Defining and Honoring Writing Mentors

I thought this was a really interesting question and one I suspect my readers can answer better than I can. . . .

I need a definition of "What is a Writing Mentor." I write Romance, Mystery, and Suspense and have had a critique partner and mentor for the past 4 years. I belong to RWA, and my local chapter wants to give the mentor of the year award, but I need to compile a definition of a writing mentor. Can you help me?

Mentors are such wonderful and amazing people, and let me congratulate you for having found someone who you obviously have been lucky to find. I really don’t think I’d be the person I am today or have the success I have without the many mentors who helped guide me to this place. From teachers who taught me the power of a book to editors who taught me how to recognize good writing, edit, and negotiate, and to fellow agents who took time out of their busy schedules to answer any questions I had, or still have.

I imagine what you’re looking for is a definition that can be used to describe what mentors are for this particular award. I’ll leave it up to the wordsmiths to correct me, but in my mind I think a mentor is someone who takes the time to teach new writers about the craft of writing and the business of publishing. A mentor is someone who helps others succeed in an area where she has already found success.

But what about the readers? Do you have a better definition of a writing mentor? And what about mentors you’ve had? Let’s take a moment to honor them here by telling a little about those people who gave selflessly of their time so that you could all learn about writing and what they did for you.

Jessica

Formatting Guidelines

When authors are getting ready to submit to agents, I see a lot of them who get caught up in what’s really too ridiculous to stress over, and that’s formatting. Listen, folks, follow the simple term paper formatting rules you had to follow in high school or college and you’ll be fine. But for those who are still worried, here are some guidelines. Guidelines, mind you, and not rules. Every agent is different, but if you follow these guidelines, few are going to reject you without reading a word.

Query Letter
Standard business-letter formatting. If you’re using a word processing program like Microsoft Word you can probably use a template, but here are my suggestions:

• Single space
• One page only
• Include your address, email, phone, and web site if you have one
• Include the date (and make sure to update this with each letter you send, otherwise it gives a sneak peek into how long you’ve been submitting for)
• A font that’s comfortable for you to read over and over and over. Times New Roman, Courier, Arial. All are acceptable. Usually 11 or 12 point. Again, think of reading 50 of these in one sitting and avoid eye strain.

Manuscript
Again, standard word processing format works best, but here are some guidelines to help you get started

• One-inch margins
• Double space
• One-sided only
• Page numbers in a header including your last name (should be the same name as on the letter)
• A font that’s comfortable for you to read over and over and over. Times New Roman, Courier, Arial. All are acceptable. Usually 11 or 12 point. Again, think of reading 50 of these in one sitting and avoid eye strain.

Listen, I am not going to reject you if your margins are less than one inch or greater. I won’t reject you if your query letter is double-spaced. I might not read as much of your book if it’s single-spaced because my eyes will start to hurt, and I might not read as much of anything you submit if you use a fancy script type that’s hard to read. When formatting a manuscript or when submitting anything to an agent, think logically. There are absolutely no rules in this, no matter what people say, just make sure we can read it.

Anything I missed?

Jessica

Now the Good Stuff

Thank you everyone who participated in my venting blog post. It was fascinating, disheartening, frustrating, and just sad to read what many of you had to say. And it’s given me a lot of material to write for future posts. Points to address, topics to discuss, and hopefully inspiration to dole out.

I’ve also learned a lot about what frustrates you and I think I would be lying to you and to myself if I said that everything you complained about was what other agents had done and not me. I suspect there were more than a couple in there that fit me. The difficulty of listening to anyone vent—whether it’s you listening to agents or me listening to you—is that none of us are perfect, and when listening to a rant we feel that we should be. I don’t think any of us expects perfection from the other. Sure we preach it because it’s easier to say we want things perfect than that we want things nearly perfect (since the definition of perfect differs from person to person), but in truth I think what we can all agree that we really want is respect, consideration, and professionalism. Unfortunately we don’t always get it. We don’t always get it in publishing, at the doctor’s office, the grocery store, or even our own homes.

However, when all is said and done, I do know that 99% of you work really hard at what you’re doing and your query letters do show that. They are professional and submitted carefully. I hope you know that I too work very hard at professionalism, but because I’m not perfect there are times when things slip through the cracks.

Okay. Now that I’ve let you rant and you’ve listened to my rants on a daily basis, I’d like to cheer us all up a bit and spend some time looking at the good things. The things that make us smile in this business and remind us why we keep plugging away at it. Because while I might complain about the unprofessional query letter or the author who calls just to yell at me after receiving a rejection, the truth is that I really, really love what I do and to love what I do I have to love authors.

So I’m going to start. I’m going to start by sharing some of my favorite things about this business.

I love this blog. I love that it’s become a community unto itself, and one of my favorite things is when the comment boards take on a life of their own. I love meeting my readers at conferences and I love that you are all so willing to honestly share your thoughts and feelings with me (even when I might not want to hear it).

I love going to conferences and interacting with authors. One of my all-time favorite stories was during the Reno RWA conference in 2005. I was sitting in the coffee shop when another author came up to me and asked if I had talked to, we’ll call her Mary Author. Mary had been looking for me because, on the advice of one of my rejection letters, she had sent her book to Harlequin and sold her first novel. It still gives me chills telling that story. I love success and I love to see any author have success—by the way, two years later Mary did officially become a client.

I love receiving queries and submissions. Because let’s face it, they are the lifeblood of this office, and the minute they stop coming in is the minute I need to really start worrying. On a selfish level, your queries boost my confidence. They remind me of how far I’ve come (from those days when we first opened and ten submissions a week was a big deal) and how many wonderful books there are yet to take on. Sometimes the submissions become overwhelming, when I’ve been too busy to really sit down and give them the attention they deserve, but when I’m in the mood to take on a new client, and have the time to do so, there are few things more fun than sitting with a pile of possibilities (submissions) and a hot cup of cocoa.

There is only one “call” in this business and that’s “the call” when your book has sold. However, for an agent there are two calls (which is why it’s more fun to be an agent). I get to make that call to offer representation, that breathless, nerve-wracking call (breathless and nerve-wracking for me, by the way). What if you say no? What if you say yes?

And then there’s “the call” when I get to tell any author, first time or otherwise, that I’ve sold their book. Please, feel free to scream, holler, and rejoice in excitement. I LOVE it.

I have another story that makes me smile and it just happened. I was queried by an author who had an offer from a publisher in hand. We had met a couple of years prior and I knew she was a reader of the blog. While I had rejected her book before, I was happy to take a second look. I did and I still really liked her writing, but I just wasn’t in love with it, and as much as I liked her and wanted to work with her and wanted to love it, it’s not fair to her to have an agent who doesn’t feel breathless with excitement. I turned it down. She was extremely disappointed and asked a second time if I was sure. I explained that I thought she deserved better. Well, the next day she emailed again to say she had found that agent who was breathless with excitement and now she knew what I meant. I was thrilled for her.

Beyond all of that, though, I just love that on a daily basis I get to make books happen. One of my best friends is a fan of a client of mine. She came to this client’s books on her own and reads them the minute they hit the shelves. It’s really, really cool to know that I’m a part of making those books happen and that when I walk into her house I see them on her bookshelves.

So now it’s your turn. Tell us the good of this business, the stories about agents, editors, and publishing that make you smile or give you a warm fuzzy feeling. Because I think right now we could all use a smile.


Jessica

Lessons Learned from the BookEnds 100-Word Contest

First, let me take care of a little post-contest business. Surprisingly, we’re still waiting on quite a few winners to send us their material for critique. We’re guessing there’s some furious writing and polishing going on. We’d like to request, however, that all winners’ materials be e-mailed to our blog account by June 15th. This seems a reasonable amount of time to polish a synopsis and first chapter, and frankly, I’ll be going on maternity leave a few weeks later and don’t want Jessica to be shouldered with any remaining responsibility.

If your entry didn’t win a free critique, but you’re just dying to know what a BookEnds agent or another agency might think of your work, consider bidding on an evaluation at bestselling author Brenda Novak’s Online Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research. There are some top-notch agents and editors offering critiques there and some other terrific items to bid on. Best of all, it’s going to a great cause!

Moving on . . .

Once the contest ended two things really struck me as I looked back over the results:

1 — The common denominator in all of our winners was a strong voice. Jessica wrote an article about voice a week ago that sparked a great discussion. What seems apparent to me here, though, is that when given only 100 words with which to judge, we always found ourselves reeled in by the voice first and foremost. The hook was secondary.

I think that’s part of the reason we pulled out so many first-person points of view. It can be the toughest perspective to execute well, but can immediately draw the reader into a certain intimacy with the narrator that’s tough to achieve with a third-person POV. Does that mean Jessica and I favor first-person manuscripts? Not at all. While a first-person POV can create that faster connection with the audience, it’s a relationship that can quickly sour. It’s easy for a reader to grow sick of the narrator. That’s why it’s such a tricky skill to master.

Clearly a strong voice is important to a successful book, but I’d also like to clarify that just because a voice may not have struck us in the first 100 words doesn’t mean the manuscript is lacking a great one. It can often be something that builds. In fact, I just signed a client who entered one of our contests and didn’t even make honorable mention. But when I read her submission, I totally fell in love with her voice. I love the story and the characters too, but her writing style is really what hooked me. So please don’t be discouraged from submitting based on the contest results. It was a daunting task to judge based on 100 words, and so we had to make our decisions much differently than we might in the submission process.

2 — This business really is amazingly subjective. I’ll be honest. I really thought to myself while I was judging, “Oh yeah . . . Jessica’s going to pick this one.” I was almost always wrong. Having worked with her over the last four years, I think I have a pretty good idea of her likes and dislikes. I know which projects to pass on to her because they're more up her alley than mine. But even so, there’s a certain something special between a reader and the words on the page that’s impossible for an outsider to understand. I just couldn’t predict how Jessica would react to those words: which ones would strike a chord and which she’d gloss over. That strange chemistry is even harder to pin down when it’s based on so few words.

Personally, I embrace that subjectivity. It’s part of what I love about this business. The unpredictability keeps the industry exciting. Sure, there’s enough common ground among publishing professionals to keep the business running and establish relationships between author, agent, and editor, but taste still plays a huge factor. There are plenty of NYT bestsellers that I just didn’t “get.” I know Jessica and Jacky would say the same (though their examples would likely be different). There are others that totally clicked with me that I know were panned by other publishing professionals. It’s a fun debate and one I’ll talk about soon in an upcoming post.

In the meantime, what did you learn from the BookEnds contest? And once we’ve had our break . . . what would you like to see in the next contest?

Kim

A Change of Punctuation

I recently received the following question from a reader and it made me think of the style in which we write:

My question is about the dialogue dash. I love it. I write historical fiction, and I love the way the dialogue dash (instead of quotation marks) gives the speech a ‘foreign language’ nuance. Quotes seem too contemporary for the speech in my novel. I loved the effect in Cold Mountain and Cry, the Beloved Country.

I wonder, though, if it’s annoying to the reader, or worse—to the agent or editor! Would you reject a “dialogue dash” manuscript out of hand? Do you consider its use to be a barrier? I think my attributions are clear, even with the dash.

Not trying to be a “look at me; I use dashes” kind of writer. But putting my dialogue in quotes just makes it feel . . . different.

What do you think?

I think you should stick with quotation marks.

When we write we like to think that our voice stands out and makes our writing distinctive and many times I see authors try to add other things into their books, different styles of punctuation, art, etc., to make the book unique and different. However, what it comes down to is voice. You can can dress things up all you want, add shiny baubles and glitter, but in the end it’s the voice that’s going to truly matter. My suggestion here is that you should stick with traditional quotation marks. In fact, you should stick with traditional grammar style a la Chicago Manual of Style as much as possible. Once the book sells this is a discussion to be had with your editor. Converting quotation marks to a dialogue dash is easy enough and will come down to a matter of design, not so much writing style.

Part of getting the sense that an author can write is knowing the author has an understanding of basic writing skills. Now, I don’t expect any of you to be perfect. If you’ve read enough blog posts you should know that I am not a perfect grammarian in any sense of the word, but I also don’t want to read and discover that you have no idea where to place an apostrophe, not a clue about where to place dialogue or how to properly format it, or no sense of exclamation point usage (rare, by the way). Grammar is there to make reading easy and comfortable for us. When we see a quotation mark we know someone is talking. When we see a paragraph break in quotations we know someone new is talking. Simple, easy, and understandable. When trying to woo an agent or editor, keep it as simple and easy as possible.

I’d like to hear from readers though. Are you traditionalists or do you also think techniques like dialogue dashes make a difference in tone?

Jessica

A Time to Vent

As authors you have to listen to it all the time, agents and editors venting and ranting about everything you do wrong and all of the ways you irritate us. Well, now it’s your turn. I’m going to give you an open forum to tell your agent and editor horror stories, to ask kindly that we change the way we do certain things, or just to rant about the business in general. Anonymous posts suggested and recommended. The only thing I ask is that you not include the name of anyone you might be venting or ranting specifically about. If specific agent or editor names or houses or agencies are used, I will probably have to delete the comment. This isn’t meant as a witch hunt, but simply a way to let you let off steam. And I’m always interested in hearing horror stories or learning more about how we can be better agents.

I’m looking forward to hearing what you say!

Jessica

How to Advertise "Editability"

The lines between "mainstream" and "sensual" seem to be blurring these days, as more "mainstream" books include steamy scenes that just get racier as time passes. When I write, I have to decide how far to take the steamy scenes, if I don't just close the bedroom door. But I'm never averse to stepping up the heat level if a publisher wants, or adjusting it down or taking it out entirely. When trying to sign on with an agent, is there some way to say, "I'll be glad to tailor these scenes to suit the market" without sounding wishy-washy? And do you have to do that when you pitch the book?

Whether you’re writing steamy bedroom scenes, gory murder scenes, bloody battle scenes, or fantastical fantasy, I think you always need to do two things. The first is push your own limits and boundaries. Don’t get sucked in to what you think the market wants, editors will want, or agents want. One of the biggest mistakes I see authors make all the time is toning down their own writing because they think that’s what the market dictates. Take a look at some of the bestselling authors out there. One of the things they all have in common is that at the time their first work was published or they started to hit it big they were pushing the boundaries of what was seen as the norm for that time. To succeed you have to be different, and different means thinking outside of the box. Don’t be afraid to do that.

The second thing authors need to always consider is writing the book that works. If you feel a certain scene warrants hot sex or a really gruesome murder, then write it that way. If you feel that it is a tamer sex scene or the murder is off the page, go ahead and do that too. We can tell almost instantly when an author is no longer writing the book she feels should be written. It shows. If an agent really loves everything about your book, but feels the sex is too steamy or the fight too gory, she can easily ask you to tone that down. And trust me, we all assume that anyone submitting their work to us is open to revisions and changes. If not, it’s probably not going to be a good fit, so there’s no need to tell us you’re open to making changes. Write the book as you feel it should be and the rest should follow.

Jessica