What does Novak Djokovic have to do with writing? Read on…
Long title, yes, but I wanted to be sure I made sense. I am reading an article about “Tips for Writing Young Adult Fiction” from Writing Mastery and found a piece of advice that hit me like a brick and I’m going, YES! I’m gonna do this! Makes perfect sense. Why didn’t I think of it? Jeez, right? 🙂
The advice is:
“…create a spreadsheet where you can track the titles of the books you’ve read. Record the author, the publisher, and the date of publication. Go so far as to even record the agents and editors. You can often find this valuable information in the author’s acknowledgments section, usually at the end of the book, which can be helpful when you’re ready to submit to agents and editors yourself.”
Writing Mastery
Read the bestselling books in your genre written in the last five years. This will help us know what is selling and what readers are responding to. We can’t rely on books that are our favorites that were published more than five years ago.
- In the U.S, the best-selling book of 2022 was ‘It Ends with Us’ by Colleen Hoover.The book sold just under 2.73 million copies in 2022, 730,000 million copies more than the next runner-up: ‘Verity’, also by Colleen Hoover. ~ Zippia.com
Read widely in the genre you wish to publish. There are different styles of writing for different types of stories in that genre. For instance, there is the fantasy genre, but there is so much more than just fantasy. There’s contemporary fantasy, urban fantasy, gothic fantasy, historical fantasy, dystopian fantasy, medieval fantasy, and more.
Where does your story fit? Maybe in several categories. Pick the one it best fits in and make that #1, then select a second best fit for #2, etc. Maybe make three categories of sub-fantasy areas where your story will fit and study those on your spreadsheet. You can even make a column for this and mark it 1, 2, 3 so that you can sort on it and see how they stack up. Are they different? How? The same? How?
I’m a bit of a spreadsheet nut and love using Excel, but anything that sorts them out works. Airtable or Smartsheet or Notion or whatever.
- According to Book Ad Report, the following sub-genres make the most money:
- Romance and Erotica ($1.44 billion)
- Crime and Mystery ($728.2 million)
- Religious/Inspirational ($720 million)
- Science Fiction and Fantasy books ($590.2 million)
- Children and Young Adult ($160 million)
- Horror ($79.6 million)
Trendy isn’t your friendy. If you’re going traditional publishing, getting your book to the shelves is a long game. It could be more than a year after you submit it to the editor/publisher and even longer when submitting to the agent. By the time your book gets published and on the shelves, whatever was trending when you were writing it, is probably long gone. Although, let’s face it, some things never change, like vampires and relationships and well you get the drift. But do be aware of trends, those niche things that are super popular today that usually don’t last through tomorrow.
Preaching is for Sunday go to meetings. While we may have a theme or want to impart some wisdom in your story, readers are not selecting your book because they want to be told what to do, how to do it, or what will happen if they do this or that. You might have a character who embodies those traits and that’s OK. Avoid teaching and overt lectures. That kind of directness risks alienating your readers and you’ll end up in “file 13.” Our goal is to craft a compelling narrative and take our reader on a new adventure in some way.
Know what your age group is talking about. Whether you are writing YA or adult, early 20s or a retired cozy sleuth, know what works for that age group. Adults will read YA, but YA won’t necessarily read adult. This is a good area to research depending on your story and theme.
Social media is both your friend and your fiend. Lots of great research is available on social media. So are rabbit holes and nasty, negative people who might get your down on your story. Don’t engage with negativity. Dump them.
This reminds me of what I’m seeing on the U. S. Open. One of my favorite players currently playing is Novak Djokovic. The man is a tennis playing machine. He works so hard at every little thing to learn how to do a thing and how to avoid a thing, how to play offense and how to play defense. One of the most difficult things for a tennis player is how to stay positive and up beat during a match. Players are on the court alone. There’s no team to help motivate them when they make a mistake and get down. Now the coaches can yell out advice but like the commentators have said that even other players have said, the players can barely hear their coaches, if at all.
So, even with this recent rule change, the player is on the court by himself. Playing at a game as a job in front of about 25,000 in the stands, several more thousand on the outside of the courts watching on big TVs, and the millions who watch around the world. When the player makes an error, everyone sees it. When he executes a poor server, a badly thought out return, or put himself out of place to hit an otherwise hitable ball, everyone sees it as it happens. There’s no do-over, there’s no mulligan. There’s just OUT! and L’ET’S! or just watch the ball pass you by.
I can’t imagine a more embarrassing moment! What if my writing mistakes were real time, out in the world for all to see? The audience mummering behind my back–“she keeps using the was verb,” “there’s that introductory gerund phrase again,” “oh, she typo’ed!” or “do you think she could just add another ‘just’ word? My goodness.” LOL. I feel kinda lucky that people dont get to see my mistakes in real time!
So, I’m watching Djokovic play and he’s missing some his first serves. His coach indicates he should lift his head. Look forward. Maybe he means look up, but the indication I read was to look forward, eyes up front, not look down. I got the feeling he meant Novak was looking down too much, which might be not only spoiling his shot, but also spoiling his attitude.
So, my take from that is eyes front! Look forward! Chin up! Because looking down won’t get you anywhere but into negativity. Trust you’ve practiced enough that your feet and hands and body know where to go and what to do. And do it to the best of your ability.
He didn’t tell Novak to smile. That might have been a bit much in the middle of a match. Few players smile from pure enjoyment the whole match. It’s a long, grueling, sweaty thing. But some are able to in spite of their minds thinking and thinking of how they’ll play.
Watching tennis these two weeks reminds me: heads up! Trust myself while I’m writing because I’m in a tough spot for me, and writing my story from the end to the middle, a skeleton write. It helps me know what I need and who I need, when and where.
So, I’m off to start my spreadsheet just for a bit as a break, then back to my story. I’d love to see how you did your spreadsheet or layout. I’ll share mind when I get some good info on it.
Keep writing!
and just because we always need more data 🙂 ……
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