Category — On Writing

Conjure up a rainy day (or a rainy night). This prompt is about the senses: Write a scene in which you (or your character) are inside on a rainy day/night: What are you hearing, feeling, observing? Then write a scene, considering the same senses, in which you are outside on this rainy day or night.

For writers, rumors provide fantastic material — in fact, the weirder and more outlandish they are, the better. As writers, we don’t care whether the rumor about a long-lost classmate’s love child is actually true; we’re just fascinated by the possibility that it might be because there’s a story there.

Whether a rumor is about a tornado warning, a sneaky colleague, or a relative having an affair, hearing such things perks us up, makes us pay attention. It teaches us to be alert, a state we should always be in as writers. Keep this in mind as you enjoy this week’s prompt:

Write about a rumor you heard. Try to write out several scenes, using these details: who started it, who is spreading it, who the rumor is about; write around the rumor itself, exploring instead the reasons it came into being.

It’s always fun to visit a museum, particularly with family or friends — I’m curious to see which pieces draw us in, which paintings or sculptures one person admires while the other rolls her eyes. Today, think about art — your own preferences or that of one of your characters.

Write about a favorite painting. Go into great detail visually; if you can, include background on the artist, including when and where he/she created the work.

This weekend it occurred to me how much my Sunday morning rituals have changed over the years. Instead of having every surface of my apartment covered by some section of the Sunday New York Times, for example, I read it tidily online. I no longer have omelets but tofu scrambles. Instead of donning running shoes to explore a new neighborhood of whatever city I live in, I’m now putting on hiking boots and heading into the woods.

Write about what you did this past Sunday morning. Then, write about what you did on a typical Sunday morning five years ago, then ten years ago, then fifteen, and so on. To flesh out this exercise, fill it in with two- and three-year intervals as well. Write about how things have changed, and why.

With another new year ahead, my new list of writing goals now reads: Writing Goals of 2011 2012.

Sometimes we don’t accomplish everything we hope to — but that doesn’t mean we can’t re-evaluate and move on. So I thought I’d offer a few writing tips as we head into 2012 (though I admit I probably need them more than you do).

It wasn’t even two years ago that I discovered Priscilla Long’s List of Works, and I still find that it’s among the best tools I have for keeping track of what I’m doing (or not doing) as a writer. In brief, a List of Works allows you to note what projects you’ve begun (and when), at what stage they are (published or circulating), and what you need to revise, finish, and/or send out.

In all, it’s been a great year. Forgetting English, which went briefly out of print last year, has a fabulous new life thanks to Kevin Morgan Watson and Press 53. I did a book tour with my dear friend and writing buddy Wendy Call, the award-winning author of No Word for Welcome. I published five stories, won a fiction contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Then, of course, there’s the rest of it. I also have three unfinished stories (two of which I began back in 2010), and a half-dozen ideas for stories that are still waiting for attention (and again, some of these ideas have been sitting there, half-baked, for at least a year…or more). I have half of a new story collection that I’d hoped to finish this year (definitely not going to happen). And then there’s that novel I’ve been working on for the past two years.

But this is what it’s all about: accepting both the good and the less-than-good. Finding the balance. Celebrating the great news and resolving to make great news from the rest…eventually.

So if you’re like me — juggling storylines and submissions — here are a few tips for 2012…

- Create a List of Works. Whether you’re just beginning to write or whether you’ve been writing for years, you should have a List of Works. Create it in whatever way works for you … just make sure you write down every single project you begin, and be sure you create one for every calendar year. Most important, go back through your ancient files and list every writing project you’ve ever begun…you never know what might happen when you rediscover these “old” ideas.

- Take a close look at unfinished projects. I’ve found many a gem in a long-abandoned project. Even when I have only a vague idea for a story, I’ll jot down a few notes, file it as a “story in progress,” come back to it at least once a year. Often it just sits there for another year, but sometimes I’ll find it at just the right time, and it’ll come to life in new and surprising ways. Never abandon old ideas; you never know when they’ll suddenly be relevant.

- Track all your submissions. This may seem incredibly obvious, but I’m always surprised by how many writers don’t keep track of submissions. Thanks to many magazines and publishers accepting online submissions, it’s easier now than ever — but you’ll still want to have some sort of system for whatever you submit in print. I use an Excel spreadsheet; one writer I know keeps a loose-leaf binder; other writers keep simple lists. It’s helpful for many reasons (among them, making sure you don’t submit the same piece to the same publication twice, or forget what you sent when a form rejection arrives) — but most of all, it’ll remind you to keep sending work out there. It can take dozens of rejections before you get an acceptance, and you’ll want to be sure you keep your work circulating.

- Take stock of your progress at least twice a year. And quarterly is even better. Taking inventory will help you see what you’ve begun and how far you’ve come — and how far you still need to go. And keep in mind this isn’t meant to stress you out about what you’re not writing but to inspire you to stay on course. You may find that you haven’t gotten anywhere with the novel you’d hoped to write but that you found the perfect ending for a short story you’ve been working on for years. Or you may find that the poem you started isn’t coming together but that it would make a better personal essay anyway. Be open to taking things in new directions.

- See how you can use your new work to better promote the work that’s already out there. When Forgetting English was reissued by Press 53 in April of this year, it was in an expanded version with two new stories. One of the stories, “Lost Art,” hadn’t yet appeared outside the collection, so I thought it would be great to find it a home of its own, which would in turn help promote the new edition of my book. I found the story a home in a beautiful online journal, Escape Into Life, and it was a win-win all around. (Note that you may need to check your publishing contract before embarking on such a venture.) I’ve also done guest blogs and articles for The Writer about various aspects of my writing process, all of which bring new attention to Forgetting English. Think about how you can use what you know and do best to highlight your own work.

Happy new year! May 2012 be your best writing year ever.

There are certain things that annoy us all — leaf blowers at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, for example, or typos on billboards — and, naturally, what annoys us can also reveal quite a lot about us…just as pet peeves can reveal so much about our characters.

Write about your (or your main character’s) top three pet peeves. Then write about why and how it came about, i.e., what might be the origin of these particular peeves?

When my writing buddy Wendy Call and I began to plan our joint book tour for this past summer and fall, we proposed events from readings to workshops to writing-prompt sessions. And, as this Wall St. Journal article indicates, we are apparently not alone in thinking outside the traditional book tour. In fact, of the nearly dozen events Wendy and I did together, only two of them were straight readings.

We took this approach for several reasons: For one, we are two writers with quite different books that are very similar in theme; our books cover travel, globalization, and characters facing challenges, yet Wendy’s book, No Word for Welcome, is nonfiction, while Forgetting English is a collection of short fiction. So we wanted to bring readers together to offer something for both nonfiction and fiction readers, as well as to give them a chance to participate as an audience.

We also recognized that neither of us is (quite) famous enough to have fans lining up around the block. And when you are an unknown author, it helps to offer a little something beyond the book when you’re meeting your readers, most of whom will be new.

Finally, we planned to visit a variety of venues, from Grub Street  to The Writer’s Center to Boston University, as well as bookstores. And we also recognized that a bookstore event needs to draw crowds and sell books to be a win-win, and it’s up to the author as well as the bookstore to try to make that happen.

We learned a great deal — far more than will fit into a short blog post — but here are a few tips…

- Team up. There are so many advantages to doing a joint book tour — and offering a little something different to participants is only one of them. And, as this WSJ article mentions, sometimes a bookseller will interview an author, which is another great idea.

- Offer a workshop. Wendy and I taught several different workshops on our tour, all geared toward the themes in our books, from narrative writing to travel writing. Though we each chose sections of our books for the other to read, we also offered examples of work other than our own and included handouts and reading lists. You can also, as Wendy did at several of her solo events, offer slide shows with images that relate to your book; many authors use PowerPoint presentations as well. There are really no rules other than making the presentation engaging and relevant.

- Talk about what inspired the book or certain scenes. It’s always fun to learn what’s behind the scenes of an interesting book, and by going this, you offer readers more than what’s between the pages. You’ll want to read enough to give readers a taste of what’s to come — but the idea is that they’ll be buying the book, so you’ll want to offer something they can’t take home with them.

- Make time for audience participation, whether you assign a couple of writing prompts or start the Q&A with you asking the Qs. As novelist Jason Skipper says in this interview, on his recent book tour he took several fun approaches to his readings, from singing Wilco songs to inviting the audience to read with him.

- Structure the event so that reading time is minimal. While Wendy and I both made time to read brief excerpts from our respective works (you definitely want to give people at least a little taste of your book), we spent only a small percentage of our event time on reading, which allowed for us to get to know our audiences and vice versa. We’d often begin with a brief reading and then conclude with one as well — this is a good way to bookend an event — but for the most part, while we were there on behalf of our books, we talked more than read.

In the end, the most important thing is that you have fun — this is something that readers will remember — and often the most fun and surprising events go well beyond the book itself.

Every writer has certain language and punctuation tics, which we either embrace or overcome, depending on how well they work (or don’t) for us. My particular punctuation tic is the em dash — I love it and overuse it to death. If I go back and revise, omitting 50 percent of the em dashes in a story, it’s still pretty riddled with them. Still, I can’t get rid of them completely — I love how em dashes add emphasis, set phrases apart, offer a little sense of something more interesting to come than a mere comma or semicolon would indicate.

What’s your favorite (and/or most overused) punctuation mark? Why do you like it, i.e., what do you think it offers to a sentence than another mark can’t? Give it a bit of personality, and see where this takes you.

With each new season, everything shifts: We get out our happy lamps or our flip-flops; we plan our vacations or head back to school. Each season has significance, though we don’t often stop to ponder it.

Today, write about winter — what you feel about it, how much you love/hate it, how it temporarily alters your life. (Fiction writers: Feel free to apply this one to any one of your characters.)

When Forgetting English was first published by Eastern Washington University Press in 2009, I learned — after the fact and much to my dismay — that it had never been sent out for reviews. It wasn’t long before I also learned that half of the press’s staff had been laid off and that the press would close within the year, which answered the question of why — but I still had to deal with the fact that I had a short story collection to promote without a single review.

And that was a little depressing.

Authors (rightly) expect their publishers to send out review copies (if there’s ever any doubt, they should ask), but of course this doesn’t guarantee that their books will actually be reviewed. With some 200,000 books being published in the U.S. annually, it’s a challenge, particularly for new and emerging authors, to get reviewed by the major media outlets that can get your book the attention you want and need. So what can an author do to help create some publication buzz when the reviews aren’t coming in?

Among the best advice I got from authors when Forgetting English was published was to use my author copies for promotion purposes. I’d been planning to give them all away — what could be more fun than to shower friends and family with free books? — but then I realized that my fellow authors had very good reasons behind their advice.

First, if anyone’s going to buy your book with great joy and pride, it’ll be your friends and family — so let them. It doesn’t cost them all that much, and it’ll support either their indie bookstores or your Amazon ranking, and that’s nice, too. Second, you’ll need to send complimentary copies to those who were instrumental in the writing or publishing process, from those who helped you with research to those who offered blurbs; anyone who donated time and energy to you without asking anything in return certainly deserves a signed copy of your book. And, finally, whatever copies you have left are best used to help promote it — given today’s challenges, from the economy to dwindling attention spans, we authors need all the help we can get.  And I don’t mean this in a pessimistic way, just a realistic one: As anyone who’s published a book will tell you, promotion makes writing look like the easy part.

Whether you’ve gotten those PW and NYT reviews or not, you’ll still want to take advantage of the myriad options for generating buzz and/or keeping it going. So here are a few tips for getting reviews and making the most of them…

- About six months before your book comes out, research book review blogs to see which ones might be a good fit for your book as well as receptive to reviewing it. You’ll want to approach bloggers with a good number of followers (these are your potential readers) as well as comments (which shows that the reviews are being read and responded to). Also be sure they read and review in your genre and that the reviews are of the quality and sensibility you hope for in a review. It’s best to query first so that you don’t send a copy that may end up in recycling; if a blogger is interested, he or she will get back to you. Because publishers often offer advance copies to book bloggers as well as more traditional media, check your list against the review list of your publisher so that you don’t send duplicates.

- If for any reason your book doesn’t get sent out for reviews, don’t give up: Send copies out yourself. You won’t get anywhere with Publishers Weekly, which requires copies months in advance, but your local newspaper will probably pay attention, and may even do a feature article along with a review. Alumni magazines and newsletters are also a great resource.

- Think outside the box: Don’t limit yourself to traditional book review sections of publications but also look at other possibilities, from travel columns to cooking editions. Target radio stations, university publications, community newsletters — any venue or publication that might offer a good audience for your book and/or topic.

- If you are fortunate enough to get good press, add reviews to your web site, your Facebook page, etc. — get the good news out there. At the same time, avoid becoming tediously self-promotional; if you get several reviews at once, you might space them out a bit. I often link to reviews on Facebook by expressing gratitude toward the reviewer or publication, which always seems a bit softer than shamelessly showing off my book (even if that really is the point). It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

- Remember that every day is book promotion day: Don’t give up on getting reviews  six months past your publication date. When Forgetting English was reissued by Press 53, I reached out to new bloggers and even did another book tour — all of which led to many new readers, even though the book by then was two years old. Always keep an eye out for publications that might be a good fit, or for a local news story that you may be able to contribute to. There’s never any reason to stop promoting your book; there will always be someone out there for whom it’s brand-new.

- If readers tell you how much they love your book, ask for an Amazon/Goodreads/LibraryThing/Barnes & Noble reader review. Having good reviews on these sites will get the attention of online shoppers, and though it feels awkward to ask, you’ll get over it once you see a few nice reviews up there. You don’t have to beg or plead; simply let people know how much a nice review will help get the word out about your book and how much you’d appreciate it.

- And, finally, if you do happen to get a bad review, try to remember how subjective the process of reviewing is. This is especially true with book blogs, many of which are very informal — yet even professional book reviewers are human beings with personal tastes that may not align with what you’ve written. Recognize that no writer or book can satisfy every reader, and, because the book is out there and there’s nothing you can do to change it anyway, do your best to ignore anything negative. And don’t attempt to respond to bad reviews, even if you feel the reviewer was sloppy or missed the whole point of the book; this approach never goes anywhere good. Just let it go.

And keep in mind that, in the end, while reviews are wonderful and helpful, they won’t necessarily make or break your book. Many bestsellers have been made by word of mouth alone, so always remember what you can do for your book, focusing on what is in your power do accomplish rather than what’s not.

Write about the last time you (or one of your characters) felt genuinely happy.

Then write about what happened the day before.

We all know those people who are so confident, so sure of themselves, that decisions come quickly and easily. (Aren’t they annoying?) But for most of us, as this article points out, making decisions is challenging and can even be exhausting.

Write about a decision that you — or your character — needs to make. Write about  making this decision, in two versions: one in which you weigh the pros and cons and make a thoughtful, informed decision; then write another in which you just go for it. Don’t forget to write about the consequences for each scenario!

A few years ago, my mom gave me a box of stuff that had been in her house for decades — stuff I hadn’t even realized she had. I opened it up and discovered such things as my baby book, notes to my parents congratulating them on their first child, baby portraits, and other things that happened during my early years, of which I have absolutely no memory whatsoever. I really enjoyed this glimpse into my far, far past.

Today’s writing prompt is to take out your own box of baby stuff, if you have one. If you don’t, imagine it: What’s inside? What parts of your life might be contained there that you can’t possibly remember? Whether you’re writing from your own POV or that of one of your characters, take this exercise as far as you can go, from the unborn person to the person of today.

I’ve had confinement on my mind lately, ever since my cat had surgery 12 days ago. He’s been confined to a small space and has to wear one of those awful cones around his head (so sad), and the whole thing has made me think a lot about being trapped, confined, and restricted against one’s will (I’ve tried to explain to him why it’s necessary, but somehow it hasn’t registered). So here are this week’s writing prompts, inspired by the cat (and, in truly exciting news, his cone comes off today):

1. Write about a time you had to do something you didn’t want to do — whether it was something that was “for your own good,” like finishing your peas, or something necessary but unpleasant, like a flu shot or taking your wild, beastly cat to the vet.

2. Write about a time you were physically confined (stuck in an airport, trapped in a stalled subway car, imprisoned in a jail cell). Include all the details you can, including a little backstory for context.

3. Write about a time you felt emotionally trapped (in a relationship, a job, etc.). Again, include all the details and backstory you can.

Fiction writers: If you don’t feel like writing about yourself, apply these exercises to your characters.

On Halloween, it only seems fitting to write about costumes. It’s the one day of the year (for most of us, anyway) on which we get to dress up in outfits we wouldn’t normally wear and be someone — or something — else for a while. So let’s run with this in our writing today, too.

Write about a costume, personality, job, etc., that you (or your main character) has always wanted to try on. Maybe you’re not athletic, for example, but have nevertheless dreamed of being an Olympic swimmer; maybe you’re not musical but have always longed to sing. Write about a day of living this life — and see where it takes you.

Happy Halloween!