Katey Schultz's Blog, page 29

Increasing Tension in a Novel

Manipulating time. Increasing tension. Deepening character. These are all craft concepts writers are taught and that we study for years. But there's nothing like actually applying that knowledge and seeing your words make a satisfying impact. While there's no formula for it, I've looked to author Ursula Hegi's Children and Fire for technique as I navigate my way through writing my first novel. The technique I'd like to discuss today isn't copyrighted--no technique in writing can or should be. Many writers have used it. But for whatever reason, Hegi's voice speaks to me. I can dissect it in ways that are very useful. I've gone to her again and again, as one goes to a mentor, and I'll use her as example to make today's point.

About fifteen chapters ago, I abandoned my paragraph-by-paragraph method of writing my novel by imitating form…and made the bold leap from pen and paper to actual computer. While I still used Ursula Hegi's Children and Fire for inspiration, I had found enough momentum of my own that I trusted my characters to be consistent with the foundation I had created for them. It was a fun leap to make and got me from Chapter 12 all the way up to Chapter 27. (FYI, examples of techniques I had studied in Hegi up to this point: the ways in which she leaps seamlessly between her protagonist's mind and the narration of the story; the way she uses white space, asterisks, date headings, and short chapters to pace the story.)
But once I reached the moment in the novel I had been writing toward for months, I went back and looked at how Hegi handled the last 1/3 of her book. At the apex of her novel--which, like mine, involves one moment, a death, and one very long day--Hegi brings the reader right to the edge of seeing the actual boy's body. The reader knows, as her chapter unfolds, that something horrible is about to happen (and most, I think, probably guess accurately that it is Bruno who is going to die). But Hegi lets the tension build as Bruno's mother reaches to open the closet door where we know our worst fear is about to come true (she'll find her son in there, hanging from a noose). Then she flashes into the mother's mind in italics with a string of reactionary thoughts, and ends the chapter.
Her next chapter is a flashback to twenty years prior, giving us the backstory on the protagonist's father. Reading this book as a writer, I had to ask myself: why did Hegi place this interruption and backstory here, just after the climax?
Two reasons, I believe: First and foremost, to amplify the tension. In the present narrative of the novel, a boy has just died. Readers are desperate to know what is going to happen next and how other characters are reacting There is a sense of urgency as one reads, as if the present narrative is continuing while we, the readers, have to sit back and plug our way through this other chapter that has only a slim connection to the boy who has just died.
The second reason I think Hegi does this is to deepen character. Not the boy's character. And not even so much the protagonist's father, who is the focus of the interrupting backstory chapter. No…I think Hegi's literary devise actually deepens the reader's understanding of her protagonist. By showing readers what she shows about the protagonist's father, and letting us see something about him that the protagonist herself never fully understood, we are allowed to understand more about the protagonist than she understands about herself. We're given an insider's view and the upperhand. And as we turn the pages, this lets us guess at how the protagonist might handle Bruno's death. It also deepens character, because we start to understand why she is the way she is, by way of her father.
It's a brilliant, complex move and certainly hard earned. But reading and studying it in this way, I was able to give myself permission to play around with an interrupting backstory chapter of my own, following the climax in my novel. It's not dealing with anybody's father, and it's not twenty years back in time (like Hegi's), but it isfar afield from anything readers have seen yet in the novel. And it doesdeepen the reader's understanding of the protagonist by way of another character who is close to him.
Food for thought, as I wind my way toward what could very soon be the end of my first draft. Yowzah!

Randolph College Wimberly Recital Hall

It's no secret Maya Angelou came to Randolph College this semester. The TV crews and Police Department came that night, too, along with several thousand people and hundreds more who were turned away due to lack of seating. But what might be a secret, are the delightful Sunday concert series events hosted by the Department of Music in Wimberly Recital Hall. Over the past six weeks, I enjoyed 4 free concerts from this series. Each time, the event got me out of the house at the end of a days-long novel-writing date with the sofa. In other words, it got my toosh out the door and my mind out of fiction-land just before temporary paralysis and delusions of grandeur set in.

I can't write with music playing, unless for some reason I'm in a distracting place and forced to use headphones to tune into classical or world music. In those cases, anything that doesn't use the English language will do. By and large, my MO is silence. (And that means you kid, you over there talking on your cell phone while Facebooking on your laptop and ignoring your Bio II homework. Thank you.) But when it comes to taking a break from the work, exercise and music are my go-to activities. The first requires getting my heart rate up high enough (and keeping it there) so my mind can do nothing other than react on the physical level. Thoughts are gone, or, if they're there, I'm not paying attention to them. The second requires nothing other than opening up and listening. Seeing and hearing live music has always felt like one, long, exhale to me. (Exception: fighting for my life in the mosh pit at the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert.)
As gifted and amazing as each professional performance at Wimberly has been this winter (my favorite being Kevin Ayesh on piano--90 minutes of memorized, finger-dancing, melodic, amazingness), yesterday's student performances pulled me out of my mind more than any of the others. In "A Winter Showcase," the majority of pieces were vocal soloists or choir, but it's worth giving a nod to the lone, Freshman euphonium player who tried his level best. The euphonium is a brass instrument in the shape of a tuba (with a straight bell) but smaller than a baritone. It plays in the octave range between the baritone and the trumpets and, of all the brass instruments I tried as a child, it stuck. Lightweight and silver, it came with lots of bonus points as I showed it off on the school bus ride home. (Yes, I was that kind of child and, no, I did not sit in the back of the bus…though I certainly grew curious. If I broke up with my euphonium, would I have a chance to sit near the dreamy Alexander Anderson?)

Memories aside, watching this student performance reminded me about the beauty of hope, effort, and the human spirit. As the chorus took the stage, 18 bright faces looked out at our humble crowd. They wore matching, fitted black suits and dresses. This uniformity brought out their individual facial expressions even more. And, of course: they sang. High and low, jazz and hymnal, harmonized and layered. Eighteen bright faces, all of them reaching for something, necks outstretched, chins up as though they could drink from the sun. The students appeared beautiful to me in their striving. I immediately loved all of them for it.

When I returned to my date with the sofa (aka, writing), my work carried a tenderness I'm certain wouldn't have appeared if I had not just come from "A Winter Showcase." For six weeks, I have been writing my way toward a particular moment in my novel. It is the moment I imagined last summer, when this leap of faith first began. Yesterday, I arrived at that moment and it is painful for every character involved because they have to watch someone die--the only fatality in the entire novel about war. But just as my sentences wound their way toward death, something knocked at my conscience…something not unlike the faces of the students in the Randolph College choir. I planted the landmine in the road. I made the convoy stop. Then I wrote this: "And the only mercy in the next second as the soldier steps forward again—ready to save this boy, ready to save himself—is that it happens so fast, neither of them will ever understand what actually did it."

It's a bit challenging to grasp out of context, but the point is this: mercy is not something I think about every day. I probably only use that word once in a blue moon--both in speech and in writing. But it was the right word for this horrible moment in the novel, and as much as it helps the characters involved, I hope it will also help my readers carry on with enough faith to get to the very end. Did the tenderness evoked by watching "A Winter Showcase" have anything to do with this word choice, this sentiment? I like to think so.

Living Inside a Novel

With about 10 days of this fellowship left, I find myself reflecting a bit on my time here and how it compares to others I've experienced. The most immediate change I have felt has to do with my sense of place. In the past, my sense of place was tied deeply to the land, people, and history of wherever I found myself. Now, my sense of place is tied to my novel--an intangible, half-written thing I carry around in my head that no one else can see. It's a contrast worth contemplating.

When I spent 31 out of 36 months on theroad, I blogged about local history, local legends, local people, sites to see, and experiences I had walking the land (or motoring the seas). Although I was still writing about war during these travels, for the most part, The Writing Life blog served as my public sketchpad for the unique and interesting experiences I sought along the way. When that time came to a close, I was able to look back, make a "map" of my experience, and give it a name: The Undiscovered Country of the Nearby. I considered, even, that a collection of essays about life on the road would be my next book.
But I'm off the road now and have been since August. I have a home in an Airstream in the Black Mountains. Somehow, I feel that if I keep saying this publicly, that will make it true. Leaving that home was, in some ways, the most difficult part of this fellowship at Randolph College. Home is something I have wanted for so long, and worked hard to make again. I felt--and still feel--very torn about the fact that my life as a writer will often dictate leaving home behind for large chunks of time.
What's come out of this, though, is a new sense a place centered around the work. The writing has been with me for years, by which I mean: for years, I have known it was what brought me the most happiness and therefore I would devote my life to it. But working on a novel for days on end in a basement apartment in a city that I haven't glimpsed much more than 3 square miles of, will do something to sense of place. It's enabled me to "live inside" the work, as I've heard other writers say before. What did they mean by that? I might be starting to figure that out a little.
For instance, I can call my characters up at any time. If I read an article about Afghanistan, my mind's eye often goes to fictional settings in my novel rather than the real one being described in the article. Likewise, if I see a soldier in the grocery store, I conjure my protagonist Nathan, and start mapping similarities and differences. In this way, reality and fiction bleed into one another right down to the level of my five senses, and I think I like that. This makes sense, after all, because some days I send more time in the world of my novel than the material world that's holding me up in my chair. Another thing that happens is that I don't talk about the work much because I'm too deeply in its trenches. Sure, I can tell someone I'm working on Chapter 20. I can even say I've got a plot problem with ISAF soldiers and a US Army platoon on separate missions on the same stretch of highway on the same day. But in day-to-day conversation, I'm don't find myself chomping at the bit to explain exactly what it is I'm doing with the work…because I myself still don't really know yet.
And so, dear readers, if you've noticed a shift in The Writing Life these past months you're not alone. This here writer who swore she'd never write about writing, seems to be doing a lot of that on this website. It's the two times a week I force myself to extract a lesson or two from living inside the work. And there's a very good chance I'll be at this for a long time, if my fellow novel-writing friends' past experiences are any indication.
When I get back home, there's a chance I'll feel pulled to write about my beloved Black Mountains more. And of course, Gus the dog. But home isn't something I've had very much of in a long time and part of me wants to keep every morsel of it for myself. For at least a little while longer. And in the meantime: I've got a novel I'm moving into. It's time to do some heavy lifting. Somehow I feel things have only just begun...

Saying Something You Didn't Know You Could

What sentences to do we keep when drafting new stories or essays and what sentences to do we ditch? It's a deeply intangible and private process for each writer, and therefore difficult to "teach." But no matter anyone's genre or skill level or end goal, when you sit down to write something, you are engaging an intuitive part of the brain that has a lot to teach us. One thing many writers agree on is that they can "talk" with this part of the brain, or "listen" to it, when they revise their work and look for deeper meaning. Sometimes, it's a matter of calling a sentence on its bullshit and editing the slime out of it. Other times, it's a matter of hearing the tick of something that's off (a rhythm, a word, an emotion) and letting the mind ponder that "offness." The tendency with sentences that feel "off" is to give up, or to delete them entirely. But with patience and careful listening, I think some of these sentences can become our best teachers. Here's how it worked for me this week:

Last month I talked a little bit about liberated writing and Verlyn Klinkenborg, whose advice feels especially helpful regarding "off" sentences. I knew I wanted to use a scene between my male Afghan protagnist Rahim and a translator. I wrote it earlier this summer, when I first accepted the fact that I was going to have to write a novel. But when I looked back at the scene this week, it felt like a shell: the dialogue was there, but the narration wasn't. I began by adding setting and physical description of who was standing where and what he/she could see, etc. This mattered later in the scene, as a small scuffle breaks out. I also added a brief flashback for my protagonist, who sees trouble coming when the translator approaches and longs, for just 2 sentences of narration, for easier times like he had in his twenties. This added more characterization for Rahim and felt realistic, too, as we often think ourselves worlds and years away from the present moment even as we are staring it in the face.

But one line in particular gave me pause, and it had felt "off" to me ever since I first drafted it: "Rahim puckered his lips as if to spit at the translator's feet, then decided against it." It felt out of character for Rahim, who is generally a complacent man, happy to just get by. What could justify such anger and hatred coming from him? (Spitting at an Afghan's feet, in particular, is a high form of disrespect.) Although I didn't know what to do with the sentence at the time, I kept it, if only for the fact that it contained much more emotion than any sentence about Rahim I had written thus far. Encountering that sentence again in revisions this week, I recalled Klinkenborg's advice:

A writer’s real work is the endless winnowing of sentences,
The relentless exploration of possibilities,
The effort, over and over again, to see in what you started out to say
The possibility of saying something you didn’t know you could.

What was I trying to say about Rahim? I sat on the couch and thought and thought. I paced around. I ate some popcorn. And I stared at the wall of my novel map Post-In notes and thought about this man, Rahim, who I have created. I thought about what he wants and what he needs, and most of all, what he is not admitting to himself...and in that process I realized the possibility my earlier sentence was presenting. Rahim was angry in this moment, and he was angry because in the translator he saw something of himself that he resented greatly. Like Rahim, the translator has also been puppeted out for work in war, and although that means food, water, and shelter for his own family, it likewise means playing a role in the demise of his fellow Afghans. Rahim is not a translator, but his line of work as a middleman for the Taliban trying to keep supplies away from a local village, bears the same marks of conflict. He needs the work in order to survive, but he loathes the fact that this is his only choice. His anger toward the translator was masked anger toward himself. After this insight, I was able to expand the scene substantially. Now, it appears that it will be one of the most profound moments of reckoning for Rahim in the novel...and all thanks to what I thought, at first, was probably a "throw away" sentence.

Students are the Best Teachers

I've had a few chances to connect with upperclassmen over the last week here at Randolph. One event was a mini-presentation and group discussion between myself, the arts faculty at the college, and all the BFA juniors and seniors. This is a small school, so the writing, theatre, painting, and dance majors total less than 15 (excluding those studying abroad). The setting felt intimate, yet the collective thinking in the room did not feel in any way limited. I brought in the Flashes of War broadsides and, together, we discussed the power of the right concrete image to illuminate subtext. The mixed-background group was then able push the discussion further, considering how subtext is revealed in other mediums such as dance or theatre.

Another event involved a basic classroom visit for a Q&A. Although the students were required to ask me something based on my reading they attended, for the most part I could feel their genuine interest on the other side of such questions. One of the more seemingly simple questions caught me off guard: "How do you deal with characterization in your stories?" Without hesitation, I confessed that characterization isn't something I think about very often--and not because I shouldn't, rather, because I'm really still learning exactly what that is. I know it when I see it, but I can't produce it on a whim. And I sure as heck haven't reached a point where I can describe the character as a whole person without seeing him/her move around for 100 pages or so. Who are these people I am creating? How have their lives shaped their fears and desires? Once I feel I know the answers to these questions, the novel should be over. At least, that's how I'm carrying on right now.

I used to wonder how my friends that wrote novels could stand to put hours and hours into their chapters, knowing that in a few months they'd very likely make some major craft or plot change that rendered those chapters useless (or, in the least, required a major rewrite). But I can see now how, especially on a first run-through, the pages I'm writing are only very faint glimmers of the places, people, and events I hope to bring to life by the time this thing reaches a final draft. I have to start somewhere, and if what I can start with are pale imitations, I'll take it. I trust that what I'm doing now will inform what I have yet to write, and any pages that get tossed in the meantime are in some way going to add depth and believability when I have to write new scenes and come at something from a different angle.
A third experience was with a staff writer for the student newspaper. This young woman was so delightfully self-possessed, articulate, and professional…and I was her first subject for her very first newspaper article ever. I felt quite impressed by her! One question she asked me, "Why do you write about war?", is one that I know I am going to need to be able to answer repeatedly over the next year. My first response to this question, which I never say out loud, is "How can I not?" I don't say that out loud because if I do, in the next breath I'll start citing statistics (50,000 soldiers with one or more missing limbs; $2600 per soldier per day, $300 milling dollars A WEEK in Afghanistan alone). As powerful as statistics can be, they can also put people on the defensive, and that's not what my fiction is about.

I tried answering this question once in a blog post, and another time in a radio interview. Each time the question is forced on me, I like to think I'm getting closer and close to an answer, but I don't know if that's true yet. Preparing for the book launch, I'll need a short answer and a long answer. Depending on my audience, I'll also need a craft-based answer for writers and a creative-process based answer for readers. For now, I can thank the students of Randolph College for being great teachers to me this week. They kept me on my toes, and I'm better for it.

Taking Time to Wonder

The nature of my schedule as Emerging Writer at Randolph has led to an interesting writing schedule. By lunchtime Thursday, I have no further obligations until Tuesday at noon. This effectively gives me 5 days off. Now, I still have arts writing and monthly critiques that I must complete for my small business (Writer at Large Services), but I've managed to create a pattern wherein I wait until enough of that work accumulates each week, then tackle it in a day-long or two-day sessions. Subtract that, plus a day for general life stuff, and the 5 days off yields about 3 days for writing. Three solid days.

It's a tremendous amount of time for me to spend on one body of work, given that everything else I've written up to this point--creative or otherwise--ranges in length from roughly 1-20 pages. What this uninterrupted chunk of time has given me is the space and ecouragement to wonder. I can brainstorm and re-read sections of the novel on Thursday afternoons to "warm up" to the work again. I also use this time to research details pertinent to the war and Middle Eastern culture, filling in the blanks of half-composed sentences from the previous week.

By 7:30am Friday morning, I'm at the desk and typically putting in 12 hour days. I stop for an hour-long yoga session and a quick shower. I get my food from the campus cafeteria, so I'm not even stopping for long to cook or eat. Sunup to sundown, it's go go go. I love it. It feels living inside of something, like really digging in, like making something from nothing.

Saturday morning, I'm usually so excited (and terrified) to go back and see what I've written that I don't even make it out of my bathrobe before plopping onto the couch with my laptop to see what I produced the day before. Inevitably, this leads to some repairing and tinkering, especially with regard to plot points or how the new writing fits in with the existing context. But six or seven hours later, I've usually got a few more pages composed and a clearer sense of where I'd like my characters to go.

And that's what Sundays are for: thinking, wondering, allowing for possibilities. I might know where I want my characters to go, but I don't know how I'm going to get them there. I've always been told that, in writing, there is a fine line between getting a good idea and writing your way toward that...and getting a good idea and locking yourself into it too soon, ruining chances for discovery along the way. I've never written a novel before, so I could be fooling myself. But, so far, this story has always been five or six steps ahead of me. I can see where I'm going and I feel I know my characters well enough to believe that I am trying to take them someplace they belong. It takes Sundays though--long hours of staring at my notes on the wall, going on walks and thinking about my characters as I watch the clouds roll in, or sipping bourbon at the local wine bar and spacing out while the rest of the world carries on--to consider how on earth to get them there.

Whatever I can come up with by the end of the day either gets jotted down in a notebook or repeated in my mind. That way, I can let it simmer all week until the next Thursday afternoon rolls around and I find myself in that space again: revising, generating, weaving, imagining. It's hard work! My body resists the sedentary aspects of writing with every hour that passes. It pays a price for it, too. Likewise, my mind kicks into exhaustion overdrive, forgetting how to calm down and sleep and just stop. Hard work indeed. But good.

Advanced Reader Copies Arrive! [Video]

It lives! Ladies and gentlemen, the Advanced Reader Copies of Flashes of War are being sent to reviewers as we speak. Cross your fingers and toes for me, as this little pea makes its way into the big, bold, literary world of reviews. With your good energy and some strong PR, I think Flashes will have a fighting chance on the book stands. Yes, yes I do.

Getting the ARCs is one step closer to Book Land (kind of like Candyland, come to think of it), and because my publisher is kind and fantastic, he also sent me two of the ARCs to keep for myself. It's quite a thrill to hold it in my hands and see it in print. And even more thrilling to catch that last typo or two before the final version goes to press. But I don't think anyone was as excited about getting the ARCs as my parents, who are visiting today to attend my public reading at Randolph College. Here they are, getting their introduction to their first "grandchild," also known as, my first book:

Revision: On Being Precise and Direct

Ok ok, I promise I'm done with the marketing slog for a while! I write what my life is, and there's no denying that publishing a first book is forcing me into a business mindset whether I enjoy it or not. I appreciate you staying along for the ride and hopefully, like me, you're learning a few slivers of useful info at the same time.

What I want to talk about today is the business of revision. A writer recently asked me if I revise line by line in chronological order. It seemed like a simple question, but I had to stop and consider it for a moment. In one regard, yes, when I revise I start at the beginning of a story or particular scene that needs attention. Working one sentence at a time, I'll consider things such as: word choice (especially verbs), punctuation as pertinent to rhythm, and sentence length. I'll also look at specific sensory details or consistency of metaphor, when appropriate. But more than anything, when I revise I am looking for something that can't be measured: that crack in the sentence that tells me either a) something is not right and the content or phrasing might need to be abandoned, or b) something is very right and if I just listen to what the sentence is actually trying to say, I might revise my way to a more direct, precise way of saying it.

Let me say a little more about that last point: direct, precise. Being direct does not have to mean being boring. It doesn't even mean we have to give everything away. But as writers, each sentence must be building toward something else--either character development, plot development, deepening of place, or reiteration of theme. Many times, the sentence does several of those things at once. That's what I mean when I say, "precise." Even still, the sentence must also stand perfectly well on its own--and that's what I mean when I say, "direct."

Of course, we I'm chugging along in revisions, I don't often think about what I'm doing in such a conscious way. It's only as an educator that I have had to dissect my creative process and try to articulate it to others. In so doing, I get a little X-ray glimpse of my own mind as it weaves the threads of any given sentence together...But hold up there: weaving? Yes, weaving. How else can writers create sentences that do so much with so little, without the great tool weaving? When we weave the purpose of the sentence (that it must build toward something) with the content of the sentence (that it must clearly and specifically say something), we get writing that feels more complete.

So we go and we go...from word to word, sentence to sentence. We pull upwards from the bedrocks of our stories to make sure we're getting things right and we pull downwards from the heavens to make sure our meaning is in place. It sounds sort of wishy-washy, I realize, but aren't all great things a little elusive when it comes to being pinned down?

What I Learned from Feedblitz

{This article originally appeared as a guest blog post on the Feedblitz Blog, owned and operated by Phil Hollows. I'm reprinting it this week as a part of my ongoing discussion of earning a living as a writer and preparing for a first book. Check out his link. He's got a free eBook offer going right now!}

I’ll admit it. I’m one of those writers that used to blush when being called a blogger. My embarrassment was based on stereotypes, of course, and I’ll confess them here only to prove a point. I didn’t like being called a blogger because bloggers weren’t artists. Bloggers were in it for the money and would do anything to make a sale. And if they weren’t that, bloggers were publishing drip about their personal lives, which I didn’t care for.
 
I started blogging in 2005, when perhaps those stereotypes had a percentage of truth to them. I kept my blog to myself, oddly enough, but as people started to find me and as my short stories and essays earned recognition, The Writing Life blog started growing – whether I was ready for it or not. Now more than ever, I understand that bloggers can’t be boxed in to a single category and that, as a young writer trying to earn a living, one of the most important things I can do for my career is identify as a blogger.
 Reading Phil Hollows’ List Building for Bloggers e-book changed my entire outlook. I purchased it because [at the time, I was] an editor for TRACHODON Magazine and its blog, Cheek Teeth. I figured I shouldn’t let my stereotypes about blogging get in the way of my business as an editor. But, wait a minute…didn’t I also have a business as a writer?

List Building helped me see that as a blogger I am also an “accidental marketer,” as Phil would say, and that by failing to take advantage of branding, list building, and email blasts, I was missing an opportunity to make a name for myself…and maybe even make a little money for postage and gas. I could still write quality blog posts and publish short stories I was proud of, but I could also maintain an active blog and website that offered incentives and literary products to my readers.
 
So I read the book, twice, with highlighter in hand. I already had the FeedBlitz “subscribe by email” bubble on my site, but it wasn’t in the right place and I hadn’t notified my contacts, branded the newsletter, or paid any attention to its schedule. Following the instructions in List Building, within a matter of days my email subscribers quadrupled and, several months later, I still get a few new subscribers each week. More importantly, I saw the hits on my website increase over the weekends – when I never post new content – because my subscribers were taking their time with my weekly FeedBlitz newsletter (which is emailed Friday mornings) and perusing my blog via click-throughs that FeedBlitz makes so easy in the newsletter format. Despite my belief that if I organized my readers through an email list my hits would go down, in fact, my hits kept going up.
 
Bolstered by this experience, I followed the other tips in List Building to a tee. Most changes were small – including a subscription link in my email signature, titling blog posts to make them appear readily in Google searches, dreaming up relevant incentives for subscribers – and within one month traffic on my site increased by over 35% and continues to grow. Excited, I set up my first autoresponder, as List Building suggests. Using an email blast to announce the project, and further promoting it on the blog and through social media outlets, I launched Monthly Fiction by Katey Schultz, 12 short stories in as many months for just $12 – a FeedBlitz autoresponder with my branding that delivers one new short story to subscribers each month for an entire year.
 
I’m a small operation with a lot on my mind, but List Building for Bloggers made marketing easy for this non-tecchie writer and helped me gain confidence that I do have things I can sell. Over the holidays [2 years ago], I even tested Phil’s suggestion to market by using repetition. I posted one status update each morning on FaceBook with a quote from my chapbook Lost Crossings. In less than a week, I sold eight copies. We’re not talking New York bestseller, but that’s eight books that were collecting dust a week prior and ended up wrapped under people’s Christmas trees.