"So Are You Guys Millionaires, Or What?

by Sarah R. Shaber


For two winters in a row I’ve taught a week long workshop on mysteries and mystery-writing for NCCAT, the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching. NCCAT is a terrific organization that offers workshops for teachers designed to inspire their teaching while enjoying a break from their stressful jobs. We all have a great time—both years we’ve spent the week at a renovated Coast Guard House on Okracoke Island.
The seagull in the photo was my companion for the two hour ferry ride back to the mainland last January. It was as cold as the Outer Banks can be in winter and the wind blew in gusts that made even walking to the cabin difficult.
My seagull friend landed on his post just before the ferry left and perched there all the way from Ocracoke Island to Cedar Island. He leaned into the wind to keep from being blown off the ferry, teetered and tottered, occasionally lost his footing and regained it, all with his feathers fluttering in the wind and his little bird face turned away from the gusts. Dozens of other seagulls flew after us, screaming and diving, hoping for cast off potato chips, but this little guy stoically endured the entire boat ride on his perch. I’ve ridden the North Carolina coastal ferries many times and I’ve never seen anything like it.
Once our ferry started its docking process at the Cedar Island ferry station the seagull raised his wings, did a little dance, and took off. I was sad to see him go.
Back to the NCCAT retreat on Ocrakoke. I was the main presenter, a challenge considering the number of topics I needed to cover. I asked Brenda Witchger, a writer buddy of mine from Cary, to help me out with the writing segment. Brenda is an award-winning short story writer. She’s been a teacher herself and I learned much from her during the week. (That’s a euphemism for appropriating some of her teaching materials….)
Bren and I were answering some participant questions when a woman raised her hand and said “so are you guys millionaires, or what?” People ask this a lot, but it never fails to stun me into silence until I can collect myself.
Even very knowledgeable people seem to believe that if you’ve published a book, you’re rich, as though every one of the volumes stacked on the shelves of your local bookstore earns a million dollars for its author. If only! Another writer friend of mine, Margaret Maron, faced with this inquiry, tells audiences that a successful genre writer makes about as much as a teacher. Most midlist authors, even those who publish a book a year, make less. Many, after expenses like promotional travel and their agent’s commission, even find themselves in the red.
A young man at a school where I was speaking once asked me how much of the $23.95 price of my newest book did I get to keep. Oh, I said, maybe $2.00. He passed my book to another student with a look that indicated he’d be going into a different business
Novelist Lawrence Block, who’s written many books on writing, likes to tell anyone who is interested in becoming an author that they “should take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and hope the feeling goes away.” I second that emotion!
Writing isn’t like other jobs, where you put in your hours and then get paid for working those hours. If you make $10.00 an hour, then work twenty hours, you get $200 in your pay envelope, right? Not as a writer, I’m sorry to say, or in most of the creative professions. You can labor for months, even years, without any payday worth filing an income tax return.
So, why do we do it? Because we can’t help it. It’s a drive, like other creative pursuits, music, art, dance, theatre, whatever. It’s in our natures, buried deep somewhere in our hearts and brains. We’re compelled to string words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters, and chapters into books.
The problem is, there’s no guaranteed audience for an artistic product. So no guaranteed payday for us.
I am addicted to the process of writing. My current project is with my agent, and I feel like I’m in withdrawal. I thought I’d be thrilled with a few weeks away from a manuscript that took me two years to write, but I’m miserable. Writing is so stimulating for me that I suffer a huge letdown when I’m done with a book. Writing is the only occupation I’ve ever had that keeps me mentally and emotionally absorbed, when I’m not thinking about a single other thing than putting the right words on paper. I can’t give it up. I can’t! I need it! Even more than Bunny Tracks ice cream!
Then there’s the audience, my fans, a small but loyal bunch, who love my books. That’s a high, too, to know that a reader somewhere couldn’t put your work down until the wee hours of the morning.
The “problem” with writing is what stands between your art and its audience:s the publishing process, the contracts, the negotiations, the promotional plan or lack of same, all the endless business details that must be tended to before your book gets to your readers. Not to mention that your most recent work might show up on ebay or in a used bookstore even before publication, thanks to someone making a quick buck off a review copy. Then there’s Google and scanning and…let’s not go there. Too discouraging.
But then, after publication, comes the reward. The good reviews, maybe a book club edition, a reader at a signing or workshop telling you how much they enjoyed your book. Because the truth is it’s not quite enough to write a book, the reading of it by others is a part of the addiction.
I tell all the budding writers I know that persistence is what gets you through the business part of writing, that determination is as important a quality for a writer as creativity and imagination.
Which reminds me of my seagull friend, who managed the crossing from Ocracoke to Cedar Island by perching on a ferryboat rail and enduring wind and waves until he got where he was going.

The Pulpwood Queen FINALLY Came Out of the Closet on Being a Writer!

How in the world did I become a writer, this little shy girl from Kansas? I lived in a town that did not have a bookstore, or a true library in her grade school. We did have a hallway with shelves of books, but more importantly, we had teachers who believed in the power of reading aloud books. They read to us everyday after lunch, to get us settled down after our lunch and recess. Those read aloud times planting the seed for me as a writer. I became lost in the story.

I can still remember the day, Jack died in The Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Our 5th grade class was inconsolable as Mrs. Hall carried around the box of Kleenix as we balled over the loss of Laura's beloved pet. I had received a brand spanking new Smith-Corona typewriter that year from Santa and one that came with an instruction book on typing. I practiced and practiced until I had typing down pat. I was going to be a writer just like Laura and record what happened to me in my "Little House of the Flint Hills of Kansas". Only, I found my stories boring after reading them aloud boring. Laura wasn't boring, so I began to read.

I do believe that in order to become a true writer, you must become a reader first. I became a voracious reader as a child, and still am to this day, thanks to my teachers who instilled in me that love for the story. I still kept writing but it was not until my forties that I found my true voice in writing. I admire others who found it earlier but I have always been a late bloomer.

I began to write my story, my life in books and how books saved me. Such a cliched phrase but I truly believe that my reading and writing life has brought me all the passion I need for a purposeful life.

But once I began the writing process of telling my story, what to write about, what not to write about, I began to have my doubts on whether I could live up to all the authors I had placed high above me on pedestals. My favorites have always been southern authors because they have a way of telling a story to me that is so much more descriptive than other authors. Their voices sounded more familiar to me as I grew up in a family of storytellers. How could my book compare to those I revered, Pat Conroy, Mark Childress, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, or my all time favorite author, Harper Lee?

The truth of the matter is I finally decided, I can't compete with those folks. All I needed to do was to be true to me. It is just that simple. All I needed to do was just tell my story like I was talking to you all in person. So as I wrote my book, I would stop and read it back aloud, just like my teachers use to read to me. It worked. I had found my voice and it echoed from the past voices of my Kansas teachers. Simple, true, and above all passionate.

My first book was published, "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing, Guide to Life" and my life was then changed forever. I had come out of the closet, so to speak as a writer, now I can say I am a published author. I turned that book over to God thanks to the wise words and advise of Mark Childress, and vowed that I would continue to read, to educate myself on being a better writer, and to stay true to myself. I tell everyone I know now my life is an open book. I try to publish everyday a story on my blog site, www.pulpwoodqueen.com. Because to get better, you have to practice, practice, practice.

What I have learned from my first book is reading has not only saved my life, but writing has too. So my next book of which I am working on now, I call, "The Pulpwood Queens' Guide to Reading and Writing for a Higher Purpose". I have found that reading books leads me and my now 250 Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Book Clubs to doing good works. My Anchorage, Alaska chapter flew me up for their first anniversary and I went with them as they helped start a book club in Alaska's Women Correctional Facility, The Pulpwood Queens of Hiland Meadows. My South Louisiana chapter has championed raising the funds to buy textbooks for an entire school in Nicaragua, and even just recently presented in person 100 Bibles for all the students. Now that's the reading part, you say, what about the writing?

Shortly after, I published my book I began teaching a life writing class to the homeless at Newgate Mission in Longview, Texas. I thought my life had changed from reading and writing but what has happend at Newgate has been a gift to me from God. He has given me truly a purpose to my life. We have spent the last week filming with United Methodist Television a feature that will air nationally soon on that endeavor. Writing changes lives too. I have watched it with my own eyes. I even began a book club there, The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys of Newgate Mission.

My life is unfolding just like the story in a book. And because I want my life to have a happy ending I have thrown myself into this reading and writing life with full abandon. I now know that reading has saved me and writing has too. Won't you all join me on this literacy journey?

For more on my story or how to join the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs, go to www.beautyandthebook.com, click on Pulpwood Queens.

For more on my daily reading and writing adventures, go to www.pulpwoodqueen.com.

Last, I would like to say that reading and writing is not suppose to be a solitary adventure. Those teachers who read aloud to us small town Kansas kids had to have the interaction between the reader and the audience for the full reading experience. Reading out loud must make a big comeback. Sharing stories is what makes us more human. We also must not be so at task at writing that we forget who we are writing for, who is our reader? The one thing that makes my book club so unique is that I really try to bring each author in each month so the readers can hear their perspective of their writing process. If they cannot come in, they volunteer to call in to any of my chapters that so wishes. To read a book is one dimension, to share a book with another is another dimension, but to have the author talk to a book club is to bring the full picture into focus.

As I listed all my book club selection authors in my book and give book lists at the end of each chapter, I want people to know that there are many, many great books out there that are not getting the attention they deserve. If my reading and writing life does one thing, I hope it connects a reader with a writer that reveals they are not alone in this world but have found a home. I have built a house, a home of books, and that's where I will continue to dwell. Won't you grace my doors and join me in this reading and writing life?

Tiara wearing and Book sharing,

Kathy L. Patrick

Author of "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life", Grand Central Publishing

Founder of the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs, the largest "meeting and discussing" book club in the world!

Beauty and the Book

608 North Polk Street

Jefferson, Texas 75657

903-665-7520

www.beautyandthebook.com

www.pulpwoodqueen.com

HOW 19 JOBS PREPARED ME FOR THE WRITING BUSINESS

I wanted to be a writer since I was twelve years old. Like many people who have a dream, I came to the writing profession later in life. I don’t view my former jobs as mere pit stops along the journey. No matter how unrelated those positions might seem to the writing profession, each contributed to my earning a byline. Let me explain a few.

At ten, I became a very busy babysitter. My family lived on Guam’s smallest Navy base at the time. Most of the kids were younger than me or boy-crazy teenagers who flirted with the single sailors. I might have been in fifth grade, but I knew an opportunity. I asked a talented classmate to draw a babysitter on the back of index cards.

On the front, I wrote:

Babysitter for Hire
50 cents an hour



The only problem was my mother thought I still needed a babysitter so when she asked a neighbor for a referral, the neighbor told her about a card she received in her mailbox.

“Oh?” my mom said, “I didn’t get one.”

After my mother got over the shock that I had ventured out without her permission she gradually started allowing me to babysit. My first client—my little sister. I don’t remember getting paid for those jobs.

When I began to write, I decided I’d call myself a writer from day one. It didn’t matter that I didn’t get paid. I pretended that I was. I kept showing up to write and six months down the road I got paid for an essay. The pay? Six issues of the magazine that my essay appeared in. Those issues felt like six thousand dollars because it was the first time I saw my byline.

At fifteen I got the opportunity to make 1.98 an hour as a movie theater concessioner. Minimum wage was 2.35, but it beat fifty cents an hour. I learned to pop popcorn, make change, and deal with hungry demanding moviegoers. Years later when I signed my first contract, I didn’t make a huge advance, but I got a check instead of copies and a great editor that I still work with today. My advances have grown, but just like I worked hard trying to get the moviegoers’ orders correct, I labored on that first book as much as my current ones. The moviegoers didn’t care that I made 1.98 per hour and readers don’t care how much I get for advances. They just want a good story.

In college I had a lot of jobs. One of them was working as a receptionist for the Superintendent of Education. Most of my job consisted of answering the telephone and redirecting people’s calls. When people are mad at something about their school or a teacher or how much a lunch costs, they want to talk to the top dog—the Superintendent. Who they really needed to talk to was someone a few rungs down the ladder. All modesty aside, I was pretty good at redirecting calls. My southern belle mother taught me a thing or two about charm and warmth. Most people who are angry are not expecting to find charm and warmth on the other side of the phone so it kind of disarms them. What happens then? They allow you to redirect their call.

The part of the job that I resented was making perked coffee for the Superintendent every morning. Please don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mind making the coffee. I minded making it every morning when he rarely came into the office. His personal secretary said, “Well, we never know when the Superintendent might show up. And when he does he likes his coffee perked.”

I was demoted from that job. Not because of the coffee, but because of my poor typing skills and carelessness caused by my daydreaming. I learned how it felt to go from the 12th floor to the fourth. But years later as a writer, I also learned there are parts of my job that I might prefer not to do, but will always have to do if I want to be a writer. For me that is plotting. How nice it would be to write scenes and interesting characters that really don’t do much of anything, but most readers want a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Just like I detested making that coffee every morning no matter what, I don’t exactly love writing the second draft. That’s where I examine my story’s structure. I try to get on the right track before heading to the third, fourth, fifth…etc. drafts. The one nice thing though is that unlike that superintendent, if I get it right, my readers will show up.

If variety is the spice of life, my many jobs certainly provided a classroom for my writing career. From my various sales positions, I learned readers won’t believe what you are writing, if you don’t. I discovered little details are important when I got fired from forgetting to lock the Sears jewelry department cabinets. And putting myself on a book tour wasn’t so difficult when I recalled creating a trail with catalogues on my Avon route. Maybe most important of all, I learned that writing is a lot like working at McDonalds. You have to know when to turn the plot, rewrite a sentence and end a story just like a McD employee must know when to flip the burgers, wipe the counters, and pull the fries out of the oil. And I learned all of that on my first and last day as an employee wearing the uniform with the golden arches.

Somehow I’ve managed to stay at this job for fifteen years. And if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay here for a while. I’ve had enough job hopping.





Kimberly Willis Holt writes books for young people. Her book, Piper Reed Gets a Job (the third in the series) comes out next month. Visit her website at http://kimberlywillisholt.com/
or her blog at
http://apenandanest.blogspot.com/.

Author Spotlight: George Dawes Green, author of Ravens

When Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko drive into the small town of Brunswick , Georgia, their only thought is to fix their car's leaky right tire and continue on to Key West, Florida, away from their dead-end jobs as computer technicians in Ohio. But when Shaw discovers that the 318 million dollar Georgia State Lottery has just been claimed by an ordinary Georgia family, he sees an opportunity - he and Romeo will blackmail the Boatwright family for half their winnings and ditch their deadbeat lives for good.

Disguised as a state lottery representative, Shaw enters the Boatwright's home and holds the family hostage, while Romeo patrols the town, staking out the homes of the family's loved ones, should the Boatwrights refuse to comply with their demands. But Shaw isn't your average criminal out to make a quick buck. Instead, he has a grand messianic vision and he'll stop at nothing to see it through -- and soon, the Boatwrights find themselves living a Flannery O'Connor American nightmare from which they can't properly awaken.


Q. How do you go about developing a story? How carefully do you plot your novel before you write it?

A. All the pieces of a thriller have to fit seamlessly, and should be weighed and measured scrupulously before any assembly is undertaken.

Q. Do you base characters on real people?

A. On myself mostly. But when the writing begins, all personas must say goodbye to their models and board the train and make the journey by themselves.


Q. How important is storytelling for a society? Would you talk about your founding of The Moth?

A. The art of the raconteur is a beautiful thing – there’s its prime importance. It may have some kind of theraputic or societal value, but I’m mostly interested in the beauty. So far as I know, there had never in history been a public forum for the kind of stories we celebrate at the Moth – unscripted, personal, ‘kitchen’ stories. So I created one – with the help of a thousand friends and, in particular, Joey Xanders and Lea Thau – and now we’re traveling all over the world and we’re downloaded by millions and the art of the raconteur seems to be exploding. As it should. If you haven’t been to a Moth, please go – the evenings can be rapturous.


Q. The Juror was your second novel and was tremendously successful. Your first book (Caveman’s Valentine) won an Edgar Award. Then over a decade passed when no novels appeared. Now, you have a third book, Ravens. Why did you take a hiatus after The Juror and why did you return to novel writing?

A. The years just kind of got away from me.


Q. Are you currently working on another novel?

A. I am, and I’ve sworn to deliver it soon, and my amazing, beautiful, patient and gracious editor has threatened to put me in irons if I don’t.

See the book trailer for below.
--

Joshilyn Jackson: On Betterness

For those not in the know, I am currently moonlighting as AN INTERNATIONAL SPOKEMODEL for The American Heart Association. Okay, the AHA might be calling me a “blogger” on their web page, but this is clearly a euphemism.

This summer, I’ve made a very earnest, serious attempt to use their program to become g.r.a.d.u.a.l.l.y BETTER, whole body healthier, inside and out. It works in tiny steps and increments, because after all, the program is called Better U, not IMMEDIATELY FLAWLESS U. In the past, my “self-improvement regimens” have focused on Instant Poppinsing---jumping on any speedy bandwagon that promised to deliver me to Practically Perfect in Every Way Land in 7 days or less.

Herbal Cleansing? I’ll take two, please.
Cabbage Soup Diet? Why not? After all, who doesn’t love being starving AND gassy!
Replace carbs with bacon? Sure, THAT SOUNDS HEALTHY!
Eat heaping spoonfuls of DIATOMACEOUS EARTH? ....It seemed like a good idea at the time?

Shockingly, none of it works. INSTANT PERFECTION PLANS are followed by swift failure, which causes the kind of despair that can only be assuaged with massive infusions of Cheetos paired with a decent Shiraz-Cab. (I know, I know, some people say it takes a BORDEAUX to really bring out the orange powder tang of Cheetos, but those people have clearly been smoking Diatomaceous Earth. TRUST ME, if you are going to HAVE the Cheetos, and some days require them, Better U or no, it is best to pair them with something like this Penfolds.

The AHA flew us to Dallas before we began and did blood work and put us on a fitness machine for a heart stress test. Here, eight weeks in, I am beginning to look forward to going back for the AFTER check up, you know? I am willing to bet my borderline high BAD cholesterol has dropped. While I’ve LONG been an exercise freak (love the endorphins), I have managed to stay consistently two to ten pounds over the healthy weight range for height ANYWAY via a fierce dedication to the Beautiful Sin of Gluttony and my poisonously bad genes. Even with the extra pounds, my fitness level tested as HIGH for my age range. Heck, I was in the HIGH FITNESS group for adults 20 - 29. I stayed on the machine for 15 minutes...but I bet I can do better now. I am eager to TRY anyway. 17 minutes or BUST, baybeeee.

I want to go back to Dallas and collect concrete, independently verified, encouraging, numerical, documented proof that all these little, easy, step by step changes I have been making, week after week, are having a “whole body” impact. Happily for my motivation, some of the results I can see. Like, I can wear clothes I haven’t been able to wear for two years, and my jeans are too baggy to wear in public. It’s been so gradual I didn’t realize until I looked at pics of myself from 8 weeks ago. Here is a picture of me and the other 3 Better U “Bloggers” read: International Spokes Models taken just before we started the program:





















Here I am below from about the same angle, a dress size smaller and now WITHIN the healthy weight range for my height. Scott snapped this shot a couple of hours ago, as I was heading out the front door for church. (Please note the scenic DEAD AZALEA BUSH behind me – apparently you have to FEED those things...):





At any rate, I wanted to take this GUEST BLOG opportunity to encourage folks who are thinking about trying---be it for the first time or the millionth, like me---to get healthier, go for it. Heart disease is the number 1 killer of women over 20 in this country, and 80% of it is TOTALLY preventable via diet, exercise, and regular check-ups. It is worth it. Your kids are worth it, and your grandkids are worth it, and you are worth it even if your kids and grandkids are still hypothetical.

If I can do this---me, the girl who has written LOVE POETRY to double chocolate mocha chip martinis and who grew up in the south where EVERY vegetable recipe in the lexicon starts with the words “Get you a big ol’ scoop of bacon grease from thet there coffee can on the stove...” ---then anyone can.

ANYONE can.

Even you.

New York Times bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson lives in Powder Springs, Georgia with her husband, two kids, a hound dog, a scurrilous kitten, and a twenty-two pound Main Coon cat named Franz Schubert. Both her SIBA award winning first novel, gods in Alabama, and her second novel, Between, Georgia, were chosen as the #1 BookSense picks for the month of their release. Her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, which People Magazine calls “a treat” and Entertainment Weekly gave an A-, is fresh out in paperback.