XYKADEMIQZ

I don’t need much of an excuse to start writing about fiction here, since this is the closest that my science persona and my fiction persona get to intersect, given I’m wrapped in multiple pen-name cloaks meant to protect the innocent (everyone, really) and the foolish (that would be me). So when lyra211 commented today, I jumped on the opportunity to respond, and will likely follow up with a series of posts since I’m the mood for writing about my fiction journey. (Yes, this means I’m procrastinating on a bunch of other stuff I should be doing instead; productive procrastination, thy name is xykademiqz.) 

lyra211 says:
“Congrats on your writing successes! I feel like a bit of a cliché, getting into writing in middle age, but I’ve been spending some time playing around with writing picture books. It’s an insanely difficult business to break into, from what I’ve seen so far, but I am enjoying playing around with the ideas and still have some hope that it might go somewhere. Have you mostly self-published, or are you going the traditional publishing route? What has helped you refine your craft? I’m a scientist who took exactly one English class in college and was a bit mystified by the grading criteria, and I’m finding myself suddenly uncomfortable in a world where the criteria are so vague and it’s hard to know how to improve. I know how to have a conversation about the limitations of my modeling and statistics approaches, but not how to have a conversation about what does and doesn’t work in my dialogue. Have you ever taken creative writing classes, or are you just figuring it out as you go?“

(Adapted from my response)

So glad to hear you’re writing creatively!

I think your questions deserve something like three posts worth of answers, but here is the gist.

“Have you mostly self-published, or are you going the traditional publishing route?”

Traditional. There is a vast traditional-publishing space between the Big Five (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster; here, having an agent is a must) and self-publishing. Medium and small publishers, often focused on specific genres, typically take both agented and unagented submissions. Some medium-sized publishers are highly reputable and coveted (e.g., Kensington) and some small ones have excellent taste and put out amazing, award-winning stuff (e.g., Bluemoose). My two novels and two novellas were published by a small genre publisher; my short-story collection is coming out with a very different small publisher.  The downside of working with small presses is that they don’t have much of a budged for promotion; the upside is that it’s still traditional publishing (i.e., somebody other than me thinks my work is worth putting money into), so they provide professional cover art, editing, etc. People who self-publish either have a large audience already, or are willing to grow it by putting out new books frequently (much more frequently than I can, given the demands on my time) and by relentlessly working ads and social media in ways that I have neither the time nor the inclination for, and for which I would be too old, ugly, and boring even if I were willing to put my likeness out there, which I’m not.

As for children’s lit, you could perhaps try querying a few agents, see if you get any bites or at least some feedback. Near as I can tell, children’s lit and nonfiction are ridiculously hard to get into, but neither is a genre I have deep knowledge of. QueryTracker (https://querytracker.net/) is your friend; most agents receive queries through there. More on what agents want can be found here: https://manuscriptwishlist.com/find-agentseditors/agent-list/. There are a lot (A LOT) of resources online on writing a compelling query once your manuscript is ready. For example, BookEnds Literary Agency runs a YouTube channel with good advice on querying. https://www.youtube.com/@BookEndsLiterary

“What has helped you refine your craft? I’m a scientist who took exactly one English class in college…”

Remember, I’m not  a native speaker, so I didn’t even have that one college class. You’re already leaps and bounds ahead of me. 

However, I’ve written technical prose my whole career, then blog since 2010, short fiction since 2017, and finally novels starting in 2023. I think some people are more talented, more creative, and have a better natural command of the language than others, so they improve to stratospheric craft levels very quickly. I know a handful of such people who started writing short fiction the same time as me and now write full time, have multiple books out with top publishers in their genre, and have won major awards and movie deals. It would be easy to say I could’ve done that if I didn’t have the job and family I do, but the reality is that I’m probably only moderately talented (if that). On the other hand, there are plenty of worse people than me with way bigger egos, so I don’t think I’m that bad of a nuisance overall. As for my MO, I have to give myself permission to try new stuff, which generally requires that I first decide I’ve mastered something at a level I deem sufficient before I say, “OK. You’re ready to take this next step now.” Sometimes I worry I’m too conservative, but then I go read yet another novel where I think, “Wow. This should’ve been 30% shorter. Clearly you’ve never written short fiction,” so perhaps being a little conservative isn’t the worst thing.

By the way, there are plenty of scientists (and, for some reason, many, many lawyers) who write fiction, so you’re not alone by any stretch. I have been writing fiction for 9 years now, and knowing other writers who write similar stuff, whose work you like and get and who like and get yours, is absolutely invaluable for improving. Writing a lot, editing a lot, reading and editing other people’s stuff, having other people (not randos—people whose work you like and get; I cannot stress this enough) read and comment on your stuff, reflecting on why something works and something doesn’t, reflecting on why people respond to a piece of fiction they way they do, writing, writing, writing… You have to read a ton (in your genre, but also cross-genre) and write a ton, and get in the habit of analyzing how you felt when you read something and figuring out why at the mechanics level. Then submit stuff for publication, get rejected, dust off, revise, and keep going at it until you achieve what you want.

For inspiration, here are a couple of great quotes.

Ira Glass on the frustrating mismatch between taste and skill: “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone [had] told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.“

Lemony Snicket on rejection: “A writer’s relationship with rejection is like that of a fish to water. It’s all that’s there. I think you should feel it and feel utter despair and then move on.“