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How I Got My Agent: A Story Even I Can Barely Believe

8+ years
7 finished manuscripts
200+ rejections
1 dream come true

Honestly, this is about the level of chill I have regarding all this.

After more than 8 years of queries and 7 manuscripts, I’m happy to announce that I am now represented by the wonderful Melanie Figueroa of Root Literary! I’m thrilled beyond belief to have found an agent that believes in my voice, writing, stories, and self. To have reached this milestone floors me. I still can’t believe it.

As writers often do when they get an agent, I wanted to share my journey to reach this point. Both because I hope it can offer some information and encouragement to others still looking for their agent and because I think my path was a little stranger than most. You see…

I never planned to write books.

I was a poet. And I don’t mean, “I wrote poems for fun when I was a kid” (though I did 100% do that). I mean, I deep-dove on poetry all through high school and college, including writing an Ars Poetica for my degree’s senior honors project to go with a true epic poem. Not to mention that I really, REALLY wanted to be a poet for my career. I’d been writing since I was a little kid—it’s been my passion for most of my life—but the only prose I wrote were fragments of short stories and the occasional start to novels that I never finished because I didn’t believe I could write a good book.

‘Poetry,’ I thought to myself as I graduated with degrees in English and psychology, ‘poetry is a stable career into which I can launch myself!’

Nope
Have I ever mentioned that I’m an idealist… and sometimes a hopeless optimist?

Yeah, that didn’t work out. Shockingly, there weren’t a copious supply of full-time, well-paid poet positions available on the market in 2011. Or, y’know, ever. So I did what I needed to do in order to help support myself and my (awesome) wife: get a terrible job at an insurance company. I was an Agency Sales Support Assistant (or A.S.S. Assistant). Weirdly, no one at the company wanted to call it by that acronym. The job was absurdly boring. I worked hard, did well, but my brain was dying from lack of stimulation, so I decided to do something crazy: write a book.

I couldn’t do this on my work computer, of course, so I took the sheets of used printer paper (the to-be-recycled cover sheets from faxes and such where one side just had a date on it) and started writing one line at a time with a pencil. Finish a work task? Write one line. On my single 15-minute break for the shift? Write a few more.

Ultimately, I wrote a 123,000-word epic fantasy that way. My first finished novel.

I adored it… It was full of big ideas and over-the-top action. It was great, dense, and definitely terrible.

In anticipation of this post, I dug through old emails and found evidence that I had sent some queries (all form rejections, of course) before I tried to write something new. And hopefully better.

I’d gotten bitten by the book bug. Bitten BAD.

I'm in danger

My 2nd book came not long after. My first kids book (a YA fantasy), it had a lot of great ideas that were all executed pretty poorly. Also it ended on a horrific cliffhanger. But I learned A LOT in writing it. Most especially, I realized that I loved writing kids books. Something about the dynamism, joy, realness, and wonder of kids books really clicked with me. Still does.

I queried my 2nd finished novel around 15 times. All rejections. Bummer, but I already had a new idea.

My 3rd novel took much longer than the 2nd. It was my first science fiction outing (I adore sci-fi), built around AI and questions of humanity centered on a kid protagonist. For the first time, I felt like I’d crafted a complete, engaging story that others could enjoy. It was also a lot more grim and intense than anything else I’d done. In part because that fit the nature of the story, but I also had an incredibly stressful job as the Research Director and Managing Editor for a healthcare advisory firm at the time. When I started the novel we were cruising upward in success, working with healthcare leaders across the country.

Then an outside firm purchased our start-up and I was forced out by a change in management. It was mid 2017. I thought I would get another job in 1-3 months. My wife and I could handle that.

It took 15. 15 months of looking at jobs every day. Applying for everything I could that fit my experience and skills. Hundreds of attempts. 15 months.

And to keep myself sane during that time, I worked on what I loved: my stories.

I wound up finishing my 3rd novel in the immediate aftermath of my healthcare position. I threw myself into the work: revising, editing, polishing, striving every day to make it the best story I’d ever created.

I made a writer Twitter account and participated in my first Twitter Pitch events. I made my first Twitter writer friends. And then I queried my 3rd novel, a YA Sci-fi, 20+ times. I don’t know the exact number. I wasn’t keeping the best records yet; that came later. I submitted to PitchWars and other manuscript/editing contests. I tried as hard as I could.

(It’s worth noting that I queried 20+ times, but I closely considered and researched WAY more agents than that. I’ve always been really picky about who I submit to as I tried to find someone who seemed like they would love my stories and fit well in a working partnership with me.)

All rejections. No requests. Just rejections. It was the best thing I’d ever written. My beta readers loved it. But it still wasn’t getting any success outside of my small circle. And yes, I know I could have sent WAY more queries than that, but throwing myself into what I felt would be more rejections on top of the job rejections I was getting was too much. It hurt.

No matter how many rejections you get, they ALWAYS hurt. That vulnerability is simply part of sharing your creativity and art with the world. And it’s worth it.

But anyway, as I waited to hear back on those queries, I threw myself into writing the sequel to that YA Sci-fi. Most of my books (at that time) took over six months to write. This one took 1.5 months, flat. It was crazy. Time and a desperation to find satisfaction in creativity really drove me forward.

But no one wanted that book either. ~30 queries. Many, many pitch events. No requests. All rejections.

Cool (sarcastic)
I definitely felt like a winner.

All of this takes us from 2012 through 2017. By the beginning of 2018, I came to a decision that would change my life: I was going to write something just for myself. I wouldn’t worry about genre, age category, or comp titles. I wouldn’t even think about what anyone else would get from it. This new book would be just for me. Only for me. Because I needed something to go my way. I had nothing to lose. With my incredible wife’s support, I started on a book featuring a character some of you may have heard of: Iri.

Iri’s story would be a secondary world fantasy inspired by the style, themes, and tone of North American Indigenous oral mythology. I wanted to celebrate the ancestry I carry. Embrace a world filled with people whose skin looked like mine. A world full of stories and beauty and wonder.

I started writing Iri in March of 2018. Finished in less than 3 months. Edited the whole book immediately afterward. I got my first agent request for Iri from a pitch event in July. Then came the big fall pitch event combo: #PitMad and #DVpit, barely a month apart. Iri blew up. I got dozens of agent requests, received likes from editors at major publishers, and met a bunch of really great writers that I’m still friends with to this day.

I wound up with a bunch of full manuscript requests. FULL MANUSCRIPT REQUESTS!

To someone who had gone 4+ years without even getting a partial, I cannot express how revolutionary this felt. People—cool, publishing industry people—wanted to read something I wrote. And many of them enjoyed it… but none of them loved it “enough.”

All querying writers know the line: “I just didn’t fall in love with [BOOK]”. I also got some “this would be great if it was traditionally written.” And a few, “your voice is wonderful BUT…”.

In the end, despite all the successful pitches and queries, I didn’t get any offers. I realized something that had been true from the beginning: my books leaned literary, which could make it hard for them to push an agent over the “offering line”. But I knew I was close, so I kept working. And anyway, I love writing stories, so why would I stop? Honestly, if you had told me at any point over these years that I was destined to never get an agent, I still would’ve kept writing purely for the enjoyment and satisfaction of it.

My 5th book, an MG portal fantasy built around video games like Pokémon and Jade Cocoon, was drafted before the middle of 2019. 21 queries.

1 full request from an agent named Melanie Figueroa.

This would prove to be very important.

I waited for a reply on that full with an enormous amount of anticipation. Melanie was from a terrific agency (Root Literary!) and her interests leaned literary, just like mine. She seemed upbeat and excited about kids books. A few months later (April of 2020, no less), her reply came: a rejection… but the BEST kind of rejection. The kind where she told me what she loved and what didn’t quite work for her. She encouraged me and told me that I had a wonderful voice for middle grade. Even better, I could tell from how she described the book that she got it. What the story was really, truly about.

I’m a firm believer that fantasy and sci-fi novels should use their fantastical settings to tackle real world issues that can be difficult to address in contemporary stories, and I could tell Melanie understood. She instantly shot to the top of my list of agents to query with other projects. A lot of writers talk and joke about their dream agents; Melanie became one of mine. She was on the shortlist from that day forward. (Fun fact: around this point, my wife decided that Melanie was her preferred agent for me to get someday!) In the last line of her rejection, Melanie said she would be happy to see something else from me, and I just so happened to have this one story about a girl named Iri and an adventure across two worlds.

Now, this wasn’t the Iri that I’d first queried to agents in 2018. Nor the completely revised, rewritten, and queried version from 2019. This was a third, brand-new version that I’d been working on since the pandemic started. Now an MG fantasy, I’d worked SO hard to bridge the necessarily complex style of storytelling with easier-to-approach narration and a smoother runway to the core plot and conflict. With her permission, I sent the first chapter to Melanie. She asked for the full the next day.

I may have been a little hyped. Or a lot. Okay, very much a lot.

This was it. This had to be it.

Here was an agent who got my style. Loved my voice. Enjoyed my work. And I’d just sent her the best thing I’d ever written. This HAD to be it. I’d sent ~90 queries for Iri. Pitched it in at least 15 events. Gotten 15 full requests plus requests from editors at five major publishers, including an open invitation to submit Iri directly to one. I was SO close. I just needed to wait a little longer.

Of course, 2020 interfered with everyone’s everything. We all fought to survive the disease, our anxiety, our fears, our depressions. We lost loved ones. We grieved. We struggled to be creative and hope even as the world around us seemed dim.

I started writing a new book—a YA space opera—and got 40,000 words in before something more joyful stole my attention: a modern YA fantasy involving a magic food competition. Still waiting for Melanie’s reply, I spent the last months of 2020 feverishly drafting this new book.

And then the email came in the first days of 2021. It started so good. Again, she loved my voice. Loved the beauty of the descriptions and the stories. BUT…

She had some concerns. She wanted to know if I would consider revising and resubmitting.

I admit, that hurt a little. Sure, it wasn’t a No. But it also wasn’t a Yes. Still, I know that one of the most important things to reaching your dreams is perseverance, so I told her I was interested because of course I was. She was still one of my dream agents.

Still, I know that one of the most important things to reaching your dreams is perseverance

I had finished my edits on my new YA Fantasy—my 7th finished manuscript—and gotten that querying as I waited. And despite my and my beta readers’ sky high hopes, my queries weren’t doing great. With Melanie’s Iri email in mind, I started reworking Iri.

I had a small number of queries still out on the YA Fantasy as I worked on revisions. No other prospects. Nothing particularly promising to talk about. 4.5 months had passed since Melanie’s last email. I was thinking about how I would pitch my new book in the June #PitMad. And then, one Wednesday afternoon utterly out of the blue, I got an email. It was Melanie. And she wanted to talk to me on the phone about Iri and some other things like my new project.

An agent. Wanted. To talk to me. On the phone. HOLY CRAP.

This had never happened before. In the eight years since I sent out those first queries, no agent had ever asked to call me. Let alone an agent I liked.

Some of you may immediately have thought, upon reading this, AND YOU KNEW SHE WAS GONNA OFFER.

But you’re wrong. I didn’t know that. Sure, I had the crazy, distant hope that she was calling to offer… but offer on what? She loved two of my books, loved my writing and my voice, but she’d gently declined both full manuscripts. I convinced myself she wasn’t going to offer in anticipation of our call a few days later.

And I was wrong.

Actually my face during the call.

Melanie went on to explain that she couldn’t stop thinking about the voice of my stories and the way I write. She explained the potential she sees for me and my career. And it was everything I’d been waiting more than 8 years to hear. I notified the few agents still considering my material, some of whom asked for (and got) full manuscripts and shared glowing words with me, but none of them held a candle to what Melanie offered. Like I (and my wife) felt over a year ago, Melanie gets my stories. Gets why I write. She understands what I’m trying to do and agrees that kids books (especially MG) can have such a big, positive impact for their readers. She wants to help me bring my stories to the world.

Of course, I accepted the offer.

And now, here I sit, writing this gargantuan post to tell an honestly short version of a gargantuan story. There’s so much more I want to say; want to explain. So many moments of triumph and utter heartbreak. So many times I was cut down by someone and uplifted by someone else. So many times I watched friends who started querying long after me succeed long before me as I cheered them on despite the part of me that hurt. But that’s the way of things. Everyone’s journey is full of uncountable details. Innumerable little moments where we choose to go forward when we want to give up. Choose to try again even though the last 200 attempts have failed. And sometimes that feels like insanity. That’s what people will say, of course: that doing the the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. But in the words of activist Olga Misik: “I guess hope is insanity.”

Everyone’s journey is full of uncountable details. Innumerable little moments where we choose to go forward when we want to give up. Choose to try again even though the last 200 attempts have failed. And sometimes that feels like insanity.

And I along with my wife, my parents, my sister, my in-laws, and my friends, have had so much hope throughout this journey. Even in the darkest, hardest days.

We have even more hope for what wonders the future will bring.

With all that said, I want to end on gratitude:

Thank you to God for making all this possible and inspiring me to write.

Thank you to my wife, Reneé, without whom I would be lost. I believe in the you that believes in me. I love you so much.

Thank you to my mom, who always treated every story like a good one… even when they definitely weren’t.

Thank you to my in-laws, who have become such fierce supporters to me on this journey.

Thank you to my friends, who have been cheerleaders, beta readers, and all-around cool people.

Thank you to Melanie, who believes in me and my voice. Who has a vision for the stories I’ve dreamed about for so long.

I can’t wait for what comes next. I can’t wait to show you all the worlds I imagine and the characters I love. It’s time to find out what the future holds.

-Christopher

(If you have questions about querying and my journey or simply want to discuss, feel free to comment here or find me on Twitter via @Dreamertide!)

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Sometimes Great Beginnings Start with Stops

I’ve been writing for many years. If you want to be very specific, the first creative work I specifically remember making of my own accord was a three-page poem about wolves that I wrote in the third grade. I kept going after that, writing predominantly for fun until I suddenly found that writing was an excellent way of processing everything going on in my life as well.

I didn’t start seriously writing novels until the year after I graduated from college. In the months leading up to writing that first manuscript, I wrote basically nothing. I had been depressed with difficulty in finding a job (Yay, Millenials!) and deciding whether I wanted to pursue graduate school to become an English professor.

For years, I had written nearly every day, but over this span of arduous months…

I stopped.

And from that stop came a new beginning.

Since then, I’ve drafted six novels in about the same number of years, steadily improving from quaint narratives that seemed fun to a story crafted in the style of Indigenous oratory mythology featuring a teen trying to decide who they are amidst a world full of people with countless expectations. (To those familiar with my Iri, that last one will sound familiar.)

I’ve written a thousand poems, too, in margins or texts to myself or actual dedicated notebooks that I lose sometimes.

What’s my point?

Maybe we don’t need to be so hard on ourselves when we take a break.

https://giphy.com/gifs/xYHscQ1Np55i8
Crazy, I know.

Burn-out. Fatigue. Exhaustion. I’ve seen them a million times. I’m sure that by the end of this week (I’m drafting this on a Tuesday), I’ll have seen at least one person posting about it on Twitter, asking if it’s okay that they haven’t written in an hour or day or week.

Of course, it’s okay.

Stopping is not always failure. A lot of VERY famous and wonderful authors have quotes about the merit of “writing every day.” I’m not here to dispute that. And I’m definitely not here to encourage your (or my) procrastination.

The point isn’t to stop writing when it gets hard or you don’t know the solution to a problem. Often, the best and only solution to writer’s block is to keep writing anyway. Even though it may be bad. Even though it feels icky.

Stopping as a way of avoiding our challenges only makes those challenges seem more imposing. Before long, you can create a scenario where you never write at all, even though you have all the talent and ideas in the world. The mountain you’ve created seems so vast that beginning anew feels pointless.

I’m not advocating for that.

What I want you to consider are the occasional breaks from creative output that we ALL need to settle back into who we are. These may be evenings goofing off. Or a week away. Or a month spent pursuing something completely different. The usage of the “stop” matters less than how you approach it.

What matters most is that you commit to yourself that you’ll come back. The fine line between learning from defeat and giving up is whether you’ve chosen to try again.

Life is complicated. Being creative adds more complication, especially for those that use their creative works to tangle with difficult topics. It’s normal and healthy to want a break. To need a pit stop amidst all this goingoingoingmorefollowersmorewordsmorechaptersmoreEVERYTHING.

To summarize this rambling, I’ve been consuming a few books recently about the video game industry and the effort that goes into game development. The making of Stardew Valley certainly aligns with these ideas. A single developer devoted himself to the work over the course of years, and regularly found himself drowning in a growing frustration with the process until he took time to step away. To catch a breath.

A word I hear a lot in these books is “grit,” meaning a dedication to a goal regardless of setbacks or obstacles. Many people celebrate grit, and I agree that it plays a huge role in the successful pursuit of dreams.

But remember that grit doesn’t mean you can’t take a break every now and then. Grit does not require you to make yourself miserable for the sake of word count or imagery or “showing-not-telling”.

And remember: (if you’re not a full-time creative writer yet) your day job is not a break. So don’t do that, “I’ve been working all day, that’s enough of a break from my creative output, so it’s time to write for 12 straight hours before another shift.”

That’s burning the candle from both ends and also putting it in a microwave. Be kind to yourself.

If I’ve learned anything from my journey so far, it’s that everything comes with time and practice. The harder I am on myself, and the more I give in to that feeling that I will never be enough, the worse of a writer I am.

So every now and then, take a break. Try to see things for what they are rather than what you think they might be.

As a character says in a lovely TV episode named “The Visitor”: “Well, I’m no writer, but if I were, it seems to me I’d want to poke my head up once in a while and take a look around, see what’s going on. It’s life. You can miss it if you don’t open your eyes.” You can miss it if you never blink, too.

Take care of yourself. I’m rooting for you.

Thanks for reading this rambling return to posting more regularly. Also, apparently, a return to alliteration. I’d love to hear what you do to take breaks from writing. As you may have guessed, I love to dip into gaming as a way to unwind. How about you?

Answer in the comments below or find me on Twitter: @Dreamertide

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Post and a Poem: Sad is Brave

First things first: it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and for that, I apologize. I could tell you that “a lot has happened since last post,” which would be true.

Through a minor miracle, I started a new contract as a freelance technical writer. And, thanks to a lot of hard work (plus some great managers), that three-month contract has turned into an entire year.

I’ve had the greatest creative success as a writer of my life: my novel Iri and the Spirit World got a bunch of full manuscript requests, superb feedback from many agents, and even requests for future submission from editors at some of the biggest publishers around the world. Even now I’m waiting to hear the good word from an amazing agent that I would be thrilled to work with.

Moreover, I finished a draft of my newest novel, an MG Fantasy featuring an anxious 12-year-old hero exploring an all-too-real world of dreams inhabited by incredible creatures he must train and overcome.

I even turned 30.

See? A lot has happened since my last post, heh. And yet, that’s not what this is about.

The biggest thing keeping me from posting has been myself. Somewhere in the midst of all those things above, I dipped into a whole lot of anxiety. Now, anyone who’s been here before knows that anxiety and I are old friends. And by “friends,” I mean that I want to shoot anxiety into the sun, but since that’s not an option I live with it instead.

Even more than that, I found that I was trying to avoid being sad about a bunch of admittedly really sad things that were happening in my life as well.

Fun fact: Don’t try to avoid/escape your emotions. They don’t actually go anywhere. Seriously, they’re still there. For real.

–Captain Obvious

Sadness, like Inside Out taught us, has a very important purpose: adapting, accepting, and moving forward. Saying farewell and preparing to say hello. Letting go and beginning anew.

Sadness makes those things possible…

And yet so often I and much of our society treats sadness like something that needs to be avoided at all costs. “Don’t cry,” we’re told. “There’s no crying in [football]/[the office]//[cake].” “Don’t be sad. Smile. Chin up. Distract yourself.”

And so on.

I think a lot of us are afraid of sadness. I know I am. And yes, of course, too much sadness isn’t a good thing. Like any emotion, it must come in moderation. Steep yourself in it for too long and you throw yourself entirely askew. But too often, we don’t let ourselves feel sadness at all. Or perhaps, we only do at a sad movie so we can “get a good cry.”

Sure. We all need a good cry sometimes. But we also don’t need to use a movie to justify it. We don’t need to hide from how we feel about the challenges we all face.

And we do all face challenges.

So, to conclude this extremely long (clearly unplanned) introduction, I took a lot of these thoughts and wrote a poem. Please know that this poem is strictly what I knew I needed to hear. What I know I needed to say to me.

But I hope it helps you, too.

—

Sad is Brave

Sad is brave.
Letting in all the everything,
open, honestly
forgiving
more yourself
than them.
Sad is brave.
The old say
not to cry,
but I think that’s cowardly,
denying the power of a tear
to heal
or save:
you see,
sad is brave.
But so is happy;
neither one lives
separately
of all I am or would like to be.
Each muddled in this
mixture called
me,
and God, I see,
sad and happy
are stronger
than I think
and
like me
are brave.

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Make Believe (Poem)

First: it’s been far too long since my last post, and for that I apologize. This new novel I’ve been working on has really been gobbling up my time (in the best possible way). Still, I wanted to ensure that some of my writing consistently finds it way into the world, so here’s a new poem for the day.

With my new novel being an exploration of the kind of story I’ve always wanted to write (while ignoring the insecurity that leads artists to hedge bets instead of committing to their vision), I’ve been ruminating on why I write and what I hope my stories can achieve.

Ultimately, I want my work to spark conversations, challenge, and inspire. But most of all, I want my writing to offer hope. Though Milton said that hopes springs eternal, I feel like we’ve been running low of late. With that, here’s a poetic Ars Poetica of sorts. Make sure to let me know what you think in the comments here or on Twitter (@Dreamertide).

Make Believe

Stories live in me.
I didn’t expect
everyday spent scribbling
out a better world than this one,
but, God, it’s fun
to make believe,
finding some reprieve
from imaginations gone rogue.
They say it’s old-fashioned
to double down on hope,
that cynicism reigns
and many praise the refrain
that echoes “Pain to all,”
but I say “No.”

I rest on secrets never told,
a million journeys on distant roads,
on magic rings and pirate gold,
I will stake my claim.
By ships among the sea or stars,
potato farms and queens of Mars,
in war-torn heroes, seedy bars,
I can find a way
to remind you all
with words and deeds,
regardless of colors, kinds, or creeds,
that best we have
and all we need
is to make believe.

So give up lies and come alive,
set down your torch, take up as scribes
that sacred duty here advised:
to say something worth saying–
not words of hate or empty rhetoric
that try to find the zealot or heretic.
I want your stories
for love
for glory
just say something worth saying.

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The Greatest Gift Is Hope

I greet you somberly on the morning after a terrible tragedy that, in combination with recent natural disasters and artificial discord, has left many people reeling, overwhelmed, and lost. Nothing can remove the hurt that many feel, and confusion will be the theme of many lives for days to come. I do not say that to depress, but to affirm that it is okay if you’re feeling low, sad, angry, depressed, or even grateful that you are not currently suffering in the ways that so many others are. All of those thoughts and feelings are normal human responses to grief and pain.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, however you are hurting, know that you prayed for, cared for, and loved. Know that there is still, always, hope.

I recognize how hard that can be to believe. I have been lost in despair and suffering. I have wilted under the fiery heart of those who would oppress and harm me. Those who did. I have considered tomorrow with the abject fear of someone who feels that they barely survived today.

What I want you to know is you can do this. There is always hope.

Hope is, after love, the single greatest currency humanity could ever possess. With it, we can stand defiant in the face of enormous loss and fear. Without it, the loss and fear consume us. But what I want to tell you, what you NEED to know, is that there is always hope.

No one can take it from you, though they will try. Often the loudest voices are those that seek to deprive you of even the basest hopes, reminding you of what you have lost and how difficult it will be to reclaim that which you have held dear.

Do not listen.

They may say that things are too far gone. That too much damage has been done. They may try to convince you that your hurt will never heal.

Do not listen.

Hope remains so long as you believe in your heart and the heart of those around you. Hope remains so long as, acting out of love and common decency, you give of yourself to aid others. If you are one of those most directly hit by any of these crises, know that you are not alone. You do not face this alone, though it may at times feel as though the walls of your world have caved in: pressing you from every side.

In the face of darkness screaming your name, do not listen.

You can and will rebuild. You can and will overcome. You do not have to do it alone. You will not have to do it alone.

The hearts and minds of millions are with you. Their prayers, support, and hands reach out to you. We will get through this together.

There is always hope.

A final thought to the writers out there, like me: Use your words, now more than ever. Language is the most powerful force ever devised. It exceeds the might of weapons and storms. It stands unrivaled as the shaping force of history.

It is history.

As a writer, you bend that power to your whim. Do not for an instant wave away such strength as meaningless in a time such as this. It is more meaningful than ever. When the world darkens and we as the combined peoples of this Earth grieve, writers must be there to offer hope. To remind us that every night has an end. That every darkness will be broken by light. That we can and will overcome.

Writers, let’s do that together.

Thank you.

-Christopher

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Shout, Shout, Let It All Out―Or Just Mutter Under Your Breath (Editing Life Hack)

Reading aloud. Why don’t we all do this? It’s not a rhetorical question, I seriously want to know why every writer doesn’t use this life hack ALL THE TIME.

Editing is a resource intensive task, drawing on attention, concentration, and higher cognition in order to both assess content and, hopefully, identify errors (typographical, grammatical, and otherwise…ical). For those who spend a large portion of their time reading the written word―i.e. WRITERS―our brains have a tendency to engage in some proactive problem solving. In short, when reading your brain will automatically correct mistakes, often without the mistake even registering in your conscious thought. Psychological studies have found that the propensity for this even extends to words where only the first and last letters are in the correct places. That is a serious error, but our bniars hdanle it sotohmly. Most of the time.

While editing, since your mind is attempting to process a large amount of information, this cognitive autocorrect can easily run parallel in the background leaving you with a beautiful manuscript dotted with the occasional ghastly typo.

We’ve all been there. Don’t tell me you haven’t, I won’t believe you.

What can we do about this? A few options:

  • Use spellcheck/autocorrect
  • Openly weep
  • Contract a professional editor to read everything we write
  • Create a pact with an editing spirit
  • Read aloud

Let’s go through these, shall we?

Use Spellcheck/Autocorrect

This can definitely help find those typos and correct them. We all know the sweet, lingering touch of the red squiggly line telling us that we made a mistake. Kinda like a much more subtle version of the mistake opera singer from Scrubs.

There are, unfortunately, 2 problems with this plan. First, it doesn’t always catch errors. Such programs are frequently confused by homonyms, homophones, similar spellings, or anything that is not a commonly used word/phrasing. Just look at the blight of “definitely” vs. “defiantly” in the world today!


It’s defiantly a problem.
JOKES!

Second, spellcheck dependency is a thing. As a professional managing editor, I’ve seen it and had to find ways to break writers of it. It’s so easy to rely on spellcheck to fix all the problems, but it’s not infallible. Those who treat it like it is can find their own copy editing skills have atrophied in the interim, to the detriment of their own writing abilities (see Being a Good Writer Means Being a Good Editor for more on that connection).

As a piece of a greater editing strategy, spellcheck is neat. Not by itself.

Openly Weep

I respect anyone who chooses to go with this option. But afterward, please move on to something more constructive.

Contract a Professional Editor

I mean, yeah, this would help. But who has the money to do this for everything they write?! And it brings us right back to dependency and atrophied skills again. Not a good place.

Like spellcheck, this is a tool that can (and should) be utilized when appropriate.

Create a Pact with an Editing Spirit

These are not things. Don’t try this. It’s probably a poltergeist or Slimer or Loki messing with you. Next thing you know, your manuscript will be about the flopping patterns of the midwestern perch.

Read Aloud

Now here is a tactic. It’s really simple, but I’ll carefully explain it for you:

  • Step 1: Take writing
  • Step 2: Read writing out loud
  • Step 3: Find mistakes you likely would have otherwise missed
  • Step 4: Become most famous writer ever because your pieces are SO clean

Minus the last step, that’s exactly how this works and what it does. Your mind processes writing differently when you read it aloud, as it’s forced to pay greater attention to each word. Why? Because it needs to read and know how they sound. This serves the purpose, first, of catching those little cognitive autocorrects since your mouth will often stumble where silent reading wouldn’t. And second, you’ll also be better able to recognize the areas of awkwardness in phrasing. Phrases that “sound” fine in your head may actually sound dumb aloud.

And it’s all just a part of how your brain processes language vocal language. Isn’t that fun?

Now, you don’t need to yell as you read, though you can. You don’t even need to read in a full voice. Heck, you can just consciously mouth each word and still get most of the benefit.

PLUS PEOPLE WILL THINK YOU’RE REALLY WEIRD OR CASTING SPELLS UNDER YOUR BREATH!

Those are things you want people to think of you, right?

Yeah, of course they are.

See you next time!

For more content, check HERE.

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Why I Like Star Trek

I have been a fan of Star Trek longer than I have been able to speak. Given that I started speaking at 10 months, that is a LONG FREAKING TIME. I’m speaking of The Next Generation, specifically, as it’s what I watched with my mom in the wee early years of my life.

In the modern era of science fiction, dystopias, and video games that frequently combine those tropes with KILL THE XENOS (Warhammer 40k reference for my tabletop nerds out there), I find that most people have forgotten, or never knew in the first place, what made Trek special.

It was not the fights, though TNG and Deep Space Nine had some terrific battle scenes. Voyager, too on occasion. It was not the unique (though 99% humanoid) aliens. It was not the technology or the technobabble or the plots (though many of these were wonderful).


Bonus points to anyone who can tell me in the comments which episode this is (easy one, I know)

Beyond everything else, what made Star Trek special in science fiction was its optimism.

I decided to write this post when I was considering how hard it’s become to remain positive and optimistic in the modern age. We are inextricably linked to a constantly packed newsfeed, 90+% of which is bad, sad, or difficult. Regardless of where you stand politically, culturally, racially, etc., there is enough on whatever method you utilize to stay current to depress you. Please note: it is important that we know these things. I am not advocating hiding from the world to protect a perfect bubble of ignorance. That would be bad. The issue is that the worldly malaise had soaked into everything. Even our fun.

Certainly, there are sources of optimism out there, but, in my experience, those sources are more commonly ridiculed by the majority that have come to believe the world was in some way meant to be grimdark and depressing. Our TV, movies, books, songs, and more have heavily favored the dark over the light in the last two decades.

And, frankly, I get it. We want our media to reflect our general perception of the world. That said, I think we go too far from time to time. As an idealist and optimist, myself, I’ve faced more antagonism than I ever expected, simply because I believe in the good, better, and best. I want to encourage you, to bolster you, to let you know that you’re important and that there still remains such tremendous hope for our future.

Not everyone wants to hear it. And I get that.

But sometimes we NEED to hear it. In times of crisis, when fear rises to sustain itself upon the weeping masses that have been stranded in their difficulties, the last thing we need is more reason to be depressed. We and they need hope. Perseverance. Optimism.

That’s what Star Trek is to me. Not always, no. Sometimes it’s terrible, depressing, or stupid. But at its best, Star Trek is a series that believes wholeheartedly in what we, as human beings, can achieve. It questions our choices and mistakes, but it never questions the inherent value of our humanity. Instead, it elevates that binding fiber between us as the most vital piece of our success as a people, a civilization, and a species.

There are times when prices must be paid, and the cost is often steep (DS9 did this SO well), but there is always hope. Perseverance always overcomes.

And we need that. Now, and frankly, always.

Just don’t get me started on the more recent Treks and movies. (Or do in the comments below.)

For more content, visit my main page HERE.

See you next time!

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Being a Good Writer Means Being a Good Editor

We, as writers, spend the bulk of our time considering how to write better. We attend workshops, go to conferences, watch TED Talks, and spend hours in hyperbolic time chambers training until our writing can reach the “next level.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Writing is, after all, what we do and hope to continue doing forever. At some point, however, writing alone simply won’t be enough. All the drafts in the world won’t be able to add the sparkle and shine that you and readers are looking for. When that realization strikes, in struts EDITING from outside. Grizzled from many a long fight over verb tensing and whether you should reorder three chapters in the middle that you really like as they are but don’t make sense, EDITING has returned to the picture for one simple reason:

It is needed. You need it. I need it.

The best writers are great editors.

Now, I recognize that there are many of you out there who don’t agree with that statement. “Christopher,” you say, “there are so many great writers who aren’t great editors. They just have great editors.”

To which I say: I wasn’t talking about “great” writers. I was talking about the best.

You’re right. Many, many wonderful writers are not the best of editors and have colleagues, friends, family, or industry-appointed professionals to make up for that deficiency. But there is great power in being a strong editor of your own work, before (and after) those other people enter the scene (literally and/or figuratively). Third party perspectives are vital to the creation of terrific writing, but those perspectives can only be relied on so much. There are some things that only you can effectively edit, and if you haven’t taken the time to build your editorial skills until then, you’ll be doing your own work a disservice.

Let me paint a picture for you (with words).

You’re a published NYT (and international) bestselling author. Your works have been made into successful feature films and TV shows. Everyone knows your characters’ names.

Awesome, right?

In fact, you’ve hit the point where publishers no longer question you, trusting instead that your phenomenal ability to basically print money will hold true. Third party editing is minimized to the point of proofreading: finding typos but ignoring questions of pacing, plot, characterization, etc. In short, what you write gets published as it is.

What power you wield!

But from there comes the problem: through over-reliance on those third party editorials, your self-editorial skills have either atrophied or were never fully developed in the first place. Certainly, you can bulk them up to snuff, but this isn’t the time. The publisher wants the book now. And you want it out there. So you do your best, and it turns out alright.

Which it does. But I promise you that a lot of readers (especially those that write) will notice something different about that book and any others done in the same way. The pacing for such manuscripts is often looser, characterizations more vague or (flip side) insanely detailed, and plot less clear that would be ideal.

I could name books where I think this occurred, but that wouldn’t really serve a point. What I’m attempting to explain is that even in the scenario where we, as writers, have achieved ultimate success (commercially, at least), being able to edit our own work is vital. Likewise, as writers frantically aspiring for that success, being able to edit our own work is vital. At any stage of the journey between those two points or beyond, being able to edit our own work is vital.

And that means building the skillset. There are many ways to do so, and I intend to write several posts in the future talking about editorial processes, tips, and tricks (based on my experience as a creative writer, master tutor, and managing editor ). But to leave you with a little something today:

  • Don’t be afraid of editing your own work
  • Treat editing like a conversation with yourself: asking questions and providing honest answers
  • The best way to build editing skill is to edit, so offer to edit the work of writer friends
  • Don’t beat yourself up

Editing is not the time or place for self-flagellation. It’s not an excuse to be mean to yourself or give into the insecurities in your head that make you feel like you’re a terrible writer. Editing is about becoming ever more. About taking, refining, and beautifying the beauty you’ve already made. The beauty you already are. Don’t let fear wedge itself in there and make you feel like less.

Stay tuned for more on editing soon! You can read more posts about writing techniques (and everything else!) at my main page HERE.

You can do this. Don’t ever give up.

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Sticking With It

Let’s be real here for a minute: writing is HARD. The act of creating something wholly new from the ether takes a lot of time, energy, and effort. What truly makes it difficult, however, is that once those resources have been expended…you still may not see the results you desire when you want to (if ever).

Like every writer querying to literary agents, I know how personally challenging this can be. You follow the steps, make critical edits, get outside impressions, and more, but there’s still no guarantee that an agent will respond to it positively. When those (form) rejection letters come in, it can be soul crushing. You and the people around you know that the writing is good, why don’t the agents see that?

If you’ve felt/thought anything like the above in recent weeks, welcome to the club! You are a writer striving to make a way in the world for your words when millions of others are trying to do the same.

To sum up: it’s difficult.

When faced with these situations, there are many things you can (and will be told to) do:

  • Go through and edit more carefully
  • Get more beta readers for impressions
  • Work with an editorial group to brainstorm
  • Be patient
  • Etc.

Honestly, those things are and can be very important in the process of getting an agent on the way to a hopeful career as a creative writer. I think they miss the most important thing you need to do, though, so I’m going to devote the rest of this short post to that:

BELIEVE.


(In before anyone says I sound like a cat poster.)

Above and beyond any other consideration, you must first believe in yourself and the work you’re doing. Believe in the words, the ideas, the plot, the characters, the thoughts, the feelings, and the person that put it together. Meaning YOU.

Going from person who authored a novel to person who authored a published novel can grind at the emotional anchors that hold us together. The strain can drag on relationships, push at your buttons, and make you question if what you’re doing has any value at all.

I’m here to tell you that IT DOES HAVE VALUE. Even if you don’t have an agent yet. Even if you haven’t gotten a single positive reaction from an agent yet. Even if you haven’t queried anyone and aren’t sure if you ever will, your writing has value because you made it.

Don’t let the world’s material considerations take away from what you’ve accomplished. No one else can claim to have told the story you have, so hold your head high, and keep fighting.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

And writing is always worth doing.

This doesn’t mean you’re absolved from continuing to improve your skills and stories, oh no. You need to push hard at those personal barriers, strengthening those abilities along the way. It does mean, however, that you don’t need to be glum, downtrodden, and perpetually hurt. I know it’s easy to be, sometimes you almost want to give into the negativity because it seems like that’s all the world wants to show you. Don’t. Feel the sad, anxiety, and hurt. Then get back on your feet, pen in hand, keys under fingers, brain hard at work. Push, strive, try.

And know that millions of writers, myself included, are right there next to you, encouraging you, bolstering you, and wanting you to know that you can do this.

Even if it takes forever, we will write our way forward.

I believe in you. Believe in you, too.

And if you can’t, well, believe in the me that believes in you.

I leave you with motivational gifs:

Let me know how your journey’s going in the comments or on Twitter. For more content (and encouragement) pop over HERE.

You can do it. See you soon!

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Don’t Let Writer’s Block Slow You Down

Ah, writer’s block. Bane of all creatives, everywhere. Most people are familiar with this term, regardless of whether or not they do any writing, predominantly as it’s endemic to the creative arts. We who toil with paper and pen (or typety-typing and LEDs) do not have a monopoly on lulls of inspiration, but I feel like we complain about it the most. Therefore, this unfortunate state has been named after us.

Today I want to discuss how I approach writer’s block. Ultimately, when we use that term we’re referring to a lack of motivation, inspiration, or insight regarding our creative process that leads to (what we feel to be) suboptimal quality of work. It can be brought on by emotional shifts, recent events, general malaise, or nothing at all.

Most writers, in my experience, stop writing when they feel they’re under the influence of this potent force. Superstitions may come into effect (lucky underwear, fancy pants, special music or food, etc.) or Internet tip sheets may be referenced. There are likely as many tactics to overcome writer’s block as there are writers. Ultimately, however, I want to share a sad truth with you…

Most of them don’t work, or if they do, they don’t work consistently (in my opinion).

Besides writing, I also have a background in psychology (in another life I would have been a psychologist). When we’re dealing with these sorts of creative block, we tend to blame a great many things, hence the great many solutions proffered on the Interwebz. The core cause, however, can always be tracked back to something cognitive, i.e. within your own head.

This does not mean there is something wrong with you, though it may be a sign that some amount of your mind is grappling with something that you feel is wrong (but are trying to avoid). Our minds are fickle things: easily distractible, easily lured into pitfalls, and easily discouraged. Writer’s block, at least in my opinion, tends to reflect something in our minds that is actively pulling mental energy and focus away from creation. Often, it seems to root in personal insecurity, discouragement, or a lack of confidence―often spurred by some life event that you may not have even really noticed.

All of that being said, it doesn’t really matter where it comes from. What matters most is what you do about it. If you feel like your writer’s block is overwhelming, first take a moment to step back and meditate a bit on yourself and your thoughts. Ask yourself “Is anything bothering me? How do I feel right now?” And then―this is the important part―

GO BACK AND WRITE ANYWAY. CREATE ANYWAY. DO IT ANYWAY.

The only surefire way to overcome writer’s block is to keep writing regardless. It doesn’t matter that you believe the writing will be terrible (or that the writing is terrible once it’s down), what matters is that it’s there. Refusing to write/create until the block passes gives the block more power within your mind, building it up until it can seem insurmountable. By writing through it, you subvert that power and the importance of the block in your own cognition, while simultaneously continuing to lay the foundation of your success.

TL;DR – When you write during writer’s block, you teach yourself how to overcome obstacles and continue building toward your goals.

Super TL;DR – Writing through a writer’s block makes you stronger.

This isn’t just my opinion, mind you. There are quite a few terrific authors out there that stand by this approach, too. The most significant thing you must remember for this to work is that every word you write has value. Nothing is wasted. With each letter, you improve.

Don’t let the boogeyman (writer’s block) take that away from you.

What do you do when you have writer’s block? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

For more of my thoughts, head back to the main page HERE.

Thanks for reading and see you next time!