Aim For The Heart: October 2007

The Rejecter recently talked about sending the first five pages of your manuscript, and in the comments, Pat Wood mentioned people who say, "but my REAL story gets going at page (insert here) 8, 12, 29,-- shouldn't I send THAT?"

No, you shouldn't. You should rewrite your story so that it begins on the page you're most eager to have people start reading. Some writers get it in their heads that they need to write to impress agents and/or editors. But what they forget is that ultimately, agents and editors are picking up projects they think readers will want to buy.

I'm standing in front of a bookshelf in my local Borders and thumbing through books by authors whose names I don't recognize. I open up to the first page and start reading. That's the page you'd better hook me on, because you don't have much longer before I decide whether to take the book to the checkout or stick it back on the shelf. You won't have the opportunity to stand behind me saying, "But if you just keep reading..."

Forget about agents. Forget about editors. Think about the bookstore customer and the two minutes you have to convince her to tuck your book under her arm.

Now...write the beginning you want that person to read.

Two addenda:
1) That doesn't mean you have to blow something up or kill someone (says the writer who managed to do the latter in both Phaidra books). It just has to be interesting enough to keep people reading.
2) This post assumes you're attempting publication. If you're writing for yourself, write whatever you like, even a fifty-page back story told entirely in dreams and flashbacks.

I read a lot of blogs by literary agents and writers on a daily basis, and one of my favorite aspects of blogging is the more casual aspect of it. Most bloggers discuss more than just work, work, work all the time, so you get the occasional posts on movies or TV shows or comic books, or whatever hobbies the blogger is interested in. Even when the hobby is something I'm not interested in, I always enjoy reading of the things other people are passionate about.

But my favorite blogger, hands-down, is Nathan Bransford, a literary agent for Curtis Brown (his blogger account is more active than his MySpace page). Consistently funny, informative, and nice, even his posts about some TV show called The Hills are interesting and hilarious. Check out today's "This Week In Publishing." He's running another contest on his blog next week (though he hasn't decided what form it's going to take). He usually offers some sort of query or writing sample critique as a prize.

By the way, he also answers questions in the Ask The Agent forum of the Absolute Write boards.

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It's Friday night, and my plans are to exercise, edit my book some more, work on the living room remodeling, and do laundry. Boy, the hedonists are probably wild with jealousy at all the excitement in my life.

Bath & Body Works makes a bubble bath/body wash/shampoo in a pumpkin pie spice scent. Not having my other shampoo available in our guest bathroom last night, I used it instead. Smelled nice. Strong, but nice. And then it smelled. And smelled. And for the last twenty-four hours I have smelled of pumpkin pie spice.

Fast forward to tonight. Finished my run, went to shower. I washed my hair with the normal stuff. And I still smell pumpkin pie spice. For the love of all that's good and Thanksgiving-y, why must I continue to smell of pie?!

Finishing the bathroom remodeling, starting and finishing the living room remodeling, preparing for a job hunt, working on the first draft of one book and editing another. That's what I've been doing for the last month. I can't wait to get back to a normal life, with games and a working projector and time to write and exercise.

The living room remodeling has been an amazing project. We started with old gray carpet, a wavy ceiling, and paneled walls. The wavy ceiling is gone. That was Day One, removing a 6'x12' section of the ceiling and replacing it. After that it was removing the paneling, dropping wires for electrical, speakers, and data, replacing the paneling with Sheetrock, taping and bedding, spraying texture, painting, putting up trim and crown moulding, and next week, having new carpet installed. The carpet will be the only thing we don't do ourselves.

I'll post before and after pictures when it's all ready to go.