by Alex

Please just hit me if I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but one of the most amazing aspects of this new author gig is how much teaching is suddenly required of us. Well, not required, exactly, but requested. And I think those reading along are getting the picture of how much we all enjoy, and more, are fascinated by the teaching side of this profession.

So instead of writing more about Romantic Times (except just to say that no matter how much I think I’m immune by now to these obviously staged displays, I still nearly fainted at the waves of testosterone wafting off the collective cover models when I walked into the conference last weekend…) I’m going to talk about something else that has been… um.. bothering me.

Given the gigantic slush piles and the sheer numbers of aspiring authors out there competing for publishing deals, what IS it about a book that makes – agents, publishers, readers – say yes? And exactly how do we describe that something to an aspiring author?

What is it that makes a book ALIVE?

I just recently got a slew of first-five-page submissions for a workshop I’m going to be teaching and OH MY GOD, what an interesting experience it’s being.

This is not my first rodeo, mind you. Before I sold my first script and broke into screenwriting as a living, I worked as a reader (story analyst) for several Hollywood production companies, so I have all kinds of experience with sorting through mountains of submissions and having to cull the likely ones from the pile.

That may sound hard, but believe me, there’s nothing easier. A script is either THERE, or it’s not. Same with novels. It’s either a book, or it isn’t. The more of them you read at once, the more obvious that becomes. Now, beyond that, a book needs to fit someone’s particular taste – you have to find an agent who loves it and an editor who loves it and a house who loves it, and THAT is more intangible.

But before all of that it simply has to be an actual, living, breathing book.

And if you get, for example, twelve submissions at once, and read them all in one night, there is nothing in the world easier than picking out which of them, if any, is a real book – or not.

There are all kinds of ways to write a book. Plotting, pantsing, obsessive outlining, index cards, collage books, writing in layers, writing beginning to end, writing one chapter at a time until it’s perfect, writing reams of back stories….

And certainly by now we all know that authors often go through holy hell trying to get a book to LIVE – that we throw manuscripts against walls and go on drinking binges and tell everyone we meet that our careers are over and throw out hundreds of pages at a time and tear our entire structures apart and start over when it’s not working.

But all this drama means only one thing, really. We all know… that there’s a certain point that we have to get to in which the book takes on a life of its own. No book is ever going to engage every reader – there’s too much individual taste involved to hope for that. But we all have to get every book we write to a state in which a decent percentage of readers will pick the book up and say YES to it – that they will somehow, someway, find themselves so caught up in the world that they forget that they’re holding a book and reading, and instead are just LIVING it.

But what the hell IS that? How can you possibly TEACH that?

You can teach all the building blocks to writing but how do you teach someone how to make that conglomeration of parts LIVE, to the point that it’s a fully-dimensional, breathing, seamless experience?

Well, first, art is imitative. Just like children learning to be adults, we as authors imitate our author idols – in characterization, structure, rhythm, pacing, dialogue. We have to have finely developed ears for all of those things. We have to learn to speak novelese, so fluently that when we speak we are indistinguishable from natives.

We also have to have enough detachment to pull back from the writing process and read our work simply as readers, and see where the book is engaging us and flowing, and where it stumbles, where we are engaged and where we couldn’t care less.

Maybe what we really have to do is create a world, or a stage, that’s detailed enough that we can coax real live characters (wherever the hell they come from) out onto it, who will do the work for us.

Or maybe it’s all just a Jedi mind trick. Look, I’m not kidding. Maybe it’s actually magic. Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Morgan Le Fay-style magic.

But CAN that be taught? Or if you don’t have it from the beginning, can you get there?

If an aspiring author isn’t trying hard enough, if the book is just lying there like a dead mackerel, what might get them motivated to DO what it takes to get to the next level, a living, breathing level?

I honestly don’t know if that is something that can be specifically taught. I think it might be more of a Dumbo’s feather kind of thing. You, as a teacher or a mentor or an advisor, are not going to know what it is for any particular student that gets her or him to that magic place. Sometimes you may click with a student and say the right thing – but probably, most of the time, not.

That’s kind of scary, considering the fact that while you may sometimes do great good, you could also do great harm.

For example. I have to admit that personally, coming from a dance background, I am highly responsive to someone with a cane following me across a dance floor screaming in my face – TURN! TURN! Get up on top of that leg! MOVE!

Dance teachers, like football coaches and Army Sergeants, don’t pull any punches. And you know what? It works. The adrenaline of terror will push you to a certain level of competency that you were not aware you could achieve. (This, I feel, is part of the psychology of deadlines….)

There’s a certain magic to dance, after all – there are so many things that you have to do perfectly all at once to do just a simple triple pirouette that if you were only thinking about the component parts you would never, ever get there. What you need is the level of sheer adrenaline that makes a mother not think about what is possible or not possible but allows her to lift a three-ton truck off her trapped child. You need a level of WILL that transcends your physical and mental capabilities, right? That’s what writing is all about, because if you really think about what we’re doing, let’s face it, it’s completely impossible.

Going back to the Jedi analogy, maybe for some students what it takes is a teacher that you worship, who is your ideal of what you want to be and where you want to go, screaming at you – JUST FUCKING DO IT!

And somehow the combined rage and worship and terror flips you into an altered state in which you can levitate the Death Star, or do a triple pirouette, or set your book on fire.

Now, I’m not willing to apply those take-no-prisoners dance teacher techniques to my writing students. At least, I have not been – so far. I have also not, so far, been willing to say to aspiring author friends – “You know what? You’re not trying hard enough. Stop whining, get your head out of your ass and work on ONE book until it’s right, until it’s ALIVE.”

But I’m beginning to wonder – am I doing these people a disservice? Am I letting them down by not being as hard on them as I am on myself? Are great teachers hard on students precisely because they know they need to instill that sense of rigor and perfectionism in their students, if those students are ever to have any hope of being professionals?

Or is tough love a terrible gamble that could break a talented student if applied at the wrong time in that student’s life?

On one hand, I think any student has to be responsible enough to pursue the teachers who teach in a style that is compatible with the student, and drop flat the teachers who they sense could harm their development.

But maybe… maybe… as teachers we have to be responsible enough to look a promising student in the face and say – “Do better or get out.”

Just exactly as we say to ourselves, every day.

Maybe the point is – the BOOK has to be the most important thing, always. It has to be more important than your agent or getting an agent, it has to be more important than your editor or publishing house, it has to be more important than anything. Until you get to the point that the book lives, no matter what that takes, then nothing else matters.

So my questions are – what worked for YOU? Do you remember the point at which you first wrote something that you knew, unequivocally, was alive? Did a teacher or teachers help you get there, or is that something each of us has to figure out on our own? Is there a teaching style that works best for you, as a teacher or as a student?

by Alex

I’m at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention this weekend – as I said last week, it’s my secret favorite convention, and no, not just because there’s stunt dressing and real, actual dancing every night.

I think it’s important for people in the mystery, thriller and, yes, even horror genres, to hear this because Romantic Times is a convention that may not be on the radar for other genre writers – but it should be.

I never read romances as a kid, or any time after – just had no interest, although looking back I can see there was some romance crossover in the Gothic thrillers I gobbled up in my endless quest for the supernatural. And it’s that crossoverness that makes Romantic Times a more obvious bet for me than, say, a noir writer, because paranormal is so huge right now – in romances AND mysteries, and though a lot of paranormal seems to be about warm and fuzzy werewolves and endless variations on quirky vampires, there’s also a significant segment of the paranormal readership that likes a good straight-up ghost story.

I heard from almost the very beginning of my promotional efforts that I should go to RT because I write sexy and I write paranormal and romance readers simply Buy Books. In fact, they Buy Books voraciously, which I discovered when I went to my first romance-centric workshop in the fall, Heather Graham’s Writers for New Orleans.

But the thing that stunned me from the very first moment of the convention last year was how incredibly professionally and logically organized it was. RT had really worked to recruit and organize a thriller track and a mystery track (track = a series of panels and events in that genre), alongside their bookseller track, huge paranormal track, writing tracks, and breakout (how to get an agent/publish) tracks. ITW (International Thriller Writers) had been working well in advance with RT planners to organize an outside book signing at the truly lovely Murder By The Book bookstore and a bookseller event (the fourteen thriller writers chipped in to host a breakfast for all 75 booksellers in attendance at RT, where we did a meet and greet and gave out promotional material and books. 75 booksellers at once – think about it…). The mystery track similarly organized a group signing and events.

The conference also features some unique ways of handling reader/author interaction. Apart from outside bookseller events, there is only one mass signing – that takes place in a HUGE convention room on Saturday, after all the authors have already done their panels. The authors are lined up alphabetically at long rows of tables, and the readers just walk up and down the aisles. There are drawings for dozens of author-donated gift baskets going on throughout the whole three hour signing, and video screens project book trailers through the whole event as well (THAT was fascinating, and this year I’m especially excited to have both of my book trailers playing in the book room and on the hotel TV during the convention – it was seeing the trailers playing last year that convinced me to do trailers for my books.).

I sold dozens of books, and was just in hardcover last year and not nominally a romance writer.

Another cool feature of RT is “Club RT”. Throughout the convention, in the dealers’ room there are a couple dozen little café tables set up and authors are scheduled for one/two hour slots where they just sit at these tables and anyone who wants to can come up and chat, get books signed, etc. If I were an aspiring author I would have spent half my time at this conference just going around to chat with different authors in my genre. A truly unique and intimate opportunity for authors, aspiring authors, and fans.

Of course the feature of RT I really love is Heather Graham’s Dinner Theater, an original musical review written by Heather and her longtime, comically brilliant collaborators, writer/director/performer Lance Taubold and writer/manager/performer Rich Devin, always featuring several of Heather’s charming and multitalented offspring. Last year the show was “Vampires of the Wild Wild West”; this year it’s “Blood and Steel, a Pittsburgh Monster Mash.” This year not only are all three Killerettes in the cast again – Heather, Harley Jane Kozak, and me – but we’ll also have F. Paul Wilson and Dave Simms from the Killer Thriller Band. There simply is no more fun to be had with clothes on.

I also have to say, when women organize these things everything is just – prettier. The attention to detail is staggering. Promo Alley, where authors put out their postcards and bookmarks and giveaways, is a long aisle of covered tables on both sides, and instead of having people just throw their swag on the tables, all the giveaways have to be in displays or decorated baskets. Yes, that takes an extra hour of prep time, but oh man, is it worth it. You can actually SEE the promo stuff, and you get a feel for each author from the decorations of the boxes and baskets. Brilliant idea.

Ditto with the parties. RT has professional costumers/decorators who dress the ballrooms for the theme parties – last year, Moulin Rouge, Midnight at the Oasis, Vampires of the Wild Wild West, Immortals of Rock and Roll, and of course, the Faery Ball. There was lighting. There were trees. There were enormous Moroccan pillows. There were stage backdrops. There were mirror balls and candles. There were screaming mechanical skulls. And the level of personal costuming rivaled the Renaissance Faire events and special effects masters’ parties I’ve been to in LA (I never even dreamed there were so many variations on fairies. Seriously…)

And these women DANCE. All night. I’m sorry, but you can only talk so much. You get out on the dance floor with a bunch of readers screaming “It’s Raining Men” and you have made friends for life.

But RT is not just for women. Male authors are catching on to the gold mine of readers to be – mined – at RT and are coming over to the decadent side. This year I know F. Paul Wilson and Barry Eisler are joining us (I hear Joe Konrath dropped out at the last minute… terrible drag) and I expect that more men will realize what an advantage that Y chromosome gives them in a situation like this.

And well, okay, I admit it – all professionalism aside – after years of having to put up with only female strippers at Hollywood events, I like the turnabout of having half-naked beefcake at a convention. Sue me.

Will do what I can to report on this year in real time, but no promises! There’s some serious dancing to be done, here…