Ask Aunt Susan: How to Become Rich and Famous

 Q: What are the ten most important thing you’ve learned in your time as a writer? Both useful and useless?

-from Susan

 

Why waste time on useless advice, especially because one person’s moment of total clarity is another’s blank wall? Suffice it to say, you’ll hear lots of “tips” as you do seminars, attend panels, etc. No one’s going to mislead you deliberately, but your writing is unique to you. I do counsel you to listen and weigh anything you hear, because no one’s writing is perfect. Don’t reject anything on the delusional assertion that you’re writing deathless prose already and know more than these self-aggrandizing snobs who think they know more just because they’ve been traditionally published for years, won awards, and sell a lot of books! 

 

With that, my ten bits of advice, learned by trial and error, helpful to me, and perhaps to a writer nearer the starting gate:

 

Commit - the first step is to believe in yourself and your goal to write. This means give yourself the time, the space, the freedom to fail a bit as you find your feet.

 

Reward yourself - wrote a whole first chapter? A latte and a cookie! Signed up for a writing workshop? The reward is in the going to it and absorbing everything, making friends, feeling like a Writer!

 

Show don’t tell - Yup, common advice and, of course, there are places where you have to tell. But the concept is to help the reader embed themselves in your story and the closer they get through hearing dialogue, smelling roses, seeing soggy streets the more you’ve hooked them.

 

Every scene counts - Big, big for me at least. Rambling is pleasant but as you polish the draft, yeah, a lot of that goes nowhere. Why is this scene here? How does it serve the story, be it the primary plot, or the personal growth, or providing forward momentum?

 

Kill your darlings - Big one, perhaps biggest for new writers. You wrote this gorgeous opening paragraph, but so what? It’s backstory or no story, just lovely prose. Cut. You can paste it into a computer file you call “My Darlings” and, who knows, maybe you’ll get inspired by it sometime in the future (but probably not)?

 

Never kill a pet - Having just turned in MURDER AND THE MISSING DOG (March 2024) I know whereof I speak. Also, have you seen the passion of Facebook users when they hear about an abused animal who needs rescuing? Yeah, that. If you want to show a villain who is pure evil through and through, have them kill a dog, cat, fox, or hedgehog and your readers will insist the villain die a horrible, lingering, exceeding final death!

 

Finish the book - This is beyond vital. Starting a story, playing with it, masticating the first few chapters over and over may be a good hobby, but you want to become a Writer, yes? To do that, you have to stick with it through all the messy, frustrating, hand-wringing stages until you can type “The End.” Then, of course, the real work begins. But you have a whole manuscript - a book! 

 

Take feedback - Ask for serious feedback and listen rather than argue when you get it. Readers at this stage are invaluable: Where does it blog down, why don’t they like the protagonist, is that environment believable? Better still: What did they love? What sucked them in and held them captive in your story? 

 

Use your network - So, months later, you have a polished manuscript and what’s next? The rough road to an agent’s interest. By now you’ve met other writers (Sisters in Crime, writers’ conferences and retreats, etc) and are reading the acknowledgement pages in novels you like and that you think are kind of like yours in style, sub-genre, setting. If you’ve chatted with an agent at a conference, say you met them and are taking the liberty of sending them your query (or whatever specific thing they want). Do not be shy and do not presume! And, do not give up. Some famous authors tell authors who are at this stage that they sent queries to 40, 50, 99 agents before finding theirs!

 

Always read the contract - Congratulations! You have an agent and she got you an offer You’re thrilled: “Yes, yes, thank you, thank you!” No. Read the contract. Understand what the publisher takes and what you get. What the publisher will do for you (don’t expect much) and the details of advances and royalties. 

 

So, that's it from Aunt Susan's Help Desk. I look forward to the rest of the week and what my talented and successful fellow Minds have to say. 

 

 

                            Out now in e-book and hard cover; paperback out in November 2023.