Here is a question I just got in my email inbox (paraphrased):

I love your Two Dogs in a Trench Coat books. They are so hilarious! I hope you write more!1 I am a new writer, and am currently working on a book about two dogs in a trench coat who go out on fun and hilarious adventures. Is that ok with you?

Go for it. Knock yourself out. I certainly don’t have the copyright on a trope.

There are honestly only so many book ideas to go around. Even beyond bedtime books or first-day-of-school books there are books that sound, from the outside, very similar. Or at least the titles are similar enough to potentially cause confusion. My first book was Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book) and frequently I have had concerned friends send me links to books about Snappy the Alligator, or Snappy the Croc, worried I’m being ripped off. I was accused on Facebook of stealing a book idea, because I have a book about Rick the Rock, and there’s another book (which I didn’t know about until after my book published) about Ricky the Rock.2

So the titles are similar, but the books themselves are very different. (It’s like: did H.G. Wells get mad at Ralph Ellison for titling his book Invisible Man? I bet not! They are very different books!)

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Q+A posts are usually only for paid subscribers, but occasionally (like today) I share them for everyone.

T. asks:

Have you written any books besides Snappsy?

This question didn’t come to this newsletter1 but from someone asking me in person, and I’m sharing it here because it shook me a little. It made me think about how much we do or do not have control over in our writing careers.

All we really have control over are the words we write. But there is a line of thinking, too, that we should do all we can to market and promote our books.

And, sure, do what you can. But also, it might not make a difference. I say this especially regarding promotion via social media, where we absolutely do not have control over who sees our posts (for instance, see this post from Publishing Confidential about the futility of author-led preorder campaigns). I’ll still post on social media about new books when I have them (for now) since it’s free (for now) but also it might make absolutely no difference. 

In the New York Times style magazine on Sunday, which was all about women artists, Yiyun Li wrote a great essay about ambition2, which includes this:

So ambition has little to do with the intrinsic values of an artist’s work. An artist, if ambitious, must canvas like a politician: striving, soliciting and winning popularity; seeking (and demanding, appropriately in the case of West) external acknowledgment and approval. Some artists are good at cultivating art, others at cultivating ambition, and those who are ambidextrous deserve all our respect.

I’m not particularly ambidextrous, as she describes it. I’ve done both — strived and solicited, or cultivated art — but not at the same time. The political striving in particular felt fraught, because I had no control over how people were hearing me, accepting me, consuming me.

Not only do I not have control over who sees my posts or hears about my books, I certainly don’t have control over who takes the next step of going to find one of my books so they can read it. There can be someone who is such a fan of my first book that they recognize me in public, but then is unaware that I’ve published anything else. And guess what? THAT’S FINE. People have lives that have nothing to do with mine (or yours). What obligation does a reader have? I think if someone loves books, their obligation is to keep reading, to do what they can to maintain that love, and, if possible, to pass that love on to others. A reader is under no obligation to seek out and purchase every book an author writes. A reader does not have to write an online review or tell anyone else on earth that they read and enjoyed a book. Sure, it’d be cool if more people bought more of my books, but if one person super loves one of my books, that's pretty cool too. Oh, and also? I have no control over any of that.

This is not to be discouraging but rather to be encouraging, because there is great freedom in knowing it’s not all on you to sell your books.3

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The thing you do have control over – the writing – is the best thing you can do to sell books. You’re more likely to publish more books and sell more books if you’re focused on making the books great. Yes, I know there are books that are best sellers that you hate. Don’t worry about that. Write the best book you can write. Yes, I know also that sometimes someone hits it big on tiktok and their book sells barge-fuls of copies, but I also know it’s incredibly hard to get that to happen, and your time is better spent working on your writing rather than trying to engineer virality.

I’ve been thinking a lot about taking intentional time away from the internet (which I talked about in a video last week) so that I can devote more time to writing, and to becoming a better writer. I know that’s the best use of my time right now. And still, it’s hard. I keep getting pulled back in, staring at my computer screen.4 But I know the most important thing for me to do is to keep writing (one idea that came up in the comments section for that video was creating an at-home writing retreat as a method for intentionally disconnecting, which sounds great to me).

Oh, and yes, I’ve written other books besides Snappsy. Feel free to buy them or get them from your library!5

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Ugh, I don’t know how to casually ask for your money. How does it work? On the one hand, keep your money. I mean, if you want to. I’m not going to forcibly part you from your cash. That would be terrible. But also, this is my job (writing books, and this Substack, plus the online class I recently launched). Does it make you uncomfortable? It makes me uncomfortable to ask for money, but not uncomfortable to do this for money. It’s like there’s this little crevasse between those two things, and only sometimes am I brave enough to make the leap. talked about this recently, wisely. I have a real desire to say, "never mind, never mind, pretend I never asked!" And I'm truly grateful to everyone who subscribes and reads these words. But sometimes I feel like maybe some of you might not know there are other ways to support me, that there's a paid option, and books, and you might not know because I didn't tell you.

Subtle Maneuvers

Why it’s so hard for writers to ask for money for their work

Welcome to the latest edition of Subtle Maneuvers, my fortnightly newsletter on wriggling through a creative life. It’s been one year since I turned on paid subscriptions for this newsletter, and I thought I’d use the occasion to ask a question that’s been nagging at me, namely: Why is it so hard to ask for money for my work…

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3 years ago · 169 likes · 115 comments · Mason Currey

For today’s Q&A, I’m breaking with convention and answering a question that was asked on another blog. I love Deborah Halverson at Dear Editor (and have paid her to edit novel manuscripts! I recommend her!) and last month she answered a question about whether to change a pesky part of a picture book manuscript that the question asker suspected was the r…

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Sierra asks:

You’ve got a few books out now. Do you feel the same way about writing that you did when you were getting started? Or does it ever feel like a grind?

The short answer is no, writing doesn’t feel like a grind. But this question made me think about what “a grind” means.

Here are some universal truths about writing (universal to me, that is):

• You …

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Elayne asks:

Is there anything you've spent money on as a writer that you think gets you an especially great return on investment? (Big or small.)

This is a good question, because I am very good at justifying expenses as investments (books, notebooks, page markers shaped like birds) when in fact they are just fun things to have that feed my love of office…

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Siri asks:

Do you typically start with a story premise, or logline, or character...or something completely different? (If there's a commonality.)

I usually start with a character, something along the lines of “an X who does Y.” You know: a deer who wants to be a pirate, a moose who works in corporate office in the city, an alligator who realizes he’s in a…

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Elayne asks:

When did you start referring to yourself as a writer? Was there a moment that clarified to you that's what you should call yourself?

This is a good question, and a complex one (for me, at least). I’ve written things all my life, but I always had that feeling that saying “I’m a writer” meant that I got paid for it. Though honestly also saying …

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Tricia asks:

What was your path to publication?

I have always written. From this poem I typed about how much I love the alphabet when I was 4 until now.

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S. asks:

Do you do detailed art notes? I’m especially interested regarding jokes — do you do art notes that set up visual gags? I don’t use them for visual description unless it's something incredibly essential somehow (the big no-no), but I’m wondering if you use them otherwise.

As you point out, there’s a way to put in art notes that’s like waving a fla…

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Kara asks:

What are your revision techniques? Do they differ across genres?

Well, I’ll tell you how I revise and leave it up to you to decide whether or not it’s a technique.

I start longhand. I freewrite about what I want the story to be, ideas I have, and start writing whatever comes to me. It’s a mess, both visually and draft-wise.

At some point I have…

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Siri asks:

How many drafts did Snappsy take? Was the sequel harder or easier, and why?

Snappsy — by which I mean the first book, which was also my first published book, Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book) — did not take many drafts. At least not compared to my other books. It was seven drafts until it got a book deal, and then ten more…

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Sam of The Journey Continues asks:

I've finally managed to stop using social media, but I am still feeling distracted and unfocused. I can't read a book for very long without feeling jumpy. Do you have any tips?

I do have tips!

The first thing I’ll say is that what you’re feeling is completely normal, and it’s not your fault. It’s because your brain has …

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Anna asks:

I’ve been going back and forth about deleting my Twitter account for weeks (well, months, tbh). There’s a myriad of reasons making me feel like it’s just not worth it anymore, mostly since my eyes equal ad dollars to someone…and you know, blah, blah, blah.

I’m coming up on my one-year anniversary deleting FB, which I haven’t missed one bit. And…

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M. asks:

Do your stories still get rejected?

YES.

There are a million reasons a manuscript gets acquired (ok, maybe not a million, but many) and just as many reasons a manuscript gets rejected. My gut feeling is that the number one reason a manuscript gets rejected is what might colloquially be termed “not feeling it.” The editor (or my agent) doesn’t conn…

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My answer to this question was so long that I recorded it, if you want to listen instead of read:

Nolan asks:

What’s the process of going from having a bunch of ideas for picture books to a published book? I know there’s a lot of work in there, but what is the work? How do I get there?

Hi Nolan! This is a great question. You have ideas for books, and you see what a finished book looks like, but it feels like a mystery, how does the idea get from scribbles in your notebook to a book someone can buy?

First of all, write down all your ideas, always. You may choose to have a dedicated notebook for your ideas, or you may keep track of them some other way. Write them all down.

Then, see what ideas are the loudest. Which ones either have layered and compelling lead characters or a clearly-defined concept? So it might be a voicey main character who could conceivably be in many different stories, but that character is strong enough that they are talking to you now, in your head. OR it might be such a strong hook/concept/premise that you’re getting tangential ideas for what can happen on each page.

Choose one of those ideas. And start writing. I write my first drafts longhand in a notebook, because then they look messy, not like books yet, and I can be more freewheeling. I might write a beginning, stop after the first scene, and then start to ask myself questions. I might get halfway and stall and then start freewriting about different ways it can end. But I generally try to sit there for 30-60 minutes and come up with at least a framework for how the story might work.

You might have a different process. That’s fine. Figure out how to write a version of the idea as a story, from beginning to end. Then put it aside for a little bit, and try another one of your ideas. Get that feeling of going from story beginning to story middle to story end.

When you have some distance (a few weeks, at least) from that first draft, go back and revise it. Critique it like someone else wrote it. What’s working? What’s not? What’s the story about? Is anything happening? Maybe see if you can write a pitch as a sort of mission statement to write toward, knowing it will change (I have a video about writing pitches, here). Do you need a plot? (I have a post about plots, here.) What’s the heart of your story? Is it about friendship, or loneliness, or wanting to be alone, or finding yourself, or about making the world’s best pot of soup? Pick one. If that doesn’t work, pick a different one. Play around. It’s a picture book! You have freedom to make cows fly if it makes sense for your book, and you have freedom to play with points of view and tense and plot while you’re revising.

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Click here to be directed to a form where you can ask me anything.

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S. asks:

It looks like I can suggest people for my publisher to approach for early blurbs. Are there guidelines for doing this? Especially since I've connected with others in kidlit more online vs. in person, so it's hard to tell how close a connection is close enough and I don't want to overstep of course.

Oh yeah, the blurb thing is rough. For one thing…

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We’ve got two questions about how to prepare for a book festival.

Margaret asks:

I have a book festival coming up, and I’m wondering if I should make a script/plan for it?

and Lisa asks:

What if no one one comes? Like I work up a patter to ask questions of kids and then there is only one kid and she’s shy?

These are both good questions! There’s so much anti…

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