Lacey Louwagie's Blog, page 32

Persistence = Publication

About four years ago, I wrote a personal essay about the experience of being bisexual and Catholic for a collection of stories by queer-identified Catholic women. The editor was in touch with me at the beginning of the process, but I didn’t hear much about the project as she shopped for a publisher. In the meantime, knowing that publication of the piece was not guaranteed, I also submitted it to Unruly Catholic Women Writers II, which accepted it. Earlier this year, I learned that Unruly is slated for publication by SUNY Press.

And earlier this week, I learned that the queer-themed Catholic women anthology (still pending a title, I think) has been accepted by PenUltimate Press.

Wow.

I immediately responded to the editor of the queer-themed anthology to let her know the piece had also been accepted elsewhere, and to offer to begin discussion about whether it could be offered for reprint so that it could appear in both places. I’m still waiting to hear back from Unruly‘s editor — but what a good problem to have!

More than anything, the experience has demonstrated what we’ve all heard as writers a hundred times: the difference between the published and the unpublished writers is persistence. After four years of silence, I’d all but written off the first anthology. Luckily, the editor heading up the project hadn’t — and thanks to her, we’ll have a much-needed addition to both Catholic and queer literature, with or without my essay included.

Learning on the Job: Book Promotion

With our book Hungering and Thirsting for Justice due for release next month, my co-editor and I recently received some distressing news. The booksellers that usually carry presenters’ books at the national November Call to Action conference will not be setting up a table in the exhibition hall this year. That means that our book won’t be available for sale throughout the duration of the conference, but only during times that we’re able to personally staff a table that will also be used by other presenters (which means that, even if we have the capacity to staff it throughout the conference, it would be unfair for us to dominate space others also need for selling their books.)

We’ll be having a conversation with the publisher soon to determine the best way to get the word out about the books and to sell the books without an official bookseller present. We’re talking about making buttons and business cards so that we can promote it throughout the conference even if the book itself can’t be on display the whole time. While I was initially a little devastated by the news, now I’m seeing that it will be a good opportunity for me.

You can hardly read anything about the writing industry these days that doesn’t stress the importance of self-promotion. The idea always makes me curl up a little bit inside. But I’m a writer, I want to protest, not a marketer!

Except that, nowadays, to be one, you need to learn to be both. And this is a good place to start for several reasons:

Since the book is an anthology, in addition to my wonderful co-editor, I also have ten talented writers who care about seeing this book succeed, and who will all have their own ideas and contacts;
We’ll be at the largest national gathering of progressive Catholics in the U.S. Most of our writers would identify themselves as progressive Catholics, and most of the stories in the book speak to that experience. In other words, we’ll be blessed with a particularly receptive audience;
The CTA community has fostered the co-editor, most of the writers, and me as we seek spiritual homes. Bringing this book back to that community feels like a tangible opportunity to say, “Thank you.” So not only will the community have an interest in it, but something of a personal investment as well.

Part of my squeamishness with self-promotion has to do with the fact that I don’t like to be sold to. I’m the type who won’t enter a store if it’s fairly empty, even if the contents greatly entice me, because I don’t want to be the focus of the sellers’ attention. Although I like independently owned, community-supported shops, I also appreciate the anonymity of big-box sellers. I often receive the highest possible I score on introvert-extrovert continuum tests.

But I’m continuously reminded that not everyone is like me. In fact, very few people are (only 4% of the population has the same Myers-Briggs profile as I do, for example). A lot of people like to be approached and helped while they’re shopping; many people appreciate learning more about something that is in line with their interests, and interacting directly with the creators of a product. I have to bear this in mind, and not carry around guilt that I’m “bothering” people when I set out to share news about something that is important to me.

This book is important to me — and no matter what happens, it has that in its favor. I’d love to hear comments from more veteran writers and self-promoters on the most graceful way to do this, as well as feedback from others about how they feel about being approached regarding something that may be of interest to them.

Alarm Clocks and True Presence

Recently, I finished Kathleen Norris’s Acedia and Me: Monks, a Marriage, and A Writer’s Life. In it, she talks briefly about the common excuse people give about not having “time” to write. She dismisses this, claiming that the true artists arrange their life in such a way that they make time for their craft. I have to agree with her, as I think about my younger sister, who always seems to be juggling more than one job, who never gets enough sleep, and who nonetheless manages to prolifically produce art in her garage. It also reminded me of a post I read on She Writes about how beneficial using an egg timer can be in finding/making time to write.

Joanne argues her case well; in particular, I like what she says about imagining that the timer is her “boss” who might stop by any time to make sure she’s working. I’ve found alarm clocks and timers to be incredibly beneficial to my writing, especially during times when quantity is more important than quality (NaNoWriMo, when I’m on the home stretch of a first draft and just want to wrap the darn thing up already). There’s something about the timer that takes the pressure off. I make it about time rather than about talent; I tell myself, “All I have to do is make it to the ding of that timer.” I don’t have to write 1,000 words. I don’t have to write a complete scene. But that time is going to pass no matter what, and even when writing is excruciating, it’s more interesting than staring at a blank screen or out the window for an hour. And what often begins feeling like drudgery quickly becomes so immersive that I jump with surprise when the timer does go off and pulls me back into the world.

There’s one thing Joanne doesn’t cover in her post that, for me, is one of the biggest advantages of using timers and alarm clocks for writing. And that’s that it allows me to be fully present. We live in such an overscheduled world that I think we’re in a constant state of distraction, always wondering in the backs of our minds what time it is; checking the clock can become both a mode of procrastination and an obsession. When I have a timer running, I know someone else is keeping track of that time. I know that when an allotted amount of time has passed, the device will notify me. So time becomes of no concern, and that’s incredibly liberating.

That’s why I use alarm clocks not just for writing, but for almost everything. I set them for when I should be heading out after lunch with a friend, so that I can spend all my time with that friend listening to her and not glancing at my watch. I set them when I’m in danger of squandering a whole afternoon digging through a used book shop. I set them when I’m rewarding myself with half an hour of reading time.

We all get the same amount of hours in the day. But I think we can get more done if we let go of the responsibility of keeping track of every minute of them.

Ever This Day on Tuscany Press Prize Blog

An excerpt from my middle-grade/young adult novel, Ever This Day, is currently posted on the Tuscany Press Prize Blog. It received an encouraging response from the judge/reader. Stop by, check it out, and maybe even say something nice about it. While you’re there, read some of the other submissions, too. There’s some beautiful writing, and it’s sort of thrilling to me that, even if it’s not immediately apparent, all of the stories have themes related to Catholicism. For me, it affirms the beautiful diversity that DOES still thrive within Catholicism, despite attempts to make it into a unilateral religion. And the blog proves that Catholic imaginations are rich indeed! (I could write a whole blog post about ways I think growing up Catholic fuels creative expression, but I think I’ll save that for another day.)

For today, I only want to briefly comment on the Tuscany Prize judging process. I’ll admit that I was quite surprised to learn that entries to the contest were going to be posted on a prize blog. I wondered about the intent — would reader responses play a part in the judges’ decisions? What about confidentiality or “blind” judging? Was it just a way to beef up blog content?

But now that the excerpts are posted, I can see the value in a judging process that involves sharing submissions. For one, it’s incredibly affirming as a participant to see that a judge actually read and thought about my manuscript. And I like the transparency of seeing “what I’m up against.” It humanizes the whole process. When I see the talent and creativity and love that have gone into each submission, I feel much less of a “me vs. them” mentality. I feel less suspicious of the judging process, less resentful of an eventual winner if it isn’t me. I can see that there are a lot of deserving stories, and I’m okay with that. And fostering this kind of open-heartedness in the midst of competition demonstrates that Tuscany Press is emerging as a publisher that may live the very best of Catholic virtue.

One Self-Publisher Gets Its Comeuppance

Last week, my friend Jim from my writers group shared a story about a group of science fiction and fantasy writers who pulled off a hoax with self-publisher PublishAmerica.* PublishAmerica is one of those self-publishers that claims to only accept “quality” manuscripts, presumably to stroke the egos of hopeful writers to the extent that the idea of not publishing their book is heart-breaking — and then comes the publishing fees, or the requirement that authors buy their own books. In addition, PublishAmerica made several disparaging remarks about writers within the science fiction and fantasy communities, claiming that their publishing advice couldn’t be trusted because standards are “lower” in that market than in others (if that’s true, I’ve been reading a lot of really good bad writing.)

Well, here’s another example of really good bad writing. It’s a collaborative effort of several science fiction and fantasy writers, bent on testing the claim that PublishAmerica only publishes “quality” work. Atlanta Nights reads like the very worst fan-fiction (although I guess that’s becoming popular with traditional publishers these days, too), and has the sort of horrible writing that it takes a special talent to produce. (I should warn that the manuscript contains some mature references and language.)

PublishAmerica accepted this manuscript, which includes a chapter that was written by a computer program rather than by human beings. After the troop of writers revealed the hoax, PublishAmerica withdrew its offer. Luckily, the authors went ahead and self-published anyway, making the book available for free to all who want it. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but I may need to send it to my Kindle for a full read.

Now, I don’t have a problem with self-publishers. They provide a service for a fee — namely, publishing a book without making you jump through the hoops of traditional publishing. But just as authors who don’t even run a spell-check before publishing their books give all self-published authors a bad name, self-publishers like PublishAmerica give the whole industry a bad name. I don’t have an ax to grind with self-publishing as an industry, but it’s embarrassing to all writers, editors, and publishers when a company within the industry shows such a total lack of professionalism, both in a) misrepresenting itself as a “traditional publisher” and b) making snarky comments about writers within a certain genre. And that’s why I have no qualms about sharing this story with you.

* However, this is not meant to imply that all books PublishAmerica produces are low-quality. I’ve edited books that are going on to be self-published, and they run the gamut in quality. This is not meant to disregard the talented authors that may be among PublishAmerica’s ranks, but to bring to light unscrupulous practices that prey upon the dreams and ambitions of hopeful writers. For more information about potential offenders, I recommend Writer Beware — which is run by by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Hmm, might this be why PublishAmerica are not fans of speculative fiction writers?

 

 

What are You Reading? What SHOULD You be Reading?

In the July 20 issue of Funds for Writers: Small Markets, Hope C. Clark featured an article asking “What do You Read While You Write?” In it, she recommends reading heavily within the genre in which you write. This is sound advice, and it’s made intuitive sense to me since I was fifteen and realized I wanted to write fantasy novels, then hit up the library for all the fantasy novels I could find. I even remember feeling jealous when my best friend checked out a few fantasy titles that I wanted — I felt that I needed those books more than she did. I had to learn how this was done!

Most people naturally read within the genre in which they write — we tend to write the types of books that we’re interested in reading. It also allows you an intuitive grasp of the conventions and rules within your chosen genre. That’s why, when there was no speculative fiction writers group in a city I used to live in, I started one. Because folks who read speculative fiction just handle dragons and telepaths in writing better than those who don’t. If your critique group doesn’t get too hung up on a talking cat or a misbehaving broomstick, they can help you with character development, sentence structure, and all the other pieces that go into refining a story.

But I think that what you read needs to go further than that. I’ve always been a fan of books that cross boundaries — as much as I love sinking into a well-developed fantasy world like Robert Jordan’s, I think I like even more to be in a strange blend of fantasy and current-day reality such as we find in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. And my favorite book, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, doesn’t hold such a hallowed place because of the world-building, but because of the poetic, literary writing, and the deeper questions about what it means to live through your own personal transformation.

The truth is, I begin to feel bored, even a little suffocated, when I only read within one genre. And I think it shows when writers don’t ever read outside of the genre in which they write, too. You don’t get the surprise of ancient gods on a merry-go-round, or the aching sadness of a unicorn who’s learned about regret. There’s a certain sense of predictability that makes all of an author’s books start to sound the same — the same as one another, and the same as all the others in the genre. Perhaps enjoyable, but not necessarily memorable or daring.

I write mainly speculative fiction, but I read memoir, theology, feminism, literary fiction, YA, and more. My hope is that, while my speculative fiction will follow the conventions of its genre, it will also contain the poignancy of memoir, the immediacy of YA, the provocativeness of spirituality and feminism.

In her article, Hope also has little time for people who don’t read while they’re working on a writing project:

And before you say something, let me wave off the excuse that you are afraid you’ll copy something you’ve read.

And my first thought when I read this was … who are these people who look for excuses not to read?

I’m always working on a writing project, which means that, if I didn’t allow myself to read other work while I was in the midst of creation, I’d have to stop reading altogether, or save it only for the one month or so a year when I’m taking a “break” between large projects.  I consider myself to be showing remarkable restraint if I’m only reading three books at a time (usually I’m reading five). I find excuses to put off writing, but I’ve never sought an excuse not to read. Reading is not a duty to improve my writing, but a haven, a reward, a stimulation, a treat, and an addiction. That people who think of themselves as writers shun the books of others while they’re working on their own is totally perplexing to me. If I had to follow such a routine, I think it would be enough to make me give up writing. Let nothing come between a girl and her books!

What do you think? How important is it to read within the genre in which you write? What are the advantages and pitfalls of reading “wide” vs. reading “deep”? (Interestingly, research shows that kids who read “deep” — a lot in one subject area — perform better in school than those who read “wide.” Unfortunately for me, I’m more of a “wide” reader). I’d love to hear any insights you have. Until then, I’m off to catch up on book reviews at my Goodreads account.

The Vatican and eBooks

I love it when two areas of my life converge serendipitously with one another. Last week, one of the publishing newsletters I subscribe to ran this story about the Vatican’s decision to start publishing eBooks.  And today, I wrote this blog in response to it. The best part of all? That story was literally like the answer to a prayer. I knew I had a blog post due today, and I had no idea what I would write it about. I played around with some ideas while I walked my dog, knowing deep down that I was pretty sure I’d written nearly identical posts in the past (although people are used to me fixating on certain issues at that blog, which is something that bloggers do, after all.) Then I decided on a last ditch effort to see if I found anything inspiring in the “Catholic blog” folder in my gmail … and I found this story emailed to myself, with the note, “You might want to write about this for the YAC blog.”

Why, thank you, self!

Moral of the story? 1. The Vatican is way off when it comes to reaching young people and; 2. make sure to keep tidbits of inspiration … and remember to look at them again later.

Free Access to New Moon Girls

This September will mark my ten year anniversary of doing work with New Moon Girls in some capacity. When I started as an intern back in 2002, New Moon was a bimonthly, black-and-white magazine. Now, it’s an online community for girls accompanied by a full-color magazine, which has recently been made available as an e-magazine as well. Nancy Gruver, found of New Moon Girls, has this to say about the addition:

We’re adding new opportunities, growing our community, and helping more girls join. Plus we’re making NMG more sustainable in terms of our environmental impact and our finances. I want you to know about the changes and why we’re making them.

Along with the changes, I’m asking you to support NMG more than ever and help keep our unique community alive as we innovate and adapt to the changing economy. Since the recession, we haven’t gotten the number of members we need to keep our community financially healthy. We’re very thrifty but it still takes plenty of money and non-renewable resources to make the magazine & social network and get them distributed.

Our first change is adding an e-magazine to the membership choices. Girls can read it, click on the links, share it, print out pages, search it, add notes to pages, and get connected much more easily—but still safely—than with the paper magazine. It works on all kinds of computers + iPads and other tablets including Nooks & Kindle Fires.

And for the months of July and August, you can view the e-magazine for free. I encourage you to take a look, share it with the girls in your life, or consider ordering a subscription or donating one.  There are lots of membership options, including combinations of the e-magazine and online community, paper magazine and online community, or either the magazine or the online community alone. This allows pricing and membership plans that are flexible for a wide variety of budgets and needs.

Here’s how to see the July/August issue.

First, click here: http://bit.ly/NMGja12
Enter in the ” Coupon/Token” field : 13413-2010-79688
Leave the “LogIn” & “Password” fields empty.
Feel free to share the link and coupon code with your networks, too!

If you’re not familiar with New Moon Girls, here’s a few things you should know:

 New Moon Girls is completely member supported and doesn’t contain any ads; the reason for this is twofold. One, New Moon Girls is accountable to its members first and foremost — not to advertisers. Two, correlations have been found revealing connections between advertising (especially advertising targeted at girls and women) and reduced self-esteem. At New Moon Girls, girls come first.
New Moon Girls is girl-led. Girls ages 8 – 14 work with adult editors to produce the magazine and the social network. The website and the magazine serve as a place to  showcase girls’ creations–from videos to artwork to poetry.
New Moon Girls builds healthy resistance to inequities, fosters media literacy, and provides a physically and emotionally safe space for girls to explore their identities, needs, talents, and concerns. The online community is adult-moderated, meaning that there’s next to 0 danger of girls encountering online predators or cyber-bullying on NewMoon.com

To keep New Moon Girls available into the future, it needs to receive only 30 new memberships or renewals a day. These are a few suggestions from Nancy on helping New Moon reach that goal:

EachOneReachOne: With our current members and friends, we can easily get the members we need. You just need to get ONE friend to join or give ONE gift of membership during the month of July or August.
SponsorAMembership for your school, library, a club or organization you belong to. It’s quick & really easy – plus you feel great helping girls who don’t get NMG on their own.
UsethisEmailexampleEmail is great to share and spread the word—especially to other adults, family and community members. Get ideas from this email or use it as it is to let friends and family know about us and how they can support NMG.

Clickhere for more ideas.

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog — now make your next stop New Moon Girls!

Say Hello to the Copyright Genie!

As writers and editors, all of us will probably run up against the need to understand basic copyright law at some point. Is it OK to repost a poem in your blog? Can you use a snippet of song lyrics in your novel without getting approval from the artist? Which photos can you reprint when you run that magazine story on a newly identified Lady GaGa allergy?

I worked on a magazine staff for six years and learned a lot more about copyright than most people know, since we needed to consult it constantly to know whether we could print certain photos or articles. Still, copyright continues to boggle me with the complications of its restrictions, the inconsistent way in which it is enforced, and the, in my opinion, much too heavy-handed response when it IS enforced.

You know we live in a copyright-complicated world when most people don’t even KNOW that it’s illegal to remix movie clips and post it on YouTube (“What do you mean it’s illegal? People do it all the time!”), and where you can be fined a quarter of a million dollars for pirating a movie or showing it publicly without permission (Seriously? Did you violate copyright, or cut off someone’s arm?) My opinion about copyright is fodder for a whole ‘nother rant that I won’t go into any further, but despite disagreeing with the restrictiveness of American copyright, I tend to err on the side of legality. If you do, too, you might want to check out Copyright Genie, an interactive site that can help you determine whether the specific work you want to use is restricted.

Unfortunately, Copyright Genie can’t answer your question about any specific work, but it can help you get a better grasp on whether and how you can use something. Bookmark it, and have fun staying legal!

Write Like It’s Work

I’ve often heard the advice that you need to treat your writing like a “real job” even before you’re published. That means you show up on time. You don’t skip days. You prioritize it over TV, or doing the dishes, or playing with the cat. To take it a step further, maybe you don’t let yourself “off the hook” with anything less than what you’d feel comfortable telling a boss. “Sorry, I can’t come into work today because my dishes are dirty,” or “I’m not going to make it — my cat is being SO cute right now,” isn’t going to cut it.

I’ve taken this advice to heart for a good part of my writing life, which means I do try to work on my writing every day (but I allow my schedule to be flexible), and I take two days off a week (my boss isn’t a slavedriver), and I give myself a break when I’m sick, or vacationing, or grieving (although, in the latter case, writing might be the best thing to do.) But lately, I haven’t been just treating my writing “like” it’s work. It really has been work — with real deadlines, real audiences, real editors, real publications.

I feel as though I haven’t “written” in a while, but what that really means is that I haven’t worked on my “personal writing” (writing without a waiting audience) as much lately as I used to. I have this guilt monkey in my mind who nags, saying, You haven’t worked on your novella since Thursday! Stop slacking!

And I have to tell that monkey, I’m not slacking. I’m just reversing my focus.

For most of my writing life, I’ve been making resolutions that this year I’ll redirect all that energy I usually put into writing new stories into writing for a real audience. And yet, again and again I couldn’t resist the shininess of a new story, and I’d welcome it as a distraction from the much scarier task of marketing myself. At last, I’m finally making good on that resolution, and things are happening because of it. I’ve learned that the key is to have concrete, measurable goals, like:

a goal to start writing more for a real audience. I made this goal about five years ago, and as part of it, I made an effort to take opportunities for writing that might be a good fit for me, even if I wasn’t totally sure what those opportunities would entail. That’s how I ended up writing for, and eventually co-editing, the Young Adult Catholics blog — which, by the way, directly led to my current book project, Hungering and Thirsting for Justice (ACTA Publications). The writing for the blog was and is unpaid — but it’s for a real audience. And for many writers, communication is a far more enticing reward than money.
a goal to become published three times in one year — or, barring that, to submit six times in one year. That goal is what led to the publication of my short story, “The Man in the Mirror” in Queer Dimensions, as well as my article, “Kids Keep me Closeted” for the Bi-Women newsletter, and the upcoming publication of my essay, “Where I First Met God” in Unruly Catholic Women Writers Volume II (SUNY PRESS).
a goal to submit my young adult novel, Ever This Day, to one publisher/editor, agent, or contest a month. So far, I’ve missed one month–the month I got married. I hope to submit it twice some other month this year to make up for it. Currently, I’ve got it out to the Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction; this month, I plan to submit it to the MsLexia award for unpublished women novelists.

Making concrete, measurable goals (I’m going to write five days a week, I’m going to submit six times a year) proved to be so much more successful than the more nebulous ones I used to make (I’m going to focus more on my writing, I’m going to submit my stuff more often.) These days, my writing time has been consumed by lining up reviewers and making final tweaks to Hungering (going to the typesetter as we speak), Unruly (manuscript due mid-September), and writing an article about being bisexual and Catholic for Dignity USA. After all those years of “acting as if” I was a real writer, I’m finally beginning to believe it.