The Business Side of Writing

I just returned from the 2013 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association (PNWA) conference in Seattle, Washington, so my next few posts will feature highlights of the conference.   In the conference brochure, PNWA president Pam Binder likens a writing career to a roller coaster ride. Unlike other writing workshops and conferences, where the emphasis is largely on craft, the PNWA conference focuses on getting your work published. While there were a few craft sessions, this is not a conference for newbies; it focuses on having polished work ready for market. If you are at the beginning of your writing career, try regional workshops and hone your projects.

On opening day, agent Katharine Sands conducted a session on Pitchcraft. While the stigma of self-publishing has ebbed, she makes the distinction between being printed (self published) and published (traditional.) She points out that too many self-printed books are put on the market before they are fully seasoned. “People are in a hurry, and publishing is a slow business.” She estimates once a book is accepted by a house, it is a minimum of eighteen months before it will be available in print copy. That’s not counting the months or years it takes to secure an agent. So as much of a kick it is to see your book in print, “don’t “publish” something you may later regret.”

When reading queries or hearing pitches, Sands says she looks for three things: person, place and pivot. She wants to know right away who the story is about. She also wants to know the setting, and mostly, she wants the pivot, (the problem).

I know I’ve said this before, but I’d rather write another novel than a query letter or a pitch. It’s easier. Writers feel comfortable in the artistic zone, the creative universe where we converse with our imaginary friends. Many of us have EmilyDickinsoned our manuscripts in a box or computer file because marketing our words (and ourselves)feels like roaming a foreign country without a guide.

But the reality is if we want our books out there, we have to pitch them to agents or editors. Condensing a three hundred page manuscript into two or three sentences is like climbing Mt. Everest with a fork.

I’m a good writer, but a lousy self-promoter. I’m like the two girls I see outside the window at Starbucks as I write this, waving a sign to promote their check cashing business. Traffic whizzes by and few pay attention. I’m not shy, nor am I invisible. As a teacher I stand in front of a lousy audience every day and manage to capture my students’ attention. I even took a stand up comedy class were my final exam was to write and perform a comedy routine for a live audience. I killed them. Granted, most of the audience was drunk, but I got a standing ovation. I’m fairly brave, so why do I balk at pitching my writing?

The object is to describe your book in 2-3 sentences without making it sound stupid. Guy wakes up to discover he’s a cockroach. A man burns books for a living and starts to feel guilty about it. Destitute Family leaves Oklahoma for California to seek jobs and security. See how easy it is? Why can’t I do this for my own work?

In an upcoming post I will share my experience with preparing my (dreadful) pitch, but still scored a couple of mss. requests..
Happy Writing.

Why I Am Still Ignoring This Blog

It’s not intentional. Excuse #1 The end of the school year is crunch time for all teachers, but English teachers have the extra task of reading and grading papers. My students’ papers were 8-10 pages long, and I read each one twice. Once for content, and again for syntax and structure.

Excuse #2 I recently came back from a week of being an AP exam reader. Trust me, when one reads essays all day for seven days, you are too tired of words to write.

Excuse #3 (which may be the most valid): I’m writing other things. But alas, I have run out of valid excuses, so here I sit across the table at Starbucks from my writer friend Rita Smith, pecking out this post on the keyboard.

I had entered the first twenty five pages on my current book in a novel contest, which of course I didn’t win, but I received something valuable: judge’s comments. Out of fifty points, one judge gave me 47, and the other 39. Not bad scores. Both judges gave high marks on what I consider to be most important: the writing, characters and dialogue. Both deducted points on my numerous typos. Typos are my albatross. I even had a friend scan the pages for typos, but to be fair to her, she was working on her MFA thesis and was not able to give my manuscript a close read.  So the blame falls utterly upon me.

The lower scoring judge also commented he/she didn’t care for Shelly, my female lead. The judge found her shallow. Shelly tries to portray herself as shallow, but part of the story deals with Michael discovering what lies beneath the surface.

Another issue the snarky judge had was with my synopsis; he/she said I don’t reveal the ending. I allude to the resolution, but do not state it outright. The judge who scored me highly didn’t seem bothered by the vague reference to the ending. His/her only negative comment was I capitalized the names of the characters, which I had read was the proper format.

So…..are we supposed to tell the ending of our tale in a one page synopsis? Are we supposed to capitalize the LEAD CHARACTERS’ names?

I am pleased with my 86/100 score. Having strangers compliment my work motivates me to not only continue working on the novel, but to focus on my improvements. Our friends and family think we are brilliant and will offer effusive praise on everything we do. It’s the strangers we need, those hooded, nameless characters with their red pens who will tell you the truth.

Besides, it’s a good thing I didn't win because I’m not done writing the tale yet. I know how it ends; I just haven't written the final scene yet.

Happy Writing (and revising).

The cat ate my blog post

To the tens of thousands of you (or more realistically, the ten of you who actually read my blog), I have a litany of valid reasons why I have not been posting.

Take this morning. It’s hard to write with a cat on your lap. Pablo likes weekends because my lap spends more time at home, so I am pecking this out one handed with cat hairs on the keyboard as he head butts my other hand, demanding Pet me pet me pet me.

Blame the weather. It’s been a lovely week, dry, warm, the kind of spring weather that demands one’s presence outdoors. Yes, I’m allergic to most of what’s lurking in that soil, and I pay for it with watery eyes and needing to be in close proximity to tissues.

I have been writing: not this blog, but hard at work on my latest novel. I set a date of June 1^st to be finished with the first draft. And the book has steered itself into surprising directions. It may not work structurally, but I am enjoying this bout, so I will roll with it. My main characters nag me all the time. They’re teenagers, and they demand full attention.

But so do my other teenagers at work, especially the ones ready to graduate or skate the line between passing and failing my class. The kids are finishing up a semester long research project for which they (allegedly) written two ungraded drafts. Several have only shown me one draft, some have written NO drafts. The third and final draft is the biggie. Those who have not gotten my preliminary feedback are taking a huge risk. It’s like submitting the first draft of a novel to an editor or agent and expecting a book contract.

The REAL writing is in the rewrites. Initial drafts are fun to write, but revision is re- seeing the work, allowing the pieces to fall into place with more clarity. Here is where you find the inconsistencies (like forgetting a minor character’s name,) holes (such as undeveloped scenes, and glaring errors (your protagonist is blonde at the beginning, but later you describe him as having ebony hair).

This week in class we worked on thesis statements. I projected each students’ argument thesis to check for clarity, stance and warrant. Here is an example of how we fixed them:

Initial thesis:

Television is entertaining and informative, but has a negative impact on teens and society. Teenagers aren’t fully developed making them easily influenced, so partying, bad health, or even carelessness are all being more commonly demonstrated.

With input from me and her peers, here is what we devised:

Television is entertaining and informative, however , the bulk of shows on TV now geared for teens like Jersey Shore utilize partying, bad health and carelessness and do not enhance maturing  young adult brains.

Writing is a solitary pursuit, but we need outside feedback to make us better writers. To paraphrase Stephen King in On Writing, “draft with door closed, but revise with the door open. I frequently torture my great friend Elizabeth with my wretched drafts, and since she stands outside my story, she can find the cracks more easily.

Here is hoping my students are busy this weekend working on their rewrites, just as I need to get back to my novel. Just stopped by to say hello.

 Happy Writing.

Spine poetry


Take a stack of books, and arrange them into a poem. Here is mine:

The History of Making Books

As the earth begins to end,
What have you lost?

Words under the words,
The art of fact, and one amazing thing.
Hooked on time and materials,
The night parade came passing through.

How do you see yourself under the veil?
The best of it, bird by bird,
lies on the road.
Kiss me goodnight, Pablo Neruda.

Why is the Big Bang Theory important for Novelists?

My name is Laura M and I am addicted to the Big Bang Theory, or as we seasoned viewers call it: TBBT.I have seen every episode more than once, yet I laugh at the same lines  every time. It’s a sickness. Or is it?

Some of my non=addicted friends have criticized the show as stereotypically portraying the quartet of guys as nerds, with Penny representing the token "normal” person. But it’s comedy; it’s supposed to be exaggerated. One of the elements of comedy writing is exaggeration. And Penny is not “normal”. Nobody, from Sheldon and Leonard’s moms or Will Wheaton, and even Stan Lee, gets off that show Scott-free. The characters on TBBT represent human foibles common to most of us.

Okay, at this point, if you are still reading this post, you may be asking, WTF does a silly sitcom  have to do with writing a novel? TBBT is about character, and writers take a full blown character, and mix him or her with another character or situation, place them in peril, and they react. In the case of TBBT, the reaction is funny. Comedy writers take our human frailties and spin them to make comedic magic.

This show has earned its huge success from exemplary writing. After six seasons, (and renewed for a seventh!) the characters, situations and dialogue are still fresh. Like a novel, more than one character’s story is fully developed, and the audience finds surprises throughout the journey. TV, theatre and film are collaborative efforts, and it takes actors, set designers, and directors to produce it, but the story begins (and thrives) with the writing.

In all tales, the audience needs to fall in love with at least one character a little. Even the bad guy. (Who doesn’t love a good villain? Without Beatty, Montag’s quest in Fahrenheit 451 would be beige. And who can’t love a conflicted character like Frankenstein, who is both protagonist and antagonist? When we engage in stories, we hold up a mirror, and someone we know well is one (or more) of those characters.  We watch TBBT to laugh at ourselves and our friends.

Like Sheldon, I like to sit in the same spot on my couch, and tend to gravitate to the same restaurants where I order the same things from the menu. As I write this I am munching on lunch at a local deli where the staff knows my nakme.) I don’t wear ‘bus pants’, but I am cognizant of where I sit in public; I prefer seats that can be wiped down to upholstered ones. You never know what is on the seat of anyone’s pants.

I wipe silverware down with the napkin in restaurants (trust me, I have worked in restaurants; you WANT to do this), and I over-sanitize my hands, likely eradicating any resistance to disease.  While I do not obsess over scientific formulas, I obsess over words. It can take me days before I am satisfied with a sentence or a line of poetry, (and still, it will never be right.)

Like Leonard I over think things, and often say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Can’t let it go. I blame my dad. My father was literal, much like Leonard’s mother. He said what he thought when he thought it, because it was without malice., If my mother or one of us kids did something like pull a sixteen pound turkey out of the oven and drop it on the floor, he’d glance up from behind his newspaper, and say, “Why’d you do that?”

Some of his favorite expressions, said without malice, were , “Have you always been stupid?” and “People have the right to be stupid, but they also need to know when they are being so.”  So yeah, I have some Leonard in me.

I’m a little like Raj, too; I don't like spiders and Indian food, either. My family spent three years on the Indian subcontinent, where, “it’s so hot!”, and I never developed a taste for curry or cardamom. I do like Bollywood movies, though. (I am listening to Indian music in my headphones as I write this.)

And then there’s Howard. Hmmm. No, I’m not like Howard. I don't think there is anyone like Howard. But Bernadette loves him. And so do I.

.I worked as a snarky waitress for awhile. Also like Penny my house often looks like it was recently burglarized, and I have dated a succession of Mr. Wrongs. I’d like to say I am hot like Penny, but that was many, many moons ago. Now I’m tepid. I’m more like a less smart version of Amy Farah Fowler without the sweaters.

But this isn't about me. It's about all of us, and how each of us finds ourselves inside a fictitious character.  I will agree that on the surface each character fulfills a broad stereotype; the guys have advanced degrees and love gaming, and Penny, a junior college dropout, is a shoe obsessed dreamer. But under the layers, each of these people is unique and interesting, just as good characters (and real people) are.

That’s MY story and I’m sticking to it.

Happy Writing.

I'm Not a Slob...I'm Just ADD

This afternoon isolated to clean up my desk area. I don't actually have some office. iWeb I moved into my house I intended to use one of the spare bedrooms, but my desk didn't fit through the door. It's a lovely piece of,furniture, an old fashioned roll top desk with a slide out shelf for placing papers. But the desk is also  monstrously large. So a corner of the living room serves as my home office , and that space is almost always cluttered with bad manuscripts of failed novels (my own. Sigh)  writing magazines, books, journals, and miscellaneous loose pages on which I have written stupendous ideas to use later. I also keep a paper bag for recycled paper nearby. This week I am on vacation so I am determined to clean this mess up.

I recycled two pieces of junk mail, then came across a photocopied article one of the Rock stars of Reference from our local,library gave me last week. I sat down and read through it. (Did I go back to cleaning? No. I started writing this blog post. I am hopeless.)

The article, from Book List, is a Will Manley column about graphic novels and their role  in developing young readers. Libraries are undergoing changes with lightning speed, and more of my school library colleagues have fallen into black holes, leaving behind ghost towns filled with lonely books and magazines. Some libraries have taken action to attract clientele by promoting graphic novels for kids who claim to hate reading in the hopes of leading them into more text based stories. Yet, as pointed out in  the Manley piece, "that's like saying you can get meth addicts into a rehab center by baiting them with [drugs] and expecting them to go clean."

If we want to develop a culture of readers, we need to read. And not just in Language Arts classes. The Common Core standards schools are adopting are not new. They are just a new name for teaching all subjects through narrative. (A new fangled name for ancient dialogues in Plato's time, and the Renaissance education.) It's the way I was taught in the late 60s and 70s, learning of the relationship of all things. As my former student Aaron miller once said during a eureka moment, "everything's connected !" 

I'm not sure this post has anything to do with any of the Scintilla prompts, but since everything's related, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Back to my stacks of papers....

Happy Writing.

Scintilla Day 3.5

This poem has a marginal connection to the “singing in the car while driving.” Prompt.  Meh. Not my best, but this time change has my brain addled.

Anyway, here goes.

Strange Days Have Found Us

We are five teenagers scouring

Vancouver streets

in the pink wet light of 2am.

Riders on the storm!

We sing-shout through open windows.

Into this life we’re born!

The bum on the street opens a stinkeye,

flips us a shaky bird,

a streetlight burns.

Into this world we’re thrown

On a runway pointing nowhere,

no flight plan.

The night on fire

Like a dog without a bone.

We are actors, all alone.

Laura Moe

Happy Writing.

A Lost Girl On the Road

Scintilla 3.14.13 prompt.

I chose the one where we describe an event as a set of instructions. I have written about much of what appears here in other forms, but as poet Jim Daniels said in a workshop last summer, “writers get obsessed and stay obsessed.”

A Lost Girl On the Road

1.      Have your first kiss on an abandoned runway of an airport never built because of a war. Make sure the night is moonless, yet contains stars.

2.      Let your lips linger over his. Taste the future.

3.      Feel the tectonic plates divide, swallow you whole.

4.      Lie across the front seat of his car. Run your fingers over his bare arms, breathe in the teenaged boy smell imprinted on his white T shirt.

5.      Take a snapshot of this moment. You will not be this happy again for a long time.

6.      Move away to the other side of the world shortly afterwards.

7.      Live in paradise, lost in a lonely ocean.

8.      Walk barefoot and watch men land on the moon

9.      Move to a rainy city in the Pacific Northwest and wear the wrong kind of clothes.

10.  Watch your mother die.

11.  Move to a college town in Ohio and lie to your new friends. Tell them your parents are divorced so you don’t have to say the words,“My mother is dead.”

12.  Read far too many books. Get drunk. Do drugs.

13.  Get a fake ID and go to college bars while still in high school. Date lots of young men who fail to fill the vast crater growing inside you.

14.  Eat. Never feel full. Stab yourself in the leg with a pen for no apparent reason. Leave a scar.

15.  Develop strange phobias: riding in cars, flying, driving.

16.  Move again.

17.  Start college. Drop out. Work a series of shitty jobs. Fall in love with shitty men.

18.  Restart college. Take it slow. Fourteen years. (While you work more shitty jobs.)

19.  Outgrow your phobias. Avoid shitty men. Get a cat. Get a real job.

20.  Forgive yourself.

Happy Writing.

Mad Dog 2020.

http://www.scintillaproject.com/

It's that time of year again where crazy people like me respond to a daily prompt. Follow the link above for more information on the project. Enjoy!
Scintilla. 3 13 13 

I was a junior in high school, back in the Pleistocene when guys wore their hair as long as girls. I went on a date with my brother’s friend Mark, a sophisticated senior: an OLDER guy, AND a guitar player in a band. Mark resembled Peter Frampton with a long wavy shag, and he wore a leather bomber jacket. How cool is that? Those twelve to sixteen more months of life provided  Mark with an enormity of experience I could only view with awe. We were planning to go to a party, and  he suggested we begin the evening with a bottle of wine. I was like, wow.  Wine! And he was SO experienced he even knew what KIND of wine to buy : Mad Dog 2020. Double Wow. The name was rad, and the bottle was so cool, square and stout, with MD 2020 blazed across the label. It looked more like a bottle of whiskey than wine ,and it didn't even need a corkscrew. The wine itself  was blood red, 20% alcohol.

We sat in the front seat of Mark’s station wagon on a frigid night in the parking lot outside of Kroger, taking gulps of wine like it was cough syrup. In fact it tasted like cough syrup. This was So cool. Until it wasn't..

Before the bottle was half empty I transformed from the bookish girl in glasses who read too many books into this giddy, silly girl who had trouble pronouncing words.

We never made itto the party because I started throwing up outside Mark’s car. He got worried and took me home. Mark had to escort me inside, where my brother screamed at him. “What the hell? You got my sister drunk?” My father heard the commotion, and came out of his room tying his bath robe, yelling, “what the hell is going on out here?”

I got grounded, Mark and Paul’s friendship was at odds, but I had a new badge of honor; I had tried (and survived) Mad Dog 2020.

"A Writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it." Samuel Johnson

Happy Writing.

Bad Query Contests Are Good for the Writer's Soul

Recently I participated in a Write a Bad Query Contest. http://www.booksandsuch.biz/blog/author/rachelkent/ Alas, I didn't win, but It was a pleasure to purposely write a bad query. It wasn't difficult; all I had to do was channel my litany of bad queries and poke fun at my own mistakes, or rather misteaks. The contest was a hoot, and I enjoyed reading the variety of submissions and comments. They all poked fun at the shared experience of crafting the dreaded yet necessary query letter.

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I despise the query process. It forces me to dress up and behave, but the fabric itches, the pantyhose bind my fat, and these shoes are killing me. I’m not good at faking it. When I tried acting in High School, the audience erupted in laughter with each of my lines. It wasn’t a comedy; I had portrayed Joan of Arc’s mother in The Lark. So I wonder if each time I submit a query with a sample, the agents and office staff roar with laughter.  If  they save the best of the worst to read aloud at the annual holiday party, I wonder if some of mine are in that batch.

Here is what I wish I could send:

:

Dear Agent. 
Here is my book. Hope you like it. Call me.

Unfortunately, the work cannot speak for itself..We have to sell the agent on the idea of even reading the manuscript. .

Sigh.

About a year ago I hired a consultant to help me with the whole wretched query process. http://literary-agents.com/. Part of the process forced me to analyze my writing history, the successes as well as the failures. Mark helped me recognize my weaknesses, which are many. (He has yet to help me cure them.) Even though I still languish in the dark, scum ridden pool of underrepresented authors, with Mark’s help, my rejections are now gold standard .http://laura-moe.blogspot.com/2012/09/mastering-levels-of-rejection.html

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Currently I am reading The Fire in Fiction: passion, purpose, and techniques to make your novel great by agent Donald Maass. I am hoping to gain insights into what agents look for in a manuscript. Maass presents several examples of what he deems great openings, and examples of passionate writing  While I do not find every example engaging as Maass, I agree with his statement, "passionate writing makes every word a shaft of light, every sentence a crack of thunder, every scene a tectonic shift." (I plan to print that up and tape it above my work area on my desk.) So far I have only read the first two chapters, but Maass has helped me rethink some thin gs about one of the novels I have been shopping. While I have a passion for the story and the two main characters  my secondary characters are beige. Also, my story starts in the wrong place. So in effect, every agent who has rejected me has done me a favor; my novel needs surgery. (Yes, I know it's not about me, it's about the story, yet it still stings. I care about my characters and it's a little like not everyone adoring your children.)

I’m not a gamer, but it seems like like  D& D or WOW, persistence is the key, and if I don’t give up on this writing gig, the keys to the kingdom are within my reach, even though by the time I make it to gate I will be bloodied, bruised, battered, and hairless, and I will need to hire someone else to pose for my author picture so I don't scare off readers. But it will be so worth it.

Right?
Happy writing (and querying.)

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