noveldoctor

I suppose it’s possible to be a writer and not suffer from some variation of multiple personality disorder, but I haven’t yet met one who isn’t at least circumstantially Sybilic. I’m not talking about the characters you create who take up temporary residence in your gray matter, I’m referring to the diverse and often contradictory voices that all claim ownership of your publishing success.

There’s Clueless Cheerleader, for example. She’s always saying things like “You can do it!” and “Write, baby, write!” and “Every word you write is one word closer to ‘The End’!” Everything she says ends with an exclamation point and she doesn’t care what the other voices are saying. To her, writing is easy. Clearly, she doesn’t know much about writing.

Her nemesis is, of course, Self-Appointed Voice of Reason. It needs to be noted right away that Self-Appointed Voice of Reason is Self-Appointed for a reason: she’s not really the voice of reason. She’s a nay-sayer. A nattering nabob of negativism. A sourpuss. A party pooper. She has a ready response for every naive [her word] aphorism Clueless Cheerleader tapes onto the bathroom mirror. Her favorite rejoinder is “You’ll never be as good as Hemingway or as lucky as that writer who sold all those glittery vampire books, you know, what’s-her-name.”

Programmer’s voice is measured and calm. She can explain (in five succinct bullet points) exactly how to write a novel. This is because she studies all the how-to books and knows every system there is for turning a novel idea into a perfectly readable novel. She sounds smart because she is smart. She’s also a deadline’s best friend. But sometimes Programmer can get a little huffy. Like when Rabbit Trailer speaks up.

I’m sure you recognize Rabbit Trailer. Hers is the voice that encourages you to follow every stray thought. Sometimes she is certain the thought will lead somewhere important. Other times, she doesn’t think about where the thought might lead. She just tells you to follow it. When Programmer asks, “Where do you think you’re going?” she will usually reply, “I’ll know when I get there.”

Programmer’s cousin, Rule Keeper, also gets peeved with Rabbit Trailer. She’ll say things like “that’s not a complete sentence” or “kill all your adverbs” or “don’t you dare write a prologue” rather loudly [adverb added against counsel of Rule Keeper], not caring one bit that these sorts of things might hurt Rabbit Trailer’s feelings.

There are others, of course. Many others. Woe Is Me will tell you to seek out a new hobby/career, and fast. It’s Okay to Ask For Help will encourage you to seek the wise counsel of crit partners and professional editors. Don’t You Dare will tell you your words are spotless and golden and that if anyone even thinks about changing them that person should be forced to read [Name of book deleted by voice of If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, Don't Say Anything At All] from cover to cover. Out loud. A hundred times.

Most of these voices have some merit. The real challenge of writing is sorting through them, managing them. What happens when you’re not managing the voices in your head? Error-filled query letters. Broken plots. Two-dimensional characters. Oh, and a little thing called writer’s block. All the stuff that keeps you from realizing your dream of being published.

Here’s my advice: acknowledge these voices. Let them know you appreciate their role in your publishing journey. But also let them know that if they don’t play nice, you won’t hesitate to grab the microphone and kick them offstage. At least until you need them again.

Okay, Brevity just whispered in my ear that I should bring this post to a close.

So, um…The End.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a really brilliant un-agented, unpublished writer and you’ve recently finished final edits on a truly brilliant novel. Yesterday you queried a bunch of agents and today you got five “The Call” calls. Don’t laugh. We’re playing “let’s pretend,” remember?

How do you decide which agent will share 15 percent of your inevitable Very Nice Deal?

By gleaning great wisdom from this handy-dandy agent guide, that’s how.*

A Good Agent…will have some difficulty managing her excitement about representing you, occasionally letting slip words like “amazing” or “lyrical” or “compelling” in the course of her comments about your novel. She will talk about your novel’s main character, Gabrielle, so eloquently you’ll forget for a moment that you made her up.

A Bad Agent…will talk mostly about all the money the two of you will make and will refer to your novel in generic terms until she’s skimmed enough of the manuscript on the card table in front of her to declare your post-apocalyptic novel of spiritual re-birth “better than Dickens and Nicholas Sparks combined!”

A Good Agent…will tell you the truth about how hard it is to make it as a new author, then describe in detail how she tackles that challenge with as-yet-unpublished authors she chooses to represent.

A Bad Agent…will either a) tell you your book is perfect as is and pooh-pooh the idea of spending any more time on it, or b) tell you you’re “almost there” except for a bit of editing that she’d be happy to help you with for $2000.

A Good Agent…will invite your questions and answer every one unless he doesn’t know the answer. In that case, he’ll say “I don’t know,” research the answer, and then call you back.

A Bad Agent…will answer every question that makes him uncomfortable with the nauseatingly hyperbolic details of his most recent spectacular author deal (which he doesn’t reveal actually happened back in the ’80s).

A Good Agent…will return all of your calls within a day or two, or will shoot you an email letting you know when she can get back to you if she’s currently focused on meeting a critical deadline. But she also won’t hesitate to tell you if you’re calling too often. She’ll say it nicely.

A Bad Agent…will use the following excuses to explain why she didn’t return your last six calls: my cell phone died; my grandmother died; I was busy negotiating a huge deal for you and it was taking forever and I didn’t want to jinx it…but it fell through anyway; my cell phone died again; my other grandmother died.

A Good Agent…will graciously accept gifts of chocolate or Starbucks gift cards from current clients only.

A Bad Agent…will require gifts of chocolate or Starbucks gift cards before deciding to offer representation.

A Good Agent…will custom-select publishers for each book proposal, matching the books and authors to the publishers’ needs and interests.

A Bad Agent…will load proposals into a shotgun and fire it in the general direction of a zillion publishers, regardless of “fit,” just so she can say “hey, I sent it off to 25 publishers” when you ask for a status update.

A Good Agent…will not give up on an author he believes in just because the first round of submissions doesn’t net any offers.

A Bad Agent…will tell you no one is interested in your book after getting just one rejection.

A Good Agent…will be a cheerleader, a coach, an advocate, a negotiator, and a shoulder to cry on, sometimes all in the same day.

A Bad Agent…will do as little as possible to earn his 15 percent.

A Good Agent…will share a bottle of fine wine with you when celebrating the signing of your contract.

A Bad Agent…will share a bottle of fine wine with you when celebrating the signing of your contract…then deduct the cost of that wine from your first royalty check.

A Good Agent…will know when to make the difficult decision of tabling a current project due to publisher disinterest. Then she’ll help you turn your attention to the next one.

A Bad Agent…will keep re-submitting the current un-sold project until editors around the globe start to refer to you as “that annoying author.”

And finally:

A Good Agent…will still make mistakes. You can count on it.

*I’m not an agent and I don’t play one on TV. But over the years I’ve gotten to know a few of the good ones in my little publishing niche and some of them seem to like me.

You’ve read everybody else’s predictions. You’ve heard from the experts. The insiders. The pundits. Well, goody for you. Those  prognosticators may have knowledge. They may have expertise. They may even have credibility. But what they don’t have…is a really good imagination.

So forget all those boring predictions and trust mine instead. They’re based on years of…okay, fine. They’re not based on anything at all.

I just made ‘em up this morning.

In ten years…

• Those infinite monkeys with their ubiquitous typewriters will have successfully written Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and subsequently declared it “notably inferior to The Tempest.” Then they will throw feces at each other.
• 73 percent of people who own computers will have written a novel. The other 27 percent will have written two or more novels. 99.9 percent of all those novels will be crap.
• A group of recently-out-of-work literary agents will form a rock band and call themselves The Query-Spammers. They will be terribly ironic. And terrible.
• Apple will finally release its tablet computer. Steve Jobs will declare “the end of e-ink-induced headaches.” He will then reveal the two available configurations of the iTablet: Extra Strength and Sinus Congestion. Only Apple COO Tim Cook will laugh at his joke. Jobs’ famous “one more thing” will turn out to be the long-rumored, much maligned iTurtleneck. Promising to revolutionize corporate casual wear, the iTurtleneck will feature one less hole than traditional turtlenecks. It will come in black, and black.
• Oprah will start a new network television show dedicated solely to talking about books. Unfortunately, she’ll only talk about East of Eden, Love in the Time of Cholera and The Road.
• Hemp will replace wood pulp as the source of paper for traditional books. Traditional books will suddenly become popular with a new demographic: young people who think hemp is the part of the plant you smoke.
• Ray Kurzweil will introduce an e-reader device that beams content directly into your brain. Within days of its release, hackers will find a security hole and vanity presses will begin flooding the Kurzweil CorTex(t) with crappy self-pubbed books. A month after its release, millions of readers who thought they downloaded the latest Stephen King novel, Everything In the World Is Evil and I Mean Everything, will be more disappointed than usual with his increasingly verbose prose, completely unaware that they’re actually reading a rambling collection of spam headlines cobbled together by a bored hacker in St. Paul, MN.
• The racy novel, Hermione and Me, by David Gordon Rowling Murray will be released by Simon, Schuster, Hachette & Scholastic, LLC and sell out of the 10-million copy first run within seconds of its release. In an unrelated story, J. K. Rowling will purchase ten million copies of an unnamed book and bury them in a Montana landfill.
• President DeGeneres will declare December 9th as Read-a-Real-Book Day. Most people will choose something by Dr. Seuss.
• “Fiction” novels will still account for 100 percent of all novels.
• Guy Kawasaki will finally accept that his enduring popularity is due almost entirely to the fact that people think he invented the motorcycle.
• TwitterPrint, the book publishing arm of the Twitter Collective, will hit the top spot in the last print edition of the New York Times Best-Seller list with its first published work, Someday I’ll Wish I Hadn’t Said That, by millions of uncredited authors.
• I still won’t have a flying car.

Long before Twitter made the under-140-character limit de rigueur for quotable quotes, someone said “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”

This is good advice. What it means in practical terms is that if I greet my new boss with “I sure hope you’re not the same as the old boss – she was a real witch, and I don’t mean witch but I’m trying to be polite by replacing the letter ‘b’ with a more acceptable letter” or “Is it okay if I drink heavily on the job? Because I can only work drunk since this place really sucks” I’ll probably miss out on that promotion I was hoping for.

First impressions matter.

This is especially true in publishing, where you’re competing for headspace and shelfspace with a squillion other writers. In publishing, you don’t have just one first impression to make. You have a bunch. Here are some to consider (and a tip or two on how to make your impression memorable for all the right reasons).

The elevator pitch. Strike up a conversation when it’s appropriate and be concise when you talk about your book. Don’t pitch to an agent who looks especially burned-out. Don’t pitch to an agent who is snarfing her lunch while standing at a deli counter between conference appointments. And even if she invites conversation by asking if your stall has any toilet paper, do not pitch an agent in the bathroom. Oh, and be yourself. Practicing your pitch is good for learning what’s important about your book – but use your own voice when talking with an agent.

The conference appointment. Arrive on time. Get to the point. Don’t stay late. And somehow, yeah, be yourself.

The query. Study the agent’s guidelines and, without losing your writer’s voice, tailor your query accordingly. Also, don’t query agents who don’t rep your genre.

The sample chapter. If your best writing begins in chapter four, you’re not ready to query agents. Keep editing until your first three chapters are brilliant. Seriously. If you don’t capture readers with the first chapters, you’ll never capture an agent either.

The publishing industry googler. Tweet a hundred times a day. Update your Facebook status hourly if you so choose. Blog every day and comment all you want on other people’s publishing-related blogs. But never forget that an agent (or editor) who decides to google you [why does that phrase always come across as creepily sexual?] could run across any of your words. If the first words she reads are “agents are stupid” you just made a bad impression. Unless you’re referring to secret agents. But why would you do that? That would be stupid. Secret agents are the epitome of cool. Stop badmouthing secret agents, okay? Thanks.

The editor. So you get lucky and land a publishing contract. Good for you. Now, make nice with your editor. She’s not just someone with a red pen, she’s your collaborator. You don’t want your collaborator to hate you. Not right away, anyway.

The marketing and sales staff. Be enthusiastic about your role in the marketing and sales process. If you give the impression that you’re expecting them to do all the work, you’re shooting yourself in the [book] spine. Announce your availability and willingness to do whatever it takes during your very first conversation with these fine, under-appreciated folks.

The reader. Some readers will love your words. They’ll fill Amazon’s review section with high praise and high fives. But some will hate you for wasting a few hours of their lives. Resist the urge to slap back at these people. Just smile and say “thank you” to all who comment. And learn what you can from both the fanatic fans and the determined detractors.

The booksigning visitor. Unless you’re intentionally going for that “lives in a dumpster” look, make a tiny bit of effort to look good for the masses who will hover at your table, eager to meet a successful writer in 3-D. And bring breath mints. Lots of them.

[Thanks to my older brother for suggesting this blog topic. I can't be certain what his first impression was of me. After all, I was just a few days old at the time.]

As most of you probably know, Real Life has been rather difficult these past few weeks. My premie granddaughter, Ayla, has been fighting for life since she was born on November 11, sixteen weeks early. I’ve been spending much of this time focusing on the needs of my young son, his equally-young girlfriend and their tiny, beautiful little girl. Sadly, it looks as though her fight is nearly over. Until things settle down here, I just can’t find a lot of emotional energy to write witty, wise things for this blog. However, this blog and its associated community of loyal subjects are important to me.

I have a dozen posts in the “to be written” queue. I’m sure they’ll be Truly Helpful and Utterly Meaningless as always. (Like the “choose your own adventure” approach to determining whether self-publishing or traditional publishing is best for you. Or the mostly-serious post on all the “first impressions” a new writer must manage on the path to publishing.)

But it’s not quite time to write those.

Until then…play football with your sons and buy your daughters ponies. And offer love and grace to those who need it. (That would be all of us.)

Peace.

Let’s not call them confessions, okay? Because that reeks of guilt. And for many of the following, I feel no guilt whatsoever.

I admit…

• I am immediately turned off by best-selling books because I hold fast to an erroneous belief that for something to be popular, it must cater to the lowest common denominator and I prefer to believe I am far above that line.
• I am not above that line.
• I pick up a book based on its cover and only rule out a possible purchase if the blurb on the back bores me to tears. Otherwise, I’ll buy it and give the author every opportunity to surprise me.
• I read more “debut” novels than any other category and am frequently pleasantly surprised.
• I believe the sophomore slump for writers is usually more about lack of time to write than lack of talent.
• I believe some writers only have one good book in them.
• Great writing intimidates me to the point of wanting to give up.
• Great writing inspires me to superglue my ass to the chair and write until I get it right.
• I’m constantly conflicted by great writing. And I spend way too much money on superglue.
• If people ask me what my favorite book is, I tell them “Tender Is the Night” when I want to sound smart and well-read, or “Go, Dog. Go!” if I just want them to stop asking me questions.
• I haven’t read Anna Karenina, War & Peace, The Brothers Karamazov or anything by Danielle Steel.
• I have at least 15 books sitting around my apartment (or on the back seat of my car) that I recently purchased and haven’t yet read. I will buy at least 15 more books before I’ve read half of the ones I already own.
• I am infinitely more bothered by poor characterization or lazy plotting than misspellings or other typos.
• I am quick to fall in love with a writer whose book makes me remember what it’s like to feel the deepest feelings of longing and loss. Then I stalk her with charming and clever emails. When presented with a restraining order, I am initially disappointed to discover that the language in the restraining order is boilerplate and not from the writer’s pen. At first, this hurts. But then I realize she is only choosing this approach because she knows the distance it creates between us will inevitably cause me to remember what it’s like to feel the deepest feelings of longing and loss. She is so clever. I love her.
• Sometimes I believe it when people refer to me as “brilliant.”
• Not really.
• I love my job, even though it occupies my brain 24/7.
• I have no idea what I’m doing 23/7.
• The best measure I have of whether or not my novel-in-progress is any good comes when I go back to re-read an old section and find myself wondering who’s been tampering with my file and re-writing all the crap so it’s actually entertaining and witty.
• I suffer from low self-esteem.
• I love everybody.
• Except when I hate everyone.
• I labor over every Tweet, every e-mail, and every blog post (except maybe this one).
• When I write a short story, I don’t always know where it’s going. This, despite the fact that I usually write the last sentence first.
• I am pretty sure John Irving does this, too.
• I would never compare myself to John Irving.
• Unless he tends to fall in love with writers who make him feel the deepest feelings of longing and loss and subsequently stalks them. Then we might have something in common.
• Unlike how I write my stories, I didn’t start with the last line of this blog post and therefore I have no idea how I’m going to end it.
• Or do I?

First of all, if you’re coming here from @katdish’s “Hey Look, a Chicken” blog, don’t click on the link below. It’s just going to take you right back to her post and then you’ll be stuck in an infinite loop and will eventually die of starvation. Or boredom. But since you’re here, feel free to look at older posts about writing and stuff. Just don’t click the link in the next paragraph. I mean it.

But if you’re coming here from somewhere else, go ahead and click this link so you can read what I wrote for Kathy’s blog. It’s a post called “The Unbearable Being of Linus” and it’s kind of about writing.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a highly entertaining post for this blog that I hope to publish over the weekend. And by “highly entertaining” I mean mildly humorous to anyone who’s had at least three glasses of wine.

Oh, and here’s a picture. It might be a metaphor. Or it could just be a picture of a zookeeper cleaning an elephant cage.

If you’ve been reading my little blog for any length of time, you already know that editors aren’t prefect. [Yes, I just wrote “prefect.” Squirming yet?]

As evidence of this, I present to you some of the most common mistakes editors make. By “editors” I mean me. And by “mistakes” I mean errors in judgment prompted by sleep deprivation, excessive drinking, lack of confidence in the job, or plain ol’ incompetence. I’ve given each of the editorial screw-ups a title, but these are only my made-up titles and are not the terms officially sanctioned by the National Governing Board of Freelance Editors (NGBFE), which I don’t think exists, but if it did I would already be reaching for my wallet to pay a fine for my contextually inappropriate abbreviation of “old” in the previous sentence.

Never Say Never – It’s so easy to do and it seems so right, we don’t think twice. We just do it. And the thing is, it’s quite often the right thing to do. But…not always. I’m talking about trimming adverbs. You see, we’ve read all the books, too – the ones that say adverbs are badverbs. Or something like that. So we cut ‘em out of habit. Even when we shouldn’t. We make similar mistakes when applying other Rules of Good Writing, like getting rid of all semi-colons or universally suggesting all “tell” copy needs to “show.” Thankfully, this sort of mistake only happens when we’ve been editing for 24 hours straight. Which we aren’t supposed to do, according to the NGBFE.

Exterminate! Exterminate! – Despite the fact that the title is a reference to Dr. Who’s Daleks, this editorial no-no has nothing to do with science fiction and instead is a subset of what I lovingly call The Goldilocks Compendium. (Actually, I’ve never called it that until just now. And because of that little lie, I can expect another fine from the NGBFE.) Exterminate! Exterminate! is all about being “too hard” on a manuscript. It’s about cutting. (Not the kind that people do when they’re emotionally unstable, though it must be acknowledged that all editors are emotionally unstable and probably would resort to this sort of cutting if not for coffee, wine, and chocolate.) This is the arena where I am most roguish. If I had a sweatshirt with my editorial mantra on it, it would say “Less is more.” I think it would be dark gray, with a half-zip collar and white lettering. I celebrate the economy of words, perhaps to a fault (except in blogposts, where I overwrite to my heart’s content). Maybe this is why Twitter is fun for me. Anyway, when I come across a big paragraph, my eyes get bigger still and out comes the X-acto knife of death. Cut, cut, snip, snip. And now it’s just a single sentence. There’s nothing wrong with cutting extra words (most people use too many), but I run the risk of cutting away the pretty colors in a manuscript if I’m not careful.

Intimidate! Intimidate! – Part two of The Goldilocks Compendium is a corollary to the above: going too soft on a manuscript. I’ll admit I can be intimidated by good authors. I’ll read an amazing manuscript and think, “damn, that’s good,” and question my editorial skills and my sanity and my salvation and wonder if I have the right to touch any words at all. Usually, on a second pass, I discover areas for improvement and make those edits and recommendations. But sometimes I’m not tough enough on what’s there. It works, so why change it? Well, here’s a good reason: to bump it from good to great, or great to excellent. This is why I’m (eventually, though never soon enough) paid the (not really) big bucks. And this where an editor’s art and uncertainty walk hand in hand like young lovers. (No, I don’t have a clue what that means.) Hopefully, more often than not, I make the right call. But I am always thankful, if a little sheepish, when an author says, “Hey, you missed something. I think we could actually cut this (or add this, or change this)” after I’d already let it slide.

My Word Is Better Than Your Word – I think this is self-explanatory. But I’ll explain it anyway. Sometimes an editor replaces a perfectly good word just for the hell of it. [Note to NGBFE: I"m kidding. Officially.] Okay, that’s not usually why. They replace the word because they like it better. I have my word preferences and you have yours. Most of the time, yours work just fine. But sometimes, I’ll read yours and think, “Really? ‘Crepuscular?’ Why?” And then I’ll change yours to mine because I’m the editor and I’m supposed to know what’s best for you. Normally, I’ll realize my selfish ways before I finish editing and you’ll never see my words because I’ll change them back to what you had. Unless there’s defensible benefit to changing your word, I don’t need to touch it.

Whose Voice Is It Anyway? – Some authors have clearly defined voices. When I read their manuscripts, I hear exactly what they sound like and can attenuate my editing to match that voice. However, when I work on a manuscript where the voice isn’t so distinct, I sometimes make this editorial blunder: I apply my writer’s voice (or one of them, anyway, considering I suffer from Multiple Author Voice Syndrome). That’s not the right thing to do. In these cases, it’s the editor’s responsibility (according to NGBFE statute 27.1, subsection R.) to help the author find and then maintain his or her voice throughout the manuscript. This is easier said than done, by the way.

Missing the Point Completely – Sometimes Editors Miss the Point Completely. An author may have constructed a perfectly reasonable plot or created a perfectly believable character, but the editor Just Doesn’t Get It. And in their attempt to fix The Thing They Just Don’t Get, the editor makes things worse. I don’t have a Really Good Excuse for why this happens. Let’s just go with, Editors Are Human and follow that up with Humans Are Imperfect and leave it at that. Here’s the good news, though – Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Then someone invented the Internet. Now editors and authors can Talk About Stuff and Clarify Things They Just Don’t Understand. [Another note to NGBFE: I've already calculated the fees for excessive capitalization. You'll be receiving payment in approximately six to twelve-hundred weeks, depending on when my accounting department can get to it.]

Other Stuff – We add typos. We miss continuity errors. We break a plot when trying to fix it somewhere else. We change the color of your protagonist’s hair. We get fingerprints on the printed manuscript. We remove all references to Al Gore. We add references to Al Gore. We write whole sections for you instead of simply noting in a comment what we think is missing. We can be lazy and careless.

But mostly we try really hard to do everything we can to make your book the best book you’ve ever written.

That’s all for today. I need to go screw up edit a manuscript now. Thanks for coming. Please deposit your 3-D glasses in the bin at the end of the hallway on your way out.

The other night I took a break from an editing marathon to watch a movie. This will not surprise anyone who knows me. I love movies. Especially movies you haven’t heard of yet. Like this one.

Phoebe in Wonderland.

It’s the story of 9-year-old Phoebe (brilliantly played by the other Fanning, Elle) and her apparent Alice-in-Wonderland-flavored struggle with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (which turns out to be something else but I’m not telling because I think some of you are going to rent this movie now that I’ve mentioned it and it’s always more fun to discover Important Plot Points in the context of your own experience rather than through the eyes of another).

There are a number of reasons I enjoyed this film, but I’m only going to talk about one: I got lost in it.

Not lost in a “where is this going?” way (though a certain amount of that kind of lost is actually a good thing), but more in a “where did the time go?” way.

Phoebe (the movie, and the character) took me on a gentle, unexpected expedition. I felt as if I were actually wandering around in this uniquely blended mix of the real and unreal where Phoebe and her parents and sister and peers and a brilliantly odd drama teacher and more than a few fictional characters lived. It’s not that the story was a meandering mess – the structure and plot and point eventually revealed themselves. But for much of the story, I didn’t care about that.

I was having too much fun with the beautiful uncertainty.

I wanted to wander. I wanted to get lost.

Here’s the thing you already know about wandering: the point isn’t to end up somewhere, it’s all about wondering. (Didja catch that clever wordplay?) Wondering what’s around the next corner. What’s under the rug. What’s hiding in the tree. What’s lurking. What’s in the box. What’s making that noise.

Movies like Phoebe bend narrative rules a bit. They break out of the expected plot lines and invite viewers to experience snippets of the created world from the unique perspective of one of the characters. (See also: Finding Neverland and, if you’re not frightened by cardboard, The Science of Sleep.)

What does all this have to do with novel writing? Well, it’s simple, really. I’m telling you to get lost.

Go ahead and plot your story if that’s how you like to write. But once or twice or a thousand times, steal away into the novel’s world and allow yourself to step off the plotted path. Explore the stuff that’s not obvious, that’s not there.

You might be thinking “yeah, well my novel isn’t fantasy so I don’t see how this applies to me.” After slapping you silly with a waterlogged gnome hat, I’ll ask you to take back your words. It doesn’t matter what genre you’re writing – the world you’re creating is bigger than the story arc you’ve imagined. It’s deeper and wider and taller than the words on the page. You can’t point readers to that expanse unless you’ve been there yourself.

When you lose yourself in the world of your making, that world can grow, expand, and offer up things you’d never thought of. This can be a scary prospect, especially if you’re a write-by-numbers person. It might feel like being asked to strip naked and chase saber-toothed bunnies in a blinding sleet across a frozen lake. And it’s quite possible you could run in a hundred different directions and never discover a single thing you can actually use in the novel. But at least you will have gotten some exercise. And more than that, you’ll have discovered what you want your readers to discover – that there’s a great big living, breathing world behind the page.

If you follow all the writing advice books and blogs and tweets, you can learn to write a perfectly serviceable novel. Maybe even a really good novel. Tension on every page? Go for it. Flawed characters? Sure. Use all the tips and tricks you want. But before you type “the end” please take some time to wander. Here’s a helpful tip: If you find there’s nowhere to wander? Well, you might just need to start over.

There. That’s it.

Now get lost.