11 Things I Learned at DFWcon

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Annie Neugebauer

Originally posted on February 28, 2011 at 4:47 PM

Just got back from the con last night, and man my head is spinning. Not only did I get my first requests (yes, plural!) for full manuscripts, but I also got requests for partials, met tons of awesome writers and almost a dozen amazing agents, had a blast with my writing BFFs, and learned enough good stuff to turn my brain into mush. So, let’s make your brain mush too!

1. The Gong Show is more entertaining than TV.

2. The Gong Show is also the most educational way to study queries. I learned more about query-writing in that first hour and a half than I have in a lifetime of classes, critiques, and articles. Fabulous.

3. When at a con, agents are pseudo celebrities, but nicer. (You can actually talk to them!)

4. Thanks to a fabulous class by Jessica Sinsheimer: I can put myself in the top percentile of query-ers just by following directions, being intelligent, and putting in the effort.

5. If you wear a hat, you are more memorable. (Jeff Posey’s got it down.)

6. My friends like to sleep with the room extraordinarily cold.

7. Writers’ conferences (or at least this one) are an incredible value and well worth the money.

8. Holding a glass in your hand at a cocktail party makes everything easier, even if you don’t drink from it. (Something to make you look less awkward.)

9. “High concept” is almost impossible to explain, but easy to recognize. Not all books are high concept. This is okay. Thanks, Colleen Lindsay.

10. “Portals happen.” –Amy Boggs

11. If you really want something, it is definitely worth hoping, worth overcoming fear, and worth taking risks. Dude, just go for it.

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Horror and Terror

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Annie Neugebauer

Originally posted on February 19, 2011 at 7:10 PM

*Disclaimer: this is the horror-genre connoisseur’s post. If you don’t like that genre, you probably shouldn’t read this. It might make you angry. It might make anyone angry, for that matter. Fair warning.

“Horror” and “terror” have always been interesting words to me. They’re often used together, so obviously they have some connection, but the fact that they are used as a duo (as opposed to interchangeably) also signifies that they have distinct meanings. Otherwise, why list both?

I’m certainly not the first person to think on this. In fact, it’s been an ongoing discussion in the literary community since gothic writer Ann Radcliffe (author of the fabulous The Mysteries of Udolpho) first brought it up almost 200 years ago. Here’s what Ms. Radcliffe had to say:

“Terror and Horror are so far opposite that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them …. And where lies the difference between horror and terror, but in the uncertainty and obscurity that accompany the first, respecting the dreading evil?”

Essentially, what I interpret Radcliffe to be saying here (and in other readings I’ve done), is that terror inspires fear while horror inspires distaste. And furthermore, that the first is sublime while the second is despicable. I’ll wait. Go ahead. Re-read that.

*gasps*

*other people wondering why there were gasps*

*someone goes back to re-read it*

*more gasps*

*confused looks*

Okay. I’ll explain. You know that slow-moving ghost story that keeps you awake at night for fear of a bodiless man standing over your bed? That’s okay. Desirable, even. That takes you to new heights of living. But you know that movie that you’d be uncomfortable watching with your mom? The one that involves eviscerating people with a pocket knife? That’s not okay. That makes you a scum bag.

Horror-genre lovers, you may gasp now.

As much as I love Radcliffe, I believe her to be a victim of her time. Thankfully, horror creators today don’t share her qualms, although at least the most notable among them seem to agree with her distinctions:

“I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.” –Stephen King (emphasis mine)

Why, Mr. King. Perhaps you’ve tapped into something.

I agree that terror, as a horror writer, should be the priority. I.e., causing fear in the reader. But I don’t agree with why. I don’t think it’s the “finest emotion” of the two or that it “expands the soul.” I think, quite simply, that it is harder to accomplish. Any Jo Blow off the street can gross you out or sicken your morals, but only the most talented can make you look over your shoulder, make goose bumps stand out on your arms, make your neck crawl. And thus the hierarchy is based on skill, not on some philosophical idea of one emotion being finer than the other.

I’m not arguing that gross-outs are noble. I’m arguing that terror isn’t.

And while I’m at it, I might as well piss everyone off: neither is romance, love, empathy, pity, bravery, loss, or humor. Sorry guys, but I’m just not buying it. We are humans. Emotions are biological responses. One is not greater than another, just different.

So by all means, horror writers should strive for terror first, horror second, and ickies third. But not because of some mislead notion that one will get them (or their readers) to Heaven faster. Just because it’s a way of narrowing the field. The best writers can accomplish the first, the worst only the last. Go ahead, scare the crap out of me. Prove yourself.

Disagree? I love to debate. Feel free to comment.

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In Defense of Daily Quotas

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Annie Neugebauer

Originally posted on January 26, 2011 at 9:35 PM

A writer friend of mine has thrown out some excellent writing metaphorage in reference to marathons vs. sprints. But to play the devil’s advocate…

The quota works for some people. Namely, me. And as much as “mull it over” writers might hate to believe it, I don’t think my 2,000 words a day are shit. Some days, sure, but everyone has those days – sprinters, marathoners, walkers, and cab-takers alike. Everyone. Saying that people who write more daily don’t write as well as people who write less every few days is like saying that people who run the marathon faster didn’t run it as well as the people who ran it slow. They all ran it, right? As long as you don’t quit, who cares how long it took?

There’s a reason that sitting down every day to write a quota with *almost* no exceptions works. Any (non-metaphor) runner will tell you, you have to get over the hump. Every level of runner hits it at a different place, just as some writers might feel exhausted after 300 words and others after 3,000, but every long-distance anything hits it. If you quit there, your endurance never builds, nor your skills. You’re running and for the first however many miles your body just goes, “Nope. This is madness. I refuse to participate in this senseless torture.” But if you ignore your body and just freaking run, it eventually gives in and you can run for miles. Miles and miles more than you thought you could. And every time you do that, your hump gets further along. Your endurance builds.

If you write every single day, your “muse” (whether you believe in that term or not) learns to show up. That part of your brain that produces new, creative sentences gets used to it and starts storing creativity at a faster rate. This is helpful. It means that when you want to write you can sit down and, without thinking for hours and hours first, have something ready to go. Mental note-taking becomes automatic. If you don’t write every day, which plenty of writers don’t, it’s not bad, just harder. You sit down and your muse is MIA. You have to go chase her down the rabbit hole just to put down a page or two. And argue as you will, that page or two is unlikely to be any better or worse than any page or two of a daily quota writer.

Trust me, I’ve been both.

I like to think of the daily quota as me and my muse having a running date. Every once in a while I might not show up, and every once in a while she stays in bed, but most days, we know where to meet. At the keyboard.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a proponent of breaks when one’s feeling worn-down. Muse vacations, if you will. Any writer who focuses too much on the word count for the sake of the word count has got the wrong priority. Quality over quantity is something I think we can all agree on. But there’s no reason that one has to negate the other. There’s just not. I don’t have a certain amount of “good” writing in me per day that I run out of and keep going. It’s just about effort. Are you willing to put in the effort to make your writing strong, or not? Are you willing to (forgive me) go the extra mile? First draft or fiftieth, seat-of-the-pantsers or plotters, walkers or sprinters, we all want it. All dedicated writers want it. When it comes down to it, at least in the writing metaphor, speed has nothing at all to do with a marathon. Dedication does. And I think, in spite of technique differences, we can agree on that.

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What I Do All Day

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Annie Neugebauer

Originally posted on January 16, 2011 at 6:10 PM

I’ll tell you my very least favorite part of being a writer. It’s not rejections. It’s not waiting for rejections. It’s not the work. It isn’t even being called “a housewife.” It’s submissions.

I. Hate. Submissions.

I work the equivalent of a full-time job most weeks, in being a writer. I write for 3-4 hours a day (unless it’s a really good, fast day) 7 days a week. That’s about 25 hours a week. And then I spend about 2 hours on submissions each day. That’s 14 hours a week. That doesn’t even take into account editing and formatting and blogging and record-keeping. Throw in my 3 hours of critique groups each week, and hell, I’m working over-time.

I’m telling you all this not to complain (okay, a little to complain), but mostly to let you know. When people find out I’m a writer (which is not, I reiterate, the same as being a “stay at home wife”;), they often ask me, “So what do you do all day?” They don’t mean to be rude; they’re genuinely curious. I can understand that. So I’m explaining.

About half of my available working hours are dedicated solely to writing. The other half go to necessary, boring, mind-numbing crap. Hey, it’s true.

At this exact moment in time, here’s how my completed, unpublished works break down:

• 2 novel manuscripts- 2 sent out to a total of 14 agents queried, 1 partial in review
• 2 poetry manuscripts- 1 sent out to 1 poetry contest
• 2 short stories- 2 sent out to 2 publishers
• 8 flash/micro fiction pieces- 6 sent out to a total of 7 publishers
• 289 individual poems- 11 sent out to 4 publishers

As you can see, that’s over 300 works finished and always waiting to be sent and re-sent for publication/representation. That’s not even including all of my WIPs (2 more novels, 1 more book of poetry, and near-constant short fiction and poems). It’s easy to imagine how once I started becoming more prolific than my submissions it became almost impossible to catch up. But it makes no sense to me to stop writing to have time to submit. Writing is the whole point. Publication is desirable, but time-consuming.

 

The worst part of it all? That it never ends. If I got each of these accepted at the first place I submitted to, I’d be golden. But that’s not the way it works. I get rejections in the mail/email, and as if that wasn’t bad enough on its own, it means I have to send that same piece back out again. It takes at least an hour, usually more, for me to narrow down, research, and choose the perfect venue to send a poem or story. Agents are even harder. So when I get a “no” back, it means that piece goes back on my list. Not so fun.

If I were really, really rich, I would hire someone to handle all of my submissions. That’d be baller. Anyone interested in working for cookies?

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Vampires and Zombies, part V: surviving the living dead

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Annie Neugebauer

Originally posted on January 2, 2011 at 1:15 AM

Okay, we’ve talked about the sources of the myths, the popularization of the myths, and the distinctions and similarities between the myths. Now, the most important thing of all: how to survive if the myths become realities.

We’ll start with vampires. You’ve heard before that the best defense is a good offense, but in this case, the best defense is a good, well… defense. Ahead of time. A truly prepared person (which should, according to logic, include any and all boy scouts) doesn’t wait for vampires to make themselves known. Now is the perfect time to string your porch with garlic, place crosses (backed by faith, of course) on each door, scatter your yard with grains of rice, and catalog-order those silver bullets. And don’t forget the wooden stake! These items will not deter the truly determined dead, but much like a security system, it will likely send them roaming to your neighbor’s house instead – a much easier target.

If it’s personal, such as a relative or lover returned from the grave to seek vengeance or convert you to the immortal, they’re coming to your house no matter what you put up. In this case, you’ll be happy to hear that the ultimate stopping power belongs to you: the power of no. That’s right kiddos, just say no. To get into your house, a vampire must first get an invitation over the threshold. And unless you’re a bit of an idiot, you won’t give them that. Well, maybe that was a bit harsh. The emotional pull of seeing someone you thought was dead now standing on your doorstep could easily become overwhelming… but don’t give in. They are not who they were; they are now a soulless body seeking blood. Send them away. Stay inside. Call your local vampire executioner. And never ever EVER look a vampire in the eyes.

So if bloodsuckers are your pest of choice, you’re all set. Let’s move on to zombies. There are two basic schools of thought when it comes to surviving a zombie apocalypse: 1) fortify and stay put or 2) keep moving and don’t let them find you.

The thinking behind strategy one is to minimize chance of exposure to the zombies. If they can’t get to you, they can’t chomp you. The more you move, the more likely you are to meet other uninfected and be coerced to take them on – thus upping your general risk factor. Pros to this strategy include normality, a schedule, and the potential for something that resembles regular life. Cons to this strategy include trouble obtaining new resources and the possibility of being discovered and overpowered by the undead. If this is the strategy you decide to go with, the most important thing is to choose a good location for your hide-out. You need defenses such as high walls or natural barriers as well as ample food and fresh water supplies – preferably renewable resources. Have an exit strategy, don’t let in strangers, and never, ever relax your guard.

The theory behind strategy two is to escape the threat. Surrounded by zombies? Just leave. Okay, it’s not quite that simple. It is a risky choice in the immediate present, but if you travel light enough and move quickly enough, you may be able to reach an uninfected location. Pros to this strategy include new opportunities to obtain better resources, excitement, and the unlikelihood of being cornered. Cons include the possibility of running into brigands, becoming stranded, and physical and mental strain. If this is the strategy you decide to go with, it’s important to set some ground rules: are you allowing outsiders to tag along? Who is in charge of decisions? Don’t forget to ration provisions, weapons, and gear. Where are you going? It’s important that the whole group knows the plan, be it one or fifty. Know how much you’re willing to sacrifice, always thoroughly check new stop-sites, and build trust with your travel mates.

Hopefully the dead will never walk the earth, but if they do, you need to be prepared. Good luck, and Godspeed.

Be sure to check out the other posts in the series:

Vampires and Zombies, part I: introduction

Vampires and Zombies, part II: the popularization of vampires (in western culture)

Vampires and Zombies, part III: the popularization of zombies (in western culture)

Vampires and Zombies, part IV: compare and contrast

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