Think

Opinion pieces offering commentary on various aspects of book culture, publishing and self-publishing.

Break Out Of Your Funk

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This post by John Grover originally appeared as a guest post on The Wredheaded Writer on 4/21/14.

For about twenty-five years, I’ve been having a love affair with writing horror. I’ve been writing for as long as I could hold a pen but I really took it seriously around the age of eighteen and wrote my first serious horror story. After that I wrote a novel. The short story was picked up by a magazine that went out of business soon after and the novel still sits in my closet, unpublished. Did that stop me from writing? Not in the least!

I love writing. It’s part of who I am; it makes me infinitely happy and I’ve written horror since I was able to read the likes of Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft. I never have a lack of ideas or the ever-growing list of projects but sometimes I discover that what I truly lack is time and energy.

There never seems to be enough time to write everything I want and there are days when I’m just too tired to care, too tired to put in the time and think to myself where did that young guy go that wrote every single day no matter what?

 

Click here to read the full post on The Wredheaded Writer.

 

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Fiction: Let’s Get Out of the Restaurant

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This post by Rebecca Makkai originally appeared on Ploughshares on 8/4/14.

“I need to tell you something,” he said. He twirled his spaghetti around his fork.

She sipped her wine. “What is it?”

“Well.” He shoved the tangle of spaghetti in his mouth and chewed.

She fiddled with her spoon.

Suddenly, the waitress appeared. She had a grease stain on her apron. Her nametag read Renee. She symbolized harsh reality. “Can I get you somethin’ more, hon?”

He smiled and shook his head. He returned to his spaghetti. The waitress walked off, probably thinking about her ex-husband.

“What is it?” she asked him, tearing off a hunk of bread.

“I think,” he said, stirring his spaghetti in its blood-red sauce, “that we should stop perfunctorily setting fictional scenes in restaurants.”

Okay, a major caveat: Both of my novels have restaurant scenes. If you write, you’ve probably set scenes in diners, in coffee shops, in cafés, in bars, in fancy French bistros.

Here’s why you do it, why I do it, why we all do it:

-The restaurant is a semi-private, semi-public space. People can have a conversation, but there’s always the threat of exposure, of embarrassment.

 

Click here to read the full post on Ploughshares.

 

Advice For Young Writers

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This post by Nathan Bransford originally appeared on his blog on 7/21/14.

I often receive e-mails from young writers in high school and even younger, and I’m always so impressed with them and even a little bit jealous. I had no idea I wanted to be a writer when I was in high school and I rue all those years I could have spent honing my craft. And even if I had known I wanted to be a writer, I didn’t have the Internet to reach out to other authors and learn more about what it takes to write a novel.

These young people are getting such a head start on their careers, and I can’t wait to see the incredible books they produce.

There’s a long tradition of writers offering advice to young writers, perhaps none greater than Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I can’t top that, but here’s my own modest contribution to the genre.

Here’s my advice for young writers:

Don’t write for the writer you are now. Write for the writer you’re going to become.

Writers aren’t born, they are made. It takes most writers years and years to hone their craft, and it’s helpful to have had years and years of reading experience now. By the time you’ve reached high school you have lived enough to have tasted the world and it may feel like you’re ready to channel it all into a novel, but don’t expect that your writerly success will come immediately.

 

Click here to read the full post, which goes on to share more specific advice and tips, on Nathan Bransford’s blog.

 

The Secret Rules of Adjective Order

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This post by Katy Waldman originally appeared on Slate on 8/6/14.

It is a lovely warm August day outside, and I am wearing a green loose top. Does the second part of that sentence sound strange to you? Perhaps you think I should have written “loose green top.” You’re not wrong (though not entirely right, because descriptivist linguistics): An intuitive code governs the way English speakers order adjectives. The rules come so naturally to us that we rarely learn about them in school, but over the past few decades language nerds have been monitoring modifiers, grouping them into categories, and straining to find logic in how people instinctively rank those categories.

If you’re someone whose reflexes scatter the moment you try to lift the veil on your unconscious, this fascinating little-known field (little-known fascinating field?) will drive you nuts. On the other hand, thinking about how adjectives work may bounce you to an epistemological Zen state, wherein you can contemplate amid flutes what it means to partake of Redness and whether former child actress means something different from child former actress. Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.

Maybe I am overqualifying this article about qualifiers (or is that the point?).

 

Click here to read the full post on Slate.

 

C’mon, Book Marketing Isn’t That Hard

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This post by JW Manus originally appeared on her site on 8/2/14.

I see and hear about a lot of writers wanting to sign an agent and go for a traditional deal because, “The agent and publisher know how to market my book and I don’t. It’s too hard.”

Nuh-uh.

Here’s how it works: Agents know how to market to certain editors; Editors know how to market to their editorial heads and marketing departments; Marketing departments know how to market to retail distributors. What none of them know (or maybe they don’t bother with) is how to market to readers. That’s the writer’s job. Trad or indie, if you don’t know how to market, your books are sunk. In fact, if you don’t have a marketing base before you submit to either an agent or editor, your chances of even getting a second look are slim to none.

What’s a poor writer to do? Panic is not an option. Truly, marketing is NOT that hard. Basically, all marketing is: Being in the right place in front of the right people with the right product.

 

Click here to read the full post on JW Manus’ site.

 

THE OWL: Pulling the Ultimate “All-Nighter”

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This post by Bob Forward originally appeared on the Brash Books blog on 7/14/14.

The Owl books were a lot of fun to write. The concept of a private detective who didn’t sleep spawned itself almost naturally from my lifestyle at the time.

I was young enough (and dumb enough) so that I would routinely stay awake for three nights in a row. I’m sure you’ve been there. You start by pulling an all-nighter for some test or work deadline. Then you stay up a second night celebrating the successful completion of aforementioned test or deadline. At which point, you are running on fumes and probably not making the best decisions. So you decide to stay up a third night just to see if you can do it.

 

Justice Never Sleeps

Somewhere in there (probably during one of those third nights) I created a character who never slept at all. I realized such a character would have a lot of advantages, especially in a climate such as Los Angeles. Every day I’d read about some fugitive from justice apprehended while hiding in a hotel or a relative’s home. They were always caught staying somewhere. They had to – they had to sleep.

But a man who didn’t sleep wouldn’t need to stop. He could sit down to rest, but he’d always be on guard. He wouldn’t have to go unconscious for a third of his life. He could do things. Exciting things.

Like, y’know, kill people.

 

Click here to read the full post on the Brash Books Blog.

 

Does "Novel" Now Mean Any Book?

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This post by Ben Yagoda originally appeared on Slate on 8/4/14.

I was taken aback recently to pick up an (unnamed) magazine for which I’d written an article and see my brief bio begin with the words: “Ben Yagoda is a novelist. … ” I am not a novelist, never have been, and have not (since the age of 15) even had any aspirations in that direction. When I looked into the possible reasons for the error, I came to understand that the person who wrote the bio wasn’t misinformed or making stuff up, but rather took “novelist” to mean the same as “author,” or, more specifically, “writer of books,” and maybe even more specifically than that, “writer of more or less meritorious books.”

A light bulb went off. I teach mostly writing and journalism workshops, but every once in a while, in class discussions or writing assignments, students will have reason to refer to particular nonfiction books—as I say, meritorious books, so not a guide to using your digital camera or naming your baby—and on numerous occasions they have referred to them as “novels.” I never gave this much thought till I had a conversation a few months ago with my colleague Kristen Poole, who teaches Renaissance literature. She told me that her students very frequently write things like “Shakespeare’s novel Hamlet.”

 

Click here to read the full post on Slate.

 

Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch In Conversation With J.A. Konrath

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This post by J.A. Konrath originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 8/1/14.

Joe: Yesterday I fisked Mike Shatkin, who openly brags he doesn’t read my blog, and has removed my comments from his blog because he felt them too long.

I also fisked Michael Cader from Publishers Lunch.

Cader, however, showed he doesn’t fear debate, and had no problem sharing his opinion in a forum where many have a contrary point of view. He responded to my points in the comment section, and that took integrity and more than a little bit of guts.

Michael Cader: Hi, Joe. I’m glad we have at least some points of agreement. Some of your other replies are tangential rather than on point.

Joe: Thanks for responding, Michael. While it isn’t unprecedented for people I blog about to respond, it is certainly unusual, and shows both an open mind and a willingness to engage. You have my respect.

Cader: Amazon is very careful with their words, even if not elegant. The post begins, “A key objective is lower e-book prices.” A lot of traditional media have written the post up as if it said “The key objective…” What are the other key objectives, Amazon? Why do your conversations with people in the trade talk about looking for your fare share of the “business efficiencies” produced by a rising ebook market and your investments, while your public words are only about pricing objectives.

Joe: Well, we agree that Amazon is careful with their words. It’s unusual to hear an observation like that leveled as a criticism. Does Cader prefer the Hachette approach, which is to clear English what a chainsaw is to a tree…?

 

Click here to read the full post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

 

These Romance Writers Ditched Their Publishers For Ebooks — And Made Millions

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This article by Mandi Woodruff originally appeared on Yahoo! Finance on 8/1/14.

In early 2010, things weren’t going very well for San Francisco-based romance novelist Bella Andre. Brick-and-mortar bookstores were shutting down in large numbers, and after seven years, eight books and two publishers, she learned she had been axed from her latest contract.

“I was hanging on by my fingernails,” says Andre, 41, who was trying to carve out a niche in contemporary romance. Peers advised her to try a different pen name, to change genres, to write anything but love stories. With a degree in economics from Stanford University and a background in music, she wasn’t short on career options.

Then a friend suggested she look into self-publishing. At the time, Amazon.com’s  (AMZN) direct publishing platform, which allows just about anyone to publish and sell their books online, was beginning to gain traction among professional writers. After years of bending her stories to the will and opinions of publishers, editors and literary agents, Andre found the prospect of having complete autonomy over her material very appealing.

“As an author, I was not high up on the publishing food chain and [my ideas] were rarely ever listened to,” she says. “I took my friend’s advice and I dove right into self-publishing.”

 

Click here to read the full story on Yahoo! Finance.

 

How to Write a Novel: 7 Tips Everyone Can Use

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This post by Jennifer McMahon originally appeared as a guest post on Writer’s Digest on 5/22/13.

1. Write the story you’d most want to read.

Don’t write a story just because you think it might be a bestseller or that it would make Great Aunt Edna proud. Think about the books you love, the ones you really lose yourself in. If those are mysteries, then don’t try to write an historical romance or a quiet literary novel. It might not be anything genre-specific that you love, but a certain voice, or type of story, or kinds of characters. Write what you love. Do me a favor — right now, today, start a list of all your crazy obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day.

 

2. Begin with character.

Make her flawed and believable. Let her live and breathe and give her the freedom to surprise you and take the story in unexpected directions. If she’s not surprising you, you can bet she’ll seem flat to your readers. One exercise I always do when I’m getting to know a character is ask her to tell me her secrets. Sit down with a pen and paper and start with, “I never told anybody…” and go from there, writing in the voice of your character.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer’s Digest.

 

The Book That Wasn’t: 5 Fiction Writers Talk About their Novels in Drawers

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This post by Chloe Benjamin originally appeared on The Millions on 7/28/14.

“For every book I publish,” a writing teacher once told me, “there’s one book I don’t.” At the age of eighteen, armed with a truly bad novel and a rather absurd sense of optimism, this line did not exactly resonate. But as I amassed rejection slips of every size—and once my first novel was rejected by a pantheon of New York publishers—I realized that nearly every writer has a novel in a drawer: a manuscript that, due to any number of reasons (rejection, timing, chance, diversion) never quite becomes a fully-formed book.

By the time an author’s debut hits bookstores, it’s very likely been preceded by a string of books that weren’t: doomed half-novels; slivers of inspiration that curled up and went to sleep; baggy short stories that grew into novellas, then stubbornly refused to grow any more. Some become first drafts, but never find the right agent; others find an agent, but not a publisher. In general, Novels in Drawers are an unruly breed, prone to shape-shifting and border-crossing. Some NIDs lie prone for years before being resurrected and, miraculously, finished; others have their characters or ideas recruited to breathe new life into a different manuscript.

What are we to do to with our books that weren’t? How can we learn from them, and when should we let them go? Below, five fiction writers on the story they still haven’t been able to tell.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Millions.

 

Narrative Voices – Part Two: Third Person Limited

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This post by Debby Harris originally appeared on The Blood-Red Pencil on 7/18/14.

As noted in my previous post, in First Person narration, the angle of vision is “single-track”. The central character is also the story-teller who addresses the reader directly, uses first person pronouns for self-reference, and recounts events in his/her own words.

In Third Person limited narration, the angle of vision is similarly “single-track”. There is only one focal character, and our access to plot developments in channeled through his/her personal perceptions, experiences, and discoveries. But there the similarity ends. In Third Person Limited narration, the focal character is being viewed through a telescope wielded by the author. And this makes a Critical Difference.

In Third Person Ltd. Narration, the character is oblivious to the fact that he/she is under observation. Meanwhile, the author plays the role of an on-the-scenes reporter operating under cover. Like a Nato observer, he/she uses third person pronouns when reporting narrative developments to the reader – ostensibly without bias.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Blood-Red Pencil.

 

Vulnerable Characters: How to Write Compelling Characters

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This post by Jean Oram originally appeared on her The Helpful Writer blog on 12/13/13.

What makes a character so compelling you have to laugh and cry with them through the book’s adventures? That you get so involved in it all that the author creates a fan instantaneously?

One of the things that really works–particularly in romance–is a vulnerable main character. If you don’t believe me…think of Wolverine from X-Men. In the movies he has a vulnerable side that makes women swoon.

To quote author Julie Farrell “Both Beth and Mandy [from Jean Oram’s Blueberry Springs series] have a great balance of being ‘feminine’ and powerful. And sometimes being strong means making yourself vulnerable. It’s not just about arm wrestling! … Those are the times where the rewards are greater. When you go to the place where you confront what you fear the most, you’ll come out the other side totally transformed.”

Didn’t she put that so well? It struck such a cord with me and really put words to what was swirling around in my head. In fact, our conversation lead me to look at the books I was currently reading and which heroines had really dragged me into their journies lately.

And yep. Vulnerability was top of the list.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Helpful Writer.

 

Amazon Speaks: We Want Lower eBook Prices from Hachette

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This post by Nate Hoffelder originally appeared on The Digital Reader on 7/21/14.

Amazon hasn’t said much concerning their ongoing contract dispute with the French media conglomerate Lagardère and its US publishing subsidiary Hachette, and today the retailer broke their silence with what is only their third official statement (not counting the leaked letter).

Like the first two statements, Amazon isn’t saying much. According to a message posted on Amazon’s forums (and copied below), one of the sticking points in the negotiations is the price of ebooks. We of course knew this from the WSJ interview in which Russ Grandinetti said little and avoided defending Amazon, but Amazon expands upon that earlier statement with a call for higher author royalties on ebooks.

The statement below lays out the math Amazon uses to justify their push for lower ebook prices, but it’s worth noting that the statement is somewhat misleading.

Amazon would like you to think that most ebooks can be priced at or below $10, even going so far as to point out that “there will be legitimate reasons for a small number of specialized titles” that will cost more, but what they hope you won’t realize is that they are glossing over whole swathes of nonfiction content, including textbooks, reference manuals, professional books, and works that are much longer and more expensive to create than your average novel.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Digital Reader.

 

Literary Hangovers: Share Your Rude Awakenings From Fictional Reveries

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This post by Alison Flood originally appeared on the Guardian Books Blog on 7/15/14.

After a heavy bout of reading – or a bout of heavy reading – the return to reality can be painful. Tell us about your worst mornings after the book before.

There are certain books I’ve finished and, looking up, have found the world to be a gloomier place for having done so. I was reminded, thanks to the novelist Harriet Evans on Twitter last week, of how The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden had exactly this effect on me. Her story of that “hot French August, [when] we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages” – when the Grey children, left alone in a small French hotel while their mother is ill, fall into danger – exerted such a powerful grip on me that I read it desperately, obsessively, and felt slightly ill when I emerged.

I am indebted, then, to the team at Epic Reads for dubbing this feeling the “book hangover”, in a neat, funny little video. That’s exactly what it is. The experience was good; the aftermath, not so much.

 

Click here to read the full post on the Guardian Books Blog.