Napkins, brain cells, writers, and clowns :: PNWA Wrap-up

When I got home from the PNWA conference on Saturday night, I emptied my pockets onto the top of my dresser. The usual wallet, keys, spare change, and pen knife were buried by the wads of napkins and envelopes, each of them covered in my handwriting.

Mind you, I had a Moleskine in my jacket pocket, two legal pads in my satchel, and my laptop.

And yet, I'm overcome by a desire to scribble on napkins.

There were a lot of napkin ideas this weekend. Enough to keep me busy for awhile.

Scott W.Perkins, Adventure Nerd?

At the recent PNWA conference, I was pinned down by an enthusiastic cohort questioning me about the nature of genre and writing in general.  He was an affable sort and I really wanted to answer his questions and react to what he was saying about his work, but the caffiene needle was hovering around E and he had strategically placed himself between me and the coffee cart.

I'd been listening to others at the conference coin new subgenres for themselves and most of them were incredibly clever.  ("Historical Balderdash" was my hands-down favorite.)  So in a moment when I was desperate for a cup of Joe, I found myself babbling semi-coherently about how what I really write is 'Nerd Adventure'.

Nerd adventure?  Really, Scott?

While in general I have no wish to be held to the sort of things I say on the cusp of caffeine withdrawal, I find that this isn't far from the truth.  Most of my characters have an above-average intellect and below-average social skills. There isn't a Navy SEAL or Green Beret in the bunch, none of them would feel comfortable dancing in front of people and most of them are only gregarious in situations where everyone around this is just as goofy as they are.  Even the one character I have with military experience is a misfit failed revolutionary (ex IRA, actually).

The drama and conflict comes largely from seeing these people yanked out of their comfortable, academic existance and tossed into the fire.  Scene: A bunch of people who don't know one end of a handgun from the other find themselves in a firefight.  Action!

And why not?

Nerds are big business.  In fact, it's beginning to look to me as if the mad scientist will be the meme that supplants vampires.  Old school, retro scifi mad scientists.  It just doesn't get any nerdier than that.

So in a world where a logline is necessary to get an agent or publisher to look at your manuscript, is it such a bad thing that I can walk up to them and say I'm selling "The Big Bang Theory meets DaVinci Code"?  Nope!  And that's the story of how a subgenre was born.

Thoughts on Writing Conferences :: PNWA Wrapup

• Do not expect to hand anything to agents and editors.  You will be emailing them and reminding them that they met you at _____ conference.
  
• Be memorable... but not for the wrong reasons.  A little eccentricity is one thing, but too much can hurt you. 
  
• Know the markets.  Know where you fit.  If you don't know, there's nothing wrong with asking and nowhere better to find people who can tell you.
  
• Do not miss a chance at "facetime" with an editor or agent.  My appointment with the agent was about 10 minutes longer than it was scheduled because someone else didn't show.  I appreciate the extra time, but why would you do this?  Standing up an agent is just bad business, and the opportunity to sit down across from a publishing professional isn't something you should sneeze at.  Thanks for the extra time, but you seriously need to re-think your priorities (whoever you are).
  
• Even agents who say that they don't rep your genre or style of work are worth talking to. Their opinion of your work or your pitch can be invaluable to your efforts to get noticed by the people who do want the stuff you have to sell.  Almost every agent I talk to has at least one story about a submission that was good but not their thing, so they passed it along to someone who did want whatever it was.
  
• Be good enough to pass along.
  
• Know what your story is about.  This is not a plot question, it's thematic and YOU WILL BE ASKED (over and over and over again).  If all else fails, imagine what the back of the book will say.
  
• Talk about the writing.  With the agents and editors and with your peers.  It's the thing that binds all of us together.
  
• Be enthusiastic.  It will come across even if you are nervous and scared.
  
• An agent said to me "That's an ambitious story, I'm curious to see if you pulled it off.  Send it to me."  That is my goal.  I can't count the number of books I've purchased because I said the same thing after reading the back cover.
  
• Do not lie.
  
• Be ambitious.  There's nothing wrong with that.  If someone asks if you're a good writer, say yes.  Or if you're feeling spunky, say "No, I'm a great writer."  However, do NOT say that you wrote the next Harry Potter, Twilight, Davinci Code, or whatever.  The agents are sick of hearing it.  Tell them why your work stands on its own.
  
• Admit if your project isn't done.
  
• Carry samples of your writing.  Carry the best you have.  Be prepared for no one to ask you for it.  You have it with you because you don't want to not have it.
  
• Talk to people, shake hands, pass out business cards to other writers.  Every time you meet someone, they're a possible contact.  It's called networking, but it's also called "Making friends with people who love the same things you do."
  
• Most of the people in this industry are incredibly nice, helpful and kind.  Really.  It's amazing.  So if someone you meet is an asshole, move on.  You don't want to work with them anyway.
  
• Remember that most of what you will be told about marketing (especially social networking, blogs, etcetera) is based on what worked for the last guy.  No one really knows what will work for the next guy.
  
• Innovate.  One great reason to listen to people talk about what they've done is to look for what's being missed.
  
• I heard three agents on an agents panel ask for Steampunk stories.  No one at the tables near me knew what that was.  Read about your industry and keep up with the trends if only so you can know why you're not following them.
  
• Talk to the presenters.  Approach them for reasons other than getting autographs.  Come up with questions, engage them in conversation, buy them a drink or a coffee if you run into them in drinking/coffee circumstances.  They were asked to present to your conference because they have something to say and odds are they have more to say than there was time for in your sessions.
  
• Take an improvisational acting class.  There's no better preparation for what you'll be doing at these conferences and future book signings.  The days of reclusive iconoclasts are over.  You must be able to engage.
  
• The old adage stands "Be you, everyone else is taken".
  
• Volunteer.  Help out.  Offer to pass out handouts in the sessions.
  
• Pay attention, take notes, ask questions.
  
• DO NOT approach agents in spaces where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.  Elevators are fine, bathroom stalls are not.

Agents Provocateur :: PNWA Conference

Another PNWA conference has passed into history and people I adore but only see once a year are homeward bound once more.  Safe journeys to all of you.

I haven't heard any numbers with regard to headcount and the like, but the statistic for the conference that would most interest me is the Gallons of Coffee Consumed (GCC).  You get a thousand or so mostly introverted people in one place and social lubricants rise from luxury to necessity.  Every time we are told that the current publishing world requires authors to be as adept with marketing and self-promotion as they are with crafting stories and you can hear a thousand introverts die a little inside.

Don't get me started on guessing the probable bar bills.

The dream scenario at one of these conferences is to get on an elevator with an agent or editor and have that precious moment of silence in which to pitch your idea or finished novel (preferably the latter).  We have sessions to teach budding writers how to do this.  The agents and editors know this and I'm sure the additional exercise some of them get from taking the stairs is welcome in what seems to be a largely sedentary job profile.

Nine out of ten elevator trips I took this year had either an agent or an editor in the car.  And not once was it an agent or editor that was buying what I came there to sell.  Fate can be a real jerk sometimes, but it gave me a chance to observe my fellow writers.  On every one of those elevators, I was accompanied by other writers who stood silent, casting sidelong glances at these people who had the power to grant them their hearts' desire (publication).

Wasted opportunities abounded and I hated to watch it. The past month or so, my weekly supper club commented that when I wasn't there (due to a hospital stay) the conversations tended to die with greater frequency.  Talking is something I'm good at and I'm more thankful than ever that I spent some time in sales, forced by economic necessity to transform from my default position of shyness to a more boisterous mindset.

I spent a great deal of those elevator rides breaking the ice with those agents and editors and writers, cracking jokes and trying to provoke these shrinking violets into some sort of action or interaction.  My results were mixed, but at least I tried.

 Anyway, during the conference I kept two notepads going.  On one of them, I was taking notes on whatever the speakers were talking about and on the other, I was jotting down thoughts, ideas and random tidbits that occurred to me for stories and blog posts, including "EVERYTHING THE INTERNET TELLS YOU ABOUT WRITING CONFERENCES IS WRONG!"  And yes, I wrote it in all caps just like that, so look forward to that post.

In the meantime, I have query letters and a synopsis to write, so I'll wish you well.

Movie Adaptation

The other morning, the Engineer threw a magazine at me. It was the September edition of Writer's Digest, and it had apparently been languishing far too long on the dining room table for her taste.

We were on our way out the door, so I stuffed it in the backpack (which is very similar in many respects to "putting it away") and headed off to the cafe to do my morning writing. After I finished writing my five pages, edited a couple dozen and wrote a blog entry likening my character to Bugs Bunny, I opened the magazine. In the back of my mind, I was noodling with my ongoing series of posts on "Cultural Cross-Pollination". I've already done Commedia del Arte, Playwriting, Role Playing Games, Kinetic Text and Cartoons. I either needed a good hook for talking about movies or I needed to just let it lie fallow for a little while.

How movies can, should or should not affect our fiction writing is a bit of a poser, I don't mind saying. It's a big topic for one thing, and for another, I've already touched on it a little bit. Then it hit me... exactly like a rolled-up magazine left too long on the dining room table. In WD and just about everywhere else that writing is discussed, the ability to write "visually" is discussed, dissected and otherwise touted as one of the hallmarks of marketable writing. In the "MFA Insider" column, author Joshua Henkin posited that movies and television and the onslaught of "Write more visually" advice from writing books and magazines have cumulatively eroded our willingness to create introspection in our stories. To prove his point, he gave a writing exercise that entails going through your story or manuscript and highlighting everything that can be filmed in one color (action) and everything that cannot be filmed in a contrasting color (internal dialogue).  In "too many" stories, there would be an imbalance -- the external story would outweigh the internal struggle of the characters, the parts that cannot be adapted for film.

I'm not sure he's right. For one thing, recent and upcoming movies are challenging what's "Filmable". Where the Wild Things Are takes us into the lengthy interior monologue of a young boy at war with himself. Assuming they don't screw it up The Road will be a challenging movie of silences and bleakness where the characters never refer to one another by name.

Has visual media cracked the whip of visual writing? More to the point, have novels been overtaken by authors who would be better suited writing screenplays?

I undertook his experiment with my own manuscript and without compiling exact statistics (there's a limit to how much free time I have) I think my writing is about even. Between the "filmable" sequences and the internal dialogues, I was looking at a pretty decent balance of colors. While there are extended action sequences, I temper that with the fact that my characters are pretty brainy and have a tendency to live inward.

Speaking of "filmable" writing, Paul Levine is an entertainment attorney and agent who represents a lot of screenwriters as well as authors. At PNWA, he told a full room that aspiring screenwriters should write the book first. Movie rights were easier to sell with a publishing contract to back them up and getting a screenplay over the transom at the moment was almost impossible without that. The other editors and agents on the panels all agreed. Hollywood wants a sure thing now more than ever. This is why we're seeing sequels and adaptaions packed cheek by jowl on the marquee right now. Hollywood wants someone else to play taste-maker, to vet the stories for them, to see them succeed in another venue before they plunk millions of dollars into a film project.

To bring it back to novel writing, I used to wholeheartedly agree with Henkin on the impact that visual media has had on writing... for better and worse. And I still do to some extent. But talking to Levine, I got the feeling that there was a bit of the tail wagging the dog -- that movies are following print as much or more than it goes the other way around. Films are delving into territory that was long thought impossible to bring to the screen. Introspective movies are elbowing for room alongside the usual action and adventure. Rather like you will see in my screenpla... um... novel.

---

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of suspense woven from the threads of history. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

Contact Me

We few, we happy few...

PNWA wrapup... I'm trying to get back into the groove of my real life. It's so cool to dive into a crowd of people who think and talk in the same terms you do and realize that as much of a wonk as you are, there are other people out there caring just as passionately about the same obscure topics you care about. A convention of like-minds. By comparison with the rest of society, writers are an odd lot. A happy band of rivals that are simultaneously competing for the attention of the same few agents, jockeying for the ever-decreasing number of slots available on a publisher's press... yet always happy to help another writer out. From the New York Times bestsellers who walked among us to the most gobsmacked first timer (cough-like me-cough) there was never a hesitation to help. We shared our pitches, advised others on word-choice and phrasing and honed our ability to pack a lot of information in a tiny paragraph that we could shoehorn into a conversation with any agent or editor that crossed our paths or (poor souls) walked into our elevator. I cannot lie... I joined the Pacific Northwest Writers Association because it was my local writer's association and attended this conference because it's close-by. Turns out it's one of the largest writing conferences in the country and one of the best by reputation among the pros (or so the pros told me). Writers, agents and editors are turned away every year. And there I was. You already know that the keynote was delivered by Terry Brooks. There were also amazing talks given by Joe Finder and James Rollins about getting into the biz and writing thrillers and pull back the curtain on agents and publishers. Robert Dugoni and Sheldon Siegel deconstructed their genres. The often circuitous path these guys took to get to where they are today is heartening to those of us who are too far along the path to turn back, but not far enough to see the heights ahead. The closing address was given by a guy named Chris Humphreys, who is a British/Canadian writer of historical fiction and young adult books. He's a Shakespearean actor and fight choreographer and spoke passionately about authenticity in historical fiction, voice, research, what to put in, what to leave out and his fascination with reenactors. He wrapped with - I kid you not - the St Crispin's Day speech from the end of Henry V ("We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...") which garnered a standing ovation. What amazing, funny speakers, writers at the height of their powers. Writer's conferences are a bi-polar experience filled with amazing enthusiasm and a great deal of frank and daunting honesty. Lots of emotional highs and lows. Incidentally, a comment I made in one of the sessions had what seemed like the whole conference debating how I should overcome the fact that there are so many Scott Perkinses out there, one of whom is already a writer. (The general consensus was the same that I have already arrived at, which is to say using my middle name and first initial) But the funny story of discovering that not only could I not get scottperkins.com but that there are two Facebook groups devoted to getting the Scott Perkinses of the world to coalesce into one super Scott Perkins caught people's attention and I was constantly hailed in the halls "Hey! Scott Perkins!" which was an interesting experience. Anyway, I'm still a bit high from it all and trying to focus on giving my manuscript a final polish before sending it off. I'll take a page from Chris Humphrey's and wrap this with a bit of Shakespeare from the beginning of the same play. The prologue of Henry V has always whispered through my head as I begin a project or when - God forbid - I am struck with the sort of self doubt that whispers that my subject is too big for me to encompass in my pages. "... but pardon gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object: can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? or may we cram within this wooden 'O' the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?"

-Henry V, prologue

-- Scott Walker Perkins writes literate thrillers and novels of suspense, set in the modern era but woven from the threads of history. You can read more about his current projects here or at swalkerperkins.googlepages.com.

My favorite cocktail napkin...

What a great quote from legendary fantasy author Terry Brooks. It says: "I've always thought that if people want to go beyond vampires and zombies, they ought to write about writers, because they're weird!" I jotted it down on my napkin after he said it, which he seemed to think it was funny and he was nice enough to sign it.

Day One - Laughter & Lessons Learned

Had trouble with the wireless today, so live updates many not be possible. This is all very different from what I expected and so very different from what my internet researches led me to believe... -Scott Three important things I learned today...

1. The "One Sheet" that so many websites claim are an imperative for selling your novel or book proposal are anathema to the agents... at least the agents at this conference. They arrive by plane and depart the same way. I suppose that carrying a ream of paper in your carry-on bags isn't a desirable thing and the airlines charge through the nose for weighty bags these days.
2. Same goes for business cards.
3. Have two good pitches, both of them short and sweet. One for the halls and elevators and one for the table. This is all you get to sell your idea to an agent or editor.

I can't say as other conferences or agents on another coast feel the same way, but everyone repeats the mantra "Don't hand them anything, it's an imposition and they don't want it". Interesting how different the research can be from the application... Oh! And #4. Terry Brooks is a riot. (Incidentally, so is James Rollins, who was there to introduce him.) Terry had us rolling in the aisles and my wife nodding along as he talked about how weird we writers really are. And when I jotted down my favorite quote from his talk, Terry was nice enough to sign it. Once I find my download cord, I'll take a picture and post it for your amusement.

PNWA

THIS WEEKEND!!! (Wow! That got here fast!) This weekend (starting tonight actually) I will be at the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference. Meeting new friends, sitting down with editors and agents to pitch my novel. The docket is full of the usual meetings on time management, platforms and writing groups. Tonight is the kickoff event with keynote speaker Terry Brooks. I'm kinda nervous about the whole thing. I've been to plenty of conferences in various capacities, but this is my first writing conference and my first attempt at pitching my novel face to face. I'll be liveblogging as much as I can when I can find a wireless signal... assuming my battery holds out or I can find a plug, of course. Wish me luck!

Friday Randomness...

It's (almost) finished! The first draft of my second novel in the AJ MacLeod/Jordan Elias series is almost complete. It is tentatively titled The Mummer's Masque. Click the link to read a short synopsis/teaser for the new book from my website. I've been plugging away at it for about a year now, and it's in a stage of completion where I will be sending copies to my reading group soon. This is quite the milestone for me. Meanwhile, if you're an editor or agent who has yet to see it, look forward to seeing my letter of enquiry arrive in your inbox soon! --- This August, I will be attending the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference which is hosted by my good friends at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. The keynote address will be given by Terry Brooks, which is every geeky sci fi kid's dream come true. As you may or may not know, the first Fantasy book ever to appear on the New York Times Paperback Bestseller list was The Sword of Shannara. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.