Is Practice a Dirty Word to Writers by Dean Wesley Smith

It's time for some more sage advice from Dean Wesley Smith. Today's he's talking about writers and how they perfect their craft. You can view the full article here at Dean's site: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=5097

Practice. The ugly word for writers.

Here’s the question that illustrates this myth:

Would you pick up a violin, take one lesson, and think you should step on the stage in front of 30,000 people to play a concert?

No sane person says sure to that question. It’s a laughable question, yet almost every beginning writer I know writes a first short story, or a first novel, fires it off to a publisher, and then gets mad when it gets rejected. Or they put it up electronically and wonder why only their friends and family bought it.

Reactions always vary in this anger.

— “Oh, stupid editors don’t understand true genius when they read it.”

Or when indie published you hear:

— “I need to promote this more. Clearly no one is seeing it.”

And so on and so on.

The real reason your story got rejected early on? Or no one is buying the the story online?

You haven’t practiced your craft enough, so your story sucked. Or your opening sucked. Or your blurbs sucked. All writing.

My suggestion? Leave the story alone, rewriting won’t help it. Write another one.

Get more practice.

And keep mailing or keep indie publishing as is your choice. But focus on practice, practice, practice.

I don’t practice: I write!

So how come writers think every word they write doesn’t stink and get so angry at a simple rejection to an early story? How come the word “practice” is a dirty word to writers? The shout or thought is: “I don’t practice. I write!”

To beginning writers every word is golden.

Every word needs to be polished and worked over (check out the rewriting chapter to understand that myth), even though the writer has no clue what they are fixing or not fixing. You don’t think the rewriting myth applies here to the practice myth? Of course it does. When you are rewriting, you aren’t practicing writing. You are just trying to rearrange notes in the last practice session. Think of that in music terms and you see how really silly that is.

Tell a beginning writer to toss out a manuscript and write the idea (the story) from scratch and they will sit stunned and horrified. “You can’t toss out my beautiful, wonderful, etched-in-stone words.” Yet in music you screw up an attempt at a song, you do it again.

So how come writers think this way?

Lots of reasons actually. The biggest is that early on in our lives we all started writing in one fashion or another. And, of course, those who were good in school got praise by a high school or college teacher for good writing, and thus the belief is because of that praise it is possible to be a bestseller on the first book. Uhhhh….no.

Second reason: In the early days it takes special time that must be carved out of life to write, so whatever is produced in that time can’t be “wasted” in any way.

Truth: No writing is ever wasted. It is practice.

There are many other smaller reasons for this belief system. Each writer needs to figure out why they have it and crush it. Mine was because I learned to type and write my first stories on typewriters, with tons of White-Out. I felt at times like I was carving a statue on those pages. Took me a while, meaning years, to get past that feeling.

So what is practice in writing and how do you do it?

Every writer I know who is a long term professional has practice methods for almost every craft a writer needs to master. I’ll give you some general ones in a moment. But first, let me talk about how you practice.

1) A Writer is a Person Who Writes. So is just simply doing lots of writing good practice?

Sometimes yes, to a degree. If you are mailing the story or novel out to editors when you finish, or indie publishing it, and getting feedback and applying the feedback to THE NEXT STORY.

The key is getting feedback, listening to the feedback, and then writing the next story. See my caution on workshops in an earlier chapter and on how to use workshops for the feedback.

You can’t fix a practice session. But you can learn from a practice session what works and what doesn’t work and apply that knowledge to your next story or novel.

If you just write the same story over and over, the same way, without actually trying to apply knowledge to the new story, then no, you can write for years and not improve. And sadly, I’ve seen that happen.

There is a common term for what you need to do. It is called FOCUSED PRACTICE.

But first and foremost, you have to sit and do a lot of writing. No rewriting, writing original words. Not researching, writing original words. And when you are done with the story or novel, get it in the mail or indie published and move on.

2) Does everything you write in the early years need to be a focused practice session? 

Yes, again to a degree. Early on in your writing career, you are missing so many storytelling skills, just writing and not working to get better in an area doesn’t make much sense. As the words go by and the years pass, not every session is a practice session.But every session will always be a learning session.

3) Should I tell stories while practicing or just write paragraphs or scenes?

Oh, heavens, you are practicing being a storyteller, so every session is focused on telling a story. Nothing else matters. Everything you practice goes to telling a story, so every practice session should be on a story of some sort. Anyone with an English degree can type a bunch of pretty sentences. Writing a story is another matter.

4) If I am only practicing, should I mail out my stories when they are finished? Or indie publish them?

OF COURSE!!! Duh, you have to get feedback on your practice, and an editor telling you a story works, or that they read it shows your practice is working. And readers buying or not buying your story off of Kindle and the other sites is great feedback. At first you will only get form rejections and no sales, but develop a trusted first reader and use a workshop for feedback, but get everything out.

I used to write a story every week, then mail it to an editor on my way to turn it into my workshop.

I wanted feedback on the story not to fix the story, but to learn how to do something better on the next story, and to see if something worked or didn’t work. Workshop sometimes told me that, but editors told me that even more. And I trusted the editors and readers.

5) How long do you need to practice and work on your craft and storytelling skills?

Your entire life. It never ends. The learning never stops in this art form, and the moment you think you are “good enough” you are dead.

I once had an interviewer ask me why I wrote so many media novels. My standard answer is, of course, that I loved the universes and the characters and the work. And that’s very true. Writing for DC and Marvel and Star Trek and Men in Black and X-Box was just a blast for an old kid like me. Period, end of discussion.

But for some reason I answered a different way with this interviewer. I answered, “Practice.”

You see, for every media book I wrote, I focused on one thing to practice for that book. For example, on three novels in a row, I worked on nothing but different forms of cliffhangers. The reviews on those three books for the first time in my career started adding in the phrase “hard to put down.”

Focused practice, then feedback, then more focused practice, then more feedback.

That’s the loop you want to try to set up in every way possible.

Feedback:

For a moment, let me give you some basic hints about feedback and how to understand what a first reader or workshop reader is saying to you. These are very basic.

“Your story really took off on page six.”

Meaning: Your opening sucks, you walked or strolled or woke up to your story, and no editor on the planet will ever buy the story.

“I just couldn’t see your story.”

You forgot to ground your reader in a setting, real setting, and your characters were just talking heads yacking at each other in a white room.

“Your character seemed flat.”

You forgot to give any kind of character voice or character opinion or character description.

“Your ending doesn’t work.”

You screwed up your set-up in the opening of your story and didn’t prepare the reader for your ending. Or you wrote two pages past your ending and didn’t know it. Or you haven’t gotten to your ending yet.

And so on and so on. You get the idea. Get the feedback, figure out what it really means, which is often not what you are hearing.

Secret of Indie Publishing by Dean Wesley Smith

The following article is taken in part from Dean Wesley Smith. The article plus many other helpful posts can be found at Dean's website here: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/

This post deals with product. Take it away, Dean.

Why Having More Product Is Better Than Having Less Product.

I have heard over and over and over from indie publishers how their sales are not what they expected, or how they hope to promote their way to a big seller on their one book. Up to now I have mostly just bit my lip and kept my mouth shut.

It just doesn’t work with one or two or even five stories up. Or at least it doesn’t work that way unless you are fantastically lucky and wrote a great book on the exact right topic at the exact right time. I hate planning on being lucky to make it. I want to plan on hard work and quality writing.

So how can an indie publisher plan on making a living, paying the bills, without “luck” coming into play and without sending out thousands of flyers as I suggested last chapter?

Simple, actually. You have to write more.

And if you write more, you can count on the churn, the coin drop, the arm pull, the grind, whatever you want to call it.

An indie publisher needs a lot of products across a lot of sales locations all selling small amounts.

I have talked about this in various ways in other chapters and in other places. But here I want to try to be clear and put it together quickly one more time because this kind of thinking is critical to indie publishers.

Produce Model vs Long Term Sales Model

Remember this?

Publishing for the last sixty-plus years has worked on the produce model, meaning that traditional publishers treat every book as if it is a piece of fruit that will spoil if not sold quickly. They made every book into an “event” to help sell the books quickly. And if the books didn’t sell quickly, they were pulled from the shelves like bad fruit and trashed.

The reason for this is actually fairly simple. Physical shelf space is limited and the number of books being produced far, far exceeded the shelf space available. So if a book didn’t sell quickly, it was replaced with one that might.

Now, with electronic publishing and POD publishing, the shelf space is unlimited. And there is no hurry. A book can just sell along at a pace and as readers hear about it and find it, the sales can grow slowly.

That unlimited shelf space is the largest change in publishing the electronic device has brought about. And we have just begun to see the ramifications of that one aspect of bookselling alone.

Now, all publishers can do the work to list a product for customers and just leave it to sell.

Indie publishers need to lead the way into long-term thinking.

Books do not spoil.

And a reader who finds your book four years after you publish it is just as good as a reader who finds it the day after you publish it.

Places to Sell Books

Just this last week Kindle opened up its store in Germany and made selling through it automatic for all of us. Nice!

Kobo is opening stores in numbers of countries this next month.

iBooks already sells in many countries.

And the expansion continues of electronic book sales around the world every day and more and more people buy readers and smart phones.

Here in the States, the percentage of electronic book sales compared to traditional book sales continues to expand. And that’s not even counting that indie publishers, with some work and minor investment, can sell into the bookstores with POD books as I have been talking about.

Indie publishers need to start looking at the averages.  And make writing new product the most important thing you do every day.

Indie Publishing Average

The problem with indie publishing at first is that the writers watch their numbers and get discouraged. I have told the story many times how last May Kris walked into my office and made an off-handed comment about how the three short stories I had put up quickly in December of 2009 were making $12.00 a month on Kindle. They were the only three we had up at that point.

Three old short stories. $12.00 per month one site. Was I discouraged at that? Heck no. (But many writers would be.)

Honestly, I had forgotten they were even up. And $12.00??? Holy crap! I wouldn’t even let myself believe it for a while. I just kept doing the math over and over and over.

Across my office are sixteen metal file drawers full of short stories. Kris has double that. And that is not counting the massive number of large file cabinets downstairs with novels in them. All stories and novels basically dead to the old way of produce-thinking. I swear those file cabinets turned from an ugly puke-brown color to pure gold as I stared at them.

I have far more than a hundred short stories, Kris has two or three hundred, and yet three old stories were making us $144.00 per year. Holy crap! (You do the math. And don’t forget to add in collections at $2.99 and $4.99.)

Was I discouraged at seeing only $12.00 of sales? Nope. I got excited.

With some help Kris and I formed WMG Publishing. We have been off and running since last July.

WMG Publishing now has over 160 stories, collections, and novels up and the list is growing steadily every month.

Again, just do the math. Trust me, 160 stories, collections, and novels sounds like a lot, but you can get to it as well given time and a lot of writing, even if you don’t have a backlist like I do.

Indie publishers need to write like an old pulp writer. Fast and hard and get it into print.

Sales Numbers

So what can an indie publisher count on for sales? Is there a floor?

With one story? Not a clue. You might not sell a single copy across all twenty sites in a month.

With ten short stories, you should be able to start seeing average sales.

I use five sales per story average for short stories and collections across all sites and to be honest, many, many people tell me that after twenty or so short stories, that average is low (when you count all sites and not just Kindle). It is low, very low for me and Kris, but I like to be very conservative.

Novels sell better, so I use a floor of twenty-five sales for novels total per month across all twenty sites.

But again, you must have a decent number published and selling so the amount can average. (I am not talking about Joe Konrath numbers here, just us normal mortals.)

The Math Again

Using my friend’s example of writing drive, let me see what she might make.

—- Short story sells for 99 cents. You get 35 cents minimum. Up to 60 cents on some sites, but use 35 cents for now.

5 x .35 = $1.75 per story per month.  Or $21.00 per year per story.

—-

—- Five story collections sell for $2.99. You get 70% or $2.10.

5 x 2.10 = $10.50 per collection per month. Or $126.00 per year.

—-

—- Ten story collections sell for $4.99. You get 70% or $3.50.

5 x $3.50 = $17.50 per collection per month. Or $210.00 per year.

—-

Writing five short stories can make you in one full year of really minimal sales $21.00 + $126.00 + $210.00 = $357.00 per year.

Writing 50 stories in a year as my friend is working at doing can make $3,570.00 per year at minimal sales.

Writing 50 stories a year for three years will give you a base income of over $10,000.oo. Assuming the average stays on the bottom at five sales for each story or collection across all twenty sites. Which it will not with that many stories available.

Now, say you stopped and the sales just continued on.  In 9 years you would have made over $30,000.00 if everything stayed the same and the sales stayed on the bottom. And you didn’t write another word.

Summary

No matter what you do as an indie publisher, you must be writing first. You must be creating product.

In the first golden age of fiction, the pulp writers got very, very rich at 1 cent per word in the middle of the Depression.

We are in a new golden age of publishing.

We can write a few books, treat them like events and spoiling fruit, or we can write all the time, have fun, write what we want, put them up, and then just keep writing.

We now have the choice to go either to traditional publishing or do it ourself with indie publishing.

But just as it has been for hundreds of years, the writers who will make it on either side, traditional or indie, are the writers who just keep writing.

And that really is the secret.

Dean Wesley Smith: WRITERS ARE LOSING THE FIGHT AGAIN

Dean has some valid points here and I totally agree with him.  I can hire my own editor and graphic artist for my books and then upload directly to Amazon and Barnes & Noble myself.  It's not hard to figure out.  There is lots of help out there without signing your books away to an agent turned publisher.  Here's a portion of Dean's post.  


You can read the entire post here: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4096

Because of sheer stupidity, writers once again are losing a major fight that they don’t even realize they are in.

In today’s news there was an announcement of yet another agent setting up a publishing company “for their clients.” These agents, of which there are many around the world now, are settling on certain terms for their new publishing business.

The terms from agency to agency are pretty much as stated in this new article today.

Three scary quotes from just today:

“…we are becoming partners with our writers.”

“…will recoup expenses first…”

“…then share net reciepts 50/50.”

In just the last few months many agencies have decided to go this way. Many others have been on this road for a time. One major agency has been doing this for over ten years now. In this new world this path is just about the only way agents can see to stay in business.

Also, more head-shaking, a number of major bloggers have been pushing this for some strange reason as if it’s a good thing for writers.

Okay, let me talk math here. Then ask a few questions.

Do it yourself

You put up your own book and you get around 70%, give or take, of the money.

Price your book at $4.99 and you get $3.50 per sale.

Yes, you might have  to learn a few new things, hire someone to help you with a cover, but folks, this is not rocket science.

Make Your Agent Your Publisher

Now, go with agents doing the same thing you could do becauseYOU WANT TO HAVE SOMEONE TAKE CARE OF YOU.

The agent puts your book up for sale for $4.99.  How much will you get????

Let’s do the math.

— At first NOTHING. “…will recoup expenses first…”

That’s right. Whatever the agent sees fit to call expenses, those come off the top FIRST.

So more than likely that includes the salary of the person doing the work, the cover art, and so on and so on.  You get nothing. And that’s if the agent is actually being fair to you. We are talking about agents here, remember. (For a lesson on agents, see Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog last week.)

And remember, that amount for expenses comes out of your share.  (See below.)

And wait, do those expenses count the accounting department’s expenses every time a new check comes in? Who pays for the accountant’s salary?

When do the expenses stop????

—- Second, “…then share net receipts 50/50.”

That’s right, you get 50/50 split of net after those unknown “expenses.”

What the hell is “NET?” How is that defined?  Does that deduct the assistant’s lunch and everyone’s coffee every day???

So being nice and assuming that “net” means the amount they say they got from Kindle, then you sell the book for $4.99, money comes in at $3.50.  You give your agent $1.75 of that and you get $1.75 of that.  So from getting $3.50, you get no money for a time to clear expenses and then get $1.75 per sale.

Of course, at $1.75 per sale, it might take you years to just work off the “expenses.” Because that’s how much goes against expenses. Not the agent’s half.

All because you were too lazy to learn a few new things, hire someone for a flat fee to do stuff you didn’t want to do, and take control of your own career.

Dean Wesley Smith Talks Pricing, Discounts & Sales

For those of you who don't know Dean Wesley Smith, he's a bestselling author who has written more than ninety popular novels and well over 100 published short stories.  On his website, he offers advice on a number of different subjects.  I'm reposting his post about pricing in his "Think Like A Publisher" series.  You can find the full post here: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=3940 


Think Like a Publisher #8 -- As some of you said in the comments, I sort of left this on a cliffhanger talking about how to get the other 79 book outlets to make at least 100 book outlets for sales. Please go read Think Like a Publisher #7 if you have not, or some of this will make no sense. This sales series is meant to work as one large unit.

Alas, before I can go into how to get the other 79 plus sales outlets, I need to once again talk about pricing.  I have done a number of major posts about this topic, so not going into it again here. Go argue price somewhere else if you have a problem.

Those of you who think you should price your novel for 99 cents on Kindle and that’s it, just stop reading now. You are a discount publisher and I am talking to regular indie publishers.

—Discount publishers, both traditional and indie, are a different entity and make money on vast numbers of sales with very tiny margins to a small number of outlets. Discount publishers have no regular distribution or bookstore sales.

—Regular publishers, both traditional and indie, make their money in regular sales at regular prices to a vast network of stores and outlets. Regular indie publishers are who this chapter is for.

Here is the price structure I suggest for indie publishers and that works in all the math you will be doing.

PRICING

Electronic Fiction:

…$2.99 for 5 story collections or short novels

…$4.99 for ten story collections

… $4.99 for novels.

(Nonfiction and other projects, including enhanced books are different.)

POD Fiction:

…$7.99-$9.99 for 125-200 page short novels or collections in trade paperback. (5.25 x 8 inch or 5.5 x 8.5 inch trim sizes)

(Note: Price would vary by page count costs. Check the calculators on CreateSpace.)

…$10.99- $14.99 for 200-300 page short novels or collections in trade paper. (5.5 x 8.5 inch or 6 x 9 inch trim sizes)

(Note: Price would vary by page count costs. Check the calculators on CreateSpace.)

…$15.99- $16.99 for 300-450 pages trade paper novels. (6 x 9 inch trim)

(Note: Price would vary by page count costs. Check the calculators on CreateSpace. If you can’t get your book under 450 pages with leading and font and margin issues, you might think of writing shorter books. I have no suggestion for you except to take the price to $17.99 or higher and hope. Large fantasy novels can go to that length and handle the doorstop-book price. And nonfiction can go that large and handle higher prices.)

Okay, we set on pricing? Good, because the above pricing structure works for everything I am about to talk about. Again, check the price calculators on CreateSpace with your trim size and page count to set your exact price. Always look to the Pro Plan number and try to keep the price at least in the 8% and up profit range.

What do Editors Really Do?

Author Dean Wesley Smith  has a very informative post about editors, "Editors are Evil Myth."  I'd like to pull one section out of his full post about what an editor really does.  You can read Dean's full post here.  He talks about how the myth that editors are evil lives on.  If you haven't read any of his posts, you really should start reading them today.  He has a wealth of knowledge and first hand experience as an author.  


Snippet of full post:

WHAT DO EDITORS REALLY DO?

For those of you who have never seen the inside of a major editor’s office in New York, let me give you a quick tour.

Editors and senior editors’ offices are often small, not more than about four paces deep and two or three paces wide. Shelves on both sides and a desk and one chair. Assistant editors and associate editors often sit outside in the hall at a desk or in a nearby cubicle. Executive editors have larger offices, but not much, and publishers have larger offices. Books and art are stacked everywhere in the halls and offices, along with piles and piles and piles of paper, mostly manuscripts in one stage or another.

What is a senior editor’s job? Simply put, to produce every month a list of books. Senior editors are at least in charge of one imprint list. The list can be from three to six books per month. So each editor has between 36 and 72 books a year, plus a number of others on other lists that they also buy for. The editor is usually buying two years out, so double that number, and then don’t forget the books already published that are in some stage of promotion. A normal editor can handle 200 plus book titles a year when you add it all up, depending on the house and company and imprint.

An editor’s day is filled with dealing with the art department, with the sales department, with the managing editor, with cover copy, meetings with the publisher, answering mail and email, massive numbers of phone calls, and so much more. Editors seldom, if ever, have time to read in their office. They read at home or on the subway going home or to work. They read on weekends.

In other words, if your image of an editor was what you have seen from Hollywood, with the big offices, the clean desks, the one manuscript sitting on top of the desk waiting to be read, you are sadly lost in a bad myth. Editors’ offices and the area around them are beehives of activity among piles and piles of paper and books and art.

The editors I know who have lasted for years thrive in this corporate craziness. And they do it for the love of taking a book that they have found and helping it get to thousands of readers that they hope will love it as well.

Editors don’t get paid enough. They sit in far, far too many hours of meetings. But when one of their writers show up in town, they do get to use the corporate credit card for lunch, often the only time they can afford to go to a new or nice restaurant.

Editors love and hate working with writers at the same time. They love working with the writers who act professionally and are clear on the process of helping a book become a better book in the writer’s vision. They hate working with writers who haven’t bothered to learn any business, who are lost in egos, or who think that the editor works for them.

It’s working with that type of clueless writer that makes editors sometimes rather work with an agent. At least the agent will usually be professional and understand how the business works. But if you are a clear-thinking writer who knows the realities of the publishing business, the editors would much rather work with you directly than through a third party. Less chance of screw-ups that way.

Editors do their best to protect writers, sometimes too much so. They are deathly afraid of giving a writer bad news for some reason I have yet to figure out.