Author Daryl Sedore

Contracts are being written at this very minute while wine glasses are filled. People are being published as bottles empty. Booksellers are getting books and placing them on shelves. All this happens while other writers are getting lost. There’s much ado about writing out there. I’ll break it down into three categories of A.D.O.;

Advice; There’s an abundance of advice on how to write. Thousands of books cover the topic of writing from Stephen King’s “On Writing” to Donald Maass’ “Fire in Fiction”. There are websites, blogs and conferences where you can do seminars to learn the craft. There’s as much advice on how to write as there is air to breathe.

As a writer you need to get to a place where you combine it with practice. When the writing day is over, make sure you’ve scribed something because one of the best schools of writing is writing. It has been said you need to write over a million words before you consider being published. (Then you can crack open that Shiraz or pinot noir and celebrate).

Dawdle; Writer’s procrastinate. It’s as common as breast feeding, just not as good. You can’t dawdle around and expect to have the next best-seller. Read what advice you want; then write. Come up with reasons to do this or that; then write. People with excuses don’t have book deals and people with book deals don’t have excuses.

If you find you have trouble getting into it, set some time goals. Between 11:00am and 1:00pm, I’ll read, study, take notes and ruminate, but at 1:00pm, I start writing.

Odds; We’ve all heard the odds of getting published. They’re against a novice writer. Literary agencies tell us that queries mount into the thousands per year. Hundreds upon hundreds of unsolicited queries hit an agency weekly. And that’s just one agency. There is a phalanx of agencies in New York alone. I’ve read agents who have said they took on two new clients this year. That’s two out of thousands of queries. Wow, you’d have a better chance of bumping into President Obama in self-help section in the Barnes and Noble booksellers on Fifth Avenue.

With that in mind, it doesn’t matter. That’s right, you read it right. It doesn’t matter. (Note to self: get wine ready) It doesn’t matter if you wrote something unique. It doesn’t matter if your voice is unheard of, your style a dream and your story telling ability a number one stunner. The odds don’t matter when you’re good.

So take some advice and don’t dawdle. Avoid thinking about how hard it is to break in to the industry. Just write a damn good story. Write. Make it original. If you knock people out of their chairs with your work, you have a better chance against those odds than if you just knock their socks off. Don’t dawdle, write. Avoid spending too much time with much A.D.O. about writing and get your story on paper.

After all, you’re a storyteller, right?

So write.

Rejection letters are great because that means you sent your material out. It means you’re ready (hopefully) to take your work to the next level. You see, here’s the thing; what if someone told you that the 37^th agent you query would get you a book deal? You would be so excited every time another rejection letter arrived because you’re one closer to that deal. That’s why they’re awesome. Keep querying. Just change the way you think about it.

Years ago I worked as a door to door salesperson doing cold calls. We’d go knocking on doors all over the neighbourhood and eventually get in. Sometimes it took ten minutes, sometimes an hour. Once in a while it took all day. I learned quickly that it was just a matter of knocking on doors before I got in. What I mean is, the more doors I covered, the faster I got in a house to do a presentation and possibly make a sale. So I ran. That’s right, I ran from door to door. It kept me energized and fired up so when I finally got in, I was ready to present and sell. I outsold my team month after month. The rest of the salespeople got depressed when a door slammed in their face. Not me, I loved it, because I was one closer to the door that would welcome me in.

There was this guy who was quite interested in a beautiful house a few blocks from the Chicago airport. Prior to moving in he saw the runways weren’t directly over his house so he bought it. Years go by. The airport’s getting busier. Planes are getting larger. They need to build more runways. Planes now take off and land directly above his house. Housing values plummet in the area. The man can’t sell. He goes to see a psychiatrist as this situation is now making him crazy. Doctor tells him to change the way he looks at it. So he goes home and paints, “Welcome to Los Angeles”, on the roof of his house. Almost every time he hears a plane overhead he laughs.

Change the way you look at it. If your writing is sound, then your only task is to get it out there.

“No one can hurt you without your consent” -Eleanor Roosevelt

Remember that you are going to query agents that may like the story idea, but don’t love it. You need to keep going until you find one that loves it. Each rejection letter is one step closer to the right match.

People with book deals have no excuses and people with excuses have no book deals.

Zig Ziglar said that failure is an event, not a person. You may have failed with that rejection letter but you are not a failure. You wrote a novel. The more failure you saw when growing up makes success harder to believe in. But yet you miss out on 100% of all literary agents that you don’t query. So rejection letters are your confirmation that you’re out there, you’re querying, you’re moving forward. That’s right, moving forward, even when you’re getting a rejection letter.

“Things come to those who wait, but only things left by those who hustled” -Abraham Lincoln

Besides, what’s the worse that can happen? You’re at the same spot as you are now when someone sends you a rejection letter. Send out multiple submissions. Make sure you send queries to the right people at the right agencies. Just make sure you do it.

Two men were hiking through Northern British Columbia. A bear approached from behind looking ready to attack as it eased ever closer. The one man dropped to the ground and yanked off his backpack. He reached in and retrieved a new pair of running shoes. The other man who was still standing asked, “What are you doing? Come on, let’s go. What do you think, you can outrun a bear?”

“No. I just have to outrun you.”

That’s what I’m talking about. Send more queries than the other guy. Don’t focus on the problem. Think prosperous thoughts. Allow prosperity to find you. Get past being stuck. Don’t quit, no matter what. Promise a lot and deliver even more. Be assertive in your actions. Take action. Submit your work. Enjoy rejections because you’re one closer to a book deal.

Enjoy rejections. Change the way you think about them. Read each and every one like it’s an honour badge. Save them all so one day when you’re a famous, published author you can go back and tell people how many you collected until you got the right agent for you. Rejections pile up, and yet, all they are is ammunition for author speeches.

Enjoy rejection. Stand tall. Brush off your shoulders and keep moving forward. Remember that you are one rejection letter closer to a deal.

“They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.”

-Gandhi

Even Harry Potter got rejections.

Writers write. That’s it. Simple.

Motivation to write is at an all time high. More people write in 2010 than in any other era. Today, I want to address the people who are writing for publication. What motivates you? What brings you to your work in progress everyday? Do you write everyday?

As a writer, and yes, I call myself one; I’ve noticed that many writers need motivation. Actually, there’s a trend: writers who don’t need motivation are published authors. They’re the ones who have books on the shelves in your local bookstore. They’re the ones who write everyday.

I’m not saying writers with less discipline won’t get published, it’s just they need more of a shove to get their thoughts on paper and I’m looking to find out why that is.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.

~Jules Renard

Donald Maass, a literary agent in New York, pointed out in his book, Fire in Fiction, that there are two kinds of writers: Status Seekers and Story Tellers.

Are you a status seeker? Do you want to tell everyone you’re a writer? Even if the piece you’ve written isn’t at its best, do you try and try again to get it published? When industry professionals explain why it isn’t ready, do you counter their claims with attitude? After that’s all done, did you go and self-publish? How many sold? To whom? Family and friends?

My point isn’t to berate. I simply want to know, are you a writer, or do you just call yourself one?

For storytellers, the game is different. I consider myself a storyteller. I am currently writing my fourth novel. I’ve written fifty short stories. I’ve been published in two different newspapers and I’ve won a number of contests. Recently, two different Anthologies have accepted three short stories, which will all be published early next year.

The reason for this is because I tell stories. I’ve got too many floating around, yearning for the empty page. I started writing the novel I’m currently querying in 2003. I’ve done four revisions with a professional freelance editor out of New York with countless drafts to make sure it’s just right.

Around 2006, in my seventh draft, I decided to hit the delete button and re-write the entire novel in my current voice. I felt each scene would be better served to write it fresh instead of constantly trying to tweak my two-year-old writing.

That’s over seven years of working on the same manuscript. The average writer gets their first deal after eleven years. I’ve still got a ways to go as I want my story told properly.

Are you a storyteller? Do you write because you love it? Are you passionate about it? If you are, then it’s not work. Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.

Tell me your story. How long have you been at it?

What are your successes?

What are your goals?

Are you a storyteller?

Are you a writer?

You can be both. Just don’t be status seekers.

We get so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves

~Francois Rochofoucauld

Photo credit: tibchris

1. Psychologically Revealing:  If you’re male and you write thrillers where women always seem to get beat up and abused, it may tell the reader about your struggle with the opposite sex. What you write is your voice. It comes through quite loud at times. It can reveal what you find appealing and what you find repulsive. What are we seeing between the lines? Although, usually, it’s not obvious. I’m sure there are many readers who get lost in the story and that is as far as it goes for them. But there are also people who look deeper. If you’re not buying what I’m selling here, read Edgar Allen Poe.

2. Fear of Rejection: It’s out there. Once you’ve written something and submitted it, even if it’s in notes on Facebook, it’s out there. People               can now pass judgment. If you fear rejection, this is a tough one. You could always write for yourself. Keep a diary, a journal. Or you could               write and allow others to read it. But if you do, criticism will follow. Not from everyone, but there’s people with big egos who have to knock               what you’ve done, even if it’s great. Then there’s the editor who is putting the story first. They’re the ones to listen to. Get used to critics.                     Embrace it. Learn to love the coach. Even Hemingway edited.

3. Fear of failure: This can stop a writer cold. He can be typing through a scene, start thinking about how this whole business of writing isn’t              going anywhere and just stop. I’ve heard of writers who then go and delete what they have, close their laptop and walk away. That’s how                      serious this fear can be. It’s debilitating. Usually people who experience this fear never get published for obvious reasons. These are people              who aren’t ready for publication. They fear failure so much that their ability to try has been hampered too much. Remember; Success is                      found in cans, failure in can’ts.

People have discussed fears for years. We’ve all heard that fear itself is all we should fear. All I want to say about this topic and how it impacts writers is one of the ways to combat your fears is to flood them.

What you are afraid to do is a clear indicator of the next thing you should do

~Anthony Robbins

Even though you fear failure, keep typing. Shrug it off. So what if it goes nowhere. At least you got to write a great story. Share it with ten people or a hundred, or don’t share it at all, but write. That’s what you’ve got to do; write!

Despite your fear of rejection, find a way to get it to inspire you. For every rejection letter you receive, send out two more submissions. When a fellow reader doesn’t give the expected reaction, brush it off as a personal thing. All I’m saying is try to focus on you and your writing and not on the naysayer. Stay away from the bull-ring as talked about in my previous post.

Below is a list of some of the other fears writers experience. This post would be too long if I were to discuss each one. Take from it what you want and flood the rest.

4. Fear of Commitment

5. Reading my writing to a group

6. Fear of not “knowing” enough (write what you know)

7. Never being published

8. Fear of being published and what that’ll mean to you

9. Fear of writer’s block

10.  Fear of mediocrity

Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop

~Usman B. Asif

Photo Credit: AllyRichelle

As a writer, lingering behind the curtain, waiting for my turn to step on stage and wow the crowd with my novel, there are times when I’m told to stay positive. I have positive all wrapped up in a ball. This is who I am as a person. This is what I am. I couldn’t be any other way.

Eons ago I worked for a door to door sales company doing cold calls. If we weren’t positive we became unemployed rather quickly. Door after door was slammed in my face as I tried to do a sales pitch. You can’t take that stuff personally. I created a thick skin as I ran from house to house knowing that I’m one more closed door away from the one that will open. I talked about that at writetodone.com on my guest post called, Rejection letters are great.

I’m not concerned with the bull ring. I call the people who are negative and who spew negative juice, the bull ring. It stands for “the ring of bullshit”.

There seems to be substantial bull rings available for you in any business. In the business of writing, (that’s why I’m doing this post – for writers), you can jump online and discover a nice bull ring with a little salt. Or drop by Twitter and discover wonderful people having fun spewing negative diatribe to lonely writers.

I’ll start with Slushpile Hell; the nice new website that has a witty way of poking fun at writers. Can you even imagine how many retweet’s this site is getting?

One agent said he worries it encourages the agent-hatred that many agents feel they’re fighting against daily. Yet another agent said, “Tell me you’ve seen Slushpile Hell” and used the hashtag #funny.

Today I saw another tweet: “Deliciously snarky fun along the lines of #queryfail”.

This stuff doesn’t bother me. Seriously, I know what you’re thinking. Why did I spend time to write this if it didn’t bother me? I wanted to go on record to bring this taboo topic up. What makes it taboo? Writers today are intimidated by agents. A few months back an agent belittled a querier in public on Twitter, using his name and quoted his emails. People jumped on board and pasted the guy with feathers. A few writers stood up on blogs and said it was akin to bullying. I wasn’t one of those writers. I’m sorry that I wasn’t. I get what the writer did was uncalled for, even ridiculous, but there are ways to deal with children and acting like one is not the most effective.

Agents are people too. Sometimes they make bad judgements. I met an agent in 2005 at the Willamette Conference in Portland, Oregon. I couldn’t believe how horrible this person was. It is 2010 and I am still scarred by this persons anti-Canada remarks and how far this agent went to be racist at the banquet. Not to mention rude, belligerent and so on. But that’s another story.

There are others who feel things shouldn’t be so negative; people who enjoy the industry and are always striving to make things better. Here are some of their comments.

This was on Twitter yesterday: “I feel very uncomfortable with agents who mock query and submission letters: people have still worked hard on their manuscripts.”

Another agent said, “Of course: we shouldn’t laugh at the source of our industry. No writers = no jobs for agents.”

There are literary agents everywhere standing up for writers. I want to add here: the people involved in laughing at authors are minimal in my opinion. It’s just their reach is large.

Don’t let the bull ring get you down. Keep writing that masterpiece. Work hard on making your manuscript the best that it can be. You’re worth it and so is your artwork.

I do encourage people to take a look at sites like Slushpile Hell, but only for one reason; so you can see what mistakes other people are doing and avoid them yourself.

Life is a grindstone and whether it grinds you down or polishes you up is for you and you alone to decide.

~Cavett Robert

Photo Credit: BossBob50

Persevere: I started writing when I was quite young. I got more serious about it sometime around the year 2001. My first novel was finished and being queried during the summer of 2002. Nothing came of it.

March 2003 I started another novel. After years of revisions, including four rounds with freelance editor Lisa Rector Maass, Donald Maass’ wife, it was ready for an agent. It’s now 2010. That’s seven years. In that time I wrote almost 50 short stories with 40 of them published. Also guest posts on popular blogs like writetodone.com and Urbanmusewriter.com, one published piece of poetry and I’ve been reading books on how to write since 2001. But yet, I don’t have an agent. I’ve worked for years on perfecting my query letter – still no agent. So I persevere.

You’ve got to keep on, keeping on. Let no one slow you down. Let no one stop you. You’re the most important issue to be dealt with today and every day. People will try to ebb your flow. People have persuasive ways to thwart you, but you must keep moving on. Events have a way of tripping you up. There may even be times when you feel you can’t go on, but you must.

I am.

“If you’re going through hell, keep moving.”

Stay Positive: I’ve met agents, pitched them, had dinner with them and even took a subway ride in New York with one. I had around 50 rejection letters for the first novel. More are just coming in for the second book. I have entered contests where I didn’t place at all, but then in the Writer’s Digest Short Story Contest in 2007, I had five stories place in the top 60, with one of them hitting the 6^th place. Just last month I placed second in the Strong Scene Contest. Yet, I stay positive. I am constantly reminding myself that soon (hopefully) an agent will fall in love with my voice and story idea and we’ll be able to move to the next step. I have thought in the past that a certain agent would take me on. We talked. He read parts of my story. But a contract wasn’t forthcoming. I’ve reworked the story. Made it stronger, tightened the pace, added tension. I remain positive that the day is coming sooner rather than later.

Being positive is a choice. I think of myself as a storyteller first. I’m writing my fourth novel now. I have stories to tell. I’m going to keep writing those stories and continue submitting them. Eventually, even if it takes ten novels, I’ll get an agent in love with me and I will be able to share the stories I write. All I can do is continue and get better at it.

“The only way you can consistently experience confidence, even in environments and situations you’ve never previously encountered, is through the power of faith.”

~Tony Robbins

Write: I write every day. It may only be a blog post, but I write every day. Although lately, when I’m writing a new novel I write something new each day for the novel too. A lot of people set goals for day to day writing. My only goal is to approach my work in progress and advance it each and every day. I’ve tried the word count per day structure, but found that sometimes life gets in the way and I fall behind. Then there are feelings of guilt and I’ve got to do more another day to catch up. Now, I have released that pressure from my shoulders and all I ask of myself is to just write something each day. Overall, I get a lot more done this way.

“Write. A lot of people want to be a writer, it seems to me, and they do everything they can to be a writer, except write.”

~Chang-Rae Lee

Focus: This has got to be the most challenging one. I lost a good portion of the last two years as I was going through a messy divorce. Court along with a long list of things that needed to be dealt with kept coming up. The stress and pressure at times was something I’ve never had to go through. My thriving retail business went under and I lost everything because of the divorce. I’m still healing from that experience. During that time, almost two years, my current manuscript was left languishing. I pushed on though; just short stories and some blog posts. Which means I struggled with focus. I think I was more worried about not giving my best to my manuscript so I wrote smaller pieces to at least keep moving forward as a writer.

With focus, you really need to hunker down and do it. One of the toughest parts of my life has come to an end. But it’s behind me and I’m focused now.

“The elevator of success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs…one step at a time.”

~Joe Girard

Love what you do: If you’re passionate about what you’re doing then it isn’t work. I love what I do. I spend a greater part of the day not just hanging out with my characters, but creating new ways for them to be hurt and maimed. Seriously, as the story gets told I’m enjoying the process more and more. I’m able to be in their world, explore it with my five senses and walk through the back alleys and dark streets holding a knife while my protagonist is on the run. It’s exciting, it’s energizing, but most of all, I love what I do.

If you don’t love writing or whatever it is you’re doing, you may want to evaluate what you’re doing. It is so important to love what you do that I can’t emphasize it enough. Without love you’ll never be able to give a hundred percent.

“People think about what they don’t want and attract more of the same.”

What have you learned so far? What is happening to you? How are you coping and what are you doing about being your own life manager?

Are you managing your life well?

If not, fire yourself.

Then restart managing with better skills. Take yourself to new heights. Aspire to be. Become what you always wanted to be.

You only have you. Make it count because you are worth it.

(This is a post that appeared at www.writetodone.com on May 29, 2010 as a Guest Post)

Contracts are being written at this very minute while wine glasses are being filled. People are published as bottles empty. Booksellers are getting books and placing them on shelves. All this happens while other writers are getting lost. There’s much ado about writing out there. Let’s break it down into three categories of A.D.O.;

Advice; There’s an abundance of advice on how to write. Thousands of books cover the topic of writing from Stephen King’s “On Writing” to Donald Maass’ “Fire in Fiction”. There are websites, blogs and conferences where you can do seminars to learn the craft. There’s as much advice on how to write as there is air to breathe.

As a writer you need to get to a place where you combine it with practice. When the writing day is over, make sure you’ve scribed something because one of the best schools of writing is writing. It has been said you need to write over a million words before you consider being published. (Then you can crack open that Shiraz or pinot noir and celebrate).

Dawdle; Writer’s procrastinate. It’s as common as breast feeding, just not as good. You can’t dawdle around and expect to have the next best-seller. Read what advice you want; then write. Come up with reasons to do this or that; then write. People with excuses don’t have book deals and people with book deals don’t have excuses.

If you find you have trouble getting into it, set some time goals. Between 11:00am and 1:00pm, I’ll read, study, take notes and ruminate, but at 1:00pm, I start writing.

Odds; we’ve all heard the odds of getting published. They’re staggeringly against a novice writer. Literary agencies tell us that queries mount into the thousands per year. Hundreds upon hundreds of unsolicited queries hit an agency weekly. And that’s just one agency. There is a phalanx of agencies in New York alone. I’ve read agents who have said they took on two new clients this year. That’s two out of thousands of queries. Wow, you’d have a better chance of bumping into President Obama in self-help section in the Barnes and Noble booksellers on Fifth Avenue.

With that in mind, it doesn’t matter. That’s right, you read it correctly. It doesn’t matter. (Note to self: get wine ready) It doesn’t matter if you wrote something unique. It doesn’t matter if your voice is unheard of, your style a dream and your story telling ability a number one stunner.

So take some advice, don’t dawdle. Avoid thinking about how hard it is to break in to the industry. Just write a damn good story. Write. Make it original. If you knock people out of their chairs with your work, you have a better chance against those odds than if you just knock their socks off. Don’t dawdle, write. Avoid spending too much time with much A.D.O. about writing and get your story on paper.

After all, you’re a storyteller, right?

So write.

Caterpillar Stage

As you collect yourself and gather your materials you are being born. You form an idea, or ideas, and begin to write. Before long, you have a story. Is it good? Is it good enough to sell? Will you submit it or is this just something for relatives and close friends?

This is the caterpillar stage; your ideas are all the legs the caterpillar has. Each one represents purpose. Each one has a story. It’s small but long body represents your writing career at this stage. Small, almost insignificant, but long enough to be seen by certain people, yet still not on the world stage.

This isn’t a negative thing. All butterflies started here. You just need to keep going. Keep writing. Persevere. That’s the only way to get to the next stage.

Cocoon Stage

You’ve done your homework. Your first full length novel has been written. It’s in the closet or your desk drawer. You’ve written other pieces; short stories, poems, blog posts. You’ve found this process to be exciting. Something you see yourself doing for some time. Maybe even making a career out of it. So you get serious. You do more research, reading about the story arc, how not to use clichés in your work and what tightens pace. You go to a writer’s conference and meet editors and agents. Then back to your writing desk. Back to hide. To be alone and write. To a form of hibernation where you may even unplug the phone and ask people close to you to be quiet because you’re busy writing.

This is the cocoon stage; you are wrapped up in material that has the potential to spring you anew. You hunker down and start to really write. Are you a storyteller? Are you creating magic on your keyboard while alone, writing furiously? What will be produced? What will come out of the caterpillar after it has wrapped itself up, hiding from the world with intent to come out the other side looking magnificent?

Butterfly Stage

You’re finished. You’ve written your best work. You’re ready to submit. You’re coming out of your shell in more ways than one. Your work has color. It has spunk. You’re excited to flit around and share it. You can never have too many readers. This was your purpose, your dream. The work has come out looking beautiful. It has all the twists and turns you never anticipated could be possible.

This is the butterfly stage; all the tension of struggling from a long legged caterpillar into and out of the cocoon has come to fruition. You’re here. You’ve made it. Your best story has arrived and it’s beautiful. You’ve come a long way. There’s been pain. There’s been struggle. But you’re here.

As a writer, what kind of butterfly are you? There are about 20,000 different kinds of butterflies in the world. What do your wings mean? The color, size and shape represent you. All caterpillars turn into a butterfly or a moth. Don’t become a moth. Although they have their own purpose, they’re not as pretty as butterflies, nor as dynamic.

Make your work shine. Break out with a manuscript that is multi-faceted and colourful. Make your butterfly so beautiful that agents will want to place it in a jar and show it off.

This is the life story of a butterfly, the life story of a writer. So tell me: what’s your life story? What has been your journey as a writer? What stage are you in right now; caterpillar, cocoon, or butterfly? What are you doing to make your story the best that it can be?

You deserve to be heard.

But will we want to hear you?