Category — On Writing

I suppose it was only a matter of time before it happened again — publishing drama in the form of a publisher pulling a nonfiction book because significant parts of it are, in fact, fiction. This NY Times piece offers details: Charles Pellegrino originally claimed he’d been duped by a source while writing The Last Train From Hiroshima, and then the book’s publisher later learned that other people in the book may not exist, and that the author’s Ph.D. may not exist either.

This is certainly not the first or even the most dramatic revelation of questioned work — remember James Frey? Margaret Selzer? Herman Rosenblat? to name just a few — but it comes at a time when publishing is at a precarious spot in its industry’s history. As novelist Kurt Andersen told the Times: “If book publishers are supposed to be the gatekeepers, tell me exactly what they’re closing the gate to.”

Amid the struggle to get published, my fellow writers and I end up talking a lot about self-publishing, which usually has been viewed as the only option for writers who aren’t “good enough” to find a “real” publisher. Yet many writers are choosing to self-publish these days — and it’s not because they’re not good enough (Steve Almond is certainly good enough – check out his story in this LA Times piece) or because they won’t be able to sell enough books (we all know John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, can sell books, and Publishers Marketplace recently announced that he is self-publishing his latest, Venus On Fire, Mars On Ice). They’re choosing it for other reasons, among them making more money, having more control over the process, and, as Steve Almond puts it: “No marketing plan, no guilt-inducing advance, no royalty statements, no remainders.”

This is not to say that, just because another questionable nonfiction book has slipped through the cracks, we should abandon the publishing world and do it all ourselves — not at all. Self-publishing, of course, is not for everyone — having no marketing plan, for example, is only a good option for someone who already has an audience or has a great deal of experience in book marketing — and in general, having gatekeepers is necessary and good. But for those with great books that can’t sell in today’s market, it’s good to have other options, and slipping under the gate might not be such a bad idea.

Victoria Patterson, author of Drift, wrote in a recent article about autobiographical fiction for The Millions that her writing group would call her by the name of her protagonist, despite her assertions that her character was fictional — and that she endured a “condemning two- to three-month silence” from her family after her book was published.

One of the most interesting things about Patterson’s article is a conversation she had with her father, who brought up an event that he said he wished “had gone better,” to which Patterson replied, “Dad, that never happened. It’s fiction. I made it up.” Which is another challenge of autobiographical fiction: If people recognize parts of the story as true, they may well believe it’s all true.

I’m often asked about how much of what happens in the stories of Forgetting English actually happened in real life. Last week, when this came up at a book club I was visiting, we joked about how they all might want to lock up their jewelry (and their husbands) … but the truth is (quite boringly) that Forgetting English isn’t autobiographical — at least not in the strict sense. Every story contains bits and pieces of my life — some more than others; “The Road to Hana,” for example, was inspired by a real stolen ring, even if I wasn’t the one to steal it — but these pieces are not necessarily reenactments of my own experiences.

In a reading I gave last week at a local college, I was asked about “The Ecstatic Cry,” the Forgetting English story about a scientist living in Antarctica — a character about as opposite of me as one could imagine, in that I hate the cold and barely passed most of my science courses. Yet I acknowledged that this character — a loner who spends as much time as she can at the bottom of the world, who cares more for animals than for humans — does reflect a concerned (and rather cranky) part of myself, a part that wishes we all treated animals and the planet a little better. And while in my everyday life, I express this part of myself in small ways by volunteering and supporting organizations with similar goals, I enjoyed giving it a voice and a life of its own.

If you’re writing purely autobiographical fiction, then you already know about the questions that will await you. And even if you’re not, those same questions will still await you. This is because readers know as well as we do that nothing is ever entirely fictional — even if we did make it all up.

I enjoyed seeing this LA Times blog post about England’s new American Idol of publishing: TV Book Club. Perhaps one day, like other British programs, an American version will make its way across the pond. How great would it be to see an entire show dedicated to books?

And I’ve been following William Boot’s “Do I Have To Read…?” series for the Daily Beast on reviewing commercial books. In Boot’s opinion, only 44 of the 279 pages of Elizabeth Gilberts’s new book, Committed, are readable. The number of readable pages in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help? “All of them.”

As I schedule new events and classes, I’ve found a handy resource in Teach Street. Whether you’re a student of writing or a teacher of writing (or of anything else, for that matter), check it out, if you haven’t already. It’s a great way for students to find classes and for instructors to list classes.

If you’re into publishing news and you’re also on Twitter, you might get a kick out of following FakeBookNews, satirical tweets about publishing and literary culture. Among the stories: “Success of bestselling novel leads to blog deal for author” and “Michiko Kakutani gives up using ‘fierce,’ ‘limn’ and ‘deeply felt’ for Lent.” (Note: Click here for a non-satirical piece on going from blog to book.)

“Can writing be taught?” asks this Atlantic piece, which offers advice on writing from Wallace Stegner, Francine Prose, Gail Godwin, and others. John Kenneth Galbraith, while acknowledging that the difficulty of writing is enough to drive any writer to drink, nevertheless advises staying away from booze: “Any writer who wants to do his best against a deadline should stick to Coca-Cola. If he doesn’t have a deadline, he can risk Seven-Up.”

And finally, for anyone who’s ever thought about using a pen name, check out this blog post from literary agent Nathan Bransford. (Important: Deal with the pen name after you’ve found your agent: “When I receive your query,” Bransford writes, “I don’t want it to be from your pseudonym.”) The post has an interesting list of pros and cons, especially tuned in to the Internet age, and includes reasons I’d never really thought of — for example, if you have a very common name, like Jane Smith, you might consider a pen name for search engine optimization (of course, with a name like Midge, you can see why I’ve never thought of this).

Enjoy.

I always enjoy presenting at the Southern California Writers’ Conference in San Diego, in part because it’s a great excuse to travel south from Seattle in February (it was not only sunny but in the 70s!) — and also because it’s an exhilarating, exhausting-in-a-good-way weekend. Even better, I get to see old friends and meet amazing writers.

Among the friends at this year’s SCWC were Clare Meeker, who presented on creating commissioned stories (she’s in San Diego all week promoting her book Charge Ahead, commissioned by KPBS public television in San Diego as part of a national “Raising Readers” grant to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from the U.S. Department of Education). Among the gems of Clare’s presentation were reminders that a writer always needs to be thinking outside the box, and not to take no for an answer: an editor who once told Clare that they only used in-house writers later published two of Clare’s books.

During the banquet I got to catch up with Judy Reeves, whose A Writer’s Book of Days will be reissued this fall; keep an eye out for that, even if you already have a copy  — the new edition will have all new prompts and literary quotes. I also had the pleasure of sitting with Tammy Greenwood, whose new novel, The Hungry Season, was published in January. She gave an inspiring keynote that evening, as well as a great session the next morning on creating substantive characters.

I always enjoy the agent/editor panel, and this year, I felt a bit more optimism about publishing in the air. The panel talked about book promotion, making a few important points, among them: Writing and selling a book is half the process, while promotion is the other half; there’s less and less money available for in-house publicity, so this job is falling more and more to authors; authors must be creative with marketing and/or save some of their advance dollars to put toward hiring a publicist.

They also talked about e-formats, and none had any violent thoughts on the subject, which indicates that the non-retail part of industry is becoming more accepting. One editor noted that the e-formats do not affect print runs at her publishing company — they do the same print run they’d do with or without e-books, and adding e-formats only increases readership beyond what they’d be seeing with traditional paper books.

In response to a question from the audience, the panel addressed self-publishing, noting that they don’t normally take on self-published books (the average sales for a self-published book is about 100 copies), but that their interest is piqued whenever a self-published book sells 2,500 copies or more.

And of course, members of the panel talked about their pet peeves — and I always think this is worth noting in detail. The list seems to be the same year after year, but apparently this is because writers are making the same mistakes year after year. So take note: among the most common submission mistakes to avoid are…

- approaching an agent or editor the way he/she does not want to be approached (calling when guidelines specify email contact only, for example)

- sending material the agent doesn’t represent or the editor doesn’t publish

- sending work that has not been edited or proofread

- sending work that is too long (noted one agent: “Anything over 100,000 words is a red flag — it’s hard to sell anything over 90,000 words”)

- sending emails to multiple agents at the same time

- misspelled words in a query letter (including — and especially — misspelling the word query)

- telling agents or editors that they’re going to “miss out” or that the book is “a guaranteed bestseller”

- writing, “here is my fictional novel”

- forsaking professional writing when using email – queries should still be written professionally

Overall, the conference was informative and also inspiring. One of the best things about this conference is that because it’s in February, it’s still early enough to make good on the new year’s writing resolutions. So now, back to work…

I can still remember the first story I ever wrote, when I was maybe eight or nine years old, on school notebook paper in what was then my fairly neat, legible handwriting. I think it may also have been illustrated. Perhaps because, back in my day, we still wrote high-school English papers by hand (I had a word processor in college but didn’t get my first computer until graduate school — and yes, that does make me feel old), I still often write out scenes by hand. I find writing longhand especially helpful when writing a first draft, or when polishing a close-to-final one. I’ve always loved what Natalie Goldberg says about writing by hand: “Arm connected to shoulder, chest, heart.”

But I do remember taking both computer and typing classes (on actual typewriters). And these days, nothing makes you feel quite as old as admitting you used to write by typewriter. Sometimes, when I’m in the Seattle Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, I hear people younger than me wondering what this odd sculpture is:

(Note to young people: It’s a typewriter eraser. We use to employ these to get rid of typos before we had backspace buttons and the delete key.)

Eventually, the keyboard took the place of the pen and the notebook in my academic life, and even in my writing life. But not for long: I always continued to write by hand, whether taking notes during an interview or scrawling out an outline. And now I use some combination of the two.

Many writers are particular, even superstitious, about the way they get their words on the page. I enjoyed discovering this site featuring Authors A-Z, “an ongoing project featuring the lives, works, and typewriters of the most outstanding authors around the world.” Here, you’ll find out that Harper Lee wrote on an Underwood portable. That Joseph Heller used an SCM Smith Corona Electra. That even Joyce Carol Oates has rejected the computer: She writes in longhand, then types her notes into scenes using “a Japanese made Swintec 1000 electronic typewriter with ‘a little memory’ but no screen.”

And if you’re interested in owning a piece of these antiques, here’s even an (expensive) online store where you can browse old typewriters and jewelry made of their keys. (Check out eBay and flea markets, too.) Over the last few years, my husband and I have been picking up typewriters here and there (we have three Underwoods and and have recently added a Remington), and will probably keep adding to the collection, at least until we run out of space. Only one of ours is in any sort of working condition, but that’s not why we bought them. Even bent and broken, with sticky keys and dried-out ribbon, we think they’re pretty cool — maybe because they always look as if they’re smiling.

I recently did a guest blog on writing routines (specifically, on my very random writing routine, along with a few tips for similarly scattered writers) for Seattle’s Crab Creek Review.

Check it out here.

This one comes thanks to the American Short Fiction blog, on which I discovered artist Mark Menjivar’s intriguing photo project: a collection of photographs of what’s in people’s refrigerators, appropriately called “you are what you eat.” From the freezer filled with nothing but meat and tequila to the fridge containing only two items, it’s an interesting look at the way people live. And it’s definitely thought-provoking for writers.

So here are two exercises for you to do after you’ve checked out the photos:

1) Open your fridge. Take a photo. Write about what you see: why it’s there, what you’d like to be different, what it says about you, and anything else you can think of.

2) Choose a photo from Menjivar’s project — but avoid reading his description of the fridge’s owner. Instead, make up a character based on what you see in his/her fridge, including backstory, relationships, work, passions, the whole thing.

Enjoy.

I found this NYT article about James Patterson fascinating: the story of this author’s spectacularly successful career, from the struggle to get published in the 1970s, when he sold 10,000 copies of his first book, to today (last year he sold 14 million, outselling Stephen King, John Grisham, and Dan Brown). It also shows how, depressingly, the publishing industry has changed: “Thirty years ago, the industry defined a ‘hit’ novel as a book that sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in hardcover. Today a book isn’t considered a blockbuster unless it sells at least one million copies.” (No pressure, writers.)

The article offers a little background on the history of the blockbuster, pointing out that Patterson is not only a beneficiary but a catalyst (he’s described in the piece as “Little, Brown’s most prized possession”). These days, bestselling authors are not writers — they’re brands. (And, like a handful of other bestselling authors, Patterson doesn’t write his books himself but with a series of co-authors.)

The piece reminded me of something a writer friend of mine recently heard at a conference: a literary agent, when asked what she was looking for in an author, replied, “A franchise.” For most writers, this isn’t great news.

But as always, I try to look for the silver lining. As the article notes, “Patterson built his fan following methodically … like a politician aspiring to higher office, he was shoring up his base.” He also discovered the joys of reading later in life than many writers and blew off a chance to go to graduate school. And yes, his first book was rejected more than a dozen times.

I got a kick out of the story’s glimpse into Patterson’s book tour — he calls a gathering of 300+ people “a fairly respectable crowd” — and it shows well the bond between author and reader, no matter the genre (or brand, as the case may be). Of his own work, Patterson says, “this is not high art,” but his devoted fans don’t mind: the woman who read his books with her grandmother and wanted to bury a signed copy with her; the trucker who has listened to every book while on the road.

A writer can’t have everything — and in Patterson’s case, it’s the love of critics (the Daily Beast’s William Boot calls Patterson’s detective Alex Cross “a moron”). But as Patterson tells the Times, his readers are happy: “So what’s the big deal?”

Even when I worked in publishing back in nineties, the slush pile (i.e., that pile of unsolicited manuscripts sent in directly by authors and put aside while agented manuscripts were given priority) was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. (And yes, it literally is a “slush pile”: towering stacks of manuscripts all leaning and falling into one another until you can barely tell where one ends and the next one begins). In fact, as this Wall St. Journal article notes, the last time Random House found a book from the slush pile was in 1991.

These days, the article also notes, “most unsolicited material has gone unsolicited for good reason … Book publishers say it is now too expensive to pay employees to read slush that rarely is worthy of publication.” Yet back in the day, this was how authors were discovered — Philip Roth and Judith Guest among them — and even screenwriters could send a script directly to a studio (now, most studios won’t even accept emails due to concerns about being sued for plagiarism).

Now agents are the ones discovering new writers — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for emerging writers to be discovered: finding an agent is “harder than ever to accomplish in the wake of agency consolidations and layoffs.”

While this may seem depressing, what always saves these tales of publishing woe are the exceptions, the success stories that are too few and far between but nevertheless give emerging writers just enough inspiration to keep going. One story is familiar by now: “In 2003, an unknown writer named Stephenie Meyer sent a letter to the Writers House agency asking [about] a 130,000-word manuscript about teenage vampires.” Normally this sort of query would’ve been tossed out — but assistant didn’t know that a typical YA book came in at 40,000 to 60,000 words, so she asked for the manuscript. And we all know how that turned out.

As always, there are rules in publishing that writers are wise to follow — but remember that it’s just as wise to break the rules on occasion. See the WSJ’s list of slush pile Dos and Don’ts for tips. But most of all, keep writing — becoming a better writer will help your chances — and keep submitting.

As many of you know, I send out a writing exercise in each issue of my free e-newsletter for writers.

In the spirit of the new year — looking back, looking ahead — here it is:

Write a review of your current project (i.e., your novel, a poem, a story, etc.).

Take a step back from the work and try to see it objectively. Write the review as if the piece is already published, and be honest in terms of what works and what doesn’t (adopt the style of your favorite book reviewer if this helps you get some distance). Be specific — cite examples, quote from the work itself — and then put it away. Wait a week, then take out the review and look it over. Pay attention to what it tells you about your project: first, where you are, and second, where you’d like to be.

Enjoy — and let me know how it goes!