The Importance of Goals

The Importance of Goals

In preparation for the 2012, I clean house and set goals for the new year. This week, I found a Polaroid of my daughter taken when she was in kindergarten. It was fireman’s day, evidenced by the lopsided hat atop her tiny head. She stood with her friends, all were smiling, looking directly at me and the future ahead. Beside the picture was a Steven Covey journal with a ten year old personal mission statement which read, “someday I would like to write a book.” Blinking away tears, I realize so much time has passed. My daughter has grown into a beautiful teenager and my dream is a reality.

Becoming a published author made me realize the importance of community. It also added pressure to produce more than one book. This year instead of finishing the novel I was working on, I released: Stress-free Marketing: Practical Advice forthe Newly Published Author… a project that was not on my “to-do” list.

I wrote Stress-freeMarketing: Practical Advice for the Newly Published Author after meeting two North Carolina authors at a conference. One had a beautiful memoir filled with professional photographs. However, in today’s market the $ 34.95 price tag was professional suicide. The second author remortgaged her home only to see her dream disappear in foreclosure while unsold stock gathered dust. Each day images of these women haunted me making it impossible to focus on my manuscript. Then the muse fell silent.

Upon sharing my intent to write this book, my husband and I had quite the “discussion.” He argued I was making a terrible mistake. He believed emerging and self-published authors are obstinate, opinionated and “dead set on doing what they want to do regardless of who tries to help them.” Further, he explained, “this is why they self-publish, because they don’t want to listen to anyone in the industry.”

I defended that “even though I am not self-published, if someone had tried to share marketing tips with me when I was starting out, I would have listened.” Surely, I reasoned, newbies would listen to someone who had “been there” and “done that.” Surely they would want to do everything in their power to sell the books they had worked so hard to write.

He crossed his arms and reminded me that I am “not like everyone else.” He reminded me that I had spent months researching my market and compiling contacts. Then he gave me a we’ll see look before saying, “Trust me, writers aren’t going to listen to a word you have to say.”

I tried not to cry as his resolve remained. I explained that writers help each other and that I am “doing my part to pay it forward.”

The eternal skeptic was unmoved.

Veteran authors whom I interviewed agreed with my husband. They suggested I lead marketing workshops, instead of authoring a book aimed at emerging authors. I listened…kinda.

Partnering with local brick and mortar bookstores and small businesses, I now offer workshops to emerging authors at a ridiculously low price. Workshop attendees receive a copy of the book, a password to a community blog specifically designed for new authors, and two hours of instruction from yours truly. Businesses who host a workshop receive half of the fee. This is my way of saying thank you for shelving copies of In the Garden with Billy: Lessons about Life & Tomatoes. I hope these classes will encourage and teach emerging authors as well as benefit small businesses, especially in the winter months when business is slow. The workshops will not make me independently wealthy and the fact that I am not promoting this book with a tour means those who monitor sales information won’t be pleased. Insert pouty face and crossed arms from the beloved.

I like to think of Stress-free Marketing: Practical Advice for the Newly Published Author as a community service project…voluntary, not court-ordered. Someone needed to guide the fledglings and who better than a fellow fledgling that experienced extraordinary success with her first publication. Thank you readers, booksellers and book clubs! Offering the workshops have allowed me to rest knowing that I have written something that, when read, will guide others on their pathway to publication. I have done my part. The rest is up to referrals and the magic of social media. If I can save one author from financial ruin, my work is done. Once again, the muse is smiling. Once again it is time to set attainable goals. Have you set goals for 2012?

As 2011 closes, many of us wonder what the future holds. Hopefully I will finish the novel or perhaps the sequel to In the Garden with Billy. I will continue to support independent booksellers and volunteer at the public library, both need our help. And my personal mission statement remains, “I will write a book.”

Visit Renea Winchester’s website for more information about her work, or visit her blog: http://adviceforauthors.wordpress.com .

The Best Advice I Ever Got

By Man Martin

“Experience is a dear teacher, but a fool will learn by no other,” Benjamin Franklin


I am a school teacher, and one thing life has taught me is that you have to be very careful what you say around students. The same child who cannot master a simple lesson you have drilled into his head for three weeks will be able to recall verbatim a random wisecrack you made in passing and quote it back to you, often in the context of a parent-teacher conference.

I myself, who have been educated to within an inch of my life, have often taken away more from a teacher’s passing comment than from all the carefully planned curriculum on earth, largely because most of what writing teachers have to offer is advice, and I have never been good at taking advice. This is not owing to a lack of good advice coming in at regular intervals from all sides. I am not proud of the fact I’m not good at taking advice. Had I taken advice, my teeth would be whiter, my cholesterol lower, my waist slimmer, my bank balance fatter. But, like I said, I’m not good at taking advice.

I do not know if this is because I’m cocksure, stubborn, or just a slow learner. Certainly being a slow learner is part of it. Usually I appreciate the value of advice – “Check your tire pressure every week” – only when I’m already stranded on the side of a long, deserted stretch of black top with a broken jack and a spare that is – also – flat.

I have received boo-coos of writing advice, all of which I’ve ignored, which is understandable enough when it comes unasked from friends and family, but which is downright inexplicable when it comes from respected professionals whom I’ve paid, at least in part, for the valuable advice they offer. I’m talking here about college professors under whom I’ve studied writing and who must have on more than one occasion shaken their heads in pained wonderment at my mulish stubbornness, persisting in doing things the way I want to do, dammit, and not listening to their seasoned wisdom which would have made my task lighter in oh, so many ways.

Or if not lighter, at least more productive.

Tonight as I type this the advice that comes to mind is from my dear teacher Tony Grooms. Grooms, author of Trouble No More and Bombingham, was one of my writing teachers at Kennesaw State University and taught me many things. He taught me the essential quality of a character is that he or she must care about something. “It doesn’t matter as much whether they care about their lover, their children, or their rosebushes, but they have to care about something or the reader won’t care about them.” He also said that while an ambiguous phrase might be very nice in poetry, it should probably be avoided in fiction. Clarity is the sine qua non of fiction. Next to characters we can care about, what the reader wants to know is just exactly what the hell is going on.

But all of this wisdom, plus much more besides, wisdom that I heard and neglected until I’d pounded my own fool head against the concrete for myself, testing that, yes, pounding your head on concrete probably is a bad idea and something that should be desisted from in future – Tony also warned me against excessive cleverness or “cuteness” in my writing, a lesson I may never learn – the thing that sticks in my head is one phrase.

Two hundred words a day.

He said this in an off-hand way during a summer workshop. He had graciously opened his home to his class, and we met there weekly to exchange and critique stories. It was there I debuted the first chapter of Long Gone, my novel and Masters Thesis, the only copies of which sit on a shelf somewhere in the KSU Library. The thing was never published and never will be; it was what we euphemistically call a “learning novel.” Too much ambiguity and the characters didn’t care about anything, is my post-mortem diagnosis.

Anyway, one summer afternoon before or after workshop when I was enviously admiring the tomatoes he’d already gotten from his garden long before ours were ripe, he said apropos of nothing much, “If you wrote just two hundred words a day, at the end of a year, you’d have a seventy-thousand word novel.”

He said this in the most casual way imaginable, a man nonchalantly observing that three hundred sixty-five times two hundred is seventy thousand, but what a light bulb went off in my head! Two hundred words a day. Anybody could do that! I could do that!

Thank you, Tony.

I have written two novels and am well into a third. Given my nature, I have had to learn the other lessons you taught me the hard way, pounding my head over and over against stubborn realities until the stubborn realities sank in. Stubborn Realities: 1, Head: 0. But I was able to learn what little I have because of that other thing. The two hundred word thing. I know I have a lot more to learn, and God willing, I’ll learn at least some of it before I die. But if I do, I’ll learn the hard way. Pounding my head. Pounding my head. Pounding my head.

Two hundred words a day.

Man Martin is the award-winning author of Days of the Endless Corvette and Scoring Bertram Wiggly, a novella.  His second novel, Paradise Dogs, was selected by Atlanta Magazine's December "Best Of" issue, as one of the top five novels for 2011.  He is writing a third novel, 200 words a day.  He blogs at manmartin.blogspot.com

Day Jobs of Our Lives

High school sculpture from last year

by Nicole Seitz

It's hard to write, as it's late, and my eyes are blurry after crying through the movie, Conviction. But, I'll press on. This month's topic is day jobs, or those jobs we authors do when we're not writing. I might have a word of inspiration on that. I am thankful for day jobs. They help to keep a writer grounded and humbled and actually living life instead of simply writing about it. Currently, my day job is teaching art to some amazing kids in a local Christian school. It's funny, but I never imagined I would ever be a writer, and I assure you, I imagined less that I would be a teacher. Yet, this is where I am.

How blessed can a body be.

Teaching is, well, sort of like having children--challenging, engaging, sometimes draining, oftentimes inspiring, and all the time worthwhile. Every day that I get to know the kids more, I care just a little deeper for them, even the ones who challenge me. They're all so unique, and although I could go on and on, I guess what I want to leave you with is this: did I mention I never wanted to be a teacher? How then, did God work it out so that I started doing something I would love this much? I don't know. Boy, if I could tell you I saw it coming, but I didn't. From this post, please get this: your best adventures may be coming, and they may not even be on your radar. Wherever you are, I hope you can find peace in that.

Actually, it was out of adversity that this new calling found me. The economy got tough. I needed to do something to augment our family income. I love kids. I am an artist. When I saw the part-time position open up, I thought, hmmm...maybe I could do that. Then I set out to knock on the doors.

God opened them.

I'd like to tell you how much fun I had last week doing acrylic portraits on the playground with my high school students. I'd like to tell you about the looks on their faces when we critiqued them on the wall, and then the looks on the second day when we did it again and critiqued once more. How much they had grown! My students are amazing. Few of them consider themselves artists or artistically gifted, and yet they are the hardest-working group of teenagers you'd ever want to meet. In one quarter, they have improved beyond what I could have imagined, and so we press on, trying more, challenging more, achieving more.

I am a better person for knowing these students.

Seeing these young people each week, breathing encouragement into their lives and they, life into mine, I am humbled when we are free to pray in the classroom. I thank God for placing them in my life.

I have absolutely no idea how much money I make...from my books or from my teaching. I never even look at the pay stubs and let my husband handle all that. Because even though I started teaching to help make ends meet, something miraculous happened along the way, and all of a sudden, my dining room table is covered with paintings and drawings by my lower and upper school students...I'm entering them tomorrow in the Coastal Carolina Fair Youth Art Show, and I don't know how my students feel about it, but for me, I am a very proud mama. Whether we come home with a ribbon or not, I feel like we've all won.

Find yourself a job that keeps you coming back for more. They are out there. It may just be something you volunteer doing, or do part-time, or do for free. Just find it. Ask God and he'll show it to you. He did for me.

And in case you think my whole life has been rosy and I've always done what I've loved doing, let me give you a little rundown of the jobs that came before "author" and "art teacher":

babysitter
retail clerk
fast food clerk
VERY small-time print, runway and mannequin model
perfume spritzer
waitress
retail clerk again
Superbowl commercial transcriber
waitress again
bartender
television intern
t-shirt designer
freelance writer
freelance illustrator
telephone equipment salesperson
pre-press graphic artist
graphic designer
web designer
systems analyst
web designer again
design business owner...(I'm sure I'll think of more.)

May you find joy in every job you decide to do, and may you enjoy the stepping stones and the people you meet along the way.

I don't regret any of it. All the jobs before were preparation for doing what I love today. Even the one at Hotdog on a Stick.

God bless.

Nicole is not in this photo, courtesy of hotdogonastick.com, yet she did wear this outfit, including the hat.

----------------------------------------------

Don't you just love school
photos? Nicole never thought
she'd have to take one again.

When she is not teaching or spending time with her family, Nicole Seitz writes novels. She has five of them published and a sixth on the way (Jan 2012), BEYOND MOLASSES CREEK. She is honored to know all the hard-working people who write for this blog. Find Nicole at http://www.nicoleseitz.com/, on Facebook and Twitter.

In the Real World

Back When I was dreaming of being a writer (all my  life) I imagined. And My imagination can really roll out a good one, it could have looked different. As a little girl my favorite book that I asked Mom to read over and over and over was Four Little Kittens. In the book the Mother cat who 'half-closed her green eyes' sat up and told the kittens exactly what kind of cats there were. A Ship Cat, An Alley Cat, A Farm Cat - and much later in the story after many hijinks we found out that the forth little kitten was really a House Cat. Well, I really, really am a Writer Cat  Since I spent a lot of time in my room writing stories and daydreaming, time at the beach on a blanket getting sun and further daydreaming, time hunched over the typewriter keys (oh, yes, I SAID typewriter) and daydreaming. I had plenty of time to imagine what the sexy, sassy, lifestyle of a real writer would look like.

The way it Could Have Been . . . 

8:00 -9:00 Wake up in Milan, Paris, Cairo - stretch and open to the door to room service which has delivered strong, fresh, pressed coffee and crepes. 

9:00 - Stare off the beautiful balcony of said foreign city into infinity gathering the inspiration of the ages from the smells and sounds and open vistas 

At Some Point - Write beautiful words of inspiration that move the souls of readers everywhere to cry and laugh and exclaim yes! yes! this is it~ (Whatever their 'it' may be)

Nap
Evening - Have a lovely dinner out with locals and writer friends also living and traveling on foreign shores and lands and experiencing the good life

And later that Night - Walk casually back to great old, hotel in the heart of the city.

True Nightynite - Order a nap cap and massage from room service

In the wee hours - read until the book hits me in the head

The Way It Really Is .  .
6:00 Wake up with cat meowing in my face
6:30 - Stumble to coffee maker with strong, cheap coffee
7:00 - Let out the Big Dog
7:03 - Let in the Big Dog
7:30 - Clean Up Hair Balls
7:40 - Try to settle into a little Prayer Time. Prayer is good. I like prayer.
7:45 - Walk Big Dog
8:30ish - Answer emails
9:00 - Stare at list of unfinished projects
10:00 - still staring - think about working on Novel
11:00 - Stare at pile of dirty laundry - think about doing laundry
11:05 - Read Facebook posts from friends - post 3 comments
12:00 - realize it's lunch and I should take a break
12:05 - find can of Tuna from the road
1:00 - Think about novel while having press meetings on phone
2:00 - Look schedule for the year
2:15 - Feel like I am forgetting something - IMPORTANT (LIke, should I be out of town?)
2:30 - Talk to Shellie about strange and wonderous ways to increase Book Sales
3:00 - Think about writing novel while returning emails
4:00 - Finally put on a load of laundry and clear dishes
5:00 - Wonder why room service hasn't delivered dinner
5:05 - Oh yeah, realize room service isn't coming
5:15 - Take something out to thaw

5:30 - Realize food is frozen solid - which reminds me of novel
5:35 - Order take out from Mexican Restaurant
5:40 - Let out Big Dog
6:00 - Drive to pick up food with Big Dog
6:30 - Answer emails
7:00 - Talk to sister on the phone
8:00 - Get out laptop to work on novel
8:05 - Let out Big Dog
8:08 - Let in Big Dog
8:15 - Watch PBS Special on National Parks (and then turn channel to watch 4 episodes of Malcolm in the Middle reruns
10:00 - Let out Big Dog for Last Bark
10:10 - Let in Big Dog
10:15 - Clean cat pan
10:30 - Read until the book hits me in the head


Obviously, at some point I have written a few words down. I've completed four novels, a small collection of essays and this wonderful collection of what I actually consider other peoples stories in Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human Spirit. The fact is that my real writer's life is so different than I would have imagined back in elementary, middle, or high school that I don't know how I've managed to write a single word down. Ever. (Except for the blessed friends who have tossed me keys to remote rooms, houses, and cabins over the years and said - stay - Write!)

The glamour of my life is missing. No matter what the smoke screen of the website may look like on any given day. I'm trying to remember if I Paid the 'light bill' as we are hit by a power outage and I immediately think it's my fault. At some point I juggle producing and hosting Clearstory Radio and getting to talk to so many of my author friends on the air. Somehow, they are managing to write, eat, walk, talk and chew gum all at the same time. Me - not so much.

I'm still staring off into space. (Is that the middle distance I see?) and thinking about that novel in the works and how many words behind I am.  The City of Truth it is called. And someday in spite of the odds, the business, the money (or the lack thereof), and in spite of mostly myself - I will write every, blessed word of that story. In the real world.


River Jordan is a real writer in the real world whose imagination can take her to far away places where room service never ends and the hotel bookstore is always open.

The Effect of a Thunderstorm on Silver Queen: Writing About Nature

By Man Martin
 
Years ago I visited my friend Frank Cummings in Sandersville, Georgia where I was raised. “Durn rain last night knocked all my corn down,” Frank told me. Later his grown-up son arrived, and the first thing he said coming in the door, was, “Durn rain last night knocked all my corn down.” I envied them. They’d had an experience of rain I hadn’t. The weather for them was not small talk; it was an issue. They had a stake in whether or not and how much it rained. Rain to them was a like having a neighborhood giant: an unreliable and reckless, but not disliked, giant, friendly and essentially good-willed, but clumsy and prone to sudden tantrums. They had felt the damage, even temporarily, it could do to a patch of Silver Queen. They knew rain. I never wanted anything as badly as I wanted right then to have some corn planted so I too could talk about how the durn rain had knocked it down.


For Southerners – by whom I mean anyone from a largely rural area – nature has a meaning city-dwellers can’t imagine. In Manhattan, where the sun is rationed down one slice at a time through the skyscrapers, how could you know why spring is such a big deal? Oh, I’m sure they’re glad to see winter finished with and warm weather arrive. Central Park, I’ll bet, is beautiful in spring. But here in Atlanta, my heart rushes up when the dogwoods and azaleas break out and suddenly my own familiar street turns into a Monet painting.

Southerners don’t just like Nature; we soak in it. We get down like dogs and roll in it, which is fine, but as writers, we need to be highly conscious how we express this. Doing it the wrong way is, well, wrong.

For openers, here’s an example of some of Washington Irving’s descriptive writing from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”



The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.



Really beautiful, you’ll have to admit. The only problem is it’s not having any effect on anything. It’s just there as Ichabod rides to the Van Tassels. It doesn’t matter to him, and so ultimately – sorry Irving – it doesn’t matter to us either. All this gorgeous scenery – the lush gradations of light and color Irving pulls off – the bit about the sloop seeming to float midair – is just a backdrop, and since this isn’t a stage play but a short story, it’s not even a backdrop, but something worse: an interruption.

Maybe Irving’s point is that it doesn’t affect Ichabod, that he’s so absorbed by the prospect of all the good food to eat at the Van Tassels, that he doesn’t notice the heart-stopping beauty around him. Maybe, and if so, I’ll buy it. But later, Irving goes into another passage about the twittering of blue jays and whatnot that makes you want to scream, “Get on with it!”

For contrast, here’s how Twain does description in Huck Finn.



We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale under-side of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest -- fst! it was as bright as glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs -- where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.



Twain jokingly apologized that he could write only “one kind” of weather, but that kind he handles magnificently. I contend this is a much more effective passage than Irving’s and not just because something’s happening, either, although that’s part of it. The point is, something’s happening to Jim and Huck. Nature isn’t something over their left shoulder as they head downriver; they’re in the middle of it. They’re responding to it, and it’s affecting them. If anyone understands this, it ought to be Southern writers; Nature isn’t just a backdrop we ride past on our way somewhere – it’s the thing itself; it gets right in the midst of our guts and does stuff to us.

It’d be great to write a passage as gorgeous as Irving’s, but you could make a pretty good name for yourself as a writer even if, like Twain, you could only do “one kind” of weather. But it still isn’t enough to throw in a thunderstorm now and then.

You need to have some corn planted, too.


Man's second novel, Paradise Dogs ("Zany," Publishers Weekly, "Hilarious," Kirkus) appears in bookstores June 7th.  His debut novel, Days of the Endless Corvette, won a 2008, Georgia Author of the Year Award.
Visit him on the web at http://manmartin.blogspot.com

Voracious Reader

by Mindy Friddle

I was an Army brat. We moved from South Carolina to Bremerhaven, Germany when I was nine.  Then something happened that had an impact on my life -- a big old crater-sized impact.

Our television didn't work.  

Me, at nine, before my voracious tear.

Actually, all the televisons on the American base didn't work-- there was some weird technical reason. You had to connect a big buzzing transformer to use your blow dryer, for Pete's sake, and the base wasn't big enough to have its own television station.

There  was a library on base, a tiny place crammed with books. And that winter, I read just about every book in the kid's section. Hattie, Heidi, The Hobbit, all the Nancy Drews; I plowed through Little Women and Johnny Tremain and A Wrinkle in Time, to name a few I remember.

By 11, I was working my way through the adult books. I read Benchely's  Jaws, Marilyn French's The Women's Room, Stephen King's Carrie,  John Updike's Couples, James  Jones' Some Came Running, and Xaviera Hollander's The Happy Hooker  before I could wear lipstick. {I didn't check that one out...I found it in Mrs. Terry's house while I babysat her children. They weren't good children. I deserved it.]

By the time I was 12, Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding pretty much blew me away. 

What I learned?  Censorship is untenable. Don't worry about what the kids are reading-- worry when they aren't.

Mindy Friddle is the author of The Garden Angel (St. Martin's Press/Picador), selected for Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers program in 2004. 
Her second novel, Secret Keepers (St. Martin 's Press/Picador), won the 2009 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.

STRUGGLES ALONG THE WRITER'S PATH

OUCH, OUCH, OUCH. I THINK I'VE SUFFERED A FEW WRITER BOOBOO'S. One of the suggested topics for this blog for the month has been the struggles a writer might experience along the journey. Okay. I'll go there. Maybe some writers don't experience ANY of these obstacles along the way but those I know, good friends of mine (some who will be named and others left unarmed) have endured or continue to endure struggles of varies types. Bear with me. I'll list a few of my favorite struggles I've wallowed around in or hurdled myself through to the other side. I'm sure you have some of your own favorites that you can add! I'd love to hear them so post your stories.


Finding Your Tribe: 

It's amazing how many times we are asked (or maybe this is old school and doesn't happen anymore) what we want to be when we grow up. The choices used to be something like NURSE for Girls and FIREMAN for boys. Ah, yes, the good old days indeed. My granddaughter now has a quick answer to this. Famous. Why? To be super rich. Why? So I can buy a pony and a hamster. Okay, granted. Famous and Rich will get you critters. There's logic there. Deciding to be a writer rarely involves any type of logic or reasoning. It's more of a pull inside akin to the undertow of the ocean. I picture strange little children bumping around in the darkness not being able to come up with a single answer but they are usually making up stories in their minds, playing alone just fine thank you, or keeping a secret diary. Eventually, somewhere along the way, somehow - they see a 7th grade play, get captivated by a book, or a teacher finds in them a sleeping poet. Somehow, somewhere, they find their tribe along the way but until they day comes there is a restless non-belonging of not fitting that pervades.

Discovering Your Voice:

Once a writer discovers there identity they will eventually have to follow suit by finding their true voice. This isn't automatically related to finding your genre although it can be close. It's pretty much - well, now that you know you are a writer - what kind of writer do you want to be when you grow up? In teaching writing classes I love the moment where I see that writers have suddenly surprised themselves by writing in a voice they almost don't recognise. It's stronger and more powerful than what they had imagined. More creative, more original. That's when they've shucked their inner critics and broken away from the pack of writers they've been reading or trying to subconsciously emulate. The writers on special spark hits the page with a laugh or a dare you. What comes before is struggle up until this point. What comes after feels like putting on the right coat at a crowded party in the dark. You know it belongs to you and you alone.


Convincing Those People You Really Are a Writer:

Ah, yes. The struggle to make certain you are accepted, understood, respected. This struggle kind of goes on forever and ever if you let it. Usually, the first people a writer has to face are his or her parents that just might have envisioned a more logical life for their little jewel. Something with benefits and a steady salary. Unless you were born with parents who were Gypsy's or grew up in a theatre troop you will most likely meet just a few obstacles in this area. Spouses can be great supporters or naysayers. Siblings, best friends, and that person looking back at you in the mirror. Good luck. Just try to hold fast to other examples of writers that made it through this one.  Get some advice you trust from a great reader about your work and listen to the quiet place in your soul that speaks to you. Usually, there are great truths to be found in that space -even ones that are most revealing.

Finding a Mentor or a Critique Group: 

I was fortunate to find the right mentor at the right time and to go on working then for YEARS. It would be at least fifteen years before I had my first novel published. That doesn't mean it needs to be that way but remember back in the days of an apprentice? When someone literally worked for years and years to study under someone to learn. As a society we have so lost our patience with the process. We want bestsellers overnight and in a year (I know I sure did!) but when it comes to working the soul of your talent - like a garden it takes work. I've been thinking about writing groups and critique groups. Recently, I've met a book club in Nashville that has been meeting faithfully every month and seriously discussing their book of the month for about twelve years. They are reading great works. And breaking them down like nobodies business. I couldn't image a better critique group than this readership. By now - they are experts. Find the feedback you need that makes you better - really, really better.

Accepting the simple fact that Yes, you will most likely have to have, keep, love or hate - your day job.

I had someone in a writing lecture I was giving recently ask me how did she know when was the right time to quit her day job.  Most of us have really beautifully romantic ideas about the writers life. It involves writing ting a few hours in the morning, napping at will, wandering quint foreign streets in the afternoon in search of espresso - then dinner over a fine bottle of wine with other writer friends in the evening. This is it right? The good life! On some blessed great and glorious days - this really is it. They are far and few between because there is serious work to be done either in the writing or publicity end of things and yes, there are bills to pay. Very few writers in the United States live on their writing income alone. Most have either a spouse or significant other bringing in the bread. Or at least contributing to the bread. Many others are teachers to one level or another at colleges, writing programs and otherwise. Some put widgets together in the dark all night long so that they can write for a few hours during the day. No matter what unless you have opted to live in a van down by the river or have built some life sustaining lifestyle off the grid and in the woods - you and the day job  may need to be best friends for a long time. If so, find something you love anyway. Work for a non-profit or become a Barrister. The day may come when you can sustain your lifestyle steadily on your writing income alone but don't count on it. Learn the discipline of skipping those favorite TV shows and shutting yourself up to write for a few hours. And if you can swing it, apply for or arrange a writing sabbatical so that you can at least get away for a week or a month of uninterrupted writing time anywhere away from the clatter of everyday life.

Landing An Agent:  



I think this is one of the greatest, most significant professional struggles. Consider it like a dating game. You are looking for someone with capabilities likes and dislikes, the same work ethic, a open line of communication. I met my first agent at a writer's conference and I think that is a GREAT place to start. Often writing events offer a critique by a visiting agent for 25-50 dollars. Well worth the investment for a little one on one time and in my experience agents don't pull many punches or waste their time by leading you on just to be nice. The other is checking fiction or non-fiction that resembles yours as far as subject matter or genre and searching to see if the agent's name is in the acknowledgments. Usually - but not always (and no reflection on the relationship) the agents name is there. You can do a fast search on the Internet to discover if they are still accepting new material or what their solicitation requirements are. Or you could meet your new agent at an upcoming Dutch Lunch in Nashville where we gather book people for lunch every month for some face to face interaction. Don't be shy right now where this one is concerned - contact agents to start the ball rolling but have your very best submission work ready to go. Don't write to tell them you are just THINKING about writing a novel and here is the idea and do they think they could get you six figures for it. My suggestion - write the novel - first. The Internet offers many sources for guides to agents and publishers worthy of your time.

Landing A Publisher:

My first novel had my agent seeing stars. Naturally - I saw writers with her. And since I had broken that huge struggle of signing with an agent I thought all the hard stuff like writing the novel and landing the agent were out of the way. I was wrong. The struggle continued. My agent submitted novel here and there - maybe everywhere but trying to get someone to buy it was like chasing someone to eat green eggs and ham. And it's a great novel. Promise. I love it as opposed to regretting it. The struggle here - trying to accept the fact that the selling game just wasn't going as I had planned. My life struggles weren't over or even being alleviated by all the years I had poured into learning the craft, writing the novel, finding an agent. Eventually, the novel found a home and received great reviews and what I'd call a little fan ship following.  And if your novel doesn't get snapped up by the first two or twenty publisher - don't worry (so much). It could be the editor had a really bad day and nothing read well. Or they are running out of money. Or they just published/contracted with something too close for comfort.

The Editing Game:

The Editing game seems like it should be one of the easiest parts of this strange adventure. After all, the editor bought your book so surely all the hard work is over - right?
Publishing is now a very busy, competitive world. Yes, the editor at the publishing house may have bought your work but then there is the possibility that you will loose that editor due to budget cuts or restructuring and suddenly be working with an editor that wasn't part of the procurement process. In that case or even if you are with the first editor your shared vision for the novel must be unified. This may take a few discussion via phone or email. And did I mention budget cuts and that most editors are now heavily overworked. Don't panic if your phone calls are not returned right away or if your emails seem lost in cyberspace - chance are your weary editor wills surface with a long list for you. That brings us to the rewrites.  Some rewriting is expected. It's time to polish and tightened the story. Even if you spent ten years writing it an editor has a special gift for following story lines and finding where there are large missing sinkholes that readers might fall into. They help make the story stronger by suggesting you add a line or a page here or there, give a character more room to speak, or even cut 10,000 words to tighten up the story. They are really good at what they do but learning to maintain the perfect dance with your editor and to communicate calmly and clearly may take a little work. Don't worry - most great relationships do.  Even after rewrites line edits will find their way to you. This is one of the many stages where the writer has the opportunity to catch last mistakes, fix a line that stands out as screaming wrong, or brushstroke just a little. Typesetting doesn't like a lot of changes at this point but it really is the last time to make any changes. Just when you think you can't read your novel one more time and your eyes are more bloodshot than you've ever see them - Then comes the actual  proofing of every word and page. Yes, you will amazingly catch typos and mistakes if you are giving it a careful read and you should. Final Titles, Back  copy, inside cover copy and cover art are next. If you have cover approval that is great but usually that part is basically general agreement. I have some wonderful stories from authors on their cover screams, and shocks. Fortunately I have just as many stories on how perfect the covers were for their novels. Count me in the later. It's been a real, wonderful surprise. But be prepared to submit cover ideas. The struggle continues with the understanding that no matter how much you love the writing game - there is some real, continuous work involved. So far I have yet to vacation in Tahiti drinking something cold with a little umbrella in it.


Procuring Endorsements:

Okay. Yes. It is the truth. For the most part you are expected to ASK people if they would consider reading your work and if they like it - giving it a short blurb. Do writer people want to do this. No. Most don't even want to ask their own Mother for a blurb. Also, we really do care if people like our work and truth be told all writing is not for everyone. But the publishers don't just magically send our work out to a magical list of authors waiting breathlessly for your galley. They are in the middle of the own deadlines and they have personal life to juggle as well. Ask anyway. It doesn't hurt unless you let it. Unless you crawl under the covers when someone says flat out NO I'm too busy, don't wanna, can't come out to play! Or they agree and you never hear from them again. Let it go. It's just one for the struggles you'll encounter.

Getting Publicity:

More and more publishing houses are cutting back in their marketing and publicity departments. It's a fact. So the publicity people (and/or person assigned to you) will also  be juggling a huge workload of authors and deadlines. Cooperate. And while you can make a huge amount of great and creative suggestions - you might want to tread through those waters carefully. You can also just wear your publicity people down, overwhelm them, or make them feel that you don't think they are doing the best you can. Do what you can. To the best that you can. While you are also working as best you can in tandem with them. Many writers I know have entered into agreements with private publicists who all have different rate cards/situations in the way that they work. Many of them read this blog and for those who would like to drop your calling card here - just leave a comment! There are so many books of all types being published every month there is no question that now isn't the time to go into your cave. The time just before and at publication of your book is crucial. Accept it. You must promote your work no matter how introverted you may be. Writers and readers festival can be great places to meet readers and get connected as well. Find them all listed at the Library of Congress/Center for the book.

Reviews Good and Bad:

It's a part of your life now. You may get a great review, even a starred review in something like Publishers Weekly only to find yourself in a fetal position after someone lambastes your writing on Amazon or other blog/reader sites. Time will help with this personal struggle for writers. Personally, I had to give up reviewing books simply for this reason - I know what it feels like to be on the other side of the coin. I know how much goes into a work whether I relate to it deeply or I don't. And I know how subjective words and stories are. Why is one person's worthless is another's saving grace. Keep your perspective here and remember to breathe deeply.  Don't walk on air too long after good (or great) reviews - and don't go outside and eat some worms if you get bad words. Just keep working, writing, and getting better.


Connecting with Readers:

Every writer must meet this struggle and find a way to overcome it. Ad Hudler created his Summer Tailgate book tour. Susan Greg Gilmore just baked 100 pound cakes and took them to the famous NY Book Blogger convention. Kathy Patrick has done more through her Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Getaway Weekend than anyone I know to help writers connect with readers. Most publishers are no longer sending writers on all expense paid 50 city tours. Embrace the challenge and find creative ways based on your time and money to reach the reader. But do it. (Yes, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace count!)

The Dark Night of the Soul: 

Most the writers I know have experienced this dark night moment. Surprisingly it didn't happen in the early stages of the struggle. Not near the beginning when they were learning to write or trying to get published. It has happened after a bad review followed great reviews for earlier work. It has happened after they had pretty healthy (large) contracts followed by trouble getting a book sold or selling for much less money. It's happened when financial worries only grew instead of disappearing. When agents didn't like their latest novel. When they ran out of words and felt dry to the bone.

Returning to the Page: 

Ultimately, what I've seen again and again seemingly save them was returning to the page. Recognising that above all they were created to write no matter the numbers, critics, or your mother-in-law (love mine for the record :) ) might say about how crazy you are. Returning to the story always seems to center writers. And beyond centering, when we hit that tap-root of words where we know what we are writing holds beauty, and timeless truths - makes us laugh aloud, feel deeply, fall in love - the light breaks through and the struggles feel like just another bump in the road.


RIVER JORDAN is novelist who has survived a few struggles on the writer’s path. Her work has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee and her latest novel, The Miracle of Mercy Land will arrive September 7, 2010. Her first published non-fiction work inspired by a New Year’s Resolution – Praying for Strangers will be published in Spring 2011. Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on ‘The Power of Story’ around the country and produces and hosts the radio program, Clearstory, on WRFN, 107.1 FM, Nashville. Jordan and her husband live in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us

PS - Without their permission in the first place - a few incredible authors who have shared some of the funniest stories about writing struggles along the path that I have ever heard - and they keep on writing in all their different and  amazing ways. Whether it was a book cover or a doctor that said - Whatever you do - forget about writing and just make babies (or something like that - they've all endured, survived, and SUCCEEDED BEAUTIFULLY!


Janis Owens, Michael Morris, Susan Greg Gilmore, Robert Hicks, Eric Wilson, Charles McNair, Shellie Rushing Tomlinson, Patty Callahan Henry, Michael Lister, Tony Simmons, WaylonWood,  Raymond Atkins, Joshilyn Jackson, JT Ellison, Cassandra King, Darnell Arnoult, Silas House, and yes, Even The famous Pat Conroy who had us in stiches at the PQGW with writer stories and a few hundred unnamed on purpose or by mistake. Long live all that wave that crazy flag from the Tribe of Story. (And yes, I'm claiming that for a future title. :) )

Dispatches from the Road: by Mindy Friddle

These days, a book tour is real...and virtual.

As an author, I've learned publicity goes with the job description. Book touring, blog touring, book clubbing, Facebooking, Tweeting, Skyping, e-newsletters, contests...I'm game. But I've also learned that the publicity part takes a whole different set of muscles from toiling in isolation at your desk with your gin & tonic.

For six weeks now, I've been on the Bootylicious Book Tour for SECRET KEEPERS, my second novel. I've visited brick-and-mortar indie bookstores--where I left boot planters behind to be raffled off or displayed. I hit the virtual road with a WOW-sponsored blog tour-- guest posting or being interviewed at dozens of blogs for the month of June. Topics for my guest posts have covered not just writing and books, but the importance of book covers, photography as a stress-reliever, travel, to-do and to-be lists, and how to certify your yard as a wildlife habitat. In a word--whew! Time for some shady R&R.

But it's great fun to talk and correspond with readers--it's a real pleasure. People are so generous. The emails from readers are wonderful. I put them on my website. All I have to do is read them in dark moments, and I feel a surge of gratitude.

Which leads me to the month's BQ [Big Question]: What advice would you offer aspiring writers?

When I started my first novel, I wrote on weekends because I was a single mom for a number of those years, and I worked full time. I found that by writing 5 or 6 hours on both Saturday and Sunday, and one weekday morning or evening, I could keep a momentum going. A novel is a marathon. Someone once told me that, and it's true. So, when people ask my advice about writing and finishing novels, I tell them I find it helpful to do a couple of things:

• Set up a schedule. Write at least three times a week for two hours or more each session. Commit to this schedule.

• First Draft: Think Flow. Have a daily word count goal for the first draft--1,000 words, for example. And while you're writing the first draft, don't get up from your desk until you've met that goal. Even if it's wild sentences, or you find yourself on a tangent, write your 1,000 words, and don't judge just yet. You'll develop a habit of writing on schedule, and you'll at least have something to revise down the road. After 4 or 6 months, you'll have a big, baggy monster of a first draft...and you can put it aside for a while, and then jump back in to figure out what the story is, and cut away and revise, revise, revise. Think FLOW with your first draft. Keep the portal open.

• Save polishing for later. Resist the temptation to re-read and polish those opening pages. Some writers may work this way, but I think for many of us pushing through to the end is the best way to handle a first draft. You will be resistant to changing the opening if you invest too much time and energy in it. That first chapter or two will be reading better and better, but the fact is, the opening may eventually need to be discarded or moved.

• Find a group of fellow writers. You can read each other's work. Here's why: You'll often learn a great deal about your own writing by closely reading and critiquing a fellow writer's work. It's amazing how this helps! [Of course, be gentle...point out what works. Knowing what works in a piece is so helpful.]

• Consider Contests & Apply for Grants. Something I love about entering work in contests: the deadlines. Sounds funny, maybe, but consider two important points: 1. You have to prepare and submit something by a certain date—which can motivate you to finish or polish. 2.You’ll find out whether your manuscript made it or not within a certain time frame. Even if your work didn’t make it this time, take heart. So often when you submit a story or article for publication, you wait a loooong time to find out if it was read, much less accepted. At least in contests, you’ll know for certain if your work was considered or not. Poets & Writers has an excellent calendar and listing of contests. You can find them at bookstores and also online.

• Read widely and deeply: all genres, all kinds of books, on subjects that enthrall you and on topics you don't know much about. Feed your head.
  

THE GARDEN ANGEL took 8 years from the idea--an image of a crumbling, beautiful homestead-- to publication. I didn't work on it every day in those years--I was learning HOW to write a novel, and that took patience. I would finish a draft and put it aside for a while, or have readers give some feedback, then revise. Figuring out the structure--how to tell the story--that I pondered, worked on, revised.SECRET KEEPERS took about four years from start to finish. I'm hoping the next one will take two years. Half-life, you know, like in nuclear physics. Now that's a subject I know a lot about!


Mindy Friddle's first novel, The Garden Angel, was selected for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program in 2004 and was a SIBA bestseller. She was awarded a Fellowship in Prose from the South Carolina Arts Commission in 2008. Her second novel, Secret Keepers, was published in May by St. Martin's Press. Join her on Facebook and Twitter.To read excerpts from the novels, visit her website www.mindyfriddle.com and her blog, Novel Thoughts: Musings on Writing, Reading & the Earth.