The Weekend Writer: Some Query Letter Critiques

I just stumbled upon author Mindy McGinniss' blog in which she critiques query letters. This is interesting stuff, at least as far as I've read.

McGinness is the author of The Female of the Species, which I liked. A lot.

The Weekend Writer: Getting Ready for OUR School Year

September is upon us, the time of year when writers' organizations start running workshops.  During the pandemic years, some organizations ran virtual workshops, and when things became less dire, they moved to hybrid programs, an in-house workshop for the locals and a virtual one for me. 

How I love a virtual writers' workshop.

I've gone on here before about the benefits of virtual workshops: Less expense, less of a time commitment, less travel--none at all, in fact. So let's just take a look at what's being offered this year.

Your Choices Are:

Off Campus Writers' Workshop. The Off Campus Writers Workshop out of the Chicago area is my favorite workshop site. The organization is eighty years old and may be the oldest of its type in the U.S. They offer something every Thursday morning from September into May. That's Central Time, by the way. Is Thursday morning inconvenient for you? OCWW records all workshops and sends registrants a copy that they can access at their leisure for a week. This is your cheapest option, at least, the cheapest I've found. Workshops are $25 each for nonmembers, $10 for members. Membership is only $40 a year, with the year ending in the summer. Membership pays for itself in workshop discounts. I know. I'm a member. Workshop leaders are writers, most with some kind of teaching experience, many with academic teaching experience. I've seen some pretty big name people there. Want to stick to generative workshops, nothing lecture-like? They've got some.  This year's workshop schedule. 

Thurber House. I've also attended a couple of workshops through the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. These workshops are a little more expensive than OCWW's, and the prices vary. They are still a buy, especially when you consider many writers' workshops are through conferences, so you have to pay for a day or more of attendance, even if there's only one workshop you're interested in. This fall's workshop schedule. These are evening workshops at Eastern time

Pioneer Vally Writers' Workshop. The Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in Northampton, Massachusetts is totally new to me. I only just heard about it. (I already can't remember how, but I think BlueSky had something to do with it.) Their pricing is also higher than OCWW's, though, once again, a good buy. And get this...they offer gift cards. This fall's workshop schedule. Most of these are Saturday workshops at 1:00 PM, but check carefully. I hope to make it to Anna North's Friday evening essay workshop in December. I read her novel, Outlawed, this summer, and liked it a great deal. Again, Eastern Time.

Are There More Virtual Writers' Workshops Out There?

I'm guessing the answer to that question is "Yes." Which is too bad for me, because I have a ridiculously long list of workshops I want to attend this year just from these three organizations.

The Weekend Writer: What We Talk About When We Talk About Shitty First Drafts

Over the years that I have been an active writer, sometimes interacting with

other writers and industry people, sometimes studying craft, I've seen a lot of what I guess could be called "bandwagoning." Somehow an idea gets floated out into the void, and suddenly huge numbers of people jump on the bandwagon and will...not...get...off. Something must happen between the point when the idea comes up and the point when everyone clutches it to their collective bosom, but I have no idea what it is.

A few examples: 

• YA fiction must include romance. Nothing else happens between the ages of twelve and twenty. I first heard this twenty plus years ago.
• The freaking hero's journey. Is it really the model for all writing or just the same model for the same cliched stories?
• The whole pantser vs. plotter thing. Again, cliche much? Meaningless cliche? Don't get me started.
• Give your main characters something they want, then keep it from then. Does it seem to anyone else that a lot of traditional writing advice involves teaching how to create formula work?

Which brings me to the shitty first draft.

The Point Is, Don't Expect Much of a First Draft

When Anne Lamott coined the phrase "shitty first draft" in Bird by Bird, she seems to have essentially meant that first drafts aren't good. "All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts." (I would argue that hoping for a terrific third draft is overly optimistic.) "Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something -- anything -- down on paper."

Now, it's been many years since I read Bird by Bird, but I think what Lamott was talking about here was eliminating the need to be perfect right away. The desire to create perfect prose can be paralyzing and stop work. Later in the section on shitty first drafts, she writes about her own process, involving writing a shitty first draft of an opening paragraph and going on to more shitty first draft work that she later, over time, cut and revised. 

While she describes her process, she doesn't describe the one and only process for achieving a shitty first draft. And even within the process she describes, she doesn't cover things like how writers might generate the thoughts and work necessary in order to have the material to create the shitty first draft. Her point, I think, is the end result. A shitty first draft.

What Has "Shitty First Drafts" Become?

What I see happening with the "shitty first drafts" line is a shift from "all first drafts are shitty, get over it" to "write it all out, everything, everywhere, all at once," which has become a cliche that is as paralyzing as believing you have to get it perfect on your first shot. It's also unhelpful, because it doesn't address how to write it all out all at once. 

Your most highly skilled plotters might be able to manage this, but my understanding is that most of them do quite a bit of plot planning before they begin to write. (I once read about a writer who spent three months plotting before he would start writing.) They are not getting just anything down on paper. For organic writers, who have trouble isolating plot from story and can't plan those events out first so they have to work with all story elements at once, getting just anything down is mystifying. (Organic writers. Nobody writes by the seat of their pants.)

A Shitty First Draft Is An End, Not A Process

I started thinking about this recently after reading No silos, no hidden truths, and no shitty first drafts: A Q&A with Nicole Graev Lipson by Asya Parton at The Brevity Blog. When asked about shitty first drafts and revision, Lipson said (among other things), "I've never been able to take that approach...I cannot go on to the next paragraph until the one I'm working on is doing the work it needs to do...It's like polishing a stone. When it's ready, I move on."

I've often thought of writing as like chipping away at a block of marble, trying to carve something out of it. Polishing is involved. Because I'm part of an engineering family, I also think of it in terms of a building. The beginning of a work is the foundation. If I discover a third of a way through the project that the foundation isn't right and won't bear the weight of the story, I have to go back and fix the characters or the voice or the plot. How can I possibly go on? Whatever needs to be fixed ends up generating the material for the rest of the story. What is there to write, if I haven't fixed the foundational problems? Even with this blog post, I kept going back and tinkering to change the foundational work as I was working. As Lipson said in her Brevity Blog interview, "...the writing shapes my thinking." In my case, at least, my new thinking then shapes my writing.

Of course, particularly with longer work I still end up with a shitty first draft. But that shitty first draft is a product, not a process.

The Weekend Writer: Getting Started Living Like a Writer

I recently took a Zoom workshop (Zoomshop? Let's make Zoomshop a thing.) with Lori Rader-Day through the Off Campus Writers' Workshop. While checking out her website, I found her suggestions on how to get started writing. 

What I like about them is that they are things anyone can do. She says nothing here about MFA programs. She says nothing about writers' retreats in remote places. She says nothing about putting your butt in a chair and writing every day or you really aren't interested in being a writer, are you?

What she does do is write about things you can do right away. Like this afternoon. 

 A lot of what she's talking about is what I think of as how writers live. We do:

• Look for low-cost resources (Say, Off Campus Writers' Workshop)
• Take individual classes and workshops (Why, OCWW again.) 
• Go to local book events (Look for bookstore and library events. A self-publishing writers' organization in my state runs enormous numbers of gatherings at vineyards, breweries, and other outside-the-box locations.)
• Follow other writers on social media
• Read and write

You don't need to do something big and elaborate to get started writing. You certainly don't have to wait to get started living like a writer.

The Weekend Writer: How NOT To Personalize A Query Letter

There are countless numbers of articles out in the world on how to do countless numbers of things related to writing. Personally, I have become selective about which ones I read, because there really aren't countless numbers of ways to do things. But How Not To Personalize A Query Letter by Tiffany Hawk did catch my eye because of the NOT in the title.

Essentially what she's saying is don't personalize your letter in an illogical way that's not connected to a professional connection. For instance, sometime in the last year or two I submitted to an agent who has an apple orchard. It was all I could do not to say in my cover letter that I love apple orchards. I hope I didn't say that.

Also, don't do any of these things.

Hawk also has a 6-step strategy for finding literary agents that I think is very good. 

The Weekend Writer: How Many Publishing Worlds Are You Familiar With?

 A few weeks ago, I saw an article on Medium that I will never find again, because of the hundreds of thousands of things published there. I think the writer was a woman, so for convenience's sake I will refer to her as she. The writer was distressed because she had to wait two days to hear back from editors when she submitted to publications on the Medium platform. She had a schedule to maintain! What was wrong with these people? It is a problem! I think she may have also expected these editors to automatically accept her work, but I may be mistaken.

All her commenters agreed with her.

I sat there in front of my laptop, stunned. 

I often see articles on Medium about writing on Medium and what is wrong with Medium and why the writers are thinking of leaving Medium or why the writers are leaving Medium. You don't have to read these things for very long to realize that most of these people have never written anything for publication before they started publishing on Medium. Because Medium is a self-publishing platform, anyone can publish there immediately, without meeting any objective writing standards, without having any expertise in subjects they write about. (Medium does require a certain format for published articles and really prefers that writers not steal the images they use for illustrations. Does anyone else think that seems reasonable? That's not a high bar, folks.)

Is Medium The Real Writing World?

When I read these kinds of things on Medium, I think those writers have no idea what's going on in the real writing world. But why isn't Medium real? Many of the writers publishing there appear to have never published anywhere else. The site encourages community, so many Medium people are reading there, following other writers, and supporting each other with applause and comments. If they can achieve what they want to achieve there, they may never go out to traditional publications for anything at all. They are in a world. What's not real about it?

Back in 2010, there was talk on the Internet about there being two publishing worlds. One was centered in New York and involved publishing as a means of generating income for writers. The other was centered around MFA programs and involved publishing as a means of supporting academic positions--a variation on publish-or-perish. If someone were writing on this subject today, I believe self-publishing would be a third publishing world and perhaps self-publishing on-line at platforms like Medium and Substack a fourth. 

The Publishing World That Is Not Medium

A couple of days ago, Jane Friedman published a piece by Amy L. Bernstein (who, by the way, is on Substack)  called Publishing Advice from a Serial Submitter to Literary Magazines. This is a description of the traditional writing and publishing world I'm familiar with, the publishing world where you are not automatically published. "Indeed," Bernstein says, "the 1% acceptance rule is fairly consistent, whether you're submitting short fiction or a novel."

Even though I wasn't aware that only 1% of submissions are accepted by literary magazines, my expectations of an acceptance are not high. And, no, I never expect to hear back from a traditional editor in two days. But the publishing world Bernstein is talking about is one that I am at least familiar with. I stick with it, because I understand that, as she says, "If you don't play, you can't win."

But I know about the traditional publishing world, because I've been writing, submitting, and sometimes being published for a long time. Most of the people coming up writing in Medium world have not. Will they ever know anything else besides sending off whatever they write with an expectation of it being published, as is, immediately? 

Does it matter if they don't?

The Weekend Writer: Some Virtual Writing Workshop Opportunities

You know how much I enjoy attending writing workshops by way of Zoom. Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio has announced its fall adult writing workshops, and, yes, you can attend them virtually. 

Why, yes, I have been to Thurber House. 

Why, yes, I have written about going to Thurber House.

Why, yes, I do have a Pinterest board about Thurber House.

The Weekend Writer: Some Great Writing Ideas Even If You Haven't Been Rejected Yet

Karen Jones, a flash writer and editor at New Flash Fiction Review has a terrific craft piece in its State of the Art Column called  Why You Might Not Have Placed That Brilliant Story (aka READ THE GUIDELINES). By terrific, I mean it's full of good stuff about writing even if you haven't been trying to get something published and not getting there with it. 

It's short and to the point and filled with things writers should be considering well before they start to submit.

The Weekend Writer: Hybrid Publishing

First, A Brief Primer On Book Publishing Options

Traditional publishers: They accept manuscripts for publication that meet their standards (whatever they may be), provide authors with an advance against royalties (an advance against the author's take of sales), and provide all the work necessary to publish books. And there's a lot. The author takes no financial risk but receives a small percentage of the cover price of each book, since the traditional publisher needs to make back its investment...and presumably more. Many traditionally published books don't sell enough to cover the authors' advances.

Self-publishing: Authors publish their books themselves, doing...and paying for...all the work necessary to do so. And there's a lot. Over the years, I've read that it's not unusual for self-published writers to pay around $10,000 to publish a book of a quality to compete with traditional books. And then they may sink a lot more money into marketing. The authors are taking all the financial risk but receive all the money their books make. It's not unusual for self-published authors to not make enough money on book sales to cover their investments.

Hybrid publishers: Hybrid publishers are supposed to be somewhere between traditional publishers and self-publishing. They provide some of the work necessary to publish books but authors pay for a portion of it. I'm seeing figures of around $8,000 to $9,000, and while that does include distribution, which self-published writers struggle with, it often doesn't include developmental editing and marketing. Both can cost a lot. Authors are sharing the financial risk with the hybrid publisher but receive a bigger percentage of each book sold than traditionally published authors do.

Looking Further Into Hybrid Publishing

Jane Friedman takes a deep plunge into hybrid publishing with IMHO: A Nuanced Look at Hybrid Publishers at The Hot Sheet.  Read it carefully. Among other things, she talks about the percentage of authors publishing with She Writes Press, a well-known and reputable hybrid, who earn back their investment. I found it sobering.

A few years ago, I attended a women's writers group. A few women had books coming out with a hybrid publisher. A couple of them said they were going that route, because they were older writers and didn't want to spend the years it can take to find a traditional publisher. Yeah, that was sobering, too. 

These days, we think of traditional publishing as being the gold standard. That's where the quality is. But I wonder if a couple from now we won't be thinking in terms of quality, but social class. People with the means to do so, will publish rapidly with self-publishing or hybrid publishing. Poor writes will congregate with the traditional publishers because they don't have to put any money up front with them.

The Weekend Writer: A Case Study In Raising Stakes With "Queen Charlotte"

Over and over again in my writing years I have read and heard that writers should raise the stakes for their characters. Protagonists must have something at risk to make readers care.

I will admit that my response to this has been, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have a story, you have a story. Raising the stakes is just manipulation or filler."

Recently, though, I saw Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story and realized what a difference a protagonist with something significant to lose can make to a story.

The Bridgerton Series

The first two seasons of Bridgerton on Netflix are the arguably drawn-out love stories of attractive, wealthy characters in Regency England. 

The stakes: How soon will this good-looking, rich guy get together with this good-looking, rich woman and how soon will they take their clothes off?

These are entertaining shows, if you like historical romance or at least the historical period involved. Or if you like looking at beautiful clothes.

The Queen Charlotte Difference

Queen Charlotte is centered on a secondary character from the Bridgerton universe, one inspired by a historical figure, Charlotte, the wife of King George III. The story here begins at the point where the other two Bridgerton series end. Charlotte and George get together and marry, though don't take their clothes off, in the first episode.

The stakes:  1. How will Charlottee deal with George's mental health problems, which could affect the monarchy/government? Will the two of them make it possible for him to reign? 2. Will Charlotte be able to establish herself in a position of power as queen, thus ensuring that the people who look like her, their side (as the situation is often referred to), will be able to hold their new positions in the aristocracy and hand those positions down to their children. 

We're talking a cultural shift for a society versus a romance for one couple.

Queen Charlotte is far more involving than the first two Bridgertons, and that may be due to how much higher the stakes are for the main character.

The Weekend Writer: Some On-line Workshop Opportunities For Children's Authors

 The Highlights Foundation has a number of programs coming up over the next few months. Some of them, particularly the two-night minis, are on-line. 

Thanks to Erica Verrillo for this information. She also maintains the website Publishing...And Other Forms of Insanity, where she covers writers' workshops as well as calls for submissions and other such info.

The Weekend Writer: But Then A Workshop You Thought Was Going To Be A Bust Provides A Lot Of Value

Last month I did a Weekend Writer post on workshops, inspired by one I'd just taken that made my all-time worst list. This past Thursday I had a very different workshop experience.

 I took a workshop on humor writing, Using Humor to Deepen Emotional Impact with Kathleen Rooney through the Off Campus Writers' Workshop. No sooner had the workshop started then I realized that I had misread the workshop description. It was about humor and poetry, something I don't write, though I became interested in prose poetry a few years ago. I've dabbled in it. Barely.

Well, the mistake was totally mine. I knew I had taken an OCWW workshop with Rooney before and decided to put aside regret about my ineptitude, live in the moment, and see what happens.

What happened was a terrific workshop with excellent use of handouts. I came away with some new knowledge of humor terms (call backs! durational humor!) and the name of a George Orwell essay that I've found on-line but haven't yet read. (Funny, But Not Vulgar. And, no, I've never thought of George Orwell as being funny, either.) There were also a couple of opportunities to write, and I came away with what I think could be the beginning of one of those prose poems I've been dabbling in. Barely.

This was a really well-planned and well-executed workshop. On top of that, it was hybrid, meaning Rooney was speaking to a live group as well as a Zoom audience. Those don't always workout seamlessly. This one did.

I am particularly hopeful about the bit of writing I did in this workshop, because back in 2021 I took that other workshop with Kathleen Rooney that I mentioned earlier. It was on writing flash fiction and nonfiction. Looking back on my notes, I see that the work I did to a writing prompt in that workshop became my essay Enough, which was published four months later at Kitchen Tales. 

So Weekend Writers, while sometimes we have to suck it up when we stick ourselves with a disappointing workshop, sometimes we have to keep our minds open to what a workshop can offer us.

  

The Weekend Writer: A Couple Of Words About Workshops

I highly recommend that new writers take any writing workshops and classes that are available, affordable, and of interest to them. Writing is a craft, and very few people can learn it from just writing the same things over and over again without any thought of how the rest of the world reads and comprehends words on a page. 

However, not all workshops/classes are going to be terrific.

A case in point is the workshop (in reality a talk) I took this past week.  I thought the workshop leader was going to explain a method to help with drafting and revising. Instead, the workshop was about...Well, I would be hard put to say. This event makes my list of worst so-called workshops I've attended. 

Another Great Benefit Of Zoom

However, it was a Zoom workshop. Thus:

• It was cheap.
• I didn't have to get dressed up or made up.
• I didn't have to drive hours to and from the workshop site.
• I didn't have to find a place for lunch or decide to go without, which is always an option.
• I hand-drafted part of this blog post while the workshop leader was talking about who knows what.

 A really crappy workshop is nowhere near as big a loss when you're taking it over Zoom versus having to drive somewhere.

What Is A Writing Workshop, Anyway?

The word "work" in "workshop" suggests some kind of "work" is going to happen during it. You're going to do something during the workshop. However, in my experience many writing workshops are in reality talks or lectures. That doesn't mean you can't benefit from them, especially if you're just starting out. Personally, I'm a fan of a good lecture, especially if the lecturer knows how to use PowerPoint.

If you've been around the workshop/conference/retreat track a few times, though, you may get to the point that you've heard a lot and don't want to hear anymore. A member of my writing group once said she was tired of conferences, she wanted to write.

If you're interested in workshops that will do more than just tell you information, look for the word "generative" in the description. The workshop leader expects the workshop to generate work. Even workshop descriptions that suggest participants bring a project they're working on often end up being for workshops that involve very little work. I've had better experiences with workshops that are described as "generative." 

Old Wine In A New Flask

Some writing workshops, as well as writing books, do not provide new ideas or techniques. They're the workshop leader's or book writer's personal application and name for techniques other people have used and written about and that are generally called something else. If you are a new writer and you haven't heard any of this before in any way, shape, or form, you may find this helpful. 

If you have been writing and studying a while and have heard of this before in a different way and perhaps are even using it, you may find this old-wine-in-a-new-flask content confusing. You may end up sitting there searching for something new that just isn't there.

A Final Point

Sometimes you just have to suck it up, because you're in a lousy workshop and move on. I, myself, will be spending some time today continuing to watch a recording of a SCBWI workshop that is good. Okay, it's really a lecture, not a workshop, but so far it's been a good one.

Movin' on.

The Weekend Writer: The Story Behind My Latest Publication In "Literary Mama"

 

My short story The Mother Suite has been published in the latest issue of Literary Mama. Literary Mama is one of the first literary journals to focus specifically on the work of mother writers and is celebrating its 20th anniversary next year. It publishes a blend of poetry, book reviews, profiles, fiction, and nonfiction. 

Now The Mother Suite has a history that may be of interest to writers who haven't done a lot of submitting yet.

• According to my records, I first submitted The Mother Suite in 2005. I submitted it 9 times over the next 17 years.
• I continued to tinker with it during that time and didn't just keep submitting the same thing over and over again. Come on. There's always a possibility that a piece of work is rejected for a reason. My submission records indicate that around 2020 the story evolved into a flash version. That is about the time I became interested in flash fiction.
• Sadly, I have no hard copies of the original, presumably longer, version. Nor can I find anything pre-flash on my hard drive. As a minimalist, I believe that is good. As a writer...not so much.
• The first publication I submitted the original story to in 2005 was...Literary Mama! I thought it was worthwhile submitting it again this past March for two reasons. 1. The story had changed over the years. 2. Publications change editors over time. A new person would be seeing this. 

Working With A Developmental Editor

Literary Mama has department editors who function as real developmental editors (I published a piece of creative nonfiction with them in 2007, and the situation was the same.). This is unique in my limited experience publishing short work, but it was a big part of publishing my books with G.P. Putnam. It's hard to describe what developmental editors do to someone who hasn't worked with one and especially to people who aren't writers. But, essentially, they help develop the story. Developmental editors working for a publication or a book publisher see something in a submission that appeals to them in some way, that they think could work for their publication or company. Writers and editors agree to work together to develop the story, to help it evolve into something they all believe enhances the original submission.

In this case, the original submission, called Take It From Me, was written as an older mother's advice to new mothers. The main character had two children, and she had more experiences that she talked about. It was essentially a superficial rant. Looking back, I think there was a feeling that the children were at fault somehow. Literary Mama's fiction editor liked a particular aspect of the story. She suggested dropping one of the child characters and creating more of a relationship between the mother and remaining child. She suggested dropping some of the experiences the mother originally talked about and elaborating on the ones I did use. She also suggested dropping the advice frame I was using, which went a long way to eliminating the ranting.

Maintaining the mother's voice was important to me. Among the good things that happened as this story evolved is that the daughter developed a voice as well.

The story became much more sophisticated than it originally was. I hope that the experience of working with this editor will have a positive impact on my future short story writing.

The Weekend Writer: Reading About Writing

I am picky about what I read on the subject of writing, because back in the day when I did read more of them, I found that books about writing tended to be the same thing over and over and were often very boring.

However, 18 of Our Favorite Books About the Craft of Writing by Leah Schnelbach  from Tor.com sounds interesting. It includes well-known books like On Writing and Zen in the Art of Writing but a lot of things I haven't heard of, even when I've heard of their authors. While I'm a lot more interested in generative workshops than craft workshops, I might give one of these craft books a try.

Hmm. Reading and blogging about one of these could be an arc for The Weekend Writer feature here at OC.

The Weekend Writer: An Opportunity For Unagented Picture Book Writers

I learned about the 2022 PBParty Annual Contest at my writers' group Tuesday night. It's an opportunity for unagented picture book writers and writer/illustrators to make a submission to a pool from which a group of projects will be drawn for the agents and editors connected with the event to read. Some of whom may ask to see more of a particular author's work.

Note, this is not a Twitter pitch. You will need a query and 60 to 70 words of a completed, ready-to-submit manuscript. You will have two windows on March 1 to submit your material via a Google form, a link to which will be provided. 

There's lots of information on this event at the link above. Check it all out.

I must add that networking about events like this is another benefit of belonging to a writers' group, particularly one with trained, active writers who are pursuing study and submission.

The Weekend Writer: I Need Someone To Do This For Me

When self-publishing first became a thing, it wasn't unusual to see blog posts and personal opinion articles about how traditional publishers didn't do that much for writers, yet they kept so much of the cover price of a book. Writers could do what publishers do and keep everything they make in sales themselves! 

Over the years, it has come out that traditional publishers do thousands of dollars of work on every book they publish, work that their authors don't do and don't pay for. Self-publishers can, indeed, do this work themselves, and they do. But not only do they have to fund all the work themselves, paying for professional level editing, cover illustrations, design, and marketing, they also have to learn everything that needs to be done.

A case in point--printing.

Andrew Watson's Book Printing 101: What You Need To Know Before Approaching A Printer appeared at Jane Friedman's Blog. I don't mind admitting, I was shaken by all the details involved. 

Now, I suspect there are companies out there, Amazon might be one of them, where self-publishing authors can just press a few keys, and everything will be taken care of for them. But isn't somebody, somewhere, still making decisions about types of paper for the text and types of paper for the covers, and what types of hard covers, and on and on?   

I have probably said something similar to this here before, but it's worth saying again: You just can't exaggerate what self-publishers need to know to give their books a chance at being successful.

 

The Weekend Writer: "My goal is to do well enough that my publisher wants to publish my next book."

I've been saving this interview with Elinor Lipman at Jane Friedman's website, because I think she says  some good things about writing humor and dialogue. 

I realized just a few days ago that I really don't enjoy reading interviews with, and writing articles by, authors I'm not familiar with. So I should probably say here that I've read a couple of Lipman's books and particularly liked The Inn at Lake Devine, which for some reason I thought must have been set on a lake near where I grew up. 

Something that struck me in this interview was what Lipman said about her publishing goal. "My goal is to do well enough that my publisher wants to publish my next book." That was my publishing goal, too! I really didn't care about how much money I made. I cared about a publisher for the next book.

One of the things you have to accept about goals is that you're not going to meet all of them.

 

The Weekend Writer: New Writers/New Parents

My husband and I recently shared a laugh over the common belief among prepublished expectant mothers and fathers that they'll be able to write a book while on parental leave with a newborn. It was a cruel, insensitive laugh, since we still talk about 'the nightmare of infant care' and can't recall a lot of our sons' early years.

Gail with new baby--not writing

Author Maria Kuznetsova has a moving piece at Catapault about something slightly different. She promoted her debut novel soon after the birth of her first child. Remind me not to plan to do that in my next life.

What makes Kuznetsova's essay so good isn't that it is an account of what happened and what she went through. She also describes how the experience changed her. It changed how she perceives others, how she reads, and how she teaches. Her essay is about change and coming out the other side with something, making it far more meaningful than just "this happened and then this happened and then this happened." 

We often hear that fiction should involve a change. Maybe essays should also.

Oh, also, Weekend Writers, if you're planning to do some major writing or promoting while recovering from the arrival of a new child--give it a second thought.

 

Weekend Writer: Writing Prose Poetry, Are You?

Well, it looks as if I'm doing a poetry arc for the Weekend Writer this month, what with it being National Poetry Month and all. Since I have a small interest in prose poetry, that's what this installment is about.

 

Tell Us Gail, What Is A Prose Poem?

These are my own probably not very reliable thoughts on the subject--You know how creative (or narrative) nonfiction is nonfiction that uses elements of fiction to communicate fact? Okay, well, prose poetry is prose that uses poetic elements--say, imagery, metaphor, repetition--to communicate the kinds of emotion or intensity we usually associate with poetry. A hybrid, so to speak.

But if you're smart, you won't take it from me. Check out:

• Prose Poem at Poets.org
• The Poet's Revolt: A Brief Guide to the Prose Poem by Danielle Mitchell at diyMFA 
• Prose Poem or Flash Fiction--What's the Difference? by Jessica Terson at Trish Hopkinson--A Selfish Poet
  

I am very new to reading prose poetry. To date, my favorite is How to Make Boxed Shells: 8 Easy Steps by Brenda Nicholas at Unbroken.

And Now For Something That's Not About Prose Poetry

School Library Journal has a list of 2021's children's books of poetry and about poetry. Presumably these are just the books published so far this year.