Kerry Allen

I hear there’s yet another author who has cut and pasted chunks of someone else’s writing into hers. I hear the excuse this time was something like “It’s research about the spotted pygmy thief rat. It’s not like I ripped off a real writer.”

I’m not going to get into the moral and legal wrongness of plagiarism, which is being done by people far more knowledgeable than I regarding morals and laws. I’m not going to protest for the poor guy who spent ten years of his life camped out in the godforsaken wildnerness studying the spotted pygmy thief rat, five years organizing the accumulated data into a comprehensible format, made $2 in royalties for fifteen years of work, and then gets slapped in the face because it’s okay to steal his work because he’s not an exalted writer of fiction.

Instead, I’m going to teach you proper note-taking technique. It’s easy. I learned it in third grade. There’s really only one rule you need to know.

Never copy a complete sentence.

Here is an example of some of my djinn research that I ultimately discarded because I didn’t like it or need it. (I’d love to show you the scribbly original, but my scanner doesn’t work with Vista.)

djinn (race) — djinni (one)

have tribes of 7 w/king — king controlled by angel — angel’s name torture to the tribe

controlled by humans — see Sulieman (scribbled on top of) Solomon — by magically binding to objects

to enslave — know name, have item or piece of djinn (hair)

There are lines shooting all over the place, linking miscellaneous related and contradictory snippets from a variety of sources. There isn’t a sentence to be found anywhere in this folder. In order to make any sense of it, I would have to write a sentence, all by myself, using at least several of my own words.

Now, if you want really advanced note-taking techniques, you use your own words even when jotting down the non-complete sentences that are your notes, and then when you compose a sentence based upon those notes, the chances of producing an Eerily Similar Sentence are astronomically low, and in that case alone, I might buy an “oops, it was an accident.”

Otherwise, there’s no excuse, it’s not okay, and you are a thief and should be punished accordingly.

I’ve been compiling my new submission list, gathering all the details I can find into one document so I don’t have to be flitting all over the web looking up whether Agent A, who accepts both snail and e queries, really prefers one or the other, and all that tedious stuff that is so much less fun than writing.

Agent Z was on the “Possible, Needs More Research” list and looked viable… until I got to what he expects from his clients.

Must be willing to change every word in your manuscript if I say so. Um… no. I’m open to editorial suggestions and will implement any I feel improve the product, but at the end of the day, it’s my story. If you hate it so much you want to change every word, why would you even offer to represent it?

I expect my clients to produce four to six books a year. Holy crap. I couldn’t do that even if I didn’t have a day job, a kid and a dog and a house to take care of, and a life apart from BICHOK. Also, I gotta say, unless you’re Nora Roberts or writing exclusively at abbreviated length (category or novellas), I have to question the quality of a story that goes from conception to delivery in two or even three months. I will never believe it wouldn’t benefit from an additional six months of gestation. I realize more product = more money for everybody, but there’s an element of artistry in writing that’s going to suffer from mass production, no matter how good you are.

Must have a flexible schedule so edits can be returned immediately. Dude, now you want me at your beck and call 24/7?

.

This guy wants an awful lot of control over his clients, who are exclusively romance writers and therefore predominantly female. Ringing any bells? That’s right, he’s the embodiment of the patriarchal domination establishment oppressing women through the innocuous guise of romance novels!

Needless to say, due to our disparate views of what constitutes the ideal (or even minimally tolerable) author-agent relationship, he didn’t make it to the “I Grant You the Opportunity to Participate in the Steel Cage Match to Determine Which of You Lucky Agents Wins the Privilege of Representing Me” list. There is no “Crap, None of the Good Agents Want Me, Time to Beg the Second-Rate Ones” list (because I’m all over “if you can see it, you can be it” in the new year), and even if there was, this guy wouldn’t be on it.

He’ll always have a place of honor on the “Men Who Gave Me the Creeps” list, though.

I’m not even going to try Monday, Wednesday, and Friday blogging for the rest of the month. I got nothin’.

I downloaded a 30-day trial of Web Studio. I had only an hour to play with it, but it seems like a fuller-featured version of WYSIWYG drag-and-drop web design for morons. For instance, you can enter a descriptive tag that will pop up when you hover over a link (merely neat), and it WILL center the page on any size monitor (huge improvement). I’ll have to get deeper into it before I know for sure, but it’s looking good so far.

To combat my mehs, I picked up a book. Within the first few pages, the heroine was sexually assaulted and beaten within an inch of her life. Um… no. I’m not usually squeamish about stuff like that (the details weren’t even provided), but now is not a good time, thanks. My weary brain craves something fluffy. I need that Jennifer Colt in my TBR or a Stephanie Plum marathon. Now that I think of it, I have an Aisling Gray’s latest ludicrous hijinks and mayhem in the pile, too. If all else fails, I can read something kiddy.

I maintained word count on WL on the latest edit despite the added info. (Die, speech tags, die!) Time to put it away for a couple weeks before another readthrough and get it back out there, which means it’s (drum roll, please) Query Letter Time Again! The most frustrating six sentences one will ever write. The new formula: hook, setup, disaster, disaster, disaster, resolution. I can fill in those blanks, but there’s no flow from one to the next, so it sounds choppy and disjointed. I can write two-thirds of every sentence, but the last bit of every one gets limp and soggy.

Where are the freakin’ voices in my head when I need them?

I finished writing Djinn for Dummies, 17 pages of mythological goodness. I wish I’d done it a long time ago. It made connections I hadn’t even thought about. I’ve had djinn who hate a god because he gave man the knowledge to enslave them, but I never considered why the god would do such a thing. Once I did, another important historical event came to light…

If I’m not going to put something in a story, I tend not to think about it. Probably a mistake. Much as I’ve enjoyed all the AHA! moments while I’ve been writing this essay, it would have been more helpful to know a lot of this stuff before I wrote two books on a foundation with so many gaping holes in it. The new info won’t lead to any major changes, but the subtle ones might make some difference.

Now I’m kind of looking forward to laying out the mythology for dragons, vampires, and weres. Not so much the deities, since you know they’re going to be a bunch of vicious inbred whackadoos.

On second thought, that might be kind of fun…

Upon finishing a manuscript to the best of your ability, before you send it to any agents, editors, or contests, put it away. Write another book. Put that first one completely from your mind. After a couple of months, you will no longer remember word for word what is supposed to be on the page, and typos overlooked the last 50 times you read the thing will leap to your attention.

In the event you ignore the “before you send it” portion of this advice and discover, months later, after writing that other book and re-reading the first for a continuity check, a veritable plague of typographical errors, no matter how distraught and filled with self-loathing you become, do not chuck the offending manuscript across the room. You won’t feel better about wasted postage and lost opportunities after you’ve broken something and have to pick up a ream of paper.

If you thought the bet/bed typo was funny, get this one: gut instead of tug. 

Yes, poor Lia has entrails in her hair. She’s the kind of gal who would be fussy about that sort of thing, so her reaction as written was entirely inappropriate…

Fear not. I am in no condition to inflict more poetry upon you.

This was particularly crushing because, with the exception of a few unnecessary speech tags that had to die, I was thinking, “Cool. I’d read this.”

And I know, realistically, five typos in 100,000 words isn’t going to stop somone who is otherwise impressed from reading more, but it’s sloppy and certainly can’t help.

Off to remove desk splinters from my forehead…

I’ve written myself into a corner. My transition to my Big Kidnapping Scene cleverly left the Kid elsewhere, which I realized only after I was three-quarters through the Big Kidnapping Scene (wherein the Villain shakes his fist and shouts at the Stupid Writer for twenty minutes for screwing up his first personal appearance), and good luck to the moron who tries napping her from that babysitter’s care.

Zombie Pinky sez, “This is your Muse’s way of telling you an abduction is unnecessary.”

No, this is my Muse’s way of telling me she’d rather be playing Assassin’s Creed. The Kid escaped completely unscathed last time. She must be at least mildly scathed this time in order to Escalate the Tension, and she must be increasingly scathed at each subsequent encounter so that by the time she becomes the Woman, she is accustomed to living in Peril. It’s all in the Master Plan. See Section 12, Paragraph 22.

My problem is, my Good Guys aren’t incompetent enough. They are prepared for Bad Things to happen. Security around the Kid is too good. What possible reason could there be for it to lapse at the Villain’s convenience?

Damn, if only I had a Skrhybe Vher—…

Erm, no. How about… Tough Guy is in the john , and his unsuspecting Wifey hands the Kid to the Villain in a case of mistaken identity?

‘Cept Wifey is a mind reader, so that unlikelihood would require a whole ’nother explanation.

Okay, the Kid has a TSTL moment and sneaks away for a bit of mischief, serving herself up to the Villain on a silver platter? Unfortunately, I’ve established her as smart, insightful, often the Voice of Reason. She knows better.

Aha! She has AMNESIA!

Or maybe Edan, who has been conspicuously absent since Dropping the Bomb in Chapter One, pops in and Acts Evil for some perfectly explicable reason other than setting up her own story. Except the only person who has more reason to detest the Villain than she does is the Hero, so what could possibly motivate her to do the Villain any favors? Maybe she’s been in cahoots with him all along. Yeah, maybe she liked being sexually assaulted and having her baby stolen and returned to her all soulless and twisted. It could happen.

So this is why authors resort to peeving devices. There’s no way around an intelligent setup other than blatant illogic or the Hand of God, and there’s no drama when everything goes According to Plan.

Do I seriously have to go back and dumb something down to make it easier on the Villain? You must be joking.

Crap. Figures I’d trip and fall and dislocate something when I’m within spitting distance of the finish line. I hate writing when it’s like work.

Screw it. I’ll put a “WTF?!” sticky on it and belly crawl to the end. Maybe something will shake loose in the final stretch.

I had this on the old Blogger blog. I’ve had it scheduled to post, as there has been a recent development that prompted me to resurrect and update, but I’ve pushed it back several times because more interesting inane drivel has come up. But since The League is all about crit groups this week, I take it as A Sign that the time has come.

The Lazarus Portion

I’ve taken the Serious Writer approach and joined a Crit Group, not once, not twice, but thrice. (I ignored my own advice, so now it’s four-ice.)

If your Crit Group helps you improve your writing, congratulations. You don’t know how lucky you are.

According to Crit Group #1, every word I wrote was crap. When this is the extent of the criticism being offered, it is not conducive to improvement.

“This scene is crap.”
“Okay, but what’s wrong with it?”
“It’s crap.”

Evidently nothing could be done to improve the reeking pile of feces that I had created, so I should just do the world a favor and hang up my pen. I’m pretty tough on myself, and while I have no delusions that my book is the best thing since peanut butter met chocolate in a convenient cup-shaped form, I am confident that it’s solid enough technically to withstand some legitimate hammering without shattering.

I suspect this variety of critique had a great deal to do with my genre of choice, since the tone of said critique took a nosedive only after the Romance issue became apparent. These were Serious Writers, after all, not… whatever writers of Romance are supposed to be.

According to Crit Group #2, every word I wrote was gold. When this is the extent of the criticism being offered, it is not conducive to improvement.

“This scene resonates with sheer geniosity.”
“Okay, but what’s wrong with it?”
“Not one thing. You’ll be a bestseller in no time if you just believe in yourself.”

Not that I don’t appreciate the ego stroke, but when I participated in the critiquing by pointing out another writer’s glaring grammatical errors and a lecture ensued to educate me that negativity has no place in this group, it became clear that I had stumbled into Happy Rainbow Kitty Land, where the shiny happy people live and the skies are not cloudy all day, and they wouldn’t have wrinkled their pert little noses even if I presented an actual reeking pile of feces for their consideration. These people had no interest in improving their writing (or even their spelling, apparently). They were there for pats on the head after their query letters for their unfinished first drafts returned with a big “hell no” for reasons they could not comprehend.

According to Crit Group #3, every word I wrote could be improved by simply changing it to a word chosen by The Collective. When this is the extent of the criticism being offered, it is not conducive to improvement.

“Start by changing this first line to ‘The clouds scudded inexorably across the sky.’”
“What clouds? They’re in a cave. Underground. Do you even know what ‘inexorably’ means?”
“It’s the group’s weekly Scudding Clouds Day, and ‘inexorably’ is the Word of the Decade. Assimilate or die.”

Yeah, baby, nothing like a little homogenization to make your book stand out from the crowd.

The Kerry Never Learns Portion

Why, oh why, do I never learn? Crit Group #4 was just like Crit Group #2, with one member of Crit Group #1 and one member of Crit Group #3 duking it out for dominance over the other members.

“Kerry, this is really good.”
“Thanks, but…”
“Romance is crap.”
“Everybody in this group is a romance writer, dumbass. Why are you even here?”
“Have you sent it to Agent Q?”
“Yes. No luck. Obviously there’s something wrong. I need somebody to tell me what it is. Seriously, I want to fix it. You won’t hurt my feelings.”
“I’ll tell you what the problem is. You need clouds on the first page. Scudding inexorably.”
“And this is why romance is crap. You need to dust off that urban fantasy you originally intended to be an animated series and concentrate on that.”
“Um, excuse me, but how do you even know about that?”
“Stalker.”
“Besides, at the heart of that story is a damaged but eternal ROMANCE.”
“Yeah, but there’s swords and shit.”
(My turn, but I am speechless with creeped-out-ness. I may have mentioned this project in passing, but not in any kind of detail, at least not in the past 3 or 4 years.)
“There’s swords and shit in what she gave us to read here. Dumbass stalker.”
“I wouldn’t know because I stopped at the kissy-kissy-goo-goo.”
“There’s a bloodbath on Page One!”

Crit Group #4 left me with a splitting headache, a loathing for humanity that took 3 days to fade, and a strong desire to obtain a restraining order. And no constructive changes to the manuscript.

You know what the single most useful resource has been for me? A bunch of guys sprawled around my living room, reading just the dialogue out loud. (Mostly actors, so they did it really well.)

No “this is perfect just the way it is.”

No “I can tell this is stupid without even reading it.”

A few crackups when it was supposed to be funny.

A few “that’s a little awkward, this would be more natural” spots, duly corrected.

One “Dammit, why do I have to be all the girls?”

And one “Um, sorry to interrupt, but why does Gabe have a pseudo-British accent?” / “Because he’s the James Bond of djinn, that’s why.”

(You want surreal? Find some guys willing to read a romance novel aloud with no sneering or snickering or embarrassment. I would have paid to watch the performance. I wish I’d thought to tape it.)

Now, if only I had a proofreader with keen enough eyes to catch sneaky little typos like bed and bet…