Month: May 2013
Image by Brocken Inaglory licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
In the last couple of months, I released one book and wrote another in six weeks, start to finish. (No, I don’t usually write that fast; yes, I really, really wish I had the magic recipe to make novels come that quickly and easily all the time– if I ever figure that recipe out, I’ll post it here!) I have more to do– there’s always more to do. Edits on another mostly-completed book, a sequel to the just-finished novel . . . But this week, I’m not working on any of it. This is the part of the process where I know I need to take some time to regroup and recharge, because I’m just . . . empty. If you imagine a story-well inside where the creativity bubbles up, then mine is at the moment dry.
And not that that’s a bad thing. There was a time– a LONG period of time–when being creatively empty would have felt like a bad thing to be– scary and unpleasant and wrong. Earlier in my writing career, I would have fretted and fumed at not being able to write, or worried that that inner story-well would never be refilled. To be honest, I still feel a bit restless when I have to take a break from writing– I love getting my daily word count; I’m happiest when I’m on fire with a story that is begging to be told. But this time around, it occurred to me that I was feeling much more at peace than usual with the idea of needing to take time to recharge. Somewhere along the way, I’ve learned to trust the process, to trust that the well of creativity will once again be filled- because it always is. To trust that my fingers will soon start to itch with the urge to write another story–because they always do. This time around, I’m letting myself relax into all the ways I’ve found over the years to help with a creative recharge.
Here are my chosen strategies:
Read MoreTrained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and literary agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), the first page has 16 or 17 lines.
The challenge: does this narrative compel you to turn the page?
[pullquote]Storytelling Checklist
Evaluate this opening page for how well it executes the following 6 vital storytelling elements. While it’s not a requirement that all of them must be on the first page, I think writers have the best chance of hooking a reader if they are. The one vital ingredient not listed is professional-caliber writing, a given for every page.
[/pullquote]
Let’s Flog Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Following is what would be the first manuscript page (17 lines) of Beautiful Ruins, the number 1 trade paperback on the May 5, 2013 New York Times bestseller list.
The dying actress arrived in his village the only way one could come directly—in a boat that motored into the cove, lurched past the rock jetty, and bumped against the end of the pier. She wavered a moment in the boat’s stern, then extended a slender hand to grip the mahogany railing; with the other, she pressed a wide-brimmed hat against her head. All around her, shards of sunlight broke on the flickering waves.
Twenty meters away, Pasquale Tursi watched the arrival of the woman as if in a dream. Or rather, he would think later, a dream’s opposite; a burst of clarity after a lifetime of sleep. Pasquale straightened and stopped what he was doing, what he was usually doing that spring, trying to construct a beach below his family’s empty pensione. Chest-deep in the cold Ligurian Sea, Pasquale was tossing rocks the size of cats in an attempt to fortify the breakwater, to keep the waves from hauling away his little mound of construction sand. Pasquale’s “beach” was only as wide as two fishing boats, and the ground beneath his dusting of sand was scalloped rock, but it was the closest thing to a flat piece of shoreline in the entire village; a rumor of a town that had ironically—or perhaps hopefully—been designated Porto despite the fact that the only boats to come in and out regularly belonged to the village’s handful of sardine and anchovy fishermen. The rest of the name, Vergogna, meant shame, and was a remnant from the founding of the (snip)
My vote and editorial notes after the fold.
We are so excited that our guest today is consulting editor Alan Rinzler. Alan has edited and published Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson, Jerzy Kosinski, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and others while working as Assistant Managing Editor at Simon & Schuster, Director of Trade Publishing at Bantam, west coast editor for the Grove Press, VP and Associate Publisher of Rolling Stone, where he was also President of Straight Arrow, and Executive Editor at Jossey-Bass/Wiley. Alan’s years of experience spans the gamut from commercial to literary, and he’s also edited a wide range of memoirs, histories, biographies, among others. We feel fortunate that Alan agreed to share his wisdom and expertise with WU today.
Check out his website and blog at www.alanrinzler.com to learn more.
Six Core Issues Facing Writers Today
Being an author these days requires much more than working alone in solitude. But you knew that, right? Many authors are taking charge of their work and stepping out at conferences, trainings, pitch sessions, writer’s groups, readings, and especially online with web sites, blogs, and social networking, no longer stuck in the stereotype of the shy or invisible recluse.
Authors are also required to navigate radical, unprecedented changes in getting published. Prior structures, procedures and assumptions have fallen apart. The balance of power has shifted and it’s unclear exactly who’s in charge as the traditional gatekeepers have lost their supremacy.
What does all this mean for you? My view is that it’s the best time ever to be a writer. Best but not easiest. Here are some of the questions a writer faces.
State of the Business
Will the book business survive hemorrhaging revenues, downsizing, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, merging haphazardly to reduce overhead, experimenting with one insane ebook program after another, reinventing itself desperately to convert from all print to all digital? Is this at long last the Death of the Traditional Book Publishing?
Have people stopped reading, stopped buying books? Are they getting their news and information for free online, so why spend the money. Is our culture suffering from a universal attention deficit disorder, too busy texting, YouTubing, friending on FaceBook, social networking. Is this the End of Intelligent Reading?
[pullquote]The only thing you can count on for sure is that people who think they know how it’s all going to fall out or what it’ll be like in two years don’t know what they’re talking about.[/pullquote]
Have as yet unknown writers been left high and dry as agents won’t take on an author without a track record or platform. Are all publishers so risk aversive that they’re looking for only best-selling stars or celebrities getting contracts?
Reality check
There’s a lot of confusion and contradictory advice going around today among writers and book publishing professionals. The only thing you can count on for sure is that people who think they know how it’s all going to fall out or what it’ll be like in two years don’t know what they’re talking about.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to play pundit and offer my unabashed opinion about the major issues a writer needs to confront these days, along with my short prognosis of choices to consider.
Read MoreMe and Mom
I’ve decided that I have a new quest as a writer. And I think it could help any other writers who dare to join me in this quest.
Like any good quest, it has a mission statement: Say no to woe.
(Pretty cool, huh? It even rhymes! Hey, I’m a writer, so the whole making-magic-with-words thing – well, it’s just what I do. But I digress…)
To what woe do I refer? The ever-popular “woe is me” mantra, which so many writers seem all too eager to adopt and trumpet. After all, it’s hard being a writer. Nobody appreciates us. It’s difficult to find time and energy to write and still deal with real-world concerns like making a living and supporting a family. And the odds are stacked against us. People like Snooki get book deals and we don’t. The same two dozen authors occupy 90% of the shelf space at any Target or WalMart. Meanwhile the rest of us toil away, unappreciated and unknown. It’s all so unfair!
A notable example of the SPP (Self-Pity Party) movement was this author’s recent article in Salon, in which he bemoans how hard it is to make it as an author, particularly in the strange new world of self-publishing. (The alert reader will note that this guy has already published three well-reviewed books on major imprints, and is now dipping his toe into the waters of self-publishing, seemingly without having done any significant research on the nature of those waters. Oh, and he also gets to write articles for Salon, so clearly this is a guy who just NEVER can catch a break as a writer.)
I’m sorry – was my sarcasm not coming through clearly enough? Then let me voice my reaction a bit more bluntly: Boo-freaking-hoo. You poor thing, you.
Lest you think my quest is directed only at people who aren’t thankful enough for their current blessings, I can assure you, it is not. No, this is an EOQ (Equal Opportunity Quest), aimed at bursting the bubble of self-pity in which any and all writers may be attempting to envelop themselves. Why? First of all, because self-pity is an enormous waste of energy. But an even more compelling reason – for me, at least – came from something my mom said to me many years ago, which I’ve never forgotten.
Read MoreI once had a client tell me she’d heard that sentences should never run more than fifteen words. To this day I have no idea where that rule came from, though it was probably from someone who either had a short attention span or had read way too much Henry James.
The rule is nonsense, of course. It wound up making all her characters seem like they had short attention spans. But it shows one of the dangers with trying to write by the rules – you wind up limiting your characters or story so you can color within the lines. Sure, more sophisticated rule-givers (George Orwell, for instance) try to get around this danger by giving you the rules on when to break the rules, and maybe even rules on when to break those. My head usually starts to hurt by that point.
Are there guidelines that can help you shape your writing? Sure. I co-authored a book full of them. And I recommend that you learn as much about them as you can. The danger lies in treating these guidelines as rules. It’s much more accurate – and safer – to think of them as tools.
Rules are made to be obeyed. Tools are made to do specific tasks. They’ll do one thing well, and another not so much. Once you know what various tools can and can’t do – what’s in your toolbox – you can pick the right tool for the job. (Full disclosure: I‘m saying this as someone who has, on occasion, used a socket wrench as a hammer.)
Read MoreEver since I can remember, I’ve loved fairy tales, myths, legends, and fantasy. It’s something I responded to instinctively as a young reader, and something I took to easily as a young writer, too. In my imagination and my dreams, journeying to those magical worlds seemed to me as natural as breathing. Of course I was an imaginative child; but it’s only lately that it’s struck me that perhaps there was also another reason why I so took to those genres. For the classic fantasy themes of the journey between worlds, the sojourn in strange places, and the sudden irruption of a different reality into the everyday is at the very heart of my own lived experience.
I come from a family whose ethnic history is to say the least, complex. Taking in French, Basque, Spanish, Portuguese, and French-Canadian, our history was always more than a bit player in all of our lives. People to whom I’ve told even a fraction of the vivid family stories are thrilled by them; they say, No wonder you became a writer!
But it’s more than that, for three things happened to me as a child that were like fairytale gifts: First, though my parents were both born and brought up in France, I was born in Indonesia, as they were expatriates working there at the time; second, because of ill health, I was then taken as a ten-month old baby to live with my paternal grandmother in France for four years, was told many traditional stories by her–and did not see my parents in all that time; and third, I was then taken, at the age of five, to yet another new place, Australia, where I first discovered English. And what’s more the first book I read for myself in English was a Little Golden Book comprising three fairytales–Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Toads and Diamonds–in it (there it is, in the centre of the picture).
Read MoreErika Robuck’s novel HEMINGWAY’S GIRL (NAL/Penguin) was selected as a Target Emerging Author pick, a Vero Beach Bestseller, and has been sold in two foreign markets to date. Her new novel, CALL ME ZELDA (NAL/Penguin), published on May 7, 2013, and looks to be another successful blend of history, mystery and compelling prose. The book begins in the years “after the party” for Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Erika writes about and reviews historical fiction at her blog, Muse. She is also a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Hemingway Society.
Best of all, CALL ME ZELDA is receving fabulous advanced praise:
“You thought you knew everything about the Fitzgeralds, their drama, delight, dazzle and despair? This gem of a novel spins a different, touching story, drawing you right into their intimacy and fragility through the eyes of Zelda’s caring nurse, Anna. You will love it, as I absolutely did.” –Tatiana de Rosnay, New York Times Bestselling Author of Sarah’s Key and The House I Loved
Erika says, “I have great affection for Zelda Fitzgerald, and I have a strong desire to set her story straight in the eyes of readers everywhere, to bring attention to the pain of mental illness, and to give hope through fiction.” Check out the trailer HERE. And follow Erika on Twitter and Facebook.
Enjoy this Take 5 with Erika Robuck.
Q: What’s the premise of your new book?
Held captive by her own tragic past, psychiatric nurse Anna Howard is drawn to her new patient, Zelda Fitzgerald—wife of the famous writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a woman whose raw pain mirrors that which Anna has long buried. As Zelda responds to Anna’s care, Anna becomes privy to Zelda’s most intimate confessions, written in a secret memoir meant only for her. Anna begins to wonder which Fitzgerald is the true genius, and longs to help Zelda find balance in her creativity and familial relationships. But in taking ever greater emotional risks to save Zelda, Anna may end up paying a far higher price than she intended…
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
I want readers to know that Anna is a fictional character based on the mention of “a nurse” who helped care for Zelda Fitzgerald during her stay at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore. While Anna’s story and search for healing from her past are fiction, Zelda’s story is true.
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
Read MoreI have just come off one of the most amazing months of my entire life. April involved traveling nearly the entire month, including a two week book tour,
teaching workshops and giving a keynote at a regional SCBWI conference, and attending the librarian paradise that is the Texas Library Association’s annual convention. It also involved one of my books being nominated for a RITA award, and another of my books even landed (briefly!) on the NYT list.
I have met hundreds of enthusiastic readers and librarians and booksellers and students and teachers, and my life has been enriched beyond measure by these connections.
The one thing I have not done is write a single word in over six weeks.
I know that some writers write on the road, but I am not hardwired that way. Being an extreme introvert means that as much as I adore meeting and connecting with all those lovely people, I also need recharging time. My brain is not able to produce words when it hits that level of exhaustion every day. Schlepping through airports does not feed my muse. Honestly, the idea of writing while I’m on the road feels like being asked to sing an aria while surfing an avalanche of rocks downhill.
Or maybe it’s simply my ADD kicking in and with so much stimulation on so many fronts (New city! New hotel room! New bookstore! Different high school!) my brain simply can’t get quiet enough.
Read MoreHere’s a piece of advice writers are universally given: if you want to learn to write, read good books. As counterintuitive as it may sound, this is almost always bad advice.
First, before your head explodes, I’m not suggesting that you don’t read good books.
Heck, reading good books is probably a big part of what made you want to be a writer. You’ve spent your life voraciously reading ‘em, right? So you know firsthand that when you’re lost in a compelling novel you’re transported to another world, and when the novel ends and you’re delivered back into our own dusty world, you see things a little differently. Or maybe a lot differently.
Stories change us. They inspire us, they give us insight into what makes people tick. Including ourselves. That’s their job. I’m not speaking metaphorically. I mean that literally: we’re wired to turn to story for useful intel. But, ironically, there is one kind of intel it’s very, very hard to gather from reading a great book. And that is information on how to write one.
Why? Because the first job of a good story is to instantly (and chemically) put your analytical brain to sleep. Here’s how a good story grabs us: it makes us curious. What’s going on here? What’s going to happen next? That curiosity triggers a surge of the neurotransmitter dopamine that’s kinda like a chloroform soaked rag when it comes to figuring out how the story is working its magic on you.
But here’s the real killer: it doesn’t feel that way. It feels as if we can see exactly how the writer is doing it. After all, it’s right there in front of us in black and white: the beautiful sentences, the great metaphors, that luscious prose, the fresh quirky voice. It’s so easy to mistake the beauty of the delivery system for the actual content it’s delivering — a story.
I want to break in here and say, in no uncertain terms, that I am not saying that beautiful writing isn’t important. What I am saying is that beautifully written novels – like all novels — get their power from the story they’re telling. Great writing heightens it, deepens it, and makes it more memorable, more compelling, and more filled with what feels like magic. But make no mistake, it’s not the words themselves that are doing it, it’s the “it” – the story – that the words are bringing to life.
So, given that, when it comes to improving your writing, is there a way that reading great books can help?
Read MoreFirst, a caveat: this is a post about the craft of fiction, and I don’t have the first clue about how to teach the craft of fiction.
From my years as a high school English teacher, I could teach you how to write an essay on the symbolism found in The Great Gatsby. I could teach you the joy of diagramming a sentence. I could give you some tips on what to do when you run into an iambic pentameter in a darkened alley. But teach you about the craft of fiction? Bah. No way.
So instead of trying to teach you, I’ll simply share something fiction-crafty, something about which I am very excited.
My friend, Schmidtie, does this when she discovers something life-changing (an ergonomic garlic press, Corn Salsa from Trader Joe’s, those little mini peanut butter cups, also from Trader Joe’s). She wraps these discoveries in tissue paper, puts them in a cute paper bag, and says to me, “Here’s a little something you HAVE to try.” She shares because she knows these things will change my life. And they do.
But what if once I share this life-changing, share-worthy discovery about craft, you think, “Huh? That’s not life-changing. That’s Craft 101.” Kind of like when, just last week, Schmidtie joyfully shared her latest, brand new discovery: Goodreads! Yes, Schmidtie was ten to fifteen minutes late to the party on that one.
Maybe you’ll think the same thing of me. Maybe my new discovery will leave you bored and unimpressed, and you’ll promptly email the WU Mamas and call for my demotion. Maybe in sharing my new discovery, you’ll also see I learned/stole this idea from Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story, chapter seven, pages 129-139. That’s right! I stole the idea of a fellow WU contributor!
OK, but this week I sat in church and we learned about Loving Your Neighbor. For the hundredth or thousandth time. For good reason. We humans need to be told and retold to love one another because we forget to do it. Likewise, preschoolers must be reminded, over and over, to share. Dogs must be reminded, over and over, to heel. So maybe I should share this not very original idea in case you are as forgetful as I . . . but will my ego and I look stupid? Ack! To share or not to share?
Friends, it is this tension, the emotional stress, the feeling of suppressed, palpable anxiety found in all good stories, that I’d like to share with you today.
So let’s talk tension.
Read MoreWe’re so pleased to bring you today’s guest–long-time WU community member and Reader Unboxed reviewer, Amy Sue Nathan. Amy lives and writes near Chicago where she hosts the popular blog, Women’s Fiction Writers. She has published articles in Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune and New York Times Online among many others. Amy is the proud mom of a son in college and a daughter in high school, and a willing servant to two rambunctious rescued dogs.
Amy’s debut novel, The Glass Wives, releases next Tuesday, on May 14th. What’s the book about?
Evie and Nicole Glass share a last name. They also shared a husband.
When a tragic car accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it also upends the lives of Evie and Nicole, and their children. There’s no love lost between the widow and the ex. In fact, Evie sees a silver lining in all this heartache—the chance to rid herself of Nicole once and for all. But Evie wasn’t counting on her children’s bond with their baby half-brother, and she wasn’t counting on Nicole’s desperate need to hang on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. Strapped for cash, Evie cautiously agrees to share living expenses—and her home—with Nicole and the baby. But when Evie suspects that Nicole is determined to rearrange more than her kitchen, Evie must decide who she can trust. More than that, she must ask: what makes a family?
This novel is wonderfully laced with cultural references, as we view life and mourning through the eyes of protagonist Evie Glass. It lends the novel an air of cultural authenticity that’s rarely seen in women’s fiction.
Said Amy:
When I read a novel I love reading about traditions and cultures both similar and different from my own. Feeling like I “almost” understand what it’s like to be in the characters’ home or situation or life often makes me wish I was there, if even for a moment. Knowing I felt this way when I read, meant I wanted to incorporate a lot of my own Jewish culture into my main character’s life, while at the same time reassembling and inventing traditions to fit her world, not mine. Using Yiddish words and sayings was probably one of my favorite parts of writing The Glass Wives. I often think (and say) only Yiddish will do. The funny thing is, I don’t really remember anyone in my family speaking Yiddish, but it was very important to me it be an integral part of Evie’s character.
We’re so pleased Amy is with us today to talk more about writing with a dash of culture.
Learn more about Amy on her website, her blog–Women’s Fiction Writers–and by following her on Facebook and Twitter. Enjoy!
A Dash of Culture
When I started writing my novel, several people suggested that only Jewish readers would like it. They thought I should nix the Yiddish words and replace the rugelach with biscotti. (You know, because that’s not ethnic.) Or, they said, I should set aside space within the chapters for lengthy explanations, because otherwise, no one would […]
Read MoreM.J. Rose’s new novel, SEDUCTION, is out tomorrow. It’s an Indie Next List pick, and has garnered fantastic reviews. Here are just a few:
“The 1843 drowning death of Victor Hugo’s beloved eldest daughter, Didine, provides the catalyst for Rose’s well-crafted paranormal novel of suspense. Rose is especially good at recreating Hugo’s despair…making his abandonment of rationality all too plausible.” —Publishers Weekly
“What sells the book—what sells all of Rose’s books [is] the author’s boundless enthusiasm for the material… and we can’t help getting caught up in that enthusiasm.” —Booklist
“Threads of past lives and malevolent spirits… combined with Rose’s vivid imagination and beautiful writing make this a book to savor.” —RT Top Pick 4 ½ stars
“A luxurious, sensual experience for the reader. This atmospheric tale of suspense is fully engrossing.” —Library Journal (starred review)
We’re so pleased M.J. is with us today to answer a few questions about her novel.
Q: What’s the premise of your new book?
In 1843, novelist Victor Hugo’s beloved nineteen-year-old daughter drowned. Ten years later, still grieving, Hugo initiated hundreds of séances from his home on the Isle of Jersey in order to reestablish contact with her. In the process, he claimed to have communed with Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, Dante, Jesus—and even the Devil himself. Hugo’s transcriptions of these conversations have all been published.
Or so it has been believed…
[pullquote]I found a bottle of ink. Filled the pen. Then pulled out a simple notebook and started to write. Not the way I write, on a computer, but the way Victor Hugo would have written over one hundred and fifty years ago. Pen on paper.[/pullquote]
Recovering from a great loss, mythologist Jac L’Etoile thinks that throwing herself into work will distract her from her grief. In the hopes of uncovering a secret about the island’s mysterious Celtic roots, she arrives on the Isle of Jersey and is greeted by ghostly Neolithic monuments, medieval castles, and hidden caves.
What she doesn’t anticipate is that the mystery surrounding Victor Hugo will threaten her sanity and put her very life at stake.
Seduction has a ghost story at its heart, and a mystery that spans centuries.
Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?
A lot of it is based on the truth.
Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?
Hugo is offered what he wants more than anything in the world in my story but to obtain it he has to betray everything he believes in. It’s a very seductive offer. At the same time, my main character in the present, Jac L’Etoile has to overcome her ambivalence and fear about her own abilities- something she has been avoiding for a long time.
Q: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?
Read MoreSomebody will tell you no.
It’s going to happen. It has probably happened already. It might happen today, or tomorrow, or every day next week and then some. Maybe it happened five minutes ago and the pain is still searingly fresh, or maybe it’s on its way, looming dark and ugly on the horizon, five minutes from now.
Somebody will tell you no.
It could be any one of a thousand people, for any one of a thousand reasons. The magazine editor doesn’t give you the assignment. The journal doesn’t accept your short story. Your beta reader breaks the news to you, gently, that your work-in-progress isn’t compelling in the way it needs to be. The agent doesn’t think your edits have made the book better, only different. The editor can’t convince the publisher to make an offer. The famous author doesn’t give your book a blurb. The papers don’t review you. The sales just aren’t where they should be. The award committee chooses someone else. The agent says no. The publisher says no. Barnes & Noble says no. The readers say no. The little voice in the back of your head says no, as much as you wish it didn’t, as much as you try to drown it out with your confident internal yes.
Somebody will tell you no.
Some days it feels like the world is wallpapered with nothing but no. Like there will never be anything but rejection. The worst of it is, no is a renewable resource. There are always more nos out there.
And what do you do with that? It’s up to you.
Some writers will counsel you to turn every no into a yes, but that isn’t really how it works. Some nos are temporary, but others are permanent. Not every story will find a home. Your dream agent may remain always and forever a dream. Not every writer gets published. Not every book finds its readers or earns out its advance. Not every writer who sells a first book sells a second one. Even a yes can be followed up by no, surrounded by no, overwhelmed by no.
Depressing? It doesn’t have to be.
Because as many nos as there are in the world, that isn’t all that’s out there. No isn’t the answer to every question.
The only way that no ends your journey is if you let it. If you stop at no. So don’t stop. Keep going. Keep learning. Keep writing. Hone your craft. Expand your reach. Get better and do better, and keep asking. There are other stories. Other agents. Other publishers. Other readers. Other books. If you’re smart and motivated, you’re already headed toward it. There’s no telling which direction it’ll come from, who will say it, what question it’ll be answering, but it is most certainly out there, maybe just over the horizon.
Somebody will tell you yes.
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