Serial Agent Pimp Nathan Bransford (I love coming up with titles for people, it’s going to get me in trouble sooner or later) has finished the mammoth task of reading 2,500 plus entries and come up with a short list of ten finalists.

I’m not one of them.

I’m not bitter about this at all, for starters the ten finalists have some up with some excellent first paragraphs, I want to know what happens next in their stories. The other reason I’m not bitter is that if I couldn’t handle losing out in an online blog contest, I’d have no business at all being a writer.

Rejection and failure are all part of this writing business. You will be rejected, your masterpiece will go unappreciated and often unread, you will lose contests, you will be hunted down by pitchfork wielding peasants.

Actually that last one’s just me.

My propensity for attracting lynch mobs aside, every writer goes through both internal and external rejection. Luck plays a huge role in any creative endeavour, especially publishing. Even if you get an agent or a publishing deal, there is no guarantee your book will sell.

There are a few things that can get you through the down times:

Persistence:

Don’t quit. If you stop writing your chance of being published instantly drops to zero. The more you write, the better your writing will get and the better chance you will have of being the person who’s in the right place at the right time. We all know that J K Rowling got rejections before Harry Potter made her one of the richest women in the world.

Flexibility:

You might have to make some changes. None of us really like changing our stuff, after all we’ve written it, edited it (you did edit it didn’t you?*) and loved it, surely it’s golden?

No. Not even a maybe.

It could well be that your book just hasn’t found the right agent yet, but if you’ve hit up every agent that handles your genre and there are still no bites, there could be something that needs changing. You need to be open to the idea that you can change your book, even if it means a re write or even starting a whole new story. be stubborn about keeping writing, not about making changes.

That leads us to…

Objectivity:

Take a week off from your story, take two. The go back and read it like you just paid twenty dollars for it at Borders. You’ll see mistakes there that you never thought you could make. The key at this point is not to ignore those mistakes. You read books, lots of books**, so you know how a good book should feel. If your story doesn’t feel that way, you will need to be honest about that with yourself and make the changes.

Equally valuable is bringing in some outside objectivity. Recently Julie Butcher*** of Wordathon fame took some time out of her ridiculously busy schedule to give me some feedback on my writing. I took the notes she gave me and decided that my second chapter needed a complete re write. If Julie hadn’t been kind enough to give me that feedback I probably wouldn’t have changed it.

Enjoy Yourself Damn It

It’s really easy to get caught up in how hard writing is. It’s really hard, some days are a horrible mockery of a happy existence. It doesn’t matter. I love writing, I’m happiest when I’m tinkering with my stories, and like cold pizza and sex, even when it’s pretty bad, it’s still pretty good.

If writing does nothing but fill you with pain, why are you still doing it? There is no guarantee that you will get published, and even then no guarantee that you will sell enough books to make a decent living, or even a living at all. Obviously we all want to be published and have so much money that Dan brown turns green with envy, but we have to be able to enjoy the process of getting there as much as we dream of fame and fortune.

Fame and fortune may never arrive. I honestly believe that with enough work and a little talent, anyone can get published if they keep at it, but real success is often down to luck. If that fame and fortune never arrives I want you to be able to look back on every minute you spent writing and say “It was worth it anyway.”

* Didn’t you?!

** Your writing will be better for doing more reading.

*** Julie is the busiest person in the world and still cranks out excellent writing, helps with charity events, organises wordathons, raises six kids and plots daring cupcake escapades. If she can find the time to write so can you.

I have a new reivew up of Larry Brook’s book 101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters.

First 10/10 review on this site, so I think you should go and check it out.

Genre fiction is a funny beast. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing science fiction, fantasy, crime or horror; sooner or later one of your characters is going to do something that you the author doesn’t have the faintest idea about.

For most (but not all) of us the big thing that we write about that we haven’t actually done is killing. My main character isn’t a killer by nature but by the end of my novel his body count is in the double digits. This was a problem for me because I’ve never been there. I know how to fight; I’ve spent a lot of time studying martial arts, I’ve fought in the ring and I was a nightclub bouncer for a few years.

But I’ve never killed anyone.

There’s a big difference between knowing how to throw a punch and knowing what it’s like to take a life. Short of actually killing someone (please don’t) writing authentically about killing takes some research. I’ve hit the books, researched online and spoken to the few soldiers I know about their experiences.

I’ve learned a few things. The first thing I learned was that no one kills without there being consequences. Killing, even for those trained to it, always costs the killer. Even sociopaths and psychopaths are affected by it, albeit differently from the rest of us.

It’s those effects on the psyche that authors need to pay attention to. The technical details on how to kill are everywhere online and in books (some of them are wrong too). We can be as creative as we like with the death itself but our research needs to include the psychological cost of killing, because if our hero doesn’t feel anything when they kill another person, then they’re not the hero anymore.

The best book I’ve found so far is called On Killing by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman. You’ll learn things you never wanted to know about humanity and the cost of killing, but your story and your characters will be stronger for it.

Every death has a consequence, even when it’s just fiction.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m utterly unqualified to give advice on writing. It doesn’t stop me trying too mind you, but the qualifications to do so are not present.

To make up for this I try to link to people who are qualified to give you the good oil on writing. Bob Mayer is one of those people. He’s had forty books published, been  a Green Beret, taught writing at multiple university and has a dog named Cool Gus.

Now that’s being qualified to give advice. He current runs the Warrior Writer course and can be found dispensing sage advice and talking about his dog right here.

Normally I only link directly to posts on other blogs in Twitter, but I Should Be Writing‘s Mur Lafferty makes an excellent point about writing and your real life. Click here to get the goodness.

I’ve just put up another book review of Seth Harwood’s Jack Wakes Up. Just click on those funny coloured letters with the line underneath and enjoy!

Scott Sigler, one of my favorite authors, has announced his tailgate tour. You can check it out right here. The tour is to promote his book The Rookie. What’s The Rookie? It’s American Football with aliens, humans and what can only be described as a very loose set of safety regulations.

Sticking to his tradition of general awesomeness, Sigler has posted a free podcast of The Rookie in its entirety on his site.

* With apologies to Jay Z

Carrie Heim Binas, author of one of my favorite blogs Heim Binas Fiction, saw fit to give me a Superior Scribbler award.

That’s made my whole day, thanks Carrie!

There are some rules to getting one of these…

1. Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
2. Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
3. Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
4. Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit This Post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
5. Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Now, time to give some deserving others the award:

Skyla Dawn Cameron: Author, publishing ninja and the creator of “How NOT To Be A Douchebag Writer 101″

Mur Lafferty: If you aren’t reading “I Should Be Writing”…you should be. This site is the ultimate writing inspiration blog. Plus you can pick up some of Mur’s writing for free. What are you still doing here?

Pip Ballantine: Fellow Kiwi, writer and podcaster. Pip is the obscenely talented writer of Weather Child and Chasing The Bard (among many other things).

Andy Shackcloth: Not only does Andy give out great advice himself, he trawls the web to bring you the best writing advice from all over.

Girls With Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto Not a writing blog, but a webcomic. It’s not really work safe, but you should go anyway to see some of the best art AND writing on the web. Concise, clever and hilarious.

I was hesitant about posting this particular article, at least in part because I’m not sure if this will work for everyone.

I also worry it’s going to make me look really stupid.

Still, without this particular set of experiences I would be far further behind in my writing than I am. I still can’t say if I’m any good, but if I am then one of my friends is at least partially to blame.

Because, in abusing this particular friend, lets call him Ross*, I’ve written well over half a million words of creative stories all describing his messy, humiliating demise at the hands of various different people, creatures and occasionally landmarks.

None of it’s printable, and some of it would have us both burnt an the stake, but we’ve both gotten a lot of practice just writing. No judgement, no need to make it good (although there were bonus points for concocting particularly gruesome deaths for each other) and no worrying about it if it didn’t make any sense.

I’m not suggesting you just send a friend an email describing in detail their death at the hands of a rabid wild boar, at least warn them about what you’re doing first. Having warned them though, back and forth emails stories between friends is a great way to refresh your writing and stimulate your creativity.

Plus, you get to send someone a really silly story and you’ll probably get one back. Awesome sauce.**

* He’s guilty as sin, but I’ve changed his name anyway

** The term “awesome sauce” I have lifted wholesale from Dave Kellett’s excellent comic Sheldon. If you’re a fan of excellent comic writing, not to mention funky art, you should be reading it.