Posts by Sharon Bially
Eight years ago I dropped out of writing classes and signed up on a whim for ballet and modern dance lessons instead.
The writing classes, it seemed, were going nowhere. The questions were always the same, the answers were as elusive as ever and the feedback had gotten pretty stale. Besides, as one of those fidgety types who hates sitting still, I’d simply had enough of spending my rare free time in a chair.
Already an avid runner, cycler and swimmer addicted to movement, I was also craving a way to channel this physical energy into something more purposeful and expressive.
After just a few classes, dance had taken root in my system. I found myself practicing leaps and chassées while running. Rond de jambes and fan kicks made their way into my dreams. Perhaps, I thought as time marched on, my writing days had come to an end. I’d found a new love I’d rather be with — one I was willing to sneak off and spend time with several mornings a week during the same two-hour window I’d jumped through all sorts of hoops to reserve for writing over the years.
But even as I tackled the uncomfortable challenge of thinking without words, of allowing muscle memory to take the place of prose, I found myself growing as a writer. Because dance, it turns out, like many of the arts, has far more in common with writing than meets the eye.
As with writing, the final product of years of hard work dancing appears neat and simple at first blush. It tells a story with beauty, grace and impact. Its many parts
Read MoreLet’s face it. With the exception of the tiny handful of writers lucky enough to generate handsome earnings from their books or to have the full financial support of a spouse or a trust fund (two things I tend to longingly confuse), nowadays, most of us need some sort of gainful day job.
In fact, in this new economic and publishing context, paid jobs and careers in fields as seemingly unrelated to books as medicine, engineering, finance and law have become as integral to the writing life as long, quiet afternoons at the library once were.
Yet it’s a topic that tends to get lost amid our many conversations about publishing trends and craft.
So I asked some authors who also work outside their homes to share with us their experiences with this complex balancing act that’s increasingly becoming the *real* writer’s life.
Without further ado, I’m delighted to introduce Andrew Goldstein, Jane Roper and Michelle Toth.
Andrew Goldstein
Andrew’s smashing debut novel The Bookie’s Son will be released in May by Sixoneseven Books. (I can’t help adding that I was so taken by the humor and razor-sharp insight in The Bookie’s Son that I lent the manuscript around to friends and family long before it was ready to go to print, literally shaking them and saying, “you HAVE to read this!”)
A former Breadloaf fellow and a new grandfather, Andrew has run the award-winning custom building firm, Thoughtforms, for over thirty years. Initially he joined Thoughtforms to provide an income for his family, having held a panoply of part-time jobs before that including…Zamboni driver!…in order to write. He then put his writing on hold for twenty years. Still, he enjoyed his work and is proud to have helped helped Thoughtforms earn both Best of Boston and National Custom Builder of the Year awards.
Andrew confides that it was challenging to get back into the swing of writing after a twenty-year break. But ultimately, he did. Over the past ten years, he has managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of writing each morning before heading off to work. “Writing in the morning before work has created good discipline,” he says.
His patience and dedication have paid off. On top of publishing The Bookie’s Son, Andrew is now in a position of being able to leave his job in a couple of years to write full-time. He’s looking forward to it, and notes that even after all these years, writing is still his true love.
Jane Roper
Author of the forthcoming memoir Double Time about the fascinating challenge of raising twins while grappling with postpartum depression (Saint Martin’s Press, May
Not so long ago, “being a writer” might have cost us our sanity, consumed countless hours each day and caused us to opt out of paying jobs, but it didn’t actually require spending money.
Those days are over.
A veritable writing industry has emerged in the wake of the digital revolution, complete with webinars, seminars, conferences and manuscript consultations available to all — for a fee. Amid today’s fierce competition, writers with professional aspirations know how important it is to partake in these. Regularly.
At the same time, we all know that authors are becoming increasingly responsible for most or all of their publicity expenses. With advances shrinking, too, that means emptying pockets, dipping into savings.
And with the rise of e-books and easy self-publishing, all writers have the opportunity to reach large audiences directly. But building the awareness it takes to reach them, and appealing to them with a respectable level of professionalism, requires cash.
Yet somehow, the gritty, romantic notion of pinching pennies while quietly scratching out our drafts, of using advances to fix leaky roofs or pay off credit card balances then doing everything from building web sites to pitching the media by ourselves, continues to shape many writers’ choices. We ask friends to copy-edit our manuscripts. We design our own book covers. And publicity? Forget it. Once the book is out, we tweet about it, do a few book club events, contact a local paper, cross our fingers and start writing something new.
But those of us who truly want to establish a niche as an author and give our books a fighting chance to sell MUST come to terms with the fact that in this day and age,
Like many writers, when I begin a story I have a pretty clear sense of where I’d like it to end. Though it might take unexpected twists and turns along the way, its general direction is shaped by my vision of where it’s headed. This process reminds me of a seed, which even while sealed inside an envelope on a shelf in Home Depot contains a complete blueprint of what it will ultimately blossom into.
Developing this vision, nurturing it and balancing a commitment to it with the inevitable wanderings that both test and enrich it is a twenty-four-seven task. A state of mind that needs to be maintained.
Yet this effort produces only half of what I think a writer’s vision needs to be. The other half — the bigger-picture half — involves the direction of our overall contribution as writers: what niche we’d like our voice to fill, what conversations we’d like it to be part of and what we’d like the ensemble of our stories to convey. And while this might sound overly ambitious or grandiose, in today’s environment where the jobs of writing and self-marketing go hand-in-hand, it’s pragmatic. Knowing what conversations we’d like to plug into means knowing who our base audience is – which ideally is the same or similar for present and future books. This creates a natural synergy between our writing and how we put our books and selves out into the world.
Remember Judy Blume? Of course you do! Snippets from Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and Forever are probably mixed up with memories of your own adventures in growing up. That’s because they spoke directly to all of us as her then-pre-teen audience about matters very close to our hearts – expressed all the more poignantly because they were also close to hers. Clearly, Blume didn’t just have just a
Read MoreThe media — both traditional and social — is doing a fabulous job spreading the word that self-publishing has officially lost its stigma. Outlets as venerable as The New York Times Sunday Book Review and PBS.org and have weighed in on the pros of going solo and how the changing landscape has brought this phenomenon into the mainstream.
But two major caveats to the stigma’s end seem to have been left out of the conversation. As an author about to self-publish who’s learned a lot the hard way, I think it’s vital to air, share and build some awareness around these quirks of the trade that impact us all. For lack of better names, I’ll call them “The Rubber Stamp” and “The Blanket Policy.”
Quick primer:
The Rubber Stamp
Not all methods of self-publishing are created equal. On one end of the spectrum e-books seem to have virtually no stigma attached, possibly because they’re so different and new. On the other end, paper books produced by one-stop-shopping firms like Lulu.com, AuthorHouse and iUniverse, which offer everything from design to distribution in a convenient package deal, are a glaring target for anyone inclined to turn up their nose.
These firms stand at the absolute bottom of the self-publishing food chain. Many people take issue with the fact that they charge an up-front fee for a package of services, throw their logos on your book’s cover, set the price, take a cut of the royalties and turn a very nice profit. They also have some nefarious practices such as offering accolades (e.g., iUniverse’s “Editors Choice” and “Rising Star” awards) to books they find deserving then requiring costly supplemental services before the awards can be granted.
Bottom line: These firms’ logos on your book are like a rubber stamp reading “stigmatized.”
The Blanket Policy
There’s a silent rule that book reviewers follow like the gospel, book
Read MoreHumble thanks to Jenna for yesterday’s priceless wisdom! I couldn’t agree more that superfluous forays into the past weigh a story down and should be slashed. And that writers should learn to recognize and kill off those darlings, no matter how painful. Jenna’s books are shining examples.
But I’m also worried. It seems that an exploding number of novels are cowering in a corner, so frightened of making that one fatal flashback misstep that they choose instead to march forward along a safe, straight-and-narrow, chronological line. These novels include virtually no scenes from points in time before their narratives begin, no matter how relevant or well-incorporated, which lends them a bland and frightening homogeneity. The exception indeed seems to be when there’s a second, alternating plot set in the past – a story in and of itself with its own set of powerful (“loud”) events. As if telling this second story in any other way were taboo.
Sure, in this age of short attention spans books have to be snappy and fast-paced enough, “I-gotta-see-what-happens” enough, to compete with Twitter and TV. But that’s exactly what scares me! Aren’t books meant to offer audiences something richer and more challenging than other types of media do? Their once bold range of expression has shrunk lately to a mere shadow of its former self. As a result, readers are getting used to being spoon-fed their paltry remains: action, action, action. They (we!) are growing lazy about having to think.
With sales and publishing imperatives the real Commander-in-chief around here, I also worry that we writers are developing a meek laziness of our own. In ruling out an approach that includes even artful flashbacks for the sake of avoiding risk and hooking publishers and readers, we’re losing the skills to create them at all. We’re even losing
Read MoreAt this year’s end, with temperatures near twenty and snow fluttering to the ground, I stand before you naked.
Don’t blush. Don’t turn your head. Just look directly at these words. They wear no cover, no jacket. No pages. Just like the words of my novel, Veronica’s Nap.
In September, I launched Veronica’s Nap…on a blog. Having had agency contracts for two previous novels that didn’t lead to publishing deals, I realized early in the submissions process this third time around that I just couldn’t stomach the roller-coaster ride anymore. It was time to move ahead from a place of strength, on my own. A true believer in social media, I opted for a blog as my publishing tool.
Because the rise of blogging has made us all boldly – almost shamelessly – immodest about sharing all sorts of writing online, it didn’t occur to me at the time that I’d feel so exposed. That besides getting lashed directly by the bitter wind of author friends turning their backs in silence and family members raising eyebrows, I’d relive adolescent-caliber insecurity due to my lack of “the right” accessories: an editor’s approving insignia, a publisher’s logo radiating prestige.
Yet at the same time (now you can blush), it feels good to be naked!
Read MorePlease welcome Sharon Bially to Writer Unboxed. Sharon was one of our FINALISTS during our search for an unpublished contributor for the blog, which means you’ll see here her a few times annually from now on. After she announced her love of dark chocolate on her application (which earned her bonus points with us), she wrote:
I became serious about writing fiction in 1997, when I left a career in international economics to draft an early first novel. I’ve since completed a chapter book series for children and my latest novel, Veronica’s Nap…I write women’s fiction, and my stories portray a strong link between identity, autonomy and creativity.
Sharon has recently established a website to support her story, Veronica’s Nap, which she plans to self-publish through through iUniverse. Check out Sharon’s site HERE.
But Sharon has more than writing and self-publishing to tamp into here at WU. She’s also a publicist.
As a publicist, I’ve handled PR for many non-fiction books and have held dozens’ of authors’ hands through the publishing process, from manuscript-drafting and querying to agency and publisher relations, marketing and beyond. I have much to say about what I’ve witnessed as well as about book publicity and publishing industry trends.
We know you’ll enjoy her smart advice in her first post with us.
Ready, Aim…Bull’s-Eye! Targeting in Audience Development
A few months ago, Jane blogged about audience development. Her message: Writers must cultivate and grow their audiences every day of their lives.
As a publicist, I couldn’t agree more.
But I’d add that first, writers must ask: WHO is MY book’s audience? In PR lingo, this is called the “target.” Without it, audience-building has little chance of equating to readership. But to hit it, you have to define it.
Businesses spend significant chunks of their budgets defining targets by analyzing who will buy what products. Only after this groundwork has been laid does production begin.
Books are products, like it or not. So the implication for writers is that the first step in audience development – targeting – should take place before drafting. That it should be woven into our stories’ conception.
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