Doin' It Your Way

I wrote this elsewhere in response to somebody worrying they were not doing their plotting 'correctly'. I think they were worried about not using an outline maybe.

So this is what I said:

Writing is not like the Olympics where, as I understand it, athletes watch computer images of themselves and train to lift the left elbow a half inch on the turn so they conform to the optimal mathematical conformation. Nor is it necessarily a Tai Chi kata where one finds enlightenment by interpreting centuries-old patterns.

photocreditAlainDelmas

Writing is more like a bar fight -- not that I have been in a bar fight.

You will doubtless have noticed that writers follow many paths to plotdom. These may or may not include cats.

What we all have to do is find what works for us. We have to re-find this with every book, really, since we learn as we go along and we change as people and maybe the baby stops taking naps and some books need to be coaxed out of their cave with soap and railway shares while some need to be struck repeatedly across the head with a 2 X 4.

So take all the 'you have to's and use them to provide better drainage in the gully at the bottom of the hill and do what seems right to you. (This is known as 'The Great Permission' and you have to give it to yourself, though other writers can lend you theirs for the weekend. You will probably find used ones on e-Bay.)

You need not expect the first method to work. It might. It might not. Keep trying.

More Gadgets for the Computer

me and computers

I have a more complicated relationship with my computer than I do with most of the humans I know.

It's a MacBook Pro and I am, on the whole, fond of it and proud of it. One major problem, however, is that the DVD player/reader doesn't work. It will accept DVDs into its mouth, but it will not play them. Having decided not to play them, it will not spit them out.

It's kinda like a two-year-old about this.

So I did some research on what kinda outboard DVD reader to get. (An outboard or external DVD player is one that sits next to your computer and plugs in.) Everybody said 'Get a Samsung 218' and so, by golly, I did.

I hooked this outboard up with the little wire provided using the Universal Directions that showed plugging the two ends into the slots they fitted.
 (DUH)
Took like eight drawings to show this. I put the CD they provided inside the little drawer. It went whirr whirr for a minute.

So I'm sitting there thinking, "What now?'

I find the User's Manual online and download it as a pdf.
You're thinking, "Why didn't she read the User's Manual first" and all I can say is that I never look at the directions first and thus have many interesting encounters with Things I Buy.

So I open the Manual and it spends ten pages telling me not to drop the thing in water and not to put heavy stuff on it and some stuff called RoH and WEEE which may have to do with recycling. I skipped that.

It explains very carefully how not to drop it in water, actually.

Then it gets to the stuff I need to know and it starts using words like firmware -- which has a nice sound to it, though god knows what it is. Then it asks itself, "What is Buffer Underrun Prevention Technology?" and answers itself in a way that leaves me no wiser.

Me figuring out about computers

And we continue. The next page:

How to Confirm Installation of the Device Driver.
Go to Macintosh 'More Info' and click 'Device Manager'
which my machine doesn't have.
There is just no Device Manager anywhere.

Next page: 

How to confirm USB 2.0 and install the USB driver
And how to do that?
Well we just look at the Universal Serial Bus Controller, don't we?
which my machine doesn't have
or doesn't call that
or just doesn't want to talk about
and what buses have to do with this I cannot imagine.

I have reached Overload Confuzzlement Status at this point
and I am only halfway through the User's Manual.
And if I want to do anything or ask anything
the manual directs me to a website that doesn't exist.

I go to YouTube and watch some geek spend half his time explaining how to hook the wire up by putting the ends in the slots that fits
(Is this something people have trouble with? Really?)
and then lapse into incomprehensibility for a while
and then say, "... and that's how you do it."

This is what I wanted to watch all along

So I sit there and whimper
and the dog comes over and puts her head in my lap.

I say, "The hell with this" and go get an actual DVD
and take OUT the CD that came with the outboard player
and put IN the movie DVD
which is Nicolas Le Foch Man With the Lead Stomach
and that plays just fine.

The Coming of the Seed Catalogs

Joanna here, being topical over at Word Wenches.

My seed catalogs have arrived. This is the first sign of spring for me — not a sighting of the first robin — the sighting of the first seed catalogs. Now the truth of the matter is I don’t so much buy seeds and plant them. I live on stony, steep ground here and grow my plants in a few miserable little pots. But I dream with these catalogs. I meditate upon all the wondrous flowers and vegetables I’m growing in my mind rather than in reality.

Anyhow, this got me thinking about woman gardeners in 1800 or so. The eons’ old association of women and healing
plants, edible garden herbs, and flowery borders made them natural gardeners.

About at this time botany got an intellectual boots with the Linnaean system of plant classification. Thank heavens this was one ‘science’ considered suitable for genteel women. They began collecting plants and writing about them. We have pictures of these women carrying their watering cans — dressed in a way we’d consider problematic for gardening work — headed out to botanize.

I delight to imagine the glasshouses filled with interesting specimens and women tending and caring for them. Studying them. Learning how to grow the most troublesome of their charges.
Describing the exotics.
Writing, y’know, monographs and papers.

There's a bit more of this over at Word Wenches ... here.

Technical Topics -- Breaking Comma Rules for Fun and Profit

... or, like, not

 
Punctuation Rule Breakage
Pro or con?

Elsewhere somebody talked about leaving out commas when he didn't like them. This is a response I made.
I'm assuming this is breaking hard rules, not just using the great expanse of stylistic wriggle-room Chicago Manual of Style and its brothers leave us.


I came up with five consideration to think about when playing fast and loose with commas. This holds true with a lot of writerly eccentricities besides comma punctuation, I suppose.


First off,
Let's say you leave out commas that do not, for some reason, please you on a case-by-case basis.

The publisher's copyeditor will have to laboriously add or remove those off-brand commas.
She really has no idea which comma-errors are done on purpose and which are true mistakes. She has to mark them all.
While she's doing all that comma work, she's not fine-combing your manuscript for other problems.
She's only got a set number of hours, most likely .
What do you want her to work on?

Managing Editore: Been a hard week

When you're confronted with her copyedits, you now have many hundreds of editorial marks and comments that you have to go through and leave in place or stet.

Then the Managing Editor picks up this complicated mess and says "I got an author here who doesn't know basic punctuation" or worse, "He's doing this on purpose?"
The Managing Editor's job is to look at every stet and say 'yes' to some and 'no' to some. You've given him work. Much work.
You have just pissed off the Managing Editor.
This is not a good thing
for anybody.


There will be some important stets you want to make. It's easier to argue for that one important stet if you have not just been stroppy over 800 missing-comma stets.

Sometimes we don't want to innovate

Whatever the outcome, the copyeditor, the Managing Editor, and you have wasted a lot of time and effort.

 

Finally --

While most readers won't notice commas one way or the other . . .

the ones who do notice intermittent use of the Oxford comma or failure to set off essential relative clauses with commas
will not only be distracted from the flow of your fiction,
they will see these as mistakes arising from the author's ignorance
rather than considered authorial choice
and in their heart of hearts, they will think less of you.

Defending genre

This is me, defending genre

Elsewhere, I was defending genre writing.
From folks who only like Literary Fiction.

And since I hate to waste good writing I thought I would bring that back here.

I say -- There's excellent genre. Scads of it.
So why do folks not see this obvious truth?

It's Sturgeon's Law, in part  -- "90% of every kind of writing is crap."

The difference between LitFic and genre writing is

Both excellent and mediocre genre writing is on the shelves, making a profit, being read and enjoyed, each in its own way.
 

Mediocre LitFic, of which there is any amount, remains in decent obscurity because it is not remotely commercial. It's not seen.

That leads to sampling error. 

You also get sampling error when you take the best books in a genre and declare them 'literary fiction' rather than 'really good mysteries' or 'great SF&F'.

Let us now praise genre and its forefathers in their generation.

Launcelot and Guinevere ... Pure Genre

Genre is story.

Storytelling is a Big Deal. Ancient as humanity. Core to what makes us human. Powerful.

What defines us?  What is our 'culture'? What books do we care about after a hundred or a thousand years?

King Arthur and the Round Table, Robinson Crusoe, Romeo and Juliet, Moll Flanders, The Satyricon, Song of Roland, Tom Jones, A Thousand and One Nights, Pride and Prejudice, Rob Roy, Poldark, The Importance of Being Ernest, The House of Usher, The Three Musketeers, Kidnapped, Last of the Mohicans.

Tales of high adventure, mystery, love, horror, bravery, sacrifice, triumph, humor, intrigue.

Pure genre.

One characteristic of this durable literature is that it was popular in its own day. Beloved up and down the social and intellectual scale. It was bestseller stuff when 'bestseller' meant stories told around the fire. 

It appealed to the hoi polloi.

So I don't so much want to hear 'noncommercial' as approval and praise.

Commercial' is not a criticism. 'Popular' doesn't mean poorly written.

Genre is the good stuff.

What the Animals Got for Christmas

I don't forget the animals at Christmas. They may not know what's going on, but they know it involves food.

If I left them out of the festivities, the dog would gaze at me sadly, wondering how she'd failed me. What she'd done wrong.
The cat would stomp over and bite my ankles.

So they both got finely chopped chicken served to them in a lordly dish with much crooning and praise.

Up there's the cat in her accustomed cat-coma, sleeping off Christmas dinner, cat version.
I didn't buy her any toys. She turns her nose up at toys.

And to the right here is the dog, slightly more alert than the feline. Note the new squeaky toy. It's blue. It has eyes. And spots. And three (count 'em three!!) air bladders inside, each squeaking at a different note. The dog has a high old time playing tunes on it.

Outside is the accustomed tribute for the birds. Sunflower seeds. Only the best for my feathered friends.

The dog is grateful.
The cat, as usual, accepts my tribute.
Who knows what birds feel?

The Winter Solstice

For some astronomical reason tonight is one of the longest nights earth has ever seen.

There's an article here that explains why, though I don't actually understand it, being one of those folks who looked on in puzzlement while people circled an orange around a lamp and explained summer and winter to me. I understood it for about five minutes, I think.


A friend in the Southern Hemisphere points out that for her this is one of the shortest nights ever. There is a certain strange balance in all things.

But locally there's sure as heck a long cold night acoming.

I light candles against all the kinds of darkness. Many good wishes for every one of you as the sun returns.

Winter. Snuggled in.

Snow. Ice pellets. Howling winds. Temps of 26 degrees.

But I bought milk, meat and apple juice yesterday. I bought roses.

I haz a wood stove. I haz kitty litter and satusmas. I haz egg custard and bread and a rough-draft chapter to whip into shape.

Life is good.
. . . so long as the electric holds out.

The Oldest White Horse on the Hill

The Oldest White Horse on the Hill

Joanna here, talking about a British hill figure, the White Horse of Uffington.
This is Nicola’s neighborhood, as you see here.  I will nonetheless forge on bravely into her bailiwick.
Okay. Let’s say you’re a Regency miss visiting friends in Oxfordshire in the parish of Uffington.  Even though the White Horse can be seen twenty miles away, your carriage arrived in the Vale of the White Horse at night. You had to pull yourself out of bed at dawn to creep out in the garden and finally see it.
A skimped, hurried breakfast and you’re off.  This is Midsummer’s Day. You drive through throngs in the morning to get to the White Horse. You’re not surprised there’s a fair and foodstalls, jugs of beer, and sports. Midsummer’s Day is always  a big event. You have a village fair back home in Yorkshire. But this is huge. Beyond anything. There must be thousands of people here.
You’re in time to see the festivities start. The young men gather in a troop, up spade, shovel, mattocks, and hoe, and head up hill for the “scouring of the White Horse.”  All the nearby towns, you’ll be told, claim a role in the scouring and restoration of the White Horse by ancient custom.
Now I will break into your Regency scene here and say that I have been to the White Horse of Uffington myself.  It’s impressive. There it is, carved into the endless green, 374 feet long, 227 feet high.  Designed to be in proportion when viewed from below. It’s . . . big.
The figure is on the side of that sloping hill, just a lazy walk from the road below. It was clear and quiet when I was there.  The figure feels very old. The artistic convention of it is sophisticated, but alien.  And it’s beautiful.
There’s a superstition that if you stand in the ‘eye’ of the horse and make a wish, it’ll come true.  So I did that. And it pretty much did.

Back to the Regency, where I spend much of my time. Your giggly friend twirls her umbrella and admires the manly form of the local squire’s son who’s joined the village lads scraping away at the encroaching vegetation.

What it looks like near the eye

You climb the hill with the others to get a close look. The White Horse is made simply enough.  You can walk over and see how the shape of it is cut into the ground. This chalky ground underfoot has fascinated you from the first. The paths bordering the garden at your friend’s house are all perfectly, dazzlingly white. The stones in the fields are white. Under a layer of grass and dirt, you find chalk.  The White Horse was created when people scraped away the grass, set the edges, and filled in level with more chalk. But in every generation since then, these people have kept the figure alive. You’re lucky enough to see it happen when you arrive at the one-year-in-seven festival when the White Horse is ‘scoured’.
Come for the dancing, singing and drinking, stay for the legends.

Read the rest at Word Wenches.

Regency Spices

 I was fumbling through my spice shelf the other day, as one does, trying to decide whether I wanted to make some kind of fancy beet salad to go with my last burrata cheese ball — this turned out to be a non-problem because I left the cheese on the counter while I was thinking all this and the cat jumped up, seized the cheese ball in her little white teeth, and went running off to scarf it down in secret under the forsythias.

Anyway, I got to wondering which of my spices I got here in my house would be in the kitchen cabinet of your well-supplied Regency housewife or cook.

Up above there’s my spice cabinet, which I have over the sink because having it over the stove is harder on the spices, them getting heated up and damp from the steam and all. As you will see, there is a bit of a crowd of spices.

So what spices and herbs do I hold in common with my Regency housewife?

She would have had access to all the herbs that grew in hedgerows and kitchen gardens since the first modern people walked across a land bridge into the British Isles about 40,000 years ago … though they didn’t so much go in for kitchen garden at that time.

A Regency woman would have easily matched my pitiful little array of traditional herbs. See them pictured in a line: sage, rosemary, mint, thyme, and oregano. She would have called the oregano ‘wild marjoram’, just to make everybody’s life interesting.

The Regency housewife would have had many more of these traditional herbs at hand — dried or fresh parsley, (thus the ‘parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme’ that are headed to Scarborough Fair,) ordinary marjoram, dill, sweet basil, coriander, (of which more below,) fennel, garlic, scallions, mustard, saffron, and caraway. And she’d use herbs we don’t necessarily associate with everyday cuisine any more, like marigolds, lavender, roses, and violets, tansy, and angelica.

And follow the rest of this posting at Word Wenches here.

Regency Weather Lore

Joanna here:  The other day, we had a bit of a storm -- buckets of rain, impenetrable clouds walking up the hill and past my window, trees lashing back and forth like mad things, a march of roiling black thunderheads over the valley.

This was our taste of Hurricane Arthur, and fairly mild it was when compared to other folks' experience.

It got me to thinking about weather in a historical sorta way. Before Arthur went strolling up the coast,  I had a week of weathermen showing me charts and maps and making dire predictions.

If I'd had a herd of sheep I would have moved them to the lower meadow or the upper hill or whatever. I would have made sure the roof of the hen house was tapped down tight and in good repair. I could have gone out to the fields and brought the corn in. (We do Indian corn -- maize -- in this section of the world and it's getting ripe on the southern slopes.) I would have worried about the little baby peaches on the trees -- not that I could do much about them.

And read the rest at Word Wenches here.

Technical Topic -- Do I need an agent?

Because advice is kinda like this

Giving advice here:

First, you finish the book.

I. If you're going for print publication with one of the Big Five New York Publishers you probably need an agent, because these publishers mostly don't look at unagented manuscripts.

Who are the Big Five? If you go to a book-and-mortar bookstore or the book aisle in the grocery and run your finger down a row of books, 90% of them are from the Big Five. Most of the folks who make good money writing publish with one of these imprints. We're talking Hatchette, McMillian, Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and all the subsidiaries thereof.

So that is one career path. If you take it, you need an agent.

Your agent at work

A good agent will not only get your foot in the door, she will (a) know the best place to sell your work, which makes the sale more likely, (b) get the best contract terms, and (c) keep the author from making contract mistakes.

There are exceptions to the rule that you need an agent to get in this particular door. Some folk meet an editor at a conference; they're already published; they have a following for their fanfic; they are successfully self-published; they know somebody who knows somebody ...


II. Some imprints from the Big Five (Tor, Avon,) and some large independent publishers (HQN, Baen, Kensington, Ellora's Cave, Sourcebooks, Grand Central, Carina) accept unagented manuscripts.

These books are distributed to brick-and-mortar stores and groceries. Writers can do very well indeed dealing with this set of publishers. A number of the folks making a living at writing sell to these companies.

Your agent helps them pick YOUR ms

If you plan to deal with them, you do not need an agent to get your work seen. But a good agent might still perform functions (a), (b), and (c) above.


III. E-publishers and almost all small presses accept unagented submissions.

Agents do not generally submit to these publishers because there's not enough advance money in it.

Many satisfying options don't need an agent

IV. Self publishing/indie publishing, of course, doesn't need an agent.




So, the short answer is --

Summarizing all this

-- You need an agent for some career paths and not for others.
-- There are many profitable career paths that don't require an agent.
-- Even where an agent is required, you may be able to sneak by without one, depending.
-- Agents earn their weight in gold at contract time.
-- If you plan to submit to the Big Five, get an agent before you start firing your ms out to random publishers.
-- Finish the book.

Technical Topic -- Being Introspective

Elsewhere, somebody says, more or less  --
My WIP is full of introspection.  I'm going overboard. 


It's good to spot this going-overboard-with-introspective problem before you disappear under the waters.

Introspection distances us from the story.
It is generally pretty boring unless the character is introspecting about how to murder someone with a can opener.
Or overthrow the government. 
Or lure somebody into bed.


This exercise is one approach to the introspection problem:

-- Make a new document of the scene.

-- Remove ALL the introspection. I mean -- just all of it.  All the internals. All the flashback.  All the philosophy and self-doubt and angst and toing-and-froing about what to do next, all the moral uncertainties.  In short, every moment the author takes the reader into the character's head.
This includes flashback and thinking about what's happening elsewhere or mulling over what just happened and roughly about anything that is not under the POV character's nose at the moment.

-- Put the internals into a separate document.

-- Nudge a bit at this stripped-down version. Can you goose up the pacing? Can you give the scene more forward momentum by adding dialog or action?

-- Move internals into dialog

Instead of him thinking 

He was so sad Connie had failed her exam. Why wouldn't she study? What was wrong with her? He felt frustrated and annoyed.

Write it out as dialog

He snapped, "Why the hell can't you study?"
"I try--"
"You failed another goddamn exam. Do you think you're going to become an architect with a bunch of C+ grades?" He kicked the chair beside the fire.
"It's not my fault."
"Bullshit it's not your fault."


You do this movement from introspection to dialog because dialog (and action) is more interesting than introspection.
Because dialog allows folks to react to all the stuff that's floating around in the POV character's head. Because the POV character gets to react back.

Actual brain contents and why we avoid introspection.

-- Now you go to the snippets of introspection you have saved in the other document and allow yourself to use a tenth of that introspection.

-- Do not re-add the rest of the introspection till the next draft. After a couple weeks away from the introspection, you will be less in love with it. The new, faster, sleeker, more-vivid story will compare favorably with the sluggish, introspective story.

The Lights of the Solstice

I posted this over at Word Wenches and forgot to put it here.

Now I'm putting it here.
Because i really do get to most things, just not very fast

So, me,  writing about the Winter Solstice.
And lights.

If you want to be picky about it, we're two days past the solstice, which was on December 21 this year, but I will just go ahead and talk about the Winter Solstice anyhow.

What is this Solstice I speak of?

Your ordinary woman in the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Centuries and in all the days right back to when women woke up and stretched and strolled out of the cave in Laxcaux, France, might watch the sunrise every morning.

Authorial intrusion here to say that I wake up every morning at sunrise because that is when the dog and cat wake up and they want my company.
They are worried if I don't get up.
They are determined.

But, anyhow, let's say our historical woman is shuffling through the farm yard to empty the chamberpots or feed the chickens. She notices the sun does not just get out of bed any old where along the horizon. When she stands on the doorstep in July, the sun is rising from that pointy pine over there.

Every morning the sun gets out of bed a little to the left of where it got up the morning before.
Not enough so's you'd notice it from one day to the next.
But enough so's you notice it over weeks and months.

In December when she drags herself out of bed and stands shivering at the door, there's the sun waking up all the way over next to the church spire.

That extreme, leftmost sunrise she sees, on December 21 or 22, is the Winter Solstice. From then on, day by day, the sunrise heads back in the other direction. Our New Year is tied to that astronomical event, being a little inexact about it.


 I go on to talk some more about the solstice in the rest of the posting, which is here

Take Down Letters

Somebody brought up DCMA letters and their intention to charge in, sword swinging,

and take down the enemy. 

I have thought about this a good bit and will now for no particular reason share my conclusions with you.

I am not fond of folks who swipe the hard work of writer and  editor.  It sticks in my craw, to use the technical term.

But if you send this site a take down notice ... and send them another take down notice six weeks later when they have reposted the illegal download ... and then send them another ... and another ...
It is all very iterative.

And, I gotta say, there are lots of sites out there ...

How much time and effort will you spend? 
How many actual $$ sales have you thereby gained?
Is this the most efficient use of your time?
Is worrying about this the most efficient use of your energy?

If you google "joanna bourne" and  "free download" you'd get about 2000 hits.

Most folk who go for these illegal downloads never actually read the books.
Most of them never would buy the book if you put sugar candy on the cover.

Some folk who illegally download you go pick up a legal book later
or recommend you to friends who are more conscientious
or suggest you to their library. 

Some folk who illegally download you give you good reviews.  (I hope.  I mean, to first steal your book and then give you a bad review seems a bit much.)

Some folk who illegally download you can't get hold of a legal copy in their own country and to them I say, "Have at."

Go into the tavern and play your songs and if somebody throws money into the hat, bless them.  If somebody listens and enjoys and walks away without contributing, that is the burden on their own back.  Don't let it be one on yours.

Me, Talking About Entering The RITA Contest

Elsewhere, somebody asked --
(I'm paraphrasing here):

"Why enter the RITA?  Readers don't care about the RITA.  It's nice to get approbation from your fellow romance-authors, but it's an expensive luxury. 

Does the RITA have any real impact on sales or on any aspect of a career?"

So I had some thoughts on this,
to wit:

Reader, not caring about the RITA

It is true that readers don't know or care about the RITA.  It's not like getting a HUGO or an Edgar, worse luck.  I don't know why the RITA gets so little respect.

Hey -- Look at some of the authors who've won the Historical Romance RITA in the last decade or so.  (Click on the name to see a book.)

Sarah MacLean, Sherry Thomas, Pam Rosenthal, Madeline Hunter, Julia Quinn, Liz Carlyle, Laura Kinsale, Connie Brockway, Jo Beverley, Laura Lee Guhrke, Pamela Morsi, Julie Garwood, LaVyrle Spencer, Mary Jo Putney ...

Can we say, "Really Good Writers, Folks"?
Can we say, "You should read these people"?

Why is the RITA not making a bigger noise?
I have no explanation. I am confounded and numbleswoggled.

Anyhow, talking about money.

There's a definite bump in sales with a RITA win -- but that bump would not cover the cost of entry for many people.  When I look at the economics of the RITA, I'm looking at the long tail. Any monetary value, IMO, lies in a secondary effect on the professionals in the field, rather than in immediate, direct sales.

This is how I see the long tail:

-- You're right about the RITAs being primarily for other writers. But this is not a bad thing.  Many Romance writers try out the RITA Finalists in the year after the win and sometimes they like what they read. The single best advertising for any writer is the recommendation of other writers.

Somewhat jaded reviewer

-- RWA Chapters and writing organizations notice the winners. If you like speaking engagements, this is a way to get wonderful invitations.

-- Reviewers often pick up the next books from RITA writers. Reviewers love good writing -- that's why they're in the business -- and take an interest in what Romance writers think is good writing.

-- And I think the publishers take note.
Publishers are endlessly interested in writers. We are 'the product' they're selling, as it were. I like to think that in some future marketing meeting, that RITA win or Final might be the little nudge that pushes a book into a more favorable printing slot or gives it a bit of the publicity budget.

So. Onward to expenses.  Does the RITA cost a writer too much?

This so much depends. Take an example of one sort of writer.
Let's say you're not an RWA member and would not normally become one; you wouldn't go to National; you have to pay for your own print books; you have to pay for your own entry to the RITA contest; and you make less than $2000 writing income after expenses.

In this case, to get the RITA at the National Convention, you'd be paying, soup to nuts:

$120 RWA membership
$100 to print up ten copies of your book
$50 to enter the RITA contest
$500 registration for National Conference
$400 plane fare to National Conference
$50 for a checked bag
$500 hotel at National Conference
$130 meals at National Conference
$100 dress to wear to the Awards dinner
$100 for professional clothing to wear at the conference

This is all ballpark, but we're flirting with $2000 overall. And you'd have to judge five books.

Another writer would be in a different situation.
For instance, until I fell into my recent snit with RWA over their latest revamping of the RITA, I paid for RWA membership every year. I judged the RITAs whether I entered or not. I attended the National Conference whenever I could scrape together money enough to do so.

The National Convention of RWA

Because I was already paying for so much, entering for the RITA cost me about nothing extra. Entering the RITA, then, is probably a good economic decision for any RWA member who plans to go to National. It's maybe not such a good economic decision for folks who aren't and don't.


But the economics are not the be-all and end-all of this contest.  For me, entering the RITA has never been about the economics. It's part of being in RWA and supporting Romance.  For many longterm RWA members, the RITA is 'our contest'. It seems natural to enter.

Finally, let me suggest one particular case when the payoff is worth the cost.

If you are Indie pubbed and you have just a hellaciously good book and you cannot seem to get anybody to notice it ... the RITA might be a good way to put your book in front of the world.

Hellaciously good Indie book

Is your book good enough to Final? Looking at it objectively, is your book better than most of those Finalists?   Do you have a supergreatwonderful book?
If so, and if you choose not to go to National with your Final, the RITA would cost:

$120 RWA membership
$100 to print up ten copies of your book
$50 to enter the RITA contest

That $270 seems cheap for that amount of publicity. 
There'd be special notice taken when an Indie book hit a Finalist position.

Technical Topic -- What to do when you've done what you do

Congratulations on finishing your manuscript.
Woot woot.
Go celebrate.

We'll wait.




...  All through with dancing and whooping it up?
Now there are a few necessary steps to take to get from here to publication.

 I. Get Crits

What:  Turn some chapters of your manuscript over to harsh, knowledgeable critters.  Listen to what they say.  You need critters who haven't been with you every step of the way as you wrote.  Critters who are not your family or friends.

This is not putting a saucer of milk out for the tabby.  This is wrapping yourself in raw meat and stepping into the lion's cage.

How:  There's a Writer's Workshop in the Books and Writer's Forum.   Here.  Absolute Write, here has a 'Share Your Work' section.  Writer's Forum here has a Writers' Workshop.
If you are writing genre, there are probably specialized sites for writers of your genre.

Why:  Intelligent criticism of your work will help you write better and will prepare you to edit your manuscript.

II.  Let the manuscript rest

What:  Put the work away for as long as you can.  Six weeks.  Three months.  Six months.
(You spend this time working on the next ms and critting other folks' manuscripts, which is an excellent way to improve your own writing skills.)

How:  Print it out and put it in a locked drawer in the bottom of your desk.  Put all the work in a folder named "Open in January.

Why:  This lets you look at your own work with a critical editorial eye.  It gives you distance.

III.  Learn how publishing works

What:  Spend a solid 40 hours studying the publishing industry. 

How:  Start out by Googling everything you can find on the subject.  Then drop into places full of knowledgeable folks and ask questions.

Why:  If you were going to (a) take a job in Thailand for a year or (b) go to State Aggie to study animal husbandry or (c) work for Avis Rent-a-car, you'd do that much research about (a) the country, (b) the university or (c) the business.
Why would you go into writing with less preparation?

III. Learn about agents

What:  Start making a spread sheet of agents who work in your field.  See who they represent.  See who they sell to.  See what kind of deals they're making.  Find out what folks say about them. 
If they have an on-line presence, get a feel for who they are.

How:  Google.  Look at the acks in the front of books similar to your own writing.  Publisher's Lunch and Publisher's Marketplace.

Why:  That's the list you will query, when you query, if you decide you want an agent.  And after all, you have some time while your manuscript is resting. 

IV.  Revise

What:  When the manuscript has aged like, y'know, fine wine ... take it out of hiding and read it over.
Now you will revise.  Now you see what's wrong.

How: Read and correct as if someone else had written it.

Why:  Because, unless you have indeed done this, the manuscript is not as good as you can make it. 


V.  Find Beta Readers

What:  Beta readers take an entire manuscript that is ready for submission and crit it.  Beta readers, if possible, have never seen the manuscript before.

How:  Find them by doing beta reads for others.  Find them by making friends in writers forums.  Pay them in chocolate.

Why:  Because they will tell you if the whole thing works.  They'll point out illogical story lines.  They'll improve the manuscript.

 
VI.  Re-revise in light of the Beta read

'nuff said.






VII.  Get an agent ... or not

Three months have passed since you declared your manuscript finished. 

You will have read 10,000 words arguing Indie/Big Press/Small Press.
You'll have the best manuscript you can write in one hand and a significant bit of WIP in the other. 

Now you make this decision.