Author in Progress
This past Friday at sundown began the Jewish month of Elul, the last month of the year and a month for teshuvah, a word often translated as repentance, but which more literally means return. I’ve spent the past couple of years working towards my conversion and learning about the cycle of the Jewish year. And as I write this post, it has me thinking about other cycles in our lives, about the natural ebbs and flows of people and nature, and so, in the spirit of Elul, this is not my usual advice post. Instead, this post is an apology, a forgiveness, and a reminder.
But first, I have a confession to make.
I’ve barely written since last November. It isn’t that the creative well has run dry. I have a new novel idea I’m eager to dive into, edits due on my current book and plenty of ways to improve it, and a short story idea I’ve been mulling over for more than a year now.
Furthermore, I know I feel better emotionally when I’m writing on a consistent basis. I feel more accomplished, more creative. I generate more ideas and the writing improves in turn. Sometimes I write so consistently and so much that I even impress myself. Back in October 2018, when my current novel was little more than an idea and 5,000 words of a draft, I decided I wanted to apply to GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator Program. The application was due mid-February of 2019, and I would need to submit an entire manuscript draft to even apply. So I logged onto the NaNoWriMo website, opened Scrivener and began working.
I wrote every day for a month and a half and by mid-December had an 85,000 word draft. I wrote 80,000 words in six weeks y’all. That’s nearly 2,000 words each and every day.
I’m not sure I’ve written more than 2,000 words in the past six months.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been in the “ebbing” portion of this ebb and flow cycle of writing. I thrive on novelty and work best (and often only) under the pressure of a deadline (some of you may be unsurprised to learn that I am currently looking into being tested for ADHD), and can go months at a time without touching a story. It’s not… ideal to say the least. It can be frustrating to feel like you aren’t reaching your potential, to feel like you’ve got a story trapped inside and can’t get it out. Even more frustrating when you have proof of just how high you can soar.
Under the right conditions.
Conditions that are vague and elusive, that seem to work sometimes and not others.
Conditions that feel like trying to map out an ever-shifting maze when everyone else sees a straight corridor.
It doesn’t help when so much writing advice from published authors is about consistency. Writing every day. Butt in the chair, hands on the keyboard. It sounds so simple, so easy. So when I fail to do it, over, and over, and over again, the sense of shame […]
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We have two reminders and exciting new details to share with you about WU’s OnConference!
August 31st
First, August 31st is the last day you’ll be able to purchase Early Bird tickets–which comes with early access to the writers’ lounge on our event platform. Tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite, HERE.
August 31st is also the last day to apply for a WU scholarship. Learn more about that and how to apply, HERE.
Tiffany Yates Martin
We’re thrilled to share with you that multi-published author and professional editor Tiffany Yates Martin has joined the WU OnConference, and will lead a session called, “Seamlessly Weaving in Backstory: How to Incorporate Context, Memory, and Flashback.”
Learn more about that via our Infographic-style schedule at the end of this post, or on Eventbrite.
Closed-Captioning
We’ve added closed-captioning to our live sessions, to help you capture every word.
Our 18 sessions are accessible in other ways, too. They trickle out over the course of 18 days at times designed to sync with your life-in-progress. If you miss one of them, you can watch it in our conference library through the end of October, and from your own living room.
Preview Video
The Writer Unboxed OnConference was carefully planned to offer you a wide array of deep craft and writing-life topics. Below, find a video preview of our session leaders describing their sessions, why they’re important, and what they hope you’ll take from them.
(Email subscribers, please visit YouTube directly, HERE.)
Our Dress Rehearsal, Take Two
There’s an additional preview for you from our own Kathryn Craft just below. Kathryn will lead two sessions for us at the OnConference, including “Get that Story Moving!” We tried to run through this during a dress rehearsal on Friday for a group of UnConference alums, but were stopped short by a technical issue. Kathryn kindly agreed to try, try again to Get that PowerPoint Moving!
Turns out rehearsing for an OnConference can be like revising a draft. We’re keen to work out the kinks before we “publish,” and we’re beyond grateful for our “early readers.”
(Email subscribers, you can access Kathryn’s video directly on YouTube, HERE.)
The Infographic That Tried to Kill Therese
Finally, please enjoy this Infographic-style view of our schedule.
Learn more about the OnConference and purchase your Early Bird pass on Eventbrite. We hope to see you in September! Write on.
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Many stories have been written on the topic of obsession: The Girl on the Train, Lolita, Moby Dick…the list goes on. Most of these are cautionary tales. Don’t get obsessed; it could lead to mayhem and self-destruction. But sometimes obsession can be beneficial.
Recently, I watched the Adam Sandler movie Hustle. Though it has its humorous moments, it’s definitely in the “serious Adam Sandler movie” category. It’s about an NBA scout looking for a standout player so he can cement his status as a coach on the team after decades of work (often grueling with constant travel). He finds his prospect in Spain. As they’re training together he says, “Obsession beats talent every time.”
As a writer that line stood out to me. As a person it stood out, too.
Sometime in 2007 I got it in my head that I wanted to run a 5K. I had never done well in fitness testing in school. In fact, I often finished last in the mile run challenge. I once ran a 14-minute mile. For most people, that’s walking. I was not fast, even though I played team sports. But a 5K goal seemed achievable. Most of my family and friends thought I was nuts. Why would I want to run 3.1 miles? And time it? To this day, I have no idea. But I became obsessed with this goal.
I read Runner’s World. I found a plan called 5 weeks to your first 5K. I followed the plan, 90% of the time. I found a running buddy. And it worked. I ran the 5K and didn’t finish last. I ran several more after that. At my fitness peak, I even completed a half-marathon, a distance I have no desire to run again.
Why am I telling you this? Because it’s similar to our journeys as writers. I believe every writer is talented but certainly there are degrees of talent. The one thing that sets writers apart from the rest of the population who aspire to write a book, essay, magazine piece, etc. is that they sit down and do it. The words might be garbage on the first draft, but they just go for it. Time and time again.
If writing is important to you, it doesn’t matter how talented you are. It matters how interested you are, how often you throw words against the page. Handwritten, typed, or otherwise.
It matters how much you persevere, even when you don’t feel like writing a thing.
It matters if you put words to paper, even if it’s just 5 words a day or 3 words a year.
You are a writer because you show up. Showing up is the action part of the obsession. Over time that obsession will manifest itself into talent.
It’s why I’ve sent hundreds of query letters. (I eventually got an agent).
It’s why I’m writing even though I don’t necessarily feel like it. (I’m recovering from a breakthrough case of Covid).
So go ahead. Obsess sometimes. I think a little obsession is healthy for all of us. Sometimes it even improves your cardiovascular fitness.
Over to you, WU community. What do you think is more important: an obsession with writing, or talent? How do you know when something has become an obsession?
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(Yes, this actually IS a photo of F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
In my previous post, I focused on the importance of the written word in the time of Covid, and on how I was embracing a newfound reliance on written correspondence to stay connected with people – in particular, people I care deeply about. Among the books I mentioned in that post was this collection of letters written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I recommend to anyone who’s a fan of the author.
Since posting that, I stumbled onto a powerful quote from F. Scott. (By the way, how cool is his name? I actually went through a phase in college where I insisted on being listed in musical programs as “K. Daniel Cronin.” Good thing I wasn’t pretentious or anything, right? But I digress…)
The particular quote attributed to F (er, can I call him F? Okay, probably not) was: “Nothing any good isn’t hard.”
Or at least that’s what Facebook (or Instagram or some other social media site) wanted me to believe. Ever the skeptic, I researched the quote to see whether F (okay, his real first name was Francis, which helps me understand why he chose the initial) actually ever said that. Turns out, he did.
But far more interesting to me was the context in which Mr. F expressed that thought: It was in a 1936 letter to his then 15-year-old daughter “Scottie,” to whom he was providing a combination of coaching and tough love re her aspirations to become a writer like her dear old man. The letter skips around a bit, some of it addressing Scottie’s complaints about life at the new boarding school she was attending, but then her father turns his attention to a story she’d written. To quote from the book I mentioned above:
“Don’t be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.
Let me preach again for one moment: I mean that what you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought. It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it […]
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Have you ever imagined being interviewed on late night television about your breakout bestselling book? Do you long for your own Wikipedia page? When you read the New York Times “By the Book” feature, do you draft out what your own answers would be?
Or is that just me…?
Well, whatever your specific fantasies may be, we all have them. We all stretch our imaginations toward the brightest possibilities the future may hold, like plants seeking out light. Even if we’re a little afraid, I think we just can’t help it. It’s human nature to dream.
It’s also human nature to feel the ticking of the clock. As the years pass by, our future seems to shrink, and some of those shiny possibilities fall from the sky like shooting stars: dazzling, but gone forever.
I used to get rather down about that, realizing that certain fantasies could no longer come true for me. Mourning the milestones that never occurred and never can. For example, I have aged out of being a literary wunderkind, or “the Taylor Swift of books.” And my first manuscript did not sell, much less lead to a highly publicized bidding war.
Please don’t judge my juvenile delusions too harshly. Chuckle with me instead. I was so naive! I held such a limited vision of what my success could or should look like, and unfortunately, like too many things in our society, it was completely tied to youth, wealth, fame, and acclaim.
But now, having gained some maturity and wisdom, I’m revising my fantasies in much the same vein I would rewrite a work-in-progress. After all, my dreams aren’t so different from my novels, in a way. They’re just stories that I’m telling myself.
So let’s cross out “teenage prodigy” and “breakout bestseller,” because those are not the only stories that are worth telling. They are not even necessarily the stories that people find most compelling, in the long run. They might be flashy and exciting, sure, but do they touch the heart? Do they make a home there?
Take the Olympics, for example. The top medalists get plenty of media coverage, of course. But some of the most memorable and beloved competitors are ones who never make it onto the podium — because winning is not the only thing that matters. We care about the journey.
So these days, when I imagine the content of my Wikipedia page, or pretend to give answers for an interview, the takeaways are all about patience and perseverance. Overcoming adversity. Committing to a passion and a purpose, regardless of the outcome.
Depending on how the next couple years (or decades) go, this all may change again, who knows. I can’t predict what the future will bring — but I can revise my own story, to find pride and merit wherever my journey leads.
Just for fun, no wrong answers, no judgment: What writerly fantasies do you hold? What will your New York Times feature say about you? What kind of values do you want to embody as a literary role model?
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The German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag wrote Die Technik des Dramas, a definitive study of the five-act dramatic structure, or arc, in which he laid out what has come to be known as Freytag’s pyramid. Under Freytag’s pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts. (Definition paraphrased from Wikipedia).
1. Backstory/Exposition: The story begins in late January, 2020, when the debut novelist (nine months out from pub day) hears an international news piece about contagion on cruise ships. The author is on a cruise ship; a three-week trip around South America. The ship staff have protocols—lifeboat drills and announcements, outside doors locked in high seas. The author lines up with the other passengers, and like obedient preschoolers they insert hands into a portable spray-sanitizer station before returning onboard after shore excursions. She finds the delay an inconvenience, the alcohol gel irritating. She starts to carry scented hand cream. The term “Legionnaires disease” circulates and goes away. From Buenos Aires, the author telephones a foundation in France to secure the use of a photograph from 1930 for cover artwork. At sea, she is frantic for a good internet connection; final blurbs are trickling in, the cover design is finalized, and the title font.
Then, somewhere near the Falkland Islands, there is a new page up on Amazon, with her own name and a preorder link for her book. The author drinks free shipboard Champagne and Googles her title over and over and each time it hits she feels a little thrill. She posts photographs of the cover design on her Instagram page along with whales and seals and by then, the cruise is over and she returns home, anxious to begin pre-publication marketing of her debut novel.
Inciting Incident: CNN reports about a ‘wet market’ and pangolins, and the world gets stranger and stranger. “Those poor authors who have books coming out in June!” the author laments, with shallow sympathy and large-but-silently selfish relief, that her book does not come out until August 2020, and all this virus foolishness will be old news.
The author has a live reading with a poet in late February, in a bookshop, and tells herself that by August and launch time, she will have her talking points and gestures down. She orders a Great Outfit for the book festival talk, along with mounted posters of her book cover to stand in the background behind the podium. The Great Outfit is expensive; a little edgy-in-a-good-way, and she rationalizes that it will help her feel confident at public appearances.
2. Rising action: By March, signs of spring are appearing, but the author’s focus is not on her garden. The news is sobering. Dr. Fauci is introduced into the plot. The author worries about elder loved ones and is afraid to get on a plane and fly halfway across the country and stay in a hotel and mingle with thousands of people in a convention center. Thousands of attendees back out, thousands vow to go anyway. She cancels attending AWP at the last minute. She feels bad for the members of her speaking panel, but they replace her easily.
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For years (over a decade to be exact), I have been hanging on to a three-ring binder of rejection letters and emails I’ve received from agents and publishers. I’ve been hanging onto the folder as a reminder of what…I don’t know. The struggle, I guess. I’ve always had this vision of becoming a bestselling author and holding up the binder and saying, “Look at all the adversity I’ve encountered and I never gave up. You shouldn’t either.” I would picture the crowd gasping or crying tears of redemption on my behalf. I would tell everyone that no matter what, they could be a successful author, too, if they just kept at it. Everyone would be inspired by this long, hard road I’d gone down.
When I started my rejection compilation I had no idea it would take me fifteen years to land an agent. I’d always assumed that once I got a coveted agent everything would just fall into place. My first manuscript on submission would sell within a week and I’d become an NYT bestseller with a movie deal a year later. How naïve I was. Or maybe I was just a hardcore dreamer. My career has not played out that way. I self-published one of my YA series. But I have hung onto the binder. Until recently.
We have a small house, and during the last couple of weeks leading up to the birth of my daughter I tried to free up room wherever I could. A drawer here, a shelf there. One of the things that was taking up space was my large binder of paper rejections. Some were physical letters; some were emails I had printed out. I flipped through it once, remembering how excited I had been to receive something other than form letters – there were many but some included handwritten notes of encouragement. I had been in the query game so long that some of these agents had passed away or switched careers. I sighed and moved the binder to the garbage pile by the front door.
“Are you getting rid of your writing?” my husband asked. “Don’t do that. It’s important. Keep all of it.” He picked up the binder.
“It’s a book of rejections,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, toss it. We don’t need that bad energy.” He also added an “F them” which I appreciated.
The older I get the more I think there isn’t anything romantic about a hard struggle. It makes for a good story with some drama, but it doesn’t make someone’s journey more worthy than another’s. I don’t think it makes the win much more satisfying either. It just makes the waiting and wondering harder. Although since I haven’t had the big “win” I can’t tell you for sure.
I don’t know how long it will take for one of my manuscripts to sell to a traditional publisher. Or if I’ll ever tell audiences who come to see me about my hard luck story. Even though I still have a digital catalogue of my rejections (I have a spreadsheet tracking all of my submissions over the years), getting rid of the physical binder sort of felt like giving up on part of the dream (the part where I tell […]
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As we come up on the two-year anniversary of our lives being changed forever by the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s easy to think about everything we have lost. And I know I am not alone in being sorely disappointed in the failures of our governments, our health agencies, and society at large in not adopting any sort of consistent or universal approach to combating this deadly scourge. But even though I’m admittedly a glass-half-empty kind of guy, I can’t help but notice one ongoing behavioral shift that I attribute primarily to the pandemic, which I believe is both relevant and even beneficial to us as writers:
The increased power of the written word.
I really do believe that writing has become more important than ever. And this is particularly interesting to me, since for more than 20 years I’ve been earning my living as a writer in the corporate world.
The biggest surprise I encountered when I first entered white-collar life was that most people apparently do NOT like to write. Many of them find it hard, unpleasant or flat-out frustrating. And to me an even bigger surprise was to find smart, educated people who were extremely articulate and effective speakers, yet could barely write an intelligible sentence.
Having been raised by a pair of journalists, I grew up thinking that writing and speaking were essentially two sides of the same coin, since in my household we were expected to be able to express ourselves in writing just as well as via the spoken word. I had no idea that this was not the case for most families. In working with my new colleagues and clients in the corporate world, I soon learned that just because somebody was an eloquent speaker, it did not necessarily mean they were able to capture that same eloquence when they wrote.
The good thing was: Because so many people hated to write, I could earn a nice living, because – wait for it – they would pay ME to write for them! Who knew? Seriously – this was a major revelation to me, and has been the secret to my staying gainfully employed for the past couple of decades. But that revelation is why I also find this new Covid-era trend so surprising. I mean, if people don’t like to write, why are they doing it so much? I have some thoughts on this.
But before I go on to defend my hypothesis, I want to acknowledge that I’ve seen numerous posts on this site over the past couple of years about how some of us are NOT writing. Posters and commenters alike have expressed how they’ve felt blocked, disinclined to write, unable to concentrate on artistic endeavors in light of all that’s going on around us, and so on. But while some of us may have found our creative writing efforts hampered or even shut down by the sheer emotional and psychological weight of these turbulent times, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of us have actually been doing more writing than ever. Think about it:
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Many writers, myself included, keep an eclectic assortment of books on their desks at any given time: a novel or two, a book of poetry or short stories, perhaps a few research books for the WIP. And as might be expected, many of our desks also have a stack of dog-eared books about writing.
I love when people ask for recommendations about books on the topic of writing. There exists such a variety of them: instructional, informational, inspirational. No matter the direction a particular writing resource takes, I always find gold nuggets of wisdom to incorporate into current projects.
In the spirit of a baker’s dozen, below I’ve listed thirteen of my favorite books about writing.
1. LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET by Rainer Maria Rilke (Inspirational)
“…admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write,” Rilke writes in the early pages of this classic. The book is a compilation of letters from mentor (Rilke) to mentee (young officer Franz Xaver Cappus). Interspersed throughout the letters are countless bits of wisdom about life, writing, suffering, art.
2. BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK DEAL by Courtney Maum (Informational – Business)
This guide to finishing, publishing, promoting, and surviving your first book asks all the hard questions we’re too scared to say aloud: Do I need an MFA? What if I don’t like the offer I get on my book? What happens if I don’t like my agent? What if I die before my book comes out? Maum liaised with countless industry professionals while writing this book; the advice is second-to-none.
3. WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL by Donald Maass (Instructional – Craft)
Touting one of our own here, but this book is too good to not include in this list. I skim this book before starting any new project. It includes invaluable advice on story premise; stakes; plot approaches; and theme, all of which evolve with each new project. “Every protagonist needs a torturous need, a consuming fear, an aching regret…” Maass writes. This book is a must-have on your reference shelf.
4. BIG MAGIC by Elizabeth Gilbert (Inspirational)
This inspirational guide on the balance of fear and creativity is the reason I’m a writer. I was lucky enough to attend one of Gilbert’s talks when she was on tour for this book years ago, and she asked the audience to think about how we’d feel if we didn’t pursue our dreams. Suffice it to say: the next week, I began penning my first novel.
5. SAVE THE CAT WRITES A NOVEL by Jessica Brody (Instructional – Craft)
For the structure-lovers among us, this book breaks down the three-act story structure in a way that prompts interesting questions to consider in our projects. An excellent resource when outlining a project, particularly if you feel your plot is lacking in tension or pace. Don’t get lost in the formulaic nature of some of the chapters: like any writing resource, the information in this book exists to guide you, not constrain you.
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What do I, as an author, owe to myself? What do I owe to my publisher? To my readers?
I think about this often as I promote my debut novel, Waiting for the Night Song, while simultaneously revising my forthcoming novel, The Last Beekeeper, and drafting what will hopefully become my third novel.
To whom do I owe what?
I wrote Waiting for the Night Song with no expectations. I created a story I needed to tell, not knowing if I would ever sell it. I wrote the book for myself. After landing the elusive book contract, I incorporated changes based on suggestions from my editor. At this point, I was still writing for myself — sort of.
New expectations started lining up.
I wanted to please my editor and my agent, both of whom took a gamble when they signed me. I wanted to make them proud. I wanted my book to succeed commercially. But mostly, I need this book of my heart to be mine, to be the book I had envisioned for so many years.
It was still my book, right?
Ideas, many of them bad, started sneaking into my head. Should I add more surprise twists? Books with twisty plots were topping the charts, so I added a poorly-conceived plot contortion, for no reason other than I thought readers wanted it.
I quickly deleted the ridiculous subplot because it didn’t serve the theme of my book, and this book was, after all, for me.
To be clear, my editor and agent have never pressured me to change my writing in ways that didn’t feel right for my story. They make suggestions, not demands. But after years of writing just for myself, I now feel the burden of writing for other people, as well.
I started to wonder: Was Waiting for the Night Song still mine?
Every time I contemplated a change, I checked in with the little voice inside my head that shouted: Is this really what you want?
Waiting for the Night Song launched in January 2021. As soon I got the first copy in my hands, I took a long, hard look at my beautiful book, and I can honestly say, yes, it is the book I wanted to write.
But as soon as it hit the shelves, a new player came into the picture: readers. Early readers, reviewers, influencers, book clubs, and they all had opinions.
When I Zoomed in to virtual book clubs to chat about my book, I occasionally faced tough questions. Did that character really need to die? Are you pushing a political agenda?
At first, I assumed a defensive position when anyone challenged my authorial choices. Didn’t they understand I wrote this book for myself? Of course, my writing includes my worldview. But I soon realized that the day I released my book into the world, it no longer belonged to me, at least not completely.
My book did not belong to my agent or my publisher.
It belonged to my readers.
Every reader who invests time and money in reading my book owns a piece of the story. They read my words through the filter of their own lived experiences. I believe the scenes I wrote play out differently in the minds of each reader.
Some readers appreciate the choices I make for my characters. Other readers […]
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In classes and conferences we’re taught to be better writers, but it’s up to us to get our work out there and learn how to be writers in the world. If you have an intention or desire to publish a book, submitting to literary magazines and contests can be a good place to start down the road. As with any undertaking, it helps to have credentials and to that end, validation of your work and getting your name out there are always a plus. Winning a writing contest, fellowship, or grant looks really good on a cover letter. Having your work chosen and published gives you street cred that you really can’t get anywhere else.
Here’s one thing I’ve learned about getting published: you’ve got to get noticed to get noticed. To that end, here is a basic guide to submitting, entering contests, and applying for fellowships:
1. Buff it up– Be sure that your work is as polished as you can make it.
2. Gather information– Part of choosing where to send your work is knowing your market. Almost all print magazines and online journals request that you familiarize yourself with their preferences and style before you submit. Fair enough, right? You could spend a fortune buying copies, but many have excerpts on their websites. Make a list of those that sound right for your style and whichever piece you are planning to submit. Duotrope and New Pages have a weekly newsletter listing calls for submission, including themed submissions and contests. Authors Publish newsletter also offers a free weekly lists. Entropy, The Master’s Review, and Literistic all have submission listings. Submishmash is the weekly newsletter of the Submittable entry portal, featuring submission opportunities. Also, writer’s magazines such a Poets & Writers and Writer’s Chronicle have good databases.
3. Make a list of markets -Remember that each piece you write may fit into a different market. Some publications pride themselves on featuring debut writers, some only want well-established authors. Whatever magazine you choose, be sure that your piece fits their style. In addition to litmags, consider widely distributed magazines that aren’t exclusively literary but publish fiction and poetry, like The Oxford American or Garden and Gun. Look at their websites and at the physical mag if you can. Most of the websites have a tab for “submissions” or a blurb in the back pages or masthead. If they say “no unsolicited submissions”, don’t waste your time unless you sat next to the editor at a dinner party and he asked you to send something.
4. Tier your targets– Duotrope has a really nice feature where they show you the percentages of acceptances by specific magazine as well as where writers who submitted to one place also submitted. Send to the top first, then wait before sending out round two because what if you send out fifty submissions at once, and immediately hear from someone at the bottom of your list with an acceptance but then, the next day The […]
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I was raised in a central Illinois town of about 90,000 people. I realized as a child that A) I wanted to be an artist (specifically, a rock n’ roll drummer), and B) the Midwest was NOT the place where that would likely happen. So I planned from an early age to leave skid marks behind me the very second I was able to achieve escape velocity.
I have an older brother, who was also not a big fan of the region. He ended up working in Seattle for an up-and-coming software firm called Microsoft, around the same time I started making Florida my home. If you look at the US map, the two of us couldn’t have positioned ourselves much further apart, a pretty telling reflection of our own personal dynamic when we were children. To be fair, we reached a state of détente in our early twenties, and later learned to genuinely enjoy each other’s company – admittedly in very small increments. We continued to live 3,000 miles away from each other for many years, getting together every few years to share our current stage of extended adolescence with each other. My brother eventually relocated to Arizona, bringing us slightly closer, while I remained stubbornly ensconced in the Sunshine State, other than a two-year stint in Los Angeles in the early ’90s.
As our childhood acrimony faded, we found ourselves drawn closer together, in particular upon the occasions of the death of our parents: first our father, when we were both in our early twenties, and then again when our mother died during our forties. We came to look forward to our occasional visits with each other, and were surprised to realize we were both feeling a growing sense of nostalgia for the places that had defined our childhood.
One of these was a tiny town in central Iowa where our mother had grown up, which had been the site of an annual family pilgrimage during the Viet Nam War era. My parents would load my brother and me into our well-worn Ford station wagon, and make the seemingly endless northwestern slog across some of the dullest landscape in the country, all to spend a few excruciatingly boring days visiting our grandparents in what was certainly The Dullest Town In The World. My brother and I dreaded these trips, and, I’ll confess, did little to make them any easier on our parents.
Fast-forward 40-some years, and my brother was suddenly pitching the idea of us getting together for a family reunion of sorts in that tiny Iowa town. Apparently he had swallowed a few more nostalgia pills than I had, but he was not to be denied, and I soon found myself reluctantly booking a not-very-direct flight to the Iowa airport that could get me closest to that tiny burg – which was not very close at all. I rented a car at the Des Moines aiport, and then headed north towards my final destination (no, the town I was visiting was not actually Pleasantville, but that 1963 photo at the top of this post is NOT retouched, and was too perfect not to use.)
Take me home, country roads
The drive ended up being surprisingly pleasant (see what I did there?), as it […]
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A while ago, a writer friend of mine was talking about her first query letter. She’d let me read it and I thought it was well done. This wasn’t a surprise. She’d spent a lot of time on it, she’d researched, revised, and sent it out to critique partners for their honest opinions. It was at a place where further effort was just spinning her wheels, at least until agents started to weigh in.
But she was frozen in place, terrified to send it out. She admitted that even though she knew the query and the manuscript were both in excellent shape, she couldn’t pull the trigger. “What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t like…me?”
“They won’t,” I told her in my usual too-blunt way. “At least, most of them won’t. That’s just the way it works. But they don’t all have to like you. Only one has to like you.”
She laughed and said, “Can you imagine going out on stage in front of a large audience, singing a big emotional ballad that you wrote yourself, and when you’re done the audience is silent except for one person, slow clapping in the back row?”
She had a point.
It occurred to me that as writers, we really are true performers, and not so different than any other artist whose platform is a stage or a gallery wall. My friend couldn’t send out her query because she was suffering from good old-fashioned stage fright.
Based on my research, social anxiety and fear of public speaking/performance affect 22 million Americans and are two of the top-twelve most common phobias (along with fear of spiders, snakes, heights, flying, dogs, storms, needles/injections, germs, and both wide open and small spaces). These phobias are evolutionary and have been key to our survival—keeping us away from poisons or getting too close to a cliff edge and falling to our deaths. But now, with our day-to-day lives being lived in much safer environs, those evolutionary anxieties have less purpose while being no less present. Even when there’s no actual threat to our safety, our bodies often want to flee, or they just freeze up. Not surprisingly, these fears attack self-confidence and cause people to avoid stepping up to the podium even when doing so could lead to long-term success.
Getting back to my friend and her query letter, she’d admit that her stage fright comes from her need to be perfect and her fear that she never will be. Well (here’s me being blunt again), she’s right about that. She never will be perfect. None of us will. Check out this 1-star review for the King James Bible:
“I would have given it 5 stars if not for the 2 typographical errors that I’ve found (so far).”
For some, simply acknowledging that perfection is not attainable may be all it takes to gather the courage needed to put their writing out there for others to see, to judge, to love, or to hate.
But if that’s easier said than done for you, here are 6 techniques you can try to help you step out into the spotlight:
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The R&B group Shalamar told us that love can be better the second time around, but I wonder if that’s true. When I met with my publishing house editor a few weeks ago, she said, “You know what they say about second books.” I wanted to respond, “No, what do they say?” But of course, I knew. The publishing world and readers love a debut—shiny and new—but by the time book two comes around, the bloom is off the rose. There are the inevitable comparisons, and authors desperately want to prove they aren’t one trick ponies and that their glorious debut wasn’t a fluke.
I had great success launching The Kindest Lie in February, catching the attention of journalists, booksellers, librarians, and trade reviewers. Then the intensity of publicity and marketing for my debut began to wane. The “best of” lists included new titles and everyone’s eyes had turned from winter toward summer and spring. Here, at the start of fall, I’m trying to make magic for the second time with a new novel, People of Means. So, I thought I’d share a few lessons I’m learning the second time around.
Take as long as you need to write the best book you can. I signed the contract for my second book the same month my debut released. A draft of my new novel would be due eleven months later. After taking six years on and off to write the first one, doing it again in less than a year seemed daunting. When I turned in the first 45,000 words to my editor to get a gut check on my progress, she could tell I was rushing to meet the deadline. Luckily, she gave me four additional months to work on it. The downside is that it will release several months later than we had planned. But that’s okay. I’m working a demanding day job, juggling promotional events for the first book, and writing a new novel. I need the time and mental space to focus on the second book. This will take the time it takes, however long that is.
Be flexible about the kind of writer you are. Writers and readers often ask about your writing process. Do you outline or does the story evolve more organically? In writerly lingo, are you a plotter or a pantser? For years, I have detested outlines and formulas that tell you the inciting incident must occur by the 25 percent mark. Building that type of structure around my creativity felt too confining and I resisted it. I told my editor all of this when we spoke recently. After listening patiently, she said, “I’m going to need you to outline.” I took a few seconds to absorb her words and then agreed. My author friend, Alison Hammer, shared her color-coded outline for multiple point of view, dual timeline novels. That’s what I used to craft a 10-page outline for People of Means that my editor loved. I don’t know if I can call myself a plotter now, but I had fun with it. None of the labels feel right anymore. Maybe I’m a chameleon who can adapt to multiple literary habitats. I still believe in the advice of esteemed author Andre Dubus […]
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