Jeffrey Somers - Writing Without Rules: How to Write & Sell a Novel Without Guidelines, Experts, or (Occasionally) Pants

Writing and reading as much as you can is often (and correctly) prescribed for aspiring writers. When it comes to reading, there is no right or wrongread anything, read everything, and dont worry about whether you have good taste in books. Reading feeds the machine no matter what kind of books were talking about. On the other hand, writing all the time isnt a goal unto itself. Finishing things is just as important. Well discuss this in more detail later in the book.

When I was sixteen, I had already written several terrible, derivative science-fiction and fantasy stories. I had a cant-lose method that Ill teach you right now: I took an already-published book, like The Lord of the Rings, and rewrote it, deleting 90 percent of the nuance and detail and changing all the names.

Hey, writing is a learning process.

At sixteen, though, I had a breakthrough and I wrote what I consider to be my first more or less original novel. It was titled White Rabbit and it was about a spy for a galactic civilization who had been trained and augmented to be able to change his appearance through total control over every muscle and ligament and tendon in his body.

Well, sell is a strong word. I never got paid any money, and very likely never would have. The publisher was a one-man micropress out in California, and although I signed a contract, he never even finished the editing process. I did spend two years or so telling everyone I would soon be a best-selling author and thus they could take their dire warnings about getting an education and making plans for the future and stuff them, which made me incredibly popular among my parents friends.

What did I learn from this humiliating experience? On a personal level, nothing, as I was and remain disturbingly confident in my own awesomeness, as well as proud of my inability to grow in any sort of emotional sense. On a professional level, I learned something incredibly valuable: Publishing a book doesnt require competence, organization, or good spelling.

So, White Rabbit. The book was written on a manual typewriter. Yes, I am that old, although part of my fetish for manual typewriters is sexual in nature, which also explains why I continued to doggedly pound out (see what I did there?) first drafts on my ancient Remington portable up until about 2005. This also means that White Rabbit wasnt revised in any way. You read that right. I took a steaming first draft fresh from the typewriter, covered in correction fluid, made a dozen photocopies at my fathers office without telling him, and mailed them out to publishers without even bothering to proofread the thing.

Not only thatthe photocopies I sent out were mysteriously lacking pages 85, 89, 93, and 142.

Not only that, but the cover letter I wrote was hilariousif youre me. For just about everyone else in the universe, not so much. I assigned code names to potential editors and myself. Why sixteen-year-old Jeff thought this was a good idea is a mystery to present-day Jeff. My code name was (and I am not making this upit actually happened) Sic Sic by the Seaside and the editors code name was always Tweedledum.

Yes, I called editors who I wanted to publish my book Tweedledum.

Not only that, I misspelled Tweedledum as Tweedeldum.

And despite all that, someone tried to publish it. The editor who tried, valiantly, to publish White Rabbit even referred to my rather tenuous command of English spelling and punctuation in their acceptance letter. So, let me recap. When submitting this manuscript to real, actual publishers, I did the following:

• sent a raw first draft
• sent out a manuscript with missing pages and numerous typos
• wrote a ridiculous cover letter in which I more or less insulted (and very likely freaked out) anyone who read it

And it (almost) got published.

Little did I know, but this would set a pattern for the rest of my life. A pattern of goofy incompetence and clueless shortcuttingand unambiguous writing and publishing success. To date Ive published dozens of short stories, nine novels, several novellas, one comic book, and countless articles and blog posts on the internet and in print magazines. I actually make a living from my writing, both fiction and nonfiction. And Im here to tell you I havent gotten any better at any of the things people will often tell you are required to have a professional writing careerlike attention to detail, social media competence, and knowledge of the basic rules of society.

The one thing I am good at? The writing part. Being incompetent and clueless doesnt mean I dont work hard at my craft. I write every day. I complete a short story every month, no matter what. I constantly submit short fiction to paying markets, and I am forever plaguing my long-suffering agent with new novels to sell. The fact is, cluelessness isnt laziness: Whether its writing skills or the more frustrating and elusive promotional and business skills that a modern writing career requires, Ive always been good at figuring things out. Its just that my first (and second, and sometimes third) stabs at anything career-related are often hilarious failureshilarious failures I think you can learn from.