Vincent Zandri's Blog, page 27
February 28, 2010
Southern City Mysteries Interview
This is from the latest interview I did this week with one of the hottest mystery/thriller blogs in the states:
http://southerncitymysteries.blogspot...
Moonlight Falls
http://southerncitymysteries.blogspot...
Moonlight Falls
February 5, 2010
Publishing's New World (Wide Web) Order
The book publishing industry has changed drastically in the eight years between my last commercially published novels, As Catch Can (Delacorte Press/Dell) Godchild (Bantam/Dell) and my newest small press noir effort, Moonlight Falls (RJBuckley). The most obvious of which is the utter explosion of social media and the tremendous marketing opportunities available there.
Eight years ago I had a single AOL account where I’d receive email and, on occasion, peek at the news. The internet back then was more or less an extension of both the television and the telephone. But today, I have a website, www.vincentzandri.com, which can be updated instantly. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. And this article is appearing for you not in newsprint but on your computer screen. See the hyperlinks? Just click onto them. A whole new universe opens up to you with each double-click.
Articles are no longer articles. They’re interactive, multi-media, multi-dimensional “blogs.” I have no idea where the term comes from, but I do know that the blog is a way to express participatory journalism in as real-time as possible. Eight years ago, I had to put my freelance journalism career on hold since writing articles and sending them out to pubs via snail mail along with an SASE, was exceedingly time consuming. I concentrated on writing fiction, the old fashioned way. When a manuscript was ready, I printed the hardcopy, packaged it up, pasted a bunch of stamps on it, and sent it out to my agent. And waited. Sometimes, for weeks.
Back in those days, I had no other income source than my fiction. Today, not only do I make money from my fiction, I’m a professional blogger. As an experienced photojournalist, blogging is something I simply fell into. You can check out just a few of my blogs here: Embedded in Africa, The Vincent Zandri Vox, and Dangerous Dispatches. You don’t need to do anything other than double-click on the link. It’s that easy.
When I complete a new fiction manuscript, I simply add it to an email as an attachment and send it electronically to my agent, whom I’ve never met in the flesh. She will then read the book on her Kindle. Suggested revisions will be emailed back to me as an attachment with computer generated corrections. When the book in finally completed, she will query publishers by email. Welcome to the new world publishing order.
I now deal with CMS systems, podcasts, and video links. I submit photos as “gifs” or “jpegs.” Meetings with my editors and fellow freelance writers from around the globe are conducted via Skype or Webinars. If I’m not at my computer, I can utilize my Blackberry touch-screen as a fully capable mini-computer. In fact, I often send photographs directly from my phone to Facebook in preparation for a new food “video blog” my girlfriend and I are thinking of starting.
For my first couple of books, I drove around to bookstores where I signed copies of the printed novels. I drove to new York City, flew to Philly and L.A. Come February I begin my first ever “Virtual Tour,” because after all, my new novel is gauged not necessarily by how well it’s doing in the independent bookstores, but what my Amazon rating is. The Virtual Book Tour of interviews, guest blogs, reviews, flash trailers, websites and more, will assure me success as a traditionally published author in a non-traditional online, cyberspace environment. Which leads me to the news I got just this morning. Moonlight Falls has just been released on Kindle. I’ve never even seen a Kindle in person.
But despite the publishing world wide web and the electronic revolution, you can’t replace a good old fashioned literary reading. You know, the kind where the writer makes the walk to the podium with all the visible anxiety of a man walking the plank. You can see the sweat beading on his forehead, see the fear in his eyes, hear the crack in his voice when he begins to read…Oh, hey wait just one moment. This is the new world publishing order we’re talking about here. See for yourself. Here’s me reading from Moonlight Falls. All you gotta do is double-click on the link: Youtube.
Vincent Zandri is an award-winning novelist, essayist and freelance photojournalist. His novel As Catch Can (Delacorte) was touted in two pre-publication articles by Publishers Weekly and was called “Brilliant” upon its publication by The New York Post. The Boston Herald attributed it as “The most arresting first crime novel to break into print this season.” Other novels include Godchild (Bantam/Dell) and Permanence (NPI). Translated into several languages including Japanese and the Dutch, Zandri’s novels have also been sought out by numerous major movie producers, including Heyday Productions and DreamWorks. Moonlight Falls is his fourth novel. He is the author of the blogs, Dangerous Dispatches and Embedded in Africa for RT ( Russia Today TV) which have been syndicated and translated in several different languages throughout the world. He also writes for other global publications, including Culture 11, Globalia, Globalspec and more. Zandri’s nonfiction has appeared in New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Game and Fish Magazine and others, while his essays and short fiction have been featured in many journals including Fugue, Maryland Review and Orange Coast Magazine. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and is a 2010 International Thrillerl. Writer’s Awards panel judge. Zandri currently divides his time between New York and Europe. He is the drummer for the Albany-based punk band to Blisterz. You can visit his website at www.vincentzandri.com or his blog at www.vincentzandri.blogspot.com.
Eight years ago I had a single AOL account where I’d receive email and, on occasion, peek at the news. The internet back then was more or less an extension of both the television and the telephone. But today, I have a website, www.vincentzandri.com, which can be updated instantly. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. And this article is appearing for you not in newsprint but on your computer screen. See the hyperlinks? Just click onto them. A whole new universe opens up to you with each double-click.
Articles are no longer articles. They’re interactive, multi-media, multi-dimensional “blogs.” I have no idea where the term comes from, but I do know that the blog is a way to express participatory journalism in as real-time as possible. Eight years ago, I had to put my freelance journalism career on hold since writing articles and sending them out to pubs via snail mail along with an SASE, was exceedingly time consuming. I concentrated on writing fiction, the old fashioned way. When a manuscript was ready, I printed the hardcopy, packaged it up, pasted a bunch of stamps on it, and sent it out to my agent. And waited. Sometimes, for weeks.
Back in those days, I had no other income source than my fiction. Today, not only do I make money from my fiction, I’m a professional blogger. As an experienced photojournalist, blogging is something I simply fell into. You can check out just a few of my blogs here: Embedded in Africa, The Vincent Zandri Vox, and Dangerous Dispatches. You don’t need to do anything other than double-click on the link. It’s that easy.
When I complete a new fiction manuscript, I simply add it to an email as an attachment and send it electronically to my agent, whom I’ve never met in the flesh. She will then read the book on her Kindle. Suggested revisions will be emailed back to me as an attachment with computer generated corrections. When the book in finally completed, she will query publishers by email. Welcome to the new world publishing order.
I now deal with CMS systems, podcasts, and video links. I submit photos as “gifs” or “jpegs.” Meetings with my editors and fellow freelance writers from around the globe are conducted via Skype or Webinars. If I’m not at my computer, I can utilize my Blackberry touch-screen as a fully capable mini-computer. In fact, I often send photographs directly from my phone to Facebook in preparation for a new food “video blog” my girlfriend and I are thinking of starting.
For my first couple of books, I drove around to bookstores where I signed copies of the printed novels. I drove to new York City, flew to Philly and L.A. Come February I begin my first ever “Virtual Tour,” because after all, my new novel is gauged not necessarily by how well it’s doing in the independent bookstores, but what my Amazon rating is. The Virtual Book Tour of interviews, guest blogs, reviews, flash trailers, websites and more, will assure me success as a traditionally published author in a non-traditional online, cyberspace environment. Which leads me to the news I got just this morning. Moonlight Falls has just been released on Kindle. I’ve never even seen a Kindle in person.
But despite the publishing world wide web and the electronic revolution, you can’t replace a good old fashioned literary reading. You know, the kind where the writer makes the walk to the podium with all the visible anxiety of a man walking the plank. You can see the sweat beading on his forehead, see the fear in his eyes, hear the crack in his voice when he begins to read…Oh, hey wait just one moment. This is the new world publishing order we’re talking about here. See for yourself. Here’s me reading from Moonlight Falls. All you gotta do is double-click on the link: Youtube.
Vincent Zandri is an award-winning novelist, essayist and freelance photojournalist. His novel As Catch Can (Delacorte) was touted in two pre-publication articles by Publishers Weekly and was called “Brilliant” upon its publication by The New York Post. The Boston Herald attributed it as “The most arresting first crime novel to break into print this season.” Other novels include Godchild (Bantam/Dell) and Permanence (NPI). Translated into several languages including Japanese and the Dutch, Zandri’s novels have also been sought out by numerous major movie producers, including Heyday Productions and DreamWorks. Moonlight Falls is his fourth novel. He is the author of the blogs, Dangerous Dispatches and Embedded in Africa for RT ( Russia Today TV) which have been syndicated and translated in several different languages throughout the world. He also writes for other global publications, including Culture 11, Globalia, Globalspec and more. Zandri’s nonfiction has appeared in New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Game and Fish Magazine and others, while his essays and short fiction have been featured in many journals including Fugue, Maryland Review and Orange Coast Magazine. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College and is a 2010 International Thrillerl. Writer’s Awards panel judge. Zandri currently divides his time between New York and Europe. He is the drummer for the Albany-based punk band to Blisterz. You can visit his website at www.vincentzandri.com or his blog at www.vincentzandri.blogspot.com.
February 1, 2010
Biting the Nail: The Discipline of Writing
Biting the Nail: The Discipline of Writing
By Vincent Zandri
“Where do you get your discipline?”
That’s the question I’m asked most frequently about my solitary writing life. Most people who work according the programmed schedule of job and career find it inconceivable that a person can actually roll out of bed, face a blank page, and begin to make words. Yet, as writers, that’s what we do. We create and in order to create we have to have discipline. Discipline to work alone, according to our own rules, according to our own high standards, according to our own priorities and curiosities.
Acquiring discipline isn’t so hard when you are passionate about your work—when you have a desire not only to write well, but to do it better than anyone has done it before. At the same time you have to develop a skin of armor in order to feed the obsession. The first most important lesson of the disciplined writing life is learning that you’re not always going to be successful. Most of the time you will fail and must face the resulting rejection head on. That’s the most difficult thing about discipline: carrying on with your work unabated, even in the face of rejection.
So where does my discipline come from?
As clichéd as it sounds, I can only tell you that it comes from deep inside. It’s not something I have to work up, so much as it’s something I have to feed on a daily basis. Discipline means waking up early every day, day in and day out, and writing. It’s writing everyday in isolation no matter what’s happening in my life. Be it sick kids, angry spouses, insolvent bank accounts, a broken toilet, a terrorist attack… I write no matter what. Hemingway called this sometimes impossible but necessary process, “biting the nail.” And anyone who has the discipline to write every day no matter what, understands what biting the nail is all about. Writing, like the discipline it requires, can be an awfully painful process.
Back in 1992, I wrote in my published essay, A Literary Life, “In the morning, weariness begins with darkness. It surrounds me inside my kitchen like a weighted shroud, cumbersome and black. It continues as my fingertips search and locate a light switch next to the telephone, above my son’s hi-chair. White light stings my eyes when I flip it up. There is a clock above the sink…I interpret a big hand and little hand that have not yet made 6:00AM.”
Those were the days when I wrote in the mornings, worked a fulltime job and received rejections everyday. But still, I crawled out of bed and wrote. I guess all these years later, I can truthfully say, discipline is what I had in the place of sleep, in the place of comfort, in the place of security and success. Discipline was and remains the bedfellow I seek when I am at my most lonely.
Eventually the discipline would reap its rewards.
In the 12 years since I’ve earned my MFA from Vermont College, I’ve published three novels, with one on the way this winter. I’ve been translated into numerous languages. I’ve published almost two dozen short stories, countless articles, essays and blogs. I’ve traveled “on assignment” to China, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Africa and more. Along the way I’ve met wonderful people, seen wonderful things, witnessed atrocities, unspeakable disease, hunger and corruption. I’ve written about much of it. Some of it, I’ve simply stored away in my brain for some future story or novel down the road.
For all its rewards, discipline demands stiff payment.
Because of my priorities, I’ve failed at two marriages and many more relationships. I’ve lost friends and lost the faith and trust of family members who have come to think of me as unreliable or flaky at best. Because after all, I tend to use a holiday like Christmas as a time to work, and when family events like birthdays come up, I might be traveling or locked up in my studio with my significant other…Well, you know her name. It starts with a D.
I have managed however, to find a way to balance time with my kids. Not that it’s always been easy. Children are a distraction, no bones about it. But they are also fuel for your discipline. I’m not entirely certain that I could have achieved any kind of success without them. Children open up emotional vaults that would otherwise remain sealed shut. You need to expose the contents of these vaults in your prose.
My writing simply wouldn’t be the same without kids. Now that they’re almost grown up, I still keep them as close as possible without smothering them. When it comes to my children, my philosophy has always been, hug them, tell them you love them, and make them laugh once a day. You’d be surprised how well this works. Also, don’t be afraid to tell them the truth. They know when you’re lying. If you can’t spend time with them because you have to feed the discipline, be honest about it. They will appreciate you for it and come to respect you.
Case and point: it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I’m writing this article. My children are home, just outside the closed door of my studio, where I can hear them engaged in some sort of friendly argument. I’m not doing anything with them per se. But I’m here with them, for them.
This month alone I will write and published 36 short architecture and construction articles, three major blogs, present a revised version of The Concrete Pearl (my fifth novel) to my agent, write one or two features, engage in pre-publicity for Moonlight Falls, and maybe, if there’s time, pen a new piece for my personal blog. In between all this, I’ll juggle time with the kids, time for exercise, time to tip some beers with friends, time for a few road trips, time to be by myself and read. Have I mentioned the discipline required to read books?
One word of warning, the discipline, no matter how beautiful a bedfellow, does not always respond lovingly. Even after you’ve scored a major book contract or two. During my second marriage, I suffered through a writer’s block that lasted five long years, a period during which I published not a single word. The block just happened to coincide with my oldest son’s nervous breakdown and the onset of severe depression (see “Breakdown,” http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/11/12/B...). At that time, as I came close to going broke (after receiving a mid-six figure advance for As Catch Can), I never once stopped working, never once veered from the discipline of waking up every morning and trying to write. “Trying” being the key word here.
Looking back on those difficult years, I realize I wasn’t writing so much as I was just typing, but the process helped me cope with some very difficult and serious issues in my life. If nothing else, the discipline to write can be a mighty powerful therapy.
Eventually the damn breaks, as it did in my case, and I made a return to good writing and publishing. I’m not making millions by any means, but I make a decent living as a freelance journalist and novelist, and that’s all anyone can honestly ask for.
The late great Norman Mailer also understood about the financial ups and downs of being a full-time writer. But more importantly, he understood about the discipline of biting the nail. He wrote 2,500 new words a day right up until the end when his kidneys failed him. It wasn’t the disciple or the talent or the mind that gave out, it was the 84 year old body. I’m told he died with a smile on his face. Not the kind of smile that accompanies peace of mind, sedated painlessness, or “going to the bright light.” But the kind of smile that only a disciplined writer can wear; the sly grin that means you’re about to embark on a brand new adventure, and that you can’t wait to write about it.
By Vincent Zandri
“Where do you get your discipline?”
That’s the question I’m asked most frequently about my solitary writing life. Most people who work according the programmed schedule of job and career find it inconceivable that a person can actually roll out of bed, face a blank page, and begin to make words. Yet, as writers, that’s what we do. We create and in order to create we have to have discipline. Discipline to work alone, according to our own rules, according to our own high standards, according to our own priorities and curiosities.
Acquiring discipline isn’t so hard when you are passionate about your work—when you have a desire not only to write well, but to do it better than anyone has done it before. At the same time you have to develop a skin of armor in order to feed the obsession. The first most important lesson of the disciplined writing life is learning that you’re not always going to be successful. Most of the time you will fail and must face the resulting rejection head on. That’s the most difficult thing about discipline: carrying on with your work unabated, even in the face of rejection.
So where does my discipline come from?
As clichéd as it sounds, I can only tell you that it comes from deep inside. It’s not something I have to work up, so much as it’s something I have to feed on a daily basis. Discipline means waking up early every day, day in and day out, and writing. It’s writing everyday in isolation no matter what’s happening in my life. Be it sick kids, angry spouses, insolvent bank accounts, a broken toilet, a terrorist attack… I write no matter what. Hemingway called this sometimes impossible but necessary process, “biting the nail.” And anyone who has the discipline to write every day no matter what, understands what biting the nail is all about. Writing, like the discipline it requires, can be an awfully painful process.
Back in 1992, I wrote in my published essay, A Literary Life, “In the morning, weariness begins with darkness. It surrounds me inside my kitchen like a weighted shroud, cumbersome and black. It continues as my fingertips search and locate a light switch next to the telephone, above my son’s hi-chair. White light stings my eyes when I flip it up. There is a clock above the sink…I interpret a big hand and little hand that have not yet made 6:00AM.”
Those were the days when I wrote in the mornings, worked a fulltime job and received rejections everyday. But still, I crawled out of bed and wrote. I guess all these years later, I can truthfully say, discipline is what I had in the place of sleep, in the place of comfort, in the place of security and success. Discipline was and remains the bedfellow I seek when I am at my most lonely.
Eventually the discipline would reap its rewards.
In the 12 years since I’ve earned my MFA from Vermont College, I’ve published three novels, with one on the way this winter. I’ve been translated into numerous languages. I’ve published almost two dozen short stories, countless articles, essays and blogs. I’ve traveled “on assignment” to China, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Africa and more. Along the way I’ve met wonderful people, seen wonderful things, witnessed atrocities, unspeakable disease, hunger and corruption. I’ve written about much of it. Some of it, I’ve simply stored away in my brain for some future story or novel down the road.
For all its rewards, discipline demands stiff payment.
Because of my priorities, I’ve failed at two marriages and many more relationships. I’ve lost friends and lost the faith and trust of family members who have come to think of me as unreliable or flaky at best. Because after all, I tend to use a holiday like Christmas as a time to work, and when family events like birthdays come up, I might be traveling or locked up in my studio with my significant other…Well, you know her name. It starts with a D.
I have managed however, to find a way to balance time with my kids. Not that it’s always been easy. Children are a distraction, no bones about it. But they are also fuel for your discipline. I’m not entirely certain that I could have achieved any kind of success without them. Children open up emotional vaults that would otherwise remain sealed shut. You need to expose the contents of these vaults in your prose.
My writing simply wouldn’t be the same without kids. Now that they’re almost grown up, I still keep them as close as possible without smothering them. When it comes to my children, my philosophy has always been, hug them, tell them you love them, and make them laugh once a day. You’d be surprised how well this works. Also, don’t be afraid to tell them the truth. They know when you’re lying. If you can’t spend time with them because you have to feed the discipline, be honest about it. They will appreciate you for it and come to respect you.
Case and point: it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I’m writing this article. My children are home, just outside the closed door of my studio, where I can hear them engaged in some sort of friendly argument. I’m not doing anything with them per se. But I’m here with them, for them.
This month alone I will write and published 36 short architecture and construction articles, three major blogs, present a revised version of The Concrete Pearl (my fifth novel) to my agent, write one or two features, engage in pre-publicity for Moonlight Falls, and maybe, if there’s time, pen a new piece for my personal blog. In between all this, I’ll juggle time with the kids, time for exercise, time to tip some beers with friends, time for a few road trips, time to be by myself and read. Have I mentioned the discipline required to read books?
One word of warning, the discipline, no matter how beautiful a bedfellow, does not always respond lovingly. Even after you’ve scored a major book contract or two. During my second marriage, I suffered through a writer’s block that lasted five long years, a period during which I published not a single word. The block just happened to coincide with my oldest son’s nervous breakdown and the onset of severe depression (see “Breakdown,” http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/11/12/B...). At that time, as I came close to going broke (after receiving a mid-six figure advance for As Catch Can), I never once stopped working, never once veered from the discipline of waking up every morning and trying to write. “Trying” being the key word here.
Looking back on those difficult years, I realize I wasn’t writing so much as I was just typing, but the process helped me cope with some very difficult and serious issues in my life. If nothing else, the discipline to write can be a mighty powerful therapy.
Eventually the damn breaks, as it did in my case, and I made a return to good writing and publishing. I’m not making millions by any means, but I make a decent living as a freelance journalist and novelist, and that’s all anyone can honestly ask for.
The late great Norman Mailer also understood about the financial ups and downs of being a full-time writer. But more importantly, he understood about the discipline of biting the nail. He wrote 2,500 new words a day right up until the end when his kidneys failed him. It wasn’t the disciple or the talent or the mind that gave out, it was the 84 year old body. I’m told he died with a smile on his face. Not the kind of smile that accompanies peace of mind, sedated painlessness, or “going to the bright light.” But the kind of smile that only a disciplined writer can wear; the sly grin that means you’re about to embark on a brand new adventure, and that you can’t wait to write about it.
