This is a big day for me. I feel, in a certain way, I have finally arrived as a blogger. You see, last week I received the following email:

Hi,

Nathalie here from Bozo Media and I wanted to drop you a line and just compliment your site http://victoriamixon.com/. Nice layout, good info, good resources. I was looking around at a few different sites relevant to Washing Machines. I definitely thought yours was one of the best. That being said, I also noticed you guys have some great content related to them.

I currently work for a company that maintains website that offers best deals and information about Washing Machines – http://www.wtfwashingmachines/fakeurl. We are a nationally recognized, reliable source for Washing Machines and I was wondering if you’d be interested in giving us an opportunity to write guest post relevant to your site. I can assure you that our article will be very informative to your visitors and also drive more traffic. I would be very pleased if you allow me to add a link to our site in the article.

Looking forward for your reply.

Regards,
Nathalie.

Wow. Nathalie. I just don’t know what to say.

Because the truth is teaching the craft of fiction is exactly like teaching people to use Washing Machines.

But how did you know?

Nathalie, you are my new best friend. There is simply nothing I love more than sinking my teeth into a good, rambling post about the essential link between great fiction and Washing Machines. So I will save you the trouble of writing it for me. That’s how much I like you, Nathalie. I’ll write that darn guest post for you myself.

This is the honest, unvarnished truth, people: modern contemporary American fiction is, from many angles, as Dirty as Hell. And it’s in desperate need of a really good Cosmic Fictional Washing Machine.

My job is to teach you people how to clean up your fiction. Go ahead—write it, thrash around in it, have a fabulous time, make a big old fun muddy mess. Get it all over yourself. You don’t need me for that part. Anyone can do it, and hundreds of thousands of people do. It’s a blast!

Then go back and write your story again more honestly. Go down through the layers of superficial uniform dirt that get all over everybody when they truly relish a big, hefty, messy, magnificent first few drafts. Find underneath those top layers the story that’s really there. Find the real people living inside the characters, of whom you have barely scratched the surface. Find the details of their lives that make them three-dimensional in exactly the way your reader’s life is three-dimensional. Find the universal themes of comedy and tragedy out of which they’re been created and the complex interweaving of those elements that your characters must navigate on their way to enlightenment. Uncover the fabric of your characters’ unique lives that your reader needs to touch in order to reach the heart of what you’re doing.

Then write it again even more honestly. And write it again. And again. And again. . .

Every time you let your manuscript go cold and take it out later for another revision, you’re sending it through the Cosmic Fictional Washing Machine. Every time, the structure of your story gets a little clearer, the humanity of your characters gets a little truer, your reason for writing this novel gets a little more significant, to you, and to your readers too. Eventually—if you work hard enough, with enough dedication and soul-searing honesty, for long enough—it will be beautiful, vivid, shining. Clean. It will be a new definition of meaning.

And you will be proud to wear it around in public for the rest of your life.

But if you rush out and insist it be published while it’s still even sort of dirty (much less as dirty as it is when you first stand up out of rolling around in all that mud—and, yes, you can get stuff published in that condition, it happens all the time) then, like the portrait of Dorian Gray, the dirt will become ever more and more obvious as the years go by and your craft improves.

As your understanding of the meaning of life deepens. As your reasons for living make more and more sense in the overall universal scheme of things, as seen through your own unique, vivid, unforgettable lens.

Don’t do this to yourselves, folks. I say this with all editorial love for the writers in you and compassion for what writing your novels means to you. I know. I write novels too.

Develop a sincere, lifelong, humble respect for the Great Cosmic Fictional Washing Machine.

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Weronika Janczuk, Independent Editor and writer of YA, literary and historical fiction, just signed on as a literary agent with D4EO Literary Agency. Weronika’s been a reader and commenter here for some time, so when she announced her recent promotion, I realized this is a perfect opportunity to bring the real, human experience of becoming a literary agent straight to all of you aspiring writers out there—all of you just as hungry for excellent representation as she is for excellent fiction.

Sit up straight, folks, and grip your pens. This is your chance! What’s it like to move from one side of the fence to the other? You’re about to find out.

Weronika, congratulations! How fun to be able to announce such a great promotion.

First off, I just wanted to extend my thanks, Victoria, for your time in putting together this interview. I appreciate it!

You’re very welcome. We really appreciate you sharing your experience with all of us. You’ve been a literary agent now for several weeks. How’s it going?

Incredibly busy. I’ve been kind of trying to create a routine for myself, but it’s little early to make any predictions. Right now I’m editing & agenting, both. It’s just natural for me to be able to balance those things—I’ve always been a multitasker.

Where do you find enough hours in the day?

I’ve always been a very, very, very quick reader. People ask me, “How did you get through this in five minutes?” Well, I read it in five minutes. [laughing]

I limit myself in terms of what I request to see, I ask people to send me ten pages with their query letter, and I absolutely have to be able to—if I can’t reject the email and forget about it, if there’s something that just pulls me, then I’ll request an ms. It brings me down to a very, very, very small request rate.

It’s a matter of, do I want to be one of those agents who replies in twelve hours or in one month? Right now every single writer who has queried me has received a response within twelve hours. I know as a writer I hate waiting, so I want to get writers a response. I also know most writers will go with the first agent who offers.

So it’s always a balancing act, because of course I put my clients first, even before queries.

It can get really hectic, can’t it? You’ve been in the publishing industry for a number of years already. What’s your background?

In terms of writing, I consider myself fairly self-taught—I’ve never taken a structured fiction writing class, and my experience with critique partners has been limited to a few constant mentors and fellow writers.

Publishing-wise, I began as an acquisitions intern at Flux, where I worked with Brian Farrey, in addition to a few editors at Llewellyn, the New Age non-fiction imprint. That internship has been the most defining experience of my career so far. Soon thereafter, I began to work with Jenny Bent at The Bent Agency and Bob Diforio at D4EO; I also worked in different capacities for Kathleen Anderson at Anderson Literary Management, Mary Kole at Andrea Brown Literary Agency and myself as an independent freelance editor. Bob promoted me to associate agent at the end of July, 2010, and I now work solely for D4EO.

So you’ve worked with a wide variety of agents in various cities. How did that happen?

I was proactive. Once my time at Flux drew to a close, I began to suffer from withdrawal, so I sent out a few emails to agents and inquired if they needed any assistance. After I scored my first remote position, after a phone interview and a query reading ‘test,’ the others came faster—I’d networked and demonstrated I was capable, so I just kept adding to my workload.

What work did you do for agents?

Briefly, in my time as an intern, I’ve: read submissions, analyzed the quality of writing in manuscripts, written reader reports on manuscripts, researched manuscripts’ potential placements in the market, edited manuscripts, kept records of submissions, sent rejection emails, worked with contracts, followed up on submissions, networked, dealt with foreign and subsidiary rights and more.

You’ve done everything! So what’s special about D4EO Literary Agency?

We’re a small agency, first of all, with four agents, three of them fairly new—most of us are very hungry for clients, so there is a lot of room for debut authors and writers whose manuscripts might need some work. Mandy Hubbard is an agent dedicated exclusively to YA/MG work, I represent an incredibly broad range of commercial fiction and non-fiction, and Joyce Holland also has narrow tastes and a background at D4EO.

In addition, the head agent—Bob Diforio—has been in the business for decades and represents some of the most well-respected contemporary literature out there. I’m honored to have the opportunity to work with him.

What is it about being a literary agent that makes you want to do this all the time from now on?

I am fascinated by the dichotomy of agenting—there is both an artistic and a business aspect to my role: I develop projects, I represent their authors and I am an advocate for that duo. I thought originally I would want to be an editor, but I’ve found that larger publishing houses can be very political, and small houses don’t always have the resources to properly launch debut authors. As an agent, I can sell books to the big houses and then push for maximum publicity and marketing.

It’s also nice to work in pajamas.

[Laughing] Boy, ain’t it. Is this your dream job, or do you have even higher aspirations?

Agenting in terms of role is my dream job, yes, and I am thrilled that I figured out early on it is the position I want to hold. As for higher aspirations, I know without a doubt that I will want to start my own agency at some point in the future, for a multitude of reasons, one of the larger ones being the opportunity to give back to the publishing community by mentoring young aspiring agents and editors. I owe a lot to those with whom I’ve worked—they opened the doors for me.

What a great attitude, Weronika. So what genres will you be representing, as you start your career as a literary agent?

I don’t have a favorite genre, and there is no way that I can pick and choose between different genres, as I care far less about the type of story being told and far more about the writing. Good writing is a drug for me.

As a result, I represent pretty much everything—single-title romance, women’s fiction, literary fiction, commercial fiction, thrillers/mysteries/crime fiction, horrors, fantasy/sci-fi, memoirs and nearly every kind of commercial non-fiction. I have a list of editors to whom I submit different genres.

If I had to choose, I tend to like more fast-paced fiction—a good thriller or fantasy, for example—but that means a huge chunk of my favorite novelists and books are thrown out of the loop. I’ll read anything as long as it’s written well.

What kinds of queries are you getting?

I think there’s a growing romantic suspense genre that is really interesting for readers, and I’m seeing a lot of those kinds of queries now. Romance continues to be the genre that fuels the industry.

I’m seeing a little bit of thriller, a little bit of romance with a thriller subplot, fantasy with a mystery subplot, where you see the female lead starting to kind of detour from that traditional household role. I’m not sure why it’s happening now, because it seems kind of overdue since women have been part of that for a long time—but probably eighty percent of the queries I get have that kind of subplot in it. Maybe it’s because I look for thrillers and mysteries.

Janet Reid has a great blog post saying, “We’ve terrified the wrong half of y’all.” Do you see a clear dividing line between writers who are really taking their time to learn their craft, doing their research, following the rules of querying conscientiously, and people who are just oblivious?

I absolutely agree with you about, “Don’t rush.” You might have a very wonderful book done and ready to go, but there’s always a question of how much are you willing to work and how much time are you willing to spend working on it.

I’ve dealt with the crazies. I’ve been a bit shocked. But I think it’s very easy to pick up the ones who are working on getting published very hard—that’s their number one goal, their one aspiration, and they’ve been hacking away for a long time. The query letters—you know, despite all the resources available now, and there are a lot of resources, I still see some poor query letters. Some people are just a little too sloppy. It’s not anything explicit, it’s just this subtle feeling that they’re not trying as hard as they could.

What about the situation where you’ve worked on your query letter so hard for so long that it kind of winds of garbled? You’ve tried too hard?

For me, I think those are the queries and page samples that make me the saddest. They’re trying so hard because they don’t believe in what they do have. They’re not completely one-hundred-percent comfortable with what they’re sending. That level of comfort takes a long time. It took me maybe six years to pull back enough not to go over the top. If someone’s trying too hard, they’re still in that middle ground where they’re not comfortable enough.

If I see that and am personally drawn to the voice, I have said, “Yes, if you don’t find an agent or you’d like to do a rewrite, do query me again.”

So, how do you make your decisions on what to accept and what to reject?

There are different factors that come into play. First of all, I’m hands-down an editorial agent. All three of the clients I have so far are in the middle of huge revisions and even one rewrite because my goal is to present to publishers the best possible product.

I’m more than willing to do structural development because I’ve found over the months I’ve been editing it’s very easy for me to convey instructions on structure. So if there’s a voice there, but there’s not enough tension or there should be an addition or subtraction—that’s no problem. It’s a little more difficult for me when it’s anything that’s not structure. Plot and structure are the easiest because they’re so formulaic. So character and voice—the factor would be how much I would need to work on it, how many suggestions I’d have to make—how much, really, would I be teaching the writer.

I’m not just throwing suggestions out there. I’m helping ground the writer. If there are a lot of other agents I might have reason to believe would offer representation if I don’t, if it would be easy to sell once it was fixed—if I were intrigued enough—I would definitely put in the time. If the writing is mediocre, though, I’m going to have to pass.

What do you just fall in love with?

That’s an impossible question for me to answer. It depends on the genre, but I guess the most important thing is the voice. So that’s going to be how an author puts sentences together, how they structure the pacing, where they choose to begin and end the story. It’s a very unique blend. If the author manages to surprise me, that’s a really good sign. Because I read so much these days I can almost always pick up an ms and tell what’s going to happen on the next page. I have to be surprised multiple times as I re-read the ms and notice things I didn’t before.

I absolutely hate it when there’s poor grammar. I’ve found there’s definitely a correlation between poor writing and poor grammar. It can be one of the most random things. That’s why I’m repping different genres. The books I love are all different. They can be very dense, or challenging—anything challenging stereotypes, I really like.

It can be anything, just a story told from a fresh perspective, a character I would not expect to be put into such a situation. I’m already drawn to younger narrators, really smart narrators, underdogs, those kinds of characters. If the voice grabs me, the writing grabs me, the plot isn’t that important. As long as it’s something that people would love reading.

I’ve had writers come to me and say, “An agent told me my novel doesn’t have a hook.” And I’ve read it, and there’s been a great hook. A fabulous hook. But it wasn’t the hook that lead to that particular novel. What do you do in such situations?

I’ve seen that to a degree. The one I remember most was an ms when I was reading queries for an agent, and this query comes through, and it’s romance, and it’s absolutely the most captivating concept ever. I forwarded it to the agent, and we got the ms, and we were on it. But the writer didn’t follow up on it. And that’s the toughest decision on what to do about that, because we were drawn to the writing, and we felt a little betrayed because we’d been set up for a story we didn’t get.

If I loved it so much I couldn’t stand to think of another agent touching it, I might ask for a second novel. Directing a total rewrite, though—I would not be able to handle that.

What if you have suggestions about just tweaking the plot?

I always ask for a chat, and the first thing I do is I want to talk over my editorial suggestions and things I saw that were a problem. Even people who have decided to sign with me, we’ve already had disagreements about what can be the most effective story. I want to be able to justify what I think would be more readable or more marketable.

So what’s selling these days?

Everything that’s really mainstream. Of my first three clients two of them are fantasy writers. Fantasy is selling very well now. As long as there’s something fresh in the book.

With romance & women’s fiction it is really trendy. If I find something it needs to be very very well-written. Single-title romance are still selling, Regency, Victorian. I do expect to be able to sell romance very quickly. Romance is crazy, and there are so many venues for romance writers out there.

I also took on a client who has a piece of literary fiction, and I think that’s going to be far more challenging because of the nature of the genre. People have different perceptions of what they expect. Literary fiction has its niches, and some publishers will publish only in certain niches. Literary fiction is less-read than other genres.

A really good thriller should sell pretty easily. There aren’t a tremendous amount of venues.

I really would like to find a literary horror novel, but there aren’t a lot of people actively looking for horror. Horror is kind of a pre-established genre. You have to be a pretty big name.

Writers are hearing a lot about platforms, as in: get out there right now and build yours. What is your opinion on the issue of the author building a platform for their book, nonfiction and fiction?

I figure it’ll be awhile before I take someone with a nonfiction proposal, because they need a pretty big platform. I hope I get lucky and find someone.

What do you suggest for fiction authors?

Quite a few things—and I think all of these things are kind of proactively helpful. I don’t think there are any requirements for debut fiction writers. I think at the very minimum fiction writers should have an easy-to-find web presence, even one page (her blog).

In terms of building an actual platform, publication of short stories, maybe even some nonfiction articles as long as they’re relevant to the subject area of their book. For example, if you’re writing about someone Jewish and that plays an integral role in your book, publishing articles on Judaism helps get your name out there. As long as you’re talking to the right people.

I think writers think a writer-to-writer community is all they need. And it absolutely isn’t. For instance, on Twitter I’ve seen communicating with booksellers do wonders. That can result in book-signings and hand-selling, the bookseller showing your book to someone who comes into the story. Integrate yourself into your genre community. For example, if you’re writing YA having a presence on teen web sites, teen literature, teen circles online is always very helpful

And then I guess having access to a variety of different venues in the town or nearest city that the writer’s coming from. Sometimes I get the feeling that setting up book-signings in your area is kind of an afterthought to writers, and that surprises me. If a writer sends out press releases to local newspapers saying, “Hey, can I have an interview?” the foundation can all be started before the book deal.

But I think that promotion is most effective in those three months before debuting and in the months right after. You put in some time every week with radio and newspapers, touching base with them to let them know you’re there.

Authors who want to be seen more have to go beyond what the publishing house gets them. That may be just one or two signings in their local area, but they should go autograph copies around the state if they can. There’s always a draw to books with signatures or to bookstores where there are signings.

What’s something really important you want to say to writers out there querying?

Oh, how to phrase this. . .I would tell those writers that they should put themselves into the shoes of—I don’t know what the career would be—unless you are a literary agent, it is absolutely impossible to understand the kind of—the weight of the decisions I make every day about queries and ms’s. It makes me sad that I have to sometimes pass a very quick judgment and send a very informal non-personalized rejection letter to maybe 150 or 200 writers a day, if that’s the number of queries I’m getting.

I would tell writers to never, ever take a rejection personally. I don’t think, “Oh gosh, this person is a terrible writer, they should never be published.” I think, “This person isn’t there yet, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that they find out how to fix it.”

There are just only so many hours in the day. I’m also living my own life, and I have my first dedication to the clients I’m working with. It’s just unfortunate that there are a limited number of agents out there who are able to help.

I think writers can underestimate how much work we put in and how much I wish I had all the time in the world to help fix everything.

What’s your favorite thing about working with writers? Your least favorite?

No one has asked me this before, but it’s a great question.

My least favorite thing? I think a lot of writers have egos. They aren’t necessarily huge egos, but they are egos of enough size for writers to flinch when, after they’ve been told often that their book rocks, they are still asked to revise. A good friend of mine from the blogosphere and I have talked often before about the authors who cease any communication with us if we criticize too harshly as critique partners or freelance editors. I have never been able to wrap my mind around it—why are writers driven so much toward publication that they don’t stop and pause to ask themselves if this is their best work, if they would show this writing to their favorite writer and be proud of it completely?

My favorite thing would be the magic of creativity and the passion for writing. I am a writer, too, and I understand what it’s like to feel that adrenaline, and more than anything I love it when that adrenaline transfers into a willingness to work hard. To kick butt. And to come up with stronger projects in the end.

Weronika Janszuk can be found on her blog and Twitter. To query her, please send a submission email and the first ten pages of your manuscript in the body of the email with QUERY in the subject line to Weronika Janczuk.

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On Tuesday, August 3, Independent Editor, author, and A. Victoria Mixon, Editor commenter Weronika Janczuk made a big announcement: she had become a literary agent.

Actually, I didn’t even see it on her blog. I saw it on PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. So this is a pretty darn big announcement!

And I know the very first thing that pops into all your heads is: “And will she be representing ME?”

So I went straight on over to her blog and asked her. And she told me. Yes, she did.

Join us Monday for The Drug of Good Writing: the Weronika Janczuk interview.

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Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
—Kris Kristopherson, “Me and Bobby McGee”

1. Spend one day being a troll.
   
   Be as obnoxious as humanly possible online. Go around arguing with people on their own sites, expressing opinions they won’t agree with, picking fights you have no possible hope of winning. Make a complete idiot of yourself. And no hiding behind “Anonymous,” either. Use your own name. Then go back at the end of the day and read all the responses, especially the ones that prove you wrong. APOLOGIZE SINCERELY. (This one doesn’t count if you skip that step.) Endure the shame. That’s your crash course in publication.
   
   Alternatively, if your moral code won’t let you be a troll, go to the last three people you’ve hurt in your life and ask them to talk to you for as long as they want about how it felt to them. Don’t respond, just listen. Endure the shame.
   
   This step is necessary to clean out the interior censor, the one who thinks there’s still time left to protect your reputation. There’s no time left. You’ve already long-since destroyed your reputation with the ones you love, the people who matter most. Welcome to the real world.
   
   If you’ve never hurt anyone, put down your keyboard and go apply for sainthood. You are the wrong kind of liar to be a writer.
2. Spend one whole day being silent.
   
   Don’t speak. Not even when asked a question. Point when your husband asks you where you keep the toilet paper. Smile and nod when your neighbor asks about your weekend. Don’t email or IM. Just be silent. Larry Hagman used to do this every Sunday, for years on end, and he said it was an extraordinary education in self-awareness. Of course, he informed his friends and family of what he was doing, so they wouldn’t think he’d lost his mind—you should too.
   
   This step is necessary to clean out the interior egoist, the one who thinks what you have to say is the most important thing. You have nothing all that important to say. You can only record the world of your readers for them.
3. Spend one day as a student of reality.
   
   Take a notebook and make a list of the most important locations of scenes in your novel. Then, beginning as early as possible, go to each location at the time of day your characters are there. Sit for at least an hour at each place taking copious notes. Note down every single fact you can about that location and the people in it. Not impressions. Just facts.
   
   The sidewalk is pale grey with oval splotches of charcoal grey one-to-three inches in diameter every foot or so and, when the sun gets to about 60 degrees, almost invisible sparks of rainbow light from bits of glass embedded in the concrete, more reds and blues than yellow. The woman who sells fruit at the corner is in her fifties with a slight double chin ending rather sharply in premature dewlaps and a dress with huge pinkish-brownish-greenish blossoms and what look like spiders, which hangs on her as if there were weights in the hem.
   
   This step is necessary to teach you to write in your reader’s world.
4. Spend one day with the lyrics of your favorite songs.
   
   Pick one, and annotate every single line with random details you can see or hear (or smell or taste or touch) from where you are. Make the details absolutely specific—not a book, but Brett Halliday’s The Private Practice of Michael Shayne lying open on its face; not a cat, but the grey-&-black striped nine-year-old James Dean wannabe or the carrot-tip Siamese who pees outside the litter box whenever he’s mad. Feel free to throw in gratuitous imaginary details so long as they’re neutral and not meant to sway the reader toward either positive or negative interpretation. If you feel the urge to sway the reader, use a detail bent in the opposite direction from where you want it to bend.
   
   Do this with a handful of your favorite songs, then treat the annotated songs as Rorschach blots. Read them and take copious notes on what underlying connections you pick up. Swap the details around and do it all over again.
   
   This step is necessary to teach you subtext.
5. Spend one day writing and re-writing a single scene.
   
   Make it a scene about confrontation, and write it the first time as if you were the protagonist and you were indisputably in the right. Then write it as if you were indisputably in the wrong. Then write it as if you were insane. Then write it as if you were unbelievably boring. Then write two scenes about different confrontations and cut-&-paste the characters’ lines into the opposite scenes.
   
   Read the first scene and notice how appallingly self-congratulatory victims are to read. Read the second scene and notice that you didn’t entirely manage to make yourself indisputably in the wrong—write that second scene over again more honestly. Read the third scene and notice how hilarious non-sequiturs are. Read the boring scene and notice how much you rely on action and description to illuminate boring dialog—write that scene over again with the same action and description, but only 1/3 of the lines of dialog. Read the final two scenes and notice how much innuendo is buried in scenes at cross-purposes.
   
   Write the second scene over again, even more honestly. Write the boring scene over again with those 1/3 lines of dialog taken from one of the final two scenes. Write the second scene over again, even more honestly.
   
   Write all kinds of confrontation scenes, swapping characters indiscriminately when you’re done. Keep this up for the rest of the day.
   
   This step is necessary to teach you hard work.
6. Spend one day on research.
   
   Pick a handful of topics you know a little or nothing about and learn everything you can about them. Read articles. Take notes. Collate your findings. Write essays. Compare your conclusions. Look for the essential truth about reality underlying two of your topics, and write an essay on that. Do the same thing for two others. And the same thing for two others. Do the same thing for three. And four. And five.
   
   Write an essay taking the most fascinating fact out of each topic and linking them into a single theory of everything. Voila! You’re Einstein!
   
   Write a counter-essay proving yourself completely wrong.
   
   This step is necessary to teach you deeper understanding.
7. Spend one day watching children.
   
   Children are people confused by their world, without adequate skills to either communicate or function within the social norms of their tribe. Watch a family, preferably of several generations. Take copious notes on how they interact with each other—how they treat one child, how they respond to the child’s efforts to communicate and function, how they communicate with each other about the child, how they communicate with each other with no reference to the child at all. Take notes on how the child attempts or does not attempt to be involved with them. Now take the same notes on the other children, along with notes on why you picked that first child first. Sketch choreographic notes on how the members of this family move around each other in space.
   
   Write a scene in which a character is an adult using the child’s tactics, only in adult language and with adult understanding. Read it, and analyze the subtext between the characters. Write it again with a different character. And again with a different character. And again with the same character but a different outcome. And again with the same character but a different outcome.
   
   Write it as if it were your one chance in life to communicate what you need to communicate.
   
   This step is necessary to teach you compassion for every single character you create.
8. Spend one day crying.
   
   Face it: you’ve got a lot to cry about. Sometimes your life has sucked. And putting all the effort of not crying into your work will make it superficial and dishonest. Go ahead and cry as much as you can out of your system. Reach the anger underneath and go punch a tree. Reach the pain under that and go bandage up your hand. Take a good look at the damage while you’re bandaging it. You did this to yourself. You punched a tree. Don’t you feel like a prize idiot? Learn to love the prize idiot who punched the tree. You need to know how to love prize idiots who rush around getting themselves into trouble without ever feeling sorry for them or allowing them to feel sorry for themselves.
   
   This step is necessary to teach you courage.
   
   If you don’t have a lot to cry about, put down your keyboard and go apply for a job in a nice, safe cube somewhere. You’re the wrong kind of fantasist to be a writer.
9. Spend one day laughing at things nobody thinks are funny but you.
   
   This will feel like hysteria brought on by all the crying, which is what it is. Laugh until you can’t talk. Laugh until you can’t breathe. Laugh until tears are running down your face. Laugh in front of loved ones to whom you can’t explain the joke. Laugh in front of strangers until they raise their eyebrows and shy away.
   
   This step is necessary to teach you to accept what you bring to the craft of fiction. Claim your own utterly unique and bizarre nature. This is the only new thing you have to bring to literature, the one thing—paradoxically—your reader comes there seeking.


If you don’t have anything to laugh about, go back a step and cry some more.

10. Spend one whole day being grateful.
    
    In our family, we used to do a gratitude ceremony around a lit candle at the dinner table every evening, everyone taking a turn to say what they were grateful for. Dinner guests would wonder if they had to be grateful for only important things, and we’d say, no, no, anything at all. We had one friend who was always grateful for football. Sometimes I was grateful for compost or fingernail clippers. Sometimes my son—when he was very young—was simply grateful for the candle.
    
    Write long, rambling, specific letters to people who have made a difference in your life. You don’t have to send them. Just get them down in words. And don’t worry about making sense or communicating what you really mean. Just blither. Go up to people you love and look them in the eye. Tell them why your life is better because of them, in very specific terms. Mention football and fingernail clippers and candles, if they’re pertinent. Write letters to your characters. Write a letter to your imagination. Write a letter of gratitude to yourself about all the most dreadful aspects of your personality without which you would not be you.
    
    Remember that 1970s chain letter where you were supposed to send cute underwear to the top ten people on the list and then sit around waiting for 500 pairs of underwear some total strangers thought were cute? Say, “Thanks for all the underwear.”
    
    Put your hand on your heart and say to the world in general, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me all you wonderful, insane senders of underwear.”

Then go keep your promise.

UPDATE: If you have trouble making yourself cry, try celebrating the end of the War in Iraq with the return of our soldiers to the families who love them—guaranteed to push you over the edge. It is the end of a seemingly endless nightmare. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, President Obama.

And once you’ve made yourself a better writer, you’re ready to tackle the three aspects of the novel:

HOOK: 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Inescapable

DEVELOPMENT: 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Helplessly Addictive

CLIMAX: 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Unforgettable

Of course, you’ll need to know those 9 Ways to Find the Time to Write.

Starred comment: I not only punched a tree, but I punched a lot of other things too… breaking two fingers on my writing hand in the process. Ah, the irony.–AnnaMay Fox

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The Art and Craft of Fiction:
A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“The freshest and most relevant advice you’ll find.”—Helen Gallagher, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Wonderfully useful, bracing and humorous. . .demystifies essential aspects of craft while paying homage to the art.”—Millicent Dillon, five time O. Henry Award winner and PEN/Faulkner nominee

“Teeming with gold. . .makes you love being a writer because you belong to the special club that gets to read this book.”—KM Weiland, author of Outlining Your Novel

The Art and Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“Opinionated, rumbunctious, sharp and always entertaining. . .lessons of a writing lifetime.”—Roz Morris, best selling ghostwriter and author of Nail Your Novel

“As much a gift to writers as an indispensible resource. . .in a never-done-before manner that inspires while it teaches. Highly recommended.”—Larry Brooks, author of four bestselling thrillers and Story Engineering

“I wish I’d had The Art & Craft of Story when I began work on my first novel.”—Lucia Orth, author of the critically-acclaimed Baby Jesus Pawn Shop

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A few days ago, Simon Larter used my blog as an example on his, Constant Revision, encouraging readers to take a walk on the wild and snarky side. It started a fabulous discussion on the topic of snark and made me think a lot about how much I love making people laugh—what fun it is to get so many comments about uncontrollable laughter on my most insane posts—plus Medeia Sharif used my new favorite participle about my blog: “entranced.”

Thank you so much, Medeia! And thank you, Simon, for pushing people to live courageously in their crazy, heartfelt, secretly terrified-and-terrifying worlds and take some virtual risks (which are way the heck safer than real ones, both for you and for others out there on the road). Thank you, everyone, for a truly scintillating conversation. . .particularly you people (Michelle) who were so intensely kind. Aw. You warm the cockles of my fuzzy little editorial heart.

(I would thank Violet, too, but she’s just about to see me descend on her doorstep tonight beladen with tequila and triple sec, so we’ll wait until the fireworks subside before we ask her how she feels about me then.)

And today, just to liven things up even more, Simon’s interviewed me. God love the man, he’s a brave soul.

It was a lot of fun, and I showed my compassionate and supportive editorial side rather than “dangerous” black humor side. Mostly. In the end I wound up getting emotional over my brilliant clients and readers, telling Simon and the whole world how appreciative I am of everything good and profound and beautiful you all have brought into my life.

And I mean every word of it, you guys. You’re a joy.

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