It's 2008, hard to believe, I know, but that doesn't mean it isn't 2008 and what better way to start the new year, or as I call it, "The Year of the Writer", than with a list of writing trends I hope to see die in 2008.

8 – Calling 2008 "The Year of the Writer" whoever came up with this stupid name should be… oh wait…

7 – Obsessing over how much money a first time author receives as an advance when it's brought up in the news. Yeah, Lindsay Lohan will no doubt be offered like 100 grand for her memoirs, a tiny percentage of which will go to the ghost writer who fills in everything between "got first role as trick or treater dressed as garbage" on a 1992 David Letterman show, and "signed book contract." If I've learned anything in the 20 some-odd years I've been writing it's that fame helps a whole lot in landing book deals. And for the editors, take a chance on us. For the couple of hundred grand you'll dump on Michael Vick or OJ Simpson or Britney Spears' Mom, you can publish like 30 of us (and we probably won't spend the cash on ghost writers, defense attorneys, and rehab).

6 – Telling people that you're writing a book – yeah, awesome, get back to me when you have a first draft for me to read. Sounds harsh, I know, but think of it this way, it's like announcing you're engaged to be married and pregnant on the same day you agree to a blind date. Write the thing. Nothing takes the steam out of a writing a book more than telling people about the book you're writing. Why? Because they'll want to know what its about (or worse, they won't).

5 – Distancing yourself from your niche by describing your chick-lit novel as "a first person, contemporary journey through this hectic world where searching for real love shows a single mid-30s blonde the meaning of friendship and loyalty – but it's not chick-lit"

It's chick-lit. Deal with it.

Describing your post-apocalyptic zombie novel as "a journey between a father an son" Cormac McCarthy, I'm looking at you. And guess what, zombies trump father/son bonding when it comes to book jacket marketing. Just because you were on Oprah doesn't mean The Road doesn't belong right there next to Max Brooks' World War Z.

4 – Paying for stories in "exposure". Sure, this is a typical method of payment for little tiny webzines, but you know, if I want exposure I'll take off my clothes. How about this, how about offering a token payment of $5 for the rights to a story, or running a contest or something where there's some money in it. I wouldn't build a set of cabinets and just give it to you, why on Earth do you think I'd do that with writing? And for the magazines that do pay close to pro-rates, but only to writers of note while the rest of us get "exposure" get bent, sideways, twice.

3 – Fetishizing the physical act of writing, and I don't mean having a favorite pen or preferred style of keyboard either. I mean insisting that you can't write anything meaningful unless you're scratching away with an antique, chrome and silver fountain pen, using imported Portuguese fuscia glitter ink, in a $100 custom, handcrafted, sun-dried rice paper and papyrus medium weight rough edge paper, hard backed, wombat-leather covered silver inlaid, monogrammed notebook fastened together with synthetic ostrich tendons imported from Lapland between two hand rolled Aztek terra cotta sconces burning saffron scented, Icelandic dripless beeswax candles on a mahogany replica of John Steinbeck's desk, only during the full moon, of a leap year, when American Idol is in reruns.

This doesn't make your writing better, it simply makes it more annoying for anyone who has to listen to you talk about your "routine". This goes for antique typewriter fetishists, and operating system/word processor fanatics.

Seriously. Just write, okay? If it's good, we don't care if it's written on bar napkins in drool.

2 – Self pitying, naval gazing, blog-filling laments about impersonal rejection letters from big magazines/publishers. Seriously, they probably didn't even read past the first page. You should treat these things like junk mail, because they're junk. If an editor (or the cadre of associate editors working for an editor) can't spend five minutes typing out, in e-mail, that they couldn't take your story because the characters weren't fleshed out enough, then move on to the next magazine. I know the tendency when you get one of these "dear Writer" letters is to immediately consume an entire 2 gallon box of department store Zinfandel (for the ladies) or an entire case of Old Milwaukee Light (for the fellas) while sitting in a clawfoot bathtub filled with butter crunch ice cream and listening to Michael Buble/Ronny James Dio CDs, but seriously, toughen that ego a little huh, you're making a spectacle of yourselves.

1 – And finally, at Number One… Increasingly ludicrous turnaround time for submissions. I mean, a month… three… I can dig it. But seriously, sitting on a short story or sample chapters of a novel for 6-12 months is stretching believability, demanding no simultaneous submissions is even sillier. Tell you what, you turn our work around in a reasonable amount of time, and we might even subscribe to your magazines or buy books by your other authors. Don't think that because we're offering you the chance to buy a short story that you're like, our steady eddy or anything, because the bottom line, and it should be the bottom line for ALL writers, is that unless there's a check/contract on the way, the publication rights are up for grabs.

So there's the list. Have a great new year and get cracking. We have loads of stories to write.

(c) Jeffrey R. DeRego 2008