The Starter Guide for Professional Writers

THE STARTER GUIDE FOR PROFESSIONAL WRITERS:

HOW TO WRITE AND MARKET YOUR FIRST PUBLISHED STORIES

A Handbook by

Therese Arkenberg

The Starter Guide for Professional Writers

Therese Arkenberg

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Therese Arkenberg

Cover Art by Jeremy Taylor jeremytaylor.eu/category/books/ebook-cover-designs/

Therese Arkenberg blogs at ThereseArkenberg.blogspot.com. If you would like to hear about her next release, please join her mailing list at: http://eepurl.com/CKBTT

Thank you for purchasing this book. This book is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced or distributed for any commercial use. Limited non-commercial reproduction and sharing, including the use of quotes and excerpts in reviews, is welcomed. Your support of this author is greatly appreciated!

This guide is dedicated to my hero funder, who helped make production of this book possible:

Cyn Duby, who is writing for Kevin (11/10/58—8/20/2011)

I would also like to thank Zahara —working alongside you taught me a lot, including, I hope, how to teach.

Special mention also of Eilene —I’ve dedicated one book to you already, but another can’t hurt, right?

And lastly, to Megan —hello, sis!

CONTENTS

Introduction: Who is a Professional Writer?

1. From Getting Started to Getting to the End—Just Write!

Finding Stories

Do I Need a Degree to Write Professionally?

Defeating Writer’s Block

2. Writing Publishable Prose

Description and Point of View: the Hows, Whens, and Whys

Dialogue: How You Say It Matters

Action Scenes: Dying Hard and Writing Harder

Content and Characterization

Qualities to Admire

3. Dialogue Tags and Second-Best Words (17 Mistakes to Avoid)

4. On Revising

Rereading Your Work

Tightening Prose

This Process in Action

Using MS Word Tools in Revision

Mad(wo)man, Carpenter, Architect, Judge: The Personalities of Writing and Revising

5. On Reviewing

Why Review?

How to Review

What to Look For in (and Where to Look for) Editors & Beta Readers

How to Make the Most of the Reviews You Get—and Get More

(Not Exactly) Q&A

6. A Basic Introduction to Publishing: Short Fiction and Poetry

Guidelines, Cover Letters, and Tracking Submissions: It’s Time to Get SeRiouS-eR

A Crash Course on Rights

Poetry

Selling Art & Nonfiction Articles

7. Introduction to Publishing: Novels

Getting an Agent

Summarizing Your Story: Queries, Blurbs, and Back Cover Copy

Title Goes Here

Alternatives: E-press and Indie/Small Press

Professionals Behaving Professionally

8. Some Thoughts on Self-Publishing

When to Self-Publish

How and Where to Self-Publish

Formatting, Pricing, and Distribution

What to Pay For—and How to Self-Publish For Nothing

Crowdfunding to Publish Your Book

Beware!

9. Promoting Your Book

Now is the Time to Keep the Faith

Guided Tour of a Marketing Plan

Marketing Goals and Objectives

Target Audience Analysis

Marketing Strategies

Organizational and Business Partnerships

Blurbs & Reviews

Online Essentials

Social Networking

Events & Conventions

Earned Media Coverage on Radio, TV, and in Print

Swag, Spin-offs, Giveaways, and Discounts

Your Byline (Other Publications)

Timeline & Budget

10. Painful Things

Health and Injury: And You Thought a Desk Job Would Be Safe

Taxes: The One Thing Certain as

Death of the Author

Further Resources

About the Author

Endnotes

Introduction:

Who Is a Professional Writer?

I assume you’re reading this because you want to become a professional writer. But what do we mean by that? What exactly do you want to become?

My definition of a professional writer is someone who makes money from their writing. This is in contrast to an amateur, who writes purely for the love of it. Amateurs are often passionate, wonderful people and every bit as talented as professionals—they have just chosen not to publish for some reason. Perhaps they’re interested in writing one specific thing for a specific, even private audience: a memoir or genealogy for their family, fanfiction for fellow fans of a TV show or book, or a journal for themselves. Pure amateurs may make use of some information in this book’s first few chapters, which present techniques to create well-constructed stories and polished prose, but the primary goal of this Starter Guide is to help writers who want to share their work with the public and to be paid for it.

Always remember: for the professional writer, publishing your story means getting paid—you do not pay to be published! Because publishing is a confusing territory fraught with emotion (to wit: a lot of people want to be published, without being quite sure how it happens), scammers are afoot. They’ll gladly slap your text between two sloppily-printed paperback covers, for which they’ll change your readers the price of a good-quality hardcover and charge you $1500 or more in formatting, printing, and promotional fees. Then they’ll leave you to hand-sell the resulting mess without bookstore distribution. The thing is, if you’re comfortable with a modest paperback edition, you can produce one yourself through a POD printer like Amazon’s CreateSpace for no money at all. While you may make certain investments, such as pre-publication editing, cover art, web design for your author’s website, postage fees for paper submissions to editors, subscriptions to market listings and similar resources, and the purchase of how-to guides such as this very book, the professional writer’s goal is always to make a profit. Not necessarily a large one, nor very quickly, but you can and should come out holding more money than you did going in. Choose the services you purchase wisely and, if you’re doing it in hope of future earnings, don’t spend more than you can recoup with only conservative sales.

This guide may also prove helpful if you want to reach a target audience beyond your blog readership or by physically passing around a binder of your writing, but have a beef with capitalism and don’t believe in selling your creative work for money. That’s a more idealist position than I would take, but I have to commend idealism in any nonviolent form. Submitting to nonpaying, free-to-read ezines is a very similar process to submitting to professional rate markets, and even if your Kindle book costs exactly $0.00 to download, you still need to attract readers to download it.

It’s perfectly fine to decide paid publication isn’t right for you as a creator, or for any one story in particular, but be sure you’re choosing not to rather than giving up before you’ve given yourself a chance.

For one thing, even if you have no prior publication credits, you don’t need to begin by being paid with exposure and work your way up to cash. There are some lovely exposure-only markets, and also anthologies that donate their profits to charity, but if you have a story that deserves to be published, you can sell it to a paying market right away, whether you’ve been writing for sixty years or six months. Professional writers are not made, they choose to be. Speaking of choices, if you’re always telling people about the book you’re going to write one day, without ever venturing past the second chapter, you’re less a writer and more a person who talks about writing. Reverse the proportion of the two activities you engage in and enjoy the results.

Some writers hesitate to publish out of shyness. Many of us are introverted by nature, content with our own company (or the company of our characters) and needing a lot of energy for social interaction. When introverts hear that publishing involves marketing their work, they want to crawl under the bed and hide from the prospect of becoming a used-car salesman on behalf of their words. Or, if they do publish, they want to choose whatever looks like the path of least resistance even if it isn’t their best option. When I was younger and even shyer than I am now, I thought I’d rather self-publish all my novels than write a query letter to a literary agent. As it happens, self-publishing takes far more marketing savvy and interpersonal charm than the traditional route—working with editors and agents will cut down on the communication, tasks, and marketing you need to do yourself. In any event, the social interaction that is necessary for a professional writer becomes easier with experience.

You may think it isn’t worth the effort to get published because the sort of thing you write—perhaps Westerns, or cookbooks dedicated to tofu turkey recipes—doesn’t sell in any quantity. But even the most niche of genres still has an audience. And the revenue from selling one copy of your book is infinitely more than from selling zero. So that’s no reason to give up before you’ve properly started, either.

Without having an opposition to capitalism in general, you may still be wary of creating art in exchange for money. My psychology textbook would say you fear that extrinsic motivation (money and critical acclaim) will overtake your intrinsic motivation (the joy of writing). Especially since you aren’t likely to become rich off your writing, is it worth risking your soul?

True, the money most writers earn isn’t great—in fact, at the average of far below minimum wage, you pretty much are writing for the love of it. But if you’re writing what you love anyway, having it professionally published will not only give you a financial boost, however small, but also make it easier for your stories to be read by the book-buying public. Being paid for my writing has, if anything, helped me write more and to write better, knowing I’ll be rewarded for the quality of what I produce. In short, by having an extrinsic motivation attached to my internal desire to write, I have become a more productive writer through being published.

Perhaps you’re not shy, and you’re in fact quite eager to earn wealth and fame (so far as it goes). You’re not a professional writer yet simply because you’re not quite sure how to go about being published.

Well, that’s what we’re here for.

Not so long ago, I started to become a professional writer. For six years I’ve submitted stories for publication, and for five I’ve received acceptance letters. All the while I keep learning. Not only was my personal learning curve steep, I’ve also taken advantage of the expertise of friends, family, and the people I met through professional writing networks. I spent my last semester as an undergraduate interning with a writer and teacher working on her novel, and I learned even more through that. Most importantly, I received generous support for practicing what I already knew, to the point that I became confident enough to begin this project: collecting the advice that helped me or would have helped me if I had it when I started getting published.

The entrepreneurial self-drive fascinates me, and I get really excited by any project that runs well and generates value, financial or otherwise (I’m especially interested in B-corporations that operate to support social causes—the B stands for benefit). I’m also a fixer: when things aren’t working well, I want to step in and help. And I really don’t like to see people miss out on opportunities. This sometimes makes me pushy with friends who are talented artists, especially writers. For those who enjoyed the aggressive cheerleading, I’ve become a guide, a coach, and a teacher. Many different new writers, asked me the same questions: Where do I get started? Will I be taken seriously without prior credits? What do I put in a cover letter? When and how much should I expect to be paid? Will I have to pay to be published?

Part FAQ, part memoir, this book started as a collection of essays, blog posts, and forum comments written over years. Once I started polishing these pieces and adding connective tissue, the Starter Guide for Professional Writers quickly became something more. Yet it still bears the DNA of an essay collection and not a few forum posts, so the tone is often lighthearted and organization may appear scattered. For example, I discuss outlining stories not at the very beginning but rather towards the end of this book, around the section on writing query letters. This is because similar summarizing and big picture-viewing skills are used to outline a story and write its query blurb and synopsis. Rather than repeat myself at multiple points, I grouped all that information together. All the same, you’ll find me repeating other information I feel particularly strongly about—such as the warning signs of unethical publishers.

The chapters are in chronological order: from beating writer’s block and finishing your story, through the process of writing and revisions, to an overview of your publishing options (short fiction markets are explained first, but short fiction sales are not necessarily the precursor to have a novel published). I round things out with ideas for promoting your newly released book and writing your next. This guide concludes with a brief chapter on grisly topics including injuries that may impact the writer, what you might expect when filling out self-employment tax (for introductory informational purposes only—do not use me as a substitute for an accountant or tax lawyer), and the thing about death and copyright (I am not a substitute for your estate lawyer, either). Throughout, I try to explain how things look from a complete beginner’s perspective, maintaining a conversational, and in places even humorous, style. I hope this holds your attention and keeps you from feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff there is to know about publishing.

Above all, this book is designed to be a reference you can come back to again and again as necessary. Don’t feel you have to absorb everything in here at once! There’s a lot going on in the world of publishing, but very few things are required for participation, except of course for writing something.

In all cases, my goal is to provide general guidelines. There are few iron-bound rules—writing an art, not a science—and what I tell you to do in one situation may be the opposite of what another, equally experienced and possibly wiser, person would tell you to do in a similar case. All the same, all information in this book is as accurate and current as I have been able to make it. Some changes, such as American Star Book’s new name (they’re better known as scam publisher PublishAmerica) and CreateSpace’s expanded distribution plan being offered for free, happened even as I completed line edits.

If you have to prioritize—and you do—prioritize what you enjoy! There will be hard work ahead, but above all writing is something you should do because it is fun and fulfilling. If it’s no longer fun or fulfilling, change your approach until it is. Or stop.

This book isn’t particularly long, so I suggest you first read it all the way through, regardless of where you are on your current project. The information is meant to be helpful at any stage, not just for this story but your next ones, too.

Chapter One

From Getting Started to Getting to the End—Just Write!

Do you have a story?

Yes? Great! Let’s finish it!

No? That’s okay, I’ll still be here once you find one. Come back when you do. Go on now! Don’t make me shoo you!

Without a story, it’s awfully hard to be a writer, even of nonfiction or poetry. When I began job searching, my professor told me even a cover letter has to tell a story. Narrative is the backbone of communication. Humans are storytelling creatures and, just as important, story-listening ones. We like our ideas to unfold with clear beginnings, middles, and ends, with a thread of suspense or mystery to hold our attention. Best of all, we like shiny and cool ideas presented in a way we can understand and get absorbed in.

Presentation we’ll get to. But first, you need to find your story.

Story finding is a skill more easily developed than taught—I can offer guidance on where to start, but then it’s on you. The good news is that once you learn how to find stories, you’ll soon be finding too many of them, far more than you’ll ever have time to write.

Then you just need to finish as many as you can. That’s covered in the second, bulkier part of this chapter.

Before we start, I want to clarify my definition of story: a story is a series of interconnected events presenting a problem and leading to its resolution. It may help to consider storytelling as problem-solving—and even if you can’t solve the problem, you have to present that failure in a compelling and, most importantly, satisfying way.

To make a story compelling, have interesting characters (usually sympathetic, although very talented authors can create downright bastards so long as they’re fascinating) face a problem that is potentially devastating, not just a minor inconvenience. In his book on speculative fiction writing, Worlds of Wonder, David Gerrold asks Who hurts the most? Don’t feel you have to answer this question literally—sometimes the character hurt worst is unable to do anything about it, or doesn’t have the best narrative perspective, or isn’t part of the story you want to tell. But your chosen character does have to hurt and to be at risk of hurting more. They need to be driven to confront the problem, which they do in an individual—you might say, characteristic—way based on their strengths, weaknesses, and values. Even if they can’t solve the problem, they shouldn’t accept their fate passively. Perhaps all they can do is adjust their expectations or make their peace in the face of insurmountable odds, but in that case, you go and write an outstanding adjustment-of-expectations scene.

Another way of looking at stories comes from editor John Campbell (quoted by James Gunn in his essay Where do you get those Crazy Ideas? on the inspiration of science fiction stories). According to Campbell, The author’s function is to imagine for the reader… He must either imagine in greater detail than the reader has, or imagine something the reader hasn’t thought of. Ideally, the author imagines something new, in great detail. From this perspective, the goal of writing is to create an experience for the reader. Having a character solve a problem is just one handy structure to provide these experiences. But it’s a structure that the modern reader is familiar with, making it the easiest path to their mind and heart.

In any event, where do you find these ideas, or the details to infuse them with, or the problems or the characters to solve them?

Finding Stories

Stories are literally everywhere. Remember how humans are naturally storytelling creatures? It’s because—or perhaps it’s the reason that—we live them. Every detail of daily life could be the kernel of a story. Pay attention and watch for them.

Do you write contemporary fiction? Read the local news. Thrillers? Read the global news, or the weird news. Read up on conspiracy theories. Get lost on Cracked.com reading articles about everything from weird news to real-life conspiracies to five things about bars, gunfights, outer space, or sailing ships that every movie gets wrong. Think of what would happen if a movie got them right.

Do you want to write historical fiction? Consider the time period you feel most interested in (since that’s the one you’ll find easiest to write about), and search for gaps in the record, questions that linger through generations, theories that have never sat right with you. Horror? Keep notes on what creeps you and your friends out. Fantasy, science fiction? Ask what if. Check out some optical illusions and read about ancient mythologies. Or modern mythologies, if that’s your thing.

When you go to work or school, who do you pass by? What’s happening to them? Where do you think that driver with a flat tire was going, and how much of a problem will that flat tire cause? How will she manage it? Would that man offering directions to a blind pedestrian make an interesting character? Would the blind pedestrian make a better one?

There are story ideas all around you, but you may be missing them because you haven’t yet learned to spot them. And even when you are observant, you may find yourself short of ideas because after seeing one and thinking, that looks like a great idea for a story! you forget to ever write that story in even the scantest of outlines. Both problems can be solved by keeping a pen (or pencil, depending on your confidence level) and paper with you at all times. Train yourself to take notes. Every day, make it your goal to find and list 3 things that could turn into stories. You don’t have to actually write anything about them past putting them down on that list.

Doing this will train you to notice interesting places, people, and events and to put your ideas in hard copy so you can keep track of them. Once you’re able to see your ideas listed in front of you, you’ll begin to understand what your process of inspiration is like. You’ll also have much more faith in your ability to find ideas, even if they take some weeding through and some careful work to shape into complete stories.

I’ll share the inspirations for seven of my own pieces—two unpublished stories, four professionally published ones, and my novella, Aqua Vitae:

Many stories come from the mixture of two separate influences. I owe Invitation of the Queen, a fantasy piece published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in 2010, to a novel by Sinclair Lewis and a film featuring John Depp—not the most refined pedigree, but it does go to show what diverse forms inspiration can take. Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here is a brilliant, if dated, book about a Fascist takeover of the United States, and offers a different look at totalitarian governments from the staple 1984 and Brave New World. I liked to see a more genteel, conversational side of evil. Fascists can never be anything but villains in my stories, but such fascinating villains—and then, after watching The Ninth Gate, I realized that sometimes the totalitarian book-burners might be justified in thinking certain books ought to be burned…

A Matter for Wizards, unpublished, came about when I realized a series of books I was reading fell into a pattern: every villain was a charlatan pretending to be a wizard. This fit the rules of the story’s world, but in a contrary mood, I set myself to writing about a benevolent fraud. And what if she had to go up against a genuine, evil wizard?

Another story (publication forthcoming in 2014), The Astrologer’s Telling, was inspired by a line in H.P. Lovecraft’s prose poem Nyarlathotep about a horrible cosmic wind making stars flicker like candles. The image of stars blowing out haunted me. Unfortunately, as the problem at the heart of the story, it was clear and urgent but not readily solvable. I wrote a 700 word flash fiction about scientists rekindling the stars using nuclear detonations, but the story was based on abysmal science that broke my own established worldbuilding rules, as one very constructive rejection letter told me. The letter went on to say my idea, though flawed, [was] interesting and my portrayal of humans reacting to cosmic disaster was compelling. So I ditched scientific solutions and wrote a full-length story focusing on the human toll and emotional impact. Who would suffer the most from the stars going out? Someone who lived by them—an astrologer. This also introduced a science vs faith debate to drive interpersonal tensions among the characters.

For The Godslayer’s Wife, another story published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, I am in debt to one of the most brilliant recent epic fantasy short stories, Matthew David Surridge’s The Word of Azrael (in Black Gate #14). Inspired to write my own epic tale, I was especially prompted by a line in Azrael about a prince with an extremely tragic background marrying a princess and living happily ever after, for a time. What would it actually be like to have a partner haunted by so much trauma? Did the poor woman know what she was getting into? And what would she and her new husband do about it? The first draft of The Godslayer’s Wife was produced in less than 24 hours, helped along by the fact that it took place in a fantasy world I had already built in detail over several previous stories. Knowing what was possible according to the setting’s mechanics made it easy to guess the newlywed’s problem (rather different from Surridge’s characters), what solutions they would try, and how those would turn out.

Goldenseed, a sendup of Johnny Appleseed by way of the Hesperides with an economic moral, was my first professional sale. The idea came full-formed during one of my shifts at the library—one of the best jobs possible for a writer, because as I returned books to the shelves I got to study their covers and blurbs. Ideas swam and blended during my hours among the stacks, and I quickly learned to keep paper and pens handy to jot notes during my breaks. Goldenseed was inspired by a kid’s book on Johnny Appleseed, crossed over with the Greek myth of the Hesperides (I don’t know if I saw a book on Greek mythology that day or if the idea for golden apples came sideways from a different topic). I was studying for the AP economics exam, so of course principles like the impact of scarcity on value and the tragedy of the commons would determine characters’ motivations, the conflict, and its ultimate resolution. This is why I encourage writers to take courses on more than creative writing in school. The more you know about, the more you can write about.

We’ve all had dreams that we wished were real. Some of us really need our dreams to come true… Lord Shashensa, about an estate threatened by invaders and only able to take refuge in dreams, was prompted by my own wistful feelings over certain dreams, plus another library find: a history book with an illustration of Visigoth hordes marching across Europe in the Dark Ages (although the setting of Shashensa turned out less European). Because I happened to write a female protagonist, this story qualified for submission to the Sword and Sorceress anthology series. Growing up, I’d read the original Sword and Sorceress collections edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I was thrilled when this story landed in the revived series—although it took some revisions. Previously, Shashensa had received one of the most encouraging rejections of my career: There will be other publishers that will love the story all the way through, but I suggest another proofreading before sending the story [on].

The protagonist of my novella, Aqua Vitae, was originally a supporting character in a novel. But, being immortal, Jenes proved to be very interesting. Although I never completed that planned novel, I had the mechanics of the universe down and wrote what turned out to be a very detailed short story about her. The problem was that the first version of Aqua Vitae had no problems to speak of—no conflict—until a helpful, merciless critique group member pointed out that Jenes’ personality was a huge problem. So I rewrote the story to acknowledge that fact, chronicling Jenes’ difficulties adjusting to eternal life—and life in general.

Both Aqua Vitae and The Astrologer’s Telling came about through repeatedly revisiting the same concept, trying to find the right problem to address, the right way to solve it, and which characters to attempt the solution. Another story, Charismatic, was begun from scratch three times over. The third version, a mixture of the strongest scenes and characters of the first two, finally stuck. It appeared in Crossed Genres Magazine in 2010.

So as you can see, there are many sources of ideas, and what makes the difference between a mere spark of inspiration and an actual finished story seems to be some combination of perseverance and luck. But what makes a given story publishable? Where does that magic happen? Does magic happen?

Publishable stories are just completed stories that turn out really, really good. Good enough to beat the competition in the slush pile, good enough to attract an editor’s attention, and ultimately, good enough to attract readers’ attention. If you’re asking whether a certain kind of story is more likely to be published by a given market, absolutely! It depends on the market you’re trying to crack (most likely, the kind of stories you write will determine the markets you want to crack). And there is an ebb and flow to the popularity of genres, currently working in the favor of anyone writing YA fantasy and less well for those writing Westerns. But that doesn’t mean you can’t sell a Western if you know the right market and have an excellent piece. It’s also possible that what you begin to write as a Western may turn out to be something different and more marketable—a