On Approaching Agents

Mike French has an excellent blog called "The View from Here" that includes book reviews, interviews and a lot of other good stuff. He's done a three-part interview with Helen Corner of Cornerstone Books. Her advice is quite useful for anyone who wants to look for an agent.

The Short Story Market - Don't Quit Your Day Job!

by Jim Bernheimer

Many writers, including yours truly, who are trying to break into the writing business start by writing short stories and shopping them around.

It’s a recipe for heartbreak, usually in 5000 words or less.

First off, many will think it’s easy. Those illusions are usually shattered fairly quickly. It’s still a story. Your work must be coherent, tight, entertaining, and complete. All of this must be done under the ever-present constraints of word count. You don’t have three chapters to introduce the character and explain why he or she has issues with authority. You get a paragraph or two at the most to inform the reader that your character is a rebel without a cause.

Once you’ve finished, go back and read every line. In a novel, you’d ask if this scene really fits into the overall story and serves a purpose. Considering your short story might be shorter in length than a scene in the novel, every sentence must be relevant to what you are doing. If it isn’t, cut it or replace it with something that is.

Okay, so now you’ve got a story written. Now what? It’s time to find someone who really wants to rip it to pieces, but will still tell you if they were entertained or not. Most of us budding writers have other writers as friends. Initially, send it to them and have them mark it up. Prepare yourself for the idea that they might actually not like it, because they might not or, heaven forbid, they might have a completely different idea of how to execute your story.

I would also advise that you need to be able to separate your friendships from what your friends could possibly say about your story. Remember, you asked them to look it over!

Once they’ve given it back to you, let it stew for a couple of days before you really do anything conceptual with it. Go ahead and fix those grammar and punctuation issues, but I recommend not jumping into rewrites for at least a day or two. After all, it’s going to eventually leave your hands and sit in someone’s slush pile, so a bit of patience on your part is in order even at this early stage.

Once you get around to any rewrites, go solicit someone else’s opinion. I find my writing works best if I show it to different types of people. With some, I just want to know if they like the story or the concepts and get their opinion of whether or not the story will entertain. With others, I want to know what they think of my mechanics and if the story “reads” well.

Not only does each sentence in a short story need to be relevant, but each sentence needs to be in the right spot. Read every paragraph on its own and dissect the paragraph. Is it as tight as you can possibly get it? Do the sentences in each paragraph keep the flow in the story? Here’s where you need to make certain that you are telling the story chronologically and not doing poor timekeeping.

My greatest personal sins against the written language are tense changes and a nasty tendency to slip into passive voice. Always review your work for passive voice. Replace any "passive" verbs with "active" ones and your writing will come alive!

Always check your work for passive voice and then have someone else double check if for you. It’s that important, when there is so little space to tell your story.

So now you have a tightly written, coherent short story that stays in tense and tells a story chronologically in a manner that the reader will follow. Now, make certain that it’s still a good read. Go back to the first group of people who read it and make sure they still like it with all the changes.

If the story is still entertaining, what do you do next? Prepare for rejection. It’s just that simple. It’s a buyers’ market in the wacky world of short fiction. Everyone’s hungry to make a name. Assume that every other story that is competing against yours in a contest you found on www.ralan.com or for space in a magazine or anthology is as good as, if not better than yours. Your story might be a diamond in the rough, but if the editor has a thing for rubies or emeralds, then you get another rejection letter to add to your collection.

Remember, there’s no “real” money in it either. Pro rates are considered 3 to 5 cents per word. So, that short story might net you a whopping $250. That’s not a huge payoff for all the sweat you’ve put into it, but like everyone else trying to make their own name out there, it’s not about the money, but the exposure. Just remind yourself of that fact every now and again. The editors and judges for these contests get to sit back and choose from a slew of hungry writers churning out their best work and most days, your best might not be what they’re looking for.

I submitted a story titled “A Sharp Mind” for Apex Digest’s Halloween contest. It’s a great story (trust me), but it didn’t even make their short list to go to the final judges. In his blog, Editor Jason Sizemore talked about how he broke down the 152 entries.

“16 were eliminated for exceeding the word count. Assume they are dead serious about the rules of their contest. Don’t think they’re going to give you a free ride if you’re not going to follow the format. In submissions, each publisher puts out their format. Most follow the popular Shunn manuscript format, but if they list deviations, then assume they are just as serious about that.

“The next ten were eliminated for typos in the first paragraph. Quite frankly, that’s inexcusable with the widespread availability of spell checkers. That’s 26 potential masterpieces that haven’t even been read beyond the first paragraph because the author was careless and didn’t follow the rules, manuscript format, or were just plain sloppy. That’s 17% of the competition down. Now all I had to worry about is the other 83%.”

Think about it. People like Mr. Sizemore spend their days and nights reading stories. He has no investment in your story or mine. It’s our job to spark some interest in him. This brought him to the next cut, where he read the first 100 words of each story and cut 24 more.

You’ve only got a few thousand words to tell a story. What makes it worse is you’ve only got a few paragraphs to sell the editor on that story. Your start needs to be compelling and grab their attention, because we’re now getting into the realm of the subjective. My story was about a zombie apocalypse. It’s quite possible that he may have rolled his eyes and gone, “Not another zombie story! That’s the fifth one today!” and cut it right then. If not, well, it went on to finish somewhere between 13 and 102. Out of the 12 that were shortlisted, there’s only a first and second place. For the other 10, it’s just like the great Howard Jones used to say, “You can look at the menu, but you just can’t eat.” I didn’t even get into the restaurant this time – maybe next time…

Did I mention that you need to be able to handle rejection already? It’s worth repeating. You need thick skin because you’re going to get pounded often – better get used to it.

Best of luck in your writings,
Jim

One Way to Fight Writer's Block

By Jim Bernheimer

Every writer has his or her own way of fighting the dreaded writer’s block. Some ways might work for you, or they might not. Here’s the method I subscribe to. As always, your mileage may vary.

The first big thing has to be forcing yourself in front of the keyboard. Go ahead! Just sit right down. Sure, the screen in front of you looks empty now, but you can fill it up.

Say you’re stuck on your fantasy story and all your humans and elves are sitting around bored at the keep waiting for you to produce the mother of all battles where they will lay down their lives. Well, if you can’t think of anything productive to write, how about taking your characters and imagining their reactions if they are watching the big screen version of the Lord of the Rings? Would your elf maidens say that Liv Tyler “is so leading that human on?” Would your barbarians prefer Starship Troopers the book to Starship Troopers the movie?

Alternatively, try writing a brief blurb on two of your characters interacting. Not about the epic battle, but about mundane everyday things. It might not seem useful until you realize that it’s getting you into the heads of your characters. It’s the difference between writing a character and really portraying the character. When writing the character, try to think with that personality. You’re not a space colonist on Vega 3, but your character is. What makes that person or thing tick? What can they see in front of them that gives them a sense of irony or dry humor? Just having a sampling of your character’s thought process in front of you can help you identify with them on a new level and perhaps open up some avenues for introspective thought. Take this rough scene I had from Dead Eye (coming soon from WHS Publications – All Rights Reserved). There’s nothing terribly important in it, but the conversation between them allows me to reach further into their characters and give them more of a past.

* * *

Four hours later, Jenny and I were back on the road, headed north. With some luck there would be a check in the mail from Roanoke County in the next week. I also had Candace’s number, if I was “ever down in this neck of the woods again” and still not dating her cousin.

Mentally, I was picturing the scene when mom asked me what I did today, “Drove four hours, dug up a dead body, and drove back, so not much. How was your day?” when Jenny started in on Candace. “So, did Candy ask you out?”

“Is that important?”

“Unless you’d like to walk, yes, it is.”

“Not really, but she gave me her number.”

My driver looked momentarily angry. “You wouldn’t really go out with her, would you? She may call herself Candace now, but all the boys used to call her ‘Candy’ because she was ‘widely available.’ If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, but I probably wouldn’t go out with her anyway. She lives over four hours away. I still can’t drive until my vision is good enough to get my license back.”

“Suppose she lived closer?”

“Why are we having this discussion?”

“I’m just curious what kind of girl interests you, Ross.”

A word of caution, it’s never a good sign, when a girl calls you by your last name. “I didn’t really get a vibe from her, so probably not even if she lived closer.”

“Good.”

That lie seemed to satisfy Jenny and she put her claws away. She seemed rather pleased with herself after that. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded going out with Officer Murphy. I hadn’t been on a real date since I returned from the war. The last real girlfriend I’d had was back in Texas and if we were matching reputations, I’d wager that Candace would have come out better than Heather. She and Don Hodges’ wife, Karen, used to dance at some piss-hole club near Fort Hood and yeah, there’s a reason mothers warn their little boys to never date a stripper, though there are far more reasons why the boys never listen…

* * *

One of the things that I prize above all else is realism. In an outline of the chapter, this would appear as, “Mike and Jenny talk on the way back.” The more real situations you can inject into your story, the easier it is for the reader to suspend their disbelief. You can overcome your audience’s innate doubts about the story by giving them something real to latch onto. Even if the scene is looked at and ultimately sacrificed to the altar of word count, it’s still something that you as the author can dig into and use to identify with your characters.

Best of luck with your writing,

Jim Bernheimer is the coauthor of the forthcoming Dead Eye series from WHS Publications.

To Outline or Not to Outline, that is the Question . . .

A short treatise on writing strategies by Matthew Schocke

I’ve read a lot of biographical blurbs, listened to a lot of interviews, and attended a few workshops held by professional writers. I’ve also communicated with a number of unpublished writers. While there are a lot of common elements in how they approach their vocation, one thing that seems to vary the widest involves the degree of pre-structuring they do with their storytelling.

At one end of the spectrum you have writers who develop meticulous outlines, plotting out everything in extraordinary detail before they commit the first word to paper. Many times they become stalled out before they even begin.

At the other end, we have writers who pretty much make it up as they go along, angling for maximum spontaneity and hoping they don’t paint themselves into a corner. They can’t really tell you what kind of story they are writing until it’s done and they read it for themselves.

Granted, both of these extremes are just that – extremes. Most people have work habits that fit comfortably between the two. Furthermore, you can’t really claim that either way is more suitable for doing good work. There are too many examples of both types succeeding and failing to make it that simple. The trick is to figure out which way works best for you.

I’m going to cover some "best practices" used by myself and others, but no one has a handle on the absolute best way to do things. Try some out and see what works for you.

An easy parallel can be drawn between outlining and public speaking. Some speakers will approach the podium with their entire speech in hand, written out word for word. Others will, at most, have an index card with their major speaking points listed. Most professional speakers will work with minimal, or no notes, so as to sound as natural and conversational in their delivery as possible. On the other hand, if not having the full speech written out makes you so flustered you can’t speak, then a conversational delivery is the least of your worries.

One exercise to see where you might stand is to simply sit at your keyboard and try to ad-lib a conversation between two of your characters. If you can spout witty, or at least usable, dialogue on command, then it may not be quite as crucial for you to have every scene outlined ahead of time. The same thing can be tried with an action scene, though in my experience those can be a bit harder to do on the fly. If you found both of those exercises stressful, like you were being put on the spot, then a thorough outline will probably save you a lot of stress and effort.

An outline doesn’t have to be supremely elaborate either. It can be as simple as a theme, a list of plot points and a character directory – the bare bones that you weave your story around. You may find however, as you list the crucial sequence of events, that you are already working out how everything fits together, leading to greater and greater detail as you fit the pieces together.

The more I write, the more I find myself refining the way in which I develop each story. For the bigger projects, I’ll actually have the outline attached to the end of my manuscript for easy consultation. Mainly this takes the form of a list of major events in chronological order, though the detail in which they are described is extremely variable. As each point is covered in the story, I delete it from the slowly-shortening outline. I could do this with a separate document, but flipping between them is more of a distraction – your mileage may vary.

Like most people, inspiration doesn’t always strike me in a convenient or timely fashion. The first novel I wrote is a prime example of this. The first section was pretty well hashed out in 1990. I got a great new idea for the end (which completely changed the entire tone of the story) in 1994. The middle section wasn’t really completed until 2003. While I was still writing in a linear, first to last fashion, the climax of the story had already been thoroughly worked out in my head. The last twenty thousand words were written in little more than a day – to my vast relief.

What does this mean for me? I’ll often be struck with an idea of how to do a particular scene I have planned, well before I’ve reached that point in the actual writing. That’s where the remaining outline comes in handy. I type up a quick summary of the scene, or whatever aspects of it I got an idea for, and then insert it into the appropriate section of the outline. That way it is preserved for when I do get to that point in the story. If I try to just remember it, not only would I risk the details being lost, but worrying about forgetting it would detract from my focus on the current scene.

Having this partially-fleshed outline also makes foreshadowing easier for me to set up. The more you can make your readers go back and say “I should have seen that coming”, the better. And if you are like me, you will always come up with new complications and plot twists as you write the actual story. Sometimes these will be worth altering your outline to incorporate. Sometimes they should best be saved for another story. But I try to write everything down as it comes to me so I don’t lose it.

That seems to be a common theme in many of my writing practices. As my father would say “Don’t keep a dog and bark for yourself.” If you work on a computer, then use it to take some of the burden off of your own brain. That’s why I record any ideas that occur to me that aren’t going to be incorporated into the current scene – so I can stop thinking about them. Free up as much as you can of your short term memory and other mental resources so you can fully focus on the current scene. Anything that makes it easier to breathe life into your characters, anything that enhances the actual creative process, anything that makes it easier for you to get the words down, that is my definition of a "best practice."

Matthew Schocke is the author of the forthcoming The Deal and The Journey in the World of Dreams series.

Writing Descriptions of Characters

by Lynda Sappington.

In one of the writing forums I'm on, a poster mentioned a problem she was having describing a character. Several suggestions were offered, including my own favorite (and the one I use on a regular basis for certain people in my novels): "Cast" your characters with actors or other public figures who resemble what you have in mind for your character, and it will be easier to describe them. If they're actors and you're familiar with their body of work, you'll even be able to picture them in various situations, which could be very helpful.

Despite having a "real" person in mind as your "model" (and stay away from family and close friends as models so you won't have to worry about offending them if your character does something they might not appreciate!), you may still have trouble coming up with good words to describe them. In that case, it could be useful to get a group of friends or fellow writers who are familiar with this person to offer their own descriptions. Not only could this be helpful to you, but it could be a lot of fun. (Whimsical me, I can see this as a party game, LOL!)

Imagine, if you will, Brad Pitt. How would you describe him? Boyishly handsome? What, beyond "sometimes blond, definitely blue-eyed, dimpled and cute" could you say about him? Imagine Clint Eastwood (not as the cute young "Rowdy Yates" on "Rawhide" on TV, but as the man he is today). You might describe him as "craggy" and "squinty-eyed" if you were writing a western. How would you describe his face if you were writing a romance about older folks? "Weathered," maybe? If you were writing a western starring Clint Eastwood, you might describe him as "rangy" or "rawboned," both of which bring to my mind the image of someone who's tall and thin. If the story was a western and he was someone who'd been through hard times, you might use a horseman's analogy: "He looked like he'd been rode hard and put up wet" (which is something you don't want to do to a horse, BTW).

Descriptions of characters can be very difficult to manage, or they can be fun. I prefer to use fun methods whenever possible (writing's hard work a lot of the time, so finding the "fun" in it is definitely something I prefer!). Don't spend all your time with your nose in a thesaurus and your butt in the computer chair. Go out in the real world (a mall, perhaps) and start writing character sketches of the people you see passing by. Or get your friends to toss out descriptive terms for actors you're all familiar with: Michael Douglas, both when he was young ("Romancing the Stone") and now; Catherine Zeta-Jones; Angelina Jolie; Angela Lansbury; Harrison Ford (both from "Star Wars" and now); Daniel Radcliffe (from the first Harry Potter film and now, perhaps including "December Boys" and "Equus"); Jodie Foster, Michael Jackson, Christian Bale, both as child stars and now. Have fun with this exercise and do it often, and your character's descriptions should become easier to write.

Lynda Sappington is the author of Star Sons 1: Dawn of the Two coming soon from WHS Publishing.

So You Think You Can Write

by Anne Walsh

You’re right, you can. Anyone over the age of eight can write. Writing well, though, that’s a whole 'nother kettle of fish, a whole different ball game, a whole . . . you get the idea.

I’d tend to describe myself as an advanced journeyman writer. I’m not an apprentice anymore, but I’m not worthy of being called a master yet. I served my apprenticeship writing worshipful stories based on my favorite books and movies, in which the heroes usually fell madly in love with women who had enormous power and a surprising lack of self-confidence. Fortunately, the act of writing the stories and the impressed reaction from the people I dared to show them to increased my self-confidence tremendously, and my heroines became far less annoying from that point on.

My journeyman work, still in progress, consists of stories set in two or three different fantasy universes. One of these, a world called Trycanta, grew faster than its compatriots, in the process giving rise to what I think will be my masterpiece, in the original sense of the word—the work by which the journeyman proves to her peers, and to the world, that she has passed her final tests and can truly be considered a master of her craft. This is my novel, Dangerous Truths, currently in pieces on my hard drive (though I recently came to a conclusion about one of the main characters that I think will speed revisions tremendously).

One more point before I get to the advice part: If you just like to play with words every so often, or you’ve toyed with the idea of writing a novel because it sounds like fun, that’s wonderful. You have my admiration and my encouragement. However, my experience has been more from the “mustwritenownownow” side, and my advice is tailored more towards that group.

With all this in mind, read on!

1. Read. Read, read, read. Read everything you can get your hands on, every genre you’ve ever wanted to try, and even a few you’re not sure about. You might surprise yourself. When you find an author you like, read more of his work. Read people who have collaborated with him. Read people who mention him as inspiration, or whom he mentions as such.

2. Obviously, enjoy what you read, but think about it as well. What makes this book so enjoyable for you? The well-drawn, rounded, believable characters? The strong plot which carries the story along swiftly? The music of the language itself, whether it be a rock song or a classical symphony or a hymn? All these are desirable in writing, but which is the most important to you?

3. Write. Write, write, write. Write about anything and everything. Describe your dog so well that someone on the other side of the world would be able to draw a picture of her. Turn your day into an action movie, a romantic comedy, a Shakespearean tragedy. No matter if you think it’s horrible, if you will never show it to anyone, if you put it all on a flash drive marked “DESTROY ME”, write something every day.

4. Listen to people talk. Dialogue and description must work side by side in a story, and properly handled, dialogue can both advance your plot and round out your characters. So pay attention to the speech around you. Have three different people—a child, a friend, and an older person—tell you about the same thing or event, and notice the differences in their vocabulary, their pacing, the structures of their sentences. Tune in on the way men talk to women and vice versa, and then on the way men talk to men or women to women.

5. Get some critics you can trust, and be prepared for pain. It hurts to have someone tell you you’re not perfect, even when you’re expecting it and you know they don’t mean you real harm. You’ll be mad, you’ll feel betrayed, and that’s normal—but do your ranting and raving in private. When you’ve cooled off, look again at the criticism. Is it valid? If it is, what can you do about it? Good criticism can do more for your writing than anything except practice, if you let it.

6. Always think of your audience. Who will read this? Your cat, Ted? Your mother and aunt? Your teacher and classmates? Your little cousin and her rambunctious ten-year-old friends? Even if you had the same outline in front of you, you’d write very differently for each of those groups. Think about the audience you intend to read your work in the same way. What will they expect? Should you fulfill those expectations? If not, what will you give them that’s better?

7. And finally, enjoy yourself. Yes, writing is work, and very hard work at times. There are days when getting a chapter finished feels to me like giving birth, and taking out a word like having a tooth pulled. But by and large, I love to write. When my fingers are on the keyboard, my mind is somewhere else, somewhere that exists only to me—and I can bring it to other people, help them to see what I see, or a close approximation of it. By writing, by creating, I confirm to myself that I am made in the image of God the Creator. (My incredibly profound apologies to any atheists, agnostics, polytheists, or people of undecided spirituality who may have been offended by the preceding sentence. I suggest you never read my work.)

So do I think I can write?

I certainly think I can try.

Yoda, eat your heart out.

Anne Walsh is the author of Dangerous Truths and related stories.

On getting published. . .

by Lynda Sappington

Since this blog belongs to a small independent publisher (WHS Publishing, http://www.whspubs.com/) I thought my first post should be geared toward the aspiring author. So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on going from idea to publication.

There are LOADS of books out there on how to get published. The best thing you can do to learn about writing and publishing is join a writers' group online where pro's and wannabe-pros both post. Critters.org is a good site if you write sf/f/horror, but earning critiques there takes a long time. The Hatrack River Writers Workshop (Orson Scott Card's site) has both lessons and message boards at http://www.hatrack.com/writers/index.shtml. You can also post the first thirteen lines of your story/novel there for critique, which can be very helpful. There are many similar sites online with helpful articles, places to exchange critiques, etc. Just poke around the Web a while and you'll find something that appeals to you. All the sites I'm involved with are for sf/f/h writers. There are similar sites for romance writers, children's writers, etc. You just have to search for them.

The first step to geting published is to write, write, write, then revise, revise, revise (*way* more than three times!!). Set the story aside for a month or two and find something else to occupy your mind so that, when you look at the story again, you'll see it with fresh eyes. Then revise, revise revise AGAIN! After it's as good as you can get it, ask people whose opinions you truly respect to read and critique your writing. Be sure the people you ask like the genre in which you're writing - don't ask those who like techno-thrillers to read a fantasy novel, for instance. Your loved ones -- spouse and children -- may refuse to read it because they're afraid they'll hurt your feelings if they don't like it, so don't expect them to read for you and give you *unbiased* opinions. They're your family, they love you, and they just aren't the best choice for editors for your fiction most of the time (unless they're serious writers too).

Don't argue with your readers, learn from them. Every opinion has SOME validity, even if it doesn't make sense to you (if it doesn't, ask them to clarify their meaning, to give specific examples from your story and perhaps they will also be willing to suggest ways to rewrite the problem areas). Go through as many critiques as it takes for you to get to the point where there is very little you can find to change in the manuscript (I normally use at least three or four regular readers for all my fiction. I also had two critique groups and two or three other folks critique my novel, "Star Sons 1: Dawn of the Two").

When you think your novel is really, truly finished, see if your most vocal critic will read it one more time to help you find any leftover plot holes, words used too frequently, etc. (See my "Writer's Tips" article on http://www.whspubs.com/ for more information on the care and feeding of your readers. :D)

While your best reader is working on a final read-through, you can start researching agents and/or publishers you want to query. If it's a novel, those who know the industry suggest you try to find an agent first, rather than a publisher. An agent can get you through doors that you'll never get into by yourself. You can meet agents at writing conventions, many of which are sf/f/h conventions or romance novel conventions, as well as writing conventions. There are guide books published each year by Writer's Digest books and others that list both agents and publishers open to new writers.

The annual Guide to Literary Agents is a good place to start your search for an agent. Some agents want you to send the first five pages, others the first five chapters, a rare few the first hundred pages. http://www.agentquery.com/ has up-to-date lists of agents and tells what they're looking for.

Jeff Herman has an annual guide to agents that's really nice because he has the agents answer questionnaires that tell their other interests, such as favorite films, which can help you get to know them better before approaching them (so you can do a better job of choosing who to query).

Another way to look for an agent is to go to a bookstore and browse the books in your genre. Look in the "Acknowledgements" section to see if the author thanked his or her agent. Add that agent's name to your list of prospects (check the agency's website or AgentQuery.com to see if that agent is accepting new clients before you send in your query!).

I've read many times that it's a good idea to break into publishing by creating a name for yourself by selling short stories. I'm not very good at writing short stories - I tend to think in "long form" - so I haven't tried that route. I do write articles for magazines and newspapers. This past Spring, I wrote some articles that were published in various newspapers and magazines to publicize my daughter's new farm (a training/boarding facility that features educational clinics for riders - http://www.dancinghorsefarmoh.com/). Articles or press releases aren't that hard for me to write, but short stories just don't seem to flow from my fingers all that well. It's a good idea to try them first if you can write them, and there is a market for them (and some cool contests for them, too). Look in Writer's Marketplace as well as on various online rescources, such as Ralan's Webstravaganza http://www.ralan.com/, which lists a whole boatload of publishing opportunities, contests, etc.

Query letters are difficult to master, IMO. The query letter has to catch the eye but be professional-looking and SHORT. A synopsis is also hard for me to write, as is a "blurb" (a one-paragraph explanation of the story - I don't write "short" well, remember? :D). But those are all things you need to learn how to do. They're all part of the process.

All that said - hang out in writers' forums. Participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month - http://www.nanowrimo.org/), or at least read their forums. Read every book you can find on story, structure, character, dialog, plot, scene, description, etc. Read every book you can find on every aspect of writing and submitting your novel. There is a "Complete Idiots' Guide to Publishing Your Novel" that explains the process in simple language, and many others that are just as good. Learn to love spending time at B&N or Borders browsing the writing books! Subscribe to Writers Digest (http://www.writersdigest.com/) and check out their book club, as well. WD covers everything from freelance articles to memoirs to poetry to screenplays to short stories and novels, and has books in the book club that are tremendously helpful for any form of writing.

Do yourself a favor and buy Strunk & White's Elements of Style and/or The Chicago Manual of Style. These are the best reference books for punctuation, capitalization, grammar, etc. Turning in as perfect a manuscript as you can will give the best possible impression of your work to those who will be looking at your submissions.

Beware of vanity presses and POD (print-on-demand) places if you want to be published "for real." I've read in books, magazine articles and on several forums that PoD places and vanity presses (both of which involve the writer paying to have the book printed) cannot get their books into the chain bookstores (Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks, Books-A-Million, etc.) or even WalMart-type stores. So you'll have a garage full of books unless you can talk your family and friends into buying them or do a lot of SERIOUS marketing on your own. (To be fair - there are POD and vanity press success stories such as the "Soup for the Soul" books, but those are rare.) Bookstores rarely deal with distributors who won't take returned books (those that haven't sold in a certain amount of time), which is why they deal pretty much exclusively with well-known distributors. POD and vanity presses won't take returned books. POD books are fine for those with a small niche market. But that kind of thing, church cookbooks and family memoirs are pretty much all PoD and vanity presses are good for if you're serious about being a PUBLISHED author. (And you can't count such "publication" on a writing resume - the pros in the field know who the PoD publishers are and will give no credance to such "credentials.")

Once your novel is as good as it can be, print it out and edit it again. You'll be surprised what jumps out at you when the novel is on paper rather than on a computer screen. When you've narrowed down which agents you want to query, find out how the agent wants to be queried (that's what AgentQuery.com and those books are for, to give up up-to-date names and addresses of agents who are LOOKING for new writers!) Print your novel out in the proper format (do some research - I don't have to tell you *everything* LOL! That can be another post sometime anyway) and send a fresh, clean, crisp copy (not your ONLY copy!) of however many pages they want (if any), along with your query letter, etc. and a self-addressed-stamped-envelope for the agency's response. Then cross your fingers that you get a good response!

If an agent asks for more of your manuscript (and you do NOT copyright your manuscript!! That's very amateurish. No agent or publisher is going to rip off your story), send them exactly what they ask for (but if they ask for the first five pages, for instance, and the chapter ends on page 6, go ahead and send page 6 - they'll accept that). After that, make sure you find a lawyer to go over the contract you're offered (if you're so lucky!) before signing it, and you're in business!

A reputable agent will not charge you a reading fee or any other fees up front. Once you have a contract, they may charge an "office fee" for copying, etc., but you shouldn't have to pay anything else. Agents are like commissioned salesmen - they make their money by making sales, not by charging writers fees. If you run across an agent who charges a reading fee or other fees while you're researching agents, don't query him.

If you're lucky enough to find an agent, and he's good enough to find you a publisher, the publisher should put you together with an in-house editor who may make suggestions about your story. Listen to the editor - he knows what works in the real world of publishing. But remember, too, that it's YOUR story. If you question something the editor says, there's nothing wrong with asking about that point. Eventually, you'll be sent galley proofs to read so you can make sure the story was printed as you wrote it (you'll be looking for typos and real errors - no "polishing" allowed at this point). Once the galleys are approved, the book goes to press. Then you and your agent or publisher will discuss which book signings you'll attend, etc. and you'll hope and pray that lots of folks buy your book!

You should talk to the agent and publisher about how your book will be promoted and how much travel you're expected or are willing to do to attend book-signings, etc. If you don't mind giving interviews, it will benefit your book for you to be interviewed on radio and TV and in print, so let your agent and publisher know if you are comfortable in front of crowds that way.

Very few publishers promote books the way unpublished authors think they do. Unless you're J.K. Rowling, expect to do the majority of the promotion of your book yourself. Get some books on marketing your books. Educate yourself. You'll be glad you did!

Lynda Sappington is the author of Star Sons 1: Dawn of the Two coming soon from WHS Publishing.