Wuing You with Words ...

My newest novel, Rapture , is out. Giant thanks to my beta readers—you are worth all the bitcoins in the galaxy. Blurb, retail links, and excerpt are here .  You can win a free paperback at Goodreads. Goodreads Book Giveaway Rapture by Alex P. Wu Giveaway ends February 06, 2018. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway I wanted to write something completely different from my first novel, Morocco, Maybe , a travel love story. My favorite TV show of all time is Battlestar Galactica. S eriously. Nothing compares. The closest contenders are maybe The Newsroom (exciting, smart, and moving) and The Walking Dead (before most of the beloved original group got offed). Thus I tried to write a story with elements similar to those that made BSG appealing to me: science, action, philosophy, politics, religion, friendship, romance ... and in particular, moral ambig...

Life usually gives you clear signals about when to stop doing something. When you cough, you stop smoking. When the light turns red, you stop moving. When the tissue appears free of skid marks, you stop wiping. Writing is trickier, if one has obsessive tendencies. Call it perfectionism (to be polite), OCD (to be clinical), or analness (to be Freudian). It's hard to know when to stop rewriting. Even when I write a casual email, sometimes I read it multiple times before clicking that scary "send" button. It's like farting: once it's out, you can't suck it back. A friend once said to me that analness is good because anal people keep planes from falling down. True. When planes don't fall from the sky, the engineers know they got it right. With writing, the standard is more elusive. When I thought I was done with my novel, I kept tinkering with it. Sometimes, I obsessed over a tiny issue of word choice or punctuation - it was not necessarily wrong but ...

A while back, I read a blog post on divorce by Anna Spargo-Ryan.   Raw. Powerful. Relentless. That's how I would describe her writing. It has such feels. I saw the silhouettes. I heard the shouts, as well as the sighs. Most of all, I felt the sad. It’s easy to pound on the table but hard to whisper heaviness. Most writers rely on the meaning of their words to create atmosphere. Anna also sets the mood through the cadence of her words. It sprints, halts, then barrels forward again. You can’t really teach that stuff. Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood is a story of quiet but deep hurt. He once said , "No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist." Well, Anna certainly need not worry about the talent part. Her writing reminds me of a manuscript I betaed a while back. It was a coming-of-age story. A young dad, trying to tell his daughter complicated things about her mom,...

Colleen Hoover self-published her first book Slammed , which became Amazon and New York Times bestsellers. Eventually, the book got picked up by Simon & Schuster. The movie rights were sold. She wrote more bestselling books. Great story, right? This is where it gets better. Reading her  blog , I noticed this under "About Me": "19) I’m very unemotional and I’m not a romantic at all. So the fact that I write romance novels that make a lot of people cry is really strange." Unexpected, but interesting. I read on ... "12) I had never read a romance novel before writing SLAMMED. I pretty much stuck to true crime non-fiction and biographies before then. " Blew. Me. Away. Never read a romance novel? The conventional wisdom in fiction writing is you have to read a lot, especially in your genre. For most writers, it's probably a good idea to read a lot in your genre. You can learn about what makes for a good read or a bad read, what sells, what's ...

One of my writer friends said this: "It is less important to please people who don't like your book than to please people who do, because it is better to have something people love than something they merely don't hate."

Some of things I've learned learned while writing my first novel: Write fast; edit slow. For my earlier drafts, I tried to craft each sentence one by one. Dumb mistake. So much of the earlier stuff got cut.  Writing is a solo endeavor. You gotta love writing and you gotta love the story you're writing, otherwise you won't have the motivation to finish. You should read a lot and broadly. You can learn from everything. Even books you don't like will teach you what not to do. I've liked books in genres that I never thought I would like.  My favorite time to write is the middle of the night, when the world and my brain are quiet.

Beta readers are the best way to improve your novel.  The key is to get betas who are 100% honest, even if they hurt your feelings. Because they will. Many people will say, “Be honest,” even though they really aren’t ready for it. Not that they're lying; they may genuinely think they can take criticism. But getting critiqued can be like getting punched in the stomach. Until you've actually been punched, you don't really know how much it hurts. Here's another thing: Most people, consciously or not, really don't want honest feedback about themselves. When they ask, "How's my haircut?", they are really looking for affirmation that the haircut is nice.  The first time my manuscript was ripped, it hurt. A lot. But I wouldn't trade it for a gentle critique. The problem with a sugarcoated critique is that it lacks the impact of a blunt one. If something in my manuscript sucks, I need to know how much it sucks, not just it sucks, because a ...

Beta readers are people who read your manuscript and give you feedback. Many betas have read my manuscript in its entirety. Some were friends and family, some were strangers. A few were writers whom I swapped critiques with. I appreciate them all. Most were simply generous folks who helped me without expecting anything in return. Many gave me helpful comments that pointed out my blind spots and suggested ways to improve. To anyone who has beta-read my drivel, thanks again.