On Writing, Reading, and Publishing Well:April Eberhardt Interviewed by Chris Jane

Read the interview here on Jane Friedman’s site. I’ve mentioned Jane Friedman before. Her site is like the Fort Knox of information for writers.  Gold standard, gold mine, gold star–okay, enough. Some days I think my blog should simply be: check out Jane Friedman, repeated two or three times a week.

So much to read on editing and writing and publishing, so little time . . . so I often miss things the first time around. Or read them and file them somewhere on my computer. (I am most definitely not of the clean desk, focused mind school of thought.) This interview is a few months old. Apologies if you’ve already seen it.

April Eberhardt is an agent in the Bay Area, who’s embraced the changing landscape of the publishing world. This interview presents a good overview of that world in general, and good women’s fiction in particular. I urge you to check out her site as well.

What I particularly want to call out and re-emphasize is her recommendation to writers to read. My first creative writing teacher in college made form, function, and imitation assignments: write a poem in the style of ee cummings, a Shakespearean sonnet, like that. That’s one way of learning to write by reading.  There are others.

For me reading and writing are like one compound activity. As I read I notice pacing, story arc, characterization techniques, choice of details–dozens of things I’m not even necessarily consciously aware of. It becomes something akin to muscle memory that I bring it to my own writing.

And when I teach or coach writers I almost always encourage them to read something that their work reminds me of in some way or for some specific purpose.

Read on and write on!

Monday, a Good Day for First Sentences?

Of course when we’re writing, the first sentence we put down on paper (up on the screen) isn’t always (often) the final first sentence. We rethink and revise before publishing. But we need something to get us going. And I think it’s inspiring, sometimes a direct trigger to my own writing to read lists like this.

What is going to happen next?

That, of course, is a question I ask myself after almost every single sentence (and sometimes word) when I’m writing a poem or a story or working on a novel. I think it’s a good question for narrative non-fiction as well, even when we think we know full well what happened next in the scene we’re reporting.

Enough said. Here’s Stephen King’s take on 50 best opening sentences.

Write on.

SF Bay Area Writers, Check Out This Narrative Writing Workshop Lead by an Editor and Writer Who Has Edited More Than 1,000 Books

If you live in the SF Bay area, if you’ve long wanted to write or book, or are stuck in the middle of the book, join me at Book Passages in Corte Madera for six Sundays beginning April 17 for a workshop on narrative techniques in fiction and non-fiction.

Click here for details and to register for the workshop.

You’ll get personal feedback on your chapters, stories, outline, and an honest assessment on how and where you might seek publication. You’ll get advice on making and executing a plan to publish your work from an editor and publisher with more that 40 years in the publishing business, who has edited everything from NY Times Bestsellers to amazing tales of other worlds, non-fiction and some fiction. (You can find more information about me on this site.)

I usually only work one on one, at a much higher cost to writers. So this is a rare opportunity of good value and an opportunity to hang out with other writers. There aren’t that many spots left. The workshop is limited to 10.

Join me if you can. (And if you can’t, please pass this invitation along).

Writing Because We Write, and Getting It Right so Our Readers Find Us

Gwendolyn Kiste posted a  blog which  Janine Kovac of sent out to a group I’ve recently joined, Write On Mamas. As Sherlock used to say to Watson, “It’s elementary!” And, as my daughter used to say when she was a teenager about most anything, “NOT!” Here it is: how to un-ruin your Amazon link in its entirety. And if I didn’t set up the link properly (possible, maybe even probable) look up Gwendolyn Kiste and you’ll find it.

The first time I used a computer, an Apple IIe, floppy disc, no hard drive, I was so apprehensive that it took me days to approach it. I’ve finally got to the point in life where I can try new things on my computer, and if they don’t work I breathe deeply, try again, panic, and call my friend Mark who might be getting sick of me by now. So I’ve made a resolution to breathe deeply and read the instructions.

Today I’m sharing an instruction worth following, whether you’re sharing the link for a your own new book or letting your friends and readers know about another writer’s book, this is good information to have. So I’m breathing deep while I follow the instructions in Gwendolyn’s article step by step.

In the meantime, write on!

 

If a Writer Publishes a Book/Article/Poem in a Forest . . .

I found this post on a Facebook Page, Writers on Writing. Here’s the link: Jennifergaram keep on writing. I love this post. Keep on writing because it feels better than not writing (even if you’re rejected, even if hardly anyone reads your post or article or book). Because you have something to say. Because you want to tell a story.

Reach out and touch someone used to be a slogan–maybe for long distance telephone calls (back in the dark ages before cell phones) or maybe for a greeting card company. The thing is, when we write and submit for publication and even publish, we are reaching out. And as Garam writes, we never know when what we write will touch someone.

Metrics and money seem to me not to be good ways to measure our success as writers. Okay, I don’t mean to be disingenuous and I’m not a fresh-eyed young artist who thinks money isn’t important. Quite the opposite. Many years ago, when I was a new mother, with a full-time job, and trying to write and submit poetry and have a life, something had to go. It was poetry because poetry didn’t earn money to support my family, and it took away from the little free time I had to spend with my family. So money was my metric.

Now I’m looking for a different one. I don’t have one. I’m looking for one. And I’m looking to connect with my writing–to find out what I think about growing older, living in this increasingly complex world, tell a story to entertain myself.

Why do you write?

 

If You Want to Self-Publish Your Book, You Should Know about The Book Designer

I’ve subscribed to the Book Designer’s newlsetter for years. It’s an amazing resource and you might want to check it out at bookdesigner.com. Not every post will speak to you equally of course. But these are some of the most detailed and best ideas available, written by a number of people who practice what they preach, with great guest blogs too. If I had a rating system I’d given this one five our of five, or ten out of ten, or, okay, maybe 95 out of 100–nobody’s perfect. If you subscribe, remember, take what you like (or can use or may not want to hear, but know to be true)and leave the rest, because there’s a lot to take in here.

And write on!

You Don’t Have to be a Comma Nerd to Appreciate One

A friend recently sent me the link to an article by Mary Norris, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. Here’s the article. It’s a fine read, even if you have little interest in commas. (I’m guessing the article might pique your interest, though.)

I’ve had many different jobs in several, quite different book publishing houses. Copy editing was my least favorite, in part because I dithered. Did this rule apply–or that? Was it a restrictive clause–or not? Later in my career, I used to drive a managing editor who went through comparing author and proofreader changes to distraction by telling her that grammar was an art, not a science. I also told her that, in all but the most egregious instances, the author is always right. If you are the author it is, after all, your name on the front of the book.

I worked with one writer who took a leaf from Kurt Vonnegut about semicolons. To wit: “Don not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” The copy editor and managing editor on the project did not share this view. Many semicolons were added. The author took them all out. The managing editor put them back in. The book was typeset and sent back to the the author and the proofreader. The author blew a gasket at that point and called me. The author, as I said, is always right. The semicolons went. The staccato sentences stayed.

I am not a very good copy editor. I have great admiration for good copy editors. They save writers from grief. They make the illegible legible. Sadly, except at venerable institutions like the New Yorker, copy editing is becoming an archaic activity. Computer programs with spelling and grammar checks are not copy editors.

My takeaway is this: read the article if you wish. But, whatever you do, before you publish a book, pay attention to the copy editor. I always tell authors that he or she is the first disinterested person to read your work. Pay attention to queries that essentially say: I don’t understand what you’re getting at. If a person who’s being paid to read is getting kicked out, imagine how your readers might react. And, if you’re publishing independently, do yourself a big favor. Hire a copy editor.

Now I’m going to post this and wait for the friend who sent me the article to correct my post. He’s a much better copy editor than I am.

 

 

Write Every Single (almost) Day!

This post comes under the do as I say, not as I necessarily do. And what I have to say here is nothing new under the sun. People have written whole books about this (Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg, and so many others). I’m saying it again because a small story in the New York Times at the end of the year struck me. A video reporter made a one-second video (almost) everyday for a year. As I read Daniel Victor’s article about his experience I translated it into a writing exercise that I’ve just begun.

I’m kind of a technidiot (shh! don’t tell). So I’m not going to make a one-second video everyday, although I did recently video my grandson successfully navigating his new skateboard for the first time. What I’m doing is writing a caption to the one-second video, moment caught in time, in my head.

Today’s is: Give up the concept of buttoned down.

One line, once a day. Maybe nothing will come of this. Maybe I’ll get bored. And, maybe, just maybe I’ll learn something about myself and my work. Maybe a germ will grow into a bigger idea. Maybe a poem will be born. Or a bit of character description and back story for my novel in progress. So I’m going to try it. Click here to see the article.

Write on!

Researching Your Memoir

Say what? Yes. Research your own story. Everybody has a story. And everybody’s story fits into some larger picture–family, community, corporation, school, world. How does yours fit in where?

Here’s an eclectic, but much thought about, list of things you might want to research as you figure out how to frame and position your story. I’ve also found that research can be a good cure for writer’s block or bump in the road.

• Top 40 songs the month your memoir starts.
• Headlines from your local newspaper or Time magazine for the period you’re writing about. What was going on in the world?
• Everyday things–grocery prices, inflation rates, gas prices, college tuition.
• The town(s) your ancestors/relatives emigrated from.
• Who you were named after.
• What your grandmother or grandfather did for a living. (I, for instance, come from several generations of crafts people and entrepreneurs. It turns out that not everything they did was entirely legal. Interesting for memoir or fiction. And good luck getting to the not entirely legal parts. It’s all whispers and innuendo.)
• Family secrets.

You get the idea. Here’s a few things you might do with that research.

Hypothetical: you’re writing about the time you made early career and relationship decisions, right after college. You graduated from college in say 1970. You probably remember how much you made at your first job and how much you paid in rent. But do you remember how much a gallon of gas was? Or a pound of hamburger or brown rice? What was happening in the world the month you graduated? (I happen to have graduated in 1970 and many campuses around the country were shut down. But I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, and if I were to be writing about my personal history I’d want the details of Kent State and campus protests to be woven accurately into that story.)

Hypothetical: you’re writing about an event in your life that could be affected by your family history–perhaps how old your grandmother was when your mother was born. And the family Bible, your Aunt Edith, and your childhood memory of grandma’s stories are all slightly different. To my way of thinking, there’s a couple of ways of researching this part of the story and deciding what to do with it once researched. You could dig to the bottom per official records and go with that story. Except people often lied about their birth date or their children’s for a variety of reasons. You could gather all the information, pick one version, and write that into your memoir. And you could tell the story of your research and the conflicting stories that you remembered and found. A, B, C or all of the above!

What story about your life do you want to tell? And what’s the surrounding story? Research can help you find a way into your story. Research can help you find bits of your story that you don’t know you know. Research can be fun!

Write on!

How to Write about Sex–Let Me Count the Ways

Okay, I’m not actually going to write about how to write about sex here. I’m not even sure I can put the word “sex” in a blog headline. If the blog police don’t blow the whistle my Catholic upbringing might. But, as Noy Holland points out, there are a lot of ways from the explicit to the barest innuendo, the down and dirty to the sublime, to write about sex.   See the article here.

I’ve read many, but not all, of the stories and novels Holland mentions in the article. And I recommend them to you. It’s been said many times and many ways: if you want to write fiction, if you want to write a particular kind of fiction, reading fiction–studying it–is one of the best things you can do. Besides writing. Dive in and try it!