Friday Mixed Bag: Question about Revisions

All I have to say is TGIFF. That extra F stands for something. I'll let you interpret it as you wish. This has been a long week, no? But I'm looking forward to a full and fun weekend so it's all good.

I actually have a question today. It was posted in the comments section and I thought today would be a great day to bring it over and give it an answer. Mr. Winch asks (after buttering me up with compliments, which, as most of you know, is the best way, other than offering me food, to get anything from me,

I wondered if Chris (your agent) had any major problems with the story when you were signed. Nothing mechanically or grammatically, more in the likes of the story itself. Were there any parts where, although he loved your story, he said, "Chop the fat here" or "what in the world is this semantic slop here"? I wonder because I wonder if agents focus on the big picture (your kick-ass story) and overlook things that might be problems (plot-wise).

This is a really good question and the answer is yes. Okay, see you next week.

Oh, more. Right. One of the things Chris and the other agents (and editors) who read The Deathay Letter loved was the voice. But Chris had some issues with some of the places I'd chosen to go. There was a particular scene he felt bordered on making my character unlikable. And I'd managed to completely botch the ending in terms of tense. I'd prefer not say how because I don't want to spoil the book.

The point is that yes, there were some things that Chris had issues with plot-wise. And before he even signed me he asked me if I'd be willing to do some work on my book. Some agents will ask you to do the work before signing you. Chris did not in my case, but he has in others.

If I can get to the heart of what I think you're asking, I think some agents (and this applies to editors too) can and do look at the big picture and maybe see the potential of a project. If they're more hands-on (like Chris) or have more time, or just really believe in the project, they might ask for revisions to see how you tackle them. To see if you're capable of revising. Because you're going to spend more time revising than you did actually writing the book.

My editor at Simon Pulse asked me for revisions prior to buying the book. She had specific changes in mind, changes that completely changed the focus of the book. The core remained the same, but the focus is different. I think my willingness to revise and work on my book is what helped.

I think I've rambled a bit here so let me distill this as best as I can: Write the absolute best book you can. Don't submit it until you believe that there's nothing you can't make better about it. If you think there are plot inconsistencies or "fat" in your book, fix the inconsistencies and cut the fat. Don't expect an agent to do what you should have done. But be willing to work with an agent and revise. Take their suggestions and make them your own. Do your best and then do a little bit more.

I've often said on this blog that my agent's enthusiasm for my book is a huge reason I am where I am. It only takes one person to champion your work and help you get to that next level. With two full request out there, Mr. Winch, it sounds like you're well on your way. Congrats and thanks for the question :)

Friday Mixed Bag?

I got nothing. Okay, that's not true. I've always got something to write about.

Tomorrow I get to begin on my next project. I don't mind admitting that I'm terrified. The project is risky. At the same time, I think it's my most mainstream project yet. It's the kind of story that I have to knock out of the park or it'll be a failure. But, you know, no pressure.

I've been thinking a lot about news and social media and people-based knowledge sources like Wikipedia. I am not ashamed to say that Wikipedia is the first place I go when I need to know something. I AM ashamed to say that I rarely check the "facts" I get from there. I've come to rely on Wikipedia so heavily that I rarely stop to wonder about its validity. And I'm not the only one.

Such blind faith has spread to Twitter where fake death announcements have been made.

Events such as Amazon using its Skynet Whispernet online network to delete the illegal copies of 1984 (and some poor kid's homework), the constant pronouncements of the death of books, and even experiments like John Green's have made me wonder if the rise of the internet will actually cause the collapse of the physically written word or if it will give us a reason to keep physical books around forever.

How, you ask, will more digitization lead to a greater reliance on paper books? Here's how: Twitter and Wikipedia and John Green have shown us that information can be manipulated to such a degree that it can become nearly impossible to know what is true. Digital media can be manipulated by anyone at anytime. He who controls the media controls the world. Amazon has shown us that it has the capability to control what you read. Yes, I know that its purposes were not so nefarious, but their PR nightmare demonstrated that they COULD. And once something is done, it'll be done again.

Imagine a scenario where parents protest Catcher in the Rye. Bending under the pressure, an Amazon-like company replaces every instance of the word "goddamn" with "golly-gee." They then go to every Kindle-like device and swap out the digital copies. People who have never read the book won't know the difference. Eventually the Golly-Gee version of Catcher will be the only version and thus the REAL version.

Because what is real? The version that exists.

Wikipedia can be used to erase the sins of our past. Slavery? Never happened. Not if it's not in the Wikipedia entry. If a lie is propagated long enough it will become the gospel truth. People have known that for centuries. People have practiced that for a millennia. But hard copies of our information limit the damage. Sure, they can release a Golly-Gee print of Catcher in the Rye, but you'll always be able to find the unmolested version. You can burn the Library at Alexandria but books will always survive.

Not so in the digital age. Not so as we move toward a digital model that doesn't even give us ownership over our own property. We rent our books from a source that tells us how we can use them, what we can read them on, how long we can read them for, and eventually whether we can read them at all. In this digital age, knowledge is at the mercy of anyone with a login and password.

Which is why I believe that as we move forward, book will become an even greater treasure. Digital copies can't be trusted. If a new version of a book is printed, the two can be compared for differences, but if a company has the ability to change a book and replace...REPLACE...the digital copy they're letting your borrow, how will you ever know?

Books are more than just repositories of fun stories. They're who we are as a people. That kind of knowledge should not be mutable. Not easily anyway.

In a world where history and the vast sum of human experience can be altered with the click of a few keys, books will be king.

Happy Friday!!!

Friday Mixed Bag: Writer's Manifesto

Sorry for missing my book review yesterday. I spent about 2 hours in a dentist's chair being poked and prodded, so I wasn't feeling much beyond sitting in my chair at work and trying to look like I was busy while I just tried to suffer through the day. On the plus side, my dentist and her dental assistant began wearing flavored gloves, so as they drilled and poked, I was treated to the pleasant flavors of both grape and cherry.

Writing is about two things: discipline and passion.

Discipline is that thing that gets your butt in the chair and gets you writing. Passion is that thing you have to have for a project. It will carry you through self-doubt and long waits and bad news and days when you're just not feeling it.

Both discipline and passion are absolute necessities if you want to be a writer. All the passion in the world won't put your fingers to the keys and all the discipline in the world won't infuse your book with that little bit of extra ooomph that it needs to go from great to amazing. Passion and Discipline are symbiotic; they can't survive without each other.

Lately I've been feeling pressure to write a book that I'm not particularly passionate about and to ignore a couple of books that I can't get out of my head, because the market might not support them. And that's led me to question why I write in the first place.

Do I write because I want to sell books or because I have stories to tell that no one else in the world can tell and I'll explode if I don't get them out? Yes. Both. I'll admit it, I want to sell books. I want to make money. I want to quit my job and travel the world and write awesome stories. But even if that wasn't a possibility, I'd still write. I'd still write because I can't not.

So while I have these ideas that I want to shout from the rooftops. Ideas that I want to pet and hug and love and name George. There's a fear that they're not salable. That the marketplace won't accept them. So I should work on these other ideas that are more salable but that I'm not so passionate about. Um. No?

I'm the writer. It's my job to write the best book I can write without worrying about whether it can be sold. Listen, I'm no J.K. Rowling. Not by a long shot. But no one wanted her book about a boy wizard at first. She wrote a book that the market didn't want and then her agent convinced the market that Harry Potter was what it had been missing. And I think that's the magic of publishing. An awesome writer writes a book no one knows they wanted to read, and an awesome agent convinces a publisher that it has to have that book. Tough jobs all around.

So what has a better chance on the market? A book that the market is asking for but that the writer doesn't love, or a book that a writer loves that the market doesn't know it wants yet? I mean, that's the great risk with writing, isn't it? You write the best book you can and hope that there's an audience for it. But you don't write a book FOR an audience because that audience may be dried up by the time your book gets there.

I was inspired by the story of Audrey Niffenegger. She wrote her book "The Time Traveler's Wife." It was good and awesome and eventually it got onto Oprah's Book Club and blew up. She could have signed a second book sight unseen and made a boatload of cash. In fact, I remember reading that she was offered a contract for a second unwritten book, but she turned it down. Six years after publishing "The Time Traveler's Wife," she sold her second book for five million. I wish I could find the story now, but the gist of it was that she didn't sell a second book until she'd written it so that she didn't have deadlines or pressure and so that she could write the book she wanted to write. And according to her editor and agent, it was worth the wait. I'm no Audrey Niffenegger, not by a long shot, but I am inspired by her.

So here's my manifesto: I will only write books for which I am overflowing with passion. I think to do anything less would be a disservice to myself.

Friday Mixed Bag?

Since I don't get a lot of questions, I'm thinking that Friday should just be a free-for-all. So for the time being, I'll be using Friday's to post on whatever I feel like posting about.

I was going to post about the Orwellian Kindle Debacle but, really, isn't everyone sick of talking about the basic right to privacy? Amazon said, "My bad, yo," right?" Instead, I'm going to discuss this: "Porn Star's Husband Out of a Job."

Okay, let's get all the jokes out of the way right up front.

"I bet she'll give him a job."

That's all I've got. Moving on.

Here's my beef: I don't know what's going down in Ft. Myers, but in these economic times, should it really matter how someone's spouse earns money? Shouldn't we just be grateful that she's not another statistic, humping the leg of the already taxed federal government, for benefits? I for one, find it hard to believe that anyone cares who a local official's wife does on video for everyone to see. I mean, come on, give the guy a bone. He married a porn star, not a Nazi. It's not like she's doing community outreach for the Ft. Myers' public schools or anything.

Which leads me to my second point: Maybe using Jenke's wife wouldn't be such a bad idea. Listen, I don't think we should turn politics into a spectacle, but look at how much Sarah Palin brought to the table. I mean, her chest alone brought in more votes than all the Russians in Alaska. Imagine what a porn star could do for politics? She'd certainly have no trouble getting people to come...to meetings. So I don't think they should have fired Jenke, I think they should have given him a raise, or hired his wife.

Which brings me to the climax of this post: which Ft. Myers' resident was lucky enough to uncover Jenke's foxy little secret? It's not like Mrs. Jenke was wandering around Ft. Myers with a T-Shirt that said, "I'm the porn star wife of a lucky local politician." Someone had to have seen Mrs. Jenke in action and then put two and two together after he finished...his research. Yeah. It was research. So it's okay to watch porn but not to be in one?

Okay, now seriously. There's a gaping hole in the logic that Jenke's porn star wife would have been a disruptive force for the community. Unless every meeting was called to order by watching clips from her private library, I can't imagine how this is even an issue. Porn is legal. Porn is a useful social component that, frankly, people in America are way too uptight about. I mean, I get that America was founded on the backs of undersexed Puritans, but haven't we moved beyond that? Shouldn't Jenke's buddies on the council have just been able to high five him and move on? I guess not. The issue was just too large to get a good grip on.

In closing, I want to live in a world where politicians are allowed to marry porn stars and not be persecuted. And I will not rest until I can live in that world. So say we all.

I'm spent.

Friday Mailbag: ALL ABOUT ME!

Since questions are lacking due to my internet obscurity, I'm going to present interesting facts about me.

Fact #1 - I'm Shaun. If anyone else says that they're Shaun, they're an impostor. Likely a doppelgänger attempting to take credit for my

massive future successes. No matter what he says, DON'T EAT THE COOKIES!

Fact #2 - When I was in sixth grade, my mother attempted to convince me to wear girls shoes.

Fact #3 - My first understanding of sex came from reading a book titled: The Devil's Cat. I was Nine.

Fact #4 - I nearly failed 11th grade English.

Fact #5 - I find it nearly impossible to stay awake in lecture type settings, including classes. Which is likely the cause of Fact #4.

Fact #6 - I can't fall asleep with my back facing the door, even if the door is locked. If someone's going to break in and kill me, I want to see their face.

Fact #7 - Ever since I saw the movie IT, if I think about the movie while in the shower or bathroom, I have to leave because of the scene where Pennywise comes up through the drain.

Fact #8 - I'm still not a hundred percent sure how to use commas correctly.

Fact #9 - People who mispronounce the word supposedly make me want to gnaw off their face. There's no B in supposedly, people!

Fact #10 - I was so skinny in my teens that when I went into the hospital for a minor procedure, my nurses were convinced I was anorexic. Yeah. No

t so skinny anymore.

Fact #11 - Not so much a fact as an anecdote. When I was 21 my mom saw me come downstairs in a suit and told me I looked handsome. I said, "You're my mom, you have to say stuff like that." She replied, "No really. I mean it. Because your dad and I were so worried you weren't going to grow out of your ugly phase." By the way, ugly phases, like the 70's, can come back.

Fact #12 - I went to Italy once and when I was in Rome, I accidentally wandered to Vatican City where I accidentally wandered into a crowd and saw the Pope speak. I even have a picture. Somewhere.

Fact #13 - I have held the following jobs: dishwasher, grocery bagger, computer builder, sunglass salesman, shoe salesman, waiter, GAP salesman, Discovery Channel Store, Starbucks barista, Wine company manager, I worked in a garden statuary, for Allstate, Levi's, a lawfirm, United Way, and my current job as an IT Geek.

Fact #14 - I disliked Catcher in the Rye. I also dislike all the works of Ernest Hemmingway.

Fact #15 - I once sold sunglasses to Alyssa Milano.

Fact #16 - I am not afraid of heights but I am afraid of falling.

Fact #17 - I played Little League as a boy. I sucked. My coach's philosophy was, "If you can't hit the ball, let the ball hit you." I grew so afraid of the ball that my baseball career ended mid-game when I refused to take my turn at bat because I couldn't face being hit anymore.

Fact #18 - I suffer from migraines.

Fact #19 - I am allergic to only one medication. Imitrex. Imitrex is also the one medication that effectively battles my migraines.

Fact #20 - I have 4 tattoos. I got each one on the anniversary of a specific significant event.

Fact #21 - My mom is only aware that I have 1 tattoo.

Fact #22 - I hate wearing shoes.

Fact #23 - When I was a teenager, I wrote only at night. Now that I'm an adult, I write only in the morning.

Fact #24 - I write an average of 2000 words per day.

Fact #25 - I throw out about an average 1400 of those words per day.

Fact #26 - My favorite cereal is Fruity Pebbles and my favorite chips are Cheetoh's.

Fact #27 - The first band I ever saw was Natalie Merchant.

Fact #28 - For most of my young life I believed I would die by age twenty.

Fact #29 - I very nearly died of liver failure two months before my 20th birthday.

Fact #30 - My best friend and I had a t-shirt company called Too Freaks. I use one of our shirt ideas in The Deathday Letter.

Fact #31 - I only drink coffee hot.

Fact #32 - Joss Whedon is my idol.

Fact #33 - My favorite number is 33.