needs to be deleted) handed me a marked-up stack of 400 pages. I dove in, did a rewrite, and sent the new version out to two more editors, story and sentence and paragraph and punctuation experts. I recently got those back.  These editors are all such a gift to a writer. Find what doesn't work. Figure out how it can work better. The pipeline flow continues.

I'll do another rewrite, then send the book off to my fourth editor. She'll identify the remaining problems, many of which I'll create as I try to fix past problems. I'll do another rewrite and send the book along to the next phase of publication. Come August, I have McKenna #18.

I like this new book. It's quite different than the previous McKenna adventures. I'll post details in coming weeks.

(For those who are curious how it works with an 18 month publication schedule, but a new book every 12 months, the answer is that I've already started writing the next book after this next book.)

Thanks for your interest.

Rethinking How New Writers Should Think About A Writing Career

Last week, I was interviewed by a college student who wanted to know what a writing career entails. She wasn't asking about how to write. She was asking advice on how to have a career as a writer.

I've written many times about the importance of writing multiple books if you want a career as a novelist. For some reason, this recent interview put things in a clearer perspective for me.

Writing seems to be unique among creative endeavors in that people think they might like to write a book and then, before they've even started it, imagine that the book might get published, and they might find an audience, and then it might sell enough to bring in good money.

Just One Book??

Way back in the past, when people have asked me about the process, I didn't make a big deal out of the multiple books aspect. I thought it was best for people to run with their enthusiasm and not face any more hurdles than necessary. (Like the realization that one book won't do it.)

Not so far back in the past, I've been more forthright about the need for lots of books. But I haven't pushed it very hard. I was still trying to walk carefully so that I didn't dampen the writer's enthusiasm.

Over the years, I've now watched many writers produce one book, and sometimes two or three books, and then feel dejected and, sometimes, profoundly disappointed when the audience didn't materialize.

Am I doing someone a service by playing to the idea that a writer should dive into writing a book without considering up front that it is just the first brick in the building? After all, most writers need a lot of encouragement to follow through on such a long, complex project as writing a novel.

Or am I doing writers a disservice if I don't explain right up front that, statistically, a single book has just about zero percent chance of finding success. (Yes, some do, although many of those "one-book-success" stories aren't true and are merely spin put out by publishers who've dreamed up a new pseudonym for an experienced author.)

It's a tough choice. If I describe only the joys of writing, that helps a new writer be excited. But they may get through the work of writing a novel only to be devastated when they find out that one novel won't likely go anywhere. (Certainly my first didn't.)

If instead I'm realistic about the task ahead and think that new writers are best prepared for the journey by knowing that they will need many books, I will serve them well. But I risk discouraging a new writer who is excited about their first book idea.

I've often used the metaphor of the restaurant menu. If you want to find success in the restaurant business, you need a full menu. It's the same in any field.

No architect wannabe would ever dream that they could find success by sitting down at the kitchen table night after night and designing one significant building.
No doctor wannabe would ever think they could find success by watching Youtube videos of a complex surgery and then attempting to perform it. .
No athlete would ever think they could find success by entering one very difficult marathon.
No oil painter would ever think that they could find success by exhibiting just one show of paintings.
No astronaut would ever... You get the picture.

Yet, when you think about those examples, you realize that every architect/doctor/athlete always assumes from the beginning that they face a very long and tough slog to find success.

So why is it that writing is one of the only things where a majority of people who consider the idea of writing a book imagine that success could possibly come from that single book?

I've decided to change my approach. When I look at the pros and cons of advice about writing, I think I will be more direct about the need to write many books before one can hope for success. I'll model it on all the other professions. I'll phrase it in these terms: Writing novels must be done in significant numbers in order to gain traction. If you are prepared to put in that work, you will have good odds of success, and you will enjoy the world's greatest job, with the potential for unlimited rewards, both reader excitement, and freedom of schedule, and creative satisfaction, and income.

As a writer, this picture depicts your goal. Lots of books.

Every Writer Should Plan A Whole Lotta Books

Here's a closing question for all people who want to become writers. Think of your favorite writers. How many books have each of them written? There's your mission.

Writers and Persistence

Do you want to write novels? Perhaps no aspect of writing is more important than persistence.

Have you ever run a marathon? Talk about needing persistence.

There are lots of quotes about persistence, and most of them ring true. The most famous may be the one by Calvin Coolidge, who was our 30th president. 

Coolidge said, 

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” (Read: Persistence is the single most important thing to getting your book done.) 

A shorter quote about persistence comes from Woody Allen.

"Eighty percent of success is just showing up." (Read: Just keep showing up at your writing desk - whatever that is - until you finish the book and, then, keep editing and rewriting until you make the book good.)

Shorter still is the famous Nike ad line "Just Do It." (Read: Just do it.)

For writers, the message is clear. 

Is there a single rigorous approach that gets the book done? No. For example, many times people assume that there are certain techniques that are critical to writing. Perhaps the most common is that you supposedly have to write a certain amount every day. While that may be smart, it isn't necessary. Although I work full time as a writer, I don't write every day. There are too many other writing-business chores to allow me the luxury of writing every day. A daily writing goal is great but hard to achieve. I still have a writing goal. It is annual rather than daily. I have to finish the book by a certain day each year. Then I have to do it again next year. Then again and again. Just do it.

Over time, my bookshelf grows.

Is there a good time to start this slow but steady creation? Yes.

RIGHT NOW. Just do it.

P.S. 

Many writers do two or more books a year. I'm more like the slow tortoise. I've only been doing one book a year. If you only average one page a day (or 7 pages a week), you can still write a book in a year. You could, for example, plan to get an entire month's worth of writing (30 pages) done in two intense days of creation. Having said that, I don't recommend that approach, as it moves perilously far afield from what works best for writers. Even slow writers know that writing every day is ideal.

So all of us who haven't gotten our book done need to remember Coolidge/Allen/Nike. Stop hesitating. Stop waiting for inspiration. Stop looking for the perfect moment/place/time to be a writer.

Just do it.

P.P.S. While I make no promises, I am writing more than one book a year, slowly building a second series. Check back in two or three years to see if it produces much of a result.