"Rock Bottom" by Kerry Madden

Photo by Lucy Lunsford


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As I write these words, I’m watching snow fall for the first time in twenty-one years. We moved to Los Angeles in 1988, and I’m now commuting/living/teaching in Birmingham, Alabama as a creative writing professor at UAB. Our oldest daughter, Lucy, is a freshman at Sarah Lawrence, and when she saw snow falling for the first time this past December, she raced outside to skip around and watch the snowflakes dance. A world-weary junior took a drag on his cigarette and informed her, “You won’t be skipping in January.”

This month’s theme asks the question: “How did you take your writing to the next level?” and I have to say I took it to the next level when I hit rock bottom. When my first novel, OFFSIDES, came out in 1996, I was skipping with each glorious snowflake of a national book tour, Hollywood movie option, meetings with Diane Keaton, and then in 1998, my own January arrived with the hot dry Santa Ana winds of August in a form letter from the publisher asking if I wanted to buy remaindered copies of my book or have it sent off to the pulp house. I saw images of my first book already an old horse being carted off to the glue factory. Did I swoon at the mailbox, six months pregnant? Somehow, I remember swooning. The book was pulped. With two kids and a third on the way living on a teacher’s salary in Los Angeles, we didn’t have the money to buy the remainders.

But that wasn’t rock bottom.

Rock bottom for me was gradual and insidious. I finished my second novel, HOP THE POND, which was accepted by an editor at the same publishing house, but at the “big meeting,” it was ultimately rejected by the powers-that-be due to lousy sales of OFFSIDES. I wrote a third novel, THE GALLERY, and it was not a good book. My writing group suffered for years with those unlikable characters honking across the pages, but I rewrote that sucker to death until I killed it off but good.

But that wasn’t rock bottom either…

I think it began with the freelance years where I wrote stories about how to stay healthy in a wide range of professions. I wrote about camera operators, coalminers, stonecutters, Hollywood agents, insurance salesman, and lifeguards. This series led to more health pieces about strokes, cancer, and even diverticulitis. But I honestly liked writing all these pieces because of the interview process of talking to people and listening their stories. I also greatly appreciated the paycheck that came with each piece. Somewhere in those years, I was hired to write a shadow soap opera to see if I was “good enough” to write the real deal. I remember dashing off winning lines like, “My that bathrobe looks familiar!”

Something else was happening that I couldn’t or wouldn’t see coming. I was almost imperceptibly drifting further and further away from my own writing all in the name of trying to make a living as a writer.

It was around the time the first wave of journalists were let go from the Los Angeles Times. Buzz magazine had also closed up shop. A group of freelance Los Angeles journalists began meeting for breakfast, and we would help each other with freelance jobs. Who was hiring? Who needed what written? Who paid what? Which editor responded quickly? Which editor never answered queries at all?

Cathy Seipp was the reigning queen of those journalist breakfasts at the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax in Los Angeles, and she was all about freelancers stepping up to the plate, acting like grownups, and behaving themselves appropriately with editors and agents and so forth.

Cathy was fearless in the way that I was utterly fearful. She didn’t take any crap from anybody, and I took crap with a smile and said thank you. After all, I was from the South, and I had learned to be polite and gracious, no matter what I was feeling inside. As far as I know, Cathy had been to the South just once, and she described it as “freeways through forests.” To be honest, we were from different planets, but she made me both laugh and wince at her brutal honesty and fierce sense of right and wrong and intolerance for any sniff of insipidness. She loathed excuses, whining, and crybabies.

And then came the ghostwriting, and that’s when rock bottom loomed. Through some freelance journalists at one of these breakfasts, I learned that Chastity Bono’s girlfriend, Stasie, needed a ghostwriter to write her memoir as former a drug addict who got clean and how she turned her life around to help kids get off drugs. I decided I could write that, and I applied for the job.

This was the deal. I would be paid $5000.00 to write a book proposal for the memoir. Soon it was all set up, and I was ready (desperate) to get started, and then I didn’t hear, and I didn’t hear, and I didn’t hear, so I did something really stupid. I offered to write it $4000.00. Turns out the reason I didn’t hear anything was because they were in Europe, but they were very happy to pay me $4000.00 to write the proposal. I received $2000.00 on signing, and then I began doing the research with Stasie.

We drove through the streets of Los Angeles at night, and she showed me the scary places of her youth from skid row in downtown Los Angeles to Rose and Lincoln in Santa Monica. She was a great storyteller and incredibly passionate, and it was fascinating to live vicariously through her wild youth of growing up out of control. After the first all-nighter, I dropped her off at her house in West Los Angeles, and she invited me inside. Sonny and Cher photographs were all over the wall, and I tried not to gawk too closely. They had a hairless cat named “Stinky Butt.” Stasie gave me pictures and her teenage journals so I could capture her voice as a mixed-up kid turning to drugs. In Hollywoodspeak it was like GIRL, INTERRUPTED meets DRUGSTORE COWBOY meets GO ASK ALICE meets EASY RIDER.

I wrote the proposal and a sample chapter, and she was very enthusiastic. She said Chastity was too. But their agent wasn’t. So I did something even dumber. I rewrote it to try and make it better. They didn’t like that draft either for a myriad of reasons…I didn’t have the voice down. The plot wasn’t working. They didn’t like the writing. It just wasn’t working for them. Still, I tried a few more drafts, because I thought if I could show my willingness to rewrite, I could win them over. Of course, it never happened, and they still owed me $2000.00.

But somehow it was decided that because they didn’t like the proposal, they wouldn’t have to pay me. I was told to return the journals and pictures and to basically go away. I very politely said I would return all journals and pictures as soon as I was paid. Silence. This went on for a while. The agent wrote a cordial note asking me to return everything and how she was very sorry it didn’t work out. Once again, I said I’d return everything as soon as I was paid.

Chilling deafening rock bottom silence.

I turned to Cathy Seipp, my take-no-crap journalist friend, and asked her advice. She said without missing a beat, “Sue them. Go to small claims court and sue them. You did the work they asked for. You did above and beyond the work. Sue them. It’s not personal.”

This freaked me out. Sue? Face them in small claims court? I reinstated my membership in the Authors Guild and asked them for advice. They were right in line with Cathy. I had done the work and was owed the money. Anita Fore, at the Authors Guild, was amazing. She spent more than an hour on the phone with me, explaining what I needed to do. She gave me the best advice and said, “Tell the judge that it’s like they asked you to paint a room red, and then they changed their minds and wanted to the room painted blue.”

When I filled out the papers in Small Claims Court in downtown Los Angeles, the clerk said, “Would you like the party served at 6:00 a.m. or at 1:00 p.m.?”

I liked this question and replied, “Oh, I think 6:00 a.m. sounds just right.”

The day came in court, and I got the kids off to school, and then I met my two dear friends, Ellen and Diana, who came for moral support. But I was a wreck. I wanted to cry and leave and sink into the earth. We arrived at 8:00 as instructed but Chastity and Stasie were not there. The court clerk read the cases that day of the names of those being sued. From what I recall, the docket was mostly fake jewelry claims, auto mechanic wrongs, and neighbor spats. But when the clerk read the name, “Chastity Bono,” she looked around the room, her curiosity clearly piqued, and Ellen leaned over and said, “Relax, the judge won’t be like that, it’s okay.”

By 8:45 they still weren’t there, and I was beginning to relax. Maybe they wouldn’t show. But at 8:55 they burst into the courtroom and demanded a fax machine because they had “evidence.” The court clerk told them there was no fax machine in the courtroom. Then the judge made everybody go outside to show all evidence to see if we could resolve it amongst ourselves. I was shaking. I showed them the drafts of the proposal, and we each showed each other identical emails. I can’t remember if we exchanged words, but I remember wanting to throw up. Diana whispered that Chastity’s belt alone could have paid for the whole book proposal. I never noticed the belt.

When we were eventually called, the judge asked why Chastity was being sued, too, because I wasn’t writing her story. I explained that she was paying for the proposal, but he didn’t like that, so he removed her name from the case, and it was strictly between Stasie and me. Chastity asked the judge if she could speak for Stasie who was scared, and the judge said no and that “she was a big girl who can talk for herself.”

The judge asked me my side of the story first and in a shaky voice, I explained how I’d written several drafts and had tried hard to get it right from all the interviews and journals. Then I told him exactly what the Authors Guild had instructed me to say. “It’s like they asked me to paint a room red, and then they changed their minds and wanted it blue.”

He nodded and then he turned to Stasie and asked for her side of the story. Stasie said, “It’s not we asked her to paint a room.” She sounded more irritated than afraid.

The judge said, “It’s a metaphor.”

She said, “Well, it’s a stupid one.”

He looked testy. “Well, you think of a better one.”

She said, “I can’t, but it’s still stupid.”

I remember thinking that that this would be so much funnier if it were happening to someone else. The judge seemed irritated with all of us, but he ruled in my favor, and Stasie immediately asked him where to appeal his decision, and he said, “Not here!”

We went out for a celebratory breakfast. I wanted to order a giant Bloody Mary, but we all sensibly had coffee and replayed the scene. It was a huge relief to have won, but afterwards, I remember stepping outside into Los Angeles sunshine, and I had this horrible, sinking feeling that time was marching by with silliness. My children were growing up, and where were the books I was going to write?

In the end, Chastity and Stasie didn’t end up appealing the case. A few months later, their lawyer contacted me, and I was told to return the journals and pictures, and he would have a check ready. I did so and was paid, and it was over.

But in that year of writing somebody else’s story and then the grief and distraction of trying to get paid, I realized I was losing my own voice. I had hit rock bottom. I still took care of the kids and lived my life with a very patient and loving husband, but I had let my stories go in the name of money, and what a paltry sum it was.

And so I returned to the first few chapters of a children’s novel I’d started called GENTLE’S HOLLER, and those Weems’ children saved me. I vowed never to write anything I didn’t absolutely love and feel passionately about again. Going to the Smoky Mountains each day in my head to find the story of this Appalachian family helped me find me voice as a writer again and go to the next level. The book sold to Viking Children’s Books, and the publisher bought two more in the series, LOUISIANA’S SONG and JESSIE’S MOUNTAIN. Then my editor asked me to write a YA biography of Harper Lee, and I felt like I’d been given a gift.

Much has changed now. Cathy Seipp passed away in 2007, and I still miss her. I don’t know where Stasie is, but I imagine she is still helping kids get off drugs, which was her passion. Chastity is now Chaz, and the Harper Lee biography led me to this job in Alabama. I’m working with students who grew up during the Civil Rights, and so I’m reading all kinds of stunning stories. One wrote an essay called “What They Don’t Tell You About Growing Up Black in the South” and another wrote about her terrifying moments with a monstrous cop while trying to pass her driving test for her license. Another wrote about his father, a one-armed man who ran a sandwich shop in the 1950s, and another wrote about her grandfather who was the iceman in Birmingham in the 1950s, and it’s likely that the one-armed father probably bought ice from the grandfather who drove the ice truck and yelled “ICE!” in the streets of downtown Birmingham. Another is the son of the first pita bread maker in North Alabama. Another teaches piano to monks, and another was an architect for thirty years who now wants to teach high school English. Each one has a story, and they are deeply focused on writing those stories.

And I’m writing a new novel, a valentine to my kids, inspired by my son, Flannery, who loved werewolves and Hamlet and scary movies when he was a little boy. And I am watching the snowfall on this January day, grateful to be writing stories that I can call my own.


Town Square in Monroeville, Alabama...



AUTHOR BIO
Kerry Madden has written plays and journalism (for publications like the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and Sierra Club Magazine), and six books including Offsides, a New York Library Pick for 1997, and Writing Smarts, a guide to creative writing published by American Girl. In 2005 she turned her hand to children’s literature with Gentle's Holler, the first installment in what became the award-winning Maggie Valley Trilogy. It earned starred reviews in both Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly, was named a “Pick” by both the New York and the Chicago Public Libraries, and was the featured children’s book of North Carolina at the National Book Festival. “It is the genuine article,” wrote Rosemary Wells. “It’s heroine is as bone-real and endearing as Opal in Because of Winn Dixie.” She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and editor of Poem Memoir Short Story at UAB. Visit http://www.kerrymadden.com to learn more about Madden and her work.

The Future of Publishing

By: Mary Alice Monroe

What is the future of publishing is a hot topic among all of us involved in the book publishing industry. At recent holiday cocktail parties, the fact on everyone’s lips was how Amazon sold more books on Kindle than they did “regular” books over the Christmas sales season. Anyone connected to publishing can’t help but ponder the future of publishing in light of the rise of the electronic books. While none of us knows with certainty exactly what the book business will look like just a few years from now, each of us has an opinion.

The electronic media reader, such as the Amazon Kindle or the Barnes & Noble Nook, continues to grow in popularity, while bookstores continue to post overall lackluster book sales. People have declared that we’re witnessing the end of publishing as we know it. Others argue that this isn’t true, that we are simply experiencing a shift. They claim that there will always be a demand for traditional books and the sense of community found in bookstores.

The most optimistic argument I’ve heard was from someone high up in the media world who believes this shift will actually increase overall book sales! For example, if you hear from a friend about a good book and it sparks your interest you can buy that book instantly with your electronic reader with the push of a button. If you had to get in the car and drive to the store, you might procrastinate and not buy the book. Hooray for instant gratification!

What concerns me more, as a writer, is how literature might change in light of use of electronic reading devices. Lynn Neary of NPR published a fascinating article last month on this topic titled How E-Books Will Change Reading and Writing. Writer Nicholas Carr was quoted as saying, “Thanks to the Gutenberg Press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation” in literature. In contrast though, Carr also said, “the Internet is training us to read in a distracted and disjointed way.”

Also quoted in the article, Time magazine book reviewer Lev Grossman, who stated, ““They scroll and scroll and scroll. You don't have this business of handling pages and turning them and savoring them.” He says that particular function of the e-book leads to a certain kind of reading and writing: "Very forward moving, very fast narrative.””

Grossman believes more purchases will be based on brief excerpts. "It will be incumbent on novelists to hook readers right away," says Grossman. "You won't be allowed to do a kind of tone poem overture, you're going to want to have blood on the wall by the end of the second paragraph. And I think that's something writers will have to adapt to, and the challenge will be to use this powerfully narrative form, this pulpy kind of mode, to say important things."

This change Grossman speaks of won’t happen overnight.

Yet, no matter what changes I, and all writers, must make in the future to accommodate the changing patterns of readership, I remain hopeful. People will always want to read a good story, no matter if they prefer to turn pages or hit the scroll button. As for the conservationist in me, at the very least, I’m happy that the rising use of electronic books will preserve more trees!

Mary Alice Monroe is a NYT Bestselling author. She has written more than a dozen books, including Last Light over Carolina, Time is a River, and The Beach House. Her books have achieved several best seller lists, including SIBA and USA Today. In 2008 Monroe was awarded the SC Center for the Book Award for Fiction. She has served on the faculty of numerous writer's conferences and retreats and is a frequent speaker. Monroe publishes a weekly blog.

The Future of Publishing

Not very long ago I had the pleasure of presenting at the Dahlonaga Book Festival. One of the panels featured myself, Catherine Coulter, and a bevy of other talented authors. We were asked to share our thoughts on the future of publishing. As none of us have crystal balls, we surmised to the very best of our abilities our thoughts on what the future of publishing might hold.

As I consider the advanced me of technologies in just the last few years, the hushed anticipation of the new Apple reader tablet, the Kindle’s and Sony Readers, the new Droid, Apple, Google phones and so on – to touch the hem of the future of publishing is beyond most of us. Except for this fact – writers have great imaginations. If we apply that portion of our minds to this riddle and not our logic over our last royalty statement, or the daily reports on how many bookstores are downsizing or closing, or how many mergers are now making publishing houses as confusing a conglomerate as our national government – then I think the pictures we’ll get are a little more true to the fullness of possibility.

What do I see? Technology becoming so integrated into our lives that reading something not presented through an electronic, super-sonic, magnetic, magical airwave Internet source will seem archaic to all but the antiquities collector. Oh, gasp if we must but just think how many years ago we didn’t even have cell phones or email and now how do we function in this business without them today?

Personally – I love hardback books of quality with paper that has been hand selected and where every element of creative design went into telling that story in the printing and publishing process. I understand how valuable this experience is. I understand the poetic romance of a great bookstore with a little bell that rings when I push open the door and lose myself in the most exotic, glamorous selections made by someone who owns that store and owns it because they are hooked beyond reason on this thing that love called books. But no matter how much I value these experiences, as I lay in front of the fire last night considering this blog and my words, I realized the truth as I know it, my concept of publishing, is already history.

I closed my eyes and thought about publishing ten years from now. Then twenty. Then fifty and beyond. I only made it as far as one hundred years. That’s when I realized that I am the antiquity. That someday, these precious hardback, signed first editions that I possess will be collectors items. (For this reason I am willing them to my grandchildren and buying as many as possible to add to their collection.) The second part of my understanding is that ultimately, it’s okay. The future comes toward us everyday bringing new challenges and answers. We are on the cusp of some of the most astounding developments and changes that writers or readers have ever seen.

Perhaps in the not too distant future, a great-grandchild of mine will open a book simply by pressing a button on their personal electronic device and in their very hands the 'page' of a book will appear – no Kindle or Apple reader needed. Perhaps – like pop-up books of old, portions of those books will become three dimensional and be acted out in 3d movie fashion right there on their desktop. Perhaps – the reader will wear virtual glasses to allow them to enter and move freely about in the world of the author’s creation. Who knows where the wings of time will ultimately take us.

All that aside, here is the most important thing to me. Even if I die with the knowledge that the books of our present are also a thing of our past, I will also know that writers will continue to be born into this world. The very art of storytelling will never die. It’s as much a part of our spiritual DNA as, “Let there be light.” We were created as part of a great, eternal story that is everlasting. And we were created to create. To tell the story of being human, of what it was like to live and laugh, to love and lose, to love again, to be born and die. In this great universe there cannot be a human race without writers and storytellers, the chroniclers of this wild adventure, this wonderful, bittersweet journey. What would be the point if someone didn't do the tellin'? From cave pictures to stories around the fire, those told on southern summer porches, and in the boardrooms up there in New York City - the tellin' continues. It always will.

The future of publishing? It lies just out out of my reach beyond my lifetime. But the future of storytelling? Oh, trust me - its in great hands.

River Jordan
" Kirkus Reviews described, The Messenger of Magnolia Street, as "a beautifully written atmospheric tale." It was applauded as "a tale of wonder" by Southern Living, who chose the novel as their Selects feature for March 2006, and described by other reviewers as " a riveting, magical mystery" and "a remarkable book."Her third novel, Saints In Limbo, was reviewed as a Southern Gothic Masterpiece by Paste Magazine.
Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks around the country on "The Passion of Story", and produces and hosts River Jordan Live radio program on WRFN, Nashville. River lives with her husband Owen Hicks, and their Great Pyrennees lap dog, Titan in Nashville, Tennessee. She thinks about where stories come from - places and people and moods of the heart while rocking on her front porch. And long after the sun sets over the ridge, she waits for the moon to rise, watches the stars come out, and stares off into the blue-night sky believing with all her might.

The Little Pond For me

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked if I was ready to start the next chapter in my writing career. My response to that question surprised me. It wasn’t the same one I would have given a year ago. Then I was constantly pondering what I was going to do next and how. But now, in the present, I don’t know if I need or even want that next step. I am pretty happy with where I am.

When I wrote my first book and got it published by Abique Books, a small publishing company out of Texas, I thought I was going to die from all the excitement. As soon as I absorbed the fact I had had a book published I was already thinking about the next one. That “next one” mentality has stayed with me through books two, three, four and five. Each time I finished one I panicked as to whether there would be a next one.

With book number six I have had a contract for over a year now. The manuscript is due to Mercer University Press in June and the book will be published in 2011. After that, I honestly don’t know. I don’t know if I have another book in me and I don’t know if I want to commit to the writing of it if it is there.

I will always write. I know that. I will probably still be doing movie and book reviews until they carry me out. I enjoy them immensely. It isn’t that I think my opinion is so weighty; it is just that I enjoy the sharing of my thoughts. I was amazed to get an e-mail from a reader of one of my movie reviews the other day in which he said I should be careful with my opinions as they carry so much weight. I don’t think so.

If my opinions carried that much weight then George Clooney’s career would be over, “Nine” would be a major success, and 3-D movies would cease production. Also Patti Callahan Henry would be at the top of the best seller lists along with Dale Cramer, Steve Berry and numerous other favorite writers.

What I enjoy more than the writing of my books is the chance to socialize with people whose writing talent leaves me in awe. Dorothea Benton Frank knows my name as do Jeffery Deaver and Nicholas Sparks. That amazes me. Pat Conroy doesn’t know me from Adam but I got a chance to review SOUTH OF BROAD as one of the first pieces I wrote for The Huffington Post and I heard he read it. That kind of thing brings me great satisfaction.

During the past year I have had some “feelers” from a big book company, but I honestly think that if I was ever signed by a major publisher like Simon and Schuster or Random House it would scare me to death. I am more of a big fish, little pond person than a little fish, big pond one. I am comfortable here swimming in the South and knowing who I am and where I belong.

There is nothing wrong with ambition but not all of us have to aspire to the highest levels of recognition. Setting your limited goals and achieving them is okay too. I always thought the spotlight made Bailey White uncomfortable and that she would probably just rather keep a low profile. Maybe that’s not the case at all but it is what I surmise.

The great thing about life is you can always change your mind. Next year, after this new book comes out, I might start itching for another one and at a higher level of exposure. Life is funny that way. What you are feeling one day could change one hundred and eighty degrees tomorrow. But for now it’s the little pond for me.

JKC

Jackie K Cooper is the author of five books. He also writes conservative reviews for the liberal leaning Huffington Post. He has been told they like the balance.

New Years Greetings from the Newbie

by Bente Gallagher

When I was given my assignment for this – my first blog for the Southern Authors – I wasn’t quite sure what to think. The future of publishing? How I took my writing to the next level...?

The thing is, I’ve been published for precisely a year and two months today. My first book, called FATAL FIXER-UPPER – it’s one of those cutesy hobby-mysteries, about a designer-turned-renovator in a small town in Maine – was released on November 4th, 2008. Exactly a year and two months ago. Book 2, SPACKLED AND SPOOKED, came last August, and I’m currently gearing up for book 3, PLASTER AND POISON, which is due to hit stores in March. I’ve finished writing book 4, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the wheels of publishing keep turning for long enough that I can see it hit stores in late 2010. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the publication of the first book in another series, A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS, in June 2010.

Sounds good, but really and truly, getting published at all is the only level I’ve attained thus far. I’m sure my writing must be getting better—usually that happens when you do something a lot; you get better at it—but I can’t say I think about that a whole lot. I’m too busy cranking out words as quickly as I can.

I wouldn’t mind taking my career to the next level, though, although I guess it would help if I knew what that meant. Is it more money? More books sold? My name in bigger letters? Moving from mass market paperback to hardcover? Hitting the New York Times bestseller list? Being featured on Oprah? Is that how you know you’ve arrived?

Or maybe you don’t ever know you’ve arrived.

I had occasion, last year sometime, to meet the wonderful Carolyn Haines (Hi, sweetie!) who should need no further introduction. She came to speak at our local Sisters in Crime meeting in Nashville, and we had dinner together afterwards, a group of us, and if she lived closer, I swear I’d be bugging her all the time, because she’s just great fun and I had a marvelous time hanging out with her. Of course, what I did to repay the kindness, was to beg the poor woman to read my ARC and – if she liked it – to blurb my new book.

Just goes to show that a good deed never goes unpunished.

Carolyn, being a class act all the way, agreed. And I appreciate it. The funny thing was when she told me she wished she could get one of the big names to endorse her. Which struck me as hilarious, since I wanted her to endorse me because she is a big name...

This is the first blog of the year, so I guess maybe it’s appropriate to do those dreaded New Year’s resolutions. What I’m going to do to take my writing to the next level in 2010.

Here are my resolutions; feel free to chime in with your own:

1. I’m going to finish the last book on my contract, and make it the best book it can be.


2. I’m going to write another book as well, one that isn’t under contract, and make that the best book it can be, too. And then I’m going to pray that my agent can sell it.


3. I’m going to attend three writers conferences in my own neck of the woods. (No, that’s not actually a resolution. I’m already signed up for those.)


4. I’m going to attend one writers conference somewhere else, and while I’m there, I’m going to pretend to be out of myself, and I’m going to meet someone I haven’t met before and make a new friend and learn something I didn’t already know.

5. I’m going to attend at least one association meeting every month, and actually get involved in each of the associations I’m a member of.

6. And because writing is one of those professions where you can easily spend fifteen hours a day sitting on your spreading butt in front of the computer—at least I can—I’m going to stand up and exercise at least every other day. Mens sana en corpore sano, and all that.

So that’s it for me. Feel free to tell me what your New Years resolutions are going to be this year, or give me some ideas for how you’re planning to take your writing to the next level in 2010. Or suggestions for how I can do the same for mine. And if you have some insight into the future of publishing, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to share that with me, as well.

Happy New Year!



Bente Gallagher writes the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime under the pseudonym Jennie Bentley, and—starting in June 2010—the Savannah Martin Real Estate mysteries as herself. She lives in a historic neighborhood in Nashville with two boys, a hyperactive dog, a parakeet, two goldfish and two African dwarf frogs, plus her husband the Realtor®.

You can find her at http://www.bentegallagher.com/ or http://www.jenniebentley.com/ (they’re one and the same) or at http://www.happy2sellnashville.com/, if you’re in the market to look at real estate.

TAKING YOUR WRITING TO THE NEXT LEVEL

By Julie L Cannon


Hmmmm. When I first read the prompt, ''How I took my writing to the next level," naturally I assumed it meant a higher level. You know, a step up. Well, now that I've given it some thought, and now that I've looked back over the past year of my writing life with a great deal of scrutiny, I'm not so sure that's it at all. Levels can be up, or down, or maybe even across a hanging bridge suspended over swirling waters.

When I read Patricia Sprinkle's lovely and very thoughtful blog (Dec. 29th), I realized that there are multitudes of things in a life that inspire, prompt, nudge, or in my case, shove a person to try new things; new levels. Patricia's story of her mother's physical/mental state, and hence her own change in genres, made me think of the saying that goes something like this: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."

In 2001 I was happily gathering rosebuds. A short story of mine won a contest in a local arts magazine, and then my first novel practically sold itself to a local publisher, and then they sold the paperback rights to Simon & Schuster, who subsequently found an agent for me (they said "We don't like to work with unagented authors). Then, my agent sold two more books of mine to Simon & Schuster, followed by another one to Penguin in 2008.

I was happy on this level. I was writing. And selling. Well, then the recession came along, and I got a big, cold dose of reality. Still furiously scribbling along, I wrote two entire books in three years. Books which my agent loved, yet which met with a number of rejection letters. My agent said to me, "Julie, several years back these would have been a slam-dunk." She said the book industry was feeling some of the pain of this economy, too.

But, the thing was, the bills didn't stop arriving in my mailbox. Frantic thoughts circled in my head like turkey vultures. I'll go back to school, I decided one moment. I'll get a teaching certificate through the Georgia TAPP program and I'll teach English in elementary school. No, I changed my mind in the next moment; I'll get my Master's in Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, and then I'll teach on the college level. But, then I talked to the head of that department, and she informed me that most area hires were generally Ph.Ds in Literature and Creative Writing who can teach both, mainly comp and lit. Anyway, job prospects were not the best, so I wrote that off. I called numerous places I might enjoy working, to no avail. I did part-time work which had nothing to do with writing. I applied for an odd sales job. I was not called for an interview. I was a little depressed.

Meanwhile, I kept praying and I kept writing, two things to hold my sanity intact. My agent worked with me on half a dozen proposals. Proposals where I'd write a very detailed (twelve pages or so) synopsis and a couple of chapters (anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words). I did this for months on end, and she sent them out faithfully. I waited. But all we got were rejections. I tried to keep hold of my hope and my faith that something would take in this writing career. That I'd move on to "the next level."

One day as I took a break from spinning stories to check my emails, I noticed one from the Manager of Literary Programs at the Atlanta History Center/Margaret Mitchell House. Melanie wanted to know if she could hire me to teach a creative writing workshop. For cold, hard cash. A hopeful bubble formed inside me. Without hardly thinking, I wrote back, "Yes, I'd love to!" At least this job was in the field of writing.

I had done a few small, scattered workshops over the years; things mainly for high schoolers and young collegiates. But, for these I'd been given the curriculum, and so it had been more like I was just a facilitator of an hour-long workshop.

I went through the process of selecting a topic, researching it just a bit, outlining a course, and presenting it to Melanie. I decided on a class about memoir writing. I called it 'Canning Memories.' She approved it and sent out word to potential attendees.

When she wrote me that my class had received enough reservations to make, I got started on the real work. What we had decided on was that I would teach a three-hour class on the first Saturday in October. Well, to be honest, at first I freaked out. What could I offer these souls that would fill three hours and be worth their time and money? I'd never taught a three-hour class, much less one on memoir writing.

For two weeks solid I feverishly gathered material. I worked around the clock; ate it, slept it, and lived it, writing what amounted to a fat textbook. I read swarms of my books on the technique of writing, I dreamed up exercises my students could do, I practiced teaching my material. I made hand-outs with subtitles such as: Getting Started and Staying Started, Writing Deeper by Using Your Fears, From A Different Point-of-View (exploring the difference between First and Third Person), Simple Ways to Strengthen Your Prose, Open Mike (The Importance of Reading Your Work Aloud, along with Breathing Techniques To Relax), Tips for Turning Personal Experiences into Salable Fiction, and, finally, What a Character! The key to Unlocking Motive and Turning Real People into Interesting Characters.

In the end, I must have had gathered and written enough material to teach an entire college semester. I know after the class, there were pages and pages of material we hadn't gotten a chance to cover. One important thing I did manage to drill home to the participants was this quote by Jim Rohn (I don't know who that is) that I keep taped to my monitor; "Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment." I told them to sit their fanny in their writing chair every single day.

This new level of writing was beautiful proof to me that there are places full of potential for rich personal reward. I, who had entered this world with a fairly severe case of laliaphobia (fear of public speaking), thoroughly enjoyed teaching! I was genuinely happy up there talking for three hours straight, imparting some of the things I'd learned over my journey to class participants ranging in age from their twenties to their eighties. I got to hear stories from many of them. Stories which touched my soul. I know you've heard people who have gone off as missionaries into remote regions, and who came home saying things like "I got more out of it than I gave." But it's true! Words were just pouring out of these people. The different levels these writers were on was astounding. Several have communicated with me post-class and enriched my life even more.

Eventually, around the end of October, my agent called me and said that one of my proposals had found a publisher! So now I am taking my writing to yet another level. Like Patricia Sprinkle, it is a different genre than I am used to. I don't know if it is higher, lower, or across that shaky rope bridge hanging over swirling waters, but I am 50,000 words into it and enjoying the process immensely. The book is set to come out in October of 2010, and I imagine I'll have the cover art and more on it to share in one of my upcoming blogs.



Julie L. Cannon is the author of TRUELOVE & HOMEGROWN TOMATOES, 'MATER BISCUIT, and THOSE PEARLY GATES (Simon & Schuster), and THE ROMANCE READERS' BOOK CLUB (Penguin). Visit Julie at http://www.juliecannon.info/

The Impetus to Climb

By Patricia Sprinkle

Every other day I drive five miles to visit my mother. I park outside her large brick residence and walk up the drive to the front door. That’s as far as I can pretend this is an ordinary home and my mother an ordinary mother.

Mother has lived for eighteen months in the memory care wing of an assisted care facility. Most days she sits in the far corner of the dining room in a wheelchair, her once sturdy frame reduced to less than ninety pounds.

Mother was bright, a reading specialist who devised creative ways to help children learn to read. Now her conversation is reduced to gibberish. Mother was once vain about her appearance. Now food dots her clothing in spite of the helpers’ best attempts to keep her clean. She has developed a terror of water, so her hair—which used to be washed and styled every week by a beautician—hangs straight and greasy. The last time we tried to wash it, she spat on me.

I’m not telling this to garner pity or disgust you. Rather, I’m telling you why I have taken my writing to a new and different level.

For twenty years I wrote mystery novels. I enjoyed it. I met delightful readers, writers, editors, and bookstore owners along the way. But all those years I had other stories I wanted to tell—stories that did not involve murder and mayhem, but rather delved into the struggles of ordinary women to survive crises in their lives with a modicum of grace and success. “Someday,” I said from time to time. “Someday I’m going to write my novels.”

But someday never came. In this life we are restricted to yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow is not guaranteed. As Dolly in The Family Circus once said, “Today is a gift. That’s why we call it ‘the present.’”

Soon after we had to put Mother in the memory care unit because she needed more care than we were able to provide, I turned sixty-five. Sixty-five is supposed to be the year we retire, right?

I looked at Mother. She taught school for forty years, then retired at sixty-two to begin a new career as a successful artist—until breast cancer surgery cut a nerve and left her painting arm with a permanent twitch. Then she and dad started teaching a “how to retire successfully” course all over the country. When she had another bout with cancer, she twice called the chemotherapy center to tell them she wouldn’t be in that week, because she was teaching a seminar out of town. As long as her mind held out, Mother was always open to a challenge.

How many years, I wondered, do I have before my own mind begins to slide down a slippery slope? Possibly it won’t—my father is ninety-four, does the daily crossword, reads Atlantic and Mother Jones, occasionally still preaches, and goes to the gym three days a week. But life gives us no guarantees. Minds don’t always last as long as bodies do.

So like a trapeze artist who lets go of one bar in order to snatch another, I bunched up my nerve, left mystery novels, and offered a proposal to my agent for two books of women’s mainstream fiction. The editor liked the proposal, and gave me a contract for the two. I hope I’ll get to write two more, and two more after that.

Writing a different kind of book certainly involved leaving my comfort zone. In a mystery if the plot sags, you can always add a new clue, a red herring, or—my husband’s usual advice—a car chase. I have to confess that the first novel does have one small mystery and even has one mild "heroine in jeopardy" scene. After all, that’s what I know how to do. But as I worked harder than I'd ever worked before trying to create a new kind of book, I remembered advice from Stephen Spender on writing: “We can’t write it until we know it, and we can’t know it until we write it, so what are we to do? We write it wrong until we get something we recognize.”

By the time I'd gotten my first “unmystery” novel into a shape I recognized, I had discovered how flabby I’d gotten in mind and body, how accustomed I’d gotten to my little rut, and that I was actually glad to be stretching muscles I hadn't known I had.

HOLD UP THE SKY will come out in March from New American Library. It’s the story of four women who come together in a sweltering kitchen one summer, each facing her own crisis. They don’t even like one another at the beginning, but they discover that women’s strength comes not from independence but from interdependence.

I hope you’ll read it. I even hope you’ll like it. But whether you do or not, I’m feeling real good right now. I tried something new and finished it!

I would not wish my mother’s condition on any other soul, but if you are comfortable in a rut, visit a memory care facility. It certainly gives me the impetus every day to live out my dreams while I still can.