Writing rules, rejection & why to forget them and have some holiday fun!
Ruth Harris joined this blog five and a half years ago with a wildly popular blogpost on rejection. Because she worked as editor at a couple of Big Five Houses as well as being a New York Times bestselling author, she knows what she’s talking about on this.
Some of Anne’s most popular posts have been about writing rules and why so many of them are just plain silly. So we’ve got a couple of excerpts from our greatest hits for you today as we wish you a very happy holiday season.
Rejection Doesn’t Mean As Much As You Think it Does
by Ruth Harris
Plenty of times editors and publishers are just plain wrong…zillions of examples of that all over the place from J.K. Rowling to Stephen King. We turned down your ms? Maybe we made a mistake. Possibly. Maybe more than just possibly.
We’ve made plenty misjudgments in the past and we’ll make plenty more in the future and we know it. Turning down the ms that becomes a hot bestseller is an occupational hazard. We don’t like it any more than you do but it’s a fact.
Just like a lot of things, rejection isn’t always what it seems to be. Writers need to put that stack of rejection letters into perspective. Sibel Hodge turned 200 rejections into the #1 spot on Amazon’s bestseller list and a great career with Amazon’s imprint, Thomas and Mercer. Joe Konrath got rejected by his publisher even though his books were selling and making money for the company and went on to become an indie superstar making more money than he ever did with a publisher.
I once got a form rejection letter for a book (Husbands and Lovers) while it was on the NYT bestseller list. No kidding. Who knows why? I don’t and never will. My agent and I laughed our asses off and I went back to my computer and continued working on my next book.
You should do the same.
By Ruth Harris (@RuthHarrisBooks) December 25, 2016
Writing Rules and Why to Ignore Them
by Anne R. Allen
Somerset Maugham famously said, “There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.”
But pretty much everybody you meet in this business will tell you there are a whole bunch. (One is “never start a sentence with ‘there are'” —so watch yourself, Mr. Maugham.)
Here are some of my unfavorites.
1. Show, don’t tell: Yeah: “He wore a helmet with a wide brim, longer in the back to protect the neck, big black boots, a protective coat and overalls held up with red suspenders. He smelled of ashes and soot.”
Why not just tell us he’s a firefighter already? Here’s my take on why “show-don’t-tell” is bad advice.
2. Eliminate all adverbs. Seriously? Even when your POV character is, um, rather vague?
3. No prologues. I’ve sometimes preached the no-prologue gospel because beginning authors misuse them, but they’re standard in some genres. If they work for your story, they work. Don’t obsess. Rules are made to be broken.
4. You must write every day. Nothing should be done every day. Moderation in all things. Including moderation.
5, You must blog to have a successful writing career. Not everybody is cut out to blog. There are many paths to writing success.
6. No multiple points of view. Multiple points of view in one sentence—or even one chapter—can be confusing, but novels with several points of view can be richer and have more depth.
7. Eliminate “was”, “that” and “just.” Here’s my blogpost about the “was” police
8. Kids can’t die. Editor Jamie Chavez wrote a great post about that.
9. Happy endings are required in any commercial book. If you’re writing Romance, yeah, you gotta have that HEA, but plenty of non-formula love stories have weepy endings. As Ruth says, you just need to know your genre.
***
Rules for the Beginning Novelist
Make it light but never funny.
(Humor’s too subjective, honey.)
By Anne R. Allen (@AnneRAllen) December 25, 2016
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Have a very Merry Solstice Season, everybody!
Ruth and Anne are taking December 22nd-28th off to be with our families, so we won’t be available to respond or moderate comments until later in the week.
But remember our ebooks are just right for some vacation relaxation and for filling up those new devices you got for the holidays. Some are even FREE.
Try Ruth’s Decades or Anne’s Ghostwriters in the Sky and check out our book pages. Anne’s book page is here and Ruth’s book page is here.
The New York Times Bestseller, now FREE!
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Available at All the Amazons
THREE WOMEN. THREE DECADES.
***
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25 PUBLISHERS YOU CAN SUBMIT TO WITHOUT AN AGENT. These are respected, mostly independent publishing houses–vetted by the great people at Authors Publish. Do check out their newsletter
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I’ve gotten something like 1,056 rejection slips. Which is a phenomenal achievement when you think about it.
Louis—And not one of them means a thing. 😉 Except Merry Christmas!
Just dropped by to say Merry Christmas
Joanne—Thank you! 🙂 Anne and I send our best wishes for a very Merry Christmas.
It’s always helpful for me to read these posts because it’s kind of a kick in the booty for me to stop trying to follow all the darned rules out there which oft times stunts my creativity. I agree that reading a LOT of books in the genre I write is my best bet.
Happy Holidays to both of you!
Patti
Patricia—So glad to hear our posts help. Above all, Anne and I do our best to keep it real. All too easy to get lost in the swamp of “rules” that often stunt our creativity. As you say, reading is a writer’s best friend!
Fantastic as always. I loved your Dorothy Parkeresque poem too! Wishing you both Happy Holidays!! 🙂
dgkaye —Anne much appreciates your kind words! And, to you, the most happy of holidays!
Wishing you both Happy Holidays!
Sue—Thank you—and from Anne and me, all our best wishes for the holidays and the new year!
Merry Christmas! I really had to laugh at the Parkeresque rules, well done! See you next year!
Claude—Thanks and happy holidays!
I went back and read the rejection article in full.
So.
If a serious publisher actually accepted my book, and then later rejected it with no real explanation at all, and if it sent me another rejection slip a year later (!?) and if it also opened a second office many miles down the road from the original office, it would be good to think about resubmitting to them? I’m thinking it probably was a combination of opening a second office combined with a money crunch.
They really are the perfect group for me, I think, to the point that I cannot imagine anyone else being my publisher.
Would they be peeved if I resubmit?
Or would then even realize it happened, since I think the accepting editor also is no longer working there?
Home’s Cool!—Resubmit! Have a happy holiday and good luck with your resubmission.
Thanks! I think so, too! And thanks for your good wishes! 🙂
Merry Christmas, and a most Happy 2017!
Thank you very much for your blog.
Sasha—Thank *you.” Anne and I send our best wishes! 🙂
Anne and Ruth, Wishing you both a happy and healthy New Year! What would we do without you? Love and hugs, Paul
Paul—Anne and I wing our best wishes for the holidays and new year! xoxo
This is a great post. I see the “write every day” advice everywhere but I honestly don’t want to write every day, only Mon.-Fri, and sometimes Sunday, and have been wondering if this makes me not dedicated to my craft. Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks for the important perspective. I’ll try to keep that with me though the new year. Best to you!
Sue—Thanks for the kind words. Have a happy and healthy new year!
Hilarious verse!
And great advice, Ruth. I teach rules in my class (but not as stringent as the ones listed here.) And yet, every release season I see someone get published who breaks those very rules the publishers tell us to follow.
I always fall back on this, when talking to students: Don’t bother with gimmicks. Just tell me a damn good story.
Melodie—You’re so right! Your students are fortunate to have you. People seem to crave rules although “rules” are absolutely antithetical to creativity. They haven’t noticed that?
Happy New Year. This was such a good post and you made so many good points! Especially with the show don’t tell and the adverbs. 🙂
Patricia–Happy New Year to you, too! I’m glad you liked my “show don’t tell” caveats. 🙂
Merry late Christmas and Happy New Year.
Oh, man, I remember the “Writing Rules” (capitalization absolutely necessary) I learned in school. It drove me crazy!
My English teachers were always saying, “Don’t use ‘said!’ Don’t use ‘was!'” There was even a whole poster on the classroom walls of what to use instead.
I was a budding novelist even back then, apparently, because half the time I felt like asking, “Then what do I use instead?!” But you have to follow the rules in school or risk getting an F, so I’d ended up with ridiculous, convoluted crap, trying to bend and twist around what I wanted to say to avoid using the word “was,” or I’d end up with ridiculous and complicated dialog tags that made no sense. Some of my earliest stories, when I was still unlearning the “Writing Rules,” might even earn me a Tom Swifty award or two now.
There should be a “a story only an elementary school English teacher could love” competition. I could submit a whole bunch of stuff.
*Sigh* Sorry to rant at you. This post just brought back memories, and not all of them pleasant. I firmly believe in the “happy sandwich” technique, so I’ll wish you a late Merry Christmas and Happy New Year again.
Sarah—Aaaargh! No wonder we spend as much time and effort “unlearning” as we do learning. Anne and I wish you all the best for the New Year!
Love the poem, Anne! Shakespeare, eat yer heart out. And as for the rest of it, I’m a bit of a rebel over here, too. 😉 Happy New Year to you both.
Belinda–Great to see you here. Nice to have an editor weigh in! Happy New Year to you too!
In December I read a novel by a NY Times best selling author who used a prologue, a second by a different best selling author who used italics heavily, and a third by an award winning writer who wrote his entire prologue in italics. Don’t use italics or prologues? Writing rules like these make me crazy.
Kevin–A lot of those are rules for submissions to agents, not for the final product. They only have to do with what can be formatted easily in an email, and nothing to do with what will work in a published book. People get very confused.