Lessons from a Friend: “How My Ebook Helped Me Nab a Publishing Contract”

Kathy Lynn Harris and I go way back – all the way to the first writing conference I ever attended, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, some 15 odd years ago. The conference, in addition to solidifying my ambitions to become a published author, also gave me a great gift ― our enduring long-distance friendship. I’ve shared Kathy’s frustrations when her worthy novels were passed over for publication ― many times getting very close.  Now I am thrilled to share the story of her eBook success as today’s guest blogger at The Writers Circle. — Michelle Cameron, TWC Associate Director.

I began my fiction-writing journey by just putting pen to paper, joining a critique group, reading everything I could get my hands on, and attending writer’s workshops and conferences as much as my day-job would allow. Through the years, I finished one novel, and then another. My manuscripts placed in a couple of regional novel-writing contests. I landed a New York literary agent, then an even better one on the West Coast. My novels were pitched to all the Big Publishing Houses. The result was a “maybe” here and a “maybe” there, all of which eventually turned into a solid “no”. The feedback? Interesting stories, good character development, but plots that were “too quiet” to make it past the All-Powerful Marketing Departments.

I licked my wounds for several more years but kept writing, having some moderate success publishing children’s books, poetry and essays. But one of my fiction manuscripts ― Blue Straggler ― persisted in keeping me up nights. I loved my characters — Bailey, Idamarie and Rudy, a quirky threesome of unlikely friends. I loved my settings — rural South Texas, the city of San Antonio and a small mountain town in Colorado. I liked what the story had to say about friendship and family secrets and discovering who we really are inside. I liked that no matter how many times I reread chapters, I smiled. I knew it was a polished and well-edited manuscript. Readers (and not just family members or friends, by the way!) seemed to enjoy it. It just seemed like such a waste to have it sitting in that proverbial desk drawer gathering dust.

Then, in 2011, I began to travel by plane a lot for my job. I noticed the gradual rise of the e-reader — probably two out of every three fellow travelers were now reading on Nooks and Kindles, and then iPads and other tablets. The ebook was reaching a tipping point.

I reconsidered why I wrote Blue Straggler in the first place. I quickly realized that what matters to me most is pretty simple. I want readers to enjoy the story and characters. To read a passage and laugh. To think about something just a little bit longer than they might have otherwise. To read the last page and consider that their time with my story had been time well spent.

And I recognized that I didn’t really need to be on a Random House bestseller list to feel good about my work.

I made the decision to get in on the ebook action. I spoke with a friend, Jeremy Kron, who helped me navigate the ebook formatting world. He was also — lucky for me — a wonderful interactive designer who designed my book cover. Together, we prepared Blue Straggler for publication as an ebook via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Program and Barnes & Noble’s PubIt! Program in August 2011.

Positive reviews began to come in from readers and bloggers. People began to talk about the book via social media. Sales were promising. And then an independent publisher, 30 Day Books, emailed me with interest in publishing Blue Straggler as a trade paperback in early 2012.

Within four months of releasing my novel as an ebook, I signed a contract. The paperback’s official release date is March 1, 2012 (even though it can be ordered right now via Amazon).

The moral of my story? Well, I could stick with the age-old adage, “persistence eventually pays off.” But really, what I’d rather other writers know is this: Technology and ebooks have opened up a whole new path to publishing, whether it be self-publishing or catching the attention of traditional and indie publishers. If the conventional gatekeepers have declined your work, but you still believe in it with all your heart, and you want and need to get it out into the universe, it can pay to take a chance. It did for me.

Stay tuned for Kathy’s second guest blog in a few weeks; she’ll be discussing her experiences working with a small indie publisher as her first novel debuts.

You can read more about Kathy Lynn Harris and Blue Straggler via her author website at http://www.kathylynnharris.com/. Check out Kathy’s blog, as well. And connect with her via Twitter (@KathyLynnHarris) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/BlueStragglerFiction).

But is it a “book”? (And does it even matter?)

Every time I begin with a new class of young students, I sit them in a circle on the floor and ask them to imagine that they’re sitting around a campfire long ago. “In the ancient days, the storyteller was the keeper of all the tales – the people’s myths and legends, stories of their ancestors, heroes and history. The storyteller’s words had power. They were almost magical. And the storyteller was one of the most important people in the community.”

All of us are privileged to be storytellers, even still. But the “magic” that we use are words – written words on paper…on the screen…on the internet…on our iPads. Perhaps it no longer really matters what media we use, so long as our stories are written, read and preserved.

I came across an article in The Atlantic about Moonbot Studios which has been developing some absolutely amazing storytelling apps for the iPad. One of Moonbot’s founders is children’s author William Joyce whose imagination entertained my children frequently in their earlier years.

Among Moonbot’s projects are the charmingly poignant “interactive narrative experiences” The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (on the web only as an animated short. You need an Ipad to get the real thing.) and The Numberlys. Both are, for me, the first proof that storytelling can indeed be enhanced by technology, at least in young children’s literature that already relies on a highly engaging visual element.

And yet I cannot agree more with the February 12 article in The New York Times, The Beauty of the Printed Book, which began: “Some things seem designed to do their jobs perfectly, and the old-fashioned book is one. What else could be quite as efficient at packaging so many thousands of words in a form, which is sufficiently sturdy to protect them, yet so small and light that it can be carried around to be read whenever its owner wishes? The pages, type, binding and jacket of a traditional printed book do all of the above, as well as giving its designer just enough scope to make the result look beautiful, witty or intriguing.”

My heart wrenches at the thought that the precious object called “the book” – in fact the only objects of any real value in my personal possession – will be no more.

One medium does not supersede another – at least not entirely. Most people no longer go to theater, opera or ballet often. Though all have become more rarefied, more specialized, people do indeed go. If picking up a book – one made of paper – becomes a rare privilege, has culture really lost? Or is it simply getting its stories in another way?

Creations like The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and The Numberlys are more like movies or video games. But they do tell stories, create characters, and share rich thoughts and experiences. They may not be “books”, but does it really matter?

These digital forays won’t replace the tomes that fill my bookshelves double-deep or the experience of actually reading “Pride and Prejudice” or “War and Peace”. Those experiences are unique, composed in their original form because that was the form of their times and creators. And I have clearly expressed and demonstrated to my sons that reading the book is almost always better than watching the movie.

But this strange new amalgam of story, game and video is SOMETHING – something powerful, something memorable, something intriguing. They’re the beginning of a new kind of storytelling – the kind that knocked the storytellers off their pedestals while creating entire new realms of learning and creativity.

They are also the only things so far that have made me regret buying an Android tablet (and saving $300) instead of springing for an Ipad.

Good Works by Good Book People

Book people have always been a fascinating lot, interested in social issues, human issues, the doings of societies, freedom of speech, education and more. We heard not too long ago about “Take Your Child to A Bookstore Day“, started by TWC’s newest addition, author Jenny Milchman.

Here is another good work begun by one of our community, TWC’s good friend and former Thursday night regular Lois Cantwell:

As a lifelong booklover, whenever I’ve spied discarded books I’ve been tempted to snag them and rescue them from whatever sad fate awaited.

In June 2011, this impulse became a notion and soon a reality when good friend Andrea Hirschfeld and I teamed up to create bookBgone – an organization devoted to taking books (and other media) from those who no longer wanted or needed them and get them into the hands of people and organizations who did.

We figured that we’d make a few pickups and drive and/or mail some boxes to schools, community centers, to servicemen overseas and to prisons – keeping the books off dusty and ignored bookshelves and out of N.J. landfills. A win-win.

We never imagined that after only six months we would have processed close to 40,000 volumes (about 16.5 tons of books!) and received recognition, support and thanks from recipients all over the U.S., from local press and, most recently, from N.J. Governor, Chris Christie.

Over the last six months we have supported various initiatives with books including:
• Community centers in Portland, Oregon; and Newark and Hoboken, New Jersey
• Schools in Joplin, Missouri and MacRoberts, Kentucky
• Food banks in Maine (statewide) and Brooklyn, New York

We are continually seeking new avenues for book donations so we welcome your ideas and input. You can contact us directly via our website: www.bookBgone.com or 908-912-6652 or email info@bookbgone.com

If you know of other good book works that we should share, please send them along to us. We’d be honored to feature them on our blog.

On the Gust of Momentum

I recently wrote a friend saying that my writing “suddenly caught a gust of momentum and is flying along.” Her response: “fly that wind!” made me smile. It also made me contemplate something that writers struggle with – how do you keep up your enthusiasm for the work through the doubts and rewrites and the days when you just don’t have it in you – you know – the days you feel like a hack.

One of my Writers Circle students put a face onto the dilemma a couple of weeks ago: “I just feel so dry,” she said, “like I’m fooling myself and people are laughing at me. Maybe I’m just not a writer.”

Of course, we all rushed to assure her that she was, and that the doubts she was feeling are common. I can attest to the fact that even published authors have those dark days. The writing comes hard – I often compare it to chipping stone – and suddenly everyone else in the world has writing that just flows, words that seem to fall naturally into place, with wonderful plot twists and fantastic characters and sparkling dialogue that just jumps off the page. And you look at your own work and turn away from your computer or page in despair.

A day or so of this might be okay – we all have off days – but it doesn’t take much to tip this feeling into paralysis. The writing muscle is like any other: if you don’t use it consistently, it can betray you. Think of exercise routines you may have abandoned. It doesn’t take long for muscle to turn to flab.

And just as the only way back to an exercise routine is to lace up the gym sneakers, the only way to re-energize the writing muscle is through writing. It doesn’t have to be work on the project that is stymieing you. It can be “off the page” exercises, where you come at that project from a different angle. What’s the grandmother’s back story? What if you rewrote a scene from another character’s point of view? Can you take a scene that you’ve “told” and dramatize it? What does the room your protagonist sleep in really look like? The kitchen? The garden?

Or if you simply can’t stand the idea of penning another word on that project, consider writing anything else. Use prompts and exercises (we offer daily ideas on Twitter, at #TWCprompt). These may never go beyond the messy first draft stage, but they will exercise that writing muscle. Julia Cameron, in her acclaimed The Artists’ Way, suggests that everyone write three pages by hand when they first wake up in the morning. Her Morning Pages, she says, get rid of “all that stuff [that] distracts you from your creativity.” Kind of like sit ups, I guess.

Another of my students suggests actually embracing the words of other writers by taking passages you admire and typing them into your computer. There’s no question but the action of fingers on the keyboard can act as a stimulant to your own subconscious. And certainly, copying over the words of great writers is not unlike art students copying a masterpiece at a museum. You not only avoid the blank page syndrome; you can’t help but learn from the best.

And finally, the reason I’m feeling my own little “gust of momentum” these days is because of a recent resolution I took. Writing – particularly in the first draft stage – can suffer when you are away from it too long. With the new year, I decided that, despite my hectic schedule, I would actually work on my novel every single day – whether that be five minutes or five hours. What this seems to do is engage the active centers of the brain, so that the novel travels with me throughout the day, ready to be picked up at a moment’s notice. My enthusiasm for it grows instead of wanes. And while, just like a new exercise regime, I realize this heady sense of commitment may not last – I’m going to “flying that wind” for as long and as far as it will take me.

Creativity Needs Time

OK, here I go again with the writer’s perfect gift. It is, this year, every year, forever and always, simply time. I wrote about it a couple of years ago, and I still cannot stress enough how absolutely true it is. But last time I suggested we ask for time from others. This time, I’m talking about giving it to ourselves.

I found this terrific little video that demonstrates this message more perfectly than I can:

Creativity requires time to muddle, time to mull, time to take root, time to grow, time to bloom. As much as we all want the satisfaction of results, those results can only be realized to their fullest with playful exploration and patience. A deadline might pressure us to complete the task. But the result might well be shoddy, a rough sketch (as in the video). Let go of the deadline to usher in the nurturing, creative mind-space that will bring forth our best work.

This season, and always, give your work the gift of time. To write. To play. And yes, eventually, to finish.

‘Twas the Tweet before Christmas…

For those of you who missed The Writers Circle’s terrific holiday gathering this past Saturday, here’s a little holiday treat written and shared by one of our circle, Michael Pilla. It’s a perfect re-envisioning of a holiday classic, just right for the moment in which we live.

‘Twas the Tweet before Christmas…

Michael Pilla reading "Twas the Tweet Before Christmas..." at The Writers Circle Holiday Gathering

‘Twas the Tweet before Christmas…
And all through the ‘net, there were last minute specials,
And shopping time yet!
Photos were sent to the cloud with great care
So family and friends would be able to share.
The usual gadgets, some small and some large,
Were all neatly plugged in for their overnight recharge.
And mom on her iPad and me on my Mac
Were Skype-ing our friends while having a snack
When then our connection was lost to the router.
I yanked off my earbuds to see what was the matter.
A tingling I felt, from my head to my toes
Spying a red Mini Cooper festooned with logos
Flying faster than video on 1080p.
The driver called out his sponsors, as clear as can be…
“Now eBay, now Apple, now Am’zon and Zappos
On Google, on Priceline, on Fedex and Fios.”
I knew in a moment, without any pause,
He was the new and improved Santa, “Cyber” Claus.
Struck speechless was I, much like a mime.
But I had to go greet him and grab some face time.
His clothes were Armani, to give him his due
He looked healthy and rested, and much slimmer too.
No more with the sleigh, or toys in the sack.
That was old Claus, with the bad back.
“I’m the Mayor of Christmas,” he chortled with glee
As he checked in with FourSquare, before speaking to me.
“With gadgets and cards,” he briefly explained,
“My job’s become easier, no need to strain.
I’ve streamlined my workshop. There’s much less to do.
Put a factory in China, reindeers in a zoo.
I laid off some elves as I now work part time
Since I developed an app to keep kiddies in line.
No more written lists of those naughty and nice.
I get real-time updates–don’t have to check twice.”
He dropped off some gifts that were both pretty and small
And sucked down the Red Bull I left in the hall.
Then quick as a wink he dashed out to his car.
It started right up, and was bright as star.
He texted my Droid as he drove out of sight,
“Like me on Facebook” and have a good night.

— Michael Pilla

…Revision, Revision (part 2)

More on Revision from TWC’s Associate Director, Michelle Cameron. If you missed Part 1, check it out here.

Once you are satisfied that the structure, character development, story arc and descriptions stand up to scrutiny, it’s time for…

STEP #3 – SEE THE TREES (and trim many of them)

Now it’s time to polish your work. You do this through judicious pruning, a careful eye for the details, and lots of attention to your fourth grade grammar teacher.

You might choose to take several sweeps of your manuscript to accomplish these tasks – though they’re certain to merge together as you revise:

• Trim the trees – you don’t really need all those words! A good rule of thumb is to look for where sentences are becoming wordy and revise them to be as simple and direct as you can. Realize that, while the reader loves your prose, less of it is generally more. Some things to keep in mind:
  • Are you using strong verbs rather than weak “there is…” constructions?
  • Do you need those adjectives and adverbs? Take them out of your sentence and surprise! You’ll find the sentence is generally stronger without them.
  • Check again – are you writing as directly and simply as you can? You don’t want to pull the reader out of your story to make sense of what you’re trying to say.
  • Wrong word choices – are the words you’ve chosen the right ones? Are there more appropriate choices available? Watch out for blindly substituting synonyms – words have nuances and what might work in one context won’t work in another. (The best way to know the difference, by the way, is to read widely – which, as a writer, you should be doing anyway!)
  • Dialogue – it’s through dialogue that we get to know the characters that people your manuscript. You need to make sure that it strikes a balance between too much and too little:
    • Do we know who’s talking at all times?
    • Have you overused strong dialogue tags such as “exclaimed, protested, shrieked”? Make sure you aren’t relying on the tags to carry the emotion – what’s being said should do that.
    • Can you trim some of those more basic dialogue tags – “he said, she said?” If we do know who is speaking, these tags will just clutter up your writing.
    • Is there enough context so that the reader is “grounded”? This refers back to description – make sure that just because your characters are speaking, that the reader is able to picture where they’re doing so, and what they’re doing as they talk to one another.
    • Grammar – yes, your fourth grade teacher was right all along. Your grammar needs to be pristine because nothing, I repeat, nothing, disturbs a reader more than an ungrammatical sentence. Make sure your sentence structure is parallel and your tenses (past, present, and future) line up throughout the manuscript. All other rules of grammar apply as well.
    • Spelling – the spellchecker is a good first step – but that’s all it is. It won’t catch the difference between right and write – a mistake I’ve made a number of times when righting this. One good technique is to print out a copy of your manuscript and read it backwards (a ruler can help by isolating individual lines of type).

STEP #4 – READ THE FOREST

When you complete all this, you’re still not done. Making changes always carries the risk of introducing new errors. And if you’ve taken my advice to “slash and burn” too much to heart, you may find you have excised some of the music out of your prose.

So it’s time to read the entire manuscript – aloud. If you can do it for an audience, that’s great. If not, head to a quiet room where you won’t be interrupted, supply yourself with plenty of fluids (I always resort to tea and honey for this stage of revision) and read.

You want to listen for any places where you struggle, where you aren’t reading what’s actually on the page. Your voice knows better than your eyes at this point. Trust it and make any further adjustments necessary.

By this point, your manuscript should be polished and ready for readers – whether they be agents, editors, or just family and friends. Could you continue to revise? Sure. But if you’ve gone through these four stages of revision, you should be feeling pretty good about the work. And that means it’s time to let it go, to start something new, and to fall in love with writing all over again.

Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day with Guest Blogger Jenny Milchman

“Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing…It must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places. The magic is in me—in all of us.” —The Secret Garden

These famous words by Frances Hodgson Burnett adorn the walls of my local bookstore.

For me, bookstores are the magic. That’s why I began Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day.

When I was a child, two places besides my home offered respite, bookstores and libraries. (And I promise: as soon as Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day is firmly entrenched, Take Your Child to a Library Day will be next!)

There were four independent bookstores in my not-large town when I was growing up. Four. Each had a unique identity of its own. One had books you couldn’t find anywhere else. Another had everything that was popular with my classmates. The other tended toward big books with color photos, its children’s section hidden.

I watched as the wares began to tend more and more toward cards and gifts. I watched as one morphed into a toy store. Another closed and a restaurant came to inhabit the space.

We have two bookstores left in town, and I realize that makes us lucky.

When my children were born, I began taking them to story hour at the bookstore long before they could sit up for it. I held them in my arms so we could all listen. I would get a cup of coffee—and often a book. The bookstore was a place of respite for me again.

How many children, I wondered, knew the pleasures of time spent in a bookstore?

I floated the idea for Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day in late November 2010. If it were celebrated on the first Saturday of December, maybe it would encourage people out of the big box stores and into bookstores for holiday shopping. The Day could support local businesses as it enriched children’s lives.

Bloggers took the idea for the Day viral, the publishing industry e zine, Shelf Awareness, and the American Booksellers Association’s magazine picked up the story, and within two weeks, eighty bookstores were celebrating.

In the intervening year, I decided to visit some of the participating bookstores, and so we took our family on the road. We drove from New Jersey to Oregon, stopping at sixty bookstores along the way. My kids were not just going to story hour now—they were getting a roadside view of our country, seen through the prism of a bookstore.

And what a country it is. Bookstores are hubs of the community. Book clubs meet there, and writers groups; churches hold socials, and home-schooling families congregate. One bookstore we stopped at has an amphibian room decorated with the skeletons of animals, which the son’s owner collected for science class.

The cross-country trip helped Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day grow to over 250 stores participating in almost every state. As the second annual Day approaches on December 3rd bookstores have hung posters, distributed bookmarks, planned author events, baked cookies, and blown up balloons.

I have goals for the third annual Day next year. For one thing, I would like to establish grants for children who are unable to visit bookstores on their own. The grants would provide transportation for the child and a parent or caregiver, plus offer a gift card from the bookstore.

Maybe the biggest goal I have for the Day is what it can say about the world we’re creating, each and every one of us, every day. A place where we value uniqueness and the slower pleasures of interacting with people who know our likes and dislikes. A place where we stop in and say hello instead of just clicking a button. A place filled with treasures we can see and touch and smell.

I want my children to grow up in a world like that.

I want them to be surrounded by magic.

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer from New Jersey. Her short story ‘The Very Old Man’ has been an Amazon bestseller, and another short piece will appear in the anthology ADIRONDACK MYSTERIES II in fall 2012. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the Made It Moments forum on her blog. Her debut novel, COVER OF SNOW, will be published by Ballantine in early 2013.

Revision, Revision… (part 1)

There’s nothing like the excitement of starting a new work or the infatuation you might have with having written it. But professional writers are really made by the serious way they approach the revision process.

It’s important to take time with your revisions and not to rush through them just because you want to be done. Most professional writers would not dream of submitting a manuscript until it had gone through four comprehensive revisions – and sometimes more.

STEP #1 – STEP BACK

It’s good to gain some objectivity for your writing by stepping away from the work for a time – a month if you can manage it, a week if you can’t. Letting the work lie fallow for a bit will help you see its flaws more clearly.

STEP #2 – SEE THE FOREST

Read the entire manuscript for sense. Your manuscript needs to be a comprehensive whole before you can start honing in on the details. Look for the following issues, remembering that the reader isn’t in your head and doesn’t necessarily know what you know:

• Are there any gaps in the plot? As you reread your story, is there any place where your reader might grow confused regarding how you got from point A to point B?
• Are there any holes in context? You’ve invented an entire world with your manuscript, and it needs to live and die by your internal rules. And often also by the rules of the world around you. I once read a story that had a man on the West Coast calling a woman on the East Coast to wish her a Happy New Year, and magically, bells were tolling on both coasts simultaneously. Such minor holes in context can hurt your credibility and interrupt our acceptance of the world you’re trying to immerse us in.
• Are there any major character flaws that you need to address? Your characters need to grow, of course, but they must do so within reasonable bounds for the character you’ve worked so hard to develop. A timid character will leap into the lion’s den because her much loved child is in danger – but not because she suddenly has an unexplained burst of bravery.
• Do you need more or less description? Have you given your reader enough to be “grounded” but not so much that it is drowning the story? There is nothing like evocative description to give your reader a sense of “being there” – but it can’t overwhelm the plot. There’s a delicate balance that you need to achieve.

This stage of revision can be a challenge for writers who generally can’t see the forest for the trees at this point. You may need to cultivate an “early reader” or two, who has an eye for the arc of a story and its characters, who will tell you honestly where you are going wrong – and who will praise you when you deserve it!

Next up – Steps 3 and 4 of revision!

What We’re Up Against – Truth & Consequences for Writers, from “The Simpsons”

OK, this is totally out of character for me, but it’s also totally brilliant, so I just had to share. This episode of The Simpsons came to me through very reliable channels. Anyone who is even contemplating authorship will be equally terrified and amused. Click below to launch the video, and laugh while you weep:

Lit-wisdom from "The Simpsons"?