Guest Blogger Pam Lobley on How She Wrote a Parenting Book Without Really Meaning To

I met fellow New Jersey writer Pam Lobley when we were paired together on a panel at a book festival this past summer. Pam has been a humor columnist for The Bergen Record, one of the state’s largest newspapers, and for three years she wrote the “Now That’s Funny” column for (now defunct) New Jersey Newsroom. She has also written for the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Today.com, Huffington Post, BlogHer, Sammichespsychmeds.com, Carolina Parent and others.

Please welcome Pam Lobley

It was a rainy day in March. I was sifting through a stack of signup sheets for summer activities for my kids. My two boys were eight and ten at the time, and I usually planned plenty of summer activities to keep them busy. But we were already so frantic and over-scheduled that I couldn’t imagine signing them up for anything. 

I asked my friend Jane what her kids were going to do. Jane, obviously feeling just as overwhelmed, snapped, “Nothing! We’re having a summer from the 1950s.”

Wow! That sounded like just what we needed, too. An old-fashioned summer with no plans at all. We did it, I wrote a book about it (of course), and then I began to shop the book around.

To me the most interesting aspect of my memoir was the juxtaposition between the  “ideal” 1950s image of a relaxed summer for both kids and parents, and our current frantic, stressed-out family lifestyle of summer days packed with tightly organized classes and programs, and me in the car all day ferrying kids to and fro. I read quite a bit about 1950s family life and laced the book with insights from my research. I even had some very funny quotes from 1950’s magazine ads:

 In this friendly, freedom-loving land of ours … Beer Belongs – Enjoy It!

                                                    1955 United State Brewers Foundation

Learning about 1950s family life–the bad and the good–gave me a huge dose of perspective on my own outlook, and in the book, I wrote about how it changed me, and the ways it seemed my kids had also benefited. My working title was “A Summer from the 1950s.”

I got an agent who loved the idea but after a rewrite, the feedback from publishers was that the title sounded like the story of my grandmother’s summer, which appealed to no one. We needed a new title, and I knew it had to resonate with stressed-out modern moms. After weeks of thinking it through, Why Can't We Just Play? What I Did When I Realized My Kids Were Way Too Busy was born.

The book sold to a publisher whose focus is creating books that help families be happy. This thrilled me because that’s exactly what I felt I was doing – writing a memoir that would help other moms be happier by adopting a less frenetic family summer.

But now the agent and the publisher began to see my story as a parenting book. Maybe this was obvious to everyone else,  but came as a surprise to me. I thought parenting books were books by people who were bona fide parenting experts. I was not a therapist or teacher or doctor - just a mom who had a certain type of experience, and wanted to pass it on.

What they understood is that just because a book is on the parenting shelf at the bookstore, it doesn’t have to be advice from an expert; it can also be adventures in parenting: stories, personal insights, lessons learned. Why Can’t We Just Play? fits that description exactly. In addition, it portrays a strong viewpoint,  namely that kids simply need more time to play without instruction, guidance, organization, or adult expectations. Free play is vital for good childhood development, and it is getting increasingly squeezed out of kids’ lives. That viewpoint gave us a strong marketing angle.  

Treating my book as a parenting book rather than a memoir also made it much easier to market after it was published. When I do a podcast or write a column, I can talk about a variety of childhood issues: overscheduling, down time, recess, screen time, signs of stress in kids, or the ways that free play teaches kids independence. I have many different angles to discuss – all of which can lead back to the book but stand on their own as interesting topics apart from my personal experience. An author constantly needs to find new ways to talk about their book as they try to sell it, so this is very beneficial.

As I shifted my vision of my book from memoir to parenting, I learned a bunch of things, including these:

- There must be a  “take-away”. Non-fiction books need a concise and readily accessible message. During rewrites, I had to hone in on what the reader would take away from my book.

- The title needs to be crystal clear in expressing the book’s message; being overly clever wouldn’t work. My original title, “A Summer from the 1950s” did nothing to give a potential reader the idea of my book.

- Trust the agent and  publisher. They understand  which aspects  will appeal the most to readers. All my favorite things -- the funny quotes, the historical insights, my sense of humor – they knew that these were the least interesting things to readers. When I talk to readers myself now, I see that they mostly relate to my feeling of overwhelm, and are interested in my struggle to slow down and give my kids more time to play. All of which I am very happy about; it’s just not how I originally viewed my memoir. I mean … my parenting book.

Because of my experience, I have gained a keen new appreciation for non-fiction books. Which is a good thing because my kids are older now, and I have a lot more material. Naturally, I’m working on my next parenting book. Hopefully I’ll get the title right the first time.

Learn more by visiting Pam’s website, or connecting on Twitter or Facebook.

The Post-Conference, Post-Vacation Post

Probably the smartest thing to do after a writing conference would be hurry home and burrow in, open a new document (or six!) for all the ideas that skittered across your mind while there. Or, better yet, take a solitary decompressing trip, that frees you to write and muse. I've done both of those things before.

What I hadn't done was return home, run a load of laundry, answer only the urgent emails, repack, sleep a few hours, and then set out with my family for an enforced four days of R&R—strictly away from my computer, all of us together in a small seaside house (often huddled in the A/C to escape daunting heat and humidity when not under a beach umbrella to escape frigid A/C), and on unspoken but rather clear orders from my husband not to disappear into my brain and essentially away from the moment

I had books. I had my notebook. What I didn't have was time to spread out all my notes from Hippocamp 2016 (a conference for creative nonfiction writers), and reflect, make notes, tackle follow-ups in the immediate manner I like, and to write a post-conference post.

But I'm back at my desk now (feeling of course as if I never did leave it!), so here goes.

If you read my post from the first day of activities this year, you already know how much I love this conference. You can scroll the live-at-the-time tweets, and read other post-Hippocamp coverage here and here and here, and at the official conference recap page. I'll just share some of what showed up in my notebook and program margins when I was sitting in the audience at various presentations.

First, I'll note that I was completely unprepared and overwhelmed by the lovely, positive reaction to my own session, "Writing About the Same Experience Across Multiple Pieces." Not only did people fill every seat in the break-out room (nerve-wracking and wonderful), but I was gobsmacked by how—for hours afterward and into the next day—so many writers approached me to say that the session opened up something for them about their own CNF work. I've never had that kind of response before, and almost cannot adequately express how much it meant to me. (And served as a timely reminder that when I'm in the audience and find value in a speaker's presentation, saying so afterward, face-to-face, can be a true gift to that person.)

Now, on to some of the small gems I came away with.

> In the Collage Essay Workshop (a pre-conference add-on), we got to talking about other fragmented forms, and Sarah Einstein shared her own definition of a segmented essay, which she thinks of as not exactly linear, but a series of interconnected stories that follow a timeline progression. Yes! That makes so much sense; something I think I intuitively understood but hadn't worked out a definition for.

> During a panel on query letters, one agent (sorry, didn't record who!) suggested a simple formula: "The hook, the book, the cook." What's the essential heart of the book?  What is the book about (slightly extended description)? Who is the writer?  Another noted that query letters should involve no more than "one scroll" of the email screen. Still another advised digging through the Manuscript Wish List's site or following #MSWL on Twitter.

> Wendy Fontaine, part of a panel on truth in nonfiction, shared some of her captivating research on memory and recall, brain anatomy and function. This, for example: "The brain makes no biological delineation between a true memory and a false one." Whoa! Certainly makes me want to think twice, or three, maybe four times when writing about what I think I remember clearly.

> At a presentation on designing and delivering a writers' retreat, Joanne Lozar Glenn advised working backward from the intended outcome. Ask yourself what you want the writers who will attend to take away from the experience. Newly generated pages? A notebook of ideas? Feedback? New process skills? Community? A combination? Something else?

> In a talk on incorporating science into CNF, Jeannine Pfeiffer, writer and scientist, suggested ways to track down data and experts without spending a lot on abstracts or other access to scientific journals—such as using Google Scholar; the Public Library of Science; asking a professor friend to let you search on Academia.edu or Researchgate.net; gaining in-person access to a local university library; and searching the terms "open access journals" + "your topic".

> At a session on content marketing, Kelly Kautz noted that for writers who are marketing themselves, their books, and/or their services, it's wise to tame the intimidating monster that is analytics data, focusing only on areas that are meaningful to you. Identify keyword combinations that work, and then purposely use them in posts or social media exchanges. That means, for me, posts incorporating the word combinations "New Jersey… Editor" "Writing teacher…NJ" and "NJ…writing coach," might be in my future.

> Jim Warner, on a panel about literary citizenship, invited writers from everywhere to submit audio files from literary events, especially interviews with authors, for consideration for his podcast, CitizenLit.

> Finally, it would be impossible to sum up all the wonderfulness that was Mary Karr's keynote address, so I'll leave you with these notes:

On writing about family: "A dysfunctional family is any form of family with more than one person."

On stories within memoir: "Memoir is, by its nature, episodic. Everyone has stories."

On melodrama: "Don't write how you suffered. Write how you survived."

On writing from reality: "Don't exaggerate. Trust that what you experienced was enough."

On blame: "Judge yourself more harshly than anyone else."

On her writing process: "One sentence at a time. There's no strategy. Jump lump along. Six hours or 1000 words a day, whichever comes first."

On revision: "Make the ugly parts prettier. Make the pretty parts better. And if you can't, cut it out, because you don't want to be boring."

There was so much more. I suspect it's all going to be buzzing around my writer's brain for weeks or months to come, and maybe as long as it takes to get back there in September 2017. Which is what I want out of a conference after all.

Images - Beach umbrella: Flickr/CreativeCommons - Monkeyatlarge - Memory stone: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Tim Green aka atoach

Guest Blogger Susan Breen on Prepping for a Pitch Conference

Perhaps this is true for every writer active online: there are some authors who you warm to and enjoy interacting with immediately—and believe you would get along with in real life, if your paths were to cross. That's how it was with Susan Breen when I discovered her online, about seven or so years ago. I'm delighted she's on the blog today.

Susan’s new mystery, Maggie Dove, was published by Random House’s digital Alibi imprint in June, and the next in the series, Maggie Dove’s Detective Agency, will be out in November. Breen teaches for Gotham Writers Workshops and is on the staff of the New York Writers Workshop. She sold her first novel, The Fiction Class, at a pitch conference.

Please welcome Susan Breen

            For nine years, I’ve been a workshop leader at the New York Pitch Conference in Manhattan, where I help participants write pitches for their novels and memoirs. Then I sit with them as they recite those pitches to editors from the big New York publishing houses. Figuring 18 people to a group, meeting four editors each session, four times a year—that means I’ve heard a lot of pitches.

From my unique perch, I’ve witnessed what goes on when an editor listens to a writer’s pitch. I’ve seen their doodles. (Always a bad sign when they begin crossing off your name.) I’ve seen writers sabotage themselves (begging and crying, for example). I’ve also seen editors light up when they hear something that excites them. (At the last conference an editor looked at me and said, “I want this book now!)

So, what can you do to improve your chances at a pitch conference?

1.      Make them want to read your book. This seems obvious, yet often writers get swept up in the rules of pitch writing, or worrying that they accurately convey all the information about the book, that their pitches become brittle. Yes, follow the rules. The pitch shouldn’t be too long. End with a cliff hanger. But the most important thing? Be interesting. It may matter for the plot that the main character gets her teeth cleaned in chapter 3, but does the editor have to know that right now?

2.      Remember, editors judge a book by its pitch. If the pitch rambles, the book probably rambles. If the pitch is unfocused, the book probably is. If the pitch is funny, if the pitch is boring, if the pitch makes no sense… My boss at the pitch conference, Michael Neff, says a pitch is a diagnostic tool, and I agree. When I’m working on one of my own novels, I always write a pitch halfway through. If I have trouble writing the pitch, it usually means there’s trouble in the book.

3.      Setting is an important part of a good pitch. Editors like to know if the book takes place in Paris or Long Island or wherever. Sometimes writers insist that the story can take place anywhere, but that’s not actually a selling point. You want your book to be set somewhere specific, which does not mean it has to be glamorous. Yes, it’s fun to read about Paris, but Long Island can also be intriguing.

4.      Establish an interesting and active protagonist. This is frustrating to a lot of writers, who can cite many classic novels that do not have active protagonists. This is undoubtedly true, and if Proust shows up at one of my conferences, we can debate the point. But I don’t think Proust was going for the commercial market. If your character’s not active, make sure he’s funny or in a lot of trouble.

5.      Credentials help. I’ve had people who’ve won Emmy awards. That helps a lot. But I’ve also had people with stories published in magazines with a circulation of 500. That helps too. It shows the editor that you’re a part of the literary world. You’re serious. Try to build up credentials before the pitch conference. See if you can spin off a chapter as a story. Take a writing class. Join a writers’ organization. Everything helps.

6.      When you are talking to an older editor, do not refer to your work set in the 1960s as “historical fiction.”

7.      Even the best pitches are not successful with every editor. Over the course of the pitch conference, a participant meets with four or five editors. Sometimes every editor will request a manuscript. Other times only one editor will request it. Sometimes that pitch will be a little odd. Or the writer will be odd. And yet, that one editor really connects with it. It’s like falling in love. You don’t need everyone in the world to fall in love with you. You just need one person.

8.      Word count matters. Most editors want books between 65,000 to 100,000 words. If the concept is strong enough, they may ask to see something with a longer word count, but it definitely creates an obstacle.  Publishing is hard enough without adding obstacles. I also work as an editor and I can assure you that I’ve never read a novel that couldn’t be shortened.

9.      Know the comparable titles in your genre and category ("comps"). My agent pitched my new mystery as "Agatha Christie meets Anne Tyler". That gives an immediate sense of the tone. When a writer has no idea of what’s comparable to her book, I feel alarmed, because that makes me think she hasn’t read anything. Sometimes people will say, “I’m writing a romance because I want to sell it, but I don’t actually read this junk.” That’s not an inducement. If you publish a romance, you’ll be meeting a lot of romance writers who will not be happy to discover you think they are idiots. Write the book you want to write, and read other books like it.

10.  Don't argue with an editor. If the editor hears your pitch and says, this would be better if the protagonist were a woman, or this sounds like a YA novel, just say thank you. They might be right or they might be wrong. No one is going to force you to change your book, but it’s worth absorbing the input and thinking about it afterwards. Keep in mind that part of what they’re trying to do is figure out if you’re someone they want to work with. So if you immediately resist or argue back about every suggestion, that’s not a good sign.

11.  If no one at a pitch conference warms to your book, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer, a bad person, or a failure. It just means that the handful of editors you met with, didn’t want your book. There are many other editors. There are many other books to write. My first two books didn’t sell. My third did. My fourth one didn’t. My fifth did. Hopefully, I’ve figured it all out now, but if I had quit after one, I’d be nowhere.

12.  Finally, try and enjoy the pitch conference. Yes, it’s stressful, but you are getting the chance to meet face to face with the people who run this crazy business we’re in. That’s exciting.

Learn more about Susan at her website, or by connecting on Facebook or Twitter.  

Images: Stack of Journals, Jon Betts and Talk Bubbles, Raiznext, both FlickerCreativeCommons. Others, courtesy Susan Breen.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- August 14, 2015 Edition

> Seen all those ads for the James Patterson MasterClass, and automatically dismiss them? One accomplished author opened her mind, dove in, and learned a little something.

>  Some pragmatic, slightly tough-love but compassionate thoughts from writer Margarita Montimore in this long (but worth reading) post, "Hope in Careful Doses: Or (What I Didn’t Expect on the Path to Getting an Agent)".

> If you missed the Hippocamp creative nonfiction conference last weekend, this Storify page brings you a wealth of gleaned tidbits.

> Podcast fans, listen to Jenna McGuiggan (who gave a kickass presentation on writing flash pieces at Hippocamp) chat with host Sara Blackthorne on "In Her Room: Women Writers on Life, Craft, and Changing the World" (episode # 21).

> Also at Hippocamp (and I promise I'll stop talking about it soon), one of the highlights of Jane Friedman's closing keynote on the possible future of publishing was this fascinating four minute video, putting into perspective the speed at which the world is changing in terms of information, knowledge, publishing, and more. You might think, yeah, I know all that, but I doubt you'll be bored, and will almost certainly learn a few new things. 

> If you plan to head to any conference soon, consider these tips from Allison Williams for getting the most out of it.

> Advice from four successful literary agents for memoir writers seeking representation.

> Finally, more wisdom from agents, this time via the tweet stream for the hilarious hashtag #KillAQueryin5Words

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons -- jdhancock

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. 

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- June 26, 2015 Edition

> Eleven video recordings are now available online (at no charge), of panels and presentations from the Fourth Annual River Teeth Nonfiction Conference held in May.

> As the resident writer in the family, do you "ghostwrite" relatives' and friends' remarks (eulogies, toasts, etc.)? Hey, there's a business plan for that.

> Have you seen Manuscript Wish List yet? It's where some agents tell us what queries would make them happy, from the expected ("more upmarket fiction") to the highly specific, ("a nonfiction book proposal on women in the circus.")

> Susan Shapiro's article, "9 Ways to a Faster Book Deal," is packed with useful information. (The way I read it, "faster" here doesn't only mean speedier, but a smarter, more strategic, more likely to succeed path to publication; but maybe that's just me.)

> I've been doing a lot of flash (micro, short, brief) writing assignments with my students -- and on my own. Paragraph Planet limits writers to 75 words.

> One author's game plan for a sell-out hometown book signing event. (Probably most relevant if you're writing on regional topics, but many useful general tips too.)

> This list of advice for memoir writing has a lot of value. Especially # 13: "Time is your friend." Slowing down, so important.

> The other day, I posted about one aspect of my submission process. At SheWrites, Emily Lackey offers another system for a submission wish list.

> Do you write humor and want to (no kidding!) earn a paycheck for it? Here are eight markets.

> If you're traveling to Massachusetts this summer, here's a new bookstore you (or your innerWimpy Kid) might like.

> Finally, Shannon Reed's hilarious piece, "If Jane Austen Got Feedback From Some Guy in a Writing Workshop."  And Nathaniel Tower tells us "What Common Rejections from Publishers Really Mean" (and I sure hope he's wrong!).

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - Wonderlane

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.

      

                          

Guest Blogger Saloma Furlong on Old-Fashioned Virtues in a Digital Age: Perseverance and Networking

About seven years ago, I was a more frequent attendee at writing conferences, and among the intangibles I miss is making new writing friends, face to face. I met, and immediately click with Saloma Furlong from the first hello at a two-day conference on memoir at Trinity College in 2007. We kept in touch via email, then lost the thread – busy lives. Until late 2010, when I was assigned by ForeWord magazine to review her first memoir, and her husband David spotted the review online. Next, Saloma read at a bookstore near my New Jersey home, and we picked up as if we'd never been out of touch. I'm delighted to host Saloma here, talking about the road to publication of her first, and second, memoir.

Please welcome Saloma Furlong. 

Seventeen years elapsed from the time I first started writing for an audience to the publication of my first book. I wanted my memoir published long before, but I believe now that the story (and indeed my life) needed to evolve and develop.

I would never have become a writer if I did not have a life story I felt compelled to share. At times I was ready to ask someone else to write it — that’s how desperately I wanted it to see it in print. In retrospect, I see that it was important my story be written in my own voice, from my perspective, with the insights I’d gleaned from my life experiences. Eventually I realized I was the only person qualified to write my story.

I’ll tell you why.

I grew up Amish.

Today, Amish romance novels are big sellers. But as a native Amish person, it is excruciating for me to pick up books written by authors who’ve never been Amish themselves. They inevitably get it wrong. These authors don’t know what it’s really like to grow up in the Amish culture. Of course novelists are not restricted to writing only about the worlds they experience firsthand; if they were, there would be far less interesting fiction on the shelves. And some authors who do write Amish novels are careful researchers, though that is no substitute for the Amish mindset that comes from growing up Amish.

But I wasn't planning to write an Amish romance novel. My story was a memoir, and the idea of a ghostwriter or collaborator meant I'd have to translate a lifetime's worth of "inside information" and still risk that the book would not have the authenticity I sought.  

  

So if my story was to make it into print, it was up to me. I wrote a draft, put it away, wrote more, put the manuscript away again, pulled it out and rewrote. For years. I’d ask others to read it and give me feedback. But it wasn't until I made a connection through my contacts at Smith College (my alma mater), that I found Jeanne Braham. She became my developmental editor and helped me shape the book into final form.

Then it took six more years to find a publisher.  

Friends have told me that my middle name should be Perseverance. They might be right, because without this very Amish personality trait, I may not have been stubborn enough to continue. But I believed in my story, even after three different agents tried, and failed, to sell the manuscript. I envisioned that book in my hands for a very long time. I was not about to give up.

When I received the manuscript back from my third agent, I decided to give it one last try. If I couldn't get a publisher interested the next time out, I would have to consider publishing it myself. Many people have successfully self-published and were happy they did. But I’ve always been clear that I did not want to go into the book publishing business. I was more than happy to promote my book (which it turns out is something I enjoy almost as much as the writing), but I saw myself as a writer and wanted to collaborate with a seasoned publisher who could do all the other things to make a book successful that I did not feel equipped to do myself

I found hundreds of independent and university presses at New Pages, scoured the list to find publishers that met my criteria, read their submission guidelines, and began making—yes—simultaneous submissions. I was following the advice of one of my writing teachers about publishers requiring exclusive submissions: “Those are their rules, not mine.”

And so I dared to be so bold. I kept a chart of publishers to whom I submitted my proposal, and when I got to 33, I decided to stop, simply because 33 is my favorite number.

And then I waited and recorded the rejections.

About three months later, I received a request for the whole manuscript from Michigan State University Press. I sent it. On December 7, 2009, I received an email from Julie Loehr, the editor at Michigan State University Press, telling me I had an amazing story, and she would like to publish it. I immediately wrote back, saying I was thrilled.

A few hours later, I received an email from another university press, asking to see the whole manuscript. My mouth dropped open. I knew one thing for sure — the time for my book to be published had finally come. But now I had a dilemma: Send them the manuscript, or wait until MSU Press officially offers me a contract?

After two days of thinking it over, I went with my gut. I called MSU Press, reached Julie Loehr directly, and told her about my dilemma. She explained that MSU Press was already investing in the book by having consultants who are experts in the subject matter read it and offer editorial feedback. I promised her I would not send my manuscript to the other publisher unless MSU Press decided not to publish it.

MSU Press did publish Why I Left the Amish, in January 2011. Perseverance had paid off. 

When I was writing my next memoir, Julie Loehr and I agreed that I needed a trade publisher for that book. I thought it would be easy to find a trade publisher because by then I had that coveted thing called a "platform." I had a blog that was garnering between 500 and 1,000 hits a day. I had an author website. My first book was mildly successful, and I had been featured in the PBS documentary The Amish that aired on American Experience. I would also be appearing in the follow-up film, The Amish: Shunned.

But it was not easy at all.

I found there was a certain expectation from writer friends, agents, and publishers, that MSU Press would be publishing my second book. I needed a mid-list publisher, hard to come by these days, and if I didn't find one, I'd be faced with a choice: do I self-publish to capitalize on the timing of the second film, or do I take my time and find a traditional publisher? I started a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish.

And then my friend Shirley Showalter, whose own memoir about growing up Mennonite was about to be released, connected me to her publisher, Herald Press. This confirmed something I had thought was true — even in a digital age, old-fashioned networking is still the most effective way of making important connections.

Herald Press made a commitment to publish Bonnet Strings: An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two Worlds, the day before The Amish: Shunned premiered on PBS, on February 4, 2014.  

The message in my story, for all writers: take heart. If, even after numerous rejections, you can still imagine your story in book form, keep trying. I know in this age of instant gratification it is hard to wait, but it may be that your story is still evolving, and that the best timing is still in your future.

Whether or not you want to adopt it as a middle name, perseverance does pay off.

Note from Lisa: Saloma will be stopping by over the next week to answer any questions blog readers would like to ask – just leave them in comments. By leaving any question or comment you will also be eligible for a random drawing to receive a signed copy of Bonnet Strings (must have a U.S. postal address, and leave comment by midnight EST on Monday, April 14).

You can read more about Saloma's journey at her blog, and connect on her

Facebook page, and on Goodreads.  She appears in this video profile from the PBS American Experience documentary, “The Amish: Shunned.” 

Images: Saloma - Kerstin Martin; Sign - DavidJones/Flickr Creative Commons; others courtesy of the author.