TEN STEPS TO BECOMING A NOVELIST

By Erin Cashman

Since my debut novel, THE EXCEPTIONALS, was published, the question I get asked the most is how I became a writer. What I’ve discovered is that most people don’t want to hear about how I used to sit up in a tree and write stories when I was in elementary school. They want to know how I wrote a book and saw it through to publication. Each author has his or her own process. This is what works for me:

1.      Write a novel. This seems obvious, but it is actually quite harder than it seems! It takes countless hours and fierce determination to see it through. At times you will have inspiration, other times you will trudge through the muck. You will be brilliant, you will be cliché. The important thing is that when you are done, you will have finished a first draft of a novel. If you are like me, when you write the words The End you will be incredibly proud and fairly certain that your manuscript is amazing and will require little revision. YOU WILL BE WRONG.

2.      Put your novel away. DO NOT LOOK AT. Leave it for at least two weeks, preferably a month. Then, read it again. If you are like me, you will be fairly certain that it is the worst piece of crap that anyone has ever written. I try to take a first pass without revising, but just marking where the story drags, which characters are really just there to move the plot, and places that don’t work.

3.      Now comes the real work – revising. Revise, revise, revise.

4.      At this point, I interview my main characters. I ask the same questions all the time, such as: What is your deepest fear? What is your darkest secret? If you could meet one person in history who would it be? I always discover that I don’t know my characters as well as I thought. You will be surprised by what you learn.

5.      Take your new found insight and go back and revise again, focusing on fleshing out the characters as much as possible.

6.      Now you have poured your heart and soul into the manuscript, and you feel that it is pretty damn good. Read the whole thing out loud. You will know immediately when the dialogue is flat or artificial sounding. You will not only pick up on errors, but phrasing that might be grammatically correct, but off for some reason.

7.      You may think you are done – but you’re not. You need a fresh set of eyes on your novel. And by that, I don’t mean your family or friends. Find a writing group or critique partner. I just did this recently, and I wish I had done it years ago. It makes a huge difference. It is not easy to sit in your writing group and listen to people pull apart your baby. You will have the urge to defend your boring or one dimensional characters, who, by now, are very real to you, and explain your convoluted plot. Bite your tongue.  Take notes. LISTEN. You don’t need to take all of their advice, but pay attention to the big picture items. If your partner or group doesn’t really care about your main character, you need to fix it. Spend a day mulling over their advice.

8.      Revise, revise, revise.

9.      When you feel like your novel is the best that you can make it, put it away for at least a week, and read it out loud again, from start to finish with as few interruptions as possible. I usually start on a Saturday morning and finish it by Sunday sometime. Are you crying during sad parts? Swooning during the romance scenes? Is your heart racing during suspenseful parts? If so, you are done. Congratulations! You finished!

10.  Rejoice! As Tom Clancy said, “Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.” Whatever happens now, whether you send out queries letter in hopes of publication, submit your manuscript to your agent or editor, self publish, or simply share your masterpiece with your family and friends, celebrate your accomplishment. You are a novelist.

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      Erin Cashman is a YA author. Her debut fantasy novel, THE EXCEPTIONALS, was published by Holiday House in 2012 and named a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year. You can find her at the group blogs The Enchanted Inkpot, BookPregnant Blog, and on Twitter,Facebook, and her Website

An Open Letter to Debut Authors: Five Things to Consider

Dear Debut Author,

 A year ago, when I launched my debut novel , I told myself that I would throw myself into the next twelve months and do all I could with the resources I had to bring my babe into the world. It’s been a wild and crazy ride (as Steve Martin might say).  These past twelve months, I’ve felt emotions in concentrated, hyper-potent doses. I’ve been wistful, happy, and everything in between; seasoned by all the events and people I’ve met, mistakes and victories I’ve experienced. I’m both sober and inebriated. I have a long way to go, and much to learn, but I hope you’ll consider these five things as you step into your debut year.

Thing #1 – Delight, enjoy and celebrate your launch.  You’re a debut author once. That’s it. Embrace your accomplishment.  Give yourself time to breathe in your feelings of pride and happiness—yes—happiness!  If you have to disappear into your bedroom closet to shout, do it! Hug your old clothes. Spill your pent up tears. If you start blubbering with gratitude because a bird landed on your front walk, ride the sensation—sob away. Be a sentimentalist. Be melodramatic with joy. You’ve worked hard to achieve this, harder than most people will ever understand. 

Thing #2 – Pace yourself. You will reach stations of utter exhaustion, moments when you are overwhelmed, and confused. You will tell yourself not to complain. You will tell yourself: This is my dream, how can I stop pushing, doing, trying every day?  Well, here’s a silly joke:  

“Knock. Knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Human.”

“Human who?”

“Human who needs sleep. Human who needs routines. Human who needs healthy foods to function at debut author speed.”

Seriously. You will push harder than you thought you could. But, you will hit that wall of fatigue. You won’t know you’ve bumped into it until your head hurts and your mind is whizzing around Venus—hot and fiery. That’s when I’d like to suggest you take a break, a few days off to parent yourself.  Don’t worry. You’ll be back at it. You’ll book another reading; you’ll write another blog post, you’ll answer more q&a’s, but you must pause or you will burn up.  Your psyche will disintegrate. Respect the demands of your particular lifestyle, family and financial constraints. Surround yourself with people who make you feel good, who want the best for you.  You are the boss of your life.

Thing #3 – Beware of Goodreads Reviews. (Okay. Laugh.)  Every author I talked to forewarned me: “Goodreads is particularly nasty,” they said. “Not everyone will love your book.”  You will listen and nod and be grateful for the cautionary advice, but privately you will want to be that one exception.  You won’t be.  No one is. Not Dickens. Not Jane Austen. Not YOU.  You will get that cranky, stupid review, the one where a reader can’t or won’t understand your character, will refuse to understand why your book has swears or sex. My cheap advice?  Don’t engage. Let those nasty reviewers fade away. Most will. (You can always vent with fellow authors. They will happily vent with you.)

Thing #4 – Let surprises…surprise you.  A reader you’ve never met will fall in love with your book, rave about it, pass it on to his or her friends, blog about it, cheer you on Twitter and Facebook.  It’s not a fluke.  It’s what you hoped for but it will still come out of the blue, unexpected and thrilling. It’s one of the most wondrous events, a gift from heaven designed especially for authors.  Soak it in. 

Thing #5 – Do everything in your power not to compare yourself with other writers and their books.  Comparing is an animal that seeks out sink holes, swamps and depression.  You’ll follow it anyway. But keep a tight leash on it. Life is fickle. Readers and reviewers are inconsistent. But you can remain constant about yourself.  Don’t compare. Just don’t.

Now, return to Thing #1 - Delight, enjoy and celebrate your debut year.  Congratulations! 

Warm wishes and good luck!

Jessica Keener   

Author of Night Swim

Almost Live From the Baltimore Book Festival—Finding the Courage to Write

by Sophie Perinot

Sophie Perinot (right) with Kate Quinn
(another woman who found the courage
to pursue her writing seriously).

This past weekend I had the pleasure of being a presenting author at the Baltimore Book Festival.  Among the panels I sat on was one entitled “Finding the Courage to Write.”  Finding their courage is certainly something every book pregnant author has done—otherwise we wouldn’t be in a family way would we?  But I’d never really reflected on that fact, or what precisely it meant in my own experience until I received my list of panel assignments. What follows are the conclusions I came to while preparing my remarks for the Festival. 

When I heard title “Finding the Courage to Write” I immediately thought about how so many women writers—including myself—transition to writing from other careers or from being stay-at-home Moms.  I mean I wasn’t always a writer (were you?).  In fact, I am not even one of those people who always knew she wanted to be a writer.  I do not have stacks of journals under my bed dating to my adolescent days. I’ve always made up stories, sure (mostly for my sister’s entertainment) but when I was a little girl I dreamed of being the junior senator from Ohio, not a novelist.  Then I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer and in due course I went off to college and law school and became one. And that is when I discovered that being good at something doesn’t mean you enjoy it.  Which brings me to the courage thing. 

When people like me—those who come to writing somewhere down the line in life—talk about “Finding the Courage to Write” what we are really talking about is something bigger.  We are talking about finding the courage to REINVENT ourselves and commit, fully to that reinvention.

In my own case my sister helped me find my initial courage.  As I mentioned I was my in my dream job but it was turning out to be not-so-dreamy.  I knew I wanted to do something new, but deciding what to be when you grow up when you are already grown up is an angst filled business.  I don’t do angst without my sister (much as she doubtless wishes I would).  So I was on the phone using her as an unpaid career counselor/therapist when she said, “I know you are making up a story right now in your head.  Whatever that story is pick up your dictaphone and start saying it out loud.”  I was leaving on a family beach vacation, but I took my dictaphone along and followed my sister’s orders.  The result was my first completed manuscript.  But putting words on paper was only the first step down the road to being reincarnated as a writer—and for me it was NOT the most difficult or courageous.

What took the most guts was getting up the gumption to admit that I wanted my writing to be more than a hobby.  That it was a serious, professional endeavor.  And here is why I think that was so difficult:

1)      When you write as a hobby you don’t really have to put yourself on the line.  You can begin writing part-time, in your spare time and entirely as a hobby.  Nobody has to know you are writing.  Other than my family and a few very close friends, nobody knew I was working on that first book.  And the GLORIOUS THING ABOUT BEING AN “IN THE CLOSET” WRITER is that you cannot fail at something nobody knows you are doing.  Even if you choose to share your stories with friends or family, as I did, there isn’t much risk—if your mother or your friend doesn’t like your book she is going to be too polite to say so.  Besides chances are they will love what you’ve written because when we evaluate something created by a person we care about we are likely to see it with kind and enthusiastic eyes.

But while you can be a writer as a hobby you cannot remain a hobbyist and become a published author. So unless I wanted to just tie every manuscript up with a ribbon and put it in my linen closet I had find the courage to say out loud—first to myself, then to writers in a writing community, and finally to agents in the form of a query letter—“I want to be a professional writer and I am seeking publication for my work.”

2)     Going public with your dream opens the door to a whole lot of hurt. The big fear of course is public failure.  If you proclaim that you intend to write and publish a book and then fail . . . ouch.  Or you can have a book published and it can belly flop into oblivion. But even before you get to the edge of that cliff, the road to publication involves finding an agent and a publisher—steps that require you to show your manuscript to industry professionals.  Handing over your manuscript to strangers brings with it the inevitable sting of rejection when someone (and doubtless more than one someone too) tells you your baby isn’t good enough or isn’t marketable.

It’s a true “no guts no glory” situation.  But plucking up your courage has more to recommend it than just the long term dream of publication.  If you admit that you want to write professionally a lot of doors open.  For example, once I’d owned up to my desire for a career in writing all sorts of new opportunities for learning about the publishing industry and growing my craft presented themselves.  I attended my first writing conference, and in three days learned more about my genre and the industry than I had learned in all my blog and article reading at home.  I also joined an on-line writing community to which I still belong and where I am now a moderator.

So by gathering your courage and acknowledging your dream you not only open the door to ultimate professional achievement—a book pregnancy and many happy returns—but at the same time you improve your chances of realizing that ultimate success.

If you are out in the BP audience quietly working on manuscripts and just storing them on your hard drive I am here to tell you (with my seven-month-old book baby on my lap) that if you can find the courage to own your dream of being a writer you can reach that dream.  And I think that a reinvention worth finding the courage to take a chance on.

Find a Good Critique Group

by Brenda Remmes

              I’m always surprised at how many people tell me that they don’t want anyone to read what they’re writing until they’re completely finished.  Most agents say they don’t need to read more than five pages to tell whether they’re interested in the rest of the manuscript.  You’re hoping they’ll get through at least the first three chapters.  My thoughts are you might as well get those first five pages out there as soon as possible for some feedback so you don’t make the same mistakes throughout the rest of your writing.

               I was very lucky to fall into an excellent critique group on my first try.  That doesn’t always happen.  Critique groups are different.  Whether you wish to start a group on your own or attend one already in existence, here are my rules of thumb.  1)  Look for some members where at least a few people have already published or have some professional experience in publishing, even if it’s in the local newspaper.  There’s no better educator than experience.  2)  Stay clear of family members and friends.  They tend to be too kind.  You need honesty that is cushioned with respect and appreciation for the work and method involved in writing.  3) Establish the guidelines for participation in the group.  Everyone should be writing something.  Meetings should be regular.   Submission requirements should be consistent.

               Here is the way my critique group works.  Our group has ten members.  Average attendance is about six, which is a good number, because it means each person can submit for every meeting if they wish.  Larger groups allow people to submit only every few months.  We have a coordinator who e-mails reminders before each meeting.  We meet twice a month for two hours.  Anyone who wishes to submit may do so four days prior to the next meeting by e-mailing to every member up to ten pages (double-spaced in submission format) of whatever they are writing.  Participants are asked to critique each piece prior to the meeting.  I stress the word “prior” because this is a point on which a lot of critique groups differ.  Some critique groups read the submissions at the meeting.  We have found it much more effective to individually critique the submission before the meeting and then discuss it at the meeting.

               We are not an “editing” group.  While we may note misspelling or grammatical corrections on our copy of the manuscript that we return to the author, this is not what we come together to discuss.  Our role is to make comment on the character development, plot and background stories.  “What worked for me when I read your piece,” and “What didn’t work so well.”  During this process, I have learned that my weakness is my inability to give enough descriptive detail to a scene.  “I can’t see this scene in my head, yet,” is the critique my group makes.  “What’s in the room with them?  What noises are going on in the background.  Are there certain smells I should be aware of?”  Incorporate all of the senses, not just the visual.  The group will often give me ideas and make suggestions of what might work.

               We remain respectful of each individual’s efforts and their particular genre, recognizing that we don’t have all the answers by a long shot and reminding one another that what one publisher may not like, another might love. One of our members joined another group in addition to ours where they worked specifically with children’s books.  She shares what she learns from them. 

We continue to remind one another that one person’s opinion does not an absolute make, but we suggest that if two or more people raise the same issue, it might be something the author wishes to consider.  In the end, the author always has the final say on whatever they choose to write.

               As for me, there is no doubt in my mind that I would not have made it as far as I have at this point without the insights and recommendations from my critique group.   I would have wasted valuable time submitting one manuscript  after another to agents without understanding why they got rejected.  I now have a contract on a book.  In addition, I have a new group of friends, who remain kind and compassionate in regards to my writing.  More importantly, they’re not afraid to challenge me to do better and continually improve my writing skills.  

Illustrations:   rudall30, Yury Shchipakin/ Shutterstcock.com

So You Want to Get Book Pregnant

by Sophie Perinot

If you want to get book pregnant—there is no delicate way to put this—you have to DO IT.  You know . . . query agents (what did you think I meant?).

Not a romantic task, granted.  Query letter composition is unlikely to leave one creatively satiated in the way that writing an 80,000 word novel will.  To torture the sexual innuendo a little further—writing a query is a highly technical and clinical business, like the type of fertility-driven sex that has people taking their temperatures, or leaving specimens in cups.
It’s enough to put a would-be-pregnant author out of the writing mood.

As a result, many writers bog down at the query letter composition stage.  I know someone who has been thinking about querying and working on a query letter for more than a year.  I am NOT making that up.  Yes a query letter is a vital sales document and a badly written one may leave you without the requests for partials and fulls that are necessary preludes to a positive pregnancy test.  And yes writing a good query is not easy (if it were there wouldn’t be hundreds if not thousands of articles and blog posts offering advice on how to compose one). BUT should it really take months and drafts in the double-digits?

No.  To be a little more adamant, NO, NO, NO.

Do NOT let writing your query becomes a Sisyphean struggle (you remember, the guy who had to push the big rock up the hill over and over), because a perfect query letter is NOT an end in itself.  It’s a tool. And tools need to be USED to get a job done.  At some point the incremental improvements you are making as you revise your letter for the umpteenth time are NOT worth the time or the agony. More than this, an over-edited letter can lose voice.

Picking through the query critique forum at Agent Query Connect (my favorite on-line community for the aspiring writer) it’s pretty easy to find threads with ten, twenty, even thirty versions of a single query.  Such treads make me want to scream “GET ON WITH IT! SEND THE DARN THING.” But that kind of verbiage in a critique threads would hardly be appropriate.

So I am saying it here. Just DO it. Stop painting the nursery and query.

I am not saying send your first draft. I am not saying don’t seek critique. I am saying all things in moderation. How many drafts of my letter did I do—maybe four. How many people did I show it to before it went out? Five (and two of them weren’t even writers). Did it work? More than uncommonly well (I had a very high request rate, snagged an agent I adore and now have a published novel). Could my letter have been better? Sure. But if I were still working on polishing it, then my book baby wouldn’t be nearly six months old!

Writers Write

By Erin Cashman

I’m sure you’ve heard about those incredibly lucky people who write a book in a couple of months, send it off to a few agents, and before they know it they are at auction, getting huge advances and ultimately becoming best selling novelists. Usually these authors say something like . . . “An idea just popped into my head so I wrote it down. I never set out to be an author.” I hate these stories. Not because I’m jealous (okay, I’m a little jealous), but because it is so discouraging for the rest of us, the majority of writers – who, if we are lucky enough to garnish a publishing contract  at all -- only do so through hours upon hours, years upon years of trying. Of never giving up.

I’ve written for as long as I can remember. It has always been my dream to be a published author, but my father encouraged me to go to law school, so I could support myself. I took his advice, and stopped writing anything except legal briefs and memos for several years. And then one night I had the strangest dream about a family of vampires. I just had to write it down. I finished it a year later, and sent it off to agents and publishers, certain I would realize my dream and become an author.

Boy was I wrong.

After Twilight, romance vampire stories were in demand, not middle-grade adventure ones.

And then I wrote another middle grade adventure novel, about a long lost Irish treasure. This one would certainly be published, I thought. I sent it out to many agents and editors, running each day to the mail box. I received a seemingly endless amount of rejection letters, postcards, and my own letter mailed back to me, with Sorry, not for me, scribbled along the bottom.  One agent even sent me two rejection letters! I guess she really didn’t like it!

And then a few encouraging letters and emails trickled in, all with very positive feedback. These agents and editors loved my writing and enjoyed the characters and suspenseful plot. BUT – treasure stories weren’t selling.

Ugh.

I realized then that I would likely never be published. But I discovered something far more important.  I write because I love to. I wasn’t about to stop writing because dozens of people – experts in the publishing field – told me my manuscripts were not good enough, or wouldn’t sell.  I may never be published, I thought,  – but so what. Writing could be my hobby, not my profession.  As much as I would love to be a published author, in the end I wrote for myself.

And so I started The Exceptionals, which is about a teenage girl named Claire who must use her long-ignored ability to communicate with animals to unravel the mystery behind the disappearances of the most talented students at Cambial Academy, a school for teens with special abilities. I loved writing The Exceptionals. I really enjoyed thinking up the different “specials”, and how they would influence the characters and the plot. Creating Dylan (a gorgeous but secretive guy who may know more than he’s letting on) was especially fun. He is interesting and mysterious. Every day I woke up and couldn’t wait to write!

Six months later I finished, and I sent it to about ten agents and editors. I didn’t run to the mailbox, or obsessively check my phone messages or email. I had no expectation that it would be published.  A couple of weeks later I got a call from an agent, Erica Silverman from the great literary agency, Trident, offering to represent me. She loved The Exceptionals! I couldn’t believe it! I spoke with Erica for about an hour. She was wonderful. I not only had an agent – I had a GREAT agent!

The very next day Pam Glauber, a very talented editor at Holiday House, called and made an offer to buy the book! So after years of writing, and two novels behind me, I was finally going to be a published author. Third time was a charm! I was elated.

I am so glad that I never gave up on myself or on my dream. I write as often as I can, and I write what I want to write, not what I think will sell. I realize I may never see another book in print (although I hope I do!) but in the end, I write for myself, as I always have.

So remember, writers write. They don’t count their rejection letters, wallow in self-pity, or throw their laptop out the window (although I am guilty of the first two – and was tempted to do the third!).  If you are a writer, write. Keep at it. Maybe you’ll find an agent, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll sell your book to a traditional publisher, maybe you’ll self-publish. Maybe you’ll just keep trying. In the end, you are still a writer – whether you are one of the lucky few to be published, or not.  You owe it to yourself to give it your all. It may not be an easy path. Like me, it may take you years (six to be exact!) and be more hard work than you can ever imagine.  But no matter what the outcome, you’ll be glad you did.  Because writers write.

Writing Anxiety

by Barbara Claypole White

When Luke Skywalker tells Yoda he’s not afraid, the Jedi Master replies in a voice that sounds more appropriate for an Exorcist movie, “You will be. You will be.” Fear—it’s an inescapable fact of being book pregnant.

As the mother of a teen who has battled OCD for most of his life, I’ve learned a few things about diffusing fear. OCD, an anxiety disorder that can feed off anything, is Doubting Thomas on speed. While the fear it generates is irrational, the anxiety one experiences is real.

The hero of my debut novel, The Unfinished Garden, is an obsessive-compulsive entrepreneur who’s terrified of everything except snakes. Which gives him one up on Indiana Jones. But the brain tricks James deploys against OCD can be used to defeat any anxiety—real or imagined. Here are a few of my favorites:

Boss it back: This is a staple of cognitive-behavioral therapy and can fry those niggling doubts. Re-label an unwanted thought as junk mail and imagine tossing it in the recycling.  Say aloud,  “The doubt’s not real; I’m not going to listen. Ha.” (Ha is vital. It’s a battle cry.)

Logic is your friend:  Yes, you will get at least one lukewarm or negative review, but reading is subjective, and you’re still going to write. Nothing is going to change those facts.

Laugh like you mean it: Have you ever tried laughing when you’re worried? Watch a silly video on YouTube and giggle like a preschooler with Tickle Me Elmo. Now tell me you’re anxious.

Pick a calming phrase and practice: Inspired by the aging rock star and ex-heroin addict in Love Actually, my son and I use “shit, f**k, bugger, damn,”  as our om phrase. You’ll have to trust me on this one…

Tinker with the worry: Dress up the worry, put a hat on it, turn it into a slapstick movie. I had a nightmare that I was going to spend launch day tearing my novel off bookstore shelves, screaming, “I can do better.” So I turned it into a romantic comedy with George Clooney.  It’s my party—why not?

Two can play the what-if game: OCD is all about what if, but when fear strikes, ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen. Yes, I could stand up at my first reading and develop a severe case of late onset Tourette’s, but really, what are the chances?

Mindfulness, man: In my OCD support group, we talk about mindfulness. Truthfully, I never believed I was the meditative type. Then one day I was watering my garden, a chore I denigrated as a total time-suck, when I realized my mind was still. Now as I water, I consciously listen to the hawks, watch the hummingbirds, and enjoy the moment. I’m in the zone…

And we’re breathing: Sometimes it really is all about the breath. “Slow the breath, and the heart and the mind will follow,” my yoga teacher used to say. Inhale to the count of four, hold to the count of two, exhale to the count of four.  Repeat. Feel better?

Think small: Don’t focus on the big picture. Create a mega marketing plan but break it into manageable chunks. To avoid freak-outs, I concentrate on my daily goal: the page count for novel two plus one promotional activity that can be as simple as emailing my pre-order link to an old friend.  Fear is all about control. By thinking small, you can take back your universe. 

Expose yourself to fear: Full-blown fear is like grief. Avoidance is bad, very bad. So when your first bashing on Goodreads drives you to imitate Howard Hughes—who lived naked in his screening room for months, peeing into bottles—read and reread that silly review. At some point, your mind will get bored and wander off to the grocery list.

Give in to the dark side: If the anxiety keeps rising, let it blow. Fear can be graded on a scale of one to ten, ten being pray-the-tornado-passes-quickly. Hitting a ten, however, can be liberating. Logic tells you there’s only one way for the fear to go—down; science tells you the human body can’t sustain a high level of anxiety for long. Bingo.

And finally, guard your writing time well, young padawans. Writing is the best therapy I know.

How to Staunch Voice Bleeding

by Mindy McGinnis

I've coined a new term that some of my fellow writers have latched onto - voice bleeding. It exists. It's a nasty little burrowing virus that will slide inside your brain and infect the gray matter with the voice of whatever writer you may be reading at the time. The voice bleeding virus thrives on creative minds, reducing us to a toxic replica of whoever we happen to be reading at the moment, especially if they hail from the same genre as our own.

How do you combat this virus? Is it something you will never be free of, like herpes? Is this a long-term infection requiring dose after dose of antibiotics? Should you lie quivering in fear under your blanket whenever a tasty looking bit of fiction tempts you?

Don't worry, my friends. There is an answer.

You CAN read while you're writing. You CAN free yourself from the scourge of voice bleeding. You CAN indulge in some published pages while whaling on the WIP.

It's called non-fiction.

Now don't get me wrong, non-fiction requires voice as well. But the chances of a well-styled narrative NF voice sliding into your YA paranormal are significantly less than if your brain is munching on the latest urban fantasy beach candy.

I hear your cries of pain. But non-fiction!!! It's so.... true. And... boring!!

Not so my friends. Hit up some of these titles if you want to learn more about why we're alive, what happens when you're not, and how to avoid people, places and diseases that might make you that way:

WATER: THE EPIC STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH, POWER & CIVILIZATION by Steven Solomon - So you're aware that we need water, but do you know the ins and outs of the political maneuvering, wars, and untold deaths of millions that is intertwined with the story of water? Prolly not.

STIFF by Mary Roach - You're dead! Great - now what? You'd be surprised how many options you've got. Mary Roach explores the myriad of choices your corpse has. Me? I'm going with composting.

THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY by Erik Larsen - Wanna know more about America's first serial killer, and how he used the World's Fair to his advantage? Sure you do.

THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL by Daniel Stashower - Mary Roger's murder in 1841 was the first instance of a media frenzy, and it had the makings of a blockbuster. A renowned cigar-peddling beauty with a checkered past winds up dead... and nobody knows who did it. The murder got under the skin of New Yorkers, including one troubled genius named Edgar Allan Poe, who was inspired to write "The Mystery of Marie Roget."

THE LOST CITY OF Z by David Grann - A mysterious city in the jungle, explorers disappearing into thin air, obsession and madness. You're interested, right?

THE SPECKLED MONSTER by Jennifer Lee Carrell - Read this history of smallpox and the people who willingly infected themselves with it in order to create a vaccine and you'll never be more thankful for the CDC.

And while I'm sharing, there's currently a voice bleeding related post over on my personal blog, along with a giveaway!

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Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut dystopian, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, will be available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins Fall, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

You’ve sold your novel and don’t have ESP? Ten things you should do ASAP.

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

On August 10^th 2011, at precisely 3:10 pm, I was sitting on the examining table at my doctor’s office, waiting impatiently for him to come in and prescribe antibiotics for my stubborn bout of sinusitis. One minute I thought I was having the worst sinus headache ever, the next I felt like John Travolta in the movie “Phenomenon” where he suddenly develops special powers after seeing a bright light in the sky. In a flash of what felt a lot like ESP, I was given a sign that my novel had sold. 

Crazy, right?

But before you decide that I should have been seeing a psychiatrist instead of a general practitioner, let me explain what happened.

Minutes earlier, after taking my vitals, the nurse had left the examination room door partway open. Out in the hall, someone was holding the latest book by Fern Michaels, a NYT best-selling author with Kensington Publishing Corp. All I could see was a woman’s tan, jewelry-adorned hand, holding the hardcover against her ample chest, right side up and title facing out, the white and pink cover like a neon sign against her navy shirt. The woman talked excitedly for several minutes, her entire body shaking, the novel bouncing up and down as if saying, “Look at me! Look at me!” I told myself I was imagining things. Seeing the newest novel by a best-selling author from one of the two publishing houses who’d requested my novel three weeks earlier did NOT mean my novel had sold and I'd soon see my name on a Kensington cover. It was a coincidence, nothing more. People read books at the doctor's office all the time. Maybe I had a fever. Maybe I needed a nap. By the time I left the doctor’s office, I’d come to my senses and forgotten all about it. 

Then, when I got home, my husband said my agent had called at 3:10, the exact same time Fern Michael’s book had been playing peek-a boo with me through a crack in the examining room door. My agent wanted me to email him as soon as I returned. Shaking, I emailed my agent, took the phone in the den, and waited. Finally, the phone rang. My agent said we had an offer from the editor-in-chief at Kensington for a two-book deal. For the first time in my life, I was speechless. “Yeah?” I managed. “You don’t sound very excited,” my agent said. Finally, I found my voice. “Are you kidding?” I said. “My heart is pounding out of my chest!”

Once I could speak again, my agent and I talked for over a half an hour. My husband and daughter kept opening the door and looking in at me with wide, questioning eyes. I smiled, gave a ‘thumbs up’, and shooed them away. Finally, I hung up and shared the news. I sold my novel! Wiping away tears of joy, I tried to remember everything my agent said. After hugs and congratulations, a rush of adrenaline raged through my body. It was like a hundred Redbulls mixed with shots of espresso coursing through my veins. I was wired, all thoughts of ESP and sinus headaches miraculously disappeared. I remember talking a hundred miles an hour and pacing the driveway in my bare feet, my husband sitting in the open door of the garage, nodding and smiling. This was huge! This was what I’d been working towards for years! This was like winning American Idol! Well, okay. Maybe not. But at that moment, that’s what it felt like (minus the million dollar contract). We decided to drive to my parents’ to tell them in person, (my mother cried) and we called close friends. It was a great day! And call me crazy, but I still wonder if someone or something was trying to give me a sign that day.

Next came the questions. What happens now? What do I do next? What's going to be expected of me? Unfortunately, that day in the doctor’s office I really did have a sinus headache and had NOT developed special powers. Bummer, I know. 

We didn’t have a party, or go out to dinner to celebrate. Looking back, I wish we had. After all, how many times do you sell your first novel?  Yeah. Once. Lesson learned.  

There are a lot of other things I wish I’d known back then. And a whole lot of things I still have to learn. With that being said, here are some insights I've gained since then that may help others who have sold a novel and can't rely on ESP.

Let me start by saying this; if you’ve just sold your first novel, you’re going to be busier than you can imagine. If you have a two-book deal with a deadline, along with a hundred other things you never thought you'd have to do, you’re going to find yourself doing edits, copy edits, and promotion for the first novel, all while outlining and writing the second. That’s why I came up with this list. Some publishers may ask for the things on this list, some may not. Either way, you’ll be glad to have some of this busy work done ahead of time. 

1) Celebrate every step! (Okay, it’s not required, and your publisher isn’t going to care one way or the other, but it’s a good idea) It doesn’t matter if celebrating means going out to dinner, buying yourself something nice, eating bread dumplings and drinking beer with your best buds, or lounging on the couch with your cats. If it’s something that makes you happy and feels like a reward, do it! You’ll be glad you did. (Did I mention you’re going to be busy?)

2) If you have a two-book deal, start writing down your ideas. Now. If you’ve already started another book or have three complete manuscripts stashed under your bed, good for you. But find out how soon your editor is willing to look at your ideas and synopses because the book you want to write, or have already written, might not be what your editor has in mind. If you have to start from scratch, it's best to know ASAP.

3) Write an Author Bio. Have several, in various word counts.

4) Write your dedication and acknowledgements. I know, I know. That’s the easy part and you'll have lots and lots of time! Trust me, it’s not, and you won’t. Look at other acknowledgements to get different ideas. Writing an acknowledgment is harder than you think.You can always add people later, but at least you’ll have a basic draft and you won’t be rushed when your editor suddenly asks for it in two days.

5) You may decide not to blog, but write a few blog posts anyway. I wasn’t going to blog and yet, here I am. The posts will come in handy if your publisher has you doing guest posts closer to publication, or you might decide to do a blog tour to get the word out about your book. You’ll be glad to have some posts ready. (And here I need to take my own advice)

6) Come up with 5-10 questions and answers for an Author Q & A. You know all those nice questionnaires in the back of your favorite books? Chances are, the author wrote it. Do yours now.

7) Write a positioning statement for your book. A positioning statement is like a pitch/byline for a movie. Here’s the positioning statement I wrote for The Plum Tree. It’s a little long, but I figured my publisher could edit it if necessary. They did.  

“Told from one of the best vantage points for witnessing the first cruelties and final ruin of the Third Reich—the German home front—THE PLUM TREE is an epic story of human resilience and enduring hope that follows a young German woman through WWII as she struggles to survive poverty and Allied bombs, finds the courage to outwit SS officers, and tries to save the love of her life, a Jewish man. Think Cold Mountain meets Schindler’s List!”

8) Write a Reader’s Guide. Again, not all Reader’s Guides are the same, but look in other novels for different examples and ideas. My editor asked for 15 questions. I came up with 25. He kept 20.

9) Write an Author’s Note. My Author’s note consisted of the inspiration behind The Plum Tree, paragraphs describing how and why I used certain non-fiction books in my research, another paragraph about novels I’d read and enjoyed that also helped guide me through WWII, plus any historical liberties taken by me to further the plot.

10) Remember to enjoy LIFE. The life of a working author is literally non-stop. Non-stop writing, non-stop editing, non-stop networking, non-stop promotion, non-stop work. If you’re already a little OCD like I am, you have my sympathy. I’m a list person. I like to cross things off my to-do list by the end of the day. Having a never-ending to-do list is tough. You have to know when to take a break. Sometimes, even when you’ve got copy edits due and a hundred emails waiting, you’ve got to step away from the computer. Go for a walk, watch the Housewives of NYC, play with the dog, invite friends over. It will make you feel like a real, live person again. I love to cook, garden, clean, spend time with family and friends, and do yard work. Those things make me feel normal. It’s easy to put in 12-18 hour days doing everything a writer needs to do. If you have a full-time job and a family to raise, things are going to be monumentally harder. And remember, whenever you feel overwhelmed, see number one on this list. Celebrate! You sold a novel!!! And that, my friend, is almost as amazing as having ESP!!

The Next One

photo credit: woodsboard's Flickr photostream

By Julie Kibler

It's been a little over eight months since I sold Calling Me Home to St. Martin's Press, and it's about eight months until publication. (And in fact, it's only THREE months until publication in Germany!) Some days I find it hard to believe how quickly this time passed, yet I expect the next eight months will really race by.

And still, life goes on.

Things I found to be true before I sold the book, I still find to be true in all the months since. The kids still fight. The house still doesn't clean itself. My husband and I still get cranky with each other. The dogs … well, they're still stinky, ornery dogs.

And I still find myself terrified I'll never write a novel.

Wait, you say. You just sold a novel. You obviously wrote one.

It's true. I wrote well over 100,000 words on Calling Me Home to eventually cull it down to the 103K or so submitted first to agents, then editors. And now, after months of official edits and copy edits, the current incarnation is slowly making its way through the production process toward official publication.

In fact, I wrote another full manuscript before Calling Me Home. And most of one and parts of a few others before that.

But here I am again, back in the driver's seat. You'd think I'd be able to jump right in, take one of the ideas that has been floating around in the brain and pin it down, choose the right point of view character or characters, the perfect setting, the appropriate tense, and get right on it. That I would, to borrow an overused phrase, just do it.

But guess what? It isn't easy yet. If most of the authors I know are correct, it may never be easy. I feel a bit like I'm wandering in the wilderness and I'm trying to embrace it.

I suspect each and every novel I write will take on a life of its own, which is a good thing, but also means the process won't ever look exactly the same. What worked last time may be worthless this time. Or parts of the process may work just fine, but I may look at others and think, How on earth did I ever think it was a good idea to do it like that?

I suspect that the voices of self-doubt always waiting, right below the surface, will pop their silly heads up again and again, to say with smirks that there's no way I can write a whole book, there's no way anyone will be interested in what I have to say, there's no way I can get away with this idea … there's no way … there's no way …

I suspect there will be a few false starts, a few dead ends.

And I suspect that the new novel waiting to be told will reveal itself in new and surprising ways I never expected.

And so I listen and wait and dream and think …

I think I hear it. I think I see it. I think I smell it and taste it and feel it. I think it could work.

And I pray that the idea occupying most of the creative space in my mind today is the one. 

Again.

This post appeared originally May 16, 2012, on Julie's group blog, What Women Write. 

Author Photo Identity Crisis

What Inspires?

by Brenda Remmes

                   Old poker table  from early 1900s still resides in the back room of the small town pharmacy.

Repeatedly, other writers tell me “get to know your character, put them in the proper place and your story will emerge.”  I don’t think I appreciated this fully until I was working on about the fifth draft of my novel and while there were multiple chapters I had written and discarded, it was in these discarded pages that we became friends.  There was too much background material to include in the novel, but enough for me to get a clear picture of the people I had created and where they lived.  They become real in my mind as I began to place them with their everyday families and jobs.  I have to remind myself that, like Lake Wobegon, they are all fictional.

In developing a character and the place, there is usually something that starts my juices flowing…someone who always wears pink, or a particular meeting place where the locals all go.  Once you notice a quirk, it’s a lot easier to embellish and move forward. How did that quirk evolve?  How do other people respond to it?  It’s kind of fun watching people and places shape up.  I spend a lot of time doing research, although I pale next to the likes of Anne Clinard Barnhill, Nancy Bilyeau, and Sophie Perinot who have taken on topics in foreign countries centuries ago. The extent of their research is impressive. My research has been focused on more mundane things like flying an airplane, sitting around a fire house discussing fires(if there had been an alarm, they would have taken me with them), learning how to shoot a Colt 45, or going to a free range turkey farm to watch them slaughter turkeys.  My research is focused on a small town in Eastern North Carolina eighty years ago, and the most fun I’ve had is talking to older folks about the way it was when they were kids.

I’ve lived in small towns most of my life, so I’m familiar with the rhythm.  They’ve changed a lot, just in the past twenty years.  The economy has taken its toll on once thriving little businesses.  Every town had a handful of stores you could depend on. One of those stores used to be a pharmacy.  Another was a local restaurant.  Both of these places are where much of the action occurs in my novel.  While the local mom and pop diners haven’t yet become extinct, the small town pharmacies are getting hit pretty hard.  When you take into account the chain-drug outlets and recognize anyone can get their prescriptions filled at most grocery stores and then add the online Medcos and Express Scripts  there’s not much room left for Shuckers Local Pharmacy on the corner.  Pharmacists now stand behind mega counters shuffling pills and plugging in insurance codes while supervising a half dozen pharm techs.

When I started writing about a small town pharmacy operating in 1992, I remembered a place where people helped themselves to a cup of coffee out of the pot that sat on the counter and you spent the first ten minutes catching up on the family before the pharmacist got up to fill your prescription.  Twenty years isn’t that long ago.  Seems like yesterday to me, and yet when I realize how much has changed since then, I am astonished at what no longer is.  When I wanted to find out how it was in 1932, I talked to Billy.

Billy walked me through the years he worked as a soda jerk when he was in high school. The soda counter sat at the front of the pharmacy. Ice cream and milk shakes were the order for the after-school crowd.  Seltzer water with a spurt of cola syrup or lemonade made from a jug of sugar water and two or three squirts of hand squeezed lemon juice were other favorites. In the morning there was a checker game going in the front room.   Billy was responsible for having all the orders off the table in the back by 3 pm in preparation for the daily poker game.  The poker table (pictured above) had ash trays set in each corner of the table for the cigarettes which kept the back room in a smoky haze that wafted into the front area of the store. A lot of those cigarettes didn’t make it into the ash trays as the game got hot, as evidenced by the circles of wood burns.

Certain customers were known to have their favorite drinks waiting.  A teaspoon of bromine in a coke could settle-your-nerves, and a squirt of ammonia in a coke was used for a pick-me-up.  The first sales of Coca-Cola began in a pharmacy, Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, on May 8, 1886, with an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass.  It was claimed to cure everything from headaches, heartburn, and depression to impotence.  The cocaine was removed in 1903 when the Stephan Company in Maywood, NJ, started using a cocaine-free coca leaf extract.  To this day it remains the only manufacturing company authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant.  

The particular pharmacy I knew in 1992 isn’t there anymore.  The owner died.  People either mail order their prescriptions or pick them up at a Wal-Mart thirty miles away.  A couple of independent pharmacies still hang-on in adjacent towns, and yet Americans are buying more drugs than ever before in our history.  Still, I write about how things were, (not so very long ago, really) not so much because I want to return to those days, but because some things are worth remembering.  The local pharmacy “where everyone knew your name,” is one of them.  As one grandchild asked, “Grandma, how did you get on the internet before computers?”  Come sit down, child, and let me read you a book.  Let the book tell the story.

Rabbit Test, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Me

When I was invited to join this group, my mind immediately went to the movie Rabbit Test.

Remember that piece of classic cinematic triumph?  I thought not.

No one remembers Rabbit Test, and that’s probably a good thing.  The movie was a box-office flop for a variety of reasons, but the biggest was the fact that no one wanted to sit around for 90 minutes and watch a pregnant man make jokes about morning sickness, mood swings and the constant need to pee.

For those of you who are hopping over to IMDb right now to look up Rabbit Test, I’ll spare you the trouble.  The 1978 comedy was directed by Joan Rivers, starred Billy Crystal in his first movie role, and carried the unforgiveable tag line “The story of the world’s first pregnant man…it’s inconceivably funny.”  The setup is simple: Billy Crystal has unprotected sex with a woman and winds up pregnant.  It could happen to anybody.  What’s unexpected is how unfunny the movie turned out to be—even with cameos by Paul Lynde, Michael Keaton, Jimmy “Dy-no-MITE!” Walker, and Roddy McDowell in drag.  Critics were not kind; Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times, “Whenever one does laugh, it's in spite of the movie, rather than because of it.”  Ouch!  I guess the world wasn’t ready for a knee-slapper about a pregnant man.

Eighteen years later, the world had softened its bias somewhat when Arnold Schwarzenegger decided not to terminator his pregnancy in Junior.  He and Danny DeVito mugged their way through another movie about “the world’s first pregnant man.”  This time, it was a research scientist (Schwarzenegger) who didn’t know what to expect when he was expecting.  The movie poster carried a familiar tag line: “Nothing is inconceivable.”  The box office for Junior was a bit more boffo, thus clearing the way for more feel-good flicks about preggo men.

Which brings me to me.  What’s a Hairy Chest like me doing in a nice place like this?

The Book Pregnant group was founded on the idea that, as writers, we all carry our stories, our characters, our paragraphs around inside us like prenatal passengers.  Right now, if you’re gestating a short story, an essay, a poem, a novel, a memoir, or even a book on the history of Pez dispensers, you are “with book.”  Your mind is swollen, your wrist joints ache, your feet need to be rubbed, and you’re distracted by the constant need to pee.  That’s right—we’re all about metaphor around here.  This blog is founded on the principle of symbolism.

But it’s a true metaphor, isn’t it?  As writers, don’t we constantly bear the weight of imagination and language?  Doesn’t it wear us down with distraction and fill us with delight in equal measure?  As a real-life father of three, I know from experience that my wife had her share of Good Days and Bad Days (along with Ice Cream Days, Mashed-Potatoes-and-Gravy Days, and I-Wish-We’d-Never-Had-Sex Days).  One minute, our work-in-progress is the happiest joy we’ve ever known; the next minute, it’s an insufferable beast of burden.

But then the day comes when we get the happy news: our manuscript is headed for publication.  We get the news not from our OB-GYN, but our agents, an editor, or the mailman who hands us a creamy-white envelope with the return address of a magazine where our work was under consideration. O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!  We will be published!  We will deliver our words and they will grow and go out into the world to make us proud.

That’s when the real waiting begins.  Here at the Book Pregnant blog, we’ve come together as debut authors who have been sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting to be moved from Labor to Delivery.  We’ve commiserated, held back each other’s hair when our colleagues leaned over the toilet in bouts of morning sickness, and have given our share of foot rubs.

I—along with Sam, Wiley, and Robert—am proud to be among the pregnant men of the group.  If I were to turn sideways for a profile views, you’d marvel at my belly bump.  Strangers are always coming up to me and shamelessly asking, "Can I touch it?"

I conceived my book Fobbit—a dark comedy about war—seven years ago while I was in Iraq.  It wasn’t what you’d call an immaculate conception.  In fact, it was downright messy.  My thoughts were scattered, the scenes were hither and yon, characters were undeveloped.  It wasn’t even a novel.  It started life as a journal which I thought would eventually grow into a memoir about my time as an untested soldier at war.  It didn't take long for me to realize the world didn't need another boring, bland-as-vanilla Iraq War memoir.  So I spiced it up with fiction, injected some steroids, and watched it turn into an entirely new and different baby.

But kids have a way of surprising you, don’t they?  What you think is just an energetic fetus turns out to be triplets.  So it goes with my novel.  Over the past nine months—since I got the news from my gyne-agent—it has been reshaped by draft after draft of edits and revisions.  When it’s eventually delivered in September of this year, Fobbit will look nothing like it did when it first started as a mere embryo of an idea.

By now, I’ve probably pushed the pregnant metaphor too far.  You might even say it has stretch marks.  (Okay, I’ll stop.)

But really, I’m happy to have found this community of writers “heavy with book.”  When I got the Book Pregnant invitation, not only did I think of Billy Crystal’s absurd belly, I also remembered one of my favorite writing quotes I’ve been packing around for years (since my undergrad days at the University of Oregon in the 1980s) in that virtual battered and scuffed journal held together by rubber bands.  It goes like this:  “I was with book, as a woman is with child.”  That quote is from a dude—Clive Staples Lewis (C.S. to you and me).  And he certainly knew a thing or two about carrying a book to full term, didn’t he?