“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware off, no shortcut. ” — Stephen King, On Writing

So what do editors want?

There isn’t any simple answer, because the things that take a book from the slush pile to publication are mostly ephemeral qualities. Most editors really only know what they want when they see it. And any attempts to narrow it down (“What I really want is a gothic vampire action adventure romance”) are more likely to lead to frustration than a book sale. It’s a lot like dating, actually.

You may think you want a certain type of guy. You look for Him. He’s handsome, medium build, blond, blue-eyed, works in finance, and has a great sense of humor and is forceful without being a jerk and sensitive without being a weeny and he never, ever forgets your birthday or your anniversary and always, always knows exactly what you want for Christmas. Also he’s great in bed and preferably is a great Trivial Pursuit player, but you’re a little flexible on this last quality because you can teach him. Trivial Pursuit, that is.

Looking for That Guy is going to leave you wildly frustrated. And what about all the other cool but not That Guy guys out there? You miss out on them.

It’s the same with publishing. If an editor is looking too hard for a certain type of book, she’ll be in danger of overlooking some other wonderful book, so she isn’t likely to look too hard for any certain type of book. And if you try too hard to write the exact book you think your targetted editor is looking for, you’re likely to miss out on what you do well.

And what is that? You have to figure it out by trial and error. You have to listen to feedback from critique partners and editors and contest judges, and you have to decide what feedback you agree with. You have to hone your gut sense about your work by getting it in front of any audience you can and then seeing their reaction. It can take years, but the years are going to pass anyway, so you might as well spend them doing something you love.

And you do love writing, don’t you? Because that’s the only reason to do it. If you love it as much as you love breathing (and by love, I don’t mean you actually enjoy sitting down at the computer every day–I mean that you can’t not write, because not writing would feel a little like death), and if you keep working at it, keep trying to get better, you’ll have the most important reward you can have as a writer.

No, I don’t mean getting published. Though that is a lovely reward. I mean, you’ll know you’ve done your best. And if you’ve done your best, and you’re writing books you love, chances are an editor will recognize it. And she’ll have to have you as her author.

The simple and complicated truth is, editors want great books. They want beautifully written books. They want books they can’t put down. And a beautifully written, can’t-put-downable book is inside you, waiting to get out onto the page. So what are you doing here? Go write it!

This will be the first in a series of posts I do this week on the topic of what editors want. If you have specific questions you’d like me to address in my posts on this topic, feel free to email me (jamiesobrato AT yahoo DOT com) or post your questions in the comments section.

PART 1:

For those of you struggling to sell your first book, trying to figure out what editors want can seem like a maddening and neverending quest. You read the publisher guidelines, you read the how-to-write-fiction books, you google an editor’s name until you come up with an interview they’ve given in which they say what they’re looking for… Maybe you even go to conferences and listen to what the editors say they want. Then you write your book, doing your best to fit your creative vision to the market’s needs. You submit your work, and you get rejected.

Okay, maybe that’s not everyone’s process. It wasn’t even my process exactly when I was trying to sell my first book, but it’s a good representation of what many of us do.

So how do you overcome the frustration of putting in all that work and still not selling the book?

The truth is, you don’t. Instead, you become one with the frustation, you embrace it, you have breakfast, lunch and dinner with it… You get the idea. Frustration is part of the process, and what you do to survive along the way is hold on to any little good signs you get and use those as motivation to keep going.

Maybe you give a pitch at a writer’s conference or in a query letter, and the editor says she loves your idea and that you should send her the manuscript to read. Turn that little bit of good news into the air that you breathe for, oh, say, the next year or however long it takes to get your next little bit of good news.

Just as important though, make yourself aware of what you did well in that pitch, and in that manuscript, that caught her interest. If you write a query that’s good enough to catch an editor’s interest, then take note. What did you do well? Do it again.

If, after submitting your work, you get anything other than a form rejection, glean every little clue you can from the feedback you get. Did the editor invite you to send more? Marvelous. Did she say no to your book and let you know why it didn’t work for her? Just as marvelous, because now you’ve got a road map toward improvement.

And now I have to qualify the above. One of the most important parts of becoming an experienced writer is learning to trust your own judgment about your work. Sometimes I think a book is good enough to sell and I’m wrong, but honestly, that doesn’t happen often anymore. If it does happen, it might be my judgment that’s faulty, but it’s just as likely to be market conditions or editorial taste. The point is though, sometimes, when you write something and you’re sure it’s the best thing you can write and you’re sure it’s going to sell if you just find the right editor–sometimes, you’re right.

The editor who rejected you may not be the right editor for you. So you keep trying until you find the right editor. You learn to distinguish matters of editorial taste from matters of manuscript quality. But that’s a topic for another post…

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2.

Weird (and not so weird) things about cover art at Harlequin:

1. No matter what color hair the hero in the novel really has, it’s probably going to be dark brown on the cover.

2. The person in the more dominant position on the cover is also usually the person who is more dominant in the story. It’s subliminal messaging, telling you subtly what the story is about.

3. Covers that prominently feature the hero’s torso (and little else) seem to sell better than every other kind of cover (this is anecdotal–I haven’t done an actual study, but am just going by what every author claims who’s had one of these mythical torso covers).

4. Object covers (featuring things instead of people), unless it’s for a bestselling author, sell horribly.

5. I can see no correlation at all between what I think are my most appealing covers and how well the book actually sells. It’s all a great big mystery (Of course there are many other factors affecting sales, but I find it strange that I can’t see any pattern. At ALL.).

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” ~Elmore Leonard

Oh Elmore. This is why we love you.

Thinking last night about how hard it is to work up the courage to chase a dream–and keep chasing it for the distance. Every which way you turn, there are people with discouraging words, eager to point out why you can’t do what you want to do. Don’t listen to them. It’s their own lives they’re really talking about, not yours.

I love cover art. I love design. Even bad cover art fascinates me. I sometimes browse bookstores just looking at the covers, considering what works for me and what doesn’t.

To turn my obsession into something useful, I’m going to do a series of posts on cover art. Some other day, I’ll get serious and talk in some detail about the process my books go through to get their covers. But for today, I have a funny story.

Harlequin mailed out to all us authors a Harlequin 60th Anniversary commemorative calendar at the start of this year. Each month features a vintage cover from Harlequin Books. Most of them are hilarious. (I’ll see if I can find some images from the calendar online later.) So I hung my calendar on the wall, with the month featuring a sultry, half-dressed minx from an old pulp fiction novel. My daughter looks up at the calendar and says, “Mommy, why is that girl’s dress falling off?”

Ahem. I took down the calendar. Told the five-year-old that’s what happens when you buy the wrong size dress.

Are you ever aware what draws you to a book visually? And how many of you will admit to buying a book based on the cover alone? I’ve done it, though not recently.

To anyone whose creative process is a clean, methodical, straight-forward matter, you can ignore this post (also, I hate you).

To everyone else, I want to put forward a theory. We mostly think of creative talent as something that can be improved steadily. Say, you write a book. It sucks. But you learn from it, and the next book you write comes out better. You learn from that one too, and your third book is even better than the second. You learn from that one, and the fourth book is so good you win major awards and attached the phrase “New York Times Bestselling Author” to the front of your name. And so on.

But this is faulty thinking. There are countless examples of authors whose first books make a big splash, garner lots of critical praise, etc, but when their second books come along, the world is less than impressed. There are various reasons why this could be so–expectations set too high by the first book, too much pressure on the author to live up to his or her first effort…

And then there is the matter of creative growing pains. Maybe the second book wasn’t as good as the first because the author is learning and growing, and he or she has hit one of those awkward adolescent phases when the nose is too big for the face, the voice is cracking, acne flares up, and emotions run high. This is the literary equivalent of junior high school.

The unfortunate part of growing creative talent is that those awkward adolescent phases never stop happening. We might write a great book, a lousy book, an okay book, a good book, another lousy book, and then a truly brilliant one. In that order. We get to be homecoming queen one year, and the awkward dork sitting on the sidelines the next.

As readers we all know the disappointment of picking up a book by a favorite author, only to find that we hate it. And maybe we hate the next book he or she writes too, and we start wondering if we shouldn’t just give up on Former Favorite Author. As writers though, we ought to know to be a little more foregiving. We’re all just grasping around, trying our best, hoping we’ve done something someone else will want to read (and, we hope, many someones). Creativity is too messy and mysterious for a clean upward trajectory.

Lori Borrill made a great point in the comments section of my last post (which inspired today’s topic–thanks Lori!), about how she noticed that Meryl Streep’s brilliant career is peppered with bad movies. And yet she’s gone on to keep acting and keep making great movies too. We should all aspire to have such long careers, accepting that no matter how hard we try, there are going to be some horrible growing pains along the way–and some moments of loveliness too.

Who are some of the creative talents you admire most? I bet no matter who you name, their career reflects this process of growing up painfully.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about the business of publishing and mentioned that it took me five years and six manuscripts to sell my first book. It’s occurred to me later though that we never stop trying to get published. It’s not as if, once you achieve the goal of selling your first book, you forever stay in that elusive state we called “published.”

Instead, it’s a struggle we continue for as long as we aspire to get paid for our writing. If we’re lucky and persistent, we write some things that sell, but we always write some things that don’t, regardless of persistence or luck. And there’s never a guarantee of selling again. So it’s really more like twelve years and counting that I’ve been struggling with this publication goal, some years more successfully than others.

I remember Jennifer Crusie making this very point back when I was still trying to sell my first book, and I found it a little annoying. Now here I am finally realizing it myself. :-> I didn’t want to be told back then that I might reach the top of the hill I was climbing and find nothing ahead but mountains.

I think what’s required to endure such a long journey without bitter disappointment is a bit of perspective. If you know ahead of time that the journey you’re setting out on is going to be a trek across the Himalayas, then you’ll pack and prepare appropriately. You won’t toss a bikini and a sarong in your suitcase, expecting nothing but sunny weather and poolside lounging.

For those of you who are writers, how long have you been writing? What’s been your biggest setback? And your greatest achievement?

My answers:
Years since I began writing seriously: 12
Biggest setback: struggling with burnout
Greatest achievement: finding myself improving as a writer (I think, I hope…)

I’m going through a blah reading period right now, where nothing is grabbing me and making me want to stay up late to find out what happens next. I’m listening to the audio version of Shantaram on my iPod, and I have various half-finished books next to my bed, but everything’s leaving me feeling kind of lukewarm.

What’s the last thing you read that grabbed you and wouldn’t let go? And what are you reading right now?