Angst In Focus archive

They say tragedy comes in threes.

Since last Thursday there have been three deaths of young people that I had either known since childhood or knew through association. The first was a boy I’ve known since we were kids who passed away after a long battle with Muscular Dystrophy. The second was the husband of a former coworker, a state trooper killed on duty. The third, a son of my mom’s coworker, died in a pool accident at the tender age of three. A lot of sadness in a short period of time.

At the same time, teen suicides in our area have spiked (three in three weeks), and we’ve been instructed to be extra diligent in watching for the signs of depression in our students.

As I was dressing for a funeral this morning, I was thinking about how a person deals with the death of a loved one, especially one they expected to have more time with. How does a young widow deal with the sudden violent loss of her husband, or a parent explain the loss of a son to a surviving child?

These thoughts led me to really examine the responsibility we have as writers for children. It often falls to us to tackle tough subjects. Divorce. Heartbreak. Drugs.

Death.

We walk the fine line of being realistic, but not so upsetting as to traumatize. We want kids going through something tough to relate but find hope, because in the end you aren’t writing about death. You are writing about life, and how to keep living it in the face of such pain.

What do you think? How do you feel about the responsibility of children’s book authors? Do you feel the weight of it when you write?

Last week, my debut thriller graduated from revisions to copyedits. When I first learned that NEARLY GONE’s final revision had been accepted by my editor, I sang it from the rooftops. “I’m going to copyedits!” My friends and family all shouted back. “What are copyedits?” After all, I’ve been revising for almost a year. What could possibly be left to fix?

Ahhh… you may be surprised.

After being copyedited, here are some of the brilliant contributions and observations made by my copyeditor. As you’ll see, her job is a whole lot more than patrolling my manuscript for misuse of commas!

Fact checking: Would my heroine actually be able see the traffic light at the intersection from her front porch? Where is her house situated within the neighborhood, and what might obstruct that view? Does the Honda Civic actually have four doors or would the person in the front seat have to get out to let someone in the backseat? Does this make/model have a handbrake, or is it located on the floor? Would planes be landing or taking off from the north end of the runway at airport X at this time of year? What landmarks would the MC be able to see from this vantage point? A copyeditor will take a fine tooth comb to these kinds of details, to make sure the logic is tight, and keep a savvy reader from tripping up on factual inconsistencies.

Consistency:  It’s the middle of June in Washington, DC and it’s HOT! Why is this character wearing a jacket? We changed the year of the story from 2012 to 2014. Did the days of the week also change to reflect the change in year? The MC was standing in a grassy field. Why did the bat clatter when she dropped it? Basically, the copyeditor is looking at every detail through a microscope to make sure the transitions, descriptions, characterizations, and setting details are consistent throughout the book.

Redundancy: I was amazed by the phrases and words that repeatedly surfaced in my story. Sometimes, it takes someone pointing out that you’ve used the word “tingled” twelve times in the book, or “eyes” three times in one paragraph, to make these echoes clear. While these might be simple catches for a copyeditor, some redundancies are tougher to spot. For instance, did this character frown and scratch their head three pages ago? If so, which of these can be omitted or replaced?

Punctuation/Grammar: Punctuation is what most people probably think of when they think of editing. Italics, hyphens, and commas… oh my! But there’s more to this process than most people assume. For instance, a great copyeditor will identify grammar and punctuation issues within the context of the authorial or character voice. For instance, if your character speaks vernacular, or thinks in fragmented sentences, the editor can help decipher which grammar and punctuation errors were likely to be intentional and contribute to the authenticity of the voice, versus those that detract from the flow of the story.

Dialog: Sometimes, the trickiest part of writing dialog is tagging it. Who’s speaking? Who’s responding? Is it clear? The copyeditor will identify any hiccups in the dialog, and point out ways to clarify tags to keep the reader immersed in the story.

So here you have it… copyediting in a nutshell. Next stop, design, launch, and first pass pages! More on all that soon.

The Cloud, The Cloud, it’s all a big scary thing with the accounts and the big fat hairy i which means Apple and maybe you don’t have Appley products and maybe you do and maybe you have an iPhone but you have a PC or maybe you have an iPad but a Droid or maybe you have a PC and Droid and a Nexus tablet period and you think you’re left out but NO!

THE CLOUD IS FOR EVERYBODY!

Well, almost everybody.

Because really, as long as you’ve been on Yahoo or Gmail or some such, you’ve been in The Cloud.

The Cloud is remotely stored data that you can access. That’s all it is. Like you’re email.

So get ahold of yourself, sister. We’re looking at two FREE Cloud-servers accessible from any device that you can log into.

GOOGLE DRIVE

This used to be Google Docs, and honey, it is so simple.  First, get a Gmail account. Then download this app on your iOS devices. Sign in and you’ll get a window like this:

• Touch the “+” sign in the upper right corner to create new documents, spreadsheets, folders, upload pictures or videos from your iPhone.
• To access documents already in your Google Drive Cloud, touch My Drive. If there are particular ones you want to get to faster, without scrolling through all your folders, star them.

Anywhere you can log in to Google, you can log in to Google Drive. It’s right on the Google page.

Oh look. I seem to have added a file from my iPhone recently.

Let us see what it is.

Another productive morning.

BONUS beauty: You can share a document with others and it will show up in THEIR Google Drive accounts. AND you can limit what they can do to the document: either eyes only, allow comments, or full permission to edit. Nice.

Google Drive gives your 5GB of free Cloud space, easily accessible from any device.

EVERNOTE

Here’s the thing. Evernote does a whole lot freakin’ more than Google Drive. Which also makes it a whole lot more complicated.  The basics:

Evernote is “notes” organized into “notebooks.”

.

These “notes” can be text, pictures, audio recordings OR clips from the internet or other apps, which I am NOT even getting into today. Next time, mes amies.

I know, it doesn’t sound that complicated. THAT’S BECAUSE I DIDN’T MAKE IT SOUND THAT COMPLICATED. There’s all this:

With the tagging and the searching and the sorting and the locationizing, and there’s a spiffy feature there on the top right, that boils down to a scanner.

Notebooks can be shared with THE PUBLIC, or only with CHOSEN ONES, but if you want to give editing privileges, you have to pay for the Premium App.

There is a 60MB for month limit, 25MB is the largest file download allowable. HOWEVER. There is no limit to the amount you may keep in your Evernote Cloud.

To access your account from anywhere, just go to evernote.com and log in.

These are just two of many ways to get afloat in The Cloud for free. So really, there’s no excuse to get caught without the notes your need to get an article or chapter finished.

Please. Help me think of a new excuse for not getting chapter 38 finished.

I wonder if it has a gas station.

Imagine taking a piece of yourself, a small sliver of your soul even, and sending it out to several strangers in the hopes that they will validate it and want to help you share it with the world. Now imagine that that piece of your soul is rejected. Not just once but over and over again. Would you have a thick enough skin, enough confidence in yourself, to keep trying? Welcome to the life of a writer.

A recent phone conversation with my mom went like this:

Me: Hey Ma, remember that place I submitted to a couple months ago? Yeah, just got the rejection email today.

Mom: Oh Honey, it’s okay. You know, I read a thing the other day that listed a bunch of famous authors and how often they were rejected before lightning struck.

If you write, chances are you’ve seen or heard of this list. If not, check out one of the many variations of it here. While it can be inspiring, until you are one of those authors who can say “yeah I was rejected a lot, but look at me now!” there is a piece of you that feels like you could be one the millions who will just rack up the rejections without ever making it.

And there is no list for those people.

It might sound like I don’t have confidence in my work but it’s quite the opposite. I wouldn’t submit in the first place if I didn’t believe in the piece or the manuscript.

Everyone deals with the rejection of their work in their own way. For me, I believe so much in what I’ve written that I am genuinely surprised when I get rejected. It’s not arrogance, it’s the rope I cling to so that I’m not pulled into the undertow. It would be so easy to let the waves of self-doubt drown me. If I’m not surprised to get rejected than what am I doing submitting in the first place?

Writers get rejected. Usually multiple times. Sometimes, if you’re actively submitting several pieces, you might even get more than one rejection in one day (been there). Those are the days you spend in the fetal position with your head in an ice cream carton.

Then you get up. You go back to work. You analyze the reasons your work might have been rejected (as most rejections are just a “thanks but no thanks” email if you get a response at all). You continue to learn. Your writing evolves. And soon, like a newly single person after a tough break-up, you put yourself back out there.

Somehow you have to simultaneously balance the humility to accept rejection and the confidence to not throw in the towel. It’s not an easy path and it can really mess with your mind if you let it.

For people in school for writing, as I am, I think it’s imperative to start submitting while you still have that supportive community backing you up. If you aren’t in school, hopefully you have a trusted critique group, mentor or simply friends in writing.

Don’t lose confidence in your writing and know that each rejection isn’t necessarily saying, “Your work isn’t good enough.” It’s probably saying, “You are capable of better, rise to it.”

Maybe someday you’ll be on that inspiring “rejected before accepted” list of people. Maybe I will be too.

Last week, my agent tweeted 140 characters of Really Brilliant Stuff. But Really Brilliant Stuff can be hard to explain in so few characters, so I will expound.

Here it is…

Finding an angle is so important to me as an agent. What is my selling angle? The Unique Selling Point. What is your USP as an author?

February 11, 2013 2:33 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@SarahGreenhouse

Sarah Davies

Did you catch that?

No?

Okay. So we all know that it takes some “selling” to get your query to the top of an agent’s slush pile. But we often forget that the agent has a lot of selling to do too. Once they decide to represent a book, the agent has to “sell” that book (or in some cases, the idea of the book) to an editor. Once an editor buys into that book, the editor then has to sell it to an entire team of publishing people as part of the acquisition process. And then that publishing team has to sell your book to the world! That’s a lot of selling, a lot of upfront investment, and a lot of pressure for all involved. Most agents and editors will tell you they read hundreds of submissions each month. Only the manuscripts that have a certain special something will make it through the sales gauntlet.

What’s the special something?

In sales, we call it a USP, or Unique Selling Proposition*. Your USP is what makes your book different from (or ideally, better than) other books you may compete with (other books in the slush, on an editor’s list, or already on shelves). It’s what sets your book apart. It answers the question, so what? The USP should be clearly spelled out in your query. Often a compelling USP will grab an agent or editor’s attention, as strongly as an intriguing voice or lovely prose. It’s the one-of-a-kind hook that snares them, and makes them think, “I can sell this”.

Now that you know what it is, how do you find your USP?

• Industry research: read, read, read! Read everything in your genre with a comparable theme, premise, or tone. To know what sets your book apart, you have to know your market.
• Prospect research: your USP is only a selling point if it’s a fit to your target buyer. If the agent you’ve queried isn’t interested in the type of book you’re pitching, no USP is going to make it leap from their slush pile. But if they’re looking for thriller about serial killers, and you’ve got one, then your query’d better tell them why your serial killer book is different/unique/more sellable than every other serial killer book in the slush — and believe me, there will be many.
• Analyze your book: Read critically. Gather feedback from critical readers. Is there an area where your book is stronger than others? Are there areas that are weaker and need more attention? Is it ready to query, and if so, are you ready to identify your USP?
• There Can Be Only One: Have you identified one unique strength that sets your book apart? Is your USP memorable, and unique enough that it would be difficult for someone else to claim as their own? Most importantly, would it interest your target consumers (agents/editors/readership)? Have you refined it, honed it, and made it as strong a selling point as it can possibly be?

Got it?

Good!

Now, go figure out what makes you different.

*Note: In my previous life, I was a top producing sales manager, award-winning sales agent, and professional sales trainer within the real estate and new homes industry. Probably, I am qualified to post on the subject of USPs. You can read my other posts about writing and real estate here.