Category: Nonfiction Books

This is off my usual track, but it’s my blog, so I’m free to do so.

Science fiction writer Colin Harvey died Monday, 15 August 2011, of an unexpected stroke, at age 50. He’d published several hard SF novels and edited a variety of anthologies.

I was lucky enough to have Colin in my writing critique group.

One of the ways to improve your writing is to exchange manuscripts with other people. By critiquing others’ work, and getting critiques on your own, you see what works and what doesn’t. (Strictly speaking, I should mention that the purpose of the critiques is not to improve the manuscript you just submitted, but to improve what you write in the future. You can’t do a huge amount to fix what you’ve already written.)

A good critique group is a weird thing. You want your critiquers to like what you’ve written. But you want them to assault your work with everything they have, point out every deficiency, and push you to make you better. The closest comparison I can make is to a martial arts school, where you help your partners improve even as you smack the crap out of them, being friendly and kind and forceful simultaneously. In a successful writing group, you develop unique friendships, even with people you don’t know. Colin was one of those friends.

I joined my current writing group at the beginning of 2007. Colin was a member. In the years since, Colin simultaneously beat the living crap out of my work and supported me as a writer. My work dramatically improved, thanks in large part to his efforts. (Not to discount the other crit group members; they’ve all been invaluable. Even Rob.)

I still have a copy of every message that has passed through the writing group since I joined. Rather than just say what a tragedy his loss is, I thought it might be more meaningful to extract some of what he said about writing and offer it here. It’s gauche to repost semi-private conversations, of course. I don’t believe Colin would mind these particular clips. He had a fantastic sense of humor, openly documented his life on his blog, and said all of this about my work on a mailing list archived on Yahoo Groups.

(On his well-deserved critiques of the first piece I submitted): “I’m aware that this mail reads like a thorough kicking, and I’m trying hard to find some positives”

(On receiving harsh critiques): “I’ll take this opportunity to thank you and all the others for the comments…”

(On theme in writing): I believe that the themes that a writer writes about come from within. So duplicity and betrayal feature largely in mine for reasons that even I don’t understand. I believe that if someone has enough belief and talent to write, then themes can’t be imposed. Topics or subjects can, but not theme.

(On any crit group member making a sale): “Congratulations”

(On synopsis): I think the whole point of the synopsis discussion is that various elements of the group have recognized that their work –as it stands– is already of publishable quality, but that there are barriers to that work being published. One of the barriers is the synopsis, or –as in most submissions generally– an inadequate synopsis. Yes, an agent / publisher will look at your first one, two or three chapters and it may be that the extract is sufficiently good to off-set an inferior synopsis. But many agents just don’t have or want to spend the time if they don’t have to. It’s all about shortening the odds.

(On scenes): Scenes should -for me- serve one of three purposes
i ) To move the plot along
ii) To set a scene or to
iii) Illuminate the character(s) in it

(On advice from non-writers): Why are you letting a failed writer tell you what to write? And before you argue that — how many best-sellers has xxxxxx WRITTEN? How many awards has he won for his fiction? (Those are all rhetorical questions, btw. I know about lack of confidence – honest!)

(On research): I read as I go along. I never know what I need to read up on.

(On critiques): The whole point of crits is not to tell you what you do know, but to smack you in the side of the head from a completely unexpected direction.

(Whenever anybody said anything nice about his successes): Thank you,

(On vocabulary): recuperance? What sort of word is that? Did you just make it up?

(On getting published): Persistence, persistence, persistence.

(On future technology): I don’t see shaving disappearing anytime soon….

(On the Star Trek reboot): You went expecting a storyline? You’re clearly an optimist.

(on someone on the critique group mailing list whinging about the publishing industry): Rant on as much as you need to, as far as I’m concerned.

(after two years of discussing outlining novels versus winging the story, during which he converted me from a hard-core winger to a hard-core outliner, and I espouse the benefits of outlines to other group members): Oh, I am *so* enjoying the poacher-turned-gamekeeper aspect of this e-mail….

(On writing rules): The only ‘rule’ is if it works, do it.

(On the last piece of mine he critiqued): This is a very, very good story.

I could go on, and on, and on, but I’ve spent hours on this. And Colin would tell me to get back to writing my own work.

Colin never stopped improving his work. And he never stopped improving mine, either. He recently wrote novels that he hadn’t had time to finish marketing. I want to see both Black Death and Ultramassive in print. The latter is cool SF, and the former scared the crap out of me.

Colin left the writing group earlier this year, but he and I agreed to continue exchanging manuscripts in a less public forum. By sheer chance, we agreed to take a hiatus in August — we both had big family projects underway. If he’d spent the last month of his life reviewing my sewage work instead of spending time with his family, I’d feel pretty bad. If I’d still owed him a crit when he passed, I’d feel ghastly.

Colin spent his last days with people more important to him than myself. And that’s how it should have been.

I’m at a publishing workshop, learning how to write pitches, blurbs, and promotions. That drove home that my SSH book title might not be the best choice.

I’ve been planning to use the title “OpenSSH: Your Next Steps.” The book will take you to SSH competence, making sure that you use basic security precautions, master using keys for authentication, SSH tunneling, and so on. That title’s fine. As far as it goes.

But I think I can do better. I’m pondering calling it “SSH with OpenSSH and PuTTY” instead. The first title, I’d have to rely on keyword search to bring up SSH. This title brings all the key words into plain sight.

I learned with PGP and GPG that a title is important. If I had called that book “Email Encryption for Everyone,” I would have sold a lot more copies.

So, what do you lot think?

I now have all the reviewers I can manage, and am not looking for more. I’d make an exception if you’re, say, an OpenSSH or PuTTY developer, but other than I’m not accepting any more. I’d like to thank everyone who has volunteered to review this book.

I’ve received quite a few questions about how I do community-based tech reviews on forthcoming books, as well as offers for one or both of the projects I have underway. I’ve put up a public Web page about the process I follow. I expect to request community reviewers for one book later this week.

Realistically, my brain is limited. I can only manage about 20 prepub reviewers for a given project. I choose the best people from the pool of volunteers.

I hope that all of them will return useful comments. I expect that about 10 of them will return nothing. Another 5 will drop out halfway through.

So, if you volunteer and I don’t pick you, you can feel superior in knowing that you would have been one of the 25% to stay all the way through, except that I wasn’t smart enough to know that beforehand.

I know several tech authors who use an agent to sell their books license their copyright to publishers. Tech authors don’t need agents. You can sell to a tech publisher yourself, and hire a lawyer to evaluate any contract offered. I’ve never used an agent for my nonfiction.

Pimping yourself is work, yes. And it takes time, and you must educate yourself. But it’s not hard, or authors couldn’t do it. Before you decide to hire an agent to place your work, I suggest you read this. Some agents are transforming into publishers.

Are there good tech author agents? Certainly. Don’t ask me, I’ve never had an agent. I can’t even say what percentage of agents are good… could be 99%, could be 1%. But no profession is all good, or all bad. (Except, perhaps, clowns. But that’s a separate issue.)

If you really want an agent, if you’re convinced that you need an agent, you should know the signs of a bad agent. An agent must be your advocate. Not the publisher’s. And certainly not the agent’s. The agent’s job is to maximize your income so as to maximize his percentage, not to pay you a percent of his take from your work.

In publishing, money always flows towards the author. Any deviation from this is a danger sign.