Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- December 2, 2016 Edition

Looks like there are a bunch of new subscribers: Welcome! If you don't already know, Friday Fridge Clean-Out is me clearing out links I've gathered in the past week (or more)...much like how I sometimes feed my family on a Friday night, pulling leftovers out of the fridge. Enjoy!

> Jane Friedman with good (and in many cases, overlooked) advice about "How to Smartly Evaluate a Small Publisher." Just because a press is traditional (and not a self publisher), doesn't always translate to a desirable partner.

> Check out Christelle Lujan's "20 Apps for Writers Who Want to Get Serious" at SheWrites. I definitely need a few of these!

>Is an official book launch worth the effort? Dorit Sasson weighs in with some recent experience.

> At WOW! Women on Writing, Chelsey Clammer encourages submission, and offers her 1,278 rejections since 2011 as proof that the prize (in her case, 150+ publications!) goes to those who stay in the game.

> If you like Pinterest: a whole bunch of nifty lists and cheat sheets here with writing, revision, and editing advice.

> Short stories printed on wine bottle labels! What's not to like? (Okay, they're in Italian...)

> Finally: breathe. Or at least have a laugh with Daveena Tauber's "Post Election College Paper Grading Rubric" at McSweeney's.

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Rusty_Clark

Author Interview: Linda Sienkiewicz on her Debut Novel and the Twisty Road That Got Her There

At one of the on-site residencies during my MFA program, a visiting writer told us students that the people in that room were going to be the foundation of our future writing community, regardless of geographic location, writing style or genre, age, or any other factor that might, on the surface, seem to separate us. Lucky for me, she was right.

Linda Sienkiewicz was one of the people in the room at that time, and eight years later, she's a valued part of my personal writing community. Linda has contributed posts here in the past (not once, but twice), and I've been a guest at her blog too. I'm extremely pleased now to offer this interview with her, as she steps out with her debut novel, In the Context of Love (Buddhapuss Ink), released just last week.

Please welcome Linda Sienkiewicz.

Q: Linda, I understand it was a twisty road from initial draft to publication by Buddhapuss Ink LLC this month. How long did it take from that first manuscript to that publishing contract? Did it surprise you that it didn't happen sooner?

A. I finished the manuscript shortly after graduation from the MFA program in 2009. It was incredibly frustrating to have long spells where seemingly nothing happened. In retrospect, if not for that time, the manuscript would never have reached its potential. That surprised me. I had an agent in 2010, but I’m glad she didn’t sell it. In the Context of Love is a much different novel than it was back then.

Q. Can you tell us about some stops and starts along the way? I believe you rewrote the entire novel in a different POV? What other major changes did you tackle in revision and why?

A. The manuscript was originally in first person—second person address, where the narrator is telling her story to a lost love, addressing him as “you.” Early in my agent search, I worried that might be a problem (I was so unsure of myself) so I rewrote it as a traditional first-person “I” narrative. I queried 83 agents before I got two offers of representation.

Then, when my agent sent the novel out to publishers, initial feedback showed editors thought it was YA because it began with the narrator as a teen. My agent had me rewrite the story so it starts when she’s an adult and then looks back to when she first falls in love and learns the family secret that alters her life.

The manuscript didn’t sell. Editors praised it, but apparently it wasn’t what they wanted. Incredibly frustrating, but my agent was encouraging. She suggested I work on something new, but writing became a struggle. I have to admit I was crushed.

Q. In addition to writing/revision challenges and publishing industry vagaries, you had a daunting trauma in your personal life. Would you mind discussing how the family tragedy affected you as a writer?

A. Shortly after that blow of rejection, my eldest child at age 32 took his own life. Let me tell you, there’s nothing that prepares you for such a tragedy. My goals and dreams of publication fell to the wayside. Nothing mattered. I couldn’t write. I didn’t feel like a writer anymore; I felt like an utter failure. It took two years before I gave myself permission to have goals again. Two years before I even turned on my computer. It was daunting, but I had to know if I would ever write again. I wasn’t ready for a new project yet; I couldn’t give up on In the Context of Love.

Q. At one point I think you hired an editor. What role do you think that played in moving the manuscript toward publication?

A. First I decided to change the story back to the way I had originally conceived it, using the second person address. Then I sought the advice of an author/editor. She absolutely loved the story, but she saw a few issues, too. She suggested I start the book at a low point in the narrator’s life — when she takes her two young children to visit their father in jail for the first time. That made a huge difference. She also advised me to speed up the narrative in some scenes, and pump up others. Her ideas, with the point of view change, were instrumental. The manuscript was a whole new animal! I was so excited!

I contacted my agent only to learn she had left the business. Not a happy moment. But in reality, she’d shopped it all around the larger publishers, so there wasn’t much more she could have done. I researched small presses and queried them myself.

Q. When you began submitting to small presses, what did you have in mind as the ideal offer and publisher?

A. I knew small presses don't have money to pay advances, but they see potential in stories that big houses ignore. I didn’t want to pay for publishing, I wanted standard royalties from book sales, and maybe some extra attention that a large publishing house doesn’t have time for.

 

Q. How close did you get to that?

A.    I got what I was looking for and more in the sense that my publisher is truly invested in my novel.

Q. If you don't mind saying, how many submissions did you make, and what kinds of responses did you get?

A. I queried six small presses. I got the standard “not right for us,” and “I'm sure you understand that small presses are creatures of their editors' individual tastes, an idiosyncratic but unavoidable standard.” Ha. The response that really had me scratching my head was “It has potential, with interesting situations and characters, but the prose style is slack and the narrative structure awkward.” I thought that was funny. By then, I had already signed a contract with Buddhapuss.

Q. Were there any surprises – pleasant or otherwise—in working with a boutique independent (though traditional) publisher? We know you're not jetting off on a nationwide book tour on their dime, but that's also true of most authors published these days by the biggest houses.

A. I had to laugh when someone asked me if I was going on tour. Does anyone do that anymore? But, it’s been great. I certainly didn’t expect to consider my publisher a friend. It’s a business relationship, true, but it’s really nice. I also appreciated having input on the cover and the inside layout. That was important to me, having an art background. I had input on just about everything every step of the way.

Q. We hear about how much work even a traditionally-published author has to do to help with (in some cases, to spur any) marketing and publicity efforts. I know you produced your own lovely book trailer over the summer. What else are you doing, what is your publisher doing, and are you exhausted?

A. Buddhapuss put together an amazing media kit for new releases and bloggers. They sent advance copies to long lead reviewers and entered the book in contests. They did a pre-release giveaway on Goodreads. They've sent me business cards, postcards, book markers, author cards and posters. They are a cheering squad.

Six months before the book launch, I revamped my website I’ve worked on creating a buzz using graphics and excerpts for Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. Twitter is great for networking, Facebook is pretty good, Pinterest not so much. I’m entering the book in other contests and trying to schedule appearances now, but I feel tapped out. I’m glad I hired an outside publicist to handle blogs, press releases and news articles (I hear even authors from large houses have resorted to hiring publicists).

Q. Before you wrote the novel, you published a good deal of poetry, earning a Chapbook Award and Pushcart Prize nomination. Had you always been writing fiction?

A. A few years before Stonecoast, I had success with publishing short stories, and even had an early novel and agent, which was kind of a fluke, really. Let’s not go there. But I wanted to write a good, solid novel. I entered the MFA program in fiction with a rough draft of In the Context of Love, eager to learn all I could. I was a sponge.

Q. Besides all the time and energy going into the book launch, are you finding any time to work on new writing?

A. Um… I have an outline and a few chapters. I’m anxious to get back to serious writing.

Q. What's your favorite piece of advice for writers who are now seeking publication for a book-length work?

A. Think of your chapters as publishable excerpts and submit them to literary journals and contests. It’s a good way to gauge how marketable your work is, and it helps establish credibility. Write a synopsis. No one likes writing them, but you’ll be surprised at how it helps you see the big picture. You’ll need one to query agents or publishers, anyway. And don’t ever give up. It’s hard work, and it gets discouraging, but don’t quit.

Note from Lisa: Linda would like to send one of this blog's readers a signed copy of her novel. Simply leave a comment here by the end of the day, Sunday, September 27, or tweet a link to this post, making sure to tag @LisaRomeo, to be entered. Must have a US postal address.

Guest Blogger Lisa Alber on Hope After (Traditional Publishing) Rejection

I came to know  Lisa Alber when she was a participant in my online *I Should Be Writing!* Boot Camp, and later as a private coaching client. She is the author of Kilmoon, an atmospheric mystery set in Ireland, which was a Rosebud Award finalist for best debut novel. About a year after publishing Kilmoon with a hybrid publisher, she landed a two-book deal with Midnight Ink Books for new mysteries in the series slated for August 2016 and August 2017. Before all that, Lisa took workshops with New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George and received an Elizabeth George Foundation writing grant. She is also a Walden Fellowship recipient and Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Please welcome Lisa Alber.

Anyone can become an author these days. It’s as simple as signing up for Kindle Direct Publishing or any other self-publishing service. That said, most of us dream of “getting published," and by that I mean landing a literary agent and then a traditional publisher that pays an advance, and produces and markets your book at its expense, not yours.

To all you aspiring novelists who despair of getting published: I’m here to tell you that there’s hope after rejection from literary agents and traditional publishers. Most of all, I’m here to tell you that no matter where you start, you can progress—move up the publishing ladder, so to speak.

I spent many years holding out for The Agent and The Deal. When I finally landed The Agent, I was still rejected everywhere she submitted my novel manuscript. How could that be? Was the agent not a great salesperson? Was my manuscript not as polished as I’d (we’d!) thought?

The answer is probably a combination of the two, plus a third factor: the fickleness of the business. Alas, unsurprisingly, that agent relationship didn’t work out and neither did the next two agents.

I grew horribly depressed. I gave up on the mystery manuscript many times during this ten-year period. I tried my hand at writing thrillers and women’s fiction with sucky results. The rejections continued to rack up and with them arrived the insidious self-doubts.

There came a point in my journey when I needed to shite (how’s that for being polite?) or get off the pot. I could no longer wait for the powers that be to deem my story acceptable. Who gets published and who doesn’t seemed like a crapshoot.

In fact, given that you have a publishable novel, it is a crapshoot. Assuming that you’ve intensively studied your craft, gathered outside feedback to further improve your storytelling, and revised and polished to within an inch of your life, your novel is probably as good as any debut novel out there. All you need is for your manuscript to land on the perfect agent’s desk at the perfect time and for about a million other random things to line up perfectly too. Easy peasy. (Not.)

Also, keep in mind that you can’t predict what publishers are looking for or what types of novels they already have on their lists.

When I distanced myself from the rollercoaster that is querying and pitching and pining, I saw what was in my heart. The heart knows things that the mind doesn’t. Mine told me that my writing, my story, had merit. It took awhile for me to shake off the rejections, but I’m so glad I did.

All we can control is ourselves. So I decided to leap, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The trick these days is to get our feet in the publishing door. From there, who knows what may happen?

So how did I poke my feet in? An acquaintance asked me to join her fledgling publishing enterprise, and I said yes. Muskrat Press is a hybrid/self-publishing LLC. A cooperative, I guess you’d call it. (There are many of these around nowadays.) Three of us debut authors supported each other on the way to publication. Professional editing, professional cover art—the whole deal.

The whole deal also included plenty of marketing and publicity. Goodreads giveaways, Twitter and Facebook virtual book parties, guest blogging, you name it. I was even a blogger on The Debutante Ball, a well-established blog for debut authors. I worked my fanny off to give my debut novel Kilmoon the best entrée into the world that I could. I organized a fantastic launch party at an Irish pub complete with a signature cocktail called the Kilmoon Sour (yum!). I landed a coveted guest post spot on the premiere mystery writers blog, Jungle Red Writers. I went to conferences such as Left Coast Crime and participated in debut author breakfasts and panels. It was all quite exhausting but so worth it.

Here’s one of the biggest and best things I learned from that experience: Most readers don’t care where their books come from. It’s mainly your fellow writers who care. I have a friend who also began with self-publishing. She told me that the most dismissive people were—hold on to your hats here—aspiring novelists! Yes, those who only had their eyes on The Agent and The Deal.

Another friend started off as a novelist-for-hire. (Sometimes in-house editors come up with ideas and hire novelists to write them.) All readers see are the authors’ names on the covers. Like I said, They don’t care. Now this friend has a thriving career writing books based on her own ideas.

The long and short of it is that if I were still holding out for The Agent and The Deal, I probably wouldn’t be published yet. Now, a year after publication—guess what?—I do have a traditional two-book deal and a fabulous agent!

And that, my friends, is how it can start. And it’s a perfectly fine way to start.

Once upon a time, I had a writing teacher who used to say that the people who get (traditionally) published are the people who don’t give up. In this new era of Amazon and ebooks and indies, I’d say that the people who get (traditionally) published are the ones who don’t give up and who keep their options open about how to get a foot in the door.

Start somewhere. You’ll see. Because if it can happen for me, it can happen for you.

Note from Lisa R.: Lisa Alber will check back to answer any questions and converse, via comments. What does your writing journey look like right now? How do you keep your hopes up in the face of rejection?

To keep up with Lisa Alber’s antics, follow her on Facebook and Twitter. 

Guest Blogger Kate Walter on Finding the Narrative Arc for Your Memoir

One of the perks of signing on to help present a panel at a writing conference is that, even before the conference happens, you sometimes make internet friends with other writers who know your fellow panelists and/or who are also on the schedule with their own panel. That explains how Kate Walter and I crossed paths: we have mutual friends, and upcoming panels at ASJA. 

Kate is the author of Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing, due from Heliotrope Books in June. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, and the New York Daily News, and she teaches writing at City University of New York and New York University. 

Please welcome Kate Walter.

       I knew something was off with the structure of the first finished draft of my memoir manuscript when an agent said my writing was strong but, "The reader knows how this will end before the narrator does.”

       Ouch! That comment sent me back to the memoir drawing board. I had to rethink my book.

      Since a memoir is not autobiography, you must find the right framework for your

story. A memoir needs an arc, a trajectory, a focus. The narrator must start some place and end up some place else. Not necessarily a physical place but an emotional place. There has to be a struggle (conflict) and wisdom gained. You are not just telling your story but reflecting upon what happened and how these events affected you and changed your life in some way.

     It took me three drafts to figure out the container for my debut memoir, Looking for a Kiss:  A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing. In the first draft I was just writing out my story and creating major scenes but it lacked a narrative thread.

     My second draft had more structure but it ended with me getting my heart broken when my 26 year lesbian relationship ended. When I shopped around this version, the feedback from agents made me realize that structure was not working either. So the rejection was actually helpful.

       The third draft, (which I sold), instead began with the break up and showed how I healed my life. I had found a universal theme. The reader is rooting for the narrator to get her life back together and laughing along with her as she tries internet dating at age 60.

        For me, I had to write all three drafts over 10 years until I  figured out the narrative arc. Meanwhile, I was also writing and publishing personal essays. Two local papers were regularly using my work, which gave me steady emotional support, and was a boost, reminding me of the value of the material.

        Writing essays, which can be woven into your memoir manuscript, and writing shorter pieces, can help you find the larger focus or container for your long memoir project. I recently reread an essay I wrote five years ago for NY Press. Looking back, I can see how the first 50 pages of my book are an expansion of this tight

personal essay.  

       Beside a little income, and the professional support of those newspaper editors, I got emotional support and feedback from my weekly writers group in Greenwich Village, run by the author Susan Shapiro. I could not have completed this memoir without the ongoing critiques from my trusted colleagues, who pulled no punches. I workshopped every chapter and then rewrote each one.

       When I finished my third draft (about 225 pages), I hired an experienced book doctor to read the entire manuscript (cost $2,000); then I rewrote some more.  After my book saw the doctor, a chapter originally in the back of my book landed up closer to the beginning in the final draft.

     The weekly group did more than critique my pages; they believed in my project and

helped sustain my morale when I kept getting rejections from agents, which was frustrating because by then, I knew I had finally nailed the structure and had a powerful book.

      That’s when a member of my group (Royal Young) hyped my book to his publisher

(Naomi Rosenblatt, at Heliotrope Books). I met her at his book party and she encouraged me to send her my manuscript. The rest, as they say, is history.

            I owe a lot to my workshop members, and I’m grateful Naomi realized the potential of my story about break up and renewal. It’s been a pleasure to work with a small independent press and have hands on involvement as my manuscript became a book. I even took the cover photo.

      From inception to publication was a long journey of 10 years, but it has been

very rewarding, and for me, cathartic. Writing my memoir was literally part of my

healing process. And as a teacher of creative nonfiction, this book will open up new

doors for me.

         I’m glad I never gave up. Maybe it’s because I’m a  Capricorn. If you

believe in your story and your voice, keep going, keep writing.

Note from Lisa:  Kate would like to give one reader a complimentary signed copy of her book when it's released in June. To enter, leave a comment here by midnight on 

Tuesday, May 12. (Must have a US postal address.)

You can connect with Kate at her website, and on Twitter, and read an interview with her at WestBeth. 

Images courtesy Kate Walter.

      

                          

A Reading, A Writer in the Family (no, two), A Coincidence (or not)

I'm a hugely pragmatic person. Planning, facing reality, hard work--these are my guideposts. Write, revise, rewrite, submit, submit, toss rejections aside, learn from it all, repeat.

But once in a while, I'm reminded of something my father often said: "Dream a little."

My father has been gone for eight years. Friday, October 17, is his birthday, and he would have been 88 years old. In a striking coincidence, I'll be reading from my manuscript on that day, essays about the relationship that developed between the two of us after he died.  

The event is part of Live Literature, at Montclair State University, where I'm lucky to be teaching this semester. A fiction writer will also read, and then we'll both be taking questions from the audience – students from many writing classes, other members of the campus community, and perhaps alumni gathered there for Homecoming weekend.

When I was invited to read that day, I cringed a little at the timing, then recognized the opportunity for what it was: confirmation, not coincidence. Affirmation, not accidental. And, okay, maybe I'm choosing to see synergy where there's only a planning perk. Maybe I'm just lucky.

All his life, my father, forced to quit high school in tenth grade to help support his parents and siblings, longed for more education. Seeing both his daughters graduate from college gladdened him. A frustrated writer, he squirreled away short stories and poems. He read always, and every morning when I reach for the newspaper, every night when I reach for a book, I think of him, teaching himself about the world, one book, one newspaper, one article, one word at a time.

My father, who loved Las Vegas and eventually retired there, believed his birth date, 17, was lucky. He always inked that number when playing keno and tossed a chip on it when at the roulette table, frequently winning. He lost a lot too. When he was assigned a hotel room with both a 1 and a 7 in it, he assured everyone that it would be a good room, a great vacation. And if at first it wasn't, he made it so.

The words about my father started spilling from my pen less than 18 hours after he died, on an airplane pushing west from New Jersey to Vegas; I didn't stop for almost five years, not until a memoir-in-essays emerged. 

Like a lot of writers, when I began seeking traditional book publication, I started a spreadsheet tracking my progress through the rounds of submission to small literary publishers and university presses. There have been a few terse No's, some This-is-lovely-but-not-quite-lovely-enough No's, and a few in-between No's. That's okay. I'm pragmatic that way. Learn from the rejections, then toss them aside, submit, submit.

As of this morning, I have queries out to 15 presses, and two additional publishers have requested, and are now reading, the full manuscript. I'm not sure what a Vegas odds maker would have to say about those numbers. But to me, that's 17 possibilities. Lucky? We'll see.