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I’m interviewing my mother-in-law while she tells me about her early years. Why you might ask? Well, she’s going to turn 90 years old in a couple weeks. There is so much about her life that should be interesting to her grandchildren and great grandchilden since life today is so different from when she was born. We’re thankful that this woman is one sharp minded cookie and able to be a main stay in our lives as long as we can keep her with us. She has been dubbed Little Grandma because she’s an agile, healthy four feet eleven inches example to live by. Her life long passions have been two. First one is her faith. She knows all the stories in her well worn bible. Second is growing flowers and plants of all kinds. I’ve never seen anyone else that has a thumb as green as hers. We both started out with rose cuttings in June from the same plants. Her rose cuttings are alive and growing. Mine dried up a long time ago. I’m used to this problem and always know I can get another start from Mom when she has her plants big enough to share.

This lady is busy in the summer raising many flowers, which cover much of her large yard, and a large garden from which she freezes the bounty and gives much of the veggies away. She has given the coming of her 90th birthday much thought. Recently, she told my husband not to till up her garden this fall. We should wait and see how she feels about planting a garden next spring. I told her to look ahead. She’s only as old as she feels. She said age was a state of mind. She’d do what she was able to do as long as she could.

In the fall, she always takes in cuttings from her houseplants and keeps them alive all winter until time to set them out again. If she loses a plant she bemoans the fact as if she’s had a death in the family. I take my cues from this woman so I’m ready preparing for fall and winter, too. Working in a flower bed is much easier to do if the weather is warm.

I use a tape recorder to document Mom’s answers to my questions about the last century. Where did I get the idea to tape someone’s story? Several years ago, I taped a resident at the nursing home. That happened because one evening at their dinner hour, I told everyone in the dining room the Good Old Days magazine bought my fourth story from me.

The woman said, "I have stories."

Afraid of where this was leading, I replied, "The magazine likes pictures with the stories."

"I have pictures," she insisted.

"The pictures have to be in black and white," I countered.

"They are."

"The story has to be before 1960," I said.

"It is."

"Let me guess. You want me to write a story for you."

Grinning widely, she nodded in the affirmative.

My day off was coming up. So if nothing else, why not share my time to reminsce with this woman. Spending time with a lonely person is a good way to volunteer. This lady happened to be a resident that had very little company. So I set up a meeting in the conference room one morning. I wanted this lady to think I was sincerely interested in helping her so I took my tape player and plenty of tapes. By taping the conversation, I wouldn’t forget details about her story, and I’d be paying closer attention to her if I wasn’t always writing down notes.

We went through her picture album together. She introduced me to her relatives and shared her early life with me. When the hour was up, I pushed her to the dining room for lunch and left. If nothing else came from that meeting, I was sure she had a good time remembering the past with someone who really listened to her and was interested enough to ask questions.

When I listened to the tapes, my idea as to write a story to give the resident. That should make her happy. The more I listened I realized what stood out was Sunday afternoons spent at her grandparents with a whole house full of relatives. Potluck for lunch, baseball in the afternoon with cousins and later rides on Grandpa’s white horse. What I heard on my tapes was this lady has a speech pattern I wouldn’t have used if I had taken handwritten notes. I’m told I write the way I talk. That’s what readers that know me say anyway. Taking the story from the tape, I was able to write her story in her words the way she spoke them. At that point, I recognized a story that had selling possibilities if I submitted it to Good Old Days magazine. Families don’t get together like they used to when all the relatives lived close by.

I read the story to the resident. She approved. I submitted the story to the Good Old Days. The by line had her name as told by me which I’d seen others do on several submissions. I explained in my submission letter that this woman was in a nursing home. I didn’t know if her story was something the magazine wanted but the woman had fun telling this story, and I enjoyed listening to it. To my surprise and everyone else’s, our story was accepted and published in the July 2007 issue of Good Old Days specials – Family Get-Togethers.

The resident was so proud. She told everyone she was a published author. The activity director had an activity just for her. The two of them sat in front of an audience at the nursing home while the activity director read her story. The other residents clapped their approval which made that woman glow. That short hour I spent with her taping her story gave her a shining moment that lasted for days as she repeatiedly told people she was a published author. Selling another one of my stories was great, but the bonus was how I brightened her days. I will always be glad I did that for her.

Now I’m taping my mother-in-law’s story. She speaks with a southern accent and a speech pattern from the 20’s and 30’s. I couldn’t duplicate that without the aid of a tape player. What am I going to do with this story? She’s already warned me I am not to make a book out of it that would be published to the world. I assured her my intention was to give her life story in book form to the following generations as her legacy to them. Besides, I can always use the writing practice.

At our first taping, I ran out of questions. Mom’s daughter that had this idea came up with suggestions. Since then we’ve had another taping. I found a way to come up with more questions by then. Last Thursday, my husband and I went to the Old Thrasher Reunion in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Talk about going back in the past. We took a trolley ride, watched school in session in a one room school house, saw rugs made on a loom and quilting in an 1850 log cabin. Everything is exhibited for men and women from steam engines and old tractors. For women, there is a reminder of how far we’ve come from the drudgery of the past when I looked at wood cook stoves, lye soap, wash boards, sad irons and much more. My mind was on my mother-in-law’s story. I took pictures of what might have been used in her lifetime as well as pictures of signs describing what we now think of as antiques. So Saturday afternoon, I had another round of questions for Mom. After about 90 minutes, my sister-in-law and I ran out of questions again. Now I’m working on a new list for the next time.

Mom asked me how I was going to put the story together. I told her we skipped around in her life so this would take time. A story that will be a good winter project. Could it be she is eager to see this book she was hesitate about in the beginning? I explained I’d have to make chapters and add each story to the chapter it fit into as I put her life in order by years. Also, I want to make this a history lesson for the children, this story is intended for, so I will add who was president, the depression era, and other history events in a time line with her life.

She’s not so suspicious of my motives now. In fact, she was eager to start talking and thought of events like the pie socials and winter sled rides through the timber to her grandparents that I wouldn’t know to ask about. It’s a good thing I didn’t have to take notes, because I listened too intently to write details down. Whether you are a writer or not, take it from me that time gets away from busy families. I have lost many elderly relatives that could have told me the stories Mom is telling. Events have come to my attention that made me regret I didn’t ask questions when my parents were alive. This time, I’m making sure the next generations will know this grandma. The next time I have the opportunity to tape someone it might be to sell another story. This is a method that works for me.

Am I always looking for a good story and characters that stand out? Sure I am. Mom didn’t say I couldn’t use a likeness of her character with a different name in a fiction book. But just to be on the safe side now that I have her talking, let’s keep this our little secret.

Odds and Ends

It’s always a thrill to know my blog posts get noticed. I appreciate that last week’s blog post Short Story Contest Winner was featured on iFOGO village’s home page. A new leader board went up on that site, and I found me at number five. Thank you iFOGO village and Gene Cartwright for the acknowledgments.

Those of you that have followed my blog posts about making hay should know that we just finished the last cutting for the year. I was so relieved to get done with the overhauled tractor working fine, the ancient baler shooting out every bale without incident and the brand new hay conveyor sent every bale to the loft with a smooth rattle. So just went I thought we lucked out this time, I woke up the next morning after unloading those bales to find my back painful. I gave in to going to the doctor for muscle relaxants and pain pills. I took one of each and was moving and talking in s – l – o – w motion for 24 hours. It’s a good thing I write these posts a few days ahead of time so I can go over them a few times. Last Tuesday was a copy and paste day and lots of nap time. By Wednesday, I decided I was better off feeling the pain which was less since I’d stayed still one day so I put away the pills. I’m looking on the bright side when I say I was probably cheaper to fix than my hay making equipment, and now I can quit worrying until the next hay season in 2011.

Here’s a quote from my initial post on the subject of workshops:

The reason a fiction workshop works, and generally works better than any other method of settling the question of authorial intent and accuracy, is the same reason that any broad-based sampling works. By providing more responses to the author, outliers are marginalized and there is at least the possibility that an informative consensus may emerge.

(Note: when I used the word ‘consensus’ here I meant a consensus about points large and small, not simply an overall judgment.)

Everything I’ve said about feedback so far applies to any feedback you get. You might be more comfortable getting or giving feedback in a one-on-one setting, then again you might not. Sitting down with someone who tells you what you wrote is death is not fun. In a workshop, even if others generally agree you came up short, there will also be people who point out some bright spots, or at least keep you from reaching for a bottle of pills.

For writers new to the craft of storytelling, however, a fiction workshop provides benefits that cannot be acquired in any other way. In fact, when it comes to learning how to give and receive feedback about stories, a workshop advances the cause by orders of magnitude over and above any other approach.

Consider the benefits:

• In a workshop setting the weight of consensus can help break the subjective-opinion deadlock between writer and reader. As I also noted in the earlier post linked to above: “If ten people (out a workshop-normal fifteen or sixteen) agree on a particular concern, it’s probably something you should take a look at.”
   
• This appeal to consensus cuts both ways. If you blew it, you can be convinced by sheer weight of numbers to look at your work rather than argue your cause. If you were successful, however, it’s a pretty heady thing to have a group of people say, “This is good,” and it’s hard to walk away thinking the group reacted positively for any other reason than the work itself.
   
• As noted in an earlier post, you’ll learn as much or more (probably a lot more) by giving feedback than by getting feedback on your own work. There are two reasons for this in a workshop, neither of which can be replicated in one-on-one feedback sessions. First, you get to see how your take compares with the feedback of others. Did you miss something? Did you see a character one way, maybe as a result of your life experience or bias, while others had a different response? Second, you get to see how other members of the workshop and the writer interact. Believe me, all you need to do is watch a few people go through the workshop process and you’ll have a much better idea how to approach the process yourself.

When it comes to learning the craft of storytelling, nothing speeds the process like giving and receiving feedback. When it comes to learning how to give and receive feedback, nothing speeds the process like being in a workshop. Nothing.

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Publetariat staff are taking Friday, 9/3 through Monday, 9/6 off in observance of the U.S. Labor Day holiday.

And by the way, did you know Labor Day was made a U.S. national holiday in order to quell social unrest following the deaths of some striking workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals in 1894—essentially out of government fear of retaliation from the labor movement? Yeah, neither did we till we looked it up on Wikipedia.

[No need to click through, there’s no more text in this post]

It’s bound to happen sometime.

When you become a freelance writer, you take on a lot of responsibility.  Each project has its own share.  The extent may change all the time, but it is still there.  A moment will arrive (or may be it already has) when you make a mistake that seriously complicates or even compromises your writing assignment.  

The danger for you as the freelancer is three-fold.  There the possibility that this occurrence is just the latest one in a line of blunders that have marked your freelancing career – and it may be symptomatic of an unprofessional attitude.  Next, you might lose out on future opportunities for work because of the delays and problems that characterized your project relationship with the client.  The third one is the biggest: you receive a request for a cancellation and/or refund from the client.  This third one really hits you where it counts – in your wallet.

Now What?

You have a few options you can take.  You can either shrug it off and move on, perhaps making a future mistake or blunder inevitable, or take this opportunity afforded by the end of the project to reassess what it is you are doing.  (I will admit, that I’m a culprit in this scenario.  Thus, I’m having examine my working process and decide what I can do to improve it and to ensure that nothing like what just happened, ever happens again.)  For those of you, my fellow freelancers, this may be true as well.  You might be wondering which road you will take.

It’s easy to tuck your tail between your legs and keep going down that path, bumbling along until you get right back where you started.  Who wants to be under the unnecessary press, being crushed under a furious writing pace, just get everything fixed and up to speed?  Folks, I just don’t want to do this anymore.

A New Course Ahead

Those of you who may be reading this might have also caught some of my earlier posts on freelance writing.  I’ve said it many times that there is a right way to do this.  Now, sometimes, even when you know better, you end up falling into the same sort of traps you’ve harped on to others.  I’ll admit I’ve done just that.

The challenge, though, is to step up, take responsibility, but then move on.  We writers can just write on to a new page – a new chapter – in our writing careers.  Yet, this requires that all of us take the proper steps.  For me, it is not burdening myself with work that I cannot possibly finish on time, when considering my peculiar stay-at-home dad/freelance writer juggling act.  I have to be more creative that that and so do you!

It doesn’t have to be some big epiphany where you decide to skip out of freelancing and become a novelist.  No, it may be just a series of small decisions that help refocus your path.  You may be ready to take another step into uncharged writing opportunities.  That’s great.  It will be a way for you to grow more a writer while also getting paid for your time.

Then again, the hope of securing better pay through new writing directions may be in your immediate future.  Who isn’t looking for better pay these days?  (The economy is making it tough for everybody out there, writers included.)

Whatever you decide, now is the time.  You cannot afford to mess around.  Your future career as a freelance writer may be at stake.

Get On With It

That’s what it’s about isn’t it?  You can’t be in front of the computer screen sitting on your hands, folks.  Get on with it and go find new ways to be a writer.  Go be the kind of professional that you are despite the blunders and mistakes you’ve made lately.  The main point is to believe that you have what it takes to be a freelance writer – and keep writing, for the love of Shakespeare, keep writing!

This is a reprint from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s blog.

The blog below is a competition I am running on a forum for ereaders called MobileReads. They have a good bunch of folks over there, many of whom provide great feedback and engage with authors. Just thought I’d share it with you.

ANNOUNCING THE FIRST EVER Find A Typo COMPETITION

Here’s the deal.

My goal is to produce a quality product which means NO TYPO’s in TAG. The problem is that I’ve read my manuscript hundreds of times. Too many times to see the mistakes that I know remain.

TAG – is slated to be released on Amazon, and at Smashwords, on 31st October 2010. The cover is being shot by a professional photographer and the cover design is being done by a professional graphic designer; they’re on track, but for the copy editing I need your eyeballs. So that brings us to THE CHALLENGE. Find more typo’s than anyone else and win a dollar for every typo you find, plus a credit in the book.

The Prize

A dollar a typo – YES! One whole greenback for EVERY typo you find. 50 typo’s = US$50-00

A listing in the book as a Contributing Copy Editor (Immortality is yours for the taking)

How to Win

Find the most typo’s before 15 September Competition will close on that day at Midnight Bangkok time.

Rules

I am the judge and jury – my word is final.

You MUST be a MobileReads Member doesn’t matter how long but if there’s a tie I’ll award the prize to the one who has been at MobileReads the longest.

Apart from rule #1 there are no rules: You can make teams, or fly solo. Up to you.

How to Play

Place your typo count as a reply in this thread or as a comment on my blog here (strategy is key here).

Email me, sgroyle(at)gmail(dot)com, your list of typo’s before midnight Bangkok time (PST +7) on 15th September 2010.

The Winner will be announced on 18th September and I will post the list of typo’s back in the thread.

This post, by J. Daniel Sawyer, originally appeared on his Literary Abominations site on 8/27/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

If you want the background for this post, check The Binge post for a description of my recent unintentional astronomical word count adventure. Short version: I wrote one hundred twenty three thousand words in fifty days. Yow.

So, you may ask, what did I learn from writing 123k words in 50 days?

Plenty.

What do you need to know if you’re gonna try for this kind of marathon?

Try these on for size:

First, as you can read in my post about the health problems I developed as a result of crappy Microsoft workmanship, ergonomics are everything. You can actually seriously damage your arms, hands, and wrists if you don’t move around regularly, have a comfortable keyboard, and pay attention to your body. Being in a groove is no excuse.

Second, food. I tried a variety of different styles of eating throughout the ordeal, mostly motivated by whatever I could think to put in the kitchen that week. What I wound up discovering surprised me. I expected to want junk food—pre-prepared high calorie, high density, high-protein, ultra-tasty nibbles supplemented with fruits and finger-friendly vegetables. However, it turned out that I gravitated toward made-from-scratch fare. I actually learned to make wood-oven pizza, sourdough from scratch, knishes, and a few other things during this time, and not just because they were tasty. It’s because it gave me something else to do.

If I was doing anything but writing, I felt a lot of pressure to get back to work. But if I was cooking or cleaning, I was holding up my end of the household. Pouring creativity into the cooking also gave me a chance to spoil my partner rotten in return for the tremendous support she was giving me as I tried to see just how far I could push my productivity. There was a lot of culinary experimentation, and between the quality of the food, the physical activity in preparing it, and the fun of creativity without pressure, it seriously boosted the quality and quantity of my output.

Third, exercise. I didn’t get enough of this, really. I can’t write very well at the walking desk—too many typos—so I was only getting on it two or three times a week. When I did get on, though, I went for the long haul. A couple hours at a stretch, and then within an hour of stopping I’d have a new creative flood. Activity helps supply the brain with oxygen—it also flushes lactic acid out of the system, and when you’re sitting that much the cellular waste sits in your muscles and makes them sore. Like bedsore-level sore. It makes you never want to move again, but once you start moving, it feels SO much better.

Fourth, massage. I’ve been doing massage for a long time now, and I have a friend who’s a pro who I trade with. Lifesaver. Getting them kept my RSI from crippling me before I fixed my ergonomics problem (and I did fix it, resulting in a heavenly experience for the last couple weeks here). Giving them helped me relax and remember there were other kinds of touch in the world besides typing.

Fifth, socialization. Weekly gatherings with my nearest-and-dearest, some festivities surrounding my birthday, impromptu meals with friends, all very important. Getting out to help build a retaining wall or join a moving crew for an afternoon was also lots of fun. All of it kept my mind limber.

Sixth, as Number Five said: INPUT! NEED INPUT! Keep your mind ticking over. Hrab’s new album was wonderful for this (you can buy Trebuchet here—it’s a mind-blower, though not for the easily offended). My weekly doses of P&T’s Bullshit!, True Blood, and The Pillars of the Earth kept me thinking in nicely twisty ways that helped the story. My Region 2 DVDs of the British quiz show QI kept me laughing and distracted during the long hours. Reading a Kellerman novel and Mary Roach’s STIFF during down time when I just couldn’t write, and listening to Steven H. Wilson’s Peace Lord Of The Red Planet (which I plan to review soon) kept me smiling and remembering the larger world outside my little projects.

Seventh, pay attention to what motivates you. For me, sitting at the keyboard wasn’t the hard part; it was keeping the juices flowing so my time at the keyboard was effective that I found difficult. Yes, I put in long hours–tortuously long, sometimes. But it wasn’t to hit a word count–I’ve found that doesn’t work for me consistently. It was to finish a story chunk or an article or a topic-based chapter. I wanted to find out how it ended, and I wouldn’t let it go till I did.

What motivates you might be different–figure out what it is and then keep it in the front of your mind.

At the root of all of this (and the plans I have for the rest of the year) is the realization that my backlist is too small. By lifetime word count, I’ve hit pro level. I now have over 900,000 words under my belt (that means 13.6% of my entire life’s writing output has happened in the last fifty days). But the number of properties I have on the market (everything finished piece since the 500,000 word mark) is simply too small, so I’m changing that. And, I suspect, I’ll keep changing that as long as I’ve got the fingers for it.

Telling stories is life for me. Even this one. Hopefully, if you like telling stories too, you’ll find some of these lessons useful.

Happy writing!

Editor’s Note: With NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) coming up in November as usual, these tips may soon be coming in very handy for many of you.

This post, from Jessica John, originally appeared on the Antbear blog on 8/25/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Pricing among audiobooks varies as much as print books, but here are some averages and rules of thumb that might be useful.

For a 6-hour audiobook on CD, prices are around $25-30, or about $4-5 dollars per hour of audio. For a 6-hour digital audiobook, expect to fetch about half of that, or about $15-17 dollars (~ $2.50-2.60 / hour of audio) . Per-hour prices generally follow an inverse bell curve which dips into the production “sweet spot” where the product-to-package ratio is ideal. This is a greater consideration for physical products like CDs, for obvious reasons.

The good news is that audiobooks hold their value pretty well over time, and older audio titles aren’t discounted as heavily as print versions on sites such as Amazon. Another difference that we’ve noted is that there is a much smaller discrepancy between Amazon and publishers when listing audiobooks (in all formats, but especially digital audio books) than there is with print books.

As with any product, you should research your competition and then price your book accordingly. We are happy to assist you in deciding between various production, duplication, and distribution methods. For your convenience, click here to see a spreadsheet with some of our author-read audiobooks and their various large-publisher prices.

Okay. You’re going along with writing the same articles each and every month, taking some solace in the fact that your source of income was secured by fact that it was a repeat customer who seemed content with your work. You don’t see any issues with maintaining that single income source, whether it is through a service like Elance or as a member of writing team. You haven’t had any trouble getting freelancing work at all.

Then it happens.

Your source dries up.

(In this case, my source dried up.) Now, you find that all those months of focusing on that one client, have left you without a back-up plan. You get reassurances that work will come in…eventually. Yet, it doesn’t. This is no one’s fault. It’s just how the freelance writing game gets played every day. You have to remember that being a freelance writer is not a secure profession.

Freelance writing, by definite, is a mobile occupation. If you’re not literally moving, you are least traveling from one assignment to another. If you’ve become used to the idea of having someone else do the legwork of getting your projects for you this can be difficult at first. You may have inadvertantly slipped into a writing rut.

What happens then? Well, you either curl up in a little ball on the floor behind your desk or you get back to doing the work yourself and finding out what it takes to beat out the competition. (Remember, fellow writers, the competition is fierce.) Take the opportunity to really begin a plan to diversify your freelance writing sources.

What Do You Need To Do?

First, you should start looking around for new opportunities. Don’t just stick with the same old, same old. Expand yourself. Try for magazine work if you haven’t yet. Make the transition from ghostwriting to credited work. Locate new teams to join if that is your preference. The bottom line is that you need to do something. Don’t let self-pity keep you from acting.

Second, you may find that you have a lot more interests than you thought when you have the time to consider your next step. If you are on a time crunch because you still have to make ends meet, then narrow down your interests to the top five and then start finding projects that focus on those niches. Again, you have to focus on something or you will end up doing nothing. Seize any good opportunities that come your way. The idea is to keep moving.

Third, whatever you do, don’t think that since you’ve found something to close the gap in your workload that you just exchange it and stay put. No, that’s not what you’re after. If you lose focus like that you’ll likely find yourself in the same position without work a month from now. Once you have an assignment to ease the financial burden a bit, keep looking around for more sources. If you can find reoccuring ones that will allow you to maintain your other obligations, the more secure you will become. The goal is diversification.

In the end, you’ll feel better about freelancing writing, if you simply have a good selection of work to keep you fresh. A small group of writing sources will keep you from work lapses if you learn to recognize the limitations of each. Multiple streams of income are far more secure than one, believe me.

Now, get out there and keep writing! Until next time. 

This is a reprint from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s site.

The news has been plastered all over the web: Seth Godin announced his most recent book, Linchpin, will be the last to be published traditionally. He blogged about it today:

Moving On

Linchpin will be the last book I publish in a traditional way.

One of the poxes on an author’s otherwise blessed life is people who ask, "what’s your next book," even if some of them haven’t read the last one. (Jeff did, of course). To answer your question, this book is my next book. I think the ideas in Linchpin are my life’s work, and I’m going to figure out the best way to spread those ideas, in whatever form they take. I also have some new, smaller projects in the works, and no doubt some bigger ones around the corner.

A little background: For ten years or so, beginning in 1986, I was a book packager. Sort of like a movie producer, but for books. My team and I created 120 published books and pitched another 600 ideas, all of which were summarily rejected. Some of the published books were flops, others were huge bestsellers. It was a lot of fun. As a book packager, you wake up in the morning and say, "what sort of book can I invent/sell/organize/write/produce today?"

It took a year or so, but I finally figured out that my customer wasn’t the reader or the book buyer, it was the publisher. If the editor didn’t buy my book, it didn’t get published. Here’s the thing: I liked having editors as my customers. These are smart, motivated and really nice people who are happy to talk with you about what they want and what they believe. Good customers to have. (In all of those years, only one publisher stole any of my ideas, no check ever bounced, and no publisher ever broke a promise to me).

When I decided to become focused on being an author, the logical thing to do was to sell to that same group of people. And it worked. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some great editors, and my current publisher, Portfolio, has been patient, flexible and, did I mention, patient. Adrian Zackheim, who runs the imprint, is exactly what you’d hope for, even if the architecture of his industry is fundamentally broken.

Authors need publishers because they need a customer. Readers have been separated from authors by many levels–stores, distributors, media outlets, printers, publishers–there were lots of layers for many generations, and the editor with a checkbook made the process palatable to the writer. For ten years, I had a publisher as a client (with some fun self-published adventures along the way). Twelve bestsellers later, I’ve thought hard about what it means to have a traditional publisher.

Read the rest of the post on Seth Godin‘s site.

There is no more difficult question for a writer to address than the balancing of their intended communication. Readers are not clones. Logical ReaderG may be very smart about plot nuances, while empathetic ReaderT may be intuitive about character motives.

Whether you’re writing genre fiction or literary fiction, how do you accommodate varying levels of audience taste and sophistication? There’s no easy answer here because the problem is not simply one of revelation. If you’ve written a murder mystery, and at the end of the story none of your readers knows who the murderer is, then yes, you failed. On the other hand, if you’ve written a literary piece that attempts to describe torture by means of a subtle metaphor, yet nobody has any idea that your story is about torture, then maybe you’re not showing your work to the right people.

What’s critical in both of these examples is calibration, which you should think of as an intrinsic part of your authorial intent. (It can be tempting to talk about markets in such instances, but I don’t think you should do that. Markets speak to money, not craft.) Your job as a writer is to meet your craft responsibilities, and calibrating your stories for your intended audience is one such obligation.

Again, if you’re writing a murder mystery, you want every single reader at the end of the book to know who the murderer was. To achieve that goal, you will — regardless how oblique or subtle you’ve been in other ways — write something like this: “The murderer is none other than…Mr. Blithers!” And in the mystery genre you pretty much have an obligation to be that bald in your explanation.

On the other hand, if you’re writing a literary work, you don’t want to bludgeon your readers with literal metaphors. Writing, “Each day passed like a day on the rack,” is not simply inelegant, it’s going to turn off readers who appreciate subtlety, which is a de facto definition of the literary audience. Unfortunately, calibrating your story for the sophistication of a literary audience is not only difficult, it may distort your intention as an author. Balancing these two needs — your own, and the needs of your readers — never gets easy, no matter how much experience you have.

How much should you do to explain your work to readers? How determined should you be to make sure your message gets through? There’s no easy answer. Again, you have to take feedback on a case-by-case basis, and you have to ask yourself whether any particular confused or oblivious reader is a reader you intended to speak to.

Please note, however, that this is not a license to dismiss feedback you do not like. In my experience, writers who dismiss feedback because they think a reader doesn’t understand their genius are more common than truly oblivious readers.

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.