Month: October 2013
Photo by Shauna Younge Dessert Tables.
Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. The laughter, the screams, the decorations, the ghost stories — it’s all such fun. But even from a young age, I knew that “trick-OR-treating” was a misleading term, because you can’t have one without the other. No costume? No candy.
Unfortunately this is true of writing too. The good and bad go hand-in-hand.
But what if we look at it another way? The good and bad go hand-in-hand. That means whenever one of those pesky writerly “tricks” comes up, we can flip it around and find a wonderful writerly “treat” too. For example…
TRICK – Doubt
So much of writing involves just 3 people: Me, Myself, and I. Writers toil for hours in solitude, every sentence like a private conversation with ourselves. In that kind of a closed loop, it’s easy for confidence to flag and questions to seep in through the cracks. Why am I doing this? What are the odds that I will succeed? Hasn’t someone already written this? Am I even any good?
TREAT – Affirmation
When we do let other people into our writing — whether through blogging, publishing a story, or just talking to a friend — that support and encouragement is one of the warmest feelings in the world. In times when doubt threatens to pull me into a dark place, I call upon my reserves of reassurance to get me through: friendly blog comments, fan emails, complimentary rejections from literary magazines, the unconditional love and faith of my family.
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I’ve read a lot of posts on rejection, lately, both here on WU and elsewhere. Understandably– it’s a common topic, because if you want to get into the writing business, the odds are about 99% certain that you WILL face the snake-bite sting of rejection at some point. And probably more than once– because the truth is that these days (unless you’re outrageously, spectacularly successful, and sometimes not even then) even if you land a publishing contract once, you will still likely have to go through another round of submissions on your second project. And third, and fourth. And every time, the spectre of possible rejection hovers near.
A couple of months ago, I read a post by a lovely, wise, talented author whose book was in the process of being rejected all over town, and it took me back to the days before I landed my first contract, when I was in exactly her shoes. It made me ask myself what advice I would give to my then-self from my perspective now. I started out trying to frame a comment on her post, but soon found that the comment was evolving into post-length– so here it is. My thoughts on rejection, having faced it WAY more times than I can possibly count over the course of my so-far 10 years writing career– and knowing absolutely that I will face it again.
First of all, the title of this post– I honestly think it’s the single most important question you can ask yourself in the face of rejection. Maybe even the most important question of your writing career. Rejection sucks. It really, really does. It’s painful and hurtful and embarrassing– whether you’re getting a rejection from an agent, a publisher, or just negative feedback from a critique partner or writing group. And I think our tendency as writers (at least my personal tendency) is to want to dig deep into that– think about it, analyze it, describe how it feels, both to ourselves and others. We’re writers; we process things by putting them into words. So I get it if rejection makes you feel like hiding under the blankets–or on writing message boards– and constructing brilliant, poetic similes to describe how you felt on opening the e-mail from the agent/publisher/critique partner. Really I do. I’d even say go for it if it makes you feel better. But I think the most important first step you can take when facing a rejection is to ask not, How do I feel now? (Or the congruent question: What the blankety-blank-blank is wrong with this agent/publisher/critique partner?) The important question is: Where do I go from here?
Read Morephoto credit: AlicePopkorn
I am a storyteller.
I play many other roles as well — wife, mother, sister, daughter. Half-hearted runner. Avid reader. Volunteer. But I was a storyteller before almost anything else.
The form my stories take hasn’t always stayed the same, but the telling part has remained true. When I was little, before I could write, I made up stories for my younger sister at bedtime. As an adult, I worked as a reporter. When my children were young and I was so sleep-deprived I couldn’t string two sentences of my own together, I’d tell them long, elaborate versions of books I knew by heart to settle them down in the car or help them sleep. On my blog, I share snippets of my life — stories about writing or family or growing up or striving toward a goal.
I’m also an author — I have one book published and am finishing up my next. But I’ve come to realize that for me, the term author is just one more extension of being a storyteller.
It’s easy to forget this.
Read MoreI’ve read a great many postings here and elsewhere in the blogosphere lately offering guidance and inspiration on overcoming the inevitable setbacks, disappointments, frustrations and rejections inherent to the writing life.
You want inspiration? Strap yourself in. I doubt you’ve heard a story like this one.
Back in April, 2012, I received a request from Tom Jenks, editor extraordinaire and co-founder with his wife, novelist Carol Edgarian, of NARRATIVE, an online magazine devoted to publishing fine writing, with a special devotion to emerging writers.
Tom asked if I’d consider offering a cover quote for a novel titled Offerings by first-time novelist Richard Smolev. In his note, Tom mentioned that the novel was “based in the world of finance and law, with an element of art theft involved,” adding: “Richard has a background in major bankruptcy law, and there’s an authenticity in his writing about the world of business and personal ambitions.” He noted that Scott Turow and Min Jin Lee were already onboard, then added the clincher:
Richard was not long ago diagnosed with ALS, and it is a great thing that his novel is going to come out this fall. We’d all like to see it have a good run.
ALS: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Most of us know it as Lou Gehrig’s Disease: rapidly progressive, insidiously debilitating, invariably fatal.
Neurological in nature, the disease creates muscle weakness and atrophy until its victims lose first the use of their limbs, then their ability to speak or even swallow. They often become confined to a portable ventilator as eventually the diaphragm and other muscles necessary for breathing atrophy as well, creating a sensation like drowning, until the sufferer becomes an imprisoned consciousness in the withering thing his body has become.
It turns out Richard had been an extremely successful attorney before being diagnosed, and now that his disease prevented him from practicing law he turned to his long-eclipsed ambition to write—before he lost the ability forever.
I of course agree to read the book, fully aware I couldn’t praise it out of pity, no matter how tempted I might be. Luckily, that wasn’t necessary. Here’s what I wrote:
Read MoreToday we are fortunate to welcome back award-winning thriller author Libby Fischer Hellmann. Libby’s previous guests posts at WU have been notable for their useful tips on writing suspense novels.
Her tenth thriller, HAVANA LOST is a stand-alone historical novel set largely in Cuba and is garnering advanced praise. “A riveting historical thriller… this multi-generational page-turner is packed with intrigue and shocking plot twists…” Booklist. “A many layered adventure… smart writing done in accomplished style by an author who never talks down to her readers.” Mystery Scene Magazine.
Libby also writes two crime series, one with hard-boiled PI Georgia Davis, the other with video producer and amateur sleuth Ellie Foreman, which Libby describes as “Desperate Housewives” meets “24.” Her short story collection, NICE GIRL DOES NOIR, was released in 2010. She has also written a cozy novella, THE LAST PAGE, and a police procedural, TOXICITY. She has been nominated twice for the Anthony Award, once for the Agatha, and has won the Lovey Award multiple times.
We were so pleased Libby agreed to guest with WU again. “I’ve always wanted to find a “System” for writing and editing my work,” she says. “Nancy Pickard’s CASTS is the closest (and simplest) method I’ve come across. I’m delighted to share it with other fiction writers.
Follow Libby on Twitter @libbyhellmann, Facebook, and her blog.
Take it away, Libby!
Arm Yourself with CASTS
Hi, all. And thanks, Writers Unboxed, for hosting me again.
I’m very excited to share with you a structure for both writing and editing a chapter of your novel. We’ve all been schooled in introductions, conclusions, and the overall flow of a novel. But what about individual chapters, which, after all, are the building blocks of your story? Is there a format? How do you know if you’re doing it right? Frankly, that’s usually where I have problems.
But now there’s a solution. It’s called CASTS and I use it all the time. It’s a terrific vehicle, and I wish I could claim credit for inventing it. But I didn’t. CASTS is the brainchild of mystery author Nancy Pickard, whose amazing suspense novel, THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS won the Kansas Book of the Year when it was published in 2007. Her subsequent novel, THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTNING has also been highly acclaimed. Nancy says she figured it out while editing and revising those books.
It’s deceptively simple, and yet you could spend hours doing it. Indeed, Nancy conducts workshops on how to use CASTS effectively, but she’s given me permission to share it with you. And although this is not a workshop, I think you’ll get the idea. I’ll also share her sure-fire way to test whether you’ve done it right.
CASTS is an acronym for the following elements all of which are critical to a powerful chapter.
Read MoreIt’s hard to believe another month has passed and we’re approaching NaNoWriMo, but here we are! October was a busy month of book fairs, conferences, and technology advances. I have loads of great links for you.
Publishing News
(#WUPrint)
"Macmillan to Offer Entire E-book Backlist to Libraries" @PublishersWkly http://t.co/uhz15kGc7R #WUPrint
— Writer Unboxed (@WriterUnboxed) October 22, 2013
"Thoughts on the Great Erotica Panic" via @victoriastrauss at WRITER BEWARE. http://t.co/Wn6T4XE0Iw #WUPrint
— Writer Unboxed (@WriterUnboxed) October 21, 2013
Frankfurt Wrap: "Thinking Beyond the Book: The Future of Publishing" via @janefriedman http://t.co/BsfnCuB6kY #WUPrint
— Writer Unboxed (@WriterUnboxed) October 15, 2013
Agent Alerts
(#WUAgent)
Read MoreHow do you launch something? Whether it is a book, a reading club, a blog, a bookstore, a business, or a magazine?
Launching something is a theme that has come up again and again for me this week, and I want to share some examples of what it takes to bring your project to life. But let me get something out of the way up front:
If you are looking to mine this article for tips on how to provide more certainty, less risk, and less fear in the process of launching something, you can stop reading right now. Because I won’t diminish the risk, assuage your fear, or paint soft fluffy clouds around the picture of launching something. (sorry)
In fact, it often looks like this, an image my friend Sarah Bray shared recently:
She captioned this: “celebrating failure,” and in an email, she described her process of writing a book: the success of writing a first chapter she loved, and then a second chapter she hated. The “hooray” was simply meant to recognize that she at least wrote something.
Today I want to share a couple stories from folks I know launching things.
Read MoreNote: The following is an excerpt from my new book, COMEDY WRITING 4 LIFE, which you can have a free e-copy of, just by sending your fruits of the following exercise to john.vorhaus@gmail.com.
Here’s the situation: Unfortunately, you died. Which makes your tombstone your last shot at cracking a good joke. What could you put there that would make your mourners snicker? I’m not afraid of outcomes; I’ll go first.
Now I’m really bored.
I wonder if this thing’s loaded.
As if life insurance worked.
Who turned out the lights?
Slacker.
Different jokes work with different groups. My friends in the ultimate frisbee community, for example, will wet their pants over “Slacker,” for they know how much I love that word, and how I cherish Slacker Wednesday, the mid-day, mid-week ultimate frisbee game I founded in Los Angeles and branded thus: “Slacker Wednesday: It works because you don’t!” Others will roll their eyes and wonder. They won’t have enough information to solve the puzzle of the joke.
Don’t expect any joke to work for every audience, ever. Your audience exists on a bell curve. Some people won’t laugh because they lack key information. Others won’t laugh because they have too much information – maybe they’ve heard the joke before. Your target is always the BFM, or Big Fat Middle.
Did you know that you can tune a joke? You can, just by adding or subtracting information.
Read More(Apologies for being late getting this up!)
Two weeks ago, I retreated to Lake Tahoe with a dozen other long-time writers. It was part retreat in a gorgeous setting (right on the beach, quiet thanks to the low-tourist time of year, mountains, water, even snow), and part business meeting as we wanted to meet to discuss the changes in the business and trade info and try to understand how we each fit into that shifting model. I came home with a completely edited book, a brain overflowing with ideas and thoughts and plans, and a sense of connectedness. To my fellows, to my sister-writers.
Last year, I went on a retreat like this for the first time and found it immensely nourishing. I wrote a ton, talked in depth with other like-minded writers, and slept like child. It was illuminating to realize how powerful that retreat from every day life could be, but more–how much I enjoy the company of writers. Up until last year, I’d really only spent that much time with writers at conferences, and that is an entirely different kind of world. High-powered, good clothes, better shoes, the need to be on and present and well–that part of ourselves who protect the delicate, easily-wearied-by-company writer within.
Retreats are quieter, set apart from the noise and chatter and dizzying elevator rides of a conference. In both cases, I retreated to a big, comfortable “cabin” on a lake, cheap because a bunch of us split the cost. In both cases, we agreed ahead of time to have no expectations of cooking, though we ended up eating dinners together in both, sometimes at the cabin, sometimes wandering out to a local village restaurant. There was an agreement to adhere to a dress code of pajama bottoms, pony tails, and yoga pants…all the way up to jeans, if you really had to dress. We walked and talked, we walked alone, musing over the wonders of the natural world.
Read MoreI suspect most of you have a dangerous habit. You get an URGE, your cautions are clicked off, you are impelled by an irresistible chain. You indulge, synapses sizzling. You are spent, but oh, the afterglow. What have you done, you naughties? Why, you’ve been reading. It’s a harder habit to drop than smoking.
That thought occurred to me when I saw my mom reading with a big magnifying glass, craning her head thisaways and that to reach the words. My mom is 91, and her eyes are shot, but she’s still jonesing for words. Even though she listens to audio fiction (and digs it), she still wants to take in the text with her eyes, to turn up the heat in the brainpan where metaphors sizzle, to ride on a line of words and feel their curves in the wind. Readers: shameless.
[pullquote]And I bring my mother up, because I am the hopeless crack baby of her addictions: she exposed me early to the intoxicating pipe of reading.[/pullquote] And I bring my mother up, because I am the hopeless crack baby of her addictions: she exposed me early to the intoxicating pipe of reading. I have lacy memories of her sitting on the couch, engrossed in her book. Engrossed at least until I started eating the ashes out of the nearby fireplace, as she insists I did. Well, I had to do something to get some attention.
There’s the treachery. Reading’s a seduction by atmospherics: seeing someone voluntarily repeat an action over and over toggles a switch in your system that whispers “And you can do that too.” When drooling was the most reasonable reaction, I had the usual suspects of kids’ books read to me, followed by reading fairly early on my own. I’d been very aware that my mom read big books, tomes—it seemed that she was into this thing and deep. Later I realized that many of these worthies were Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, which seemed to take some luster away. (Do you know that To Kill A Mockingbird was a Reader’s Digest book? What did they take out, the mockingbird?)
Reading: At This Point, You Have No Choice
I did hazily understand that people do have a choice in their pursuits; my mother still made plenty of time for martinis and poker. But once it gets a little beyond choice, only reading fulfills the addiction caused by reading—watching “Ice Road Truckers” episodes is a weak substitute. Being word-hungry is a little like loving ice cream: when you eat a little, you want more. Same with words.
Few things in life give me more pleasure than a gorgeously written blog post validating my choice to write, particularly if I’m fresh from a difficult critique or my characters have gone silent. That’s when I scan my environment, looking for people brimming with positivity. If you’re one of them, I glom onto you. I yearn to be swept up in your narrative.
And if you’re drinking hope’s sweet ambrosia and if you’ll allow me to sip from your cup, maybe take it back to the keyboard with me, I’ll love you beyond all reason.
I’ll bookmark your post. I’ll copy it into my Scrivener file marked “inspiration”. I’ll remember you with gratitude long past the point when your words have lost the power to propel me forward. Because I’m fickle like that, dear Unboxeders. Borrowed hope only works for so long before I need another hit, another dealer, a different jewel-encrusted goblet to place at my right elbow.
Lately, because of this self-knowledge, I’ve lost interest in dealing with my internal drama and grown more focused on what garners results. I’ve looked for ways to make my writing both habitual and independent of motivation levels. Much like I change my environment and routine when I’m serious about taking care of my health, I’m trying to respect my process and design an environment which makes writing the default position rather than something I must fight my way into.
Accordingly, I’ve been focused more on science-based behavioral change, looking to the resources I’d have valued in medicine to support patients who want to alter their lifestyle in systematic, incremental, and non-threatening ways.
Because I’ve found them helpful, and because they have virtually no end of application, I thought I’d share them here. (This is not to say I won’t continue to enjoy and possibly write posts about motivation. It’s not an either-or proposition!)
The first several draw upon the work of BJ Fogg, a Stanford professor whose research is about habit formation. In 2012, Fortune Magazine named him one of Ten New Gurus You Should Know, but I simply admire his work for its concreteness.
1. In this first video, you will learn:
Today’s guest is Kathryn Magendie, the author of five novels and a novella published through Bell Bridge Books—most recently The Lightning Charmer coming out this month. She’s also the Publishing Editor of The Rose & Thorn (which just recently closed its doors after fifteen years), and former Personal Trainer. She lives in a little log house tucked within a cove in Maggie Valley, Western North Carolina—where all the wild things are.
Of her post today, Kathryn says…
Thoughts of the “isolation” of this job came to me when I realized most every character I write is lonely. Then I recognized that I, me, myself, lil ole Kat Magendie, was deeply, incredibly, sadly, lonely. Well, danged if I didn’t feel right pitiful. I then read other WU posts, other author’s FB updates and Twitter feeds, and realized that feeling of isolation is shared—we’re all at one big banquet table, but the banquet table has partitions so that even though we’re surrounded by people, we’re still eating alone. I allowed myself to feel pitiful for about a week, and then I decided it was time to do something about the isolation. We’re much more than we appear to be, we band of writers, we.
You can find Kathryn on Twitter and Facebook and on her blog. More about her books here.
The “Isolated Author”
We can see the clichéd “isolated author,” one who writes in her fuzzy socks, a bottle of vodka—make that a healthy smoothie, yeah—by her side, creating micro-worlds where tiny-in-our-peahead-but-oh-so-much-bigger-than-life characters frolic and play and bring joy and epiphanies to all the land of readers. Farther pan out and see the writer hunched over her keyboard, ever more pan out and see the study she sits in with books and pens and pencils and chapstick and good luck charms and crumbs littering her keyboard and lap, and farther still to see her little log house, and outward we go ever outward to the Moon. And there we’ll stop a moment and consider just how tiny this author is. Just how inconsequential, miniscule. All the scurrying and living and loving and being around her is muffled and dark because all she experiences is: “tippity tappity tippity tappity tippity tappity *slurp munch* tippity tappity.”
The truth is, the more an author puts herself out there (But of course I mean you guys, too—we’re genderless in the World of Writing), the more isolated she becomes. The more public her life, the more private she must be. It’s an insidious endeavor, one she doesn’t recognize until it is almost too late—when the crazies visit upon her *picture here the Harpies from Jason and the Argonauts, feasting upon the sanity laid out in bounty upon the table until there’s nothing left but scraps of rational thought.*
Why, she’s on Facebook every day—several times a day! And there’s Twitter, maybe a blog, and letters/emails/messages from readers. She scurries here there and yonder, fiddle-dee-dee’ing right and left to all dangity and back. But remember that image? The one from the Moon? She’s cornered herself, rolled into a tight ball, tossed […]
Read MoreWU Admin note: Enjoy a little humor this Saturday morning.
Whoever said “Don’t judge of book by its cover” probably had a lousy cover designed by some art-school reject he’d never met. How could anyone else know enough about your book to make a cover that does your book justice. You don’t need to shell out big bucks to a graphic designer. I’m’a serve up some hot tips that those fat-cat graphic designers DON’T want you to know about.
Tools of the Trade
[pullquote]If you’re on a budget and don’t know anybody who can pirate you a copy of Photoshop, Microsoft Paint is a perfectly fine program for illustration. Otherwise they wouldn’t install it on every computer.[/pullquote]
They say a bad carpenter always blames his tools. The solution to this is to buy tools so good, you can’t screw things up. Instead of having to shell out $700 bucks for a version of Photoshop or Illustrator that will be obsolete in a year-and-a-half, you can now get Adobe’s powerful suite of graphics programs for a mere $50 every month, for the rest of your life (which is totally worth it, since you’ll probably write four, maybe even five books before you die, right?). If you’re on a budget and don’t know anybody who can pirate you a copy of Photoshop, Microsoft Paint is a perfectly fine program for illustration. Otherwise they wouldn’t install it on every computer.
Read MoreCome into my platform, where you shall have control.
Make your book cover be exactly what you like.
Set your price where you want it. Change it on a whim.
Make your book free. Make your book pricey.
Upload your brilliance. Format your genius.
Retain your rights. Collect nice royalties.
Come into my platform, where you shall have control.
And then your book disappears.
Media reports fly. Bloggers bluster. Cautious statements heavily vetted by Legal are issued. Appropriate disciplinary actions are said to have been taken against “the very few.”
But it’s your book that disappeared without warning. It’s your income stream that stopped. It’s your momentum that went up in smut, sorry, smoke, when those very few—always the very few—transgressed the terms and conditions.
And then the email arrived, finally—from the parlor, as it might seem—explaining that the company was taking disciplinary action against the very few who had broken the rules. Everyone else, like you, the parlor announced, was being riddled in the crossfire and so be it.
To our self-publishing partners…significant amount of negative media attention…offensive material…we are taking immediate action to resolve…removing titles in question…quarantining and reviewing titles to ensure that compliance to our policies is met by all authors and publishers…as soon as possible…implement safeguards that will ensure this situation does not happen in the future…working hard to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible.
It can seem sinister, can’t it? Especially when it’s your briskly selling series that vanishes and you’ve done nothing wrong, being a cut well above the very few.
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