Beverly Magid's Blog: Marketing Is Harder Than Writing-, page 6

FOR WOMEN ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL

The protagonists of my two novels (FLYING OUT OF BROOKLYN and SOWN IN TEARS) have been young Jewish females, at different historical times, but both faced with problems of independence and changes in their lives.  With the controversy kicked up by the book, "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg, everyone is re-thinking what's important to women, as if this is a new question.  Women have been thinking about this for centuries, never coming up with a formula for all women.  Why should there be one answer anyway.  The only thing that's important is having the choice to pursue the path that suits you best.  Careers, marriage, children, no children, or a combination of all those should be available to everyone, regardless of gender.  It's that lack of choice that holds us women back.  How do you pursue a career if you have no help with child care?  How do keep up with your marriage if you don't have flexibility with work hours?   My heroines struggle with their problems and conflicts and their resolution fits only their situation. If I could come up with a one-answer-fits-all, I would be crowned Queen or elected President or sell even more books than Ms. Sandberg.  Maybe I'll try with the next book.

Private Writing in A Public Place

Writers, writing teachers all have touted writing in a public place.   Sometimes alone, with a partner, timed, untimed - it's all done with the idea that once you put your pen to paper (that's assuming you can still use a pen or pencil) you keep writing for an assigned time. And it's true that the very publicness of the situation somehow turns on the writing faucet and it all pours out, to stretch the metaphor to the limit.  Give yourself a prompt - a word, a phrase, anything that will stiumlate the brain and most often, words will appear on the paper (assuming you still use paper and not a computer).  Often it's not restricted to the prompt, you can far afield, who cares, it's a way and an exercise to get the ideas and words out of your head and onto the page.  Sometimes you will even write something that you can use later in a bigger work or it might thaw some frozen area of the brain and let you actually create.

It's more motivating to have a partner, a regular set time and a place you feel safe in. It's stimulating, liberating, invigorating and it reminds you that you really are a writer. Save those pages, they may come in handy someday when the ideas have become a little stale and you need some inspiration.

GRAND AVENUE PARK BOOK FEST

Just imagine a beautiful Los Angeles afternoon, downtown in the new green space called the Grand Avenue Park, just between the Music Center and City Hall, holding the first annual Book Festival.  It was a tribute to independent book publishers, sellers, authors and poets.  Music, games and story telling for children, readings for the adults, food trucks, kids splashing in the fountain, a fun event for families, people of all ages.

A chance to mingle with other writers, schmooze with potential book buyers (we love those) and after coming back from New York, a look at LA as I want it to be:  a reading, involved, intellectually curious city.
What a great way to spend a Saturday!  What a treat!

To Sequel Or Not To Sequel

I've found in the two novels I've written, that my story is an on-going journey for each of my characters.  Some writers I'm sure like to tie up all the details in a book, so the reader knows exactly what the ending is and where the characters will be going.  I don't find life to be like that so I tend to write the same way, a possibility of an ending, ambiguous, a maybe, perhaps even a definite maybe.

So when people ask me if I'm writing a sequel to either book, it's like asking me to be a fortune teller.  Now I have to see into the future and take them on a new journey.  I toyed with the idea for the first novel, FLYING OUT OF BROOKLYN.  I thought perhaps I should consider Judith, then her daughter, then her daughter's daughter.  Three generations, twenty years apart.  But with the advent of the second book, SOWN IN TEARS, reviewers have actually suggested that they're hoping to see a continuation of the story, follow Leah and her two sons.Where do they go?  What happens to them?  Even I'm getting intrigued.

I have to admit I'm never happier than when I'm starting out on a research project, gathering the elements that will become the characters' world.  Of course the trick is not to get so involved with your research and the minutia that you dig up, that you forget your story and the conflicts, upsets, problems, victories (sometimes) that your readers are waiting for.

Never thought I'd be starting up so soon, but if you want to be a writer, you have to write and write and write and write. Turn off the emails, unplug the tv, silence the phone.

What a way to start the New Year!

Hacking, auto mishap, computer glitch - what a way to start the New Year.  But with today's technology, these have become normal events to be endured and overcome. Even technology can't be relied on. I remember the first time the computer went out in the midst of writing FLYING OUT OF BROOKLYN.  OMG, what am I going to do, no computer.  Well, of course there pens and pencils and paper, what did people do even before those implements?  Make marks with a rock on stone. We're too tied to too many "things." I don't want to wax sentimental, but things don't matter when the day or our life is closing down.  It helps if they make you comfortable but they don't define you.  Or do they?

Compared to what others have gone through lately, blips in technology can be tolerated.  Even the heroine in my second novel, SOWN IN TEARS, puts me to shame when I start complaining.  I'll try to go with the flow in 2013. Really what better choice to we have.

Sometimes it just takes a good book.....

I am so often years behind in my reading.  For instance I just read Wallace Stegner's "Crossing to Safey," a novel about four friends, which is quiet, observant, with great depth, but little action.  His descriptions are infinite and beautiful, writing the way I'd like to, with details, metaphors, bringing you right into the scene.  It seems that so little occurs, but it's the lives of four people, their friendships, their dreams, their flaws.  Such beautiful writing.  To write a book which remains alive and vital years after it was written, for a reader to share, to be moved by - I'm sure that's the dream of every writer, certainly it's mine.

With the horrors of the past few weeks, I was grateful to read something quiet, smart and insightful, which took me away from the bloodshed of outside events.  It seemed that hatred and anger were everywhere, here and around the world.  We need to hold on and notice the beauty that still exists everyday, be grateful for the smiles that still shine, the children who can still play, the books that can still captivate, especially our next breath which gives us the chance for a new start with each inhalation.

I'm also grateful for the rave press reviews for my book, Sown in Tears, the loved ones in my life and the hope that the New Year will be filled with days of wonder for us all.

I'm not really a cruise person, but......

This Thanksgiving I joined friends on a week-long cruise.  We all started the conversation, by saying, "I'm not really a cruise person but...." Then we all agreed to go, seven adults and two kids. I believe it's the obligation of a writer to experience different cultures, taste new foods, see lots of places, not necessarily out of town, you can even in your own backyard, if you keep an open heart and wide-open eyes.

I think a big ship line homogenizes everything to fit the widest range of people.  But we decided to opt for excursions in Costa Maya, Belize City, Roatan and Cozamel, run and operated by locals, so we could at least get a little taste of the different places, from people who lived there.  And we started in New Orleans where the ship was docked.  Tennesee Williams' house, William Faulkner's house, great Creole food, authentic blues music, and beignets from Cafe du Monde, I give thanks just for that.

So, I'm still not a cruise person, but.....it was a great holiday.  Hope yours was too.

Who Me, Interviewing John Lennon?

I'm always amazed at the people who start out in life knowing what they want to do and where they're going.  Sometimes I've envied their focused passion while I was still all over the place, going from one career to another.  But lately I've been reflecting on the unexpected paths I've taken and begun to realize that I wouldn't have had some of the adventures if I had stuck to the tried, true and expected.

For instance, there I was in Philadelphia deciding if I should accept a nursing scholarship and instead opted to become an x-ray technician. Whoa!  Where did that all come from?  That's another story for another time.  But that decision led to going to New York and surprisingly discovering the world of acting.  A surprise which opened up all my creative juices.  Little off-off-off-off Broadway theaters where sometimes the cast outnumbered the audience.  But always learning to observe, to remember, to let the emotions flow.  Good practice for a writer as well as an actor.

When you're an aspiring actor, you need a flexible day-job and one that I had was working for a radio/records publication where I found myself ultimately interviewing and reviewing music and musicians.  My first byline, leading to a music industry magazine and Los Angeles.  Who would have expected the x-ray technician from Philadelphia to be doing one of the first interviews with John Lennon after he split from the Beatles?  Sitting in a garden, sipping orange juice and ruminating with The Beatle, about fame and music and the group's place in history.  Or laughing hysterically with the group Monty Python as they answered questions in their own inimitable style, which was rowdy and raucous. Or seeing the Golden Gate Bridge glowing at sunset with a member of Blood Sweat and Tears.   Or as a publicist helping to plan Paul McCartney's party on the Queen Mary for his fist solo group, Wings.  Or sitting in Venice, Italy, holding off the papparazzi from Rutger Hauer at the Venice Film Festival. Or juggling the media backstage at the Grammys after Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond had just finished their amazing duet of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore."

And that was all before I had the rewarding, extraordinary experience of getting into writing fiction.  You just never know where life can take you if you're open to the adventure of new journeys.  I reccommend it, I never worry about kids who aren't sure of their life's path. Give it time I say. And stay open.

Giving Birth To A Book

Not being a mother, it's probably dangerous to equate anything with giving birth to a child.  Mothers around the world will gird up and unite in taking me down for my presumptuousness. But to a writer, a musician, a painter or any creative person, the time and pangs you go through in order to bring forth something that you have created certainly feels reminiscent of being pregnant and finally giving birth.

That's how I've been feeling about sending out a new novel, Sown In Tears, after working on it and mulling over it for several years.  Even an elephant has its baby sooner than that.  And of course, I want everyone to consider my "baby" to be beautiful and very, very smart.  And naturally, I hope that everyone will run out and greet my child by buying the book immediately. 

But a good friend who also happens to be a doctor once gave me some good advice when I lamented that I might never have millions of readers like perhaps the author of some blockbuster like Fifty Shades of Gray.  He said that when he helps or saves just one patient's life, he considers that better than winning the lottery and that if even one person loves my book or gets some insight from it, I, too, should feel that is reward enough. In Judaism it's said that if you save one person, it's as though you've saved the entire world.  It's true, that anytime a reader tells me that they have enjoyed either of my novels, I feel as good as if I've saved the universe.  I'm sure mothers all over the world would say the same thing.

How did you come up with that idea?

With my new book, SOWN IN TEARS, now out and available, I was asked what made me interested in the setting of Russia, 1905.  Before you focus on an idea for a novel, you have to be certain that you can live with that story for many months, for me, it's years.  Of course, if you get tired of the idea or it leads nowhere for you, you can always stop, put it away, throw it in the wastebasket.  I've known writers who do most or all of a book and then dump it in the nearest compost heap.  In my case, for this second novel, it was something my father said on a tape he made about growing up in Russia.  I didn't hear this tape until long after he had died. I learned about the conversation he had at his 65th birthday party, given by his nieces and nephews, when I was living on the west coast and unable to attend.
He talked about how during the influenza epidemic, which rocked the world in 1918, killing millions, his mother shuttled him from relative to relative in the area of Russia where they lived, trying to make sure he didn't catch the disease.  I had been lucky enough when I was growing up to know all four of my grandparents, so I was struck by the image of my Bubba protecting her youngest child from harm.  That was the seed that burrowed its way into my brain and would not go away.  At the time I had planned to write a more contemporary story since my first novel was also a bit historical, taking place during World War 2. But the time when Russian Jews lived in perpetual danger from both natural causes and the hatred of those in power kept haunting me.  All of us are the product of immigrant stories which brought our families to this country, looking for a better life.

SOWN IN TEARS is totally fiction and not a portrait of my grandmother, except for the strength and tenacity that I hope my protagonist, Leah, shows in protecting her own two children. Everything else is a product of my imagination, fed by facts that I researched and a trip I took to Russia and the Ukraine.