As he discussed writing with the ending in mind, Copyblogger noted that some people might benefit from a quick outline. Then came the comment, one we cannot resist quoting:

NO! Outlines are death for writers.

Uh, this is not true. We know a lot of writers who use outlines, and, to the best of our knowledge, they remain alive and productive. Our hapless commenter says that mindmapping is the only way to go. The. Only. Way. To. Go.

Yeah. That’s the ticket. Trade one rule for another. The truth of the matter is that all writers are built differently. Some take to mindmapping (we, alas, do only sometimes). Some fly by the seat of the their pants and, hopefully, fix it in the mix (we do this one, too). Some are strict outliners (again, us sometimes). Others use a blend of techniques, choosing the right tool for the project (this is our preferred technique).

Anytime someone tells you the “rules” of writing, run for the hills. Rules are often made up by people who have found success doing things one way, and remain closed to the possibility that other people might achieve similar success in a different way. Thus, they establish rules and swear those rules are the only path to glory. Tools, not rules, we like to say. It’s like our yoga teacher used to say, “Take what you can use and throw the rest away.”

It’s good advice when you’re trying to stand on one leg, twisted sideways, one arm raised to the sky, and the other reaching toward the front of the room while trying to focus really hard on pushing energy out through your raised heel…and it’s good advice when you’re writing. Nothing more frustrating than trying to mindmap when your instincts tell you to just go ahead and outline the damn thing. Forcing your brain into a method that feels counter-intuitive almost always ends in frustration.

Endings are important — we often don’t consider them enough in our own work — but there’s no need to force rules upon other writers. We have enough anxiety as it is.

So, what does make a blogger highly effective? Heck if we know, but this is what works around here:

1. Consistency: Writing every day (or as close to every day as is humanly possible). While we’ve settled on a Monday through Friday schedule, with weekend posts as the spirit moves us, we believe that still qualifies as “every day”, office worker-style.
2. Point-of-View: While we cover the same ground as many other LitBloggers, we have our own perspective. A lot of writers are very protective of their ideas. It’s not the idea…it’s the execution.
3. Voice: The mother likes to say that we were born talking (correction: we were born complaining) and haven’t stopped since. There are a lot of competent writers in this world; what makes writing compelling to us is voice. Readers have to connect with your voice in some manner. To us, voice is intrinsic, not something you can acquire. It is something you pull from inside and hone. Voice is also faceted: you do not have the exact same tone and style for every piece of work. There’s consistent core, yes, but also variety as the situation demands.
4. Fun: Sure there are times when we look at this site as a chore. Those are rare moments and usually indicate that we need a) food, b) sleep, or c) a long vacation on a tropical island. All of which can be readily accommodated. We’re writing about a topic we love and that keeps us motivated.
5. Focus: While this site sometimes wanders out to the far edges of our varied interests, mostly we stay focused on writing and publishing. You aren’t coming here to learn about the care and feeding of cats (though we can certainly help there), and we believe most people leave with the information they’re seeking. If not that, then at least they’ve had a good time. We have found that sometimes you need more than one blog/site/place to accommodate your writing needs — hence Medialoper, PaperbackReader, and our regular stint at Romancing the Blog.
6. Community: Writing is a solitary business. You can work with another person, sure, but ultimately the words come from your head (or fingers, depends). Blogging offers a chance for writers to connect with a community. We have made a lot of wonderful friends via this site, and we have managed to maintain relationships with friends we’ve had for a long time. This community offers support, food for thought, and even help when we need someone to drive the blog while we sit on that tropical island.

• Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers – Group Writing Project

Like we say, we’re too classy to name names. Leaving that third or fourth comma out is failed experiment in reworking the punctuation rules — sort of like new math, whatever that was.

Brenda Coulter takes her serial commas seriously. So seriously that she points us to a entire article about the beauty and joy that is the serial comma. In a sentence, that final comma is your best friend: it makes your meaning clear.

Many times the comma may seem unnecessary because the writer may believe there is no room for confusion in the sentence. If we were to write, for example, “The table was covered with food, gifts and flowers,” the meaning would be quite clear without the serial comma. But as writers, we are usually poor judges of our own writing and may be ill suited to judge its clarity, so play it safe and use the serial comma every time.

• Serial comma killers
• Comma before “and”

The conventional view on SNS [Second Novel Syndrome] is that it is a seizure caused by a loss of innocence. Don DeLillo said a first novel comes to the writer as a gift and he doesn’t necessarily know how he wrote it. It’s the second novel that teaches him how to write. British editor Simon Prosser once said, “When you write your first book, you don’t know who you’re writing for or what awaits you. With the second book, if your work has been digested in the press, you think, ‘Oh, is my writing really like that?’ It’s impossible to ignore the consciousness of your work being out there and people reading it and thinking things about it.”

Setting aside the notion of time-shifting in novels — your first book may not necessarily be your first book, setting up the possibility that your second book might be your first book while your third book could be your second book or your fifth — the beauty of your first published novel is that no bars have been set. You are a genius with great promise. The future is wide open, baby.

He [Jeffrey Eugenides] said: “No one is waiting for you to write your first book. No one cares if you finish it. But after your first, if it goes well, everyone seems to be waiting. You’re suddenly considered to be a professional writer, a fiction machine, but you know very well that you’re just getting going. You go from having nothing to lose to having everything to lose, and that’s what creates the panic.”

There are many ways to overcome SNS. You must choose yours. While we suggest telling the world to go bother someone else for a while, there is one surefire (if drastically permanent) method:

John Kennedy O’Toole died before A Confederacy of Dunces was published – a deft way of evading questions about how he was going to follow it up.

• Lost For Words: Panic after a first successful novel is perfectly natural, but what if it never passes?

The question Sacks dances around is that of objectivity versus subjectivity. Writing is absolutely a creative endeavor. If you need to prove this, engage in the age-old exercise of listing three objects and having each member of a small group write a paragraph including those objects. Or just one object. Or ten. Each writer will take a different tack. Some may even forego the paragraph as we know it for something else. You never know.

For those enrolled in MFA programs, there is a split goal. First, of course, is the creativity. Second, is the need to apply objective rules to judge success. Sacks summarizes this aspect of the workshop process quite well:

A Story, as it progresses, is counterbalanced by a Backstory, which informs the reader what of importance happened beforehand. Both Story and Backstory must have a pronounceable Why Now, a meaningful reason that they are being told—something must be At Stake. Regarding meaning and significance, the writer should Show Not Tell through recurring Central Metaphor rather than through dry explanation of what is being felt. Furthermore, a good story has an apt and memorable Voice and conveys a strong Sense of Place.

The rules of the classroom game — and of writing contests, writers do love their contests — agree that the full breadth of Craft, as outlined above, should be present almost before the reader finishes the first paragraph. This inevitably leads some writers to mistake classroom requirements for art. It is natural that Rules will evolve:

The class I taught was assigned a course packet and there, on the first page, were more rules: Never begin a story with a character waking up in bed. Never write a scene where a character looks at himself in a mirror. Never use the word “stuff.”

In reading the New American anthology, Sacks came away uninspired. The stories, he senses, were workshopped to death.

Without ignoring the occasional flashes of verve, the stories included are so monotonous that they seem to have been written by a single person of middling talent. All but one of them are written in the first person; a similar percentage hinge upon the narrator’s difficulties with dysfunctional or deceased members of his or her family, or with ex-lovers. The tone is always confessional and saturated with self-pity. The plot and action are always negligible: one story takes place on a road trip to a presidential birthplace, another while moving apartments, another at a wedding, another while opening presents in front of the Christmas tree. None of this much matters anyway, because the things the characters do are always mundane and largely incidental to their psychological conflicts. From time to time a structural innovation appears to offer an interesting novelty, but under the packaging the same old formula is always to be found.

• The Fiction Machine: The Workshop and the hacks.

The deepest rooted of last lines is the childhood one: “And they all lived happily ever after.” Unlike the first line of such stories, “Once upon a time,” it isn’t just a formula. It’s a reassurance that the result the story has achieved will remain in place even now the story-telling has finished. But more than that, it acknowledges what the story was about all along. Folk tales that end like that have, all along, been about happiness and challenges to it; the subject of the story is there in its last line.

There are many ways to end a novel, some more successful than others. You have a reminder that this is just a story — authorial intrusion as a way of returning to reality. You have endings that make no sense at all. You have sad endings. You have happy endings. You have endings that turn the entire story in another direction. But at some point, you must end. Unless you have Guinness Book of World Records aspirations. We do not judge.

When it comes to finishing, yours may vary. We find the best approach is this:

Certainly, that’s my habit when writing a novel. Even if, in the event, the ending changes, I always like to have a draft of a last paragraph tucked away in the notebook somewhere by the time I’m halfway through. It is rather a comfort, and an idea of something to work towards, like a distant life raft in the uncharted ocean you’re swimming towards. And I guess most decent endings had the same sort of life; treasured up through the working process, slowly polished with much more care, to tell the truth, than the more conspicuous opening gambit.

• The end. At last.

MediaBistro takes a look at the process of writing with a partner. Though we know you’re going to pop right over and read the whole thing, we feel compelled to summarize: communication. Oh sure, you’re always right and have never made a wrong decision. This does not allow you to make all the choices when it comes to a joint work.

To future authorial teams, [Lisa] Papademetriou suggests: “Go Zen. It’s really important to listen to what the other person is saying, rather than getting defensive. When Chris and I talked through our ideas, we almost always came out with something better than what either one of us had come up with on our own. Also, it’s important to find someone who works in the same way that you do. If you’re a deadline person, and your writing partner is more hang loose, you’re going to have some tension.”

• It Takes Two To Make A Book Go Right: Are two authors better than one?

Angela Hoy, who runs the Writers Weekly newsletter and owns Booklocker, a print-on-demand publisher, is suggesting that all all books be non-returnable. Her logic is that print-on-demand technology and smarter ordering would reduce the accounting nightmare that is returns.

Accepting returns ultimately hurts the author and the publisher and costs the bookstores very little (except when they agree to pay shipping or a small percentage of the loss as a penalty). Grocery stores aren’t allowed to return unsold food to manufacturers and your local department store isn’t allowed to return unsold clothes to the factory. So, why should bookstores be allowed to over-order and then return items while expecting the publisher or self-published author to bear the expense of their poor judgment? And think of all the trees that were wasted on those books that will never sell!

Now we’re very much in favor of trees, but also know there’s a little thing called human nature. Books cannot be equated with groceries or clothing*. And customers certainly can return these items, resulting in credit to the stores. Though we are not familiar with the ins and outs of every business, we do know it is possible to negotiate returns on unsold items (the store to the manufacturer). This is, of course, not factoring the wild and woolly returns policies related to music and motion picture products. Whoo hoo!

The fact remains that print-on-demand is not truly print-on-demand. If it were, then, sure, a bookstore could stock a large number of well-thumbed products, producing a fresh copy while the customer’s credit card is processed. Unlike clothing, you cannot try an item on, twisting and turning and cursing the fact that dressing room mirrors do not reflect a reality found on this planet.

Books can be tried on — we all do it — but the equivalent notion would be reading a good portion of the book (must see how it looks, front and back, not to mention the side view). Some might put the book, all stretched seams and hidden stains from dirty thumbs, back on the shelf. Others might take the book home and model it for the family before deciding it just doesn’t fit.

Our analogy, much to your relief, is going to break down now. Clothing can be marked-down until someone says, “Hey, that pink blouse with rust stripes is a good deal.” Books don’t undergo the same process. And, needless to say, once books are remaindered, authors suffer.

Hoy’s main argument seems mainly centered on the fact that bookstores get suckered into making unwise purchases — purchases that result in the little risk borne by the store and lots of risk borne by the publisher/author. She cites this example:

We heard one story about an author (not a booklocker.com author!) who convinced a huge, well-known discount store (you probably have one in your neighborhood) to buy 300,000 copies of his book. He was apparently related to someone in the higher ranks at that store. The publisher naively agreed to accept returns and processed the order. Well, when dealing with 300,000 copies of an unknown author’s books, you can probably guess what happened. Almost all of the books were eventually returned…at the expense of the publisher.

While this story has the quality of an urban legend, it also doesn’t represent life as we know it. Very rarely are well-known discount stores going to put out for 300,000 copies of a book on a whim. A business-savvy publisher isn’t going to put their financial future at risk in such a manner either. We do not make it a habit to comment upon the intelligence of our fellow humans (much), but someone wasn’t using both sides of the brain here.

Hoy then notes about the above scenario (and this is where she lost us completely):

By the time the books were returned, the publisher may have already paid royalties to the author. When something like this happens, what do you think a publisher’s chances are of recovering that lost money? Zero.

Again, a business-savvy publisher has factored risk into the equation, in this case by holding substantial reserves against returns. By substantial, we’re thinking percentages that start with a 9 and end with a 9. Contracts also, in that icky fine print, often provide mechanisms for recovering overpayments, should they happen. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s a possibility. The only real way we can see that the publisher would be out cash (other than printing costs) is if they’d been dumb enough to give the author a non-refundable advance.

Returns are a real problem in the publishing industry. Too many items are produced, stores are convinced to stock large quantities (book buying is largely a matter of gut, and it’s not always easy to gauge customer reaction), reserves are held far longer than is reasonable, and the window for returning product is far too open. The print-on-demand idea works better for non-impulse purchases — and how many books are impulse purchases? — and with online retailers whose customers don’t expect instant gratification.

Going with the print-on-demand model doesn’t address the real problems that accompany liberal returns policies and practices. Returns shouldn’t be abolished — they should be reformed. Seriously reformed.

* – Okay, we see your point, but there will come a moment when starvation is a real option.

• Why All Books Should Be Non-Returnable

• Bob’s Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots (Poster-sized version helpfully available at The Official Bob the Angry Flower Web Site)

But we’ll confine ourselves to encouraging writers with ways to get themselves turned down by agents or publishers, and trust that you’ll understand how to apply these lessons in a broader context. Nor are we going to insult anybody’s intelligence by telling you about the really basic, simple ways that a writer can ensure that no one will read her query letter, let alone her manuscript. We’re sure you already know about obvious things like using unusual fonts and paper, though we will point out that a really fuzzy, beat-up printer for your letter and manuscript is certainly a plus. Extra points if you could dig up a dot-matrix, though of course the real prize goes to those who handwrite their letters. That takes a special person.

• Screwtape Takes the Comm