Time to Write

Creating an author's platform - part 2

I recently ran part one of the secrets of how to establish a platform as an author--that is, how to be able to reach people in order to promote your book when it comes out. The first four tips were on that post, here are another four:

 5. Focus your press activity locally. There are still quite a few local newspapers and they are the ones that are going to most receptive to doing an article about you and your book.

 Read these publications and get to know the  names of their reporters. Then target the one you think will be most receptive. Start with a letter or email (I suggest a letter, because hardly anybody sends them any more) in which you tell a bit about yourself, your book, and that you are a local resident. Offer to send them a copy of the book. Or you can do the same with the editor.

6. Give them a visual. Publications are full of boring head shots, so editors are always on the lookout for photos that are more interesting. For instance, I have a head shot of myself with a little stuffed toy gremlin on my shoulder. I use that one when I'm doing a workshop on overcoming your inner critic and the other things that stop people from writing. I have another one with a little Freud doll on my shoulder, for use when I'm talking about creativity. What can you be doing in your photo that relates somehow to your book? 

7. Use social marketing. Some authors have established a Facebook page in the name of their protagonist and make their posts in his or her voice. Others do the same thing using Twitter--the Tweets are in the name of their character, who has his or her own Twitter account.

8. Steal ideas from other arenas. As you go through your day, what grabs your attention--both online and offline? What free or cheap marketing methods are other using in any field? Make note of any that you notice, and at the end of the week or end of the month brainstorm how you could apply those to promoting your book.

If you start using these strategies as soon as makes sense for each one, you will build a platform that will really pay off when you are ready to send your book out into the world.

(There are chapters on how to market your writing in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey--hey, why not ask your local independent to order it for you? More information at www.YourWritingCoach.com.)

What August Renoir can teach all writers (and others)

Here’s a quote from August Renoir:

“I am beginning to know how to paint.” 

He was 72 when he said this! 

He said, “It has taken me over fifty years of work to achieve this result, which is still far from complete.”

Toward the end of his life he suffered badly from rheumatoid arthritis and become wheelchair bound. An assistant had to place the brush in his hand.

What strikes me most, though, is the humility and patience implied by that quote.

 Perhaps when I’m 72 I will be able to say, “I am beginning to know how to write…”

If you need help from an expert on what you're writing

 Recently I had this query from a reader:

"I have been an avid reader of your blog and books for a long time and wonder if you have a short burst of blog advice for people like me who need an expert in a technical field to cast an eye over a fiction manuscript to ensure that I am not committing any factual sin.

 Finding the expert is not my problem. My problem is that I would feel guilty asking someone to spend many hours reading, annotating and advising, only for me to be the one to reap any rewards. What does he get out of it apart from my profuse thanks? Is there an unwritten protocol about tangible returns for experts who advise on their specialist subject? I can’t think why they would wish to do it otherwise, yet we all see paragraphs of thanks from published novelists to detectives, bankers, scientists and scores of other professionals. A bottle of wine seems more of an insult than a reward, yet a cut of the royalties seems too lavish. Where is the middle ground?"

 Here's what I told him:

 It kind of depends on how much work it is for the expert and their attitude. For some, being thanked in the acknowledgements section of the book is enough. 

If you can isolate the sections that require verification and there aren't too many of them, you might find that it wont' take too much of their time. If they have to read the entire manuscript and there are lots of things to check, then probably they'd find that too demanding.

 I would suggest that you consider how much you would be willing to pay and then approach the person and say you would value their input and of course will acknowledge their help in print, but also that you're aware that their time is valuable and ask how much they would charge for reading the mss and giving input.

 You may find someone who says they'll do it just out of interest, or you may find someone who demands an outrageous fee (in which case you move on to another expert), or someone who suggests a reasonable fee. 

I'd just add to this for other readers, don't be afraid to approach an expert for help. In my experience, most of them are flattered to be asked and as long as you are respectful of their time they will be delighted to help you.

A great structure for a non-fiction book proposal

Chuck Dietrich, CEO of Sliderocket gave a sample business pitch outline at entrepreneur.com, and it occurred to me that this is also a terrific outilne for a non-fiction book proposal. Here are the topics he suggests and my notes on how they can apply to books:

• Headline (your vision) - this would be one paragraph about the core of the book.
• Problem (customer pain) - what problem does your book solve?
• Solution (value prop to customer – great to add real customer stories) - how will your book solve this problem? And what evidence do you have?
• Why Now (history and evolution) - Why is this the right book in today's market?
• Market Size (who are your target customers)
• Competition (honest list) - What other books are dealing with similar topics? Cite successful ones, because they are demonstrating that there's a market. If you say 'there's no book out on this topic at all,' usually it makes publishers run the other way.
• Product (description and road map) - This could be a table of contents and a summary of each chapter. 
• Business Model (revenue, pricing etc.) - This is more for yourself, not to tell the publisher: how will you use this book to promote other products and services (assuming you want to)?
• Customer Acquisition plan (marketing and sales) - How will you help attract readers to this book?
• Team (founders & management) - You may be the entire time, or you may plan to hire a publicist or PR person to help you publicize the book, you may have lots of friends who will pitch in to help promote the book, etc.

What this underlines is that a book is part of a business, not just a creative endeavor, and that's true of fiction as well as non-fiction. If you want a publisher to take your book on, you have to help them understand how that will make money for them. If you want to self-publish, you need to work out for yourself how you'll make at least enough money to cover your expenses (or more if you want your book to be profitable).

(There's more about book proposals and how to write a winning one, in my book "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)

How writers can use setting to suggest conflict

I posted recently an excerpt from an interview with William Kent Krueger about his latest book, "Vermilion Drift." There's another bit I want to share with you because it's an interesting take on conflict. Normally we just think about conflict between individuals but even a setting can imply conflict. In this case, the setting for his latest novel, "Vermilion Drift," is Minnesota's Iron Range. Here's what Krueger says about it:

"It’s conflict that drives a piece of fiction. When I look at the Iron Range, I see a landscape sculpted by great forces in conflict. The hand of man pitted against impervious rock. A growing nation’s hunger for iron at odds with the horrible devastation of a pristine world, which was the result of satisfying that hunger. The birth of thriving communities with good jobs and well-funded resources for raising families viewed against the ultimate cost of boom-and-bust economies. In so many ways, the Iron Range seemed to me the mother lode of conflict. How, as a storyteller, could I ignore that wealth?"

Of course that conflict plays out eventually embodied by individuals, but what a great starting point to select a setting that grew out of conflict and has echoes of conflict going back many years. It's obviously an element very important to Krueger. In the interview, he gives a preview of the book he's writing now, again featuring Cork O'Conner:

"The story finds Cork and his family on a houseboat vacation on Lake of the Woods, one of the largest and most inaccessible lakes in North America, a lake that contains more than 14,000 islands. A rare, treacherous storm of hurricane force sweeps across the lake, separating Cork and his daughter Jenny from the others. They find themselves stranded on a remote island, where they quickly discover that the wind has ushered in a human darkness far darker and more deadly than any storm.The story is an opportunity for me to showcase the Northwest Angle, a remote area of this country that even most Minnesotans know little about."

Are there settings that could add a background of inherent conflict to the story you're writing?

How Scott Spencer handles rewrites & the inspiration to discipline ratio

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, novelist Scott Spencer ("Man in the Woods") talked about how he goes about rewriting his first drafts:

"I find starting from the beginning in a new draft better because you can stray further from the confines of the original draft. There's something inherently conservative about working your changes into the draft you've already completed. Also when I'm doing that close kind of editing and working within a structure, I'm less subject to flashes of inspiration. But the previous draft is right there, in a pile next to my keyboard, and I'm reading it while I'm working on the next draft. There's something about the movement of my fingers over the keyboard that connects me to the part of my brain that writes."

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? That's consistent with what he says about the ratio of inspiration to discipline in writing a novel:

"One to three. The three is discipline."

My answer would be more like ten to one. And yes, the ten is discipline.
 

(It's easier to write when you have proven practices to follow. You'll find them in "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

Should you write a novel series?

One of the great things about a TV series (for instance, "Six Feet Under" or "The Shield") is that you get to explore various facets of the lives of your characters. In a film you have maybe two hours to do this, in a series you can have literally hundreds if it's a long runner like "The Sopranos." You can do the same thing in a series of novels with the same protagonist.

One of the genres that is most friendly to the series format is crime fiction. Of course some series never get much beneath the skin of the protagonist, they just have him or her solving different crimes. Many more, though, also use this format to explore what happens in the personal lives of their characters and how they change over time.

In an interview with bookreporter.com, William Kent Krueger talked about this in the context of his mystery series featuring former sheriff Cork O'Conner. In his most recent book in the series, "Vermilioin Drift," here's the situation:

"Cork is very much alone in this book. He’s lost his beloved Jo. His children are away, either in college or simply gone for the summer. Adrift in his life in many ways, Cork has to ask himself repeatedly the question, “Who am I now?” This sense of alienation from all that’s been familiar in his world is further intensified when he begins to uncover dark secrets about his parents and realizes they weren’t necessarily the people he believed them to be. So much of the foundation of Cork’s own identity is rattled in VERMILION DRIFT. I believe a part of the attraction and the suspense of this novel is Cork’s journey to rediscover or redefine himself in light of all the startling revelations delivered to him in the course of the story."

I'll be candid: I don't read all that many mystery series books because too many of them feature characters I don't care about solving mysteries I don't care about,and I really don't want to give over much of my brain space to serial killers. But just the description above makes me want to read this one. If you can hook readers who are into the dynamics of character as well as the procedure of solving crimes, you've doubled your audience--and a publisher will like that.

(For help writing your novel, see "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers. More information: www.yourwritingcoach.com. And if you want to write screenplays, see my newish screenplay site: www.ScreenwritingSuccess.com for lots of tips.)

The writer's need for quiet time--and a support group.

 Novelist Sara Gruen ("Water for Elephants") told About.com: Fiction Writing about her writing practice. She has applied the discipline she had as a technical writer to writing novels. She says, "It taught me to sit down and write for eight hours a day, whether I liked it or not."

That doesn't mean she's actually cranking out words for eight hours at a stretch, of course. She says the first 90 minutes are spent rereading what she's written. During this time, she doesn't want any interruptions.

She says, "People don't understand that I'm often having a conversation with somebody else in my head -- because I'm being two different people in writing dialogue. Sometimes I'm having a fight with myself. I can't have a conversation with someone and not be pulled out of the fictional world."

She has two friends who are also bestselling novelists and together they have a writing retreat at their houses half a dozen times a year. The set a goal in the morning, often a minimum word count and "you're not allowed to go play poker and have a martini until you've done that." They also critique each other's work. 

Conveniently, she's married to a former editor, so he also goes over her material before she sends it to her agent and editor. (Yes, I'm aware that not all marriages would survive this.) Her new book is "Ape House," and "Water for Elephants" is being filmed starring Robert Pattinson, with a cameo appearance by the author.

Your writing practice may be totally different, but if you're having problems, finding ways to increase the amount of uninterrupted time to write could be crucial. Creating a support group like hers can also make the otherwise solo (and sometimes lonely) process easier as well. 

PS: Just had a glance at the dashboard for this blog--this is my 1500th post. Whew! If you like this blog, please pass the word along to any of your friends who might enjoy it, too.

(Check out www.timetowrite.com for more tips on writing.)

A new level of shallowness

Here's proof we're reaching a new level of shallowness.The PsyBlog site gives a 7-point primer on the psychology of facebook (how to attract more Facebook friends). Point number 2:

 "Court attractive friends

Make sure your friends, or the people who post on your 'wall', are good-looking. Walther et al. (2008) found that attractive friends boosted the perceived attractiveness of participant's profiles.

Keep the uggos away, unlike the offline world, it won't make you look better in comparison."

*** 

Sorry, Stephen Hawking, I have to take you off my friends list...

 

My message to Google Scribe: Shut up...unless I'm brainstorming

Google has a program called Scribe that suggests words and phrases as you write, and even suggests endings to your sentences.

Here’s what happened when I started the sentence “Call me Ishmael” and chose the first option Scribe suggested:

 Call me Ishmael review of the literature on the subject of the present invention is to provide a login for this account. The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive.

You can also play around with it by just typing the first letter of a word and see what comes up. In this instance, I started with “George is a” and then randomly typed first letters and let the program complete the words, with this result:

George is a member of the National day of lactation.

I can’t see how or when this function is going to be useful, other then as a random word generator for “forced association” brainstorming. That’s when you start with a question or issue and use random words to give you an idea. For instance, let’s say my issue is procrastination. Here are three words generated by Scribe when I entered just two letters, and the idea that come up (this is unfiltered brainstorming):

Bl = blogging. I could blog my plan for the day and invite readers to claim $1 from me any day I don’t achieve what I set out to do.

Tr = traffic. I could draw up a map of the tasks I need to do, to see what would be the smoothest workflow.

Yo = youth activists. I could delegate mundane tasks like shopping to young people looking to make bit of money.

So I'll be turning to Scribe when I want to brainstorm. The other times, the word that completes S is Shhhh.

(For ideas on how to get more done, check out my book, “Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done,” published by Pearson. There’s more information at www.focusquick.com).

A writer who uses a typewriter? (Here's why)

Brian Mackey wrote an interesting column in the Taunton Daily Gazette about being connected. First the way things are going:

“Notice a funny sign; upload a photo to Twitter.

Read an interesting article; post the story to Facebook.

Eat a decent meal; write a review on Yelp.

Finish an interesting book; rate it on Goodreads.

Laugh at a funny comic; link to it on Tumblr.

Meet a new business contact; connect with her on LinkedIn.

Attend a concert; add it to Songkick.

Go to the movies; check in on Foursquare ... and Gowalla.”

I can tell this stuff isn’t natural to me yet, I feel exhausted just reading that.

Mackey writes, “Sometimes, I need to disconnect, power down and go off the grid. Enter my typewriter. (Really — I’m using it now. *ding*) As I type, several colleagues come over to my desk to investigate the unfamiliar sound. ‘Do you remember how to use that?’ someone asks. Two separate people come by and take pictures. (They use their phones, of course. Look for the evidence on Twitter.)”

I don’t have a typewriter anymore but I remember how proud I was when I got my first one as a kid. It was one of those old Smith Corona uprights, bought at a garage sale by my parents. This was the machine you’d see in those great 30s and 40s movies—Cary Grant with an eyeshade pounding the keys to beat a deadline. And you did have to pound the keys.

Anyway, he says, “every now and then, I like to go to the typewriter, usually to send a letter to a friend. It usually prompts a phone call or other response from even the most deadbeat e-mail and Facebook correspondents.”

Of course if you want to take the easy way out, you can get a font that mimics old typewriters and do the whole thing on your computer but that’s going against the spirit of the thing.

Whether or not you resort to a typewriter, the principle is the same—do something unplugged (maybe even handwrite a note or a journal) from time to time to create something that isn’t connected in any way to the grid. Just you, your fingers, your brain. Ahhh.

Do fiction writers need a platform?

 I've often written about the need for a "platform" for non-fiction writers, meaning how much of a following or at least access to potential readers you have. This might be in the form of an e-bulletin, or your friends on Facebook, or audiences of regular workshops or lectures you give, or press contacts. 

However, Victoria Strauss of the Writer Beware Blogs says for fiction writers it's not as big an element:

"The importance of platform, unfortunately, isn't a myth. But it's much less of an issue for fiction than for nonfiction, and if you're an aspiring fiction author, a marketable manuscript is still a lot more important than how many followers you have on Twitter. Over the past few years, most of the fiction writers I'm acquainted with who've found first publication have had little or nothing in the way of platform (or previous publishing credits)."

This comment is part of a longer post called "Getting Published is Not a Crap Shoot," in which she emphasizes that although of course there is an element of luck or chance, there are also many factors under your control that help determine whether or not your book gets published. 

I agree with that, of course. If you want to get ideas for this, have a look at the posts in the category on this blog called "marketing your book or other writing." Also check out the two chapters on marketing in my book, "Your Writing Coach" (available from Amazon and other booksellers).

How to develop a story for your novel

Recently a reader named Joanna left this comment on one of the posts here:

"...I would love to get a novel going, but the idea I do have isn't STICKING with me. How do you find inspiration for stories, or does IT find you?"

There are any number of starting points--a character, a situation, a headline, a memory. Seldom, however, do any of these instantly turn into a complete story. They're just starting points. Then you can begin to play with them by asking "what if?" 

For example,years ago I met an elderly man whose career had been acting, but always as a character actor and extra. Now he'd retired and he was wistful about never having had a starring role. Interesting man, but not yet a story. So let's try some "what if's"

* What if someone gave him the chance to "star" in a huge con trick that, if it worked, would mystify and amaze the nation--but if it failed would put him in jail? 

* What if he dies, and how well he acts will determine whether he gets into heaven?

* What if his grandson is dying and his greatest acting challenge is to take the boy on an adventure without letting him find out his condition?

* What if he goes to a social club where a lot of retired actors only live in the past and he rouses them all to put on a new production which is hugely successful and finally gives him the role he's dreamed of?

These are not yet full stories either, of course, but they take it one step further--now we have a character and a situation or goal. Let's say I decide the last one is the one I want to develop further. 

I'd start thinking about some of the obstacles he'd encounter. Would there be an old rival of his there, who would get jealous and try to sabotage the event? Would his doctor tell him the strain of undertaking such a project could kill him? 

I'd also think about relationships. Would he fall in love with one of the women at the club? 

Of course to answer these I have to spend more time thinking about who this man is, what his life has been about, what relationships he has had and has now, and so forth. I always like to start with that and let the story grow out of the character.

The key is to let your mind wander around the seed of your idea freely, brainstorming without judging, and not holding on to anything too tightly. For instance, I might like the "con trick" plot but decide it would more interesting if it's a young aspiring actor who has had only rejections and cooks up the con trick himself. 

Sometimes at the end of a string of "what if" explorations you end up with a totally different character or story than you started with. That's fine, you're just playing around to explore and you keep going until you have a story you will enjoy writing and people will enjoy reading.

(There are lots of ideas and exercises for how to develop vivid characters and exciting plots in "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline bookseller.)

A new meaning to "the line has gone dead"...

It's not news that mobile technology is affecting all of us in big ways, but it wasn't until I read an article in the current issue of Fortune magazine that it really struck home how pervasive this influence has become.

 The article is about "cultural anthropologist" Genevieve Bell, who travels the world for Intel, figuring out how people use mobile media and what the next big thing might be. Here's the bit that made me sit up:

"She relates the story of coming across a ceremonial store in a city in Malaysia that had paper facsimiles of the latest cellphones."

 Aha, I thought, people who can't afford the latest cellphones put these up to their ears and pretend they're talking on them, to show off.

No, much stranger than that. "The paper models are burned so that dead relatives could talk to each other in the afterlife."

This raises the question of how they communicated before the advent of cellphones.  Were they able to use landlines? Or did they have to send telegrams: "Come immediately. Stop. Matter of death and death. Stop." 

And do they talk, or just text? "Wot R U doing?" "Not much. Just decomposing..."

Do they bump into each other because they're too busy looking at their phones, just like on Oxford Street? Or do they pass right through each other?

It raises a lot of questions but it also underlines the fact that when you're stuck with cellphones  even in the afterlife, there's really no going back. 

Wait, my cellphone is ringing. Could be my great-great-grandfather...

 

 

If it's Wikipedia, is it plagiarism?

 I haven't been very sympathetic to people who have lifted bits of others' work, but this time the "stealing" came from Wikipedia. The one who took the 200-word selection (on the sex life of flies, no less) is best-selling French novelist Michel Houllebecq, for his newest novel, "La Carete et le Territoire." 

He says his whole style is based on taking banal and technical descriptions and making them part of an artistic composition and rejects the notion that this qualifies as plagiarism. 

It seems to me that the fact that Wikipedia is composed anonymously by many people make it a special case. Here is part of what the Wikimedia Foundation says:

"The Wikimedia Foundation does not own copyright on Wikipedia article texts and illustrations. It is therefore pointless to email our contact addresses asking for permission to reproduce articles or images, even if rules at your company or school or organization mandate that you ask web site operators before copying their content...Permission to reproduce and modify text on Wikipedia has already been granted to anyone anywhere by the authors of individual articles as long as such reproduction and modification complies with licensing terms..."

"To re-distribute text on Wikipedia in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using, b) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on this website, or c) a list of all authors. (Any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions.) This applies to text developed by the Wikipedia community. Text from external sources may attach additional attribution requirements to the work, which should be indicated on an article's face or on its talk page. For example, a page may have a banner or other notation indicating that some or all of its content was originally published somewhere else. Where such notations are visible in the page itself, they should generally be preserved by re-users."

If I'm reading this correctly, if you lift passages, you should at least have a page somewhere (acknowledgements or bibliography, for instance) that reveals where you got them. 

(Confused about how to protect what you write? For some tips and information on my Protecting Your Material report, go here: http://timetowrite.com/protecting-your-material/