Posts by Jane Friedman
The big lesson I’ve learned this year as a professor is:
Writers need structure.
It was a hard lesson to learn, because many of the things I value in life cause me to downplay structure. I value things like:
However, freedom can be our worst enemy. It can lead to paralysis, procrastination, aimlessness, or indecision. And especially for writers who are just starting out, the principles still need to be learned. While we may need room to experiment and explore, we also need meaningful practice and a way of measuring progress.
By way of example, the best writing course I ever took in college was Introduction to Poetry. The professor was well known for being a formalist, someone who required the students to write metrical verse. For those not familiar with the poetry world, this is unusual. Most classes focus on free verse since it’s the predominant poetic idiom today.
Some of the best work of my college career came out of that class. It’s like what Robert Frost said: “I would sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down.” I found the challenge invigorating. It forced me to think harder about my word choices, and what I wanted to say. It sharpened every writing skill in a concentrated way.
For fiction writers—or all writers—here are 3 ways to introduce structure (or add a little more structure) to your writing life:
Read MoreThis past year has seen significant and well-publicized developments for self-published authors. It’s probably not necessary to point out what the high-profile success stories are, but in case you need a reminder:
Guess what? Not a single one of these authors used (or will use) a fee-based self-publishing service. They’re also not depending on print sales or distribution. They are earning significant dollars from low-priced e-books that move in high quantities. You can read more about the mass-market e-book phenomenon from Mike Shatzkin. And if you think these 3 authors are the exception to the rule, then read this post from JA Konrath.
A lot of ink—real ink and electronic ink—has been spilled on whether publishing will die, or books will die, or agents will die, etc.
But what about the impact on fee-based self-publishing services? I’m thinking specifically of the ones that focus on print-on-demand books.
Let’s discuss the history of these services first.
Read MoreI received a message from a friend the other day that said he was finally writing again. He commented, “We’ll see if I end up hating it, as I have every single thing I’ve ever written before. I do hope to get over this at some point.”
Every successful writer has had to overcome that feeling. It’s an important feeling. It’s a valid feeling. And if a writer doesn’t have that feeling (at some point), I get worried.
Why?
It’s the Ira Glass principle: You have to produce a lot of crap—stuff that you know is crap—before you can produce anything good. If you haven’t watched Glass’s series on storytelling on YouTube, be sure to set aside 15 minutes to do so. It’ll be the best 15 minutes you ever spent on learning about the craft.
Glass says something critical in Part 3 that I wish every writer knew and understood:
Read MoreTherese here, with a brief reminder that the WU Original Analogy Contest ends tonight at midnight EST. Enter, enter! Take it away, Jane.
During my teaching this quarter, a theme that’s coming up again and again is the either/or fallacy. This fallacy occurs when we divide the world into black and white, and don’t allow for other options.
As humans, we have a crazy predilection for thinking in this way. Us versus them. New versus old. Print versus electronic. Zero-sum games.
When I speak at writing conferences, I fall prey to this thinking myself. For instance, I start to see the field in terms of writers who are resistant to marketing/promotion versus those who embrace it.
I did this just recently at the Writer’s Digest Conference. I jotted a note to myself saying: There are 2 categories of writers!
Category 1: For these writers, it’s all about the work, the writing. The reading. The art and the craft. Story is paramount. The writing speaks for itself. It’s not the job of the writer to market—that’s not what he’s good at. He writes (dammit!).
Category 2: These writers market and promote before the work is even good enough to be published. They’re focused on getting known, maybe because they’ve been told that’s what they must do. They’re after readers because it’s been hammered into them that it’s about community, relationships, connections. (Meaningful ones, dammit!)
Why would I categorize like this?
Read MoreSarah Woodbury asked: I’d like to see an assessment from an agent, published author, and an editor about what happened in 2009-2010 in the publishing world. I’ve heard some amazing things (30% of employees laid off, advances down 50%, sales down a similar amount, publishing houses not buying books at all for months at a time, reprinting older books rather than buying new ones) and I’d like to know what’s true and what’s not.
This is an excellent question, but also difficult to answer definitively. For most publishing companies and agencies (and authors!), this information is considered a competitive advantage, so few are willing to outline specifics, especially when related to a decline.
The other difficulty is that you’ll get a diversity of answers based on who you ask, what their category or genre is, and how long they’ve been in the business.
For example, consider the 4 different answers given to me by 4 literary agents, earlier this year, on the topic of lower advances:
Wendy Keller: “It’s horribly true that advances are down and so are the number of books publishers are buying. Dramatically.”
Paige Wheeler: “Personally, I haven’t found [advances] shrinking, but for the midlist author, they certainly aren’t growing. I think publishers are being more selective, and their offers are more in line with their enthusiasm for a project. That stated, I find I’ve had to explain to my midlist authors to prepare for a decrease in advances for subsequent books if the first few books didn’t make a huge splash. We’re working harder to grow these authors and develop bigger book ideas.”
Read MoreAs some of you know, I recently left my career in publishing for a career in academia, teaching e-media majors at the University of Cincinnati.
Of the many lessons I learned working at a corporate publishing house, here are the three I’m thankful for that you should know too.
1. Wordsmithing takes you only so far; at some point, you write to sell.
In the 1990s, I wrote my first proposals for pub board. (Pub board is where books are approved for publication.)
I was painstaking in how I crafted these proposals, revisiting every word. I took hard copies to my boss, the editorial director, and he would mark it up for further revision, to make it more persuasive.
It took me years to learn how to write a proposal that didn’t require a lot of revision. I was too concerned with how I was expressing things rather than what I was expressing. Until the board was convinced by the what, the how didn’t matter.
Writers, and especially novelists, fall in love with their words. They want to perfect their craft. All well and good. But at some point, you must pay attention to whether your efforts are actually improving your chances at selling or publishing the work, assuming that’s your goal.
The paradox of the writing life, though, is that sometimes how something is done is so unique and compelling that it doesn’t matter if the what is considered unmarketable or unpublishable.
There’s no way to know for sure if this applies to your work.
2. Being more descriptive and more explanatory doesn’t mean you’re more persuasive or effective.
Read MoreI’ve noticed a lot of authors and publishing professionals who are discounting the impact of online marketing and promotion. It usually goes something like this:
People don’t buy books because of Facebook / Twitter / [insert online community here].
Or: Blogging/social networking takes a lot of energy, has little impact, and robs you of time better spent on publishable writing that earns you hard cash.
Or: Your so-called friends and followers consist only of other people trying to sell YOU stuff.
I sense that many authors have become jaded after not seeing any monetary impact from their blogging or online networking. “Show me the evidence,” these people say, “that this effort actually amounts to sales.”
OR: Many of you have been on the receiving end of hard sells and shills—those annoying people who exploit every online connection they have in hopes of earning a buck.
I agree, those people ought to be spurned—especially because they are setting a bad example and turning people off to what is a miraculous development of our age: the ability to efficiently and dynamically organize and connect with like-minded people for very little (or no) expense.
Social networking isn’t a fad. It’s an expression of what we love to do, which is socialize, have conversations, and form meaningful relationships with new people.
Read MoreBecause I advocate writers be very entrepreneurial in their efforts to market and promote their work—and engage in some form of content marketing—eventually I hear or receive something like this:
“You’ve said to post content, or to give content away, which to me means post chapters or sections. How can I do this to good effect?”
Let’s split an answer into three parts.
1. UNpublished Novelists, Memoirists, Essayists, and Poets
First ask: What you want to accomplish by sharing or posting your work online? Posting your work online isn’t going to lead to a traditional book publishing deal—at least not by itself. Here are a few strategies that writers typically have in mind:
While I don’t think you’re killing your chances of traditional publication when posting your work online (no matter what your reasoning), there’s not much point in doing so unless you have a strategy or goal in mind, and a way to measure your success. One writer, Dave Malone, recently used Scribd to post a serialization of his novella. It helped him build readership for a new newsletter, get started on Twitter, and further build an audience for his work—one that will likely stick with him for the next work he produces.
If you have no interest in marketing your work and connecting with readers after posting your stuff online, don’t do it.
2. Published Novelists, Memoirists, Essayists, and Poets
Read MoreFacebook is now used by more than 500 million people, and the fastest growing demographic is in the 35+ range—which also happens to be a book-buying demographic. (Keep up-to-date on Facebook stats here.)
People, whether they realize it or not, use Facebook as a personalized news stream. That means rather than searching out the news, they let it find them through a circle of people they know and have something in common with.
There are many implications as a result, but briefly:
When it comes to a writer looking to connect with readership, though, ignoring Facebook would be like ignoring your first circle of devoted fans—i.e., friends, family, colleagues, and others who (let’s hope) want you succeed and want to support your work.
No matter where you’re at in your writing career, let’s start with a few principles to set the stage.
Facebook: Basic Principles
Read MoreYou can sabotage your writing career if you frequently engage in these two behaviors:
Let’s tackle the pitching scenario first. Important: While I will specifically reference editors and publications, these principles apply no matter what kind of gig you’re after. You might be trying to land a speaking engagement, a book signing, a guest blog post, a contributor role, a reviewer position. This applies to it all!
Pitching Specific Ideas vs. Being “Available”
I’d like to lay down some principles that I’ve found to be the hallmark of a professional.
Pitch Principle #1. If you have no relationship (yet) with the editor, pitch something very specific. That’s because you’re approaching cold, you’re an unknown quantity, and the onus is on you to quickly show what’s in it for them. How does your idea, concept, or product benefit the person or organization, and why will it be successful?
Read MoreThanks to Jane Friedman for allowing us to repost this interesting Q&A, which originally appeared on her site, There Are No Rules.
For writers looking for a new creativity tool & prompt generator, I highly recommend The Brainstormer, created by Andrew Bosley.
The Brainstormer was recently released as an iPhone app, and I was curious about how Andrew worked with the app developer, Joel Davis, to launch it. Here’s what they had to say.
So The Brainstormer started out as a physical wheel, which became an online tool (using Flash). Now it’s an iPhone app. How/when/why did you & Andrew decide to make that leap? Who approached who?
Andrew: When I created the Flash version of the Brainstormer, I had no intentions of going beyond that. It was only after publishing it online, and feedback started coming in, that requests for an iPhone version were made. I liked the idea and starting talking to some programming friends at work. The developer of the Flash version didn’t have the necessary experience with Apple and other developer friends were busy with their own projects. Finally Joel emailed me and offered his time and skills. And it went forward from there.
Read MoreWe’re all taking ourselves too damn seriously.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that we’re so focused on …
• Being as productive as possible
• Crafting the best manuscript possible
• Building the best platform possible
• Appearing as professional as possible
… that we lose sight of who we really are and instead try to follow every commandment that comes along, and behave in a way that will be acceptable to whomever we think is watching and judging.
What’s truly paradoxical is that many commandments insist that you execute them in the most natural, authentic, and committed way possible. What a Catch-22! We must voluntarily and naturally do something we’ve been commanded to do!
It’s why (in my more humorous moods) I tell people that the best way to get published is to stop caring about getting published.
When you strive so hard and for so long, the whole reason you started writing in the first place—the real joy and motivation for it—gets completely lost. You’re so focused on the goal that you’ve forgotten the journey. You’ve forgotten to sing and dance, which is the secret of the wonderful and successful writer.
Read MoreI meet many writers who ask (essentially), “Read my writing and tell me if I should keep trying.”
I have a response to that you can read here, but I also empathize if you’re looking for some sign you’re not completely hopeless. It’s tough to continue doing something when you receive no recognition or encouragement for it.
There are a few rare authors who know they’re damn good and their confidence carries them through the 10+ years it takes to be recognized. Plus their confidence and enthusiasm can be infectious in the presence of agents and editors.
But all writers carry significant paradox and conflict inside them (which I commented on, at length, here).
What I find is that most reassurances, while offering a boost to a writer’s ego, are ultimately external, fleeting, and momentary. A writer needs an essential fire inside, or an attitude, that carries them the distance.
(I think this may be why so many wonderful writers are long-distance runners. Go see this book by novelist Haruki Murakami.)
While at BEA this week, I had an opportunity for a relaxed chat with Jeanne Bowerman, a screenwriter and freelance writer, who is just beginning her journey. During our conversation, it struck me that Jeanne will ultimately make it. But I have seen very little of her writing.
So how could I know this?
Read MoreAt Writer’s Digest, we host an event twice a year called the Writer’s Digest Editors’ Intensives. It is completely staff run and presented, hosted at our headquarters in Cincinnati, and offers an opportunity to get the first 50 pages of your manuscript critiqued.
Chuck Sambuchino and I usually serve as the key presenters. After a recent event, I realized—after talking to one of the attendees—that Chuck and I had delivered some starkly different advice.
Now, this in itself is not unusual. Many times you’ll find varying perspectives among editors and agents. But our disagreement was this:
Talk about a mixed message!
I recently read this blog post that also advises writers not to post their stuff online, and it’s not uncommon advice.
But I find it an utterly archaic sentiment given where the publishing industry is headed.
Here’s why:
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