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How I Learned to Reverse Engineer Write a comment.
blog by RICK WALTON listed in categories: Writer's Life

My first publication was an odd one – a quote in the book MURPHY’S LAW: BOOK THREE – “A fool and his money are soon elected.” I was paid in kind, with books and calendars (where my quote appeared on election day), and was delighted to rationalize that, given the value of the goods I’d received, I had made more per word than Hemingway in his prime. Rationalizations like this have helped me through the trials of freelance writing.

I went a couple of years before I had any more success. I had been writing anything I could think of, much of it silly stuff involving playing with words. I knew little about breaking into the market, and had been almost randomly scattering manuscripts among the world’s publishers. Finally, after compiling a tall stack of rejections, in frustration I described in a one-page query letter eight of what I considered to be my most promising manuscripts. I submitted this query to over a hundred publishers. I soon began receiving my rejections. I was not happy, but I was not surprised.

And then came some positive news. One publisher wanted to see one of the described manuscripts. Then another publisher wanted the same. Then another, and another. Four of the publishers I’d shotgunned my queries to were at least interested in seeing what I’d written.

I sent out the requested manuscripts right away. Two of the publishers bowed out. The other two took their time. I waited, and waited. Finally, impatient, I called one of the publishers, Lerner Publications, to see if there had been any progress yet. The editor said that they were still considering my manuscript, (a play on the names of dinosaurs), but asked if I would be interested in writing riddle books.

At the time I would have been interested in writing car repair manuals, or phone books, anything to get published. I told her I would love to. We agreed on a two book contract.

My career had begun. And so easily. All I’d have to do was gather riddles from other sources and compile them into riddle books for Lerner.

And then Lerner sent me some sample books in the series. I read the riddles. They didn’t seem familiar, and they should have if they were collected, because I’d read a lot of riddle books. The thought occurred to me that maybe collecting wasn’t what Lerner had in mind.

I called my editor and asked her if she wanted the riddles to be original. She said that was what she preferred.

So I taught myself to write riddles. And all of my language training helped. Because I knew about sentence structure, and about parts of speech, and about phonetics, I quickly discovered that there were formulas and rules for riddle writing. And with the help of these discovered rules, I quickly wrote two books of original riddles. I then did six more books for that series, Lerner’s MAKE ME LAUGH series, and then wrote eight more books for a second Lerner joke book series.

I was paid a low flat fee for the riddle books, but they did help launch my writing career. Eight of the books were Reading Rainbow books and five were 1990 IRA Children’s Choice books.

And I gained something else very important from the experience – the ability to reverse engineer a type of writing, and learn how to create it myself. And most of what I’ve published I was able to write because I had this skill.

I’m glad those riddle books weren’t just collections.

Posted in March, 2008