Decisions A New Novelist Must Make

Have you ever felt like this woman? Most of us have had such moments. Recently, I've been having an email conversation with a woman who wrote and self-published her first novel. She had kindly sent me a copy and I read and enjoyed it. 

Naturally, she wanted my opinion on the book. Then she asked me if I thought it worth her time and money to try to get an agent. She is already working on book number 2. We chatted about it and she remarked that the marketing of her book was a big job and that there is so much to learn about the publishing world.

How right she was. If being a writer only involved the actual creating a story or essay or poem, we'd all be happy. But it involves so much more--that is, if we want to sell what we've written and if we would like to be represented by an agent or publishing house. 

One of the things a new novelist needs to do is to read as much as possible about the things listed here:

1. self-publishing vs selling to a publishing house

2. how to find an agent

3. ebook vs print? or both?

4. how to write a good query letter 

5. marketing the book 

6. how to find reviewers other than friends and family 

Another thing to do is to talk with other novelists who have been successful in finding an agent and/or marketing their book. I don't mean a 2 minute conversation but to spend some real time with an experienced writer. 

Give some thought to the matter of producing more books once you've found an agent. It's an ongoing process. One book is not going to do it. Are you confident that you can keep writing new books?

Think about the amount of time all this is going to take. Do you have the time, or are you willing to make the time? Is your passion for writing and publishing more books great enough? 

The poor woman in the picture may have taken on too much. Or she may love to write and hate all the other things that are part of the writing world. She definitely needs to sit down and sort it all out! 

The person I had the email conversation with wrote a book that kept me turning the pages. She's heard a similar reaction from other readers of this first novel. There are things in her first novel that might have been done better and I'm sure she'll be cognizant of that in the second book. I've heard successful authors say that your first novel should go into a drawer and stay there forever. It's the one you learn from. I don't agree with that 100% but there is some merit to that thought. Now, she must decide how much more she is willing to take on. No one else can make that decision for her. 

Who Is This and Where Is She Going?

Where is this young woman going? Why is her bicycle basket decorated with flowers. And what are the balloons for? Where is she? Who is she and what will she do when she arrives?

All this can be answered if you do a writing exercise today with the picture prompt above. Play the What if...? game as you study the photo. That should trigger some creativity in your Tuesday brain.

Share your paragraphs or stories with us in the comments section. I'm thinking 20 people would have that young woman going 20 different places to do 20 different things. 

Don't brush writing exercises aside. Many a good story evolved from a Random Word exercise or a Picture Prompt. You know that walking five miles a day would be very beneficial to your overall health. Doing the writing exercises will also bring benefits into your writing life. 

Awww, go ahead. Give it a try! 

Writers Need Readers

Yesterday, Ken and I went to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City to attend a symphony performance. It's a magnifcent building opened in 2011. An hour prior to the performance, the Symphony Director and two other men held an informal talk and question & answer time. To listen to a symphony orchestra director, a solo clarinetist and a composer talk about the music we'd hear was informative and quite interesting. 

One of the things that Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist for the New York Philharmonic, said stayed with me. He told a story about an audience member saying to him, "I'm no musician but..." Mr. McGill said that he stopped the man at that point and told him that, yes, he was a musician. That a musician requires an audience to hear his music. There would be no reason for him to play over and over only for himelf. So both the man making the music and the one hearing it are musicians.

I thought about what he said and decided that we can apply the same principle to writing. As writers, we need readers. Most of us write so that our words will be read by someone somewhere. Oh sure, a few people write only for themselves but they are in a definite minority. 

When I write a children's story, I aim for a large audience of kids. I hope that the story I write will entertain them, help them see certain aspects of life, and make them want to read more stories. When I write a personal essay, my goal is to bring something to my readers that might be of interest and also remind them of some universal truth that the essay illustrates. I also write to give my readers pleasure in some way.

I write this blog to help other writers--to give them tips of the trade and to encourage them to keep on writing. What good would this blog be without you, the reader? 

Just as the musician needs an audience to hear the music, we writers need you, our readers. 

Back to the symphony performance. We were entertained by some fine classical music and a new composition by Richard Danielpour whose Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, "From the Mountaintop,"  The performance afforded us a rare treat. In the same vein, I hope that some of the things I write have provided a rare treat for some of my readers. 

Encouraging Words From A Guest Blogger

Ellen Ritscher Sackett

Meet Guest Blogger Ellen Sackett. She thinks becoming a writer is pretty simple. After reading what she has to say, you might agree. 

Writing as My Second Career

By Ellen Ritscher Sackett

One day I decided to be a writer. It was pretty much that simple. This decision came about following a painful transition in my life away from my previous career after many years of severe burnout. I needed a new passion. At that time, I wasn’t yet clear on where my next path would take me, but I figured I was smart. Something would work out.

The natural next step of perusing job ads turned up big fat zeros. My two college degrees were in music, for Pete’s sake. My education didn’t prepare me for anything else — or did it? Those thousands of dollars in tuition and years of crafting term papers had to count for something.

At least I can write, I thought.

So just like that, I decided I was a writer, and I would do what professional writers do. I bought a bunch of books that would tell me how to go about it. I also took a few online classes and joined a writer’s group. I didn’t say to myself, “Someday I am going to be a writer,” or, “I hope I can do this.” Nope. I was a writer. It was a fact.

Around that same time, I had a date with a sweet guy who dreamed of being a writer. He spent big bucks on a weekly meetings and attended weekend retreats with a writing coach.”She is just wonderful,” he said. “The best.” So I asked him, “What kinds of things do you write about?” He stared at me for a moment, looking perplexed. “Why, nothing,” he said. “That’s why I talk to her. To figure that out.”

Purging myself of awful prose that could be easily erased or deleted later seemed better than therapy and, in my opinion, was time better spent. Reading books, taking classes and seeking advice is important — I get that — but in their proper time and place. Nothing can replace the actual physical act of getting thoughts out of one’s head and forming them into words.

Here’s a not-so-secret secret: Writing is much easier when one has something to say. Initially, food was my favorite subject. I started a blog and wrote restaurant reviews. Food writing as a profession piqued my interest, but I discovered that most food writers worth their salt also know quite a bit about food preparation. While I’m not a highly skilled cook, the blog served my purposes well. It gave me a creative outlet and a way to share my writing. The ultimate compliment was when readers would say, “Boy, that really made me hungry!” Then I knew I had made a connection with them through my words, and that was more satisfying than any meal.

My second career path has been far from straight. Fast forward through several years of freelancing, working for newspapers, improving my skills and shouldering many, many disappointments. It all added up to experience, and I eventually got there. I mean, here. 

Mind you, I didn’t achieve my goals of becoming a professional writer and magazine editor without lots of support, for which I am deeply grateful. There were also some genuinely concerned folks who expressed doubts about my choices, and I thank them, too, for giving me additional perspectives to consider. But I never once doubted myself. As corny and as cliché as this may sound, faith and determination have kept me on track.

I’d be lying if I said being a writer is easy because it’s not. But for me, deciding to be a writer really is as simple as that.

###

A little about me: I’m the executive editor for Dallas and Houston Hotel Magazines and a special contributor for The Dallas Morning News. I served on the staff of the Guide, The Dallas Morning News’ weekly entertainment magazine and was a part of the paper’s digital team, dallasnews.com. I’m a former member of Writers and Critters (WAC), an international online writing group for women where I became friends with Nancy Julien Kopp. In my spare time, I take care of my menagerie of four-legged, furry and feathered friends and try to come up with pithy and sometimes amusing Facebook posts. Thank you, Nancy, for the opportunity to share a few words on your blog. Feel free to email me at ellen.sackett@gmail.com

Accentuate The Positive

Do you remember that old song that has lyrics that say: you've got to accentuate the positive, elminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative. Don't mess with Mister In-Between.

Harold Arlen wrote the music and Johnny Mercer came up with the lyrics in 1944. There's a YouTube video of Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters singing the song. View it here.

The song was very popular during my growing-up years. I wonder if it had anthing to do with me being positive in my outlook on many things. I wouldn't say it was solely responsible but most likely did have some influence on me at the time.

In regard to our writing life, the poster is right on. A bad attitude is not going to take you very far. The writer who sends a sub to an editor but thinks to him/herself that it is really dumb to send this in because it's going to be rejected does him/herself a real injustice. Of course, a great deal depends on the quality of the submission but if a writer drags him/herself down with every submission, it won't be long before there are no more submissions.

Similarly, if you think everything you write is a piece of junk, you'll soon stop submitting. In everthing we write, whether story, poem or essay, there will be good things and crummy parts. Don't dwell on the bad parts, work on them and make them more like the good sections.

A negative attitude can easily destroy self-confidence and can drag you down to a place where it's hard to get up again. So what can you do to overcome having a bad outlook on your writing life?

Make a list, whether mentally or actually written, of the pros and cons of whatever is happening in your writing life. Which side has the most items? I'm guessing it's the con side. Ignore that side! Instead, concentrate on the pro side. And don't say There's nothing on that side because there is good and bad to everything. You might have to ponder it for awhile but I know you can come up with some positives in your list.

Don't read the list once and toss it. Uh-uh! Keep it where you can see it on a daily basis. Keep reading that pro side and add to it as time goes on. Is life suddenly going to become all roses? No, it most likely will not be an overnight miracle. It took a long time to develop the negative attitude so it will be awhile before you can change it to the positive side. And like most things that are worth pursuing, it's hard work. No magic wand here.

Key to changing a negative attitude is to truly want to do so. It's like wanting to be a successful writer--you must have a deep desire and the passion to make it happen. It's no different with an atttitude change. I'm not a psychologist nor a person with a PHD in writing, but my aim here is to encourage those with poor attitudes in their wriitng world to move to the other side.

Don't Be A Lazy Writer

Tell me what emotion your character is experiencing and I'm gonna be unhappy. I don't want you to tell your readers that Mary is excited, scared, shy, silly or angry as the women in today's poster are labeled. Show me! 

If you write Mary was angry, you're conserving words. Oh my,yes! A three word sentence conveys what you want the reader to get. You've saved room for lots of other words in your story, creative nonfiction essay or even a poem. Do it all through your project and you'll get labeled a 'lazy writer' for that is exactly what happens when a writer tells the reader what the character feels. It's the easy way out.

Using the 'tellng technique' instead of 'showing' throughout your project will result in a boring piece of writing. The last thing you want to do is bore your reader. 

Show your reader Mary's anger as in this sample:

Mary grabbed the nearest object and hurled it at the wall. The book fell with a thud. She tore across the room, snatched the book and this time, she aimed for the window when she threw it. As the glass shattered, she kicked the ottoman twice before speaking to her trembling sister.

Yes, the writer used a lot more words but isn't it more interesting? Don't you get a visual image of Mary's anger? It's action but you could also show her breathing hard, screaming as she throws the book. All these sensory details result in showing your character's emotion. Nopwhere in the passage did you see the words Mary was angry.

As an exercise, use each of the emotions shown above and write a simple telling sentence using the emotion. Then write a passage, or even one sentence, that shows the emotion. Keep the sensory details in mind as you write. 

Peel off the Lazy Writer label. You're more likely to find an acceptance than a rejection if you do.

Should I Enter A Writing Contest Or Not?

Three simple words--Enter to Win--gives writers good advice about contests. If you don't enter, there's no way you can win. Simple, or so it sounds.

A lot of writers are reluctant to enter a writing contest. They might think their writing is not good enough to compete with others. They procrastinate until the deadline for entering is past. They can't come up with a good idea for the contest theme. They waver--yes-no-yes-no--until no decision gets made. 

I know, and you know, too, that it takes a bit of courage to enter a contest. Sometimes, it also takes some cash you may not be willing to part with. No problem--there are plenty of contests with no entry fees. As a general rule, the ones that do charge a fee to enter also give larger prizes. Some of the contests that are free to enter promise publication to the winners and no more. For beginning writers that is prize enough. Some will debate that putting it in the same category with writing for pay vs writing for no pay. 

There are plenty of places to find writing contests. Ask your old friend Google for a list. Specify 'no fee' if your prefer. Subscribe to newsletters for writers that offer news of submissions needed and contests to enter. Visit with other writers for news about contests. Watch your local newspapers for announcements of contests within writing groups in your state or region, or the paper itself. 

Consider what you will send to a contest. It only makes sense that you will enter something you've written that is your best work. If you wrote something that multiple editors have rejected, then it's probably not the one you want to enter in a contest. What about taking that piece that has been rejected and polishing it until it sparkles? Then enter it! 

You need to have a positive attitude when entering.. The odds of winning are not the greatest when only three prizes are given, but somebody is going to win and it could be you. You  will never know if you don't enter.

I'm reminded of one of the first poems I wrote, then entered in my state authors group annual contest. What do I know about poetry? Won't there be lots of entries from seasoned poets? Should I pay the fee or not? It's probably money down the drain. But I did pay the fee and entered my poem which won first place and a nice check. What if I'd listened to my doubting self and shied away? I'd never have had the joy of being a winner.

Will you win every contest you enter? Most probably not. Will you become wiser about the kind of contest you enter and what the judges look for? I think you will. Entering writing contests is good experience. Go ahead, give it a try.