Some good advice from a writer --- how to submit a manuscript

Here is some more good advice from a published writer. This one is on how to submit a manuscript, and it comes by way of a blog called Cute Writing, which I sometimes use. It's a good blog, and the advice is also good. Any writer who has gotten to the point where they think they can submit a manuscript, should read this.


One should look especially carefully at the parts about going over the manuscript and cutting out awkward phrases wherever possible, etc.,, and to be prepared for lots of rejectons(e.g. develop a real thick skin, something I myself am not very good at)

About the only thing that I would add to this good advice is, the writer who submits a manuscript, should research who is and is not an appropriate agent or publisher to submit it to, well before they send it out! Things can change, and change rapidly.

Now back to writing, and taking my own advice. . . .
Anne G

I wish I could do this!

One of my local news dailies had a nice article about a local author. His name is Dave Boling, and he's a sportswriter turned novelist. He recently wrote a novel called Guernica. Guernica is in Spain, and was relentlessly bombed by the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War, which was well before my time. This act inspired Pablo Picasso's famous painting of the same name. He "made it", as they say, on the first try. Not only has he "made it", he "made it" internationally! I'm happy he did. I'm happy when any writer makes it like this. And since he got a good advance for this work(few Americans nowadays know anythng about this), I'm even happier for him. Most writers aren't that lucky.

But later on, two other news writers who made the transition to novels, wondered why he "had not gone through the usual training wheels of becoming a fiction writer --- short stories and learning the craft and then getting 70 pages into a novel and losing faith"(Direct quote from the Seattle PI) Which makes me wonder. Is there some equirement that a writer follow these steps? Certainly every writer should "learn the craft". How else can
they write? But writing short stories? While Robert Sawyer seems to think you must write short stories(he called it "paying your dues" in a column I can't seem to find), I wonder. If you're writing literary fiction, probably. And if you can write short stories, it's a good way to establish publication. But not everybody is good at writing succinctly enough for a good short story(I'm not; I write "big"), and I"m not at all sure that there are too many short story outlets for genre fiction. There certainly don't seem to be many for science fiction. So why the claim? I don't know. All I know is, that aside from being happy for Boling's success, I wish I might hiave a shot at similar success for my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals. But I probably won't, so it's back to writing. . . .
Anne G

Writer's learning curve

I've been reading a variety of interesting stuff lately, of all kinds. And learning from all of it, one way or another. Not all of it is science fiction(in fact, I'm rather picky about the sci-fi I read, so I haven't read much, lately). But I've learned things from all of it.

Currently I'm reading Katherine Neville's The Eight. Or rather, rereading it. I read it almost 20 years ago, commuting to and from work on a long bus ride. It has been reprinted, since Ms. Neville recently wrothat Ie a sequel called The Fire. What is rather strange is, when I started reading it, I couldn't remember that I had. This is not usually the case. I remember picking up some romances I'd read early in my reading/writing career, and finding I'd already read them! This was not the case with The Eight, at least not till I got to a part of this long, complicated, and many-layered tale that involved that famous French Revolutionary and Napoleonic character, Talleyrand. His explanation of how he came to walk with a limp sounded vaguely familiar.

As I am not through rereading this book, I will not comment any further, except that it looks like a fascinating and exotic mixture of elements, and evidentlhy Ms. Neville was very successful in putting them together, since it seems to have been What I I have learned so far is that a lot of changes in "preferrred writing styles" seem to have happened in the last 20 years or so. For one thing, she switches points of view a lot. She doesn't exactly use an "omniscient" point of vies, but she achieves this by switiching scenes and "voices"(the main narrator in modern times tells her tale in first person, but most scenes are in third person, whether in the past or the present). She also uses a rather "formal" way of writing, e.g., consistently using "upon"where most American writers, at least, would probably just use "on". I didn't notice any of this when I first read the book, but since I've started writing my own book(s), I notice these things a lot more. There is nothing really wrong with such usage; it just kind of leaps out at me. I've also noticed she made some rather odd, and in some cases, egregious(to me, at least), mistakes, which, I suppose, is natural for a writer writing a book of such broad scope.

To name just a few I've spotted so far(but apparently didn't or forgot about when I first read it), she has Russian the Gregorian calendar in the time of Catherine II(better known as Catherine the Great in the West), and the West is on the Julian calendar. The reverse is the case. The Russians continued to use the Julian calendar until 1917, when, in the throes of their revolution, they "upgraded". The West had been using the Gregorian Calendar(two weeks ahead of the Julian by that time), since the 16th century, though the British didn't adopt it till the 18th century, for religious/political reasons.
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Then there is the little matter of names. Russian names are often confusing to westerners, but there is no excuse for confusing Alexander with Alexei(Alexis to Westerners), especially when she "umlauts" the name Potemkin(pronounce Potyomkin in Russian).

Still, all this proves is that no writer is perfect, and so far, the book is very entertaining. It has been a "learning curve" for me, because when I first read it, I had no idea that I would ever be writing anything. And now that I am writing something, I am finding the book very entertaining reading, despite its flaws, but I am looking at The Eight in quite a different way than I did before. But then, this is true of all the books I read nowadays.

I will probably review the book later, as well as read, and review its sequel. Stay tuned.
Anne G

Neandercannibals --- not?

Julien Riel-Salvatore has a long post regarding the supposed Neandertal cannibals at Krapina, Croatia It seems that the latest investigations of the numerous bones there, which Gorjanovic-Kramberger studies over 100 years ago, which, being abundant, provide a lot of important information about Neandertals, suggests a lot of these bones may have just been chewed up by scavenging critters --- perhaps after they had been buried. There also may be evidence that ritual burying deflesing was going on. Despite its length, the post is well worth reading. Riel-Salvatore also has a long post regarding the whole question of the significance of Neandertals at Gibraltar dining on seafood, and the question of "behavioral modernity". Whether or not one agrees with Riel-Salvatore's conclusions on this, there is no question --- at least not in my mind --- that Neandertals and "moderns" behaved in very similar ways, at the time they coexisted, and perhaps even before that.
Anne G

October odds and ends and some good advice from Holly Lisle

As usual, I'm behind. I wanted to write about odds and ends, to begin October. Odds and ends about the writing process, for example. Well, it turns outn I'm not writing the "odds and ends" I thought I was going to be writing about! For one thing, I had an idea, right around the start of October, and now it's October 6, and I can't quite remember what the idea was, that I'd originally planned. That's because I couldn't find the time to write in The Writer's Daily Grind! Lesson one: if you have an idea about something --- for a blog or anything else ---write it down!. That's the only way to remember anything. Especially millions of brain cells later!


Which brings me to lesson two: the more you write, the more you find out about your characters. It's a growth process. Well, I learned something about my "antihero" character a few days back, when I started reading a book that has some of the same characters in it(iincluding the "antihero", who was a real person, but in the otherbook, he's just a stupid, well, idiot). His grandma was a (sort of) witch --- okay, I know what some readers may be thinking --- this is just in time for Halloween! But that wasn't my intention at all. A woman called Melusine is referred to on various occasions, and the legend current in the period my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masgterpiece With Neandertals takes place, she was supposed to be some sort of demonic witch. But the Dauarga(that's what the Neandertals in my story call themselves)know her as Mala, and her story was tragic. Well, by various means , the grandma is descended from Mala/Melusine and, well, by the time the "antihero" is old enough to be really conscious of her, she's thought to be kind of senile, because she tells wild tales. She also has, or had, a reputation as a "cunning woman", which is what they called witches at this time(mostly, these "witches" were left alone, because they knew something about herbs and healing). In any case, it partially explains the name of the character, and partly explains how he happens to be what I call a Conduit --- one who has Dauarga DNA in a certain combination, which is quite rare, and makes people unusually in tune with their surroundings, in a way(for good or evil, so to speak). This will not appear in my "Invaders" trilogy. It will come up in the prequel. For now, it just remains "backstory".

Finally, there is one more "odd or end", and that's the Holly Lisle website. She is a prolific writer who actually makes her living writing and believes in "paying forward" to other writers, published and otherwise. The other odd bit I was trying to find was something she wrote about style, and sticking to it, which I couldn't seem to locate. However, if you click on that website, you'll find a cornucopia of information, all of which is chock-full of really good stuff for any aspiring writer, at any stage of their writing process. And I'm only too happy to pass this information on.
Anne G

Swearing and sex, medieval style

The blog Historical Boys has a nice guest entry from Jeri Westerson. She also has a blog called Getting Medieval. Both of these are on my blogroll. The entry concerns medieval "swear words", which were quite different from "swear words" nowadays. "S-words" and "f-words" would simply have described bodily functions or bodily activity, I don't have much to add to this, except that in Anglo-Saxon times, calling someone a "nithing" was considered an insult --- though it wasn't a "swear word". "Nithing" was an insult because it implied that the person so named had done something so horrible that he was basically outside society. On the other hand, people in medieval times probably would not understand what all the fuss with some hip-hop artists is all about. And on still another note, Nan Hawthorne has some "cautionary tales" about medieval attitudes toward sex. She correctly points out that the manuals directed at couples, were written by monks, therefore not precisely objective. Again, I don't have a whole lot to add here, other than that the advice in these manuals apparently varied, depending on the monks who wrote them. Some of them apparently felt that, while sex was a duty for procreation only, enjoyment could be mixed with "duty" since "enjoyment" was, according to these monks, more likely to produce children. I suppose what they actually observed was, that if the couple truly enjoyed each other's company, they were more likely to spend the right sort of time in each other's company, that would insure that children were produced! Still, even if they came up with the right answer for the wrong reasons, it definitely suggests that medieval people were not the mealy-mouthed puritans some of us imagine today.
Anne G

Historically real, or not?

On one of the e-mail lists I inhabit from time to time, an interesting discussion has been going on. It concerns the question of whether one prefers historical fiction with real historical persons as central characters, or whether one prefers historical fiction with fictional characters.

Let me say at the outset, that I prefer the latter. I've tried to read several fictional biographies over the last few years, and frankly, I haven't found them all that interesting. Why? Because, especially if the central character is well-known, the plot is, in essence, predictable! Margaret George's Autobiography of Henry VIII comes to mind here. I never finished it, although Margaret George is an excellent writer, and many people like her material. But really, how many books can people write about Henry VIII without "saying it all over again"? Some writers can pull this off, especially if they are dealing with people and times that aren't so well known. This is one reason why I like the earlier Middle Ages --- there were plenty of interesting real people around then, but often you have little to really "go on" about them.

To go a little further here, the debate came down to whether or not people preferred to

write about real people in real historical situations, or fictional characters who participated in some historical event. It turned out(though I wasn't terribly surprised, in one sense, that some writers consider writing about real people "easier", because they don't have do so much story plotting. Well, that depends. These writers often seem to feel that you can "invent" their emotions, and it's enough trouble trying to "get at" the historical person's actual character or personality, and let the history take care of the plot. I guess that's fine if you want to do character studies, but that is not enough to a novel make, as they say.

This doesn't mean interesting work can't be done about real people in real historical situations. Another of the debaters on this list, is writing a book about a real person who I think I've heard of, but is basically very obscure, yet apparently led a very interesting life. I am sure the writer of this novel did the best he could to learn as much as he could about the period in which the person lived, and tried to be as accurate about the accounts of that peson, as he could. But the author is dealing with "obscurity" and probably had to do a lot of inventing. This often works.

What doesn't work, for me, at least, is taking a very well-known character, and writing yet another fictional biography about him or her. As I said, try as these authors might, their lives are too well-known to be anything but predictable. And that "turns me off".

I much prefer something like Patricia Finney's TheFiredrake's Eye, which takes place in Elizabetghan England, but the majority of characters are products of Ms. Finney's imagination, working their way through very real historical events and processes. This makes for compelling reading if done right, and, if done right, may stimulate reader to learn more about whatgever period the author is writing about(though I myself am not a big fan of Tudor or Elizabethan; there's just too much of it).

And, I might modestly mention that my own work is, of course, in the latter category, though it is built around some very real medieval events. Some of the real people are well-known, but one of the characters, whose activities the story is basically built around, is historical but decidedly obscure. And two of the really central characters aredefinitely products of my doubtless overworked imagination! I've had a lot of fun digging out "historical nuggets" from a variety of sources, though, and even more fun putting them together ito my Great Medieval Science Fi ction Masterpiece(or should I call it "romantic science fiction"?). In any case, I continue to take the advice or writers who have gone before me, and read, read, read, everything I can get my hands on, not all of which is historical fiction, but is always valuable.
Anne G