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Said it before and I’ll say it again: publishing-industry professionals intentionally diversifying what they represent or publish is NOT an expression of anyone’s intent to suppress majority perspectives. But by default, if only majority perspectives are chosen, marginalized perspectives are buried. Attempts to uplift historically and currently suppressed populations to get just a tenth of what’s already out there by mainstream authors is NOT going to interfere with any opportunities for the mainstream. But the way they’re always wailing about other people getting opportunities certainly does betray how unrepentant they are about believing those positions automatically belong to them.

Government officials making exclusionary and bigoted laws and policies is nothing new. As usual, people who gloated about it and made up stories about their own superiority will be self-righteously explaining how it was “just a different time” when they end up on the wrong side of history. We, who are sharing this time with you, know it’s wrong and never considered not fighting it.

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Flesh out the world! Give the scenery some love! Put some meat on those worldbuilding bones! Build in some complex history, not just the plot-relevant stuff! Hey, why is your book so long?

Welcome to my hell! SF/F gets a little bit of leeway when it comes to higher word count caps, but even with that, I’m definitely struggling to balance natural storytelling, two major plots, dialogue that has room to breathe, and an entirely invented alien culture with layered mythology and complex history.

Comic features my mother, who used to always say this useless crap about why she thought my word counts were high. (I do not have an overdescription problem. The opposite, really.)

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Seriously. Once is enough. If you’ve got a properly edited document, don’t drive yourself up the wall rereading it before every submission. Read your query letters and cover letters carefully, sure, but don’t do it tensely and obsessively. And yes, if it’s been a while since you read the submission guidelines, you might wanna make sure they haven’t changed in the meantime, but you can read them once and maybe make a little list of bullet points for anything that’s relevant. You can overdo it on “making sure” and end up forever feeling like you’re not ready yet, and you might even waste energy obsessing over it after you send it out, hoping you didn’t make a mistake.

Relax. Take it seriously, but relax.

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I guess I’m not that surprised to see people spreading the (incorrect) belief that properly used punctuation is a sign of automation. When I was much younger, I would sometimes have online conversations with strangers or acquaintances who would suddenly accuse me of trying to talk smart and using a thesaurus. People aren’t used to communication that follows writing standards appropriate for a published article. They literally think humans don’t write like this unless they are forced to, and that casual communication won’t ever look like this unless it’s cheating.

And here’s the thing. AI writing DOES sound robotic and soulless! It usually has this weird repetitiveness; doesn’t make a whole lot of sense under examination; purports to be by the same author throughout but changes tone part of the way through; references to events, people, or articles that don’t exist; and doesn’t contain any personal perspectives. Looking for a “telltale” punctuation mark as a cheat sheet–and insisting that no one uses em dashes in real life–is, frankly, just as lazy as using AI to avoid writing your own work in the first place.

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You get a little leeway for worldbuilding if you write science fiction and fantasy–and I do–but even in the genre most tolerant of long works, a debut fiction manuscript can’t come busting down the door at twice the expected length. (And it’s kinda frustrating that sometimes when I talk about this, people bring up the existence of successful long books, without acknowledging that they are generally penned by much more established authors. Yes, even Stephen King’s first published book was short!)

Marketability is the issue here. If you’re trying to partner with a publisher, you’re ASKING them to bring their knowhow and resources to the table to sell your book. So yes, they get to call the shots, and one of the things they believe is that young adult SFF books are ideally around 90k. It’s intimidating as hell to think I have to UN-WRITE about HALF of the book I wrote to get it to fit in those pants, but I’m gonna try to at least get close.

Some of it will be making hard choices about entire aspects that will have to be chopped. I might lose a plot line. I will definitely lose some big scenes. Then I’ll need to make smaller choices: what does each part of this book that I devoted words to DO for the story, and are there redundancies according to that? Cut ’em. Moving on from there, it’ll be reducing scenes to offscreen references or cutting them, toning up bulky language, and eventually the nitty-gritty of knocking individual words out of sentences to make them tighter.

But all that writing that gets cut still served a purpose. Some of it helped me figure out aspects of the worldbuilding that I can then be more subtle about (or not include at all). Some of it helped me figure out characters’ voices and relationships. Some of it was done as loosely as it was in the spirit of not editing myself to death while I was trying to get the story down. Some of it just turned out to not be needed, and I found that out by putting it there to be judged. But none of it is wasted, even if it does end up on the cutting room floor.

I’ll never write short first drafts. My life would be so much easier if I did, but I just don’t. And while my books can sometimes lose enough words to come out tight and smooth and presentable to the publishing industry’s expectations, I’m not going to strangle them while they’re coming out to have them start out that way. It’s like a recipe I’ve got to taste as I cook it. I think I’ll get there.

But dang, it sucks. (Readers, let me know if you want to join the test reader list for an upcoming Sapphic science fiction romance/coming-of-age novel.)

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In honor of my other webcomic, Negative One, hitting 20 years as a webcomic this month, you get a So You Write comic based on a real thing that happened. Heh.

Obviously it’s simplified and doesn’t capture the actual nuance of the conversation I had with this person, but yeah, I once got an e-mail like this, explaining to me with Utmost Seriousness that a story featuring a missing child where she isn’t found safe and sound and returned to her parents “didn’t make sense” and that my stubbornness in writing a story with this sad plot was driving my readers away. This reader was quite polite and sincere, but they were adamant: I was making a HUGE mistake writing what I was writing; that I must be “married to” a plan I’d written for the story that I felt compelled to miserably carry out even though it was obvious the story should go a different way, and that the reader was certain my other readers would all feel the same way.

Furthermore, I was not adhering to the correct way to write stories, was refusing to listen to feedback from readers (which responsible authors really should take into account), and should provide some way of disclosing to readers ahead of time that they’re not going to get what they’re all going to want. (This reader explained to me that they truly felt I should post spoilers of the future story so no one would be harmed by not getting the ending they wanted in the story. They would certainly all be reading to get the plot point they wanted, and I had a responsibility to reveal that it wasn’t going to go that way.)

Obviously I was baffled by this weird entitlement–no, readers don’t get to tell me what I have a responsibility to write!–and I was pretty confused by the suggestion that I owed people full disclosure of future events, not to mention the reader’s belief that I was knowingly writing the story in a way everyone would hate. I’m pretty sure that if I’ve written it to be devastating when characters experience tragedy, I’m doing something right! But on top of that . . . you’re welcome to stop reading any story you’re not enjoying, for any reason!

I sometimes have strong feelings about stories–we all do, right? That’s why we write!–but I’d never dream of e-mailing the author of an ongoing story and telling them what they should be doing with their plot. I’m good at offering feedback when it’s solicited, and I love posting book reviews when I read completed books (some of my reviews are negative), but I can’t say I’ve ever felt entitled to explain to another author that they should be writing a different story than the one they chose to write.

(And if you think an author wrote an awesome story up to one point and then ruined it, or corrupted the story with an element they should have left out, or just wish they would have written it how you would have . . . yeah, that’s what fanfiction is for!)

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Do you know how long it’s been since I finished writing a novel? DO YOU?

I’m not going to say because IT’S EMBARRASSING.

And now I literally have to cut half the words out of this thing to really even have a chance at sending it anywhere.

Let the games begin.

(After ice cream.)

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You mean I could actually wrap the book up when my character’s major arc is over?

I don’t have to, like, revolutionize her culture, give her a happily ever after, make peace between two alien species, and solve homophobia?

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Different strategies work for different people, but dang, I don’t relate at all when people actually find lots of social interaction helpful in terms of motivation!

I’ve had people tell me it helps so much to have other people engaged in their work and rooting for them to finish so they can read the new chapters hot off the presses. I’ve had people tell me how helpful it is to be around other writers to keep them excited about working on their project. I’ve had people tell me that social interaction infuses them with they energy to get through the long stretches of solitary creating, and that connecting with others is a breath of fresh air.

And I’m the exact opposite.

I’ll participate in a social writing activity if I’m truly going to learn something (or, you know, help somebody else!), but I really like being all by myself, butt in chair, working on the WIP, no interruptions.

We’re all different! That’s for sure!

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To be clear, I do NOT think that every kind of coach must have direct successful personal experience with the subject they’re coaching; it’s just the nature of some professions that certain lessons CAN be taught (and successfully followed by students) without the teacher having personal experience. I can teach you about different kinds of coffee beans without having personally harvested them where they grow, for instance. But if you’re trying to teach people how to do something and what you’re doing DIDN’T work for you? Reconsider.

I once knew two young women who were excited to go on a surfing trip with their boyfriends, but they had literally never surfed before. After their boyfriends taught them some basics and then, ya know, went off together to do real surfing, the girls began filming each other demonstrating how to surf and giving pointers that had probably been given to them a few hours ago–demonstrating the basics incorrectly, getting details wrong, and basically looking ridiculous but trying to sound like they had any authority to teach others how to surf. It had the feel of a toddler in a play kitchen explaining in baby babble how to fix a sandwich. They posted their video proudly on one of their YouTube channels. The comments filled up with people saying what was wrong with their advice or warning people not to take advice from them. They eventually deleted the video.

You should not learn how to do things you care about from people who don’t know how to do it. At best it just will not work. At worst it will teach you bad habits.

Furthermore, some people who have no experience or credentials are out there to intentionally scam you. People posing as editors, writing coaches, and especially publishers and agents will sometimes draw in victims by pretending to have expertise and offering advice, then separating you from your money. You should want to know the background of people who give you advice in a professional capacity, and especially if they create materials or provide coaching that you have to pay for, it isn’t wrong for you to expect them to have either proven insider knowledge or personal success on the subject. They’re most likely not going to tell you straight up that they don’t have the experience the way the conversation went in this comic, either, so beware.