Laurie Boris's Blog, page 52

Books and the City

Had a great time at the Book Blogger Convention in New York on Friday. I've become acquainted with a few book bloggers during the pre-release promotion for The Joke's on Me. But what an awesome opportunity to meet a whole lot of them at once! While it's unfair to generalize about any group, these bloggers, mostly younger women, displayed one distinct quality: passion for the written word over nearly all else. Or, as one blogger put it, "I have books; what else do I need?"

They love books. They breathe books. Even with stupendously busy lives that include (in some combination) college, motherhood, partnerhood, writing their own novels, and multiple jobs, they regularly read and write about books.

As part of the convention, I participated in an event that was a kind of "speed dating" between authors and bloggers. It was the first year the BBC had done this, I was told, and it got a bit chaotic, as way more authors showed up than anticipated, and far more young adult book bloggers chose to partake than adult-book enthusiasts. But I got a good chance to circulate among several tables of very engaged book-lovers. Like most things in life, turns out I was some people's cup of tea, but not others. I appreciated the direct yet tactful way these women have learned to say no to what's not in their wheelhouse. (If only I had that skill when I was younger; I could've saved myself a lot of problems.)

We authors, too, got to mingle throughout the day, swapping war stories, swag ideas, and business cards. Most of the authors I met have books that have either just been released or are on the cusp of dropping. From them I learned important lessons: bring an ample supply of swag to book events, drink plenty of water to keep from losing your voice, and your ranking on Amazon is like your weight: don't check it too often because it will make you crazy.

All in all a great day. Regrets? That I hadn't been able to get to the four days of the Book Expo that preceded it so I could get books signed by some of my fave authors, like Jeffrey Eugenides, Erica Jong, and Dave Barry, and meet celebs like Jane Lynch, Florence Henderson and John Lithgow. And that I hadn't brought one of those cute little rolling backpacks to carry the books I'd collected. Hey, I live and breathe them, too.

And now a question for you: Besides the book, what kind of giveaway goodies do you like sticking in your swag bag at literary events?

Get Your Hands on This Book

Apologies that I'm late with this one (with a book coming out, I've been a little distracted), but I just finished reading Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.

It's fabulous. It's one of the best books I've read in recent memory. And well worth its Pulitzer.

Ignore the media flap. Ignore what might or might not have been said, ignore who or who did not get her panties in a bunch, and get your hands on this book, especially if you are a writer. This is a master class on structure, the use of fictional time, character development, dialogue, and point of view selection.

For me it combined the three best qualities of a "literary" novel: I couldn't stop reading it, I didn't want it to end, and I'm still thinking about it.

The novel is laid out as a series of linked short stories circling around a rock promoter and his assistant. I don't want to spoil too much, although this has been a topic of media consternation since its early reviews, but one of the stories is told as a PowerPoint presentation. And it was one of my favorites.

As a reader, I appreciated the compassion Egan had for her characters. Some of them are deeply flawed and make choices that could be considered unsavory, like Sasha, a young woman who can't control her impulse to lift an unguarded wallet in the first story. But Egan doesn't judge her, or her other characters. She helps us understand them and empathize with them.

As a reader, I also enjoyed trying to figure out where I was in time and space in each story, depending on the characters that showed up, and where they were chronologically. Rather than, say, employing an easy chapter subtitle like, New York City, 1983, Egan conveys the time and place as an integral part of the story, using the cultural events going on in the background or the stage of the recurring characters' relationships with each other. Readers like to feel smart, like they've figured out the riddle without having it spoon-fed to them.

I'm looking forward to reading her earlier books.

Did you read "Goon Squad"? If so, what did you think?

Tips for Ghostwriting Success

When I tell people I'm a ghostwriter (among other things), I usually get the same two questions.

First: "What are you working on?" To which I respond, "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

Second: "Don't you want credit for your work?"

My answer?  Not especially. I'm performing a service and getting paid. It keeps me in organic produce, which makes me happy. But don't believe for a minute that equating ghostwriting to a bread-and-butter, background service makes me lackadaisical about what I write. I want to do the best possible job for my clients. It's their money; they should get the byline or their name on the cover. Any credit on my part is appreciated, although not necessary. If I do a good job, I might be hired again, so I can buy more organic produce, which will make me happier.

In my previous career as a freelance graphic designer, I certainly did not expect a credit to appear on my designs. Again, as an independent contractor, I did a service and got paid. Even the book jacket designs I created did not carry my name. No big deal.

So what makes a good ghostwriter?

Discretion. Nobody wants a ghostwriter who will go around various virtual hot spots blabbing about the potential bestseller he or she is writing for Really Big Celebrity. Or that the President of the Acme Widgets Company does not write the sales letters that go out bearing his name. Keep it to yourself and don't blow your credibility. I have been in "black ops" with clients so many times I could probably get a security clearance from the CIA.

The ability to mimic somebody else's voice. I was called in to "ghost edit" a children's story that a publisher was translating into English. The writer was very well known in his field. My edits had to keep in line with the author's voice, or else his fans (and the author) would know something strange was going on. Or perhaps you are writing the CEO's blog for the company website. You'll need to write in his or her style, comfortably.

The ability to write about different topics with ease. One day you might be ghostwriting a real estate blog. Another day it could be an article for a busy entomologist about the mating habits of the Madagascar hissing cockroach. Although expertise helps, you don't necessarily need to know everything about everything. That's what Google is for. You need the patience and curiosity to do the required research, and the mental flexibility that allows you to go back and forth among topics comfortably. Yes, you could specialize, and many writers are very successful at this, but in a tight economy, and especially for a beginning ghostwriter, you may want to be more open-minded.

A collaborative spirit. Sometimes you'll get a client who is happy to let you write the whole shebang on your own, but most of the time, your ghostwriting assignments will be a collaborative effort. This may mean you'll review and contribute to a client's outline, or write a rough draft and submit it for your client's opinions and suggested revisions. It may take time to develop a collaborative relationship with a client, and this is vital if you hope to turn it into a long-term proposition. If you can't take constructive criticism or do not play well with others, perhaps ghostwriting is not for you.

Professionalism. This includes all the stuff you're supposed to do as a professional freelance writer. Work out an agreement. Stick to it. Communicate well. Meet your deadlines. Meet your deadlines. And most importantly, meet your deadlines.

Have you ever done any ghostwriting? Can you share some of your experiences? Without giving away too much, of course. Wouldn't want you to blow your security clearance.

(Image courtesy of Alexandria Library Incorporated. Copyright 2006)

A Character By Any Other Name

Hi! My turn today at 4RV Publishing's blog, "." Come visit and learn some tips on choosing appropriate names for your characters.

Why I Won't Follow You on Twitter

As the publication date of my book draws near, I've been spending more time on social networking, mainly on Facebook and Twitter, keeping my friends updated and making new ones. On Facebook, it's fairly easy for me to learn about the people I want to friend and those who want to friend me. (Did you ever think you would live in a time when "friend" would become a verb?) But Twitter goes faster, has less space (although it's surprising what you can fit in 140 characters) and can be more abstruse.

Since I am meeting more people on Twitter, I'm getting more follows. I want to follow you back. Really, I do. So many of you post tweets that are entertaining, inspirational, and often so funny I have to avoid drinking coffee while I read them, lest it end up on my screen. But in the couple of years I've been on the site, running three different accounts, I've learned how to parse out the good from the life's-too-short.

Here's why I won't follow you:

1. I know nothing about you. Twitter gives you 160 characters for a bio. If you leave this blank, I'm less likely to follow you. Tell me something about yourself. Unless you have something to hide.

2. Your avatar is Twitter's default "egg." Adding an image tells me that you care enough about your social presence to put a face on it.

3. You follow a lot of people but no one is following you. This tells me that you're selling something not a lot of people want-it could be a link to a pornographic website or spam. I'm not going there.

4. You tweet in all capital letters. This is obnoxious, shouty, and difficult to read.

5. You BEG me to follow you back. BEG and BEG and BEG. Your desperation scares me off.

6. You are clearly only on this medium to sell me something. Yes, we all have something to sell, even if your only purpose on Twitter is to have fun. You're selling your personality. But if you are hawking a product or service, the hard-sell approach will make me delete you. The soft sell (some media experts recommend never even mentioning where you can buy your brand-new book, for instance) works so much better. Let me get to know you before you offer to change my life, make me rich, or show me how to drop ten pounds of stubborn belly fat.

7. Your auto-responder is overtly spammy. Have you ever gotten one of these: "Thanks for following me! Come buy my product at XYZ.com right now! You'll lose 30 pounds in a week!" While it's nice to get a direct message after you follow someone, as it can be more personal than simply a blank follow, keep it short and simple. If you are meeting someone for the first time face-to-face, would you immediately leap into your sales pitch, or would you exchange a few pleasantries first?

8. Your tweets are awash with hashtags. I appreciate that you want to get indexed everywhere, but this makes your message sound like William Shatner is reciting it.

9. You tweet too damned much. Okay, a few at a time are fine. But I get frustrated when I have to scroll past your dozens of tweets about where I can get a free iPad before I can find my friend's daily haiku. Unfollow.

Are you on Twitter? What makes you hit "unfollow" faster than Rhianna changes her hair color?

Baffling Ads In Men's Magazines

Through some aberration in the fabric of the universe, my husband has begun receiving a year's subscription to GQ. As my spouse's normal attire is a pair of old jeans and a gray Champion hoodie, and his cold-weather-to-warm-weather transition is to switch from long sleeves to short sleeves, this gift in our mailbox is akin to Elton John receiving a subscription to Juggs. (For the record, I'm no fashion plate either.)

But since I cannot resist a peek into what poses as a male-oriented periodical when I'm tossed into the same room with one (my favorite is Maxim), I started reading it.

I thought women's magazines were bad! Holy crow. I couldn't get past the advertising. These two guys in the Calvin Klein spread (above) look like a cross between Frankenstein's monster and the guy on the cover of Atlas Shrugged. The guy on the right's intent stare could melt glass, and there is so much product in vertical sculpture of his hair that he better not get too close to an open flame, lest he reenact Michael Jackson's Pepsi ad. The dude on the left looks like he's having a very intense discussion with himself about whether he left the iron on.

There's an entire novel going on in the Gucci spread. Sorry, I couldn't find the full image in all of its ambiguous glory, so you'll have to take my word for it. A clean-shaven young man with knife-edged cheekbones has his eyes downcast and leading off the page. Perhaps he is holding back tears. Apparently, these tears are because the dramatically-posed stick insect of a female model standing in the center of the spread does not return his intense feelings of love. She presses one hand to her temple as if she has a horrible headache. Perhaps this was caused by the overzealous aesthetician who removed all the hair from her head. A finger covers an eyebrow. Maybe the waxer got to that one before she decided the Sinead O'Connor-meets-Mona-Lisa-look was probably not the best career move for her head shape. At the right is a man in a tightly fitted, shiny suit, sitting cross-legged in a way that tightly fitted, shiny suits do not normally permit. Another woman, who has hair on her head but apparently is wearing a horse's mane as a top, leans over him and whispers in his ear. What that is we may never know, but this guy isn't having any of it. He continues to stare at the shiny fabric covering his left calf as if it contains the secrets of the universe and the location of Jimmy Hoffa's remains.

But what really made my day was this Dolce & Gabbana spread (top). As I've said, I'm tragically out of the loop when it comes to fashion, but I didn't see anything in this ad that resembled fashion. It's a black-and-white spread featuring seven guys involved in a very intense game of tug-of-war. We do not see against whom they are tugging. Maybe the guys in the Calvin Klein ad. They look like inmates from a Turkish prison, and all have varying degrees of facial hair and lengths of fabric torn off their white pants. The one in the front looks vaguely like Barack Obama scolding John Boehner. They dig their feet-all wearing oxfords, some without laces-into the sand. At the bottom left of the spread, looking off the page, is a small black dog that looks seriously underfed. I do not understand the significance of the dog, and this disturbs me. Meanwhile, I draft in my head a novelization of the ad, a cross between The Great Gatsby, The Dirty Dozen, and Midnight Express.

This intense focus on creating a context for the products confuses me just about as much as the context itself.  I know what the ads in women's magazines are trying to express-they're attempting to make us feel uncomfortable and insecure about our bodies and beauty so that we will continue buying their products and the magazines. I don't know what the hell the GQ ads are trying to do. Maybe you men out there can help me. Do you buy these magazines? What do you think about the advertising? And what is the point of the dog?

Guest Blogging…Come Visit!

I'm guest blogging today at my publisher's blog, 4RV Reading, Writing & Art News. Come visit, and let's chat about ways to eavesdrop your way to better dialogue!

How to Love Editing Your Novel, Part Two

So, you've let your first draft compost for however long your brain needs to gain some emotional distance from it. Now the hard stuff begins. Many writers, myself included, get so caught up in the creative phase of writing that when we need to put our editor hats on, it feels like a poor fit.

But I had to teach myself to love revising. Fortunately, I love puzzles and challenges, so I transferred that skill set over to my editing. What I also find important is to draw the distinction between creating and editing. Albert Einstein once said that you can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it. The writer mind is interested in creation and doesn't want to revise, not one lovely adjective of it. The editor mind slashes things up with a red pen. To make it easier to get to that place, you may want to try some of these techniques.

Note: Everyone's got a different style of working, and your actual mileage may vary. So I can't presume that this series of suggestions is anything more than that. But it works for me. If you're having trouble getting started editing a manuscript, maybe this is something you'll want to try.

1. Read a printed copy of your manuscript all the way through. Some people are very handy with tracking comments in their Word documents, but I need to have paper in front of me so I can scribble all over it and see everything all at once. Incorporate any notes you might have gotten from writing group members or critique partners. Jot down anything that comes to mind as you read-research needed, facts to be checked, or inconsistencies. This is the working manual of your manuscript. Keeping everything in one place goes a long way toward preventing squirrel brain. This is also the playground of anyone who loves scrapbooking, colored markers and those little bitty fluorescent sticky notes. Go to town. Don't stress about catching every single dangling modifier or misplaced comma. That's why we do subsequent drafts.

2. Either on a series of index cards or on a computer document, summarize the content of each scene or chapter. This has several purposes. It will help you put everything in the order that's correct for the book. It will help you cut unnecessary scenes. And it will help you write the dreaded synopsis that agents and publishers want to see when you start shopping your manuscript around.

3. Look for the missing threads. Perhaps you've dropped a subplot line or have a character just hanging around with no particular purpose. Using a chart like this one can help you find major problems in the plot.

4. Modify your plot summary (index cards or otherwise) based on the information you gathered from #3. Make note of any new scenes you'll need to write, secondary characters that either need development or need to be shown the door.

5. Fact-check and research items that came up from the reading.

6. Write the next draft. Writers have differing opinions (imagine that!) about how this should be done. But I took a tip from another novelist and found that it works for me. In the early drafts, I retype the entire shebang. Yeah, I know. That's a lot of keystrokes. But an interesting thing happened while I was doing that, besides developing a wicked case of carpal tunnel syndrome-just kidding, it was tendonitis. I was able to divorce myself from what I had already written and could more easily make the drastic changes that were necessary. There's something about a computer document that seems so "finished" that we don't want to tear it up, if that's what's needed.

7. Set aside to compost until you're ready to work on the next draft.

8.  Repeat steps 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (updating your plot summary and character chart is necessary) until done.

But how do you know when you're done? Ah, my friends, that's a question for another blog.

So how do you and editing get along? Are you eager and ready with a red pen? Or does the whole process make you want to start writing another book instead?

How to Love Editing Your Novel, Step One

Over ten years ago, a close friend died from cystic fibrosis. The courage with which he conducted his life, doing all the things he loved, touched me deeply. I wanted to honor his memory by writing him into my next novel. After I completed two drafts of this story (my writing group offering encouragement along the way), I showed it to my husband. Some writers would rather subject themselves to Charlie Sheen's bayonet arms or eat a Madagascar hissing cockroach than share an early draft of their novel with their spouse. But I trust Hub's instincts and he's given me some very good feedback.

On this project, however, what he said stopped me cold. "You're too close to the subject," he said. He elaborated that because I had elevated our friend to hero status, I didn't allow for the character to have any flaws, which made the story less realistic.

I haven't touched it since.

I know someday I will get back to it. It's a good story with fascinating characters. But as a younger writer, comments like this made me wish I'd gone to nursing school like my mother always wanted.

As the days following his critique stretched forward, and that manuscript composted in my closet, I kept wondering when I would attain enough emotional distance, not just to make this character multidimensional, but to start the revision process in general. A week? A month? A year?

The answer is, as with so many other things in life, it depends. Some people are ready to go into the next draft right after typing "the end" on the last one. Some people take longer. For me, it depends how excited I am about the story. The Joke's on Me, which is coming out this summer, was one of those stories. I could hardly wait to start revising each time I neared the completion of a draft. But some stories have plodded on, and I put them aside to work on more exciting things.

You might find, though, setting your first draft aside for a short time (at least a couple of weeks to a month) to be helpful in gaining perspective. If you jump back into it right away, you run the risk of what I call "story saturation." You will read this manuscript so many times during its lifespan that you may stop seeing the words. Even if you've gone through six, seven, eight drafts before you pronounce it ready to shop around, you will go through even more with your agent, your publisher and their editors. I lost track of how many times I've read The Joke's on Me during its various iterations. Multiple readings without a break increases your risk of typos, grammatical errors, missing words, dangling plot lines, unnatural dialogue, and all of the other demons we massage out of our manuscripts.

So what's your style? Plow ahead or let it compost?

Fighting for Reviewer's Eyeballs

I've read enough and talked to enough other authors to know that once you sign your publication contract, everything doesn't magically become wonderful, or easy. True, there have been wonderful moments: finalizing the manuscript, seeing the art for my cover, and having two giant boxes of review copies deposited at my front door.

Now the hard work begins. First, to identify appropriate reviewers, and convince these very busy professionals that my novel is worth 234 pages of their time. You think you're busy? Some of these people receive thousands of inquiries each month for reviews, and have backlogs of hundreds of books waiting for them, for when a free moment or two pops up. Add the usual challenges of life, the day jobs some of these people have in addition to the websites they maintain.

It makes me understand why some are so quick with the thumbs up or down. I just have to figure out how to cut through the pile, with a pitch that's pitch perfect but not too over-the-top. Ideally, all of this should fit on one page. It almost makes me miss those frustrating, hair-pulling days of writing draft upon draft of the original synopsis.

Through trial and error, though, I'm discovering what gets reviewers' eyeballs and what is just noise. Here's what I've learned so far about writing reviewer pitches:

[image error]1. Proofread, proofread, proofread. Then get someone else to proofread. As Writing 101 as this sounds, it still applies. It's often the first thing a busy reviewer will see about you. Typos in the address block? Missing words? Eye-rolling grammatical errors? It all counts, and it could count against you. You don't want to give the reviewer the impression that your book could also be full of typos–how ponderous would that be to read? Especially critical are errors in contact information, because you are accustomed to seeing that information in all of your correspondence and thereby stop seeing it. I almost sent out six valuable review copies along with a set of letters that did not contain the correct area code. D'oh! But this turned out to be a good thing. It gave me an opportunity, while I was correcting the phone number, to fine-tune a pitch that seemed a little flabby.

2. Do your homework. Think like a busy reviewer. It's Saturday morning, your parents are watching the kids, you've got a pot of coffee on, and you're shuffling through a mountain of review packages that have been piling up in your office. You only have a minute or two to decide up or down on each one. Do you want to review that 400-page zombie western? Or a 250-page romance novel? Oops…you don't do romance. And the author would have known that if she had checked the reviewer's submission guidelines. Just like when you were selling your novel to agents and publishers for the first time, submission guidelines still rule.

3. Make it easy for them. Put everything they need for a quick decision up front: title of the book, genre, release date, publisher, number of pages. This way, he or she will know if this work is in their wheelhouse, and if they will have enough time to read it and write a review in a timely enough way to meet both of your needs. After that, include a well-crafted blurb about the book. This might be the same kind of copy you put in an ad or on the book jacket (assuming your book has a book jacket.) Don't forget to include, probably at the end, a bit about you, where the book will be sold, and relevant web pages (like your publisher's online catalog and the page on your website where they can read an excerpt.)

4. Manage your rejection. You thought all that rejection ended when you got an agent or publisher to say yes? Not so fast. Remember that bit about the really busy reviewers? Yes, they might reject you, too, and it probably has nothing to do with the quality of your book. It could merely be that they have too many books to review that month. Or, they just posted two apocalyptic zombie novels in a row on their website and including yours would turn them into a niche reviewer. Cry if you need to (I pass no judgment) but don't let the rejection stop you. Somewhere out there are reviewers who will love you, or at the very least, agreed to read you.

Most importantly, know that the author/reviewer relationship is symbiotic. No, the reviewer doesn't stand to make immediate buckage taking on your book (unless you choose a reviewer who charges for reviews, a practice I'll tackle in a future blog.) Some do it for the sheer love of reading and support for authors. They also do it to get good web content to attract more visitors and therefore make some money from their websites. So if you adjust your thinking and work with your potential reviewers instead of against them, it could turn a worrisome task into an adventure.