1. Board Book — 100 words max
2. Early Picturebook — 500 words max
3. Picturebook — 1,000 words max (Seriously. Max.)
4. Nonfiction Picturebook — 2,000 words max
5. Early Reader — This varies widely, depending on grade level. I’d say 3,500 words is an absolute max.
6. Chapterbook — 10,000 words max
7. Middle Grade — 35,000 words max for contemporary, mystery, humor, 45,000 max for fantasy/sci-fi, adventure and historical
8. YA — 70,000 words max for contemporary, humor, mystery, historical, romance, etc. 90,000 words max for fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, etc.

you love her, don’t you?

As you can see, manuscript length for young adult (YA) and children’s books depends on the age of your target audience.

And while there are individual reader exceptions (I bet you were probably reading at a higher age level than your actual age when growing up. Me too.), the above rules are what the agents and the publishers of the world play by, so if you want to play in their world, you have to play by their rules.

At least to for the first few rounds of the game. Once you’ve established a track record with your agent and your publisher by having steady sales, longer manuscripts are more of an option.

Logan: So what are we talking here? Short novel? Kafka length, or longer. Dos Pasos? Tolstoy? Or longer? Robert Musil? Proust? I’m not throwing you with these names, am I?
- Gilmore Girls, “Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ringing Out “, 6.8

gratitude

I have a quote file that I look at every now and then for inspiration and sometimes a bit of butt-kicking. It’s filled with quotes from all kinds of people: authors, scientists, actors, friends, and quite a few anonymous folks as well. Here are five quotes from people who know what they are talking about.

“I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage.” – Jim Butcher

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN’ SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.” – Joss Whedon regarding Firefly

“The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.”
 – J. Michael Straczynski

“The right ending to a story is always there. The writer’s job is not to look away or punk out. That’s all.” – Lillith Saintcrow

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” – Richard Bach

Stella: Well, I only quote from the best.
- Rear Window

anime luv – d.grayman

If so, Write or Die! is your kind of writing tool. This online application will provide a Consequence of your choice, from Gentle to Electric Shock. You can also set a Forgiving, Strict, or Evil Grace Period before the Consequence takes place.

If you attempt to escape by saying you prefer not to be online while you write, you are out of luck. There is a desktop version of Write or Die! available for $10 – a very economical stick indeed. It uses the Adobe AIR framework, which means it will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, so you truly have no excuse.

Unless you resort to pen and paper.

In which case I expect you to turn out as much work as Neil Gaiman, since he uses that venue as well.

Bassanio: Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; And here choose I; joy be the consequence!
- Merchant of Venice

conrad

Fanfiction are stories written using characters and settings that were originally written by someone else. J.K Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series. Thousands of fans have written millions of words using Ms. Rowling’s characters. They have spent uncounted hours pouring their hearts into telling tales in a magical world that is not their own.

Is fan fiction good? Bad?

Different authors take difference stances on fanfiction. George R. R. Martin is against it. Catherynne M. Valente has the rule of “don’t make money off it and we’re cool”. Jim Butcher and Mercedes Lackey have gone Creative Commons on it.

Personally, I think of fanfiction as an expressive outlet of caring. People care about these characters, the setting, the world. They want to be part of the story, and in turn, add their stories to the mix. Playing is fun; it fills a need. It should not be warped into possession nor profit.

The common sense basics of fanfiction are:

• the author is not going to read it, don’t send it to them
• you do not own those characters, therefore you cannot sell them in any way, shape, or form
• be nice and credit the original author without whom you wouldn’t have any characters to put in that fanfic

I admit to writing fanfiction. Years ago. Not much, not often, but every now and then a story using someone else’s characters would get stuck in my head and not leave until I wrote it out. I wrote those short stories for myself, and if someone else happens to like them, well yay.

These days, I write my own characters in my own worlds. I own everything about them, which also means I can sell them off. The thought of someone writing fanfiction about one of my creations is so far away as to not even be a shimmer of a pinpoint of haze on a flat horizon.

But I think it would be kinda nifty.

Just don’t sell it.

Dr. Parnassus:: You can’t stop a story being told.
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

best butler ever

A domain name, sometimes referred to as a URL, is a unique identifier such as writershelves.com. The uniqueness extends to the suffix, be it .com or .net or .org or .biz or .mobi or .us or a lot of other possibilities. There are some restricted suffixes, like .gov and .edu, but the others can be yours … if you want to pay for them.

The important thing to understand about “owning” a domain is that you are really “leasing” it. You have to pay every year to keep control of that domain name. If you want yourname.com and yourname.org, you are going to pay two registration fees each year, one for each domain. The year you do not renew your domain is the year you no longer have access to it. This means someone else can buy it and put up whatever webpages they want and it’s too bad if people end up there looking for you because you won’t be there.

Different companies have different costs to register and renew a domain. You can often get a price break if you pay for more than one year in advance. I personally prefer DreamHost* so I can have my domain registration and hosting at the same place. Hosting is a completely different cost, but I’ll talk about that in another post.

So what should your domain name be .. your name? A nickname? The name of your novel? The name of the series? All of those are definitely possibilities. Your author domain could be a portal to all you write. Or it could be dedicated to a series or even a single novel. There is no “right” way to do an author website. If it helps people find you and sells more books, it’s doing just fine.

* this is an affiliate link. If you click through and purchase something DreamHost sells, I’ll get a bit of cash. If you think you want a domain/hosting/website in the next few months, I’ll have a new website** up in July to help you out.

** this is a plug for my up-coming website called Author Dim Sum which will have more info specifically to help authors make the most of their online presence, including an ebook for sale called “Author’s First Website” – I think. Open to suggestions on the title.

Rick Castle: You subscribed to my website? Wait a minute… are you Castlefreak1212? Castlelover45?
- Castle, “Little Girl Lost”, 1.9

when you look at me that way

J.K. Rowling said she didn’t necessarily set out to write a children’s book; she wrote a story she wanted to read. I believe a lot of authors feel the same way, and that is what makes their stories interesting and captivating, because they themselves are interested and captivated by it.

If you don’t enjoy what you are writing, the reader will know. They will see it in the two-dimensional characters and feel the lack of energy of the plot and pacing.

You owe it to yourself, and your reader, to write what you want to write about, what you are passionate about, what you want to share with the world. Because if it matters to you, it will matter to someone else out there.

Every now and then, one of those readers will tell you how much what you wrote meant to them.

At a recent conference, someone who reads this website told me how my Free Ideas page helped her with her own writing. I put up that page to keep track of snippets of story that float through my head, and websites that inspire ideas. I wrote the copy on that web page for myself, as a reminder that any idea can be interpreted many ways. The fact that it also resolved a problem for that reader is proof of the shared connection of humanity.

And that what you care about for yourself, will matter to someone else.

Doctor Who: Look at these people: These human beings. Consider their potential. From the day they arrive on the planet, and blinking step into the sun. There is more to see than can ever be seen. More to do than – No hold on… Sorry, that’s the ‘Lion King’. But the point still stands.
- “The Christmas Invasion”, 2.0

his heart’s desire

Jim started collecting data in February 2010, and wrapped things up in March of the same year. Then he consolidated, parsed, and re-worked the data when he should have been writing. As much as I want to read more books by Jim Hines, I’m glad he made the time to share this information.

This survey about first novels was a personal project – he wanted to learn how new authors broke into the publishing business. From that data, Jim created many charts, and started busting some book industry myths, such as “you have to know someone” and “self-publishing your breakout novel”.

For anyone interested in becoming a professional author, I highly recommend you check out Jim’s survey. It is informative, enlightening, and should hopefully re-enforce things you have already learned through your own research.

Narrator: Look at this. Isn’t this so MythBusters? Jamie’s truck, flanked by the bomb squad and the paramedics.
- MythBusters

country heart

The AutoCrit Editing Wizard is an online application where you paste in part or all of your manuscript and run one of fourteen different reports, such as Overused Words or Cliché Finder. The results are displayed in your web browser. Which reports you can run and how much of your manuscript you can paste in depend on which version of the AutoCrit wizard you are using.

The Free version has 3 reports and accepts up to 800 words per submission/paste into the text field.

One-year memberships are available at three price/service levels:

• Gold – $47 – 5000 words, 9 reports
• Platinum – $77 – 8000, 14 reports
• Professional – $117 – 100,000 words, 14 reports, ability to submit your entire manuscript

So far, I’ve been using the AutoCrit Wizard on a chapter at a time. Chapters I have looked at, read, read aloud, edited, re-written and edited some more … and which still contain repeated phrases and other things these reports point out to me that I need to fix. It is helping my manuscripts be just a little bit cleaner, a little bit more polished, stand out just a little bit more from the others waiting in the pile.

And that is worth a lot more than the prices listed above to me.

Dorothy: Oh, please! Please, sir! I’ve got to see the Wizard! The Good Witch of the North sent me!
- The Wizard of Oz

For readers:

• Alphabetical list of authors, you can also search the site for an author
• Alphabetical list of books, you can also search the site for a book
• Monthly contests
• List of books reviewed by 65 nationally broadcast radio and television programs, from the Colbert Report to This American Life
• Daily book reviews and author posts

fushigi yuugi forever

For authors, Fresh Fiction offers several promotion and advertising services, from managing your Web 2.0 presence, holding contests, inclusion of your author page on their website, and banner graphics to a spot in their newsletter which reaches 125,000 readers weekly.

Fresh Fiction is a website worth visiting on a regular basis. And if you want to help contribute to their incredible amount of content, check out the current open positions.

Elena Gilbert: Dear Diary, today will be different. It has to be. I will smile, and it will be believable. My smile will say, “I’m fine, thank you. Yes, I feel much better.” I will no longer be the sad little girl that lost her parents. I will start fresh, be someone new. It’s the only way I’ll make it through.
- Vampire Diaries, “Pilot”, 1.1

doctor who collection obsession #3

That’s fancy sales talk for I’m more likely to get useful links from my favorite author’s websites since they are writers themselves.

Some authors have a dedicated “Links” page – like Maggie Stiefvater and Rosemary Clement-Moore.

For authors that have blogs, look at their tag cloud – this is a bunch of what looks like random words clumped together, usually in a sidebar of the website.

These are tags that the author has applied to their blog posts to help give you an idea of the topic of that entry. It is also a great way to find the specific kind of blog posts you are interested in.

Sometimes words will be bigger than other words in the tag cloud. This means there are more posts associated with that tag. Be sure to read through all of the tags, just in case you find multiple tags for the same kind of topic, as on A. Lee Martinez‘s website which has tags for “aspiring writer” and “aspiring writers“.

Depending how busy they are, some authors may not address any writing craft topics on their website. Or they might have a few articles that they wrote, which I often find the most insightful, such as Garth Nix‘s “Nine Stages to a Novel” or Jim Butcher‘s now defunct Live Journal (hint – start reading at the bottom of the page).

Some authors, like Candace Havens, add to their busy schedule by teaching workshops and online classes. If you want to learn directly from those who have gone before, this is a great way to do so.

No matter how you find the writing information and advice you are looking for, always consider the source. This is one of the primary reasons I prefer links or information directly from an author’s website. If they found it worthy of pointing out, I can probably learn something from it.

Tony Stark: You are the most capable, qualified, trustworthy person I’ve ever met. You’ll do great.
- Iron Man