Notes from OryCon: I Quit My Job to Be a Writer! What Have I Done?

Anne Bishop

Matt Vancil

Jim Kling

• Background
• • JK: Quit day job in 1992 to go to grad school. In 1995, decide he didn't want to complete PhD in chemistry, eventually decided to science writing internship. Then went on to do freelance, and has done it ever since.
  • MV: Screenwriter and filmmaker. Have a day job, but it's a writing job. Got that as a result of a string of other writing. First time he's had a consistent gig.
  • AB: Author of multiple series. Pretty much a full-time writer. Working on 18th novel, but still have a day job, two jobs a week. 
• What is the writing life like?
• • JK: 
  • • Currently have home office. Had an outside office, but stop using it. 
    • I don't get dressed or shower until noon. Doesn't keep regular hours.
    • Had a regular job briefly, hated the regular hours. Would rather work when he wanted to in order to be happy and healthy.
    • Deadlines dictate when he needs to get certain work done.
  • MV: 
  • • Required to have bit of structure because of the company he works for.
    • To work at home, he prefers a place that quiet, cool, and calm.
    • But at work, he's forced into an environment that loud and chaotic.
    • • because of this, he's abandoned the idea of structure, and just embraced the chaotic nature of the work.
    • On his own work, its about a routine: an outline and a quota. Because at the end of a day of work, the last thing he wants to do is write.
  • AB:
  • • I like structure. I treat it as a job I have 5 days a week.
    • I don't get dressed for the office.
    • I throw on clothes, make coffee, and as soon as my brain is engaged and start working.
    • The less time between waking and getting to the keyboard the better.
    • The less input, less sensory, the better.
    • I set a weekly word count equal to 1,500 words a day. This is what is needed to make the deadlines for the size of the novels I write.
    • I sit down from 8:30 in the morning until about 1:30.
    • At that point, it's time to meet the day. Get cleaned up, and tend to all the other stuff. Nobody gets time in the writing slot except for the characters.
• MV: The development is actual work too: sometimes its not just typing characters into a keyboard. It's deep thinking about motivation before you're ready to put words on the page.
• AB: No matter what the process is, you have to be willing to produce the end product.
• • JK: You have to be willing to deal with the self-doubt. As a hobbyist, there's no external pressure. If you never send off the novel, the editor doesn't even know. But if you're self-employed, you have to finish it and send it off, because you need it for the check, even if you're worried that its a piece of shit.
• AB: Know your writing style. Are you a sprinter or a marathoner? All of these are valid ways to get to the end-goal. But know what it right for you.
• How do you deal with writing time vs. all the other things you can do?
• • MV: Ultimately it's about holding yourself to a quota. And what helps you make that quota is an outline. Problems in Act 3 are almost always due to problems in Act 1 that weren't resolved because there was no outline. Also, give yourself permission to suck. 
  • AB: There's a difference between 10 minutes of minesweeper to rest your brain and an hour of minesweeper to avoid writing.
• Q: If you get blocked somewhere in the first draft, do you ever go back and edit as a way of making some progress?
• • AB: I do what I call musings. I open up another file, and just start typing about what I think the problems might be, what the characters might be thinking about. Sometimes this is like warming up after you've had an injury: you have to get the muscle warmed up.
  • • Give yourself an ultimatum to do the chore you hate the most or write a 100 words. I guarantee that you'd rather write 100 words than to scrub the kitchen floor.
• Before you quit your day job, what do you need to get from your writing?
• • AB: I've gradually decreased my hours at my day job down to two mornings. This has been very good to be able to gradually decrease.
  • • If you hope to quit your day job and pay your mortgage and feed your kids, you should be writing under contract long before you give up your day job.
    • Don't give up the day until your fiction is earning enough to pay all of your bills for a year.
    • Ideally you need to not only pay bills, but also put aside money for emergencies, savings, etc.
    • Agents will say you should have ten books in print before you consider it…
  • MV: It's better to have a job and work some minimal hours than to simply quit. Determine how many hours a day you need to write, and then try to find a job that will support it.
  • • You have to be prepared that this is a long haul… I went to a film school and they beat into your head that you'd need to do this for at least five years before you'd be able to make money at it.
    • Embrace any job that helps you further your goals: e.g. a tech writing job that gets you access to publishers.
  • JK: It's hard to do this and it requires some luck. But it also requires being willing to embrace a different lifestyle. If you want to drive a new car, have new clothes, eat your meals out… then don't quit your day job.
  • • There are some, but not very many.
    • Be willing to scale back the lifestyle.
    • AB: Leave lean.
  • MV: If you're writing you are probably doing it because you love it. Be prepared that at some time it'll feel like a job, and you'll hate it. Remember why you started doing it.
• Q: What's a likely amount of money to make?
• • AB: First advances are lucky to be $5,000, except for an exceptional few. And that comes in 3 payments over about 3 years, so it's not a lot of money. 
  • • If you have 10 books in print, then royalties will start to add up, but it's still a live lean lifestyle.
  • JK: I have a second income in the form of my wife who works.
• How do you force yourself to get dressed and leave the house? How do you avoid feeling isolated?
• • AB: Why do I want to leave the house?
  • JK: It is isolating, and sometimes it bothers me, and sometimes it doesn't.
  • • I go out and meet with other writers every other week.
    • I get sick of being at home and go out.
    • My dogs force me to take them out.
• Q: You've talked about the income, what about the expenses particular to writing?
• • AB: You need a computer, paper, electricity and time. The expense of writing is not great except that it is time.
  • MV: One cost is that you'll have a scary credit history if you don't have a steady income. 
  • AB: Self-employment tax: the other 7.5% you need to pay into social security.
  • MV: Keep very clear records of your sources of income. I have 8 sources of income.
  • JK: Deduct everything you can.
• Q: How does it work between writing and film-making?
• • MV: Over the last two years, I didn't have a day job. When I had a film, I could film it. Now I have to negotiate the time off work from a job I want to keep.

From Victim to Hero: Joss Whedon's Characters

From Victim to Hero:

Joss Whedon’s characters

Scott Allie (editor in chief, Dark Horse Comics), Rhiannon Louve, Kara Helgren, Anna Snyder, Todd McCaffrey

·      Q: How do you feel about Joss’s portrayal of River, in terms of her presentation as a victim?

o   AS: These are things that are done to her, from an outside presence. She doesn’t have a choice. She had no participation in her victimization. By the end of the series, her programming is something that is not externally triggered, but she embraces and uses.

o   RL: There is being the victim of a crime vs. a victim mentality. Joss’s characters are victims of crime who do not embrace a victim mentality, but instead rise up and fight.

o   K: Ophelia (Hamlet) was used as a pawn by everybody, and essentially had no control over that. Shakespeare implied that she saw drowning as a way out. By comparison, River saw another way out.

·      Q: Joss took a lot of heat for Dollhouse. Characters were so victimized: treated as pawns and prostitutes and were traumatized.

o   AS: Echo had some free agency. She signed on the dotted line so they could do those things to her. It complicates the notion of victimized. Women who are in abusive relationships, there is a transitional periods, on their way out, they sometimes go back. They are choosing to go back into a victim. They need to own their situation.

·      Q: Was Joss glorifying victimization by making a whole cast of victims?

o   RL: I didn’t feel that way. I felt empowered by the show. He explored philosophical sexual ideas that were ahead of their time.

§  AS: Joss has been exploring prostitution throughout his shows.

§  K: Showing people freely talking about sexual themes: people are not always comfortable with this. Sex is a part of life, a basic need of human beings. Some people just felt this was an exploitation. It was calling attention to the victimization that does happen. We don’t see these things, we try not to think about them, but they are happening all the time. And that’s hard for people to swallow.

·      Q: Inarra

o   AS: They are in control of their client base, their money, they have political power. It’s clearly not victimization.

o   TM:

o   RL: It’s hard to have a character that is traditionally feminine and still powerful. And that’s what Inarra is.

o   K: She is in control. She’s a sex worker, but she’s not a victim. River is the victim – because she has things done to her that she doesn’t want. The companion guilt is very wealthy and powerful. She knows how to fight. She’s able and capable. Whereas River is victimized to such an extent that she doesn’t even know how to control herself.

·      Q: Regarding Dollhouse: even if it could be done, could it be done ethically? Is there anything that can be done without victimization if people are desperate to sign that control?

o   RL: This is what makes Adele such an interesting character. First you think she’s the villain, and then you don’t. Adele is at the center of how the LA dollhouse was run.

o   K: Adele will get shit done, if it needs to be done, but she has a caring nature to the dolls.

o   Audience: The dolls in the LA dollhouse were still treated as human beings, while the Washington dollhouse treated them only as tools.

·      Q: Where does Echo become a hero?

o   RL: She starts out as either a hero or a terrorist. She’s back into a corner, and she’s coerced. Her personality starts to carry over from personality to personality.

§  SA: Is this what makes her a hero?

o   K: When she’s in her terrorist days, she’s Caroline, not Echo. As Echo, she starts picking up pieces of other personalities she’s had programmed into her.

·      SA: Dollhouse explores identity, without answering anything. We can all make different conclusions.

·      SA: We see female characters put in a victim role. They are put through some kind of horrible sexual ringer, to rise up from the ashes. Is it exploitive? Is it emotionally honest? (talking about Tomb Raider game)

o   TM: It’s a default state for a male writer to say that if I am going to put a female character through the ringer, it’s going to be through rape. But there are other tools. There are things that can make you lose your will to live faster.

o   K: Originally the backstory was that she lost her father. Now this is being retconed. It’s a shorthand for something more complicated. And it trivialized the event.

o   RL: Bringing it back to River, there’s nothing about sexual victimization. It’s not about sex. It’s a female character, and she’s rising up from her oppressors, and it’s nothing about sex.

§  Even if you don’t go to a story about rape, it’s about being married against their will.

§  Even things that are written now, for children, have that trope.

o   K: Using either rape or forcing to marry: you’re taking free agency away from a woman.

o   RL: forcing to marry is something that is still happening in the world today.

·      Talk of playing to strength. There’s victimization, but then how do you deal with that.

·      Women are victimized by taking away their free agency (e.g. control over their body, their mind, their relationships), and that almost never happens to men.

o   It’s the shorthand for a female character.

o   A male protagonist is usually more complex.

·      SA: Choice being taken away from the protagonist is a common trope.  But that's not always true: Ripley in Alien. Linda Hamilton in Terminator. On the other hand, you have Catniss in Hunger Games, where everyone is essentially a slave.

o   Gender is not an issue in the story of Catniss. It’s not about a young women rising above, it’s about a person rising above.

o    SA: All genre fiction is about taking support structure away from the protagonist.

o   AS: But female and male characters are treated different. You don’t see nearly as many kidnapped male characters (unless they are children). You don’t see men sexually victimized. The method of removing choice and agency is different. A wider range for male characters vs. female characters.

o    

Kung Fu vs Wire Fu: Realistic, working fight scenes

Kung Fu vs. Wire Fu

Are your fight scenes realistic? Do they work on the page?

Steve Perry, Kamila Miller, Dave Smeds, Blake Hutchins, Steven Barnes

Orycon 34 -- 2012

·      DS: The first thing, when doing an action scene, is to get intensely into the viewpoint of my character. How is the fight seeming to them. What are the threats to them. See it from the viewpoint of the expert. In doing this, it makes it accessible, regardless of whether the reader is familiar with the combat or not.

o   I know unarmed combat, but mostly I write about armed combat. There’s some cross over in terms of what people are aware about in fighting, but the techniques are different.

·      SP: I go for wire fu. Real fighting is boring. Someone gets hit, and you don’t know what happened. You want to write for it to be entertaining.

·      KM: I try to pull in the point of view really tight. In the beginning, I tried to do it like a movie: choreographed. But for writing, what’s important is the impact on the character.

·      SB: every fight has its own story arc. Look at Sylvester Stallone: every fight is a 3-act story.

·      BH: When I write a fight scene, I start with grounding in the sense. That makes it exciting. What is the scene meant to show? It is real jeopardy, or show competence?

o   What does it feel like to feel outclassed?

o   What does it feel like to be hit?

o   What does it feel like to be tricked.

·      SB:

o   Fight scenes are like sex scenes. There’s a lot going on, but what’s important is what it reveals about a character. A character should not come out as the same person.

o   I start by asking myself who is this person at the start, and who they are at the end. Either they change, or they learn something about themselves, or they reveal something about themselves.

·      Pet peeves?

o   KM: The dude who wades through the battlefield hacking and slaying.

o   DS: Karate kid: where you take someone with almost no training, and they can beat people who have been training for years.

o   SP: Tom Cruise. A 5’8” guy can’t play Jack Reacher, who is 6’5”.

o   SB: In PG and PG-13 movies, when people are fighting other people far more capable. There should be ripping eyes and going for the groin.

·      What do you love?

o   SB: The fight scene in From Russia with Love in the train cabin.

o   SB: Peter O’Donnell wrote the best fight scenes ever.

§  He’s put people in a situation they could not possible win.

§  Then convince you they have to win.

§  Modesty Blaze books

o   You find the people who do know this stuff. You have the scenes express something: somebody’s loyalty, their tolerance for pain, the lengths they will go to.

·      Get the original episodes of the Green Hornet with Bruce Lee. He’s genuinely good. The last few seasons are the best because they bought up people he could really fight against.

·      Guilty Pleasures:

o   SP: Green Arrow on CW: the kids aren’t watching this, so they just go wild. “kill them all”

o   SB: Wild, wild west

o    

So You Want to Be a Writer

So You Want to Be a Writer

Richard A Lovett, Amber D. Sistla, Karen Azinger, Ken Scholes

Orycon 34 -- 2012

·      AS:

o   My writing time is so precious that when I drop my kid off at daycare, I don’t even leave the building: I sit down outside the door, and start writing.

·      KS:

o   The most important thing I can do is write.

o   At a book signing, I can sell maybe 3 or 4 books

o   At a con, I can sell maybe 4 books

o   So the most important thing I can do is write.

o   When a book comes out, people will read it, and they’ll publicize it.

·      RL:

o   If it’s sunny, I’m looking for things to do during the day. And then I’ll write at night.

o   C.S. Lewis always wrote in the morning, and then went for a walk in the afternoon.

o   6 hours of writing in a day is a hard drive.

§  KS:            I consider 3 to be good.

·      Q: Do you have agents? How important are they?

o   KS:

§  For my NY stuff, I have an agent. They have boilerplate contracts with all the publishing houses. I reap the benefits of what Jim Butcher has been able to get, because we have the same agent.

§  For my short stories and small press stuff, I do it myself.

§  Don’t get tangled up in writers. You have to practice your craft until you have a publisher ready material.

o   RL:

§  For my non-fiction work, I don’t have agents. Usually publishers approach me. Would they get me a better deal? Maybe. Would it be 15% better? Maybe not.

·      Q: How much time do you spend writing vs. rewriting

o   KS: Much more writing, but I’m notorious for really good first drafts, perhaps from so much time spent on short stories.

o   KA: I tend to take about nine months to write the manuscript. Then I give it to my alpha readers (about nine people). I wait to hear from them. Then I take their comments into consideration, and doing a global edit. I tighten it up, increase the tension, kick everything up a notch. “they passed the building”, goes to “they passed the thatched-roof cottage”. Then it goes to my editor, and identifies copyediting, but also, for example, asked me to focus on three chapters that needed rework.

o   AS: With novels, because they are so long, if I am a third of the way through, and I see a problem, e.g. that something needs foreshadowing, I don’t make the change then. I just make a note. Then later, I can go through and do all the notes in one pass.

·      Q: What do you like most?

o   KA:

§  Holding the book in my hand

§  Having people read it

o   KS:

§  I won an award in France last year, and this year they’re asking to fly me out there. That’s exciting.

§  Whether I get a letter from a fan or win an award, it’s feels good.

o   RL:

§  Being able to do what I like to do. I can pick the assignments I want to do. If its fun, it’s worth writing about.

·      Q: What’s your least favorite thing?

o   KS:

§  I don’t like flying.

§  I get tired of seeing the same thing over and over ahead. Like having to read galley proofs.

§  Colleagues can get snarky.

o   KA:

§  When I am doing the global edit, I get tired of working on it.

§  When I get feedback, and someone says “this doesn’t work”. Sometimes I know how to fix, and that feels good. Other times, I don’t know, and I hate that.

o   AS:

§  Rejections.

o   RL:

§  Lede panic.

·      Q: What if it’s not the right length?

o   RL: I write it to the length it needs to be, and then I edit it to the length required.

o   KA: Even more than word length, it’s got to be really good. If it is really good, they’ll help you get it to the right length.

o   RL: Don’t pad. It really sucks.

o   KS: My first novel was 130,000 words, and they bought it and wanted four more novels too.

o   KS: I start with the end in mind. I imagine a 130,000 word book, in a 3 act structure, and allocate out the word count. And I know early on whether I’m running hot or cold. It’s less wasteful than writing 200,000 words and then editing down to 130,000.

·      Q: Is there anything you wish you had known before choosing writing

o   AS: I just wish I had more time to do it. I wish I had started before I had kids.

§  Just do it now with whatever time you have.

o   RL:

§  In non-fiction, I would have learned what PAC journalism is like. It’s not fun, and I didn’t know. Publishers are sheep, and it’s really frustrating. They are trying to follow the trend. If you buck the trend, they don’t want it. If you follow the trend, it’s not the trend by the time you’re done.

o   KA:

§  Pitching. In the beginning you send your query letter out, and get a ton of rejections. Instead, go to a writing conference, and sign up for face to face pitches.

·      Write a pitch that focused on the main character, a different one that pitches the main problem, etc… Come up with five different pitches. Try them all. Watch their faces… you can tell when they are turned off. Switch to the second pitch. If necessary, the third pitch. What I found was that my fourth pitch was the most effective. I started with the fourth pitch for all of the successive pitch sessions, and I used it with my query letters.

o    KS:

§  If I did anything differently, I wouldn’t be who I am now and where I am now.

§  In the last five years, I got a five book contract, and gone full time as a writer, and lost eight members of my family, and gained two members.

§  What’s important in writing? There’s no secret handshakes, no magic bullets. You can go to cons, and you can meet people, but unless you have a novel, and a good novel, nothing else matters. Producing work doesn’t just yield you a finished work, it makes you a better writer.

·      Q: Choosing indie publishing?

o   AS: You’ve got all the jobs. Even if you farm it out to other people, you are in charge of it. There’s no money coming in during the very beginning. (as opposed to getting an advance.)

o   Annie Bellet: Don’t choose. Do both.

o   KS: I haven’t done indie publishing yet, but I will. And I’ll use my contacts from traditional publishing (editors, cover designers) to get it done.

o   RL: I did my first work, and it was a collection of pieces previously vetted through Analog. Collections don’t usually make a lot of money, so there wasn’t much risk,

o   KA: I had a five book deal with a publisher. And they were awful. But I finally escaped. I would recommend doing it yourself.