Confessions of a Book Pirate

There's a lot of discussion on the Backspace forums about book piracy and how to stop it, be it one illegal download at a time or a barrage of legal correspondence with offending sites.  This article on The Millions takes us to the flip side of the boiling topic, and while the interviewee defends himself (herself?), I think the fact that he/she remains anonymous, says it all.  

It's Conference Contest Season!

Writers Conference Season kicks off in just a few short months, so what's that make this time of year? Why, it's Writers Conference Contest Season, of course!

The Backspace Writers Conference is May 26th through the 28th, with a program so unique, so fresh, and yet so time-tested it's sure to be our best conference ever! We're offering not one, but two ways to win a scholarship to the 7th Annual Backspace Writers Conference, which includes the always-popular, always-sold-out, Agent-Author Seminar on Thursday, May 26th. 

Every writer who is interested should jump over to Janet Reid's blog RIGHT NOW. Janet and the lovely ladies of Suite 500 (Joanna Volpe, Suzie Townsend, Meredith Barnes and Sara Kendall) are looking for your best effort. One query + two opening pages and an SASE could win you a full scholarship to this year's conference.

Backspace members should log into the discussion forums immediately after reading about Janet's contest to find out how you can compete for a scholarship in this year's Backspace Conference Short Story Contest. 

Last year six people won a scholarship to attend a Backspace event, but you gotta be in it, to win it!

The Meandering Plot, or How to Figure Out What's Next

by Judith Lindbergh

Plotting is a delicate balance of intention, intuition and flexibility, of knowing what path to follow without losing track of all the other forks in the road. We generally sense our story’s direction – its main thrust and the ultimate objective of our tale. But along the way, we trip and wander. Other events and characters step in with subplots, histories, and desires of their own. And themes appear that deepen our telling, even while they confuse and distract us.

In early drafts, meandering is good, at least to a point. If we stick too closely to an outline or plan, we lose opportunities for our subconscious to bring us offerings. A combination of knowing and not knowing is the perfect state from which to explore.

I view my own plots as a map with lots of dots for places. The landscape is sketched in lightly, but there are no details or connecting roads. I can see perfectly well where I want to travel, but I don’t really know which route will take me there. And like an explorer, I sometimes end up at cliffs, canyons and impassable rivers.

One writer-friend advises to “throw rocks at your characters” when you get stuck—to make something big and bold happen that throws your character into new chaos. High tension and hard choices make for excellent drama and action. But subtler approaches can also yield fascinating results. Try working from a character’s interior. Consider the conflicts and the desires that form their moment stuck in time. Dare to step into their skin and feel and see the world you’ve created for them. Whatever action, situation or choice your character has made, force them to ask themselves: “Why the heck did I do that?” and “What can I do next, now that this is what I’ve chosen?”

Of course, characters are not people and stories are not life. When you’ve made a wrong turn or a bad choice, you can always change it. Sometimes I make bullet-point lists of my character’s situation and emotional point of view, making sure the progression makes sense. I diagram plots and subplots to figure out what I’ve left out, or create outlines of each character’s journey until I discover something I haven’t dealt with fully. Taking a break or jumping to another scene or story can also loosen the clog. With time and examination, I can usually pick up my plot and start moving again, however haltingly.

But getting stuck is never a waste of time. We learn while we linger, muse and take tangents. Often these detours enrich our tale. Though more often, some of our best writing ends up tossed out with the recyclables.

Have I mentioned the “Cuts” section at the bottom of my chapters? It’s often several pages longer than my final draft, with beautiful writing that I’ve sweated over before realizing I’ve gone astray yet again.

Does anyone know a more efficient way to write? If you do, please comment and share!

~~~~~

Judith Lindbergh’s debut novel, The Thrall’s Tale, was a Booksense Pick and a Borders Original Voices selection. She is the director of The Writers Circle Creative Writing Workshops and works with professional authors, aspiring adults and children to share the joy and struggle of writing. Read more at her blog, The Writers Circle: Process, practice, hope, and the business of writing.

Only 5 Days Left

There are only 5 days left to save $150 dollars on the 7th Annual Backspace Writers Conference!

Too Many Cooks - How Do You Handle Conflicting Critiques?

by Mary Lindsey


What do you do when you receive conflicting opinions on your manuscript from beta readers, critique partners, or even agents and editors?

The answer? Well, there is no finite answer. You simply have to follow your instinct. Lame, I know, but that’s all I’ve got. 

I find revision ping-pong happens frequently in forums and large critique groups. Someone posts a first chapter or some pages. One person says something and then others jump on board based on that point and it becomes a suggestion frenzy. Sometimes comments regarding the same passage conflict and there are so many suggestions it’s impossible to know which one to take. Then, the writer ends up changing things that are working and adding things that don’t in order to please others. 

The same can be true of agents’ suggestions. One told me the pace in my opening scene was too slow, another too fast and a third said it was okay but listed a billion other things. All wanted revisions. I had no idea what to make of it. 

Subjectivity. That’s what I ended up making of it. Many aspects of publishing are subjective. Every reader is different. They bring to the table their own preferences and biases. Just as each writer does. 

Where do you start when you have conflicting opinions?

First, as with all criticism, do not take it personally or you cannot objectively evaluate the input. Then, consider the source. How well do you know this person? What are his/her qualifications? 

Some of my favorite beta readers are teens familiar with my genre. They are not writers at all, but they don’t critique my work; they simply give me overall impressions and pinpoint voice inaccuracies. My critique mates, on the other hand, are excellent writers who write different genres, but are familiar with mine. I like critique partners who are in a similar place career-wise or further ahead. 

Still, even with skilled writers as crit partners and betas who are knee deep in my genre, I come across this conflicting suggestion problem. Who do I believe? 

Me. That’s who.

I step back for a day or two, sometimes a week, and then read over the suggestions again. Often, that’s enough. The time away has let me sort out how I feel about it, divorcing my preferences and vision for the story from what others say. Most of the time when I come back over it, I clearly see why the suggestions were made and I am in accord with the changes because they fit my vision but make the project stronger. The time away also allows me to sort out the comments that are contrary to my goal. Remember that not all suggestions are good ones for your story.

So, I guess my advice is to consider what folks say, but don’t forget to take into account the most important opinion: that of the writer—you. Don’t let too many cooks spoil the broth. 

Reposted with permission of the author.

~~~~~

Photo by Brittany Hammond

Mary's writing is a natural expression of her love of reading and a fascination with the flexibility of the human imagination. Books make the impossible possible.


Prior to attending University of Houston Law School, Mary received a B.A. in English Literature with a minor in Drama from the University of Houston. She has taught drama and playwriting in a large public high school and English in a private school. Currently, Mary teaches acting to children and teens at a private studio in Houston, Texas.


She is represented by Ammi-Joan Paquette from the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. 


Mary lives in Houston with her husband, three kids, two dogs, her daughter's pet rats, an Australian Bearded Dragon and dozens of Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. (The roaches are long story—don't ask.)

How Publishing Is Like American Idol

by Amy Sue Nathan

I watched American Idol Season 10 last week, like millions of others — during the horrible, embarrassing audition process where tens of thousands of wannabes lined up waiting for their time, their turn, their shot at the big time. 

It’s a little like the slush pile aspiring authors hear so much about — or even know about first hand.  Where we write and write like so many others, hoping to hitch our wagon to our publishing star.

As we write and rewrite and edit our books, and then labor over query letters, we send them/ourselves off to our own type of auditions with tens of thousands of other query letters.  And just like the auditioning singers are horrible, so are some queries.  Just like some singers shouldn’t even be singing in public, some writers shouldn’t really be writing for publication.  Some are just not ready.  Some will never be ready.

But of course there are those who rise to the top of the slush pile or the front of the audition line.

They get that golden ticket to move forward and go to Hollywood, or in a writer’s case, they’re invited to send their partial.  There’s a lot of celebration, yet it’s just the first step.  In a way, it’s the second level of slush piles.

The singers go to Hollywood.  The writers spit and polish their stories. Everyone is under even more scrutiny than before, the stakes are higher.  This is where you must be even better than you thought you had to be.

This is where you find out you might not be as good as you thought.

This, we hope, is where the cream begins to rise.

On American Idol it comes down to a final 36, 24, 12, 10, 4, 1.  In publishing it comes down to submitting your full manuscript.  On AI you need votes to stay in the game.  In publishing you must keep the agent’s attention and make him or her fall in love with your book.  Similarly, American Idol contestants work hard not only to be the best they can be, but to make America fall in love with them.

Contestants want votes.  Votes are not only part of a popularity contest, but a show of faith in a singer’s ability and potential.   Writers want agent representation — it’s a show of faith in our ability to write a book that will sell.

They want more votes.  We want an offer on our manuscript (hopefully with an advance).

The singers want to be the next American Idol.  We want to be published authors.  (To writers it might be the same thing as being American Idol, by the way.)

And just like surprise endings on Idol (remember Taylor Hicks?) — books often have surprise endings.  And just like some become betrothed to one Idol over another, we gravitate to different authors based on personal taste.

American Idol is public, and the journey to publication is often private — but they both embrace artists with talent, drive, determination — and a little chutzpah doesn’t hurt either.

The American Idol gets a contract and now a trophy as well.  A published writer gets to hold a book in his or her hand.

And while a writer’s journey might not include J-Lo or Steven Tyler (neither of whom I minded, by the way) — we can write at home in our pajamas.

And that rocks in its own way.

Finding Character Names

by Margaret Carroll

Choosing names is such a challenge. So much depends on getting it right.

Would Moby Dick have the most famous opening line in American literature if it had begun with, ‘Call me Fred’?

Would the perils of Jane Stuttgart have set us on the edge of our seats the way we fretted over Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs?

Stieg Larsson’s choice of Lisbeth Salander for the name of his heroine in the Millennium Trilogy was brilliant, for me, because it brought to mind the word, salamander, an incredibly versatile and diverse species (how can you not marvel at an animal that sheds its skin and then proceeds to eat it?). Anyone who has read  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will appreciate the analogy.

As a writer, I want more than anything to choose names for my characters that – whether through the appearance of the letters on paper or the spoken sound of the name – call to mind certain traits. Or better yet, provide subtle echoes that suggest specific behaviors.

In other cases, I try for names that just feel good (or bad, or sad). Sometimes Jim or Charlie or Ken hit the right note.

The bad guy in my debut thriller, A Dark Love (shameless self-promotion alert: chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Top 100 Books of 2009), was a basket case of human emotion (none of it good). He was a psychoanalyst to boot. A total creepy nut job. Choosing a first name was fun. I wanted something for a spoiled, emotionally retarded brat, who was adult in age but not in mind. My mother’s good friend suggested the name of an ex who fit the bill nicely (he had taken her on safari to Africa, leading her to expect he might propose, but instead he dumped her on the way home at Nairobi Airport). He’d never held a real job, never needed to. Porter. The name sang. Porter needed a surname. I needed look no farther than a street map. Moross. The name of a thoroughfare near my town, one that trips up visitors and inevitably comes out sounding like a synonym for sullen. Dr. Porter Moross. A great name, I decided, for a sociopathic therapist. Physician, heal thyself.

My upcoming thriller, Cold Snap (coming to a bookstore near you later this year) features a plucky young ingénue from the genteel enclave of Shaker Heights, Ohio. The only child of a dentist and his adoring wife, my girl needed a name that reflected her unique upbringing. Her mother was born in Greece. I pictured the mother as extremely loving if a bit high-strung. She’d had a difficult pregnancy (swollen ankles, cravings, mood swings - - a litany of complaints that had her husband at his wit’s end), and left them both convinced they wouldn’t do this over again. What sort of name would a woman like this choose for her one and only daughter? Something special, romantic. Unique. Anndale. The surname was important. I wanted one that would harken back to Old Money (which in this region would be of French origin, meaning he could trace his bloodline back to fur trappers who bargained with the Chippewa for pelts). Modisette. Anndale Modisette, a young college grad ready to take Manhattan by storm, product of a sheltered upbringing, about to get one heaping dose of street smarts.

I envy authors who write historicals. There are a finite number of names of Saxon origin, for example, and a brief entry in any web browser turns up plenty of lists.

For writers of contemporary novels (like me), there are endless choices and therefore endless challenges. The opening scene of the story I’m working on now required two names, one old and the other hip. Two men are out fishing on a Sunday afternoon in the Detroit River. One, in his fifties, needed a good solid American name. He is born and raised in Detroit, attends church on Sundays, drinks domestic beer and drives American. Eli, right out of the Old Testament. Eli’s proudest accomplishment in life is his daughter, his little princess, who is beautiful and smart as a whip, and who earned a scholarship to the University of Virginia. What Eli and his wife didn’t bargain for, however, was the sort of young man she’d meet and fall in love with there. To Eli’s dismay, she has brought home an effete young guy with dreadlocks, the son of intellectuals from Brooklyn. He drinks double shot skinny soy lattes from Starbucks (allergic to dairy), and arouses Eli’s ire the first night by arguing in favor of amnesty for all illegal aliens. His parents (who had no need of scholarship money) chose a New Age name for their son, one that has echoes of their roots while eschewing WASP influence of modern culture and even spelling. Le’Vaughn. Just saying that name pisses Eli off. The kid is wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt and doesn’t even know how to bait a hook. Off they go in a rowboat, arguing over the military’s ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy until Le’Vaughn catches something quite terrible on his line.

A human jaw.

The book has a working title of Coyote Moon; check my website for updates.

So? Where to go for names? There are plenty of books listing popular names for babies. You can plug in to almost any search engine for lists of ethnic names. I search white pages online for various cities. It’s also fun to search historic cemetery records in various places (I love to write about people with trust funds, never having had one myself!). So I find good surnames for my characters in old cemeteries.

It’s a good place for me to go for bad-guy names. I like good old Saxon names for this. I picture someone whose family has been in the U.S. for generations (long enough for the DNA to age like bad cheese), whose parents went for aspirational, Mayflower-type names, wasted on a son who lives in a rusting trailer at the end of a rutted track off a county road. Travis Dutt is my latest. He’s mean. Saying his name out loud hurts your tongue. Never hire a handyman by the name of Travis Dutt (look for more of him in my upcoming story, Coyote Moon, see above).

I write my stories using a Mac-based application called Scrivener (it is fantastic; check it out at www.literatureandlatte.com). There is a name generator in there (thank you, Keith!) that is fun. You can choose ethnic parameters or just ask it to put out random names – you can even specify a level of uniqueness – and see what comes up.

I find inspiration in the pages of my local weekly. I’m fortunate (as a writer) to live in a town with roots dating back to before the Revolutionary War. It’s a big place for sailboat racing, which is a huge plus if you need Old Money names and nicknames and didn’t go to Choate. Just be careful to scramble the names around a bit. 

Nobody needs a knock on the door from the real-life Whitey Vandenboom, although I’ve heard he’s a great guy. But you can use his name to get your creative juices flowing. Change it up and you’ve got Van Winterden (which was the perfect surname for the scary boss in my debut chick-lit comedy, The Write Match).

I owe a lot to the Styles Section of the Sunday New York Times, which I’ve been reading cover to cover since my grandmother (thank you!) told me to do when I was twelve. There are fantastic names of people attending those black-tie galas, ranging from double-barreled European royalty to titans of U.S. industry. And if you want to know how they are naming their daughters (or were, a decade or two back), check out the first names of the girls who get presented each year at The Winter Ball (held at The Waldorf Astoria and duly noted in the pages of the Times each year just after the holidays).

The obits make for wonderful reading, in and of themselves (and inspirational). Many of them are reprinted with permission from the London papers (The Times, Daily Telegraph and The Observer, which elevated obituaries to high art). If you read all the way down – I pay particular attention to men who’ve won sailing races – you’ll hit the Mother Lode of names when their vast relations are listed. You have to dig deep (no pun intended), but it’s worth it.

So there. I’ve told you all about names and where I find them. Leave a comment and tell me where you find yours.

~~~~~

Margaret Carroll is currently at work on her sixth novel, a story of suspense set in a fictional small town, where a young woman returns to the scene of her mother’s mysterious death many years earlier determined to find out what really happened so long ago under the light of a rare COYOTE MOON.

Her debut thriller, A DARK LOVE (Avon/2009) was named a top five mass-fiction title of 2009 by Publishers Weekly:  “Carroll develops what could be a stock story of an abusive marriage into a pulse-pounding romantic thriller with a strong, inspiring heroine determined to save herself.” A DARK LOVE is the cat-and-mouse story of a young wife on the run from her abusive husband and their Georgetown home, determined to start life over. The book comes to a climax in a remote cabin in the Rocky Mountain wilderness of Colorado.

The book received a prestigious starred review from Publishers Weekly as well (7/19/09), and was nominated for a national Rita Award from Romance Writers of America in the Romantic Suspense category. It has been published in Germany and Italy.

Margaret has another thriller, RIPTIDE (Avon/2009), and two romantic chick-lit comedies, THE WRITE MATCH and THE TRUE MATCH (Avalon Books) in print.

Her fiction builds on 20 years’ global public relations and journalism experience. She was Director of PR USA for British Airways, and Director of Advertising & Public Relations for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. She had her own luxury PR consultancy, Carroll Communications, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has traveled the globe extensively.

She earned her BA in Journalism and Political Science from The George Washington University.

The Carrolls reside in Michigan with a Scottish Terrier named Buddy, who works tirelessly to keep the yard free of squirrels, possum, rabbits, postal carriers and meter readers. 

Friendship With A Writer Isn't Easy

by Nina Badzin

Friendship with a writer isn't easy. Like actors and other artists, we're among the neediest friends of all. Writers with blogs . . . we're the double-dipping worst, seeking an audience for our published works AND our blog posts.

So in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm dedicating this post to MY friends and ALL friends of writers who put up with an endless stream of writerly mishegoss (Yiddish for crazy behavior.)

THANK YOU, FRIENDS OF WRITERS, FOR DEALING WITH US . . .

• 1.  when we talk incessantly about our works-in-progress.  Unforgivable: when we use the term "WIP" in real life.
• 2. when we refuse to talk about our works-in-progress, giving cryptic answers to genuine inquires about what we're working on now.
• 3. when we overuse your willingness to read rough drafts, peppering your inbox several times a day with subject lines reading "WAIT" or "THIS ONE INSTEAD" because we changed a word on page eighty-four.
• 4. when we take your criticism too personally.
• 5. when we take your praise too personally and ask you to read more drafts.
• 6. when we ask permission to use a story you just told for a story we're writing, promising to change names, of course.
• 7. when we don't ask permission, and/or forget to change the names.
• 8. when we ask if you liked a particular post on our blog, which is passive-aggressive blogger speak for: next time leave a comment and "like" it on Facebook.
• 9. when we inundate you with asinine questions like, "Can I use this picture on my blog or does my nose/butt/pimple/(fill in the blank) look big?"
• 10. when we're defensive at your suggestion that the blog might be getting in the way of our writing time.

My friends have been through all of the above with me and more, and I can't express my gratitude enough.  I only hope I'm as good of a friend to them as they are to me. (This all goes for family too, but they deserve their very own post.)

Writers and bloggers: Did I leave anything out? How else do we test our friends' patience?

~~~~~

Nina Badzin is a Pushcart-Nominated short story writer and aspiring novelist. She blogs about the writing life, marriage, and motherhood at http://ninabadzin.com. 

Follow her on Twitter @NinaBadzin.

Revising is Cake

I'm in the midst of novel revisions based on editor feedback.  When I revise a whole manuscript, it helps to have a plan -- a recipe.  Jackson Pearce's suggestion of looking at the book as a cake (for me, chocolate with white frosting) and separating the ingredients, works.  I'm adding more levels of introspection to my characters, more depth of flavor  I'm thinking it's like the purple food dye -- just that extra touch -- something special that will make my book different (hopefully better) than the one next to it.

I hope this tip from Jackson Pearce (and me) helps you with your revision process.  And if it doesn't, bake a cake.  That's bound to make you feel better until you're ready to dig into your manuscript.

-- Amy Sue Nathan, STET! editor

I am not Jane Austen

by Amy Sue Nathan

Though I can picture myself in nineteenth century England holding a quill, wearing a bonnet, addressing my friends as miss and leaving calling cards, my fantasy stops at chamber pots.

It also stops when I realize I am not Jane Austen.

This is not an epiphany, mind you.  I read Jane Austen in my twenties and knew then I had something special in my hands while I rode the "El" to work in Center City Philadelphia. But with the proliferation of books, movies, magazines, ebooks, audiobooks, ezines, journals and blogs, I wonder.  

Are there are modern authors people will be reading on their animated, magical e-readers a hundred years from now while they're flying to work with auto-pilot jetpacks on their backs?

Will Jane Green's or Jane Porter's women's fiction hold up like Jane Austen's? (I like both of these Janes for different reasons, by the way.)  What about Jane Addams or Jane Seymour?  Jane Bancroft?  Jane Burke?

Our needs and wants are different today from long ago.  Heck, they’re different from not so long ago. We're mega-spoiled for choice.  If we don't like a book we simply choose another.  Perhaps the fact that it wasn't painstakingly written in long-hand takes away some of the mysticism.  We all type. For hours sometimes for work or for emails or for Facebook or even Twitter.  It takes a lot of time to type a days worth of 140 characters.  In our country most of us are brought up to believe we can do anything - that we have the inalienable right to pursue our dreams.  It's a country where anyone can be anything.  And that includes being a writer.  The legitimacy lines are blurred when anyone with access to a keyboard or a Sharpie spells out WRITER under “Hello, my name is…” But the fact is -- if you want to call yourself a writer, you can.

Doesn’t work that way with butcher, baker, candlestick maker.  People want proof.  People are easy on the qualifications of writers – that is, until they read something they don’t like.

Part of this is because the world of mainstream contemporary publishing holds most of us at arm's length with a sharp stick.  But let's face it. Jane Austen had it worse.  She had to fight stereotypes (not just inconsistencies and inadequacies), prejudice (not just preference), lost love, ink stains and a lack of adequate health care, I presume, since she died so young.  I'm sure (since I've seen the movie, I'm an expert) that in becoming the Jane Austen we know, she did not set out to sample immortality in her novels, she was simply compelled to write stories and live as an working author.

I guess in that way, then, I am a bit like Jane.

Lucky me.

~~~~~

Amy Sue Nathan is also lucky to be the editor of STET! and the Backspace Newsletter, and to have her first novel represented by Jason Yarn of the Paradigm Agency. 

Have You Combed Your Hair Today? A Vlog for All Writers.

 by Backspace member, author Dee Garretson.

Dee is the author of WILDFIRE RUN from HarperCollins, a middle grade

adventure about the President’s son getting trapped at Camp David after a natural disaster. Her next book, WOLF STORM, also from HarperCollins, will be released 9/01/2011.

Before turning to writing full time, Dee was a landscape designer and an instructor at a technical college. She has degrees in International Relations and Landscape Horticulture, a strange combination, but an accurate reflection of some of her interests.  Since she firmly believes any life experience can be useful for writing, she doesn’t regret some of her less than pleasant jobs, including that as a waitress, in which she spilled many things, as a receptionist in a termite control company, in which she learned vast amounts of information about termites, and as a researcher of death certificates, an oddly interesting job, and better than waitressing.

When she isn’t writing, Dee would prefer to be traveling, or at least outside. She does not do well in offices.

The Four Stages of Chasing Markets by author Tara Maya

How much should you change your book to suit the market? There was a time when my Younger Self would have answered, “Not at all! I’m an artist!” And there was a time, slightly after that, when my Older Self would have sneered at my younger self, “Get a job, hippie! Writing is a business!”

There’s no right answer for all writers. There’s probably not even one right answer for a single writer at every stage of his or her career. Maybe like me, you’ve noticed yourself going through the four stages of chasing markets.

Writing For Yourself

Most writers start off writing for ourselves. I began jotting down my first stories in elementary school, and writing my first novels in Junior High. I wrote them by hand in little notebooks, in microscopic print that no one else could read. Then I hid the notebooks in locked boxes in the deepest recesses of my room.

Even then, when my writing was Super Secret, and I would have jumped in a snake pit sooner than share it with anyone, I dreamed about other people reading my work and realizing in amazement it was the most profound, most exquisite, most world-shattering words they had ever read. But I never really stopped to think about why those shadow-people would enjoy my work. I enjoyed it. That’s what mattered.

Writing For Gatekeepers

My first rejection from a publisher (totally ignorant of agents, I mailed my first manuscript straight to Peter Stampfel at DAW) snapped me out of this dream. I started to do my research. I realized a 400,000 word fantasy epic was going to be a hard-sell. I doused myself daily in savvy sauce, until I was expert in genre, word count, reading age range, as well as the particular preferences of the publishers and agents I wanted to target. I joined Publisher’s Weekly and read agents’ blogs and query sites religiously.

During this time, I attended a Backspace convention in New York. It was amazing to meet agents I had known only as names on the tops of letters. Even more amazing – after hearing my pitch, my dream agents were interested in reading more.

Nonetheless, I discovered there is also a limit to writing to the market. One agent loved my epic fantasy, but asked me to submit an urban fantasy instead, because that was the hot market now. I tried, but the words just didn’t flow.

Sometimes I really missed the days when I just wrote for myself and hid it at the back of my closet.

Writing For Readers

I always imagined being published would change everything. It did – but not in the way I imagined. Sure, I don’t have to write for gatekeepers anymore, but I’ve discovered what should have been obvious all along. It’s not about faceless “markets,” it’s about readers as real people. A story has two co-creators. The writer is just half the team. The reader is the other half.

Readers have definite ideas about what happens to characters they come to love. I love feedback from readers – but I also began to panic. Initiate, the first book in my fantasy series, The Unfinished Song, was just released at Christmas. Because this series is targeting the ebook market (although trade paperbacks are available) the release date of the next books in the series is going to be rapid. Those books are already written – so how should I respond when readers write me, begging me to take the story in mutually conflicting directions?

No matter what I do, I know I can’t please all my readers.

Writing From Yourself

I realize that while I cannot write only for myself, I can only write from myself.  I can respond to reader enthusiasm, but only if it resonates with the story. Some readers won’t join me on that journey, but those who do will enrich the story with their own readings of it. Stories are not truly born until they shared.

 ~~~~~

Tara Maya went to school for four years to study History and then after a while she went back to school to study History some more. Because four years of History just isn't enough. Academia may have taught her Strunk and White, but the School of Hard Knocks also taught her a thing or two. She's had jobs as a forklift driver, a mermaid and overseas humanitarian worker. She's lived and traveled all around the world: in a village in Cameroon, Africa; in a Buddhist nunnery in Nepal; in a secret Russian city; in Aceh, Indonesia on the same coast hit by the tsunami. She once swapped ghost stories on Halloween with a serial killer. She attended a Backspace convention in 2007 and it was fantastic.

Tara Maya's novel, INITIATE, first in the fantasy series, The Unfinished Song, was released by Misque Press in ebook and trade paperback form in January, 2011.