June 7, 2012

Second book syndrome

Filed under: Advice for writers,articles,ask an author,bloggery,growing up,how I write,Q&A — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 6:50 pm

Lee Weatherly asked how second book syndrome affected me:
“By ‘second book syndrome’ I’m talking about the difficulties that come with writing your first commissioned title – usually with your first book, you write it on your own time, there’s no real pressure, etc – then with the second book, suddenly you have a deadline and a publisher’s expectations. What was once just your passion is now your job, with all the stress that can entail; how do you make the shift? Also, if your first book does very well or sells for a lot of money, that can (perversely) just make the second book far harder to write.”

Rhiannon Lassiter replies:
Hex: Shadows coverWhen I was 19 I was offered a two book contract on the basis of one book part written and one yet to be decided. Second book syndrome kicked in while I was still at university and still very unsure of my own ideas. I suggested a second book in the same series, a sequel to my first, or rather the middle book of a possible trilogy. It wasn’t my aim was to push the company into contracting me for a third. Although I had a number of new ideas I also wanted to continue the story I’d started with the characters of my first novel. Ultimately what decided the issue was that the first novel was selling well and the publishing company seemed keen to continue with more. They published the whole trilogy, which continues to sell well to this day.

However, in retrospect, I made the wrong decision about that second book. If I hadn’t been working on my first degree at the time and struggling with balancing academia and creative writing; or if I’d been more commercially minded, or thought more towards future development – I would have decided differently.

Most professional writers come to writing as their second career. They have some experience in the job market already. They’ve had a different career path and made time for their writing on the side, squeezing their evenings and weekends until they had something they could sell and make enough money to afford to write part time or full time.

I started writing full time straight out of university. I was working on my trilogy and was feeling positive about more contracts ahead. But once my only job was to write and I’d locked myself into this particular idea I started to notice an artistic issue with what I was writing. I was having so many ideas for so many new novels and new ways to write but in this particular trilogy I needed to stay true to the style and concept of the original book.

By the time I started writing my fourth novel I felt I ought have been much more developed as a creative artist than I was. The novel I wrote then was at a complete and wild variance to my previous work. My ideas have always spanned a wide range of genres and as my writing career has developed I’ve had published books across a range about half as wide. I’m lucky that I’ve been able to sell YA and junior, fantasy, SF and contemporary fiction ideas. But I should have started earlier.

Several years later a friend of mine published her first novel and told me she’d been offered another contract and the option of writing a sequel to her first book. I advised her against it. I suggested she write something completely different in another genre to avoid boxing herself in too soon. That’s what she did, and after three more successful novels returned to the world of her first book from the position of being much more assured in her craft, with a established list of novels in different styles and a new perspective on the earlier work.

My friend and I have both achieved success in writing across genres and styles but if you don’t want to be stereotyped early, I’d recommend avoiding series fiction as your entry into professional writing. As a newly published author – as any kind of author – your mind will be seething with ideas; you need to allow yourself time to experiment with them.

Writing full time is not the best career for a new graduate with no experience of the rest of the working world. I was incredible fortunate in that I had the opportunity to do this. But I started with no experience in managing my finances and planning my workload. The way that writers are paid advances (on signature, delivery and publication) and royalties (twice a year after advances have earned out) means that financial forward planning is virtually impossible because it all depends on the market. Don’t take for granted sales figures that make it possible to work full time as a writer; the period in which your book is on sale in bookshops, being reviewed and noticed and marketed is fleeting.

Ultimately second book syndrome leads to third book syndrome and fourth book syndrome and so on. I know authors who have published hundreds of books; but managing publishers expectations and your own expectations of your work never ends. The lessons that you learn are to give yourself space and to be kind to yourself about your workload and rigorous when it comes to your art. Every writer has to learn that individually but I’d recommend gaining self knowledge of what kind of writer you are by stretching the boundaries of possibility as soon as you can. Whether it’s your work space (and I redesigned mine on a yearly basis until about three years ago) or the time you set aside or your style, or genre or whatever makes you individual, expand to your boundaries, learn them and break them.

The second novel is too soon for you to decide your identity.

May 12, 2012

Book Buying Binge

Filed under: bloggery,life,recommended reading — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 7:49 pm

Well of Books via SuperpunchI’ve been on a book buying binge. I blame Amazon recommendations – which were actually spot on for a change instead of suggesting books based on presents I bought for other people. I came back from Wales to a heap of oblongs all for me:

  • Wither by Lauren DeStafano (I’ve already greedied this one up, first of a trilogy in which women die at 20 and boys at 25)
  • Once a Witch by Carolyn MacCullough (Tamsin should be a powerful witch but appears to have no magic at all)
  • Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George (re-imagining of the 12 Dancing Princesses)
  • Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh (I’ve never read Brideshead, shocking – I know)

But that’s not all of it. More oblongs are eagerly expected including:

  • Wired by Robin Wasserman
  • Crashed by Robin Wasserman (both are sequels to Skinned, which is awesome)
  • Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce
  • Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce (more in the Tortall universe in which I already have 3 other series about Alanna, Daine and Keladry respectively)

It’s not as though I’ve finished my “to read” pile which is actually more of a “to read” shelf nowadays. I think I’m going to have to have another clear out, always painful, to fit the new stuff in. And now I’m going to have to get the sequels to Wither as well. I am being sucked into a vortex of books.

February 29, 2012

Ask an author: How can I learn to be a novelist?

Filed under: Advice for writers,ask an author — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 7:40 am

Rhiannon (a fan) asks: I was just wondering if could give me some advice on how to start off being a novelist because I have a poem published but really want to be a writer because I have a wild imagination.

Rhiannon (the author) replies:

Dear Rhiannon (what a lovely name! ;)

Like you, I enjoy poetry and I won a poetry competition when I was 13 and it was one of the things that made me think about writing seriously. Congratulations on having your poem published!

There are lots of different ways to become a writer. The best way to get started is to read a lot and to write a lot. Let your imagination take you to extraordinary places and then work on writing them down so that they’re as real to other people as they are to you. Think about what you’re reading and what you’re writing. Think about what makes a character or a place exciting, interesting and worth discovering more about. Think about the kind of story you and your friends enjoy reading and talk to your friends about your ideas. Maybe you could join a book group or a writers group to share your ideas with other people.

I keep an ideas file (both electronically and in hard copy) where I write down my ideas for books. I also have a lot of notebooks so I can sketch out ideas and plans and notes. I often have lots of different stories in my head, on paper and in electronic text. You can refer back to your notes, keep different projects in different folders or notebooks and pick up and put down different ideas as you go. Don’t be afraid to put down an idea if it seems to go dead in your head. You’ll have lots of false starts and lots of ideas that you can’t yet see how to develop. As long as you’re enjoying writing and inventing stories, keep going, eventually you should find the seed of an idea which you can develop into a novel.

NaNoWriMo is a community project to help people write a lot of words. Novels tend to be 60,000+ words so you need to be able to sustain a story across a lot of words. But the more you write the better at it you’ll become. Once you’ve learned how to write multiple chapters you can hone your writing to ensure it’s expressing and achieving what you want it to.

Good luck with becoming a writer and with your poetry. Poetry is an art of its own and perhaps you’ll find a way to use your poetry in writing fiction.

February 8, 2012

Ask an author: an occasional feature

Filed under: ask an author,bloggery — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 7:45 pm

Got a question for an author. Ask it here!
Caution: all #askanauthor advice contains high levels of honesty and should be taken with care.

I’m thinking of quitting my job and spending a year writing a book. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Should I follow my dream?”

Rhiannon says: Don’t quit your job! 60% of professional authors don’t make enough to support themselves on their writing income alone. Start by working on your book in evenings and weekends, set aside time to write it and get a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook for lists of professional contacts and submission advice. If you get a good response from agents consider approaching your employer about going part time.
Following your dream is much more possible when your bills are paid. It’s hard to manufacture inspiration when you’re fretting about the rent cheque.

I want to write a book about a vampire family in New Orleans or a game in which teenagers compete to the death.

Rhiannon says: Let me stop you there. It’s really important to know the market. Every genre of fiction has classics and current top sellers. Make a note of them. You want to write something that appeals to the same audience as these books – but don’t end up rewriting them. Even if you came across the idea independently, if it’s like something else that already exists you need to find a radical new twist or route into that kind of story to persuade a publisher to buy a book that’s too like an existing title.

Do you think it is a good or a bad idea to take real life events and people and put them in your writing?

Rhiannon says: That depends on how you use them. I’ve drawn on real life events in my writing, for example the first time I had really bad vertigo. But events and situations that involve other people can be tricky. There are events that occur in most people’s lives from the first day of school to the first really bad breakup. Drawing on your own experience adds depth to these events but if you find yourself retelling a real life situation or putting someone you know into a book stop and consider if you want to write this kind of autobiographical fiction. It exposes you – especially if one of your characters becomes a thinly veiled authorial self-insertion. Do you want to be judged on your witty/truthful/insightful retelling or real life or on your creation of situations characters who you invent who you hope will feel real to the reader. What kind of author do you want to be?

September 15, 2011

Q&A Friday

Filed under: bloggery,Q&A,recommended reading — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 11:50 pm

Rhiannon answers your questions here on her blog.

What have you been reading recently?
Rhiannon: More Steph Swainston: The Modern World and Above the Snowline.

What have you been writing recently?
Rhiannon: Nothing significant but thoughts are percolating.

What else have you been doing?
Rhiannon: I attended an inspirational and thought-provoking conference: Women + Leadership, hosted by Oxford Brookes University. I’ve also been revising my school visits and preparing a new set of creative writing workshops.

What would you like to ask your readers today?
Rhiannon: What would you like a writer’s workshop to include?

September 2, 2011

Q&A Friday

Filed under: bloggery,how I write,Q&A — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 1:21 pm

Rhiannon answers your questions here on her blog.

What have you been reading recently?
Rhiannon replies: I’ve just finished two novels by Steph Swainston: In The Year of Our War and No Present Like Time. They’re urban fantasy – a sort of cross between Joan D. Vinge’s Catspaw and Steven Brust’s Taltos series. I acquired them at a friendly bookswap and liked them so much I’ve just ordered the next two from Amazon. I’ve also read a detective story Why Shoot a Butler by Georgette Heyer, a YA novel The Devil you Know by Leonie Norrington (which I’ll be reviewing for Armadillo) and Seaworld, real world fiction by Ursula Le Guin.

What have you been writing recently?
Rhiannon replies: I’m still working on SPIN, but haven’t written words because I was in a field without computers over the August bank holiday.

Why were you in a field?
Rhiannon replies: I was at the Reading Festival – listening to bands and dodging rain showers.

Thomas asks: What inspires you?
Rhiannon replies: Unusual situations. They inspire me to come up with stories about them. Children in unusual situations are an example of this. Celebrity children, gifted children, independent children. But I’m inspired by everywhere I go and whatever I do. Recently at the Reading Festival I wondered if I wanted to write a novel about a music festival in space and sketched out the first chapter in my head.

Sarah asks: How do you get into the right frame of mind for what you’re writing?
Rhiannon replies: Reading books in the right sort of area helps… as long as they are not too close to my own ideas. Listening to music is sometimes helpful. The weather is also surprisingly relevant. I find it difficult to write about frozen winters on a hot sunny day and vice versa.

Sarah asks: Which is harder: plot or characterisation?
Rhiannon replies: I don’t find either more difficult than the other. There are different challenges. Plots come quickly for me because my head is stuffed with ideas. Characterisation sometimes comes more slowly as I get to know a character. But later on in the book I have to do a lot of work on making a plot work out the way it should, while characterisation gets easier as I go on.

Sarah asks: Have you ever been tempted to write something that stars your cat?
Rhiannon replies: No. Recently I was reading Palace Without Chairs in which a (fictional) writer character says that to write about a fictional cat would feel untrue to his own real cat. For me, while I can write happily about fictional cats (Rameses in Ghost of a Chance for example) I wouldn’t want to write about my own cat.

Thomas asks: What age did you start writing? And what was your first ever story?
Rhiannon replies: I started writing at 7. My story began like this “The night the old priestess died the soldjers souljers soljars solljeers solders ….” until I gave up in frustration.

April 20, 2011

Advice for Writers: Who advises the advisers?

Everyone loves to give advice. There’s nothing quite like the pleasure of telling someone else how to lead their life.

I follow several different advice sites and “Ask InsertNameHere” columns, most of which have forum systems for giving your own advice. Often when I should be writing I spend my time explaining to strangers on the internet how they should act around cranky relations, annoying colleagues and other people’s children. But although I do occasionally post under the category advice for writers on my blog, I’m never quite sure that it’s the right thing to do.

One reason is that very few people ever take my advice. I can’t tell you how many times a friend or friend-of-a-friend has asked me for advice on getting published only to ignore everything I’ve suggested. (The most often ignored advice is: “Don’t write a 100,000 word novel and then submit it. Submit a 15,000 word draft and see if anyone actually *wants* more.”) Nowadays I save my professional advice for my writers group, who are tough enough to cope with the occasional scathing critique (“someone hit by three crossbow bolts would not shake it off easily”), and for the teenagers who ask questions at schools and book fairs who have done me the courtesy of showing up and asking a question.

Another reason I don’t write a lot of advice is that there’s heaps of it already out there. Last year the Guardian asked every prominent author they could find for their ten rules for writing. There are books like How NOT to Write a Novel and blogs like Write to Be Published and The Stroppy Author’s Guide to Publishing. Just google for “advice for writers” and you’ll find 96 pages of results.

With so much advice on offer you have to wonder how useful it is. Much of it comes uncontextualised: “write what you know”, “don’t write in the second person”, “don’t write about vampires” – TELL ME WHY! Sometimes it’s just plain wrong: “pay to get your text edited before submitting it”, “design your own cover”, “don’t bother submitting to professional publishers” – NO, NO, NO! A substantial portion of online advice comes from unpublished, pre-published or independent authors with experience in self-publishing and self-promotion – but little to no experience of professional publication.  Go to an indie author for advice on alternative avenues of publication: eBooks, internet, self publication and small presses. But for advice on publication by an established publishing company go to a pro author – or better yet, a professional agent, one who won’t charge you a readers fee. (And there I go, giving advice.)

Advice doesn’t exist in a vacuum – consider the credentials of your potential mentor. I’ve been asked to give advice about graphic novels, travel writing and poetry: genres in which my only experience is as a consumer. (Not that I mean to discount the experience of the reader: reading widely in a genre is a fine basis for critique.) I’ve been given advice by people who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about: “you should write a book like Harry Potter” or “my life would make a fantastic story – write about me!”

Some authors don’t give advice. Philip Pullman’s response to the Guardian’s request for tips was: “My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work”. Careful readers will notice the stealth advice in that statement.

Most authors with an online presence give some sort of advice in their blogs, FAQs or other web pages. Advice posts are easy to write – you don’t get to be a pro author without picking up at least one tip or trick along the way. That means they’re an easy way to add content to your site – and marketing folk will often recommend creating a blog and posting up some advice to demonstrate you have an online existence. (Yes, I have been guilty of this when my blog was looking very empty.)

I asked some professional authors why they gave advice and the answers were enlightening:

  • “I think it’s the teacher in me”
  • “[it's] a great way to procrastinate”
  • “if you’ve found something that works, it’s tempting to think you’ve discovered the right way, and perhaps the only way, to do it”
  • “I get quite a few emails asking for advice – particularly from teen writers – so it’s useful to be able to refer them to a page on my blog”
  • “[I] see it as a kind of ‘pro bono’ payback for all the times other writers have helped me when I wanted to know something”
  • “because I hate to see people slogging away re-inventing the wheel”
  • “I have absolutely no idea but I’m always grateful for whatever I can get. Especially if it’s free…”
  • “it can be very fulfilling to help a writer ‘break in’”
  • “there are writing techniques, rather than ‘rules’, just as there are techniques for music or art – and there’s a world of difference between breaking them through ignorance or with intent”

And, perhaps the most compelling reason of all, “people ask”.

The authors I asked responded with noticable humility. One author I asked said “I always stress however that it’s based on my experiences so don’t treat what I say as gospel – the industry changes and editors all have their own opinions”. Another commented: “I give writing advice… but always present it as slightly eccentric and ‘what works for me’”. Another successful author said: “I always feel slightly ludicrous giving advice, I don’t know that much myself…”.

Advice given with the best of intent can be wrong. Celia Rees replied: “For every rule given, there’s someone who has broken it and gone on to sell millions. Even the vampire thing – sure, they are going to throw every Stephenie Meyer lookalike straight in the bin, but if someone came up with another twist, that could be a different thing. The only rule is… there are no rules.”

And I’m 40,000 words into a novel I haven’t submitted yet because I want to make sure I get it right. Rules were made for breaking.

April 15, 2011

Writers who don’t read

Today’s quotation on @Quotes4Writers on Twitter is from John Birmingham, author of the wonderfully-titled He Died With a Felafel in his Hand:

“If you can’t be bothered reading, do not bother trying to write. You’ll fail.” John Birmingham (@JohnBirmingham) http://bit.ly/JoBirm

The quotation is from an interview Birmingham did with Australian book blog ‘Booktopia’ in 2010. The interviewer commented “we live in a world where this advice has to be given!?” Like the interviewer, I find it hard to understand. I was a ‘reading child’ and reading may be the greatest constant in my life. I read every day at an average rate of about 50,000 words a day. In CVs and interviews the expression “I like reading” seems woefully inadequate. I *have* to read. After the air I breathe and the felafels I eat it’s the next essential.

My friends are also readers. Many are writers but even those who don’t write, read. Book recommendations, diatribes and discussions form a major tranche of our conversation. Local friends belong to a book group. (More distant friends do too: but a different group.) And it’s reading that has made the writers want to write. In the last couple of weeks I’ve read about so many professional authors who were inspired by the late Diana Wynne Jones.

Still there are writers who don’t read. I’ve met only a few of them over the years so they obviously move in different (less book-lined) circles, but they do exist. “Oh I don’t have time to read, I’m too busy writing” is one explanation I’ve heard. Also “I don’t want to be influenced”. Weirdly, I’ve heard it from fanfiction authors, people definitely inspired to write by someone else’s work, whose multiple chapter epics “don’t leave time to read”. What’s with that?

What advantages are there really for the writer who doesn’t read? Yes, you do have more time. That’s got to be true. But will you use that time as well as the writer with a head stuffed full of stories? Not wanting to be influenced I can understand and I won’t read a book too close to the subject of one I am currently writing. But that’s about unintentional plagiarism for me. Influence in the wider sense of being inspired by someone else’s work is a good thing. Being a non-reading writer seems to me like doing your work in the bottom of a well.

February 4, 2011

Feminist-friendly YA fiction

Filed under: recommended reading — Tags: , — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 2:00 pm

The furore I posted about yesterday has inspired me to do a new recommendations list of feminist-friendly YA novels.

But, before I launch into it, what qualifies something in my mind to appear on this list. Here are the factors I am currently working on:

  1. Equal billing, equality of opportunity: women and girls should be presented as equal to men and boys. Ideally there should be as many female characters as male and in similarly ranked professions e.g. fiction with three male doctors and three female nurses would not count
  2. Passes Bechdel test: girls must talk together about something other than boys
  3. Avoids stereotyping: boys are allowed to like pink and dislike sport, girls are allowed to enjoy sport and aren’t inevitably interested in fashion.

Okay so those three are givens. I think there are probably lots of other potential criteria too though – elements that aren’t required but would increase the feminist-friendly nature of the work. For example:

  • Characters discover/learn/engage with feminist issues e.g. equal pay, reproductive freedom, harmfulness of the beauty industry etc
  • Matriarchal fantasy society or similar female empowerment, unless presented as vile dystopia

Does anyone have ideas to add to these?

An example recommendation, on these terms, with an explanation, might read:

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
In the fairytale kingdom of Ingary, oldest sister Sophie expects to fail first and worst at everything she tries. But when a wicked witch’s curse turns her life upside down she sets off to seek her fortune. Strong and intelligent female characters strew the pages of this book from Sophie and her sisters to the Witch of the Waste herself. Some readers might cavil at the romance plot which suggests the love of a good woman redeems a shiftless man but this is expressed with emotional realism and doesn’t fall back on an easy ‘happy ever after’ ending.

February 3, 2011

Censorship or responsiveness?

Bitch magazine posted a list of “100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader”. The original list included Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce and Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. After receiving critique that Tender Morsels validates (by failing to critique or discuss) rape as an act of vengeance, Sister’s Red has a victim-blaming scene and Living Dead Girl is triggering, the editors decided to remove/replace the books commenting: “We still feel that these books have merit and would not hesitate to recommend them in certain instances, but we don’t feel comfortable keeping them on this particular list.”

John Scalzi posted about this on his blog and reported that:

a number of high profile, award-winning and/or bestselling YA authors, including Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, Maureen Johnson and Ellen Kages hit the roof and show up in the comments to demand their own books be removed from the list as well.

But I’m not so sure that this deserves to be called censorship. I find myself feeling differently about this than I did about a teenage literary festival disinviting guest of honour Ellen Hopkins after one librarian challenged the suitability of her work. Is Bitch really wrong to ensure that their list of YA books is feminist-friendly? If a book had made it on to the list but had the conclusion that a feisty female character should stop being such a tomboy and wear high heels, they’d surely be right to remove it. Obviously in an ideal world they’d have researched, read and discussed all the titles before putting them on the list but even a book might be challenged by a reader who noticed something the editors didn’t.

I haven’t read any of the contentious titles so I don’t know if the criticism is validated. (I turn out to have read only 17/100 so I need to get to the local library and check out all the books I’ve missed.) I am a little uncomfortable with one person making a complaint and then the list being changed. Although, in the case of Sister’s Red the commenter did link to another blog post with 98 comments at the BookSmugglers blog on the potential problems with the book.

Part of being an active feminist or feminist ally means listening when someone tells you that text or imagery is problematic, that the message you are sending is not the one you intended to send, that you need to think harder, think deeper about certain ideas and concepts.

Does Scott Westerfield’s status as a published YA author of a book on the list or his opinion that Tender Morsels is a good book constitute more valid grounds for inclusion than the complainants’ grounds for exclusion?

What do you think, readers? Bitch made a mistake, I think we can all agree on that. But what was their mistake? Including the books in the first place? Taking them off the list again?

Is this censorship or response to criticism? (Interestingly one commenter liked the list but thought it was inappropriate to show to a teenage girl because it includes the word ‘bitch’, the name of the magazine. Now that *is* censorship and the magazine rightly refused to remove their own name from the list. I can usually tell what is and what isn’t censorship.)

Let me know your thoughts. And also how many of the books on the list you’ve read – or if you’ve read the three contentious titles.

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