How I Became a Published Writer – Part 7 of 7

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #7:


Written by Alan Chin


With three novels published, I spent four or more hours per day promoting my books, all the time thinking there must be an easier way. Then a fellow writer told me I should become a screenwriter if I didn’t like promoting. Screenwriters write movie scripts, sell them to studios, and the studios do the promotion. That sounded great to me. And how difficult could it be writing movie scripts? I mean, I’ve sat through volumes of movies thinking: I can do better than this….

I started by taking a college-level screenwriting class, which gave me the basics on formatting and structure of screenplays. I then joined a group of screenwriters who met once per week to critique each other’s work and help each other through the process of writing and polishing their screenplays. It was a fun group of talented writers, and with their help and encouragement I began to learn at Concord speed. At first I found it difficult to write screenplays. One has to strip away everything except what is shown on the screen. No long descriptions, no internal dialog, no telling what the characters are feeling. Only showing, mixed with dialog. You have to strip away all the flesh of a story until there is nothing left but bones.

I found that I loved that process, because it drove me to analyze the heart of the story, and also of each subplot. Then came the hardest part, making sure that specific turns in the story happen on specific pages. Movie scripts are incredibly structured, and industry professionals expect certain plot points on certain pages. It’s maddening, yet I began to relish the challenge of it.

In a little over a year I produced two screenplays, Daddy’s Money and Simple Treasures. Now came the time to sell my scripts to a studio. I now believe that for an unknown writer, it is perhaps a million times harder to get a movie professional to read your script than it is to get a publisher to publish your book. Nobody wanted to read my scripts. I spent a year before I finally managed to convince an indie producer/director to read Daddy’s Money. He loved it, even wanted to make the movie. The problem? He had no extra money to do the project. It takes millions to make a movie, and few people are willing to gamble that kind of money on an unknown scriptwriter.

I’ve spent a few years banging my head against producer’s doors with no result. During that time I wrote another screenplay, Flying Solo, and published another novel, Butterfly’s Child. I am now in the process of rewriting my screenplays into novels because I have lost confidence that I will ever see them made into movies.

I keep writing both screenplays and novels, and I keep promoting my books on the internet each day. I occasionally ask myself how much longer I will keep working to produce my stories, and more importantly, why I produce them. With all these many hours of work, it seems there must be more to it than the gratifying pleasure that a well-written story brings, both in the reading and the writing.

I know the answer, but to explain it I’d like to share a letter from a reader I received back in April of this year. I’ve gotten to the point where I regularly receive emails from readers telling me how much they enjoyed my stories, and although I love reading them, I no longer get too excited over them. But every once in a while one pops up in my inbox that is special. I’d like to share one with you that came shortly after the tsunami hit Japan earlier this year. She is talking about my novel, The Lonely War, and my offer to send all profits during the months of April and May to the Red Cross Japanese Relief Fund.

Dear Alan,

So beautifully written, and so very bittersweet. Thanks for what you did with it. I got it at the beginning of the month so that the funds could go to Japan. I should have had two boxes of facial tissues handy before I started reading though...I went through one and had to resort to drastic measures (papertowels, lol). Bravo.

For myself I'm declaring this week Alan Chin week. Because right now you're my own personal newly minted hero. Thank you for helping me remember that each person can make a difference.

May You Be Well,

And I responded to her with a heartfelt, thank you back, for helping me remember why I write. Because it’s true, whether it’s donating money, lending a neighbor a hand, or simply capturing with words the truth you find in your heart and sharing that, one person can make a difference in the world.

This seven-part series tries to chronicle how I became a published writer with a reputable publisher. It’s actually the path I took to make a dream come true. Reaching a new goal often means letting go of something you cherish. I gave up a seventeen-year corporate career with a highly esteemed company. How did I do it? I simply took the first step, then followed my heart. I’ve learned my craft as best I can, and I keep leaning each new day. Most importantly, I didn’t let any setback stop me.

What I hope you glean from my experience is that it is possible to follow your passion. And when you do, good things happen. Don’t wait for time to become right. Face your fears, make a plan, and take the first step.

You can find out more about Alan Chin and his books at http://alanchin.net

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 6 of 7

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #6:

Written by Alan Chin


In October, 2008, a seed I had planted and nurtured and worked toward for several years had finally flowered. My first book, Island Song, was published. As I held a copy in my hands, I said to myself, “You’re now published, and what you’ve written will have an effect on readers. Who knows how many people will read this?”

My euphoria wore off in only a few days, and reality settled in—if I really wanted many readers to be effected by my novel, then I needed to let them know about it. Up until that point I had thought the whole writing/editing/publishing effort had been hard work, but now I needed to market my book, and I had no idea of where to start.

I read a study that claimed over 80%—over 80%!!!—of all books published in 2006 sold less than one-hundred copies. They attributed this sad statistic to the fact that most publishers do nothing to promote books unless well-known authors write them. Add to that, most writers are dismal at marketing. They sell a few dozen books to friends and family, and give up due to lack of confidence or lack of effort. I became determined to sell several hundred copies, perhaps even thousands. But how?

I knew that many authors spend hordes of money traveling to book expos and bookstore signings to peddle their books, but I didn’t have the confidence that sinking that much money into promotion would pay off in the long run. It seemed to me that spending time on the Internet—direct mailings, writing blogs, literary group discussions, chat rooms, review sites, Facebook and Twitter—was a cheap way to get my name out there. It could also be the most effective way, my publisher informed me, if I was willing to put in the time and effort. Luckily, being retired, I had plenty of both to spare.

So I began to split my time between two tasks. I spent mornings, generally 8am to noon, working on my third novel, Match Maker, a story of gay tennis players battling homophobia on the pro tennis circuit. I would break for lunch and a few hours with my husband, be back at the computer by 3pm, and would work the Internet in whatever way presented itself until dinner at 7pm. That became, and still is, my pattern—four hours of writing in the mornings, four hours of marketing in the afternoons. It’s been a fulltime job since 2008. So much for retirement….

It didn’t take long before my hours upon hours of working the Internet felt like screaming into a black hole. Nothing came back, and the sales figures for my first two books confirmed that my efforts produced little results. The thing that effectively boosted sales was book reviews, and I was fortunate to gather a number of five-star reviews from prominent reviewers. But there were only a handful of sites that reviewed lgbt themed books. So in 2009, I began reviewing lgbt themed books and posting them on my writer’s blog. That led to creating two other review sites, including managing an LGBT literature column for Examiner.com here in San Francisco. I quickly found that I enjoyed reading/reviewing other writer’s works, and I felt I was offering other writers new outlets to promote their books. It became a win/win situation not only for me, but also for the writers I admire. It also put me in contact with dozens of writers and publishers whom I never would have met otherwise.

Today I review thirty to forty books per year, and my reviews are read on six different literary sites, including Lambda’s literary blog. Even though more readers were seeing my name here and there, sales were still sluggish. When I published my third novel, Match Maker, with a different publisher, Dreamspinner Press, my sales took a very satisfying jump. I believe this happened for two reasons. First, the book was very well received by readers and reviewers. Second, Dreamspinner Press helps its authors promote their books. Since switching publishers, my books sales have been steadily rising, and I’m pretty thrilled about it.

But still I spent four or more hours per day promoting my books, all the time thinking there must be an easier way. Then a fellow writer told me I should become a screenwriter if I didn’t like promoting. Screenwriters write movie scripts, sell them to studios, and the studios do the promotion. That sounded great to me. And how difficult could it be writing movie scripts? I mean, I’ve sat through volumes of movies thinking: I can do better than this….

Let me say, I couldn’t have been more wrong. But more about my journey down the screenwriting path in the next installment.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 5 of 7

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #5:


Written by Alan Chin


I had confidently thought that once my debut novel, Island Song, had been signed with a publisher, even a small independent publisher like Zumaya Publications, I could relax and not worry about being the unknown quantity any more. I mean, I had a contract, and a soon-to-be a published book. Didn’t that raise me above the hordes of faceless, nameless writers who keep beating their heads against the wall? Shouldn’t that open doors previously closed to me? Shouldn’t that make people sit up and take notice? Ha! That should tell you how naive I was, not to mention full of myself. The term green as grass is no mere cliché.

I started my second novel, The Lonely War, before the ink had dried on that Zumaya Publications contract for my first novel. It took me roughly two years to write, edit and polish; yet it was finished long before Island Song was published. You see, Zumaya is a very small shop trying to publish twenty-five or more books per year. There were a few dozen books in the queue ahead of mine, and only one person to slog through the backlog of editing, preparing, organizing cover art, publishing, marketing, attracting new talent and writing checks. One of the hardest lessons to learn in indie publishing is that nothing happens quickly. Nothing.

My second manuscript, a gay love story that spans WWII, starts on a US Destroyer, moves to a Japanese POW camp (Changi), and ends in Japan after the war. I was aware at the time of writing that many readers are not interested in war historicals. But I felt compelled to make a statement about gays in the military, and this particular setting and time frame gave me exactly the set of circumstances I needed for my premise.

So armed with my two-year-old contract and a new manuscript, I began sending out query letters—about forty of them—to all the larger publishers, believing that they would take me seriously this time. As with my first novel, most of them merely ignored my letters. Some were kind enough to send a standard rejection note. As the rejection notices piled up, my confidence nosedived. Keep in mind I am an openly gay man writing uplifting stories about gay protagonists for a gay audience. That dramatically limited the number publishers and literary agents interested in handling my work.

In the end, I sent the manuscript to Zumaya Publications, knowing that it would be years before being published. They accepted the manuscript and sent a second contract.

Now I had two novels to be published. The first in mid 2008, the second in late 2009. Of course I would have preferred a larger, more prestigious publisher, but regardless I was thrilled about publishing two books and starting on a third—Match Maker.

At about the same time Zumaya began editing my Island Song manuscript, they also contracted with an artist to create the cover art. I sent some ideas to the artist, including a mockup of a cover my husband, Herman, had produced. As far as I was concerned, Herman’s mockup was a perfect cover. However what came back turned out to be, in my humble opinion, hideously ugly. I put my foot down, and I went back and forth for two weeks with the publisher trying to forge a better cover. At one point, the publisher told me they were cutting me out of the conversation. They had full rights to design whatever cover they deemed suitable, and I would make due with what they produced.

I can tell you with no hint of exaggeration that I simply loathed that original cover. It drove a wedge between me and my publisher that never really repaired itself. If I had not already signed that second contract, I would have not taken a chance on Zumaya again. I felt that strongly about it.

But soon after, I held my first published book in my hands. It was an amazing feeling that literally moved me to tears. A seed planted in 2001 finally gave fruit in late 2008. Even with that hideous cover, I loved it. And for the next year, I learned, not too successfully, the other side of the publishing coin—marketing.

But more about marketing in the next installment. For now, let me say that for I year I struggled to get my name out there so people would buy my book. When it came time for Zumaya Publications to produce my second novel, to my great surprise, they gave me a cover that I loved. Loved it then, and still do. I’m very proud of The Lonely War—both the story and the cover—and very grateful to Zumaya Publications for the superior job they did in publishing it.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 4 of 7

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #4:

Written by Alan Chin

In 2001, having retired from the corporate world with a little nest egg to keep me from starving, I now had the time, the energy, the ambition, and an idea for a story. How hard could it be? I mean, I had an advanced degree in writing from a prestigious university for Pete’s sake. It was solely a matter of making myself sit at the computer for three hours each day and type until my fingers bled, pounding out words to form sentences, then paragraphs, then pages, then chapters until I typed “The End”. How simple can it get? At least that’s how my husband sees it.

I first sketched out a high-level outline, mostly to get my head around the whole story. I made notes about where the main plot points would take place, and then began forming impressions of the main characters. As I said in an earlier post, Island Song was a story about homophobia, gay bashing, and fighting back. But it had to be more. It had to have a subtext of Buddhist ideals, which of course means passivism. That became the trick, to write about hate and vicious beatings, yet have an underlying message of passivism. And to do that, I knew up front I needed a special blend of characters, so I created four detailed character sketches for the main characters to insure they had the attributes the story needed from them.

Once I had the high-level outline and the character sketches in hand, I started the manuscript. From the outline, I knew all the drama would come to a head in a barroom brawl between the protagonist and several homophobic bashers. So I started the manuscript by writing a line of dialog in that climax scene:

Garrett said, “When you tell your friends about this, be sure to let them know it was Tinkerbell, a fairy, a fucking faggot, that kicked your ass and had you sucking up your own puke.”

In the years of rewriting and editing, this one line never changed. It was a stake in the ground of where the story was headed, a lighthouse beacon guiding me to the safe harbor. Once I had that one line, I went back to the beginning and wrote the first draft chronologically. It took me about a year.

That first draft took so long because once the characters were put on the page, they began to flower, to expand, to change, and finally to have a will of their own. I experienced a remarkable process where the characters, all of them, came to life in my mind. At first I simply thought they were interesting vehicles to tell my story. But then I began to relate to them as actual people and had ongoing dialogs with them. Then I slowly fell in love with them. As my knowledge of their personalities deepened, so did my love for them. So as these characters changed in my mind, I was forced to go back to the beginning and change the story to better fit my characters. And the funny thing was, that as I fell in love with Garrett and Song and Grandfather and Hap, the focus of the story changed from gay bashing to love, and I’m talking more than m/m romance. I mean love of family, love of place, love of culture, even the simple love of waking in the morning and being excited about the day. It turned into a collage of love on every level.

But at long last I did complete the story. I was so excited by the final product that I rushed through two rounds of edits, had a few friends proof read it, and then I sent out query letters to every publisher and literary agent who handled LGBT themed books. Now came the tough part: one rejection letter after another. Six months of rejections deflates the ego to a pancake. I knew the story was a good one. I really believed in it, so I assumed I had written it poorly. I went back to work, editing.

I rewrote the whole manuscript, focusing on language and voice. Again, I had friends proofread it, and sent out another round of query letters, only to get another six months of rejections. I thought about giving up or self publishing, but as I say, I really believed in the story.

In desperation, I purchased a book called, The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. Lukeman described how most publishers and people in the business only read the first few pages looking for style and a good hook. If you don’t impress them by page five, your manuscript goes in the trash. Lukeman went on to tell what publishers are looking for, and what turns them off—things like passive voice, over reliance on adverbs and adjectives, showing verses telling, tone, and style. Lukeman recommended that you go through the first five pages and clean them up using his writing tips. I edited all three hundred pages using his tips as a guide. That book, more than any other, taught me the kind of writing techniques that get your foot in the door of a publisher.

After completing a third major rewrite over a period of three years, I sent out a dozen query letters to some of the smaller publishers I had already approached. Again, the rejections came flowing back. I finally gave up on Island Song, but I didn’t give up on writing. I started a new novel, a WWII historical novel entitled The Lonely War.

A few months later, I was visiting some friends in Southern California. There was a small party going on and we were all crammed into the kitchen drinking coffee and eating cookies. I pulled out my laptop and checked my email. There was a note from Zumaya Publications, a small publisher in Texas, telling me that if the Island Song manuscript was still available, they were willing to publish it. They attached a signed contract to the email. I let out a scream as I leaped off my chair. It scared the hell out of everybody in the house. They were all mad and thrilled for me at the same time. That was a turning point for me, but the battle was far from over.

More to come.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 3 of 7

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #3:

Written by Alan Chin

It took a span of ten years after I received my Masters in Writing diploma before I started working on what would become my first published novel. You see, by the time I earned my degree, I had been promoted again to a much more taxing position. I worked a high pay, high stress, long-hour management job. My department was responsible for some of the most complex, big-budget computer projects in our brokerage firm. At the end of the day, at the end of the week, I had nothing left to give to my craft of writing. My job was all consuming, a black hole for my time, energy, and one sixteen-year relationship.

But by the end of the decade, I had accumulated enough company stock to live a frugal life without the overcaffeinated, sixty-hour-week career. So on April 1st of 1999, I happily skipped out of Charles Schwab & Co. for the last time. I will forever be grateful to Chuck Schwab, the company, and the people who work there, but I never want to see them again.

My partner, Herman, and I spent two years traveling the globe, visiting over forty-five destinations. We scuba dived the Great Barrier Reef and the Red Sea, tracked black rhino in the Serengeti, hiked over mountain trails in Nepal and Tibet, and dined in most of the capitals of Asia and Europe. It was during these travels that I began to write again, keeping a journal, which led to dreaming of completing a novel. I struggled to find a topic I cared about. I was not content to simply write some cliché romance story. It had to be good and it had to say something about me, about my view of the world. But nothing substantial came to mind.

Then, while enjoying a few weeks on a beach in southern Thailand, I read a book that changed my life—Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. For the first time, I read a brilliant book of fiction where the author intricately wove Buddhist philosophy into the storyline (did I mention that I am a Buddhist?). The book presented everything I felt in my core, but did so seamlessly with the actions and dialog of his characters. Beneath the characters and plot, lay a subtext with a very profound message. At some point toward the end of that book a switch clicked on in my head, and I knew I wanted to write, had to write, my own novel with a similar subtext.

I picked through the short stories I had written in college a decade earlier and found a story I had written about gay bashing, and about fighting back. It was a story of outrage that I wrote after hearing of a murder trial in Phoenix, Arizona. You see, four high school students had pled guilty to beating a fellow student to death, simply because he was gay. All four bashers were on the school football team, and the judge let the boys off with six years probation, because he felt they were fine, upstanding athletes.

The rage I still felt ten years later drove me to pick up this short story and begin crafting a longer work about homophobia, gay bashing, and fighting back. I wanted desperately for my gay characters to pitilessly kick some basher’s ass. But it had to be more. It had to have a subtext of Buddhist ideals, which of course means passivism. That became the trick, to write about hate, vicious beatings, yet have an underlying message of passivism.

I believe I accomplished my goal, but you will need to read my first published novel, Island Song, in order to find out how. The novel took me two years to write, and another year to rewrite after fifty literary agents and publishers had turned the book down. But more about that in my next installment.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 2 of 7

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #2:


Written by Alan Chin

My years attending the University of San Francisco, working toward a Masters in Writing degree were both amazing and frustrating.

The frustration came in two flavors. The first was that I was struggling with a fulltime management job that often stretched into sixty-hour weeks. Heap on another thirty hours of classroom and homework, and there was no time for any social activities. Yes, I went almost two years without any kind of social life outside of work and classroom. For a man in the prime of life, that was a difficult sacrifice.

The second frustration was that I attended each class with the same group of students—about twenty of us as I recall—and I was the only gay student. All my writing for classwork was focused on my experiences as a gay man, highlighting issues with family and my job from a gay perspective. The other students were not openly hostile, but none were supportive. Other students would present their work, and the class would gush out praise no matter how mediocre the writing. I would present my work to a wall of silence. Often, there would be not a single comment (keep in mind this was back in the early nineties.) The only encouragement I received came from the instructors, who focused on structure and writing and flow, rather than content.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but being snubbed by my fellow students actually helped my writing. I was so intent on rattling their cages, that I struggled to become one of the better writers in the class. I was out to impress them all as a way to rub their bigotry in their faces. I freely admit now that my attitude was infantile, but I believe it did help me to take my writing more seriously.

Fortunately, there were amazing rewards as well. Writing gave me a creative outlet to dig deep into my being and analyze my life’s issues, then present them in a fictitious environment and with made-up characters. I fell in love with that process, which is a form of self-discovery. At that time in my life I held a great deal of rage inside, tying my gut in knots. For me, writing turned into a vehicle to both recognize and work through what I believed to be the injustices in my life.

You see, even today, every character I write about is an extension of me, and each character in my stories deal with problems that I struggle with myself. I believe all art is a form of self-discovery, and having tread down this path for so many years, I’ve come to feel that self-discovery is the most important thing a person can do in life.

A good novel, like life, is a journey for the writer and the reader, not to a destination, but of transformation. As the characters in the novel transform, so do the reader and writer.

So yes my college years were challenging, often overwhelming, but it was also a time of wonder as I delved into that grey matter between my ears and listened to the chaotic sounds my being sang. It was like learning to meditate for the first time, to open myself up to the universe and begin to understand my role in this incredible thing we call life.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 1 of 7

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #1:

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 1 of 7
Written by Alan Chin

I often hear published authors tell how they became interested in writing at a young age, and have written stories all their lives. That is not the case with me. Until my mid-thirties, I not only had no interest in writing, but I was inept at crafting English. The only thing worse than my spelling skills was my lack of knowledge regarding punctuation. In fact, it was my poor English skills that first propelled me down the road to writing novels.

You see, my career of choice back in the ‘80s was computer programming. I had worked my way up the technical ladder in a few short years. I became fluent in six different computer languages, and could create system level programs on several kinds of mainframe, mini, and PC computers.

After a successful project where I singlehandedly created the first application for people to trade stocks over the telephone while talking directly to the computer, I was offered a momentous break—a move to management. My company put me in charge of a group of twelve software engineers. I quickly found that working with people was much more rewarding than working with machines. I took to my new management career like a baby to its mother.

Six months into my new vocation, the V.P. of my division called me into his office and told me I was doing such a great job that he wanted to promote me to the next level of management and give me more staff. But, he said he couldn’t advance me because of my poor English skills. He complained that every time I wrote a report or sent an email, my English was so bad it made me look rather stupid, and he could not promote anyone who looked stupid. He suggested I take night courses to improve my writing skills.

I was not thrilled at the prospect of taking night classes while performing a fulltime job, but I knew I was going nowhere with a management career until I did. I finally found a Masters in Writing program at the University of San Francisco that only required me to spend one night a week sitting in the class room, but expected me to spend another twenty to thirty hours per week writing at home. I jumped at it, only because it was one night of classwork per week.

I had, rather foolishly, thought the course would cover proper grammar. But I soon found that college level courses focused on the techniques of writing stories, essays and poetry, and expected that students already knew the basics of spelling and grammar.

But by the time I realized that the course was not what I expected, I was hooked. What I lacked in English skills I made up for in storytelling ability. I bought some books on grammar, and worked twice as hard to come up to speed in order to keep up with the other students. Once I began writing stories for classwork, a whole new, wondrous world opened up for me. I had found a new love.

Six months after starting my course work for a Masters in Writing, my V.P. called me into his office to congratulate me on my improved writing skills. He proudly offered me a promotion to senior manager. I accepted the new position, but I was no longer interested in a management career. All I wanted to do was write stories.