Tag Archives: Writing Career Tip

Storytelling Mentor on Your Shoulder

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Storytelling Mentor on Your Shoulder. Every writer I know has endured rejection. I certainly have. In fact, on the occasion of my first major rejection, the editor implied, or maybe told me straight out, that I had no idea what I was doing.

My first big mistake that day was agreeing to a sushi lunch. I didn’t know sushi from tsunami at the time, but I did know I should appear cooperative. So, I replied, “Sushi’s good.” Had I guessed the true purpose of the lunch, I would have made a different response. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a clue, though I probably should have.

I was writing my second novel for this editor. The first hadn’t set the world on fire.  The second was supposed to correct that, but the revision phase had dragged on so long I’d almost lost track of what my story was originally about. As I took a wobbly chopstick grip on my third portion of something raw and wet wrapped in seaweed, my editor let me know she felt the same.

“This just doesn’t work for us,” the editor said. If you have ever heard or read those words, you know what happened next. I plunged into shock. On the other hand, I was back on track in one respect. I got that the revision phase was finished. Novel number two was off the table, as surely as the sushi had slipped from between my chopsticks and plummeted to my plate.

“You seem to think a bird sits on your shoulder and tells you how to write,” my editor was saying. “Like you don’t have anything to do with it.” I needed to be at the top of my mental game right then, but I was incapable of responding. Instead, I excused myself, dashed to the ladies’ room, and leaned my clammy forehead against the cool black tiles of the marble stall.

A Storytelling Mentor on Your Shoulder?  I had never been aware of anything, with or without feathers, telling me how to write a book. What I had always been aware of was my lack of power. Because of the way the publishing world works, I had no control over the destiny of my writing career. Now, I understood how perilous such a position can be.

If you have ever submitted a manuscript anywhere, you know what I mean. You labor over your work, send it out into what feels like a void. then wait for a thumbs up or down on your efforts, your ambitions, your hope. You endure this because you have no idea what else you can do. You are as clueless as I was in that ladies’ room with my forehead pressed against tile as black as I believed my future to be.

A few years later, I became an editor myself. That choice had a lot to do with power. I was determined to regain mine, and to pass it on. As an editor, then a literary agent and teacher, I would be that bird. I would sit on a writer’s shoulder and whisper in her ear the words she needed to hear to avoid her own demoralizing rejection scenes. I could do that because my years on the other side of the desk taught me a lot about how to create a marketable manuscript.

I have been sharing that knowledge ever since. Still, the dread words are out there. “This just doesn’t work for us.” Words that hit their mark hard for any writer. I wish I could guarantee they will never be heard again, but I can’t. What I can offer is my experience and expertise, and to be a bird with an empowering song you need to hear. A Storytelling Mentor on Your shoulder. Stay tuned to this blog. I have many more melodies to sing.

Meanwhile, ask your crucial questions. How does your attitude need to be adjusted? What fears do you face about your writing career? What do you most eagerly desire to know? Add a question comment to this post, or email me at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. I will be honored to respond.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice Orr’s Christmas story A Vacancy at the Inn – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 3 – is available on Amazon HERE. Enjoy!

Alice Orr A Vacancy at the Inn

Praise for A Vacancy at the Inn. “Grabbed me right away and swept me up in the lives of Bethany and Luke.” “Undercurrents of suspense move the story along at an irresistible pace.” “The Miller family is rife with personality quirks, an authentic touch that demonstrates Alice Orr’s skill as a writer.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

Publishing’s Rocky Road Continues – How to Keep Traveling On

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Publishing’s Rocky Road Continues. You’ve completed your manuscript, revised it, polished it. You’ve followed the advice in my last post, Literary Agent Search Savvy. You’ve submitted to the right agents for you, not exclusively, but no more than six at a time. Now, as if out of bright blue nowhere, the anxiously awaited call or email has arrived. An agent is seriously interested in your work, maybe even a topnotch agent. Hallelujah!You think you have exited Publishing’s Rocky Road. Think again. Don’t get me wrong. A momentous thing has happened in your writing life. You have captured the attention of an agent, not an easy thing to do. Good agents don’t waste their short supply of time requesting work that has not genuinely attracted them. But this doesn’t mean you’re off Publishing’s Rocky Road. You have detoured onto its unmarked byway, the Wait-Wait-Wait Highway.

“I’ve already been here,” you exclaim. You have most likely traveled through a pile of submissions and a pile of rejections too, wait-wait-waiting what felt like eternities in between. The current view beyond your windshield may feel and look a lot the same, anxious and skimpy on roadside attractions. The order of the day is once again to Wait-Wait-Wait, and waiting periods are trying, in civilian life and in author life.

Console yourself first with this reality. You have already traveled the hardest leg of this adventure. You have conceived and created an entire book. A book that is attracting positive attention in the land of the publishing professionals. Do not ever underestimate that accomplishment. It is the foundation of everything to come, and it hasn’t crumbled so far.

So, why do you not feel consoled? No matter how far out of control you felt in your initial agent search submission phase, this new phase somehow feels more out of your control than ever. During that initial period, you dropped your work into multiple black holes, expected rejections and, when one came, made another drop into the next black hole on your list. It was something to do. Now there is only a single repository and nothing to do but, you guessed it, wait-wait-wait.

So, how do you keep from losing your mind? Right here, I’m going to say something that sounds so lame, so Pollyannaish you will want to climb through the screen and wring my neck. To jeopardize my neck even further, I must preface that something by agreeing with you. This phase of your struggle to become published feels so far out of your control because it is. And, here comes the I-get-throttled part. You must simply let go and travel on.

What did she say? I said you must let go of longing for control and let your work find its way. Harder still, you must have confidence that it will. While you attempt, however imperfectly, to build this confidence, turn to your first powerful resource, the rest of us, your writer friends in your writers’ community. We are your shoulders to lean and/or cry upon. Whether you need a strategy session, a consult, or just a boost in the spirits-up department, we are here.

Next, get back to work. If you’ve not already done so, dive deep-down into your next book or continue your series. Professional authors are forever moving on to the next project, which keeps us from bogging down with anxiety over the one that’s out there in the publishing world ozone. It also guarantees we will have a continuing career, bent upon producing a shelf load of books eventually. Disciplined forward momentum prevents, or at least lessens the severity of, running out of fuel along Publishing’s Rocky Road.

Never forget that you are tenacious. You have traversed this far on an obstacle-strewn path. From that process, you have forged your own personal template for doing so again and again with each new project. Have faith that will be the case, and take my word as well. I have watched it happen with countless authors, including myself.

In the meantime, there is the joy of the doing. The joy of the writing work, at every stage of its challenging course. You are on that course, moving along it, as well as deeper into it. Publishing’s Rocky Road Continues, but you, with fire in your belly, are ready for the ride. Bon voyage.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!A Wrong Way Home

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving– Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE. Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/alibettewrites/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/

Literary Agent Search Savvy – Words to the Wise Writer

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Literary Agent Search Savvy. Where have all the agents gone? A writers’ conference organizer contacted me recently to ask why they were having so much difficulty finding participants for their annual agents’ panel. From what I hear, this is not the only group having that problem. In fact, individual authors experience the same scarcity.

Agents are selective. A difficult species to pin down, even back when I wasa member of that species (check out the above visual). Literary agent accessibility has always been a thorny issue. Agents, and their mother ship companies, have always been selective regarding who goes where in terms of conference participation, which is an investment for them after all, even more so now than in the past.

Traditional Publishing has become an almost totally bottom-line business. For agencies, that means they must justify each investment they make of time and resources. Not only the time and effort spent on being at an event, but the time and effort required to address the cascade of manuscript submissions that result from every such appearance.

Bottom-line thinking, agent style. The essential consideration for any agency worth its AAR membership is this. How many author contacts are we likely to make at this event that will lead to taking on a client who attracts a publisher and sells lots of books for that house? The viability of any agency depends on its ability to scout out authors who will satisfy publishers.

This concern has to do with commerce. Many authors, and authors’ organizations, make no pretense of being commercial in focus. Others claim otherwise. Their primary goal is not necessarily to sell the work, or so they say. They are instead all about freeing the writerly voice, exploring the writerly self, and encouraging that voice and self to define and speak the writer’s personal truth.

A worthy aspiration for sure. But, to the publishing establishment—agents, editors, publishing houses—that focus reads as not particularly marketable, whether this is entirely accurate or not. All of which puts writers’ groups, and writers, at a definite disadvantage when it comes to attracting agents, either to attend author events or to represent an individual writer’s work. But do not despair. I have a couple of suggestions.

My first and most sweeping suggestion is to modify your target search. Seek out, in addition to literary agents, people who know a lot about the publishing business and how to succeed there. Let’s call them Mavens. A writers’ event has a better chance of mounting a successful panel when there are mavens in the mix. An individual writer gifts herself with access to wisdom and experience when she cultivates a maven mentor.

Thus, value is added. These mavens know the world of writing and publishing like it is, as we used to say, and they tell it like it is. They shoot from the hip and are, frankly, much more forthcoming with the real skinny than most agents can afford to be. Another agent bottom line is that she must not risk alienating publishers.

Still, almost every writer wants to get up-close with agents. More specifically, you need to find agents who will actually be willing to show up for a panel and/or read your work. So, here’s my second suggestion. Identify established agencies and target the young, the talented and the hungry on their staffs. In other words, don’t pursue the headliners. They already have a stable of authors and are far less eager than their newer colleagues to go trolling for more clients.

Contact agents who are lower on the agency totem pole. Go to the agency website. If they don’t have a good one, that’s a heads-up that they’re not very deep into the publishing game. Find the assistant editors and associates. Check their credentials. Each should have a bio on the site that details the submissions they prefer. Google them too. Any agent worth that designation has an online presence.

Choose the ones that suit your interests and needs. Don’t worry that you shouldn’t be scouting the second string. Successful agencies hire talented new agents they believe can bring in authors that will attract publishers. These agencies groom and train their recruits and closely supervise their work. The top dogs prepare their pups to become champions – your champions.

“Hungry” means these starlets don’t yet have a full stable of clients and are eager to find good writers with good work. Let’s face it, that means marketable work, books that will sell. If you want a stall in that stable, my words to the wise are these. You must adopt the bottom line too. If you need to find out how, return to my first suggestion. Ask a maven. That’s real Literary Agent Search Savvy.  Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving–Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5– is available HERE.  Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/alibettewrites/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/