Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (19 page)

3. A table of contents usually follows next. This will give an editor a sense of how you envision the organization of your book. It will give your reader an indication of the scope and depth of your material.

While you may not choose to have a separate table of contents, you should make sure to include a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the
contents of the book you plan to write. For each chapter of the book, write a miniature essay, usually no more than a few pages in length and often no longer than a few paragraphs, that describes what material will be covered and how it will be handled. Your aim is to show the depth and detail of your approach and how the themes of your book will evolve from one chapter to the next. You want your chapter summaries to be complete enough to convince an editor that you can write the book you propose, and that it will contain interesting, fresh, valuable material and yet also leave the reader wanting to know more.

4. Provide a section of production details. Approximate how many pages your book will have and how long it will take to research and write it. What kinds of costs will you be incurring? Will you have to travel to do research? Will there be extensive fees for permissions or artwork? Indicate what additional kinds of materials you envision including in the book: are you planning to use photos, charts, diagrams, etc.? Here your goal is to realistically assess what will be entailed in writing this book—and how much money you will need to do the job adequately.

5. The author bio, written in the third person, should establish your credentials for writing the book you propose. Your previous writing credits, if any, should be listed first; enclose any material you have written on the subject. Then give a description of your qualifications; this includes academic degrees, career highlights, or a lifelong study of the subject as an avocation. If you can get or have already gotten endorsements or blurbs from prominent people in the field, cite them. Include videotapes of any TV or other public appearances you have made. Give a rundown of what media, if any, you have already done. Since more often than not it is the author who is at the center of any publicity or promotion a book gets, it is a tremendous asset to a publisher to have a mediagenic author to work with.

6. Finally, you should provide one or two sample chapters from your book. This will prove to an editor that you can write, and although no one will assume that this is the finished product, these pages should show off your writing skills to their best advantage. Each chapter should be twenty to twenty-five pages in length and display the writing style you plan to use throughout the text and contain the kinds of information that will appear in the book. Remember to choose chapters that will suggest all the possibilities for the full-length work and still whet your reader’s appetite!

Keep in mind that a proposal is not the same thing as an outline you would use to write your book. The best proposals are those that elicit the
fewest questions. Why? Because you’ve anticipated an answered them all. Remember, your aim is to write a proposal so gripping that after reading it an editor will get on the phone and offer you a contract for your book.

There is a certain irony in the fact that an editor can tell a writer quite a bit less about what she looks for in a completed manuscript than what she’d like to see in a query letter or proposal. In part this is because editors are not writers and do not know how to write a book; we soon learn that every single writer approaches his or her task in a different fashion. And when a completed manuscript is submitted to an editor, it is quite close to being finished and should persuade an editor of its value on its merits: the content and style of the work. You should, however, make sure that your manuscript, whether fiction or nonfiction, does not indulge in sloppy thinking or careless writing. Ask yourself: Is my plot or argument persuasive; is it well executed; does each scene, character, conversation, and idea make an important and effective contribution to the work; is it original; will it keep people outside of my family and closest friends reading through the last page?

…

It may take a while, but a well-written and -conceived manuscript, proposal, or query letter presented with enthusiasm and professionalism
will
find a publisher. In the meantime, consider carefully the responses you are getting from editors and use them to continue honing and sharpening your work for future submissions. Keep in mind how difficult your task is. After all, you’re trying to catch the attention of extremely busy individuals who read enormous amounts of material daily while they try to balance acquisitions with their editorial, production, and marketing responsibilities.

But despite their being overworked, remember that editors are always looking for new material. There is nothing quite so thrilling for an editor than coming upon an original, exciting, and thoroughly professional author. Your expertly prepared and presented query letter, proposal, or manuscript can convince her that you are that author.

Why They Go, What They Do

Michael Seidman

M
ICHAEL
S
EIDMAN
, the mystery editor of Walker & Company, has more than thirty years of experience in all aspects of the publishing industry. A winner of the American Mystery Award as Best Book Editor, Mr. Seidman is the author of
From Printout to Published: A Guide to the Publishing Process.
His latest book
, Living the Dream: Writing as a Way of Life,
was published in November 1992. Mr. Seidman attends at least ten writers’ conferences a year
.

Are you looking for “a large and varied support group waiting not only to ensure that you are not lonely, but to provide the kind of help and lessons the writer needs in order to grow”? According to Michael Seidman, “All you need to do to make contact is attend a writers’ conference.”

There are hundreds of different writers’ conferences held during the year in every part of the country. Mr. Seidman’s fact-filled, hands-on essay recommends practical guidelines for choosing the right one for you and tells you how to get the most out of attending it in terms of value for your time and money. He shows you how to make every moment there count, how to select a workshop, how to gauge which ones to avoid, and how to network effectively with the editors who attend the conference in ways that can enhance your career. For it’s important to remember that the editors who attend these conferences are there to discover new authors for their list. They’re as eager to meet you as you are to meet them. That’s what writers’ conferences are all about. So turn off your word processor (or, if you just can’t stop writing, take along your laptop) and recharge your creative
batteries at a writers’ conference and just possibly change the course of your career!

Why They Go, What They Do

The pundits say that we teach most that which we most have to learn. After more than a decade of being invited to conferences as a speaker and managing to attend as a writer, I’m not about to start arguing with the pundits. They’ve got it right.

They also say that you’re supposed to write, write, and write, that time taken away from the writing is time wasted, that the only way to learn how to write is by writing. Right?

They say that writing is the loneliest profession, something done alone, just the writer and the words. Right?

“They.” Ambiguous, amorphous, and always quoted. But what they say is not always right.

If you sit alone and write, with your only feedback coming in the form of noncommittal rejection slips (“… not right for our list at the present time”), you will find yourself repeating the same mistakes. You learn from your mistakes, after all, only if you know they are errors of some kind. Unfortunately, reading and attempting to emulate the writers you enjoy is not the answer; the work you produce that way is simply an echo of someone else’s ability.

As for the loneliness—well, at the very worst you always have the company of your characters, coming to life on the page, telling you what they’re going to do, and to hell with your outline. At best, though, there is a large and varied support group waiting not only to ensure that you are not lonely, but to provide the kind of help and lessons the writer needs in order to grow. You’ll have to take a couple of days away from the typewriter (perhaps; after all, there
are
portables), but the time is not wasted.

All you need to do to make contact is attend a writers’ conference.

There are hundreds of writers’ conferences held every year. Some of them, like the Golden Triangle Fiction Writers Conference in Beaumont, Texas, or the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in Denver, Colorado, are sponsored by writing groups and workshops; others, like the University of Oklahoma Short Course on Professional Writing in Norman,
Oklahoma, are presented with the direct support of university writing programs. Some are seminars, offered by various experts in the field; Gary Provost, for instance, presents a series of programs around the country.

There are conferences designed for writers in a particular field: satellite organizations of the Romance Writers of America sponsor meetings (most of which, these days, deal with all forms of writing); the Chicago chapter of the Mystery Writers of America offers a program called “Dark and Stormy Nights”; there are conferences for those who want to write children’s fiction and for those who want to write for the Christian inspirational market. If you want to do it, there’s someone out there ready to help you.

How do you choose the right one, then, from this abundance of riches? Every spring,
Writer’s Digest
publishes a list of upcoming conferences, as well as ads announcing the speakers scheduled to attend and participate. It’s a good place to begin.

Friends can also provide information that’s useful. If they’ve attended a particular conference, and pronounced it good, that recommendation should be taken seriously.

Finally, librarians—either at a local branch or at a local school or college—are often aware of upcoming conferences and can put you in touch with the organizers.

Having found several conferences that are convenient—travel expenses won’t be prohibitive, you can attend without losing too much time from your day job—your next task is to find the one that is most suitable for you. The answer there lies in who will be attending and what will be discussed. If you are specializing in science fiction and none of the speakers (editors, agents, or writers) is going to deal with the subject, you might decide to pass. Of course, there may be someone there who will be of help: a writer whose work you’ve admired, an editor known to you by reputation for publishing insights—you have to make that decision based on your needs and what you want to gain.

Find out whether there will be an opportunity to arrange individual appointments with the editor or agent you want to meet. Some conferences arrange ten-minute meetings as part of the program; others offer a roundtable at which a speaker will meet with a group of people at one time. At some, you are expected to arrange the meetings on your own. Most of the people speaking at a conference go out of their way to make themselves available, so even if you can’t get an appointment, it doesn’t mean you won’t have a chance to talk with a guest.

Most of the conferences at which I speak (and I try to do eight to ten a year) also offer the opportunity for critiquing. At some, this is in the form of a contest (generally with an extra charge per submission). Following the organizers’ guidelines, you submit material that is read and judged by
professionals and prizes are awarded. Even if you don’t win, however, you receive a sheet of comments pointing out your strengths and weaknesses.

Once you arrive at a writers’ conference, you may find as many as three hundred people waiting to check in and receive their conference packets (schedules, speaker bios, publishers’ guidelines, meal tickets—if meals are part of the program—and an evaluation sheet for your comments at the end of the meeting). Or there may only be seventy-five. Some may be regulars, people who attend this conference every year, or they will be people who attend two or three different ones as their schedule permits. And there will be those for whom this is a trip into uncharted waters. No matter their particular writing interests and needs, they’re all there for the same reason: to learn, to meet other writers and exchange information and experiences, and to become part of a network with its heart in the offices of publishers and agents. That’s right: they’re there for exactly the same reason you’ve shown up.

Bring notebooks and pencils and, if it is appropriate, three or four copies of your proposal, partial manuscript, or other materials. Most editors and agents don’t want to take manuscripts home with them and they don’t have the time to read at the conference. That’s most; there are exceptions, and if you meet one of them you want to be ready to reel that fish in right away.

If you’ll be staying at the conference, and you’ve brought that portable typewriter or computer I mentioned earlier, all well and good: conferences have a way of being energizing. You don’t need a keyboard, though. Most of what we call literature wasn’t created on a machine and the old-fashioned way still works perfectly well.

And don’t forget comfortable clothes. Those meeting rooms have a way of getting very warm over the course of a day. If there’s an awards banquet you may want something “dressy,” though that’s by no means any more necessary than a typewriter—even if you’re lucky enough to be one of the finalists.