Here are the 5 things I wish another writer had told me when I was 21. Why 5 things? Because I love writing advice in list-form.
1. Writer's block does exist. It strikes everyone in different ways, but it will creep up on you. A good way to tell if you're blocked is to look at your schedule and then revisit what you've done for the past 3 days. Case in point: blogging when you have a manuscript due. If you chose to indulge in a Gilmore Girls marathon instead of finishing your chapter, it's probably writer's block. There are a few ways of dealing with it. You can force yourself to write. This is hard and often requires silence, or at the very least, a familiar movie soundtrack. You can drink, do drugs, and then write whatever comes to mind. I don't recommend this as a permanent solution, but it does tend to produce excellent haiku. One of my tricks is to write myself an email with just dialogue, no descriptors. A good dialogic volley can sometimes get you unstuck. If it's an absolute emergency, I turn to the Double-Chocolate Nestle Sunday, or re-watch crucial episodes of Buffy, often in tandem.
2. Querying an agent is easy. Writing your query letter takes forever, because you need to distill everything down to three irresistible paragraphs. But to actually send the query, all you have to do is begin it with Dear [Agent], and click SEND. Don't be afraid to send an agent something. It's their job to read queries, and the agents I've worked with all seem to really like their jobs. So nobody's going to laugh at you for sending a query-letter. And if you don't know how to write one check out Lynn Flewelling's
Complete Nobody's Guide to Query Letters on the
SFWA website.
3. You will not be able to choose the cover of your book. But most presses will allow you some feedback, and don't ever miss this chance to influence the image and design. Covers sell books, as well as serving to identify genres through symbolic imagery. Yes, your heroine will probably wear a tank-top. It's unavoidable. But the right artist can really make the background come alive, which is as important as the figure in the foreground.
4. Read everything before signing it. Ask your agent about anything you don't understand, and they'll do their best to explain it to you. When emailing your editor, always .cc your agent so that she can keep abreast of everything that's being planned for your book. You'll hear both of them talking a lot about the book 'earning out its advance,' which basically means that it's made enough money to cover whatever they paid you. Most books don't earn out their advances, and if this happens to you, congratulations: you're a writer, and a member of an amazing group of people. Make sure to lean on them often. In my experience, writers tend to be full of information about their genres, as well as other unfathomable subjects.
5. The only way to get better is to keep writing. Don't worry about being a novelist. Worry about finishing each chapter, or poem, or fragment. Be rude if you have to. Excuse yourself from public events. Lock yourself in a computer lab, or your bedroom, or the laundry room, even, anywhere you can write in peace. Don't worry about what appears on the page. You have lots of time to deal with it, revise it, fall in love with it, or ultimately dispense with it, and all writing is good experience. It also helps to make bad life decisions. These include: split-second travel plans, pub crawls, new relationships, old relationships, experimental sex, rash appliance purchases, loan applications, and offers to publish work for free. Also, really listen to people when they tell you stories, because if you can remember enough, you'll be able to hijack it later. Friends, family, and lovers are not immune; on the contrary, they're your richest source.
So, it's possible that I'm turning to Norse Paganism now for pantheistic inspiration. Call me crazy, but runes, drinking horns, and cows that lick the world into being are all things that make sense to me. I'm pretty sure my Elder Futhark is Hagalaz, the Rune of Disruption (and sudden, devastating hail-storms). I feel a strange sense of phantom kinship with Heimdall, who spends most of his time patrolling the border of Bifrost, listening for the distinctive footfalls of frost and fire giants. But Ragnarok is a long way off--so what's the guy doing in the meantime? Probably, he plays a lot of chess, which the Aesir and Vanir both love. After the Vanir invade Asgard and set up a monarchy, the two families of gods blend so sweetly, you forget all about their earlier internecine strife. It's less of a battle than a kind of hostile war-dance, which culminates in everybody mixing blood-lines and pretty much carrying on with what they were doing before the Vanir siezed political control of the city of gods.
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