Posts by Allison Winn Scotch
So the wonderful Teri suggested that I chat about my experiences with book clubs, and her idea couldn’t have come at a better time. Time of My Life seems to be a popular book club choice these days, I guess because women, myself included, can talk endlessly about their “what ifs,” and whether or not they have any relevance in their current life. So, because of that, I’ve been doing quite a few call-ins or emails with book clubs.
What I love most about these experiences is hearing directly from readers. I’m working on my third book right now, and while the writing is organic and I’m staying true to my character’s voices and motivations, I’m also keeping in mind feedback that I’ve received from readers and from book clubs. Not in any way selling out, mind you, but just…well…for example, I very intentionally left the ending of TOML ambiguous. I wanted readers to make their own choice about what had happened to Jillian and where she was headed from here. But I’m learning, in talking with people, that not everyone was pleased with this. That after reading 300 pages, they wanted a bigger payout. I stand by my choice, and I wouldn’t change a word of that ending, but listening to their thoughts has certainly made me open-minded about the decisions I’m making in my next book. Again, not that I’d revamp anything I’m currently writing, but yeah, sure, this is a consumer-oriented product, and if I can make them happy while making myself happy, well…win-win, right?
One thing that’s always fun when talking to readers is that I almost inevitably hear about their own lives and the various ways that they connect with these characters. Listening to their stories – their what-ifs, their takes on marriage and motherhood – I’m always pretty amazed at how we all share so many common threads in our lives. Regardless of circumstance, our human experience is often one and the same, and that’s always pretty fascinating. And again, this has definitely helped influence my next book: as I work my way through the chapters, I do try to keep in mind ways that I can keep these characters grounded and relatable. There is nothing better than reading a book and feeling like you really empathize with the heroine, and sometimes, when I’m maybe veering into making a character too unlikeable or too unrealistic (because, of course, life is heightened in fiction), I consider my readers and wonder how I can ensure that they’ll connect with my character’s actions.
Of course, it’s not all wine and roses with these call-ins and/or emails.
Read MoreGiven that this month on WU is Plot Month, I thought I’d take some time today to talk about how I develop my plots. (Brilliant, right?) Actually, what’s brilliant is Juliet Marillier’s post from last week. She really nailed so many of the complicated aspects of plotting and the traps that writers can fall into along the way.
To pick up on one of her points, one place that I think a lot of writers fall short in their plotting is to confuse words on a page with actual action on a page. Put another way, a high word count does not necessarily translate to a good plot. Too often, aspiring writers (and I definitely fell victim to this with my first, unsold manuscript) get bogged down in exposition, and exposition, my friends, is not plot. No, plot is all about action, and to that end, I usually build my plot around complications in my character’s lives.
For example, the premise of Time of My Life was “suburban mom wakes up one day to find herself seven years in the past.” Now there’s a problem. And that one problem alone provided plenty of opportunities to create action within the story.
But that one action/problem wasn’t enough.
Read MoreSo today, I accomplished…exactly nothing. I told myself that it was because I was only wearing one contact lens – my left eye was killing me and I haven’t gotten new glasses since 1995 – and typing on the computer was too jarring. Yesterday, I accomplished…exactly nothing as well. I told myself it’s because I had an impossibly busy day, packed to the gills with errands and what not.
The truth? After a few days of telling myself all of these terribly untrue things, the truth is that I’ve lost a bit of my gusto for my manuscript. Not the enjoyment I get from it when I actually sit down and write it, but just my mojo in general. I come up with 1000000 distractions that tear me away from the ms, and so, today, even with my literal cloudy vision, I’ve decided I better take action before this two (okay, five) day streak turns into something more serious.
What I’ve opted to do is rethink my strategy when it comes to reading. Let me explain: normally, when I’m working on my first draft, I refuse to read other books. My brain is easily permeable, and I find that I quickly start thinking (and perhaps writing) in the voice of the author I’m reading, rather than the voice that should be inside my head. (When I was a teen, I voraciously read Stephen King, which meant that I swear, half the time I walked around thinking in the voice of a serial killer.) So, because I know how malleable my tone can be, I swear off other works until I’m done with my own, thus lessening the risk of page 50-56 sounding like Meg Wolitzer while pages 97-100 echo Tom Perrotta.
But last night, I remembered something.
Read MoreSo, as I’m sure you’ve all read (see Kath’s post yesterday), the sky is falling in the publishing industry! Editors are getting fired, no one is acquiring, book stores are in a free fall. Just like the rest of the economy, the book world is tanking with a capital T. Or is it?
I have news for you, I don’t think it’s that bad out there. I’m not minimizing the people who have lost their jobs (I know plenty of them) or the dire situations that plague the book stores. There’s no denying that. But I’m also hopeful that out of this whole mess, something positive is going to happen to our industry, and I’m hopeful that deep changes will be made as a result of what’s going on out there.
Now, what I’m about to propose probably isn’t that popular with writers. I know that, and yet, I still think it’s the right thing for the future of publishing. And that’s this (for starters):
Read MoreSo it’s been two months since I last posted here, and in those two months, I’ve had a second book come out AND hit the New York Times best seller list. Needless to say, it’s been a little, um, nuts. So what have I learned along the way? Here are a few things.
1) It doesn’t get easier. I swore to myself that I would be calmer, more collected this time around. Was I? Well, hmmm, uh, NO. I tried to be. I tried not to stress out over sales and call Ingram 100 times a day and wish that my agent were calling me four times, instead of just three times, daily, but none of this really happened. Sure, I was calmer in the sense of I knew what to expect, which is basically, nothing is ever going to be 100% as you’d like it to be when your book is released, but still, let’s level with each other: having a book come out is stressful. Period. No matter how often I tell myself that it’s not, it is. I will inevitably lose sleep and become a basketcase during the week’s leading up to a release, and the sooner I accept that, the better I’ll be to handle the anxiety.
2) A lot of a book’s success depends on luck. Authors might not want to hear this. We want to believe that we are firmly in control of our book’s destiny, but the simple truth is that some things, things that can make or break your book, will be completely out of your hands and in fate’s hands instead. (Or at least those of a really, really good publicist.) My book hit the Times’ list because, by chance, it happened to be reviewed in People and on The Today Show within days of each other. If one of these had happened during a different week, my sales would have likely been spread out rather than spiking, and I doubt I would have landed on the list. Pure luck. Plain and simple.
3) Not everything is about luck, of course.
Read MoreI woke up a recent morning, and this is what my brain felt like:
“EEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Yes, really. Because, ack, I realized that my book is coming out in just one short month. How did this happen? Where did my time go? Not that I had a lot of time to contemplate this because I was so busy dealing with pre-publicity stuff. Which is actually the point of this post, not me pressing the E button down as often as I can. :)
A lot of writers wrestle with the question of whether or not they should hire an outside publicist, and when I woke up that recent morning, I was asking myself this very thing. If, in fact, I’d made the right decision to NOT hire someone, now that I was running around like a nut trying to ensure that I maximized the publicity that I could do myself. Fortunately, as of now, I still feel confident that I made the right decision. Here’s how I came to that decision:
Many months back, shortly after we sold the book, we met with my team at Crown. They were pistol-sharp, and both my agent and I were totally wowed.
My in-house publicist took on only one book a season from this imprint, and she’d chosen mine, so I knew that I was going to get great attention and a very creative strategy, and my marketing manager was so fabulous that I couldn’t stop talking about her to just about everyone I knew.
I did, however, ask them if they’re comfortable working with outside publicists, and they said, “Sure, we’re happy to, but there are ways you can better spend that money.” I was intrigued.
Read MoreSo, I am two months out from the release of my second novel, and I am officially starting to come unraveled. I realized this early one Friday morning when I was frantically searching every back corner of the web in hopes of tracking down my Publishers Weekly review a day or so early, so I could be put out of my misery before the weekend arrived. I was granted relief that afternoon: voila – there it was – and a rave too – on PW’s website, a full day before my publicist and agent promised it would be available! I exhaled. And loudly. But then my mind started churning toward the next reviews: GoodReads.com, Kirkus, Booklist, Amazon…the list is never-ending. My google alerts are never-ending. How am I expected to find mental peace when I know that people are out there, judging my work, judging my skill, judging ME for what I put in my book.
Well…the answer is, I’m not sure. With my first book – and some hindsight – I’m very well steeled toward not caring what the reviews and reviewers say. If someone puts up a negative review on Amazon, I find it very easy (too easy?) to ignore it almost entirely. And I suppose that, with time, I’ll feel the same way about this one: don’t like the book? Oh well. No big deal. But right now, I’m in that bubble where I’ve heard from enough people to give me positive reinforcement, but not enough that I don’t worry that the other shoe will drop. Does every writer go through this? Sure that his or her book is the bee’s knees, only to be punctured when he or she discovers that the rest of the world might not or doesn’t agree?
Read MoreA friend and I were recently chatting about first person vs. third person, and she asked me why I chose to write my first book (and incidentally, my second, though she hasn’t yet read it) in the first person. I thought it was a great, discussion-provoking question, so I wanted to address it here.
For me, writing in the first person is simply instinctual. I used to do a lot of acting, and my writing process is very similar to my acting process: I tend to slip into my characters, embody them wholly, and so it’s only natural for me to spit out their words as if they are coming directly from them. When I’m in full-blown writing mode (something I desperately need to get back into), I literally find myself woken up in the middle of the night or stopped mid-sentence with the voices of my characters. So, in that sense, first person is the obvious choice.
It also doesn’t hurt that first person, in my opinion, is so much easier to write in. I have complete admiration for authors who pen in the third-person because I just never seem to be able to quite get into the groove when I’m writing in the third person. Words and ideas just don’t flow in the same way. I raised this with my friend, Laura Dave, whose new book, The Divorce Party, alternates between two different third person voices (and is great!), and she concurred, saying that it was so difficult that she’d never tackle that task again. I mean, come on, writing a book is hard enough, and I don’t mean to imply that I’m not willing to challenge myself – I am – but I’m just not sure that I’m up for climbing that mountain.
One thing I am considering for my next book is alternating between two, or even-three, first person voices. This might prove a challenge, but a good challenge, a way to stretch myself without tackling something that is going to suck, as I suspect my third-person book might. But I’m curious to hear what perspective you guys write in and why. Is it instinctual or is there a rational choice behind the voice that you use?
Photo courtesy Flickr’s Lá caitlin
Read MoreToday, WU contributor Allison Winn Scotch steps in for a Q&A with fellow author Julie Buxbaum.
It’s not every day that an aspiring writer quits her cushy lawyer job in the hopes of being published. It’s also not every day that she then writes a debut novel that, according to Publisher’s Marketplace, sells (in conjunction with a second book) for over seven-figures. But for Julie Buxbaum, the above scenario is a reality: the now-London-based writer’s first book, The Opposite of Love, was published this past January by Dial Press to much acclaim, and her team recently announced a film deal with Paramount Pictures. Not too shabby for this former lawyer who didn’t even start writing her book until she told her law firm, “Sayonara.” So we’re thrilled to have Julie stop by and answer some questions on her writing process, her follow-up book, and how she’s dealt with this whirlwind process.
Q: Some writers outline their entire book from start to finish. I tend to write where my characters lead me, which means that I don’t always know how my book is going to end. Which sort of writer are you and why?
JB: I am definitely of the school of thought (particularly if you are not writing something like a mystery, where clues need to add up) that your characters have their own stories to tell, and it’s usually best to get out of their way. Though I did write an outline for The Opposite of Love, as soon as I got absorbed in the writing process, I completely forgot to look at it; I have never actually gone back over it, but I would imagine my end product is very different than what I had originally envisioned. If I hadn’t let myself go off outline, I would have missed the most fun part of the process: the surprise.
Q: Your lead character, Emily, shares a few, but not all, similarities with you, which might lead readers to assume this is more autobiographical than it is. Did you make an intentional decision to make her different than you, despite some life-experience similarities, such as losing a mother to cancer?
Read MoreAfter having two starkly different experiences with my first two books, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a book a smash hit. Mostly, I’ve been thinking about this because I’m struggling to come up with a concept for my third book that will be as well-received as the concept for my second, but I’m also thinking about it because, as I said, now that I’ve been on this merry-go-round for a few spins, I have a clearer idea of what an author needs to do to truly hit their book out of the park.
And my main theory is that it is all about the hook, the “high-concept idea,” as they say behind closed doors at their marketing meetings when they decide whether or not to buy your book and if so, how much to spend on it.
Agents, publishers, editors, booksellers and PR teams get very, very excited when your book has a big hook. By this I mean, it can be summed up in a super-excited, one-sentence plot that will immediately give someone a sense of what happens. My first book had a hook – girl gets cancer and redefines her life – but not everyone wants to read about cancer, and not everyone wants to buy a book about cancer (even when I explain that it really, really isn’t about cancer), but my second book has a BIG hook (according to those in the industry) – discontented woman goes back in time to tweak the mistakes she made the first time around – and people have flipped for it. The print run is exploding, foreign rights deals are closing. If you’ve followed my blog, you’ll know that we recently just closed a pretty big movie deal. So while my first book was well-received, this one is just in a totally different stratosphere. And I’m telling it, it’s because of the universally appealing hook.
So, as I’m considering the plot line for my next book, I am, admittedly, trying to stick to the premise that a big hook means big excitement which means big sales. Does this mean that I’m selling out?
Read MoreA special announcement from Allison Winn Scotch:
I am THRILLED to announce that we have closed a film deal for my next book, TIME OF MY LIFE! Thus, I am so super-excited to announce that the book has been sold to The Weinstein Company, on behalf of Meryl Poster, the former co-president of Miramax, who has produced, among others, Chicago, Chocolat and The Cider House Rules. (Not bad company to keep!) I am even more thrilled to say that Meryl has kept me involved through this whole process, and if there is ever a chance for a book adaptation to be made – and be made well – this is it! If you’re interested, I’ll be talking more about the deal and how it came to happen on my blog later this week.
So now, come on, pre-order the book! :) And don’t forget to pick up a copy of The Department of Lost and Found while you’re there. You can say you knew me when. (Ha! Yes, that’s a joke. Pul-ease. This is me, who was still up at 2AM wiping puke off of my son’s sheets…it’s non-stop glamour around here, I tell ya…)
Read MoreSo I’m getting the galleys of Time of My Life tomorrow. Yay! For those of you who don’t know, a galley – or an ARC (advanced review copy) – is essentially an uncorrected paperback version of your book. Which means that there will still be some typos and whatnot, but that mostly, this is the finished product. So it’s pretty dang exciting. Especially because, unlike with my first book, this time around, my publisher – Shaye Areheart books, an imprint at Random House – is doing some really cool things with these copies.
The big push that they’re doing involves something called “blow-in” cards. Essentially, they’re sending a bunch of galleys to avid readers and folks with big mouths and such, and along with the book, they’re including a card that says, “Want to share your ‘what if’ moment with a friend?” And then, if you fill out the card with your friend’s address (and sharing your ‘what if’ moment), your friend will receive a copy of the book.
At first, while I was thrilled about the cool idea, I didn’t quite get it. I didn’t quite get the idea of a big galley push. I knew that these blow-in cards had helped generate buzz for a few select books in the past, but still…I don’t know, it just didn’t click. But then, it slowly dawned on me: galleys are for more than just garnering reviews and getting the book in front of booksellers. Galleys are an incredible marketing tool to get readers, not just the media and bookstores, excited for the book. Which sounds simple, logical even, but if you haven’t been fortunate enough to have this push in the galley phase, really, it might not seem so clear. (Or maybe I’m just slow!) As we’ve often discussed on this and other blogs, co-op space aside, word-of-mouth might be the single most important marketing tool you can hope for when it comes to your book’s success. And these blow-in cards, among other things, are designed to do just that: get people talking, get them buzzing, get them to spread the word and the excitement and hopefully, the love, about Time of My Life. Sort-of like advanced movie screenings. Such that by the time it hits the shelves in October, readers will say, “Oh yeah, a friend told me about this book, and I have to have it.”
Read MoreSo I’m gearing up for the paperback release of The Department of Lost and Found, which basically doesn’t mean that much since most of the promotional push goes to the hardcover release, but one thing that will catch readers’ eyes is that I have an entirely different cover for this version of the book. At first, I was aghast. Now, I’ve changed my tune a bit. Here’s why and how the changes came about.
When the hardcover jacket (at right) was created, I was asked for my input and thoughts, and I was tremendously grateful for that. I sent over a list of books whose covers I admired, and savvy detectives might notice that as a result, The Department hardcover is a near exact blend of the covers of The Myth of You and Me and The Dive From Clausen’s Pier. The process was somewhat collaborative (from what I understand, not all writers receive this privilege), and we all declared this cover both stunning and marketable. And to me, it was. The rub was this: it was marketable, at least according to the folks at HarperCollins in hindsight, to a very specific demographic, namely, my demographic: urban, willing to pay for hardcovers, well-heeled, etc, (no wonder I loved it!) and missed the boat for a lot of readers for whom the words inside might resonate but for whom the cover did not.
Hrmph. That’s what I thought when they sent me the image of the paperback cover. (Well, I thought a lot of other things, but they’re not printable right now.)
With time, however, I’ve come not only to accept the new cover, but I’ve even come to like it…
Read MoreRecently, on a writers’ board I frequent, someone posed the question, “Just how important is it to have other writer friends?” The question, in this day and age when so many of us are trapped behind our computers with little to no personal interaction with others, was a good one. And I was surprised at some of the answers. It seems that, like everything in this business, what is one person’s lifejacket is another person’s dead weight.
For me, having other writer friends has proven invaluable. Literally. I can’t quantify how much I’ve benefited from them, and hopefully, how much they’ve prospered thanks to my friendship. My writer friends fed my brain and boosted pitches when I was just starting out on the query wagon, cheered me on through my first novel sale, and now, I’m fortunate enough to have a few friends who are part of an intimate professional circle: we swap notes on our publishers, bemoan some of the behind-the-scenes intricacies and share contact information, if say, one of them knows another author who would be a perfect blurber. One of my writer friends is a few steps ahead of me in the publication process – her second novel is hitting shelves in a few months – so she happily passes down lessons learned and obstacles and advice, knowing that I’m up at the plate in October. And I try to pay it forward in the same way: another good friend just debuted (to much fanfare) her book, and I’ve tried to impart my wisdom to her as she tiptoes her way through the process.
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