The Intersection of Book PR and Writing Advice: A Round-Up

One task of a new author is to help generate positive online coverage/mentions of one's new book. Some are less within the author's control than others of course, and some are more fun than others.

Since spring (coinciding with the release of Starting with Goodbye from University of Nevada Press) I've been writing guest posts and answering interview questions from literary journals, bloggers, reporters and freelancers. Mostly, I've had a great time. I'm still having a good time.

While the goal is to keep the book in front of people's eyes, one of the more satisfying side benefits for me has been that many of the resulting pieces double as useful tips, advice, and information for other writers. 

The book launch, book tour, and general book promo craziness dominated my days for months, meaning I didn't have time to keep offering writing thoughts here at this blog, so whenever possible, I tried to tie in book publicity with literary citizenship. 

I've meant to share this sooner, but life piled on...Anyway, here's a round-up of some coverage from the last five months -- only the pieces that I think other writers might find useful. (If you want to see everything, check out the Media Mentions page.)

Guest posts and articles on writing issues:

Writing About Friends and Family in Memoir: Nine Key Questions (at LitChat)

How Lit Journal Publications Paved the Way to a Published Memoir  (at The Review Review)

How to Add Humor to a Sad Memoir  (at The Memoir Project/Marion Roach Smith)

Publishing with a Small (Traditional) or University Press: When it Might be Right for You and Your Book  (at Nonfiction Authors Association blog)

Writing About Family in Memoir: Fairness Counts (at The Writers Circle blog)

If You Give a Writer a Book Contract, She's Going to Want...Everything (at Women Writers, Women's Books)

Writers Recommend...for Writer's Block (at Poets & Writers)

My First (Disastrous) Writing Retreat  (at The Quivering Pen)

Author Interview Initiation: You Want to Know WHAT?  (at Bloom)

Interviews  (only those that cover writer advice, tips, insight, how-to's from my writing/publishing experience):

In Search of the Right Structure   (at Author Accelerator on Medium/Jennie Nash) 

Author's Notebook: Nine Tips on Writing Memoir (at The Whole Megillah)

Ruminations Interview (at Under the Sun, which published one of the original essays that became an important chapter in the book)

A Conversation with Lisa Romeo  (at Literary Mama)

An Interview (at Proximity's True blog)

Author Interview Q/A (at the blog of Caroline Leavitt)

Be Well, Write Well Interview (at DIY MFA)

Writers in the Trenches: Q/A on how everything before prepared me for the memoir  (at Fay Rapaport DesPres's blog)

A Conversation  (at the Sunlight Press)

Q/A  (at the blog of Christi Craig)

Podcasts (with in-depth dives into nonfiction writing craft):

The Creative Nonfiction podcast (w/Brendan O'Meara) - Episode # 98 - Lisa Romeo on the Power of Paper Habits

Write the Book podcast - # 508  (w/Kim MacQueen)

The Ish podcast (w/Cameron Dezen Hammon) - Episode # 8 - Grieving-ish Part II

And just for fun...

Spotlight (at Publishers Weekly)

How We Spend Our Days: Lisa Romeo  (at Catching Days blog)

Becoming a Published Memoirist at 58  (at Empowering Women in Midlife)

I hope some of these will prove useful for your own writing practice, writing life, writing challenges. As book mania settles down, I hope to be back here at the blog more regularly, with the spotlight once again trained on passing along good writing life advice and lessons learned from experience -- mine and others'. 

Guest Blogger Rebecca Entel on the Tricks that Helped Her Finish Writing a Full Novel

Rebecca Entel’s first novel is Fingerprints of Previous Owners (Unnamed Press, 2017). Her short stories and essays have appeared in Guernica, Joyland Magazine, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Cleaver Magazine, The Madison Review, and elsewhere. Rebecca is an Associate Professor at Cornell College, where she teaches multicultural American literature, Caribbean literature, creative writing, and the literature of social justice. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin and a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Rebecca grew up in Cleveland and currently lives in Iowa City.

Please welcome Rebecca Entel.

Maybe it’s part of my process to imagine having better writing days than I actually have. In my mind’s eye, there I am at my desk or on the couch or at a table in the library, fingers flying as I produce and produce and produce. It’s much harder to be inside that body I’m imagining watching from afar – to be the one staring at the screen, resisting the click-away temptation of the internet, believing in what could come next.

I had been writing and teaching writing for many years before publishing Fingerprints of Previous Owners. Part of my process in writing that first novel was seeing if I could, in fact, even finish one. I got to travel many times for this project, which takes place at a Caribbean resort built over the ruins of a slave plantation. I even learned how to use a machete to reach those ruins for my research. But most of my time was spent staring at the screen, feeling frustrated. I’d spend too much time trying to get the conditions right for becoming the writer that existed in my mind, and then when I actually sat down to write, I’d feel fundamentally not up to the task. Those images of watching myself writing prolifically had become one more weight getting in my way.

The only way I seemed to get anything done was when I tricked myself into writing, by using all the tricks I’d counseled my students to use when they were feeling stuck. Two of these tricks had a major impact on the development of the book.

What’s something you know about that your readers may not?

A grad professor of mine once recommended we think about this question, finding something unique to describe that might inject some energy. Posing it to myself, I thought back to learning how to use that machete. I’d been taught it was a tool of gravity, not of force. No matter how strong you were, hacking away wouldn’t do much good. You need a sharp blade and the right angle, then let gravity do its job. I began free-writing about this and discovered a voice that belonged to Myrna, the book’s main character, who was secretly excavating the ruins. The machete became thematically important, too, since Myrna didn’t have much power, physical or otherwise; she had to be sharp and find the right angle to get where she wanted to go.

What will you learn if you free-write from a minor character’s perspective?

I advise my students to find multiple ways to jump away from the main thrust of their stories. This particular exercise isn’t necessarily about writing material to be included in the text; it’s about the writer discovering new information.

On the days I felt most stuck, I let myself write short narratives from the perspectives of minor characters in my protagonist’s community. I learned a ton about the island’s history, more than my narrator could know, and much of it allowed me to add texture to the fictional island I was creating, where what does not get talked about fuels Myrna’s machete adventures. That secretive aspect of the book hedged me in because I couldn’t reveal anything beyond Myrna’s perspective, which, combined with the typical limitation of the first-person narrator, and her intense focus on her excavations, isolated her character from friends and family.

Some of these free-writing exercises eventually became parts of the book in which I let other characters speak. These characters never would have come to life if I hadn’t let myself experiment with their voices. In talking to readers, I’ve learned how important these side stories were to their reading experience. They needed these breaks from Myrna’s perspective. So perhaps my feelings of being mired in the writing was actually a clue into what my readers might feel, too.

I wouldn’t have finished Fingerprints if I hadn’t relied on these tricks to help me stop thinking about the to-be-finished Fingerprints. I hadn’t thought of the various exercises I offer students as necessarily related before, but I came to see that many of them focused on relieving writers of the pressure of writing a book –  distracting writers from that larger aim so they could write something.

In speaking with other writers, particularly students, I’ve also been reminded how helpful it is to hear writers speak honestly and practically about what their processes were before their books were ever books.

Connect with Rebecca at her website, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

She is teaching an online novel writing workshop for Catapult beginning in June.

Guest Blogger Stephanie Vanderslice on Rest, Writing, and the Walking Cure

The name Stephanie Vanderslice often comes up when discussing best practices for teaching writing. I’ve happily hosted her here on the blog before, and am pleased to welcome her back. Her latest book, The Geek’s Guide to the Writing Life, is chock full of solid, writer-tested, smart, and innovative tips on living a writing life in the 21^st century. Stephanie holds an MFA in fiction writing from George Mason University and now directs the Arkansas Writer’s MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas.

Please welcome Stephanie Vanderslice

I originally put the book, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, on my reading list last summer because the title was so tempting, because I am a victim of the modern culture of “busyness” as much as anyone else, and because I thought I might find in its pages the secret to managing my time.

Instead, what I found more than anything else was a history of artists and the creative life over the last several centuries, a history with a surprisingly common thread: walking.  Walking, or some kind of meditative physical activity undertaken without distraction, without trying to multitask or do anything else but put one foot in front of another. 

I was astonished to learn how important walking had been throughout history, how many of the world’s great writers and artists have been walkers. Jefferson, Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis. Alice Munro, Barbara McClintock (Geneticist), Lin Manuel Miranda. They all got their best ideas walking.

I am no stranger to physical exercise. I ride for miles each week on a stationary bike while staring at my Kindle or reading a magazine, and I power walk around my neighborhood while listening to podcasts. Anything to keep my mind occupied, because even though I’ve exercised for 30 years, I still find it pretty boring. 

The kind of exercise advocated in Rest was different. The kind of physical movement that inspired the creatives of the past was exercise for its own sake. It was supposed to be boring. That was the point. As Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard reveals, “I have walked myself into my best thoughts.”

After reading Rest, I became so enamored of walking that I first began scheming to make my commute to the university where I teach on foot—a 20-minute prospect each way—but the problem of figuring out what to do with all the stuff I’d need to schlep back and forth persisted. In the end, I decided to start smaller, with a 45-minute neighborhood stroll after my morning writing sessions. The new caveat: headphones not allowed.  I had to give my mind as much freedom to roam as my body. 

The results have been impressive. Each walk has ended with so many writing ideas, especially development ideas for my novel-in-progress, that I quickly had to start a file called, “walking ideas,” to keep track of them. Moreover, I am learning not to pressure myself on these jaunts, telling myself that my mind can go wherever it wants, even if that means perseverating on what I should have said at yesterday’s faculty meeting. Still, I have yet to return home, even on the most stressful of days, without a revelation about something I was writing.

It’s not just Rest that’s onto something. Recently at a reading at my university, a student asked renowned poet Maggie Smith how she generated her ideas. “Put your phone away and take a walk,” she said.

No wonder the Romantics spent so much time wandering the moors. So, while Rest (the book) has not necessarily granted me an extra hour a day or helped me maximize my REM sleep, it has changed my creative life. See for yourself—read Rest and give the “daily constitutional” a try.

Connect with Stephanie on Twitter, Facebook, or at her website.

Images courtesy S. Vanderslice

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- October 27, 2017 Edition

> Invest three minutes with 19-year-old poet Amanda Gorman, reading "The Gathering Place" at the Social Good Summit recently. She's the first official U.S. Youth Poet Laureate. You'll see why.

> I'm looking forward to reading Amy Tan's new memoir Where the Past Begins: Where the Past Begins, especially after enjoying this interview at Shondaland. (So many of the pieces in The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, her 2004 essay collection (memoir in essays?), are ones I re-read frequently. Especially "Mother Tongue," which I teach from.)

> At Book Riot, Christine Ro explores "100 Must Read Books for the Socially Awkward". 

> Since I am (and so many author friends are) brainstorming future book marketing and publicity ideas -- and not that I have anything near her pull -- it's been interesting to see the #misfitsmanifesto posts on Twitter in celebration of Lidia Yuknavitch's new book of the same name.

>  At LitHub, some of the best writing advice gleaned (and edited down) from 150 authors.

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-1950sUnlimited

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- September 8, 2017 Edition

> Need to scan old, perhaps not-great-condition photos for a writing project? Google has a new app that looks as if it might be the answer. I'm itching to try, and wish I'd known about it a few months ago when scanning pics for my forthcoming memoir. (h/t Simplemost)

> I loved this essay at the Woven Tale Press, in which Beth Kephart draws writing inspiration and insight from the painter Andrew Wyeth. (Well, of course I love it. I've admired Beth's writing for 20 years, and thanks to my own inspiration--via friend and writing supporter Christina Baker Kline (whose latest novel was inspired by Wyeth's most  famous subject) -- I visited Wyeth's Cushing, Maine painting base this summer).

> Congrats to the new "Debs" -- five authors, from different genres, whose books will all debut in 2018, and who will be taking readers along for the ride via frequent blog posts at The Debutante Ball. 

> Excellent tips for aspiring op-ed writers, from columnist Bret Stephens at The New York Times.

> Finally, buying your way onto the bestseller lists. And getting caught. Here's the long, gossipy, tweet-laden, multiply-updated story. And the shorter, concise version of how the New York Times reacted.

Have a great weekend!   (And if you happen to be spending it at the Hippocamp Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers, please do say hi!)

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- August 25, 2017 Edition

> Flesh out your fictional characters by thinking of them as...horses? Yes, says Roz Morris.

> This Quartz piece's stance is a bit strident, but I do agree that sometimes talking, talking, talking about writing projects can often drain them of creative energy. 

> Indivisible and the Op-Ed Project offer some tips and guidelines for writing editorial advocacy materials (scroll down).

> Literary journals open and close to submissions according to predictable--and often unpredictable--schedules. AuthorsPublish offers this list of journals that are always open.

> Ever have someone scrawl in the margins of your work: Head Hopping! or POV shift? ...and not be precisely sure what this means or how to avoid it? Here's a primer.

> Brag Box Times Two: 

           Since I'm already partial to stories in which the weather is a kind of character, that makes this flash piece, written by my former MFA student Bethany Petano, twice as nice.

           Many congratulations to my former client Kathryn Sollmann, on her book contract with Hachette for Ambition Redefined: Creating Lifetime Security (Without Neglecting Your Family or Yourself) in a More Flexible Workplace. It was a pleasure working with Kathryn on the book proposal that helped her land the agent who sold her book! 

> Finally, you have until August 26 to leave a comment on Melissa Palmer's guest post and maybe snag a complimentary copy of one of her books.

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-switthoft

Guest Blogger Melissa Palmer on How Time is the Line Between Loving and Hating Her Own Book

Sometimes, one is matched up, by the organizers of a book festival, for a panel with other authors unknown to yourself. Usually, those panelists turn out to be rather terrific. That was the case when I was included on a panel at BooksNJ earlier this summer (Women's Perspective on Writing Memoir) and I met Melissa Palmer a few minutes before our panel got underway. A bonus was that she's also a New Jersey author, funny and smart, with books in several genres, including Baking for Dave (young adult novel, published 2016); A Life Less Normal (memoir, 2015); and Twin Oaks (literary fiction, 2014).

Please welcome Melissa Palmer

Last year I started a book I was so excited to write, my first horror novel. I love horror. It’s what I was raised on as a little baby writer. I love horror so much it took me almost thirty years to write my own.

            Why?

            Because I wanted it to be good.

            In fifth grade, I wrote a magnum opus about a bug monster; in sixth, I wrote a ghost story about a man in a mirror (not at all like Michael Jackson’s). Then, I never wrote horror again.

            I’ve continued to be a connoisseur of horror, but I knew that writing good horror is tough. So I waited.

            Then last year when a scary book idea came to me, I all but jumped through my keyboard to get it all down. I felt ready. For the first time I wrote with a daily word count goal. (I’ve never done that before.) Every day I set out to write a minimum of 1,000 words, then upped the ante by setting a personal hard deadline for the project’s completion. My normal “schedule” bounced between one paragraph days and ten page days.

            Normally, I am a stickler about every word, whittling down passages by paragraph as I write. But I was so eager to get Husk out into the world, I approached it like a machine, tapping away mechanically each day to get that first draft done.

            Can you see where this is going?

            Somewhere around my “deadline” I realized something terrible. My book was crap. Like any hopes of horror writing I had in sixth grade, I put Husk aside.

            I focused on my happy stories. My novel, Baking for Dave, was released and I got to go to BookExpo America and show it off. Smiles and warm fuzzy feelings abounded.

            Then something strange happened. It was a dark and stormy night in Transylvania. Actually, it was a gorgeous day in New York City. Walking through the Javits Center during BEA, I noticed an odd thing, and I gasped. NO HORROR! There were thrillers sure, lots of twisty, missing person capers, but there was a distinct absence of good old fashioned scares.  

            I had to step in.

            After a year away, I picked Husk up again. Reading old work can be jarring, like looking at old high school pictures. How much you’ve grown and changed is evident in one glance. All your flaws stick out like giant overbites.

            I’ve spent the summer of 2017 picking through that old manuscript: fussing, reworking, and CUTTING. So. Much. Cutting. In so doing I’ve discovered one thing.

            A good story is told in the things you don’t write.

            Maybe it’s the summer talking, but I took a hint from the film version of Jaws. What makes that shark so chilling is all the time we don’t see it. I cut a lot of exposition, explaining, and so many passages that made me ask myself out loud, “WHY IS THIS EVEN HERE?”

            Reading old work makes you question yourself. It will make you wonder when it was you forgot how to write. But overall, you learn some valuable lessons.

HERE’S MINE

> Choose the approach that works for you.

One look at my Husk manuscript and it was evident. Word counts don’t work. FOR ME. When I was obsessed with hitting word goals, the quality of the words I chose took a hit. Style wise, I’d rather get 100 quality words then 1,000 full of crappy metaphors, repeat phrases, and way too much telling. The word count, FOR ME, made for rushed, shoddy writing. Some people swear by them. Not this gal. As a writer you need to find what works FOR YOU.

> Write the story as if you love words, but edit as if you hate them.

Of course a horror great swears by the age-old writing advice “Kill Your Darlings.” What Stephen King suggests works for all writing. Too many words kill pacing. Too much showing kills suspense. Too many words kill the story. So even though you love your words, sometimes you have to 86 them. 

> Go dumpster diving.

For a year I considered my horror story garbage, but when I picked it up and sifted through the mess I made, there was treasure hidden inside. You may have a story you think is “horrible.” The odds are it isn’t. Sometimes we get so frustrated with what we are doing, or we put so much pressure on ourselves as writers, we don’t see the proverbial diamond in the rough.

> Take time off.

This links with the above sentiment. Time away from a project gave me the mental space I needed. (Think of it like being lost in the middle of woods, then returning later with a Google Maps view of where you are.) When we pull far enough away, the path becomes clear.  

I am so glad that I took up this book project again. Last year it had begun to feel like an onerous task to write. The product, something I hated. Now I’ve found a book I truly love. And…It’s scary!

Note from Lisa: Melissa would like to gift one blog reader with a signed copy of one of her books. Simply leave a comment here on the blog by Saturday, August 26, and specify which book you'd like. (Must have a U.S. postal shipping address.) Melissa will also answer any writing-related questions left in comments during that time.

Visit Melissa at her website or read her articles at Huffington Post. You can also follow her on Instagram @melissapalmerwritesbooks and on Facebook.

Guest Blogger Judy Mollen Walters on Creating Fictional Worlds From What We Know

I shared a meal at the AWP conference last month with four other writers. We're all part of the same Facebook group of women writers, and when discussing where we each live, they assumed I already knew their mutual friend Judy Mollen Walters, who lives less than an hour from me in New Jersey. Well, I didn't then, but I do now. Judy is a novelist and also writes occasional essays, with work in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, SheKnows, Spring St. Scary Mommy, Kveller, and other places. Looks like I met Judy just in time to learn about her fifth novel, A Million Ordinary Days, published this month—and invite her to write this guest post.

Please welcome Judy Mollen Walters.

You know what writers I admire the most? Historical fiction writers, who are able to catapult themselves—and their readers—into a completely different time, whether it be back to the ancient days of the Romans, the time of twentieth century World War I or WWII heroes and survivors, or when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Even those who write about the 1960s and 70s, when flower power and bell bottom jeans were in full fashion, impress me.

Historical novelists can go back and visit a completely different space and time, and literally plunk their readers right there beside them. They need to conduct hours and hours, and days and days, and months and months of research—online and in person research, talking to historians, librarians, and experts, taking countless notes, and reading countless books about their subjects. And that’s all before they start writing. And, as they go along, drafting, revising, rewriting.

I hate research. I always have. I can remember when I was in middle school, trying to learn the techniques of research, annoyed and bored out of my mind. As soon as I got to the library, I didn’t scurry to the encyclopedias to look up my topic. I went to the fiction section to find a new novel to read. Research was painstakingly agonizing for me, looking up articles, trying to find good, interesting information, and then just as painful to try to flesh it all out into a solid paper. I just didn’t care. I only wanted to go back into worlds I knew along with authors like Judy Blume, worlds I was familiar with. I loved realistic fiction about girls my own age, then.

Now as a writer, I have the same tastes. I am the opposite of the go-into-other-worlds, spend-a-lot-of-time-researching historical fiction writer. I’m in the solid write-what-you-know camp. For me, that’s contemporary women’s fiction. I write about families and mothers and wives. Many of my characters have some sort of affliction or illness or struggle that I’ve either gone through personally or can identify with because I know someone who has experienced it. 

Subjects I’ve explored in my novels include a Jewish family struggling with adoption (I am Jewish and know many adopted people); autism (My best friend’s son is an adult autistic man.); infertility (I went through it myself twice!); a best friendship that ends with a shock and a secret (With one of the women discovering a shocking truth about her ex-best friend, which happened to me, too.)

Yet the characters in my novels are not me, nor are they my children, husband, or family. (My sister kept trying to find herself in my books, so finally I created a character who was a middle school math teacher, like she is, so she would stop bugging me about it.)

My latest novel, A Million Ordinary Days, is about a mother like me, at the prime of her life with two daughters, battling a chronic illness. While I have Crohn’s Disease, my character has multiple sclerosis (MS). I have several friends with MS, and I reached out to them in order to make sure I was telling an accurate story. Okay, so maybe I do some casual research after all!

These friends were so supportive—and excited about—a novel about MS. They wanted a character like them to rule a novel. So they were happy to read my drafts, offering suggestions to make my character more “real.”  They also suggested blogs by writers living with MS that helped me get an accurate picture of living with the disease.

But to create my protagonists, I do not have to pursue pure research. I simply watch the lives of those around me, listen, and am able to reproduce what I observe well enough to, I think, build a credible story. My fictional worlds have everything in common with the current-day world my readers and I all live in.

If I was trying to replicate historical times, I would be miserable. There’s so much to get right: language and dress, food and lifestyle, politics and environmental conditions.  Even if I wanted to write a coming of age novel set in the 1970s and 80s when I was growing up myself, I still think I would have a hard time. I don’t remember all the fads, music, movies and TV from then!

Of course, with the Internet, research isn’t nearly as difficult now as it was back when I was in school. But that doesn’t make it any more appealing to me. I still love to write about the lives I see unfolding around me now. Mothers. Wives. Friendships. An illness or condition that's familiar. That’s how I’m most successful.

My hat's off to all the historical fiction writers out there. And the science fiction writers. And the biographers. Writers who really dare to take us into worlds so different than we could ever imagine. I admire them. But for me, I’m still sticking to the old adage: write what you know.

                                                                                                                

Note from Lisa: You can connect with Judy at her website,  Facebook, or Twitter. Find a review of her newest novel at Books is Wonderful, and order the book here.

Of Paper, Files, Age and Advice

 At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, or anyway, old: I wonder if many other writers, like me, simply love paper? Is it my age? I love any and all kinds of paper, from note cards to newsprint to the inside of novels. Magazines, legal pads, sticky notes, newsletters. Copy paper, composition books, coloring books, coupons, cards. 

And, I hoard paper and paper products. If you're an overnight guest in my house and you discover at the last moment that you need a notebook to bring to an early morning meeting, I've got you covered. In five sizes, three shapes, four colors. Serious looking ones, whimsical, slim, fat, cheap, or lush. Lined, unlined, white, yellow, flimsy, sturdy. With or without a place to stow the pen. Ones you can lose and I won't care, and those that mean something (okay, I won't loan those out anyway, but you get the idea).

But the biggest stash of hoarded papers are the ones I "need" as a writer. I keep pages clipped from newspapers and magazines because there's an image or article of interest, and I keep all my own notes, and I keep paper copies of anything I've written and published. 

When I have an idea for a piece of writing, it may begin in a paper notebook, or on the computer screen, but eventually, a paper file folder begins to fill with notes, research, related materials, and always, lists (possible places to submit it; research to be done; title ideas, etc.). Polished revisions and really shitty first drafts.

It all piles up. And when one accumulates a lot of paper files, the need arises for a...filing cabinet.

In the big home office-makeover (already three or so years ago by now), I placed two tall, three-drawer dark wooden ones side by side within arm's length of my chair. A few weeks ago, I asked my husband to stop by Ikea and pick up a matching one-drawer unit. It actually holds more than one drawer's worth of files, because it's a good six inches deeper than the others. Plus there's the bonus of a small drawer at the top for office miscellany, a help since I banished my old desk in favor of a large but drawer-less table. 

I know - this isn't very interesting and maybe more about old habits than writing. Except that, while emptying an overflowing cardboard box of paper (!) and sorting it into the new filing unit, I came across some random items that don't really go anywhere but that I'd been obviously saving for--well for something, I'm sure. Probably a blog post, or to pass along to a student or coaching client. 

Anyway, those random scraps held good advice, good enough to pass along. Here's what I found:

- Scribbled notes from an ASJA conference two (or more?) years ago that included these:

from Susan Shapiro on writing personal essays that sell to mainstream media: 

"Get in late and get out early.  Keep the camera rolling. When rejected, see if it needs revision, then find a more friendly editor."

and from editor/author Daniel Menaker: 

"In memoir, it all lies in the voice. Yours has to be a voice that is self-surprising, not self-promoting."

- A scribbled note with no attribution from who knows when or where. I've seen/heard this a lot, and maybe you have too, but it's probably worth repeating: "A page a day is a book a year."

I need to go write my page now instead of fooling with more paper.

  

The other scraps of paper will make it into a future blog post. Meanwhile, are you a paper lover?

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-JohanDreo/nojhan

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- July 1, 2016 Edition

> Lit Hub has two interesting posts this week for those who write and send out literary work. Before you get into action collecting No's, as suggested in Kim Liao's "Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections in a Year," consider the tips Erika Dreifus shares in "13 Questions to Ask Before Submitting to a Literary Journal." 

>For those who publish regularly on more mainstream sites and are curious about the reach of your work (especially if your payment is partially determined by clicks), have you tried out Muck Rack, which claims to track all blogging and social media shares?

>I won't get to see Hamilton on Broadway until January 2017, but later this summer some teaching colleagues and I will be incorporating it in our Teen Creative Writing Intensive workshops, which makes the timing of Roy Peter Clark's article in Poynter this week, "Learn From the Word Craft of Hamilton and Make Your Stories Sing," just perfect.

>When a normally savvy, professional, and experienced author (both traditionally- and self-published) apparently gets ripped off by a book PR "firm," it illustrates how easy it is to lose money and waste time while seeming to be doing the right thing for a book launch. Linda Formichelli, of The Renegade Writer, bravely shares her cautionary tale. Later, Sandra Beckwith, of Build Book Buzz, posted about how others can avoid Linda's experience.

>Write a book (even a slim one) under contract in two weeks is a crazy idea, right? Right. Even Sonya Huber, who did it (The Evolution of Hillary Rodham Clinton - SquintBooks/Eyewear Publishing), will agree. But her generous post this week about exactly how she did it, isn't crazy at all.

>Brag Box: I'm so proud of my former coaching student Emily Klein for her essay, "Variations on a Theme: Sing it James" now up at Entropy. It's always a little thrill for me to read the final, polished, published piece, having once seen it in its infancy. It's a lovely essay about what the music of James Taylor means to an ill baby--and aching mother.

>Finally, for typewriter lovers (I know there are still a bunch of us out there), check out Chryselle D'Silva Dias's City Lab article on the state of the typewriter industry in India (bonus: photo of cool typewriter sculpture).

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Erix!

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- June 3, 2016 Edition

> Running out of ideas of where to write away from your house/office? Read Shaun Levin's two-part guest post at Aerogramme Writers' Studio: "Taking Your Notebook for a Walk," an A to K  (and L to Z) of interesting places to write. I thought I knew them all, but many of these surprised me (mostly in a good way).

> Writer Jac Jemc shares her acceptance/rejection stats for applications to writer residencies. 

> Judy Blume has joined the growing list of bestseller authors who have opened independent bookstores. 

> Check out Brooklyn Magazine's "50 Fictional Women We're Obsessed With."

> Planning a blog tour to promote your book? Women on Writing has a few tips.

> At the blog of The Writers Circle (where I teach locally), founder and co-director (and historical novelist) Judith Lindbergh recently posted Part Three (finding an agent) of an excellent, detailed series on getting published. Part Two tackles "the dreaded synopsis," while Part One focuses on the elevator pitch / query letter.

> Interesting, short interview by Debora Black with Mira Ptacin (about the writing, and the difficulty of selling), her memoir, Poor Your Soul, at Bill & Dave's Cocktail Hour. (For a bonus, follow the link at the end to Ptacin's lovely post on her journey to E.B. White's writing shed--and her own move to a Maine island.)

> Finally, enjoy this Yankee magazine essay about a quirky bookstore customer, by my Bay Path University MFA teaching colleague Kate Whouley.

Have a great weekend!

Image:  Flickr/CreativeCommons - Don O' Brien DOK1