Advice to New Writers

 

Advice to new writers who want to become professional authors or the trials and tribulations of all fiction writers

It’s time to share some of the things I’ve learned during more than fifty years of professional writing. I thought about calling this “advice to young writers,” but many writers are no longer young when they turn pro. So this is probably good advice for all writers, young and old alike, professional or aspiring, myself included. Take it for what it’s worth. My advice is usually free. I charge for my stories (smile). If you like what you read here, perhaps you’ll buy one of my novels or short story collections at Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/Paul-Dale-Anderson/e/B00A9XFLBQ/ or BarnesandNoble.comhttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/paul+dale+anderson?_requestid=514797. I’ll eventually get royalties. Every penny helps.

You’re a writer if you write. You’re a real writer if you write regularly. You become a professional writer after you sell your first story for cash money paid at professional rates, and the story is actually published and available for public sale.

Very few professional writers earn their living entirely from writing fiction. Most pros have to supplement their royalties by writing non-fiction, and/or teaching creative writing classes, or working a full or part-time day job. Short stories and novels may pay the rent and put a little food on the table, but you have to be really prolific (as well as good) to also pay for health insurance, social security (self-employment tax), and income taxes solely from fiction sales. And, if you expect to save money for retirement, you need to start saving now and put something away from each monthly or semi-annual royalty check. Royalty income tends to diminish with time, and you can’t count on receiving big royalty checks forever. You’re only as popular as your next novel. Backlist books don’t usually sell well unless you’re Stephen King or James Patterson.

I began writing when I was four. I turned pro when I turned seventeen. I won a state-wide writing contest for high school students. My short work (less than 2000 words) was published in multiple places and I was paid for each publication. I earned $175.00 from that initial sale ($25 for winning the contest, $150.00 for first serial rights and subsequent publications; I considered that big money back in 1962). I put all that big money in the bank and it helped feed me my first year at the University of Illinois. Eventually, I earned a BA in English with a minor in journalism from Loyola University, and I sold a bunch of non-fiction pieces to newspapers and magazines and worked briefly as a magazine and a book editor.

I wrote my first novel while in high school, my second, third, and fourth novels while in college. Those novels were valuable learning experiences for me, but the novels never sold. I still have dog-eared copies tucked away in trunks somewhere. From time to time I think of revising them and trying again to sell them. Someday, perhaps, I will.

I sold only four short stories between 1966 and 1977. I sold three work-for-hire down-and-dirty novels (one western and three erotic/porn novels) between 1977 and 1984. Although I did consider myself a professional writer, I wrote only part-time and worked full-time day jobs while serving my country, managing businesses, raising a family, and learning a lot about living. None of the four science fiction novels I wrote during that time period sold. They are also buried in a trunk somewhere; rightfully so, I suspect.

I became a full-time pro writer in 1984 with the publication of multiple short stories and three novels bearing my Paul Dale Anderson by-line. I also taught writing classes for the University of Illinois and Writers Digest Schools, and I wrote articles on writing for which I was sometimes paid and that were published in national and small press publications. I joined SFWA, HWA, and MWA. I served as a vice president and trustee of HWA. I remained a full-time writer until 1990. In 1990, when my wife first became ill and we needed insurance, I took a day job at the local public library and remained working full-time for libraries until 2011. I earned a masters in Library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin and retired as an honest-to-goodness reference librarian. I worked for both public and academic libraries and taught classes during that twenty-year time period, and I earned both a meager state university retirement and a public employee retirement. I also earned a masters in educational psychology and worked on a doctorate. I did research and wrote journal articles and a University-published thesis and dissertation, but I wrote no new fiction from 1993 until 2013.

When Gretta died in 2012, I decided to return to writing fiction to save my sanity. I retired from academia and closed up my successful hypnosis practice in 2013. I didn’t write full-time until 2014, but I did begin to attend sf conventions and reactivated my memberships in SFWA, HWA, and MWA. I joined ITW and The Authors Guild. I dropped my memberships in National Guild of Hypnotists, American Psychological Association, and Association for Psychological Science. I sent out novel proposals to editors and agents, and I sent new short stories to editors. It was like starting over again. Most of the editors I had worked with had died, as had Barbara Puechner, my literary agent. Few people in the industry recognized my name in 2014. I used multiple pen names when I was a prolific writer working in multiple genres, and that didn’t help. Nor did being best-known as a horror writer, because my new works were more fantasies and thrillers or crossed genres.

It took me two years to get rights back to my previously-published novels and find new publishers to reprint them. I began selling regularly to the small press. Eldritch Press, Damnation Books, and Crossroad Press bought new novels and Weirdbook and The Horror Zine bought short stories. Within a year after publishing my novel, Eldritch Press went out of business. Damnation Books sold out to another publisher before they published my book. I immediately sold both titles to Crossroad Press.

I only recently acquired a new agent.

So here is my advice: write every day. Write what you want to write and like to read. Writing should be fun and you should be so absorbed in the story itself that you can’t wait to find out what happens to your characters next. Before you finish one novel, start on your next novel. Write a short story a month. Keep writing. Take a break from one project to work on another, if you need a break. Have lots of fun because you deserve it.

Although writing should be fun, revision and editing should be, and will be, hard work. So, you will find, is marketing hard and time consuming work. You write for the love of telling a good story. You edit and sell your writing to make a living.

Never hire an editor to edit your manuscript. Editors offer to pay a professional writer (you) in advance for the privilege of editing your manuscripts. Editors pay you. You don’t pay them. Period. End of sentence.

Editors today expect a manuscript to be almost perfect before they first see it, so the real editing work is your responsibility. It’s not the responsibility of an editor you hire. Nor the acquisitions editor. Nor your agent’s. The responsibility for editing your work is yours and yours alone. Your editor may assign a copy editor to check continuity and facts, a line editor to check spelling and punctuation, and a proofreader to catch typos. If you are a true professional, their job will be easy and minimal. They’ll remember you and thank you for it.

Before you can write, you must read. Read everything, including the ingredients listed on a cereal box. Read everything you can get your hands on.

Before you can edit, read Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style. I’ve memorized The Little Book (Strunk and White), and you should, too.

Next Up: The business of writing

Happy 2016

2015 was a great year, and 2016 will be even better

My modest goals as a writer: Write and sell two novels and two short stories every year. I started that practice in 1982, and I completed two novels and ten short stories that year while working a full-time job as a hotel manager. I also served thirty days on active duty as a Chief Warrant Officer with the U. S. Army Reserve. I sold one of those two novels the following year, and the other novel sold in 1985. Four of the ten stories saw print by 1984, and the other six were gobbled up by small press magazines before 1990.

I continued writing two novels and ten short stories each year through 1994. I sold eight novels and fifty-six short stories during that twelve-year period. All eventually appeared in print.

Most went out of print before the start of the new Millennium, although several of my short stories continued to be reprinted in anthologies from Pinnacle or in translations appearing from foreign publishers in various European and Asian languages.

When I returned to writing fiction in 2012, I had the same goal: write two new novels and two new short stories each and every year. I completed Abandoned and Deviants in 2012, Winds and Darkness in 2013, Light, Icepick, and Spilled Milk in 2014,and Meat Cleaver, Axes to Grind, Running Out of Time, and Pinking Shears in 2015. I sold Abandoned and Deviants both in 2014 (Eldritch Press published Abandoned in March 2015 and Damnation Books still hasn’t set a definite pub date for Deviants). Crossroad Press brought out new digital editions of The Devil Made Me Do It, Claw Hammer, and Daddy’s Home in 2014, and they published Pickaxe, Icepick, Pinking Shears, Axes to Grind, Meat Cleaver, and Running Out of Time in 2015.

Three of my short stories appeared in print in 2015. “Dolls” was published in Weirdbook 31 in September, “After the Fall” was published in the Fall 2015 issue of The Horror Zine, and “Who Knows What Evil Lurks” was revised for the August 2015 issue of Pulp Adventures 18.

2015 was very good year.

2016 promises to be even better.

The Devil Mad Me Do It Again and Again, a new short fiction collection containing twenty stories previously-published in anthologies and magazines,  should be out by March.

I’m putting final revisions on Sledgehammer, the latest novel in my Instruments of Death series. Impossible is an sf thriller, part of my Under the Gun series. I’m working on sequels to Spilled Milk, Winds, and Daddy’s Home. Come Hell and High Water is a supernatural thriller about the End of Times. And Final Exam is an exciting forensic science novel with an aging female pathologist who is teamed with a retired detective to teach criminology at a State University. When faculty members become targeted by a serial killer, two over-the-hill sleuths and a handful of students must track down the killer before they become victims themselves.

I’m also experimenting with first-person present tense in short fiction.

2015 was a busy year for public appearances and autographing, and 2016 promises to be even busier. I’m already committed to attending MidAmericon II in KC, Thrillerfest in NYC, Bouchercon in New Orleans, Stokercon in Vegas, and Wiscon, World Fantasy Con, and Windycon in the Midwest.

I wish all of my friends and fans the world over a very Happy New Year. I look forward to seeing you in person in 2016.

My Debt to the Small Press

Many of us sf, suspense, and horror writers owe a debt to the small press.

Those of us who began our careers in the last half of the twentieth century—specifically, the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s—honed our craft by writing short stories. We had grown up reading pulp magazines and paperback anthologies, and what we aspired most to be in life was a paperback writer who wrote short stories and fast-paced serialized novels sold on newsstands or through subscriptions.

Our heroes had ascended the ladder of success via early short stories published in the pulps: Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Robert Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Andrea Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Fritz Leiber, Fredrick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, H. P. Lovecraft, and countless others. Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and even Faulkner and Hemingway and Stephen King wrote many short stories for magazines. Seeing one’s own name on a by-line in a magazine was the gold-standard of success.

But television killed most of the markets for short stories, especially pulp-style stories. Smart writers migrated to screenwriting (Richard Matheson, William F. Nolan, Harlan Ellison, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, William Faulkner, and Raymond Chandler were only a few of the more successful screenwriters who got their starts in the pulps). Motion pictures and television shows were really only short stories in disguise. I view television as the modern reincarnation of pulp magazines

As the number of magazine markets dwindled, new writers sought alternate ways to get their stories into print. Fan fiction thrived, and Amateur Press Association APAs—mimeographed or photocopied hand-stapled magazines—achieved significant circulations. Distribution or sales in the hundreds and even thousands provided ways for new writers to get their fiction into print and their names known.

Some amateur publishers became semi-pros, paying ½ cent or a penny a word, almost as much as early pulp magazines had offered half-a-century earlier.

Semi-professional publishers became known as “The Small Press” because their distributions and pay rates were too small to attract professional writers.

Today many of those small presses are called “Independent Publishers” because they aren’t owned or controlled or distributed by one of the Big Five International media conglomerates.

Cemetery Dance Publications, Dark Regions Press, Gauntlet, American Fantasy, and 2AM Publications began as small press publishers of magazines. David B. Silva began The Horror Show as a small press magazine in the 1980s. Dave was a writer himself, and he created a vehicle for new writers—as well as a place for big names like Dean Koontz, Robert R. McCammon, and up-and-coming Joe R. Lansdale—to showcase short stories. Dave achieved newsstand distribution, a consistent quarterly publication schedule, and professional-quality covers and print production. When the First Gulf War glued Americans to their television screens to watch play-by-play CNN or Fox News coverage of the war, sales of newspapers, magazines, and books declined and didn’t recover. Dark Regions, 2AM Magazine, Weirdbook, Pulphouse, Deathrealm, and The Horror Show folded. Only Cemetery Dance survived as a continuously published magazine.

The digital revolution in publishing has seen a rebirth of the small press. Dark Regions Press, Cemetery Dance, and Gauntlet produce exquisite numbered and lettered hardbounds and trade paperbacks. They publish short story collections and novels. I support all of them by buying and reviewing many of their books.

I have supported the small press since the 1970s. I reviewed the small press under my own name and under my Irwin Chapman pseudonym for three decades. I served as the Grievance Officer for the Small Press Writers and Artists Association in the 1980s. I have contributed stories to most of the small press magazines over the years, and many of those stories (along with some of my stories that appeared in anthologies from major publishers) will soon be collected into a new short story collection entitled The Devil Made Me Do It Again and Again.

When Eldritch Press announced in the HWA newsletter that they were actively seeking novels and would pay a professional advance and royalties, I sent them a proposal for Abandoned, the first novel in my Winds-series of Supernatural Thrillers. They replied immediately, and I sent them the full manuscript. They accepted within a week and sent me a written contract that was more than agreeable. In exchange for an advance, royalties, and a one-year reversion or renewal agreement, Eldritch would publish Abandoned as a trade paperback, a hardcover, an e-book, and an audio book. They hired a pro artist to design a dynamite cover.

I informed my then-agent who was very displeased. Two professional publishers had expressed interest, but both were taking their time to make an offer. I withdrew Abandoned from consideration, and my agent and I parted ways.

Michael Randolph, the publisher of Eldritch Press, agreed to hurry the trade paperback into production so the title would be available at the World Horror Convention in Atlanta in May. We agreed on a March 1, 2015 publication date. Abandoned actually appeared on March 3, 2015, and copies were for sale at WHC. Michael said he wanted to wait to release the e-book, hardcover, and audio book until we could get advance publicity into place.

Eldritch Press never did do any publicity, nor did they publish a hardcover or audiobook. I did push Michael into publishing an e-book version at the end of summer.

I recently heard from other Eldritch authors that Michael closed Eldritch Press on November 18. The Eldritch Press website has vanished, along with the Eldritch Press Facebook page. Copies of Abandoned are no longer available for sale on Amazon.com.

I know from experience that the time, money, and energy required to sustain small press operations makes it impossible to live one’s own life. The burden can seem unbearable. If the small press publisher is also a writer, he or she has no time for his own creative writing. Family life goes to hell. Constant demands from authors and distributers destroy perspective. There is simply never enough time for one person—or even a small part-time staff of several people—to do everything required to acquire, edit, format, publish, market, distribute, and publicize multiple books. Necessary accounting for taxes and royalties eat up time and money. Communicating with authors and artists, negotiating contracts, and marketing published and soon-to-be-published works can become a real nightmare.

I don’t know if that happened to Michael Randolph at Eldritch Press. I only know that Michael is no longer communicating with me and Abandoned has gone out of print.

Over the years, I have had 43 stories and novels accepted by small press publishers that never made it into print. At least Eldritch Press actually published Abandoned, and they did a decent job. If I had waited for a major publisher to produce Abandoned, it would still be in production. At my age, I can’t afford to wait.

So, thank you Michael Randolph and Eldritch Press for publishing Abandoned in a timely manner. I wish you well.

And thank you Crossroad Press for wanting to produce a new edition of Abandoned. As soon as I have it edited and I’m certain the rights have reverted to me, Abandoned will be available as an e-book.

I will continue to support the small press whenever and however I can. Despite the temptation of large advances, I can’t afford to wait years for major publishers to bring out my new titles. I owe a debt to the small press for rushing many of my titles into the marketplace. I intend to pay that debt.

 

 

A Writer's Heaven

Rockford isn’t known for much that’s good. It’s called “Screw City” for a reason.

 

The Stockholm Inn is very good, and Maria’s Restaurant used to be good. The Ratskeller used to be good, too, and so was the Sweden House. The Stockholm Inn is still in business. The others aren’t.

 

Rockford is known for having an exceptionally high crime rate. It’s also known for having an exceptionally low literacy rate. Anyone see a connection?

 

Rockford used to be known as the “Second City”, second only to Chicago in size, culture, and amenities. Now Rockford has diminished to the fifth or sixth largest city in Illinois. Intelligent people abandoned the town in droves, and more leave every day. Rockford is going downhill rapidly, and no one knows how to apply the brakes.

.

 

Rockford used to support a viable community of writers, poets, artists, and musicians. Most have gone elsewhere, although Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and poet Christine Swanberg still remain in town and only God knows why. New American Theater closed. The only live theater in town is at the local community college during summer months and at the restored Coronado Performing Arts Center when roadshows come to town. The big box Metro Center—excuse me, the renamed BMO Harris Bank Center—has become a venue for ice hockey and religious festivals and no longer includes a regular schedule of musical performance by big name artists.

 

The annual 3-day and 3 raucous night Labor Day “On the Waterfront” music extravaganza fizzled out and exists only in memory.

 

Rockford used to have one of the finest public libraries in the state. Instead of investing in maintaining the library and increasing its collections, the city chose to build golf courses and sports complexes. Soon the main public library building will be torn down while a new indoor mega-sports center appears on the opposite bank of the Rock River.

 

 

Rockford has no new bookstores other than a few Christian booksellers and one pint-sized children’s bookstore. Borders closed and Barnes and Noble moved out of town to nearby Cherry Valley. Toad Hall, one of the best record and book memorabilia shops in the country, is still on Broadway, but it has deteriorated into a ghost of what it once was. Tomorrow is Yesterday has become more of a gaming haven than a comic book emporium and changed its name to Top Cut Comics and then to Top Cut Central. There is a Half-Price Books discount outlet that opened a few years ago. But they carry only remainders and inventory acquired from bankrupted bookstores.

 

 

I left Rockford and I came back. I left the first time when I went away to the University, but I came back to attend Rockford College when John Bennett and Mary Dearing Lewis and Donald Walhout were teaching there. I left the second time to enter the army and complete my formal education. But, eventually, I came back.

 

Declining home values makes Rockford affordable for low-lifes like me. Rockford’s escalating crime rate provides daily inspiration for crime writers like me. Paranoia and superstition and religious fanaticism fuel the fires of horror fiction. Rockford, Illinois, is a wonderful place to observe entropy in action. In short, Rockford is the perfect place to write.

 

Although I miss brick-and-mortal bookstores, Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com make it easy to buy new and used books from the same computer I use to craft my own fiction. Facebook and Skype allow me to stay in touch with other writers throughout the world without leaving my computer. I can easily access library databases and do research on the internet from the comfort of my own home.

 

Because “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household,” I do leave Rockford to make personal appearances and do book signings all over the world. My novels and stories sell well in England and in Europe and Japan and China. I can hop a commuter bus or airline in Rockford and make connections to anyplace I want to travel. Or I can drive to Chicago’s O’Hare and be there in less than two hours.

 

But I return to Rockford to write. No one here knows or cares that I’m a writer. There are too few venues here to bother about doing local autographings, and the local newspaper and radio and television stations prefer to report on true crime and not the imaginings of home-town boys and girls.

 

Crime runs rampant in Rockford. Gunshots are a daily occurrence. No one here pays any attention to the voice of one person crying in the wilderness.

 

Rockford is known as one of the ten worst places to live in the nation. For a crime writer, it’s one of the best.