Victor O'Reilly

Health Warning

Health Warning

The following thoughts are primarily about writing books and - ideally - being successful enough to make a living at it (but if you want to write for your own personal pleasure, that is fine too. Much of this advice should still help). I'll let you define what "successful enough" is but remember authors don't get expenses, paid vacations, medical insurance or pensions.

I don't want to put you off but let me start by giving you a health warning. Making a living as an author is capitalism at the coal face. With all the attendant risks. It is a decidedly precarious business. My advice, if you want a relatively civilized and secure life, is: "Don't do it!" Nonetheless, my eldest and much loved son, Christian, is a writer - and a good one - because what son ever follows his father's advice? I write, despite all the attendant risks, because I love it. And the rewards, intangible and tangible, are very real.

In my first book, GAMES OF THE HANGMAN, amongst many other topics, I researched and wrote about computer based Expert Systems. These are computer programs whose expertise is substantially derived from human experts by - I love this name - Knowledge Engineers (you follow round a doctor or whoever and ask endless questions).

The Knowledge Engineers have a hard time. Extracting a lifetime's experience from the average cantankerous human, and reducing it to a set of rules, is exceedingly difficult and time consuming, if only because - beyond a certain stage - most practitioners do not know themselves exactly how they do what they do.

Strange - until you think about it - but true.

Such is my situation, but with that caveat and within the constraints of time, I shall try and help as much as I can, for I am vastly sympathetic to anyone (and you are all potential competition!) who really wants to write but still has not got momentum yet.

I feel for you and I would like you to succeed. And if do your homework and work hard enough, and have a reasonable amount of talent you probably will. So settle in for the long haul. The ability to endure is probably the toughest part. And you do it by keeping the faith. Self doubt will be your greatest enemy.

I have every reason to be supportive. I have been there. I remember all too well what is like before I was published. I have endured considerable difficulties - particularly with editorial conflicts - since I have been published. And I am still learning. So consider me an ally, a teacher and a fellow student. And a competitor.

From the beginning, recognize these simple facts:

If you have not got commitment, stop here. For most people, the price, in human terms, is just too high. The business is intrinsically financially insecure. There are other more insidious pressures.

• Not everyone (fortunately) is destined to be a writer. After a while, an inner voice will tell you whether you can do it or not. Listen to that voice. What other people - except for your readers - say is less important. Critics, editors and publishers often - almost always - have other motives.



• Writing is about writing, not talking about it.



• Writing requires vastly more work than most people seem to realize.



• Professional writing is a full time occupation. There are exceptions but not many.



• As with music, or shooting or athletics or flying attack helicopters, you've got to practice, practice, practice. Daily. A certain initial talent is not enough.



• Ideas are cheap. Turning them into readable books is the difficult part.



• Turning that readable book into an adequate living is more difficult still.



• Starting a book is relatively easy. Finishing a book is an exercise in stamina.



• Writing is an exceptionally tough business. And mostly you write alone with little or no support. Except for your readers. Getting to know them is a rare pleasure.



• If you are writing for a living, writing the book is only part of it. What comes after it - dealing with agents, publishers and publicists etc. - is not easy and can be particularly difficult for the writer who prefers to focus on his craft. Though there are some good people out there. But finding them is the trick.



• You will never write quite as well as you would like. But you may write better that you ever dreamed you could. And that is nearly enough.



• For those few who break through the wall, writing is one of the most satisfying human activities you can do alone. And you can spend all day it. And all night too if you are so inclined.



• Writing is a distillation of your own essence. If it is not in you, then you cannot write about it. Your writing is a projection of yourself.



• Writing fiction is first and foremost about telling a story about people. And better yet, about people and ideas.



• Writing is about passion. If you don't care, don't write.



• Whatever you write, you will have to fight and the chances are that over time you will lose some of the battles. It is not important. It is the writing - the communication of a story and certain ideas and values - that is important. If you are a committed writer, not much else is.



• Writing is like a Secret Garden. It is there and you can't see it and time goes by and the secret always eludes you. Then one day, the door opens and at last you understand. Even that understanding is transitory, but that is just the nature of things.

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Basic Training 1

Basic Training 1

Write Daily

Most people I know can manage about three quarters of a page before petering out. There is nothing wrong with that - it will get you through an e-mail and we are more and more an audio-visual culture these days - but it's something of a problem if you want to write a 400 hundred page book (which is about 800 pages of double-spaced typescript). And I have not factored in the re-writes.

A simple solution when you are starting to write is to set yourself a daily word target and make sure you write that every single working day. Oddly enough, the content is less important that the mere fact that you are getting used to writing in volume. But don't write something meaningless. The idea is to get your mind and fingers co-ordinated so that the process of producing words becomes relatively straightforward.

I started with a target of 600 words a day and took months before I could hit that consistently. Year by year, I increased my target and now regard 2,000 words a day as being the acceptable minimum. If I don't hit that, somehow I don't feel right.

You might think that producing quantity would undermine the quality. That may indeed happen if you are trying to do too much, but it is my experience that if I am writing easily and steadily I will probably produce better work than if I stop and start. My objective is a state that I call 'flow' which is something that athletes and marksmen also aspire to. It is a Zen-like state where the work just seems to happen.

Arthur Hailey's daily quota was 400 words and a major researched book every four years and he was one of the best sellers of all time. But that was in a different less competitive time. These days the market would like a book a year produced with the regularity of a metronome. That is tough to do if you write books of my typical length and researched complexity so I confess I haven't reached that output state yet - but I am close and should start hitting it this year.

Whatever daily target you set, the important thing is to hit it week after week, month after month, year after year. You can have weekends off if you have hit your weekly quota.

Otherwise you write.

Writing is about writing. And a whole lot more. But if you can physically write the distance you've got a real good foundation. And it gets easier - eventually.

The meanwhile can be a problem but that's just the way life is.

Read Always

I am amazed, and vastly entertained by how many people (many supposedly well educated) have not made the correlation between reading and writing.

Writers, unlike many other professionals, lay all (maybe not all) their secrets out for everyone to study and copy if necessary. There is no magic to it. So read, study how the experts do it and apply.

Of course, a twist in all this is that a great many people cannot absorb written information properly even thought they can 'read' the actual words.

The reality is that reading in its fullest sense is an acquired skill and takes a great deal of practice.

But if you want to write well, reading is a hell of a good place to start - and it can be a pleasant relaxation from all that writing.

Personally, I am an absolute bookworm and have been reading a book every couple of days for about forty-five years. That is probably a bit excessive but if you want to be a writer, I can guarantee you this - reading helps in two fundamental ways.

It shows you how it is done

And it gives you knowledge which you can turn into something to write about providing you have experience of real life as well.

So leaven your reading with real life. That's the stuff that doesn't have commercials in the breaks.
But read.

It helps to live a little

Experience is an odd thing. Until you have it, you tend to think you don't need it. And getting it can kill you. But writing from book knowledge alone is like an Irish Whiskey without the whiskey.

Looks the same. But no depth. No punch. And readers pick up on these things.

Famous character actor Wilfrid Hyde Whyte was once asked what advice he could give aspiring actors and he replied - with his distinctive chuckle: "Don't tread the boards until you are over forty."

He was exaggerating to make a point but his emphasis on the importance of seasoning was - and is - valid. For writers as well as character actors. If you want to be a gymnast or a world class mathematician, different rules apply because they peak early, but we are talking writing here - unless you are J.D. Salinger.

he advice constantly given to aspiring writers is "Write about what you know" and it is a simple fact that you are likely to know more after you have racked up a few years.

I do not mean to suggest that you can't write when you are very young but it is hard to write a series of full length books until you have tasted some of the stranger dishes that the process of living serves up.

I carry a notebook everywhere I go and use a tape-recorder when convenient but actually most of my writing comes straight from experience. And you can rarely use such tools in the more interesting environments anyway. Now given what I write, what that says about my life is another matter, but the thing I am trying to stress is "If you want to write about a life - get a life yourself first."

And live vigorously.

And no, I am not going to define that. But I said 'vigorously' not 'vicariously.'

A great deal of human life is based upon reacting to people. In fact it is possible to spend most of your life as a reactive person and benefit the community in the process.

Mothers with young children are focused to react to the needs of their offspring. Gas pump attendants react to the needs of their customers. Cops react when you dial 911 - or so you hope. Nurses or the angels react when that machine which you are wired to stops producing that pretty pattern and opts for a dull straight line. A great deal of military activity is reactive.

Writing a novel from scratch is not a reactive process and particularly if your day job is a reactive one, that can come as something of a shock.

The phone does not ring. You don't have a written brief. You probably have virtually no guidance at all. There is just you and a blank computer screen and a great urge to go and have another cup of coffee instead of writing. And the months stretch ahead of you. And your family have to be fed and housed. And your money is running out.

You have to fill that screen with a story and that is not easy because you can write anything. And all it takes is a decision - but that is tough because life trains most of us to react to other stimuli, not take decisions.

Taking decisions in an unprompted vacuum is unnatural. It is stressful and it is almost impossible to do unless you have trained yourself to take decisions on your own without instant feedback.

You have got to have the courage of your own convictions. You have got to develop your own ideas.

Chances are you'll fail this one first time around. It is scarcely surprising. The average upbringing and living environments cultivate 'go along to get along.' They rarely reward decision making outside the norm, initiative or out of the box thinking.

Chances are you'll fail this one first time around. It is scarcely surprising. The average upbringing and living environments cultivate 'go along to get along.' They rarely reward decision making outside the norm, initiative or out of the box thinking.

The transition from playing by the rules to pioneering is painful and you may well fail at first. The secret of success is simple. Stay with it. Over time you will find that what seemed near impossible is now automatic.

The transition from playing by the rules to pioneering is painful and you may well fail at first. The secret of success is simple. Stay with it. Over time you will find that what seemed near impossible is now automatic.

A full length book is a mental marathon. So get yourself mentally fit first - and you will make it.

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Basic Training 2

Basic Training 2

Tell the story first: Polish afterwards:

Practically every writer starts off trying to make every page just as good as it can be - before writing the next page. It is an admirable aspiration but the net result for most of us is that we spend too much time staring at a screen looking for the perfect word or phrase and not nearly enough time actually writing.

If you are writing fiction, first and foremost you are telling a story - so start by getting the story down. Don't worry about style or fine detail. Focus on the story. Then afterwards, when you have a complete story to work with, you can polish and shape it the way you want.
Get the story down first.

Some Simple Techniques To Help You Get The Story Down:

Write the biographies of the main characters first. If you get to know your characters really well, you will know how they will react in a given situation and that will help you enormously. Stories should be character driven.

Start off by writing a short outline of the story. It can be a single page. It can be twenty (best to err on the short side) but the important thing is that it contain all the main elements of a story.

Break the story down into scenes. Each scene can be described in a single line but it will still focus you.

Don't worry about deviating from your plan as you go. But if you do change your story then change your plan as well or you'll end up highly confused.

Remember you have got to keep your reader interested and turning the pages.

Hook the reader early. Preferably on page one. We live in an impatient age.

After you have written your daily quota, try and quit when you still have something to say. That way, you have some momentum for the following morning.

Study structure. A typical story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Sounds obvious but you would be surprised how many people ignore this basic fact. Get a book on structure. Get taught structure. It is fundamental.

Learn technique - it will save you a lot of grief - but don't let techniques dominate.

Know the rules before you break them.

Develop that inner voice and learn to have faith in it. You can learn a certain amount from other people - normally the basics - but eventually you are on your own.

Where Do Stories Come From?

Stories are everywhere. Your life is a story. The media pour forth a constant stream of stories. Libraries and book stores are full of them.

One of the easiest techniques is extrapolation. You take something that appears ordinary, add a twist and build from there.

Reading is good training for understanding the storytelling art.

Movies are not so good because so often their emphasis is on the audio-visual and many movies have surprisingly weak endings. But a great story is a great story in any medium.

The Work Starts When The First Draft Is Written:

There are some writers who produce a near perfect manuscript first time around and do very little to it after its complete except maybe check the spelling and punctuation. Lucky people.

There are some writers who produce a near perfect manuscript first time around and do very little to it after its complete except maybe check the spelling and punctuation. Lucky people.

Remember that editors in particular don't look for what is good but what is bad. A rough passage in the first hundred pages can kill your prospects even if the rest of the book is good. Yes, I know it should not be this way, but editors are normally drowned in work and thin out their manuscripts ruthlessly.

Get It Right Before You Send It In:

A book is a big project and after a while you just want to get it finished and off to the outside world. You are tired and the damn thing is like a rock on your back. Worse, your family and friends keep on asking you how the book is progressing and look somewhat unbelieving when you say you're still working on it. After all, years have gone by. Meanwhile, your bother-in-law has made a small fortune in real estate and taken his family to Florida four times and Europe once and learned to fly. So what is taking you so long!

Keep your cool. No matter what the pressures, your book should be as good as it can be before you send it in. That does not mean it has to be perfect - that is not part of the human condition - but it does mean that it should have reached the stage where that inner voice tells you it is ready. And all those bits that you are secretly not quite happy with have been smoothed out.

I do not mean to suggest that you can't write when you are very young but it is hard to write a series of full length books until you have tasted some of the stranger dishes that the process of living serves up.

So how can you tell the difference between that inner voice and your own insecurities? The short answer is experience.

There is no shortcut.

What Do You Do About Writer's Block?

If you only write when the Muse hits you then I guess Writer's Block could be a problem for months on end if you happen to be going through a bad patch.

I don't think there is any one answer to Writer's Block but I do think treating writing as a job helps. A job entails doing the work within work hours whether you like it or not. So you sit down at your desk and you write your quota whether you are feeling dynamic or otherwise. And if it is not good enough, you re-write it. But however you feel, you put in the hours and you produce the words.

What actually happens, in my experience, is that the mere process of hitting the keys can transform my mood. The thing may look impossible as you sit down but once you have been typing for a few minutes some kind of Pavlovian transformation seems to take place.

If I am really stuck, my solution is to revert to the letter writing technique. And that works every time.

But the important thing is to keep writing.

Writing is about writing not talking about it or worrying about it. Do the deed and live with the consequences.

If your inner voice tells you that you have done as well as you possibly can, well, that's fine. What others say is not so important.

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Some Personal Observations

Some Personal Observations

A friend of mine came around to my study a few years ago, looked at the thousand of books and research files and maps and the computers and said (more or less): "If it is this much work, I wouldn't want to be a writer!"

Well, each to his own. As it happens, she is a highly successful physiotherapist and mother of a delightful family, so may work harder than I do.

Writing researched action thrillers is, in my case, a particularly heavy work load because not only am I trying to produce a major book a year, but also I am endeavoring to keep up with the military, law enforcement and counter-terrorist worlds which are evolving at an ever faster pace. And I keep tabs on computer developments and other technologies too. And the scene in Washington DC. It's fascinating and it's fun but it is a time burner.

You don't have to work this way to write. But even if you strip away the research and the networking, the process of writing itself still demands more focused work of a particular type than most people are prepared to do. That is not a criticism. It is an observable fact.

Earlier on I said I write because I love it. That's true and doubtless some of the reasons are genetic or buried in my subconscious, but since I have drawn your attention to the downside - to prepare you, not to put you off - now let me list just some of the advantages of my craft.

• The greatest advantage of being an author is that I get paid to do what I like doing most in the world
  You see I love the actual creative process itself. I love thinking about ideas and distilling the results into the printed word. I love the challenge and the disciplines and that sense of victory you get when it starts coming out more or less the way you want it. I love the actual process of writing. Everything else - the research, the access, the fame and so on - comes second. I am happiest when I am actually writing.



• Writing, providing you can make a living out of it, provides an astonishing degree of independence
  You can structure your days, your weeks and your years how you like. You have freedoms which are denied to most other people. That is a truly marvellous thing.



• Writing is an excuse to ask anybody anything
  If you have an inquiring mind - and that is something I seem to have been born with - this is a great boon. And let me add, if your questions are sincere, as an author you will normally get an answer to the most intimate inquiry. Whereas as a lawyer (to pick an occupation at random.) you might get your face slapped.



• Writing is an excuse to travel and to linger in places and truly get their flavor
  Instead of doing Europe in ten days on a tour you can go to the city of Bern for two weeks - as I did - and end up spending two months there. Or head off to see Biosphere II or hop a plane to Tokyo in the rainy season (I lost eleven umbrellas while I was there). Or savor the New York subway system in August or visit NYPD friends in the South Bronx.



• Writing can give you remarkable access
  I don't think of myself as a celebrity in any way (I get lectured on this subject fairly regularly) but as a practical matter I do know people in all kinds of interesting places from the White House to the Pentagon, from Tokyo to Moscow and I do have access to information which is not generally available to the general public. Such access is intellectually stimulating, helpful to my craft, useful in other ways - and plain fun.



• Writing can bring you fame yet allow you (more or less) to retain your privacy
  Writing is one business that can make you a household word (qualification - amongst the reading public) yet few people will know what you look like so you can go about your business unhindered. That is quite an advantage. Most of us like recognition for our efforts - that is natural - but when you have to start hiring bodyguards and cannot walk down the street without being recognized, then - for me anyway - there is a problem.
  Of course one oddity of being unrecognized is that people start telling you about your own work and recommending you to read it. That is quite a surreal experience that has happened to me on a number of occasions. In fact, one incident involved a Dallas police lieutenant regaling me with the entire story of my own book - even after I had respectfully pointed out that I had written it. Well, it is hard to stop an enthusiast who is carrying a gun.
  I did get recognized on the Hill a year ago after speaking on terrorism. Various security guards started staring at me as I moved from the Capitol to one of the House office buildings (using the tunnels and the little train) and I was getting mildly concerned when one of the guards introduced himself and said he had seen me on C-Span the day before. But mostly I travel unrecognized and that is far from bad.



• Writing allows you to cross boundaries and explore - and, as a result, get new insights and fresh perspectives
  I have a great respect for anyone who does anything well - from a plumber to a president (I know a few of both) but again and again I am struck by how circumscribed your thinking can become if you stay within the bounds of a specific profession or occupation. There are unspoken rules in any human organization and you break them at your peril. There are restrictions on authors too but you still have more intellectual freedom than most people.



• Writing - at least in my case - is a great way to make friends
  Again and again I have found that if someone has read one of my books they will open up because they think they know me. And if they have read four hundred pages of my writing, they probably do. I have to say that I value this facet of writing greatly. And because I am not a joiner of clubs and social organizations, it makes up for what could be a deficit. Better yet, I have friends across the social and geographic divides. And frankly, I would have more if I was better at languages.



• Writing allows you to exert a degree of influence
  There is an old Hollywood saying: "If you want to send a message, use Western Union" which neatly sums up the fact that if you are in the mass market entertainment business - which I am - you should focus on the entertainment aspect. Fundamentally, I do and I don't start every book with a message that I want to get across. Nonetheless, it is a simple fact that some of my ideas and beliefs do come across in my writing and people pick up on them and respond.



• Writing allows you to communicate - and teach
  We all have our roles in this world and I guess I was born to communicate. Anyway, I enjoy the actual process of thinking about things and distilling them into a form which many people will both enjoy and understand. Some people call that teaching. I like to think it is a byproduct of writing a reasonably intelligent book. I like the notion that underpinning the high adventure there is content. In GAMES OF THE HANGMAN the reader learned something about Ireland and Switzerland. In RULES OF THE HUNT you got a peak into Japanese customs. In THE DEVIL'S FOOTPRINT you had an insight into the political machinations of counter-terrorism in the US and experienced the 82nd Airborne in full action.



• Writing allows me to track innovation
  I am fascinated by technological innovation and follow a wide range of developments both for the sheer intellectual stimulation and - so I tell myself - for my books. Of course, I could do this to an extent in any occupation but the freedom and access that writing allows makes it easier to get really close to the action.



• Writing has the potential to make the author a great deal of money
  As you will gather by now, I am idea driven rather than money driven but nonetheless I have no objection to the thought that the rewards in this business can be substantial. For most of us they are not and the vast majority of authors support themselves with a day job, but I do have pinned to my notice board an old clipping which says: "$14 million book deal puts Cussler on top" and recent books deals for Patricia Cornwell and Tom Clancy are reported at $23 million and $50 million respectively.
  Let me add that I am not either in or close to that league - but it is a scale of reward that has certainly got my attention.

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Putting a Book Together

Putting a Book Together

When I first started writing, I was hard pressed to work on more than one book at a time. It was hard work. I was learning my trade.

Get specific (you are saying) - how do you put together a book?

After I have written a dozen books, I may well have a tried and true formula but so far it has been an evolving process, because, as I mentioned earlier, I still regard myself as someone who is learning his trade.

But let me take you through the process as it is right now - with the important qualification that the actuality is far less structured than a series of brief paragraphs would suggest.

• First stage is the story idea - something you can describe in a sentence.
  In fact it may well be only a situation you can extrapolate from and not a complete story. "Slightly burned out warrior finds body hanging from tree and decides to investigate." And thus emerged GAMES OF THE HANGMAN which made the New York Time Best Seller List and is still on sale six years after publication. You start with a seed.



• Second stage is the gestation process.
  Essentially as I am wandering around, or gardening or whatever, I am also running my base ideas through my mind and trying to flesh them out. That seems to be both a conscious and an unconscious process and it takes years rather than months. My focal point for such activity is a working title. In fact, it is hard to focus without a title. GAMES OF THE HANGMAN was originally called THE IRISH SAMURAI because I had this notion almost of a knight errant in my mind.



• Third stage is taking all the ideas that are buzzing around in your head and trying to turn them into a structured story.
  The official name for that phase is the writing of an Outline. An outline is both the plan for the book and a selling document for your agent. It should be relatively short - perhaps five to twenty double spaced pages and written in the present tense.
  So far I have not mastered the art of writing a compelling outline and indeed my first book had no outline at all. But the publishing world likes outlines because then the editor knows, albeit in broad terms, what he or she is getting. They are difficult to write for me because they are bald descriptions without humor or dialog.



• Fourth stage is writing a chapter by chapter, and scene by scene, book plan.
  tend to start off with the beginning and end of a story fairly clear in my mind so most of my effort goes into working out how to get there. I do that by listing out scenes and then shuffling them - to some extent - to give the development and pace that I require. I regard this stage as highly important and through practice, I guess, am becoming significantly faster and better at it.
  In fact, my latest book SATAN'S SMILE was written from a scene by scene book plan that was over half the length of the actual book. However, the effort was worth it because when I was writing I knew pretty much exactly where I was going. And let me add, planning a story in advance is a real antidote to writer's block. If you know where you are going, it is a whole lot easier to get there.



• Fifth stage is writing the first draft.
  I sit in front of the computer with my book plan in a ring-binder and focus on writing 2,000 plus words a day no matter what. To back up the book plan, I have all my research material in a separate row of binders so if I need some technical data, I can go straight to the spot. In practice, I find the process of preparing the research and re-reading and indexing it seems to embed it in my brain so I rarely have to look things up.
  No matter how much preparation I have done in advance, during this stage the characters and story come alive and the story starts to grow on the page. The trick here, I have discovered, is to amend the plan as you go or life can get very confusing. But I am a great believer in the story "growing on the page" as otherwise there can be a coldness about the work. And situations just naturally throw up dialog.



• Sixth stage is re-writing and polishing and re-writing and polishing.
  My first drafts tend to be rough because I focus on getting the story down and am willing - at this stage - to take risks. The net result of all this is not only that there are some rough passages in my writing but also that some of my scenes just have not come off. That does not worry me. It is my belief that it is better to test out something than be ultra cautious because some of the ideas do succeed and you can only really judge that in the context of the complete book.
  At the end of the first draft stage it would be nice to have my editor read and comment but I have learned from hard experience that such an action is premature. And, of course, a great deal depends upon the individual editor. But so far, I have found that a work should not be exposed until it is as good as it can be. However, it is still a help to have it read by a few other people and that I do. And they mark the manuscript and raise plot points and generally make my life a misery!
  I sit down with a marked manuscript and do a re-write.
  Note: Re-writing does not mean changing every single word but it can involve moving scenes around, cutting, inserting fresh passages, correcting numerous small errors and re-writing certain weaker sections. To me, because I write in advance in my head, the changes seem obvious and already exist mentally but to an outsider, the difference is typically dramatic.
  Draft numbers are deceptive. To keep track of different versions, I code every draft with a separate number and it can appear as if the book has been re-drafted numerous times - over a dozen would be typical. In point of fact, this typically represents a process whereby certain sections are re-written multiple times but overall, it probably boils down to the original and two 4-6 week periods of re-writing.
  Re-writing is very very important. From experience, I have found that however good you think something is, you can normally make it better - but as with anything you can't go on for ever.
  I used to hate the re-write/polishing process but with time I have got used to spotting my own weaknesses and correcting them and also to enjoy the actual process - possibly because I have learned to become quite good at and to do it fast.



• Seventh stage is sending the manuscript off to your agent and your editor.
  Most writers - I am told and I am no exception - suffer from chronic self doubt and certainly the decision to send off a manuscript is never an easy one. There is a saying that "no book is ever finished, it is merely abandoned" and there certainly some truth in it because every author knows he could always make some portion of his work better if he or she had more time.
  Nonetheless, in this business you don't get paid until you deliver and there are deadlines involved so there comes the day when you have to take your work and dispatch it for the judgment of others. Not easy.
  The trick at this stage is to take a vacation because whether the response is good or bad, you are still going to have additional work to do and it is a really good idea to be fresh and ready to do it. Also, a vacation gives perspective and that is an elusive quality when you are pounding away at your computer day after day, week after week, month after month and maybe year after year.
  So take a vacation whether you have the time or not - and whether you can afford it or not. And trust me. This is good advice.



• Eighth stage is the reaction from your agent and publisher.
  There is a huge gulf between the perception of the author and the mindsets of your agent and publisher. Fundamentally you are in the creative business and they are in the selling business - and the divide between is significant. However it is disguised by pleasantries, it is of Grand Canyon proportions.
  Simply put, your job is to provide product and their job is to sell it.
  I will write more about this subject in a separate section but it is important that you be aware of it and not expect more of your agent and publisher than they are prepared or equipped to deliver.
  The bottom line is that whereas you are expecting praise for your masterpiece, your agent and publisher will almost certainly zero in on the book's deficiencies (in their eyes) and take praise as implicit in the fact that they are dealing with you at all. And they have a point. Most manuscripts do not even get read - so their criticism, oddly enough, is praise.
  Well, I don't want to go overboard on this but I just want to alert you to the fact that the reaction to your work - no matter how good - may not be what you expect. But don't sweat it. Your agent and publisher want to squeeze the last creative drop out of you and there is more than a fighting chance that some of their suggestions are actually pretty good. Here, clearly, it all depends upon the quality of the people you are dealing with.
  But the important thing is to react to the comments coolly (something I find it hard to do) and implement whatever changes make sense to you. Here, you have got to rely upon that inner voice because some of the changes they will suggest may be terrible and primarily designed to stimulate your thinking. In the final analysis, it is important to remember it is your book.



• Ninth stage is incorporating (some of) your agent's and publisher's suggestions - it is a further re-write.
  Not everyone goes through this stage, of course, because there are really are a few people who supply ready-for-the-market manuscripts (or have enough clout to tell their publishers to get stuffed) but the balance of probability is that you will find yourself making some changes. And several iterations may be involved. But if you do carry out this stage speedily and with minimum fuss then it will pass in a few weeks and everyone will be a whole lot happier.



• Tenth stage is acceptance.
  Publishing contracts tend to have a phrase "Subject to acceptance" which broadly means that the publisher has to be happy with your manuscript before accepting it.
  Since that is a subjective judgment that little phrase has the capability to put you, me and most other writers into a world of hurt, but fortunately it is normally implemented in a common sense way. But it does allow a publisher to put excessive pressure on you since the acceptance stage normally comes at a time when your income is at its lowest. Personally, I would like to see automatic arbitration involved so that there would be a more even distribution of power between author and publisher but that is just not the way it is right now. But in most cases books are accepted after a little jousting - so finally the sale is complete and you can relax a little and let the publisher start doing most of the work - and think about the next book. Actually, there are still quite a few more stages but I'll write about them in more detail some other time. For the moment, rest content that you have written and sold your book.
  Congratulations. Take another vacation. Soon enough you'll be back hammering out 2,000 words a day, or to put in a gentler way - you'll be back telling stories.
  Because that is what you do, and if you do it well, the world will be a better place for it because people need stories to live. And fiction is one of the best ways of illuminating the truth. Of promoting understanding.

Writing is a strange activity - but it is worth doing well and despite all the attendant difficulties, it is wonderful. And maybe a little bit better than that.

So go to it!

Postscript

I have written this 8,000 word essay in response to quite a large number of readers who have read or more of my books and then written in for help. If it is of some assistance to you, please let me know, and similarly, if you have any suggestions to make, I would like to hear those too. For instance, I am particularly interested to hear of good writing schools so I can list them.

Over time, I am going to try and expand this section so it becomes of real practical benefit to the novice writer who really wants to make it happen. But to do that successfully, I will need your help.

And yes I know I have not answered key questions like "How do I find a publisher?" and "How do I find an agent?" but I will in time. This is just a start.



Go To It!

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