Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 58

Promote Your Book with Your Values

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Today’s post is by author Sonya Huber (@sonyahuber).

Like many authors, I had a book to promote during the COVID-19 pandemic and still today each one of us faces the threat of illness and too little bandwidth for a promotional blitz. Shilling our wares can be draining, so I decided to ask the unreasonable from my book promotion: that it give me something back.

At first this felt like a short cut. I was juggling Long-COVID, a full-time job, and the raising of a teen, so it seemed necessary to do what made me happy rather than adding to my exhaustion. I realized, looking back on past events, that the way to gain energy from book promotion is to focus on my values.

I’ll admit that this awareness started somewhat by accident. During the long promotion for a book of essays on chronic pain, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System, I was asked to do a few workshops for people with chronic pain hosted by nonprofit organizations. As I enjoy teaching and interacting with workshop participants, I knew how to promote and prep for these events. Unlike a reading, where I often feel like I’m begging audience members to sit passively and listen to me for an hour, a class felt like a dialogue, a chance to connect, even if it was on Zoom.

Then I started to think about the numbers. As an author, I’ve experienced the discomfort of an in-person reading with two people in the audience, both of whom are bookstore employees. The time invested in planning a reading—never mind the task of getting a bookstore to agree to host a university press author—rarely offered meaningful returns in terms of book sales or visibility.

When I began to offer free workshops with writing prompts built around my book’s theme, my audience counts were ten times what I’d been able to pull in for a reading. Plus, the focus shifted from “me” to “us”: I got a chance to interact and be spontaneous, to read and hear writing from participants, to dialogue about questions that emerged from writing prompts, and even to do some writing myself.

So when I had my next book to promote—an essayistic memoir about a single day in my life (Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir of a Day)—I thought up a format for online classes that allowed participants to write and share on what had happened to them that very day. These “Day-Ins” ended up providing moments of calm focus amid our anxious pandemic lives and were, even over Zoom, a great social bonding activity.

This doesn’t mean that every book promotion event needs to be a class. Instead, I realized, I wanted to do book events that do double duty, that allow me to align the things I care about with the time I spend on promotion. My personal values include community engagement, but they also include a wide array of causes from disability rights to racial justice to the environment.

When I planned a tour for a book on identity and health insurance (Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir), my most satisfying event was a bookstore reading that was co-hosted with a health access nonprofit. I sold a few books and was joined on stage by an organizer who talked about legislative efforts and gave attendees a chance to get involved and contribute financially.

To think about your values in terms of your book, you might consider some of these questions:

What kind of setting are you comfortable or energized in?What themes from your book might connect to fun or meaningful activities?What causes and organizations might your book connect to?Are there existing non-book-related activities that might feature your book as an add-on?Are there specific populations you might reach out to in order to provide a free experience other than a reading, but with the same ultimate awareness-generating benefits for you as an author?What non-writing skills would you donate to a cause you care about, and how might those skills allow others to learn about you as an author?What kinds of events or experiences have you always meant to try? Could you use one of those to build a fun or meaningful group activity that also happens to feature your book?

As I focused on building activities that feature my books, I found friends and strangers eager to take me up on the idea of a free class for their book group or community center. And in each case, I made sure to offer attendees a worksheet that had both a summary of my key points and writing prompts along with my contact information, an image of the book cover, promotional blurbs, order information, and a discount code. I don’t know whether these ultimately contributed more or less to my sales figures than traditional readings, but I am a happier author as a result, and the next book tour looks less like an onerous chore and more like a creative challenge.

The Julie & Julia Formula: How to Turn Writing Envy Into Writing Success

“happy birthday, julia child!” by Rakka is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Today’s post is by author Catherine Baab-Muguira (@CatBaabMuguira).

Genuine, widely applicable career-hacks are rare in the writing life. But I do know of one. In all honesty, it is the single greatest writing-career secret I’ve ever stumbled across—like really stumbled across, feet flying out from under me, coffee mug launched into space—and I won’t even make you skim 800 words to discover it.

The secret is fandom: dedicated and even obsessive engagement with another writer’s work. I learned this firsthand, the hard way, and it led to the agent, auction and “Big 5” book deal of my nerdiest dreams. I just never thought to codify until I heard it discussed on a podcast.

A couple of weeks ago, on You Are Good, a film-discussion show, the journalist Sarah Marshall happened to be analyzing Julie & Julia. “You can reach your dreams by loving another person’s work,” Marshall said, identifying this as the central dynamic of the 2009 movie. In case you haven’t seen it, Julie & Julia tells the true story of Julie Powell, a frustrated young writer who, in the early aughts, started blogging about her attempt to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The blog eventually grew so popular that it became a book, then a movie directed by Nora Ephron. Which is a way of saying that, through her fandom of Julia Child, Julie Powell most definitely reached her writing dreams, and then some. Meanwhile, Sarah Marshall recognized her own career in this fan-guru dynamic. Turns out she’s a giant Nora Ephron fan, and Ephron’s work had helped her become successful in just the same way.

This is my story too, I thought, listening. Other people have had this experience??? We should call it the Julie & Julia Formula!

How the formula works in general

Step one: Desire to have a writing career.

Step two: Try to write. Fail.

Step three: While stewing in frustration and envy of those who’ve somehow made it, develop an obsession with the one person whose career looks so great, so transcendently beautiful and awe-inducing that you just want to puke.

Step four: Use this obsession as either less direct inspiration or very direct inspiration.

Step five: Profit.

How it worked for me

The process sounds simple and easy, and in one sense—the retrospective sense—it is. In my case, living it felt different. Sadder. Less funny, less straightforward.

I stewed literally, in a too-small bathtub in a too-small house I didn’t want to be living in. I wasn’t where I wanted to be in my writing career, either, and this fact helped tip me into the sheer worst depressive episode I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t eat, sleep or function. I had to take mental-health leave from my job.

Some strange intuition led me to take Edgar Allan Poe off the shelf for the first time since I was a kid. My brain had gone limp, too broken down to make sense of TV or any other book than, apparently, The Complete Tales of Mystery & Imagination. Looking back, I reason that it was because only Poe’s work was bleak enough to match my mood. I was searching out evidence to confirm my darkest feelings, and I found it in Poe. But not only that.

Before I knew it, I’d grown completely obsessed, tearing through his stories, essays and poems, then moving on to the biographies—and there are dozens of Poe biographies. That’s before you get to the fan art or the academic criticism or the film adaptations. It’s hard to believe (a) how much he created and (b) just how much he’s inspired, and all this in spite of or possibly because of his tragic life. I was fascinated, drawn out of myself, weirdly yet wonderfully enlivened.

Betting that I wasn’t alone in finding Poe a perverse hero, I pitched an essay about all this to The Millions, and when it came out in September of 2017, it went viral in a literary-world sort of way. My inbox swelled with emails from fellow travelers. About this time, out for a drink with my longtime mentor, I rambled on about the experience and the larger Poe phenomenon.

“That sounds like a book,” he said.

Initially, I scoffed. “Oh yeah, I’m going to write a book about reading Edgar Allan Poe for self-help and call it How to Say Nevermore to Your Problems.” (Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.)

Soon enough, I got cracking on a book proposal, and in the week after I sent that to agents, I received four offers of representation. Eighteen months later, my book sold at auction to Running Press, a subsidiary of Hachette.

The delay in the sale came, in part, from me not understanding my book’s genre. Because what do you call an intensely personal take on a famous writer? Figuring this out took me lot of googling circa 2018; let me save you the trouble. It’s called bibliomemoir, and there are many, many comps in case you want to go this route. Look to Harry Eyres’ Horace and Me. Michael Perry’s Montaigne in Barn Boots. John Kaag’s Hiking with Nietzsche. The genre is prominent enough now that there are viral tweets dedicated to mocking it.

In time, I realized I wanted to take myself out of the project and focus entirely on Poe. For this, too, there is ample precedent, stretching back decades. Check out Alain de Botton’s 1997 How Proust Can Change Your Life. Or more recently, Sarah Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café. Or any of Ryan Holiday’s mega-popular books on Stoicism.

They’re just the nonfiction examples. Anna Todd’s After and Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You both grew out of an obsession with Harry Styles, that great rival of Chekhov and Trollope. E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Gray began as Twilight fan fiction. Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies explains itself. Grady Hendrix, for his part, essentially earns a living as a horror fan, burlesquing the genre and racking up bestsellers from The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires to The Final Girl Support Group.

How the formula can work for you

You may be laboring with a novel or focusing on nonfiction. It doesn’t really matter. To get a traditional book deal, you need a specialty—a story only you can tell, a topic only you can cover—plus an audience wanting that coverage.

So ask yourself: What writer does it for you? Who’s the Julie to your Julia? Is there some literary IP that you love so much it’s a borderline problem? Bingo.

Your audience may flow either from your own platform or, far more handily, from your subject. Anna Todd didn’t invent One Direction from whole, sweaty cloth. Nietzsche remains a lot more famous than John Kaag. The point is, it’s far easier to tap into a large existing audience for a subject than it is to try to build a platform of equal size. And if your subject is popular enough? Your own platform just became a lot less important.

Suddenly, agents return your emails. Acquiring editors call. Sales numbers start to stack up. And you’re launched.

This is the Julie & Julia Formula, some heretofore hidden wisdom coming to you via a Russian doll of influence that nests back to literary time immemorial, and for what it’s worth, you have my blessing. Go forth and publish. Lose yourself in envy, obsession, love. Maybe lust, too, why not? Could be your ticket.

Nonfiction Writers: Find Your External and Internal Why

Photo by Luke Webb from Pexels

Today’s post is excerpted from Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book by Jennie Nash (@jennienash). Join her on June 9 for the online class Land a Book Deal with a Better Table of Contents.

When I ask my clients why they want to write a book, they will often start by giving a simple answer: “I want to share what I have learned” or “I don’t want other people to suffer like I did.” These answers are part of the truth, but they often shield deeper reasons. These reasons, this deeper why, form the core of your motivation and momentum; you’ll draw on these reasons when you feel despair or imposter syndrome.

If you never ask yourself why you are writing, you are far more likely to write in circles, fall into frustration and doubt, and come to believe that writing depends on some elusive muse or a series of special habits (e.g., write 1500 words a day, write for an hour every day, write when the full moon is waning) rather than deep self-reflection, discipline, and persistence.

Identifying your why first has an enormous impact on your capacity to both write and complete a book that resonates with your desired reader. It’s often the difference between writing a book that people want to read and either (a) never finishing, or (b) finishing, but writing something that is so watered down and wishy-washy that it fails to make an impact.

You can write your way to an answer—absolutely. I have done it, and writers I know have done it, and we have all heard of famous writers who have done it, but the truth is that for most of us most of the time, it’s wildly inefficient, ineffective, painful, and unnecessary. That’s why we start with why.

Your external why

Let’s start with the external reasons why you want to write a book—things you believe writing a book will get you in the world. These are probably connected to the return on investment (ROI) of your time, energy, and money.

At the top of most people’s list is the desire to be recognized more broadly for their expertise. Writing a book is about becoming seen and heard. Different people have different concepts of what recognition and validation look like. It might be that you are quoted in the publication of record for your field or offered a column there. It might be that you are invited to speak at a prestigious event. It might be that the people you admire in the field come to admire you.

Many people hope that writing a book will make them a lot of money in book sales, and it might. You could receive a $25,000 advance from a traditional publisher or a $150,000 advance or a $1,000,000 advance, and then you will receive 15 percent royalties on every book sold once that advance earns out.

Or you could work with a paid-for publisher, which requires an upfront investment from the author. Michael Bungay Stanier’s business management book, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever (published by Page Two Books), has sold more than a million copies. He makes between $4 and $6 per book, plus the book drives business and revenue for his consulting firm. That all adds up to a robust return on the investment of writing a book.

Most people, in truth, don’t earn anywhere near that much money. The New York Times reported in 2020 that 98 percent of books sold fewer than 5,000 copies. This reality means that writing a book might not be a great financial bet if you rely solely on book sales to earn out your investment of time and effort. “The majority of writers don’t earn a living from book sales alone,” writes Jane Friedman in The Business of Being a Writer, “People don’t go into the writing profession for the big bucks unless they’re delusional.”

So why bother?

Because of the possibility of making an impact and extending your reach. My client Jenn Lim, author of Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, introduced me to the idea of what she calls “the other ROI”—meaning ripples of impact. Lim’s book is about finding purpose in the workplace and living that purpose every day. The ripples of impact happen when you connect with fellow humans in an authentic way. Writing a book gives you a way to make an impact and spread your ideas far and wide. This often leads to lucrative consulting or speaking gigs, the opportunity to collaborate on interesting projects and initiatives, and the chance to be part of powerful conversations.

Here’s how Michael Bungay Stanier puts it: “We’ve all seen our marketing heroes grow a base of fans, then customers, then empires through ‘content marketing.’ And the big kahuna in content marketing is the book. This is how you officially rise to ‘Thought Leader’ status, it’s how you differentiate yourself from your competitors, you drive revenue, you launch your speaking career, you start hanging out with other cool authors.”

Thought leaders definitely hang out with each other. I love to listen to podcasts about business, personal growth, and creativity, and I am often struck by how all the authors at a certain level know each other and boost each other’s work. Adam Grant appears on Brené Brown’s podcast when his new book comes out, and Brené Brown appears on Grant’s podcast when her new book comes out, and then you see that they both have been on Guy Raz’s show and you start to notice that Indra Nooyi is in all the same places talking about her new book, too. All these thought leaders know each other and read each other’s work and promote each other’s work to their massive audiences. These are ripples of impact at a high level, but even at less stratospheric heights, the ripples work the same way, and they can be profound.

Here are what the ripples of impact can look like:

You attract followers who are interested in hearing more of what you have to say, expanding your ability to influence, educate, illuminate, comfort, or entertain people.You attract the attention of traditional media when they are looking for experts to quote in your industry.You attract the attention of podcasters and radio and TV producers.You receive invitations to speak at industry events and at events outside of your field.You can easily share your most powerful content with key audiences.You have reason to connect with other influencers—to strike up a conversation, collaborate, and connect with each other’s audience.You have the chance to build a legacy around your thinking.

These are the reasons people invest the time, energy, and money in writing books—and some of these outcomes come with financial rewards far greater than the book itself.

It’s important to identify your external why for writing a book, but there is another layer of motivation to understand as well.

Your internal why

The internal reasons people write are the ones that tend to sustain them through the roadblocks and challenges of a long development process. These reasons might come from a place of rage or injustice, simple jealousy, a different way of looking at things than the prevailing wisdom, or a deep-rooted sense of social justice. Often people who have something to say are saying it in opposition to something else—some other idea, or social movement, or injustice, or prevailing belief, or experience they’ve had.

Writing is all about raising your voice and staking your claim. You speak your truth, claim your authority, take a stand for what you believe in. We can talk all day long about how to write—both the craft of it and the practice of it—but the hardest part by far is stepping into your power.

I have the great privilege of working with people who are very accomplished in their fields—entrepreneurs and executives and thought leaders—and every single one of them rubs up against the difficulty of raising their voice. Will people care? Do I have the right to tell this story? Is it good enough? Will it matter? These are not only questions the beginner asks; these are questions every writer asks. And they are questions about raising one’s voice.

The way to answer these questions and combat the doubt that comes with them is to connect to your why. Tap into your motivation, the reason you care, your rage, and your passion. That is how you find your voice and how you finish your book.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, please join Jennie on June 9 for the online class Land a Book Deal with a Better Table of Contents.

How a Little Psychology Can Improve Your Memoir’s Setup

Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels

Today’s guest post is by editor and coach Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen). Join her on May 18 for the online class Memoir Beginnings.

Every memoirist faces the same dilemma: where to begin, what to keep, and what darlings to cut. Many writers either freeze or overwrite act one, because they want to immerse you in that special soup of hilarious-terrifying-crazy-and-weird that inspired them to write their story. But a setup that drags on too long can lose your readers.

In Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, Blake Snyder calls the early part of act one the antithesis, or the world before your journey begins. Your main job in this section is to reveal the Six Things that Need Fixing—or the narrator flaws and problems you’ll resolve by the end of your book.

Narrator flaws generally fall into three categories:

Flaws of perceptionProblematic behaviorsInterpersonal issuesFlaws of perception

Flaws of perception include misbeliefs and faulty thinking, what psychologists call cognitive distortions. These flaws are the internal problems that impact your narrator’s worldview. We form these flawed perceptions based on our assumptions or lessons we learn from our experiences. Common cognitive distortions include black-and-white thinking, jumping to conclusions, or catastrophizing. These cognitive distortions can lead to beliefs like I should never ask for help, if I’m not perfect no one will love me, and good women don’t get angry.

It’s not uncommon for writers to create extensive lists of faulty beliefs or cognitive distortions when first working on this exercise. But limit yourself to two or three, then laser in on the scenes that reveal them.

Studying lists of cognitive distortions, common flawed beliefs, and even Twelve-Step character defects can help you identify your narrator’s internal struggles. Once you know them, you’ll understand what motivates their behavior, which leads to our next item.

Problematic behaviors

Behavior arises from our worldview and follows the following format:

stimulus (outside event) › belief (internal filter) › our response (external action)

Some of our actions look great on the outside, but actually get us into trouble, like people pleasing or trying to be superhuman. Then there are the ones most people know are problematic, like passive aggression, hypervigilance, or using silence as a weapon.

When you link your narrator’s beliefs and thoughts with external behaviors, your manuscript will benefit in three ways:

If beta readers and critique group members have encouraged you to show more and tell less, identifying your problematic behaviors (actions) will help you pinpoint which things you must show in the forward-moving story. This can help you limit your opening’s backstory to the most essential items.You will develop a tight cause-and-effect chain between events, which is how you create a propulsive opening.Learning about how beliefs and cognitive distortions feed behavior will give you more compassion for your characters. For example, most people hate it when someone tries to control them. Yet, few know that control is fueled by deep fear of losing something we value.

Returning to the Twelve-Step list of character defects and exploring lists of maladaptive coping mechanisms can help you uncover the two or three actions that need fixing. While it can feel painful or awkward to examine unflattering traits, revealing your flaws will turn you into a trustworthy narrator readers are more likely to care about.

Interpersonal issues

In storytelling, every hero has an antagonist, or a character who creates obstacles in their path. That means most conflicts take place between characters. Many bestselling memoirs are populated with characters who behave badly—just look at Mary Karr’s parents in The Liars’ Club, Tobias Wolff’s stepfather in This Boy’s Life, or Krystal Sital’s grandfather in Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad. While these characters were either born or thrust into these relationships, many of our antagonists are people we’ve chosen to be with.

Before exploring the problems between your characters, return to your ending, so you can see which relationships have transformed. Look for ones that have fallen away as well as those that have taken on a new form.

Understanding which relationships have changed will help you determine who must be developed in act one, and who’s part of your story’s context. This is essential, because many memoirists use too many act-one pages to develop flawed parents, abusive family members, or painful situations that provide a context for the narrator’s current reactions. But if transformed versions of those relationships don’t appear in your ending, they’re probably not as important as you think.

Once you know who’s important, it’s time to determine what’s going on between them. Most issues fall into one of the following categories:

Communication: you share and listen equallyTrust: you honor your wordBoundaries: you’re not too close or too far awayRespect: you see and understand my perspectiveSupport: you’ve got my back

When assessing each essential relationship (there’s probably one major and one minor one), consider which aspects have changed or improved. Do they communicate more honestly, see each other more clearly, or relate in a new way? In the setup, reveal the opposite.

Once you’ve explored these three areas, you’re ready to create your final list, which might look a little like this:

I see things in black-and-white (internal)I believe I need to be perfect (internal)I’m a chronic people pleaser (external)I don’t ask for help (external)My partner doesn’t respect my boundaries (between)My mother tells me what to do (between)

Next, identify one scene that represents each item on your list. If you’ve written more than one, choose the best example, then repurpose the rest of your material in another project. Focusing on the Six Things that Need Fixing can eliminate your act-one dilemmas regarding which aspects of your story’s special soup readers need to consume. Develop them well, and you’ll hook your reader and keep them invested in your memoir.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join Lisa on May 18 for the online class Memoir Beginnings.

Why Write When the World Is on Fire?

“Sunrise w/Distant Fire” by Susan Smith is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers an online course, Story Medicine, designed to help writers use their power as storytellers to support a more just and verdant world.

Over the course of the pandemic, many of us struggled as writers, and many of us independent editors and book coaches faced some version of the same question from our clients: Why write a novel when the world is on fire?

It certainly feels like a reasonable question. We don’t spend hours in universes of our own making when a hurricane is bearing down on the city where we live. We don’t occupy ourselves with imaginary conversations with imaginary characters when real people are calling for justice right outside our door. And we don’t spend time daydreaming about plot and character when the house is on fire.

But where do we turn when we’re waiting out the hurricane in the hotel of a distant city?

Where do we turn after the protest has passed, and we’re struggling to make sense of what we witnessed?

Where do we turn when we’re trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces of our lives and move on after the house has burned down?

We turn to stories.

Here are three reasons to keep writing, even when the challenges in the world at large feel overwhelming.

1. Novels offer solace

I don’t know about you, but in times of trouble, books have always been my refuge. They’ve been there for me in times when no one else was (like the cafeteria in sixth grade) and in times of great uncertainty (like the period of my life when I had cancer).

And in this I’m not alone: as print sales over the last two years have shown us, in times of trouble, people turn to stories.

It’s easy to feel like your story is only meaningful to you, because you’re the one who’s writing it. But the truth is, the author of every novel you ever loved probably felt that way at some point or another.

Keep writing because stories matter.

2. Novels change the reader

Yes, stories can offer us a much-needed escape from the pressures and challenges of this world. But they can also offer us a source of moral courage in grappling with those pressures and challenges.

When I think of the books that have had the most impact on me, books that have shaped the way I think, act, and see the world, I think of books like Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Ed Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang—and, more recently, Rene Denfeld’s The Enchanted, Richard Powers’s The Overstory, and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Not surprisingly, many of these same sorts of novels have been targeted in our current wave of book banning crusades.

The next time you start to feel like writing fiction is pointless, in the face of the challenges we’re facing in the world at large, ask yourself: If fiction doesn’t have any real power in the world, then what are all these people so afraid of?

Write because stories have power.

3. Novels change the writer

Remember when I mentioned the period of my life when I had cancer? As anyone who’s faced a diagnosis like that can attest, it has a way of clarifying what really matters to you, and what really doesn’t—and one of the few things I realized I regretted, at the point when I received mine, was the fact that I had not yet published a book.

If writing and publishing a novel is on your bucket list too, then let me just affirm this for you: doing so is one of the most meaningful things you will ever do with your life.

All in all, I’m a firm believer in the power of storytelling. That’s why I developed my course, Story Medicine: to help writers of fiction claim their power as storytellers, and use that power to effect positive change in the world.

In times of sickness, times of cultural upheaval, and times of real existential threats, like nuclear war and climate change—I think stories matter more than ever.

So wherever you are, if you’ve been struggling with this question, Why write when the world is on fire?, remember: Your words are water.

Your Journal as Time Machine

Photo by abdullah . from Pexels

Today’s post is by writer and creativity coach A M Carley (@amcarley).

You know how time expands and contracts? The feeling that you’re living your life in the middle of a cosmic accordion, and some force of the universe is working the bellows. Contracting—Where did the day go?—expanding—I can’t believe I just drafted an entire chapter!—and sometimes just chugging along normally.

Although who can say what’s normal?

One of the best places for me to meet and experience expansive time is in my journal. I like to think of it as my little readymade time machine. Open the pages of my marbled-cover composition book and I can stretch a few minutes into something meaningful.

For example, I have appointments today at 10 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2 p.m., and 4 p.m. In those in-between spaces I won’t be able to focus on anything because I’ll know the next thing is hovering. My day is trashed, and it’s only 9:15!

But that kind of self-talk is not helpful. So it often makes sense, almost paradoxically, to make some time, from 9:15 to 10:00, for sitting comfortably with my journal. I can think out, with my pen, how to maneuver the day. Where will I be between appointments if some of them involve travel? If they are all virtual, and I’ll be under my roof all day, what to-do items will fit into the gaps and be flexible enough to allow for last-minute changes? When will I take breaks? Eat? Make some tea? Go for a quick walk? Write?

For years, I imagined I might be the only person who gets like this—who takes a passive stance as to the passage of time. Then I got into conversations with other people, often writers, who knew all too well that same sense of having “lost” or “wasted” chunks of time that they wanted to have filled with work. Bad enough that we’re graceless with our use of a day. Then the second arrow aggravates the loss when we berate ourselves for it.

There’s an overlap here with another phenomenon—the delaying tactic or mistaken belief that the only usable time for creative pursuits comes in big chunks of hours at a stretch. I won’t go there now except to mention all the essays and blog posts out there from authors who wrote entire books in the little moments they made: waiting in the car for their child to get out of school, stopping for ten minutes before going into the grocery store, etc.

We ARE time

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman goes deeper. He suggests, as have others before him, that we ARE time. Not something outside of us that can be contained, managed, segmented, or mastered, time is inseparable from our embodied selves. From this stance, it’s even more up to us, right? There’s no point trying to objectify time as something outside ourselves that speeds up or slows down or sneaks away or runs through our fingers. It’s entirely up to us. So in that case, I’m for using my journal to savor the time that is my life.

Someone is due to arrive at 11:15 to look at the washing machine, and it’s now 10:57. I can’t DO anything because I’ll be interrupted as soon as I begin.

In this scenario, I’m pre-agitated, and the repairperson’s van hasn’t even pulled up yet. But I can perch near the front door and open my journal. Ahh. Something useful to focus on, disperse nervous energy, and—who knows—come up with an idea or two. And if the person due at 11:15 is delayed, that’s fine with me, because I’m occupied with something positive and useful.

Time confetti

Research indicates people nowadays “have” more free time than in previous eras, if the time is measured cumulatively over 24 hours. This may seem hard to believe. But it feels like we have less because available pieces of time are tiny slices of only a few minutes per slice: time confetti. That’s Brigid Schulte’s apt term for the little bits of time that are unprogrammed for people in western societies these days.

I’m supposed to leave at 5:30 and it’s 5:17. I can’t DO anything because there’s no time.

While tidying up is an option for those thirteen minutes, another option—especially attractive if the day so far has felt more like a forced march than a carefree saunter—is opening up my journal. I can stand, blank book in hand, and jot down ideas, lists, narratives, memories, questions, reminders, and more before I head out the door. When I go out, I’ll be feeling a little buoyed up from having given myself a few minutes of expanded time in that brief interlude between all the scheduled things.

Counter-productivity

Learning what to do with those little slips of time can be a challenge. One main reason Schulte gives for how we wound up with confetti-size pieces of time is our incessant connection to email, social media, and other 24/7 communications. Spare time, even in tiny slices, is a boon. Often I find the best use of a sliver of time is to drop into an awareness of my breath and shift into a lower gear. One way to make that shift is to put pen to paper in my journal. I’m not interested in becoming a productivity fiend, driven to wringing the last second out of every minute. Reaching for my journal at odd moments feels calming, not “productive.”

When you begin to count on your journal as a companion, you may notice ideas surfacing that you want to be sure to add to the pages. You can develop habits to support that impulse. You can start to apply some of those awkward short bits of time to jotting things into your journal. Bits of time confetti, no longer thieves of your day, become useful, yet calm, moments.

Finally, with time and distance, the pages of your journal offer another kind of time machine—a portal that transports you from the here and now to multiple snapshots of your internal world, over the years.

Go ahead. Step into the time machine.

To Nail Your Memoir’s Beginning, Stop Looking in the Wrong Direction

Photo by Nothing Ahead from Pexels

Today’s guest post is by editor and coach Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen).

You’ve been told the first fifty pages of your memoir can make or break your publishing dreams. Listening to The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast has amplified those first-page stakes. So, you’ve active-verbed the hell out of your sentences, sharpened your imagery, and made sure every period is correctly placed.

But when the queries aren’t answered, or they’re answered with an unhelpful “thank you for submitting, but it’s not right for me,” you wonder what’s missing from your manuscript.

The beginning of every memoir must hook the reader, establish the setting, and reveal the situation and stakes. Most writers work tirelessly to develop these elements. But spending all your time at the beginning of act one might mean you’re looking in the wrong direction. Instead, try studying the end of your manuscript. Your closing pages shouldn’t just reflect all you’ve learned, or the triumph you feel—they must reveal your story’s resolution.

Once you know what you’re resolving, you can establish a clear path for getting there. This is essential because most openings are revised to death in an exhaustive line-by-line edit. The tedium of this process can cause you to rush through the rest of your manuscript, resulting in a middle that sags and an ending that flags.

Even if your opening pages light up an agent’s enthusiasm, that fervor will quickly wane if the writing that follows seem like it’s not going anywhere specific. Sadly, beautiful sentences can’t hide this issue. That’s why you must know your destination, no matter how your memoir is structured.

In artfully rendered manuscripts, the opening and closing pages give the story a sense of symmetry. Screenwriter Blake Snyder talks about this in his book, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. He says, “[The opening image] sets the tone, mood, and style … and shows us a before snapshot of him or her.” The before snapshot is the narrator in full problem mode, well before they’ve figured things out. “The final image is the opposite of the opening image. It is your proof that change has occurred and that it’s real.”

Jane Alison’s craft book on the nonlinear form, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, also explores the power of symmetrical scenes. Reviewing the opening and closing pages of the memoirs you love will help you see this symmetry in action. Here are a few examples to get you started.

 At the beginning of Wild, Cheryl Strayed is homeless, motherless, bootless, and unsure she can become the woman she once was. At the end, she’s a married mother visiting the Bridge of the Gods, the destination of her hike, who understands how this journey transformed her.In The Glass Castle opening, Jeannette Walls avoids the homeless, dysfunctional parents she ran away from at eighteen. By the end, the entire family eats Thanksgiving together, showing that her shame has morphed into acceptance.Nonlinear books also contain this symmetry. Michael Ondaatje’s nonlinear memoir, Running in the Family, chronicles his return to Sri Lanka so he can understand where he came from. In his half-page opening, he concisely reveals the drought happening both in his homeland, and in what he knows about his origins. In the closing, we experience the lushness of his understanding through the verdant place which now mercifully accepts the rain.Krystal Sital’s intergenerational memoir, Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad, opens when her grandfather is rushed to a New York City hospital. Because she’d always seen her grandfather as her protector, she can’t understand why her grandmother might be reluctant to save him. At the end, a far-wiser Krystal is back in Trinidad. She acknowledges her grandfather’s complexity, the power of her mother and grandmother, and both the beauty and danger of her homeland.

If you don’t know your book’s ending, you’re not ready to nail your beginning. Keep writing until you arrive at a compelling ending point. Once that has been established, identify what you’ve resolved and then list the steps you took to get there. Now describe what the opposite looks like. That opposite is your story’s opening.

Sometimes, when we’re working on a story that happened more recently, or a situation that’s yet to resolve, we struggle to find the ending because life continues to happen. If this is the case, either take a break and return to this project when a clear ending emerges, or ask yourself the following questions: What have I set up? When in the future does it seem to resolve, even if that resolution is imperfect? Let that imperfect resolution be your ending until something better comes along. Then make sure your story works toward it. Even if you later discover this isn’t your memoir’s true ending, you’ll have practiced the art of telling a cohesive story.

If your ending is solid, consider revising backward, chapter by chapter, to ensure everything belongs. Once you reached the opening, apply a tool like a beat sheet to ensure you’ve hit the key turning points in the early part of your memoir. And don’t forget about beta readers. Their keen eyes can spot what’s truly working and what’s begging for revision.

While writing, revising, or waiting for feedback, choose five books you love. Read the opening and closing pages. Note their connections. Then do a last 25- and first 25-page review. See what issues the author resolves in those final twenty-five pages. Then find out how those issues were set up. Repeat this exercise several times, and you’ll know which direction to turn when it’s time to nail the beginning of this book and your next one.

Your turn: What symmetries have you discovered in your favorite memoirs?

The Vital Difference Between Plot and Story—and Why You Need Both

Today’s post is by book coach, editor and platform expert Heather Davis (@HLeeDavisWriter).

Writers buy plotting books by the dozen and do their best to create the plottiest plot that the world has ever seen. They stuff their novels with action-packed sword fights, explosions, fist fights, and screaming matches. Plot points, pinch points, and grandiose climaxes abound.

But the problem is this: in the world of great novels, Plot and Story are very different entities, and every great novel needs both.

Plot refers to all the external events that happen in a novel. The plot encompasses things like sword fights and explosions. It also encompasses the logical flow of the narrative as a series of cause-and-effect events. (Plot even encompasses your Inciting Incident—you know, that oh-so-important event that catapults your reluctant protagonist into the action in the first place!) Think of Plot as the external and highly visual part of your novel.

Story, on the other hand, refers to the internal transformation that your protagonist must make throughout the course of the novel in order (usually) to become a less flawed version of themselves by the end. Story tracks the character arc of the protagonist, showing us exactly how they get from point A (maybe selfish or cowardly) to point Z (maybe unselfish or brave). Story is largely internal, and it follows the emotions and thoughts of the protagonist as they try to make sense of (and adjust to) their ever-changing world. It is here in the Story where we see the protagonist slowly transformed by the events of the Plot.

Think of Plot as what’s happening to your protagonist and Story as what’s happening within your protagonist. And certain events force them to wrestle with their internal demons, fears, misconceptions, and prejudices until (finally) they come out the other side of your Plot as a changed person. (Or, possibly in a tragedy, not changed.) When that happens, the Story is done!

Novels that have an interesting Plot but not a deep Story are dramatic sequences of somewhat related external events that would rival any Hollywood action flick. But…those action-packed events don’t seem to have a throughline, and there is no emotional continuity for the reader to grasp hold of. Plot without Story is unrewarding for readers. In fact, neurologist Paul Zak found that both plot and story must be present for test subjects to pay attention to a narrative and feel empathy for the characters involved.

Here are seven ways to infuse your Plot with Story.

1. Design a clear character arc for your protagonist. Your protagonist is an imperfect person, because they would be totally boring if they already had everything figured out from the beginning. Decide which aspect of their imperfection your story will focus on. This will be their basic character arc. Here are some common (simple) arcs, but there are many more that vary in complexity.

Selfish to selflessCowardly to braveMistrusting to trustingDeceitful to truthfulLacking self-confidence to having self-confidenceAfraid to unafraid

2. Create a compelling backstory that makes your protagonist’s character arc make sense. If your protagonist is selfish, have a specific and concrete backstory that supports this flaw. The backstory you create will be sprinkled throughout the narrative like seasoning, helping the reader understand your protagonist and begin to empathize with them.

3. Make that character arc clear from the beginning of the novel. The opening scenes and chapters are the perfect place for your protagonist to show off their imperfection. If their character arc is cowardly to brave, the reader should see them acting cowardly (and what effect that has on their life and happiness) early in the novel.

4. Test each plot point (narrative event) to see if it relates back to the Story. The events in your novel aren’t just there to be flashy and dramatic. They should pressure your protagonist to change in a very specific way. In essence, plot points exist to make your protagonist walk the trajectory of the character arc you have designed. So, if your protagonist’s character arc is cowardly to brave, then each plot point should relate back to that idea.

Sometimes these events will cause them to be less cowardly and sometimes more cowardly. Their character arc is a two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back sort of thing. But, overall, there should be forward momentum and the reader should feel it.

5. Prune away plot points that don’t relate back to the Story. Once you start connecting plot points to your protagonist’s character arc, you might notice that some of the events in your novel don’t fit anymore. That means they aren’t actually a part of the Story you are trying to tell. This is where that advice to kill your darlings comes in extremely handy. If plot points don’t serve the Story, they must go.

6. Check that internal change is slow and subtle. Readers love Story, but they don’t want to be beat over the head with it. They don’t want to feel like you’re trying to teach them a lesson. Instead, the magic you’re working should be nearly invisible. The internal change your protagonist undergoes is subtle and slow enough to make sense in the context of the Plot. Meaning, the protagonist shouldn’t just wake up one day as a changed person. The external events of the Plot must really leave them no choice but to change.

7. Show that your protagonist is changed by the end of the story. The beginning and ending of your story should be like night and day. If the opening scenes and chapters show that the protagonist has a flaw, then the ending should show that the flaw has been fixed (or at least greatly improved).

Plot and Story are two halves of a great narrative. By spending as much (or more) time weaving a dynamic Story as you do creating a flashy Plot, readers will walk away feeling like your novel was worth their time and energy. They will have gleaned a nugget of universal truth about the human experience from the pages of your work. (And isn’t that why we come to novels in the first place?)

Now I’d love to hear your thoughts! What is the Story at the heart of your Plot? How did you decide on it?

Not a Journal Person? Post-Pandemic Might Be the Perfect Time to Start

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Today’s post is by writer and creativity coach A M Carley (@amcarley).

When vaccinations became available, that was when we though we’d be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief and resume regular life. No, that didn’t happen.

After the second (North American) winter of a global pandemic, I’m no longer waiting for things in the world at large to improve. For all we know that won’t happen—at least not in a way we can envision now. Powerful currents—the global climate crisis, war, naked hatred, tribalism, cellular-level fear, and mistrust—swirl among us and drive events.

Several new habits are helping me adapt to the changes. Routine phone calls and Zooms with loved ones, colleagues, and friends have become anchors for me. Our conversations combine reassurance and support with practical suggestions—and brief, shared, descents into despair. More walks outdoors, better hydration, escapist reading, and the occasional nap are all helping. And one old habit, journaling, supports me every day.

It’s a great time to consider cultivating a journaling practice if you don’t already have one. If you are more swamped than ever with demands from others who live under the same roof, what follows may be of limited use. If, however, you see the possibility of unassigned time in the week, here are some ideas.

1. Welcome everything. Your journal is uncritical and agnostic. All thoughts are welcome here. Anything. For all the things you’re thinking but not comfortable saying, your journal is a safe receptacle. It also welcomes ideas you didn’t even know about—sometimes you can channel inspiration directly onto the page, bypassing most of your conscious thought processes.

2. Use your journal as a time capsule. Ticket stubs, receipts, Polaroids, drawings, pressed flowers, clippings, memorabilia—these can all live in your journal.

3. Stash your present moment awareness. Capture a moment, a strong sensation, an inspired idea. No time like the present.

4. Plan. For a comprehensive point-by-point list or agenda to one-by-one marginalia, your journal is a great place to track the things you intend to do.

5. Compose your morning pages. Julia Cameron’s time-honored three pages a day have populated millions of journals.

6. Draft, draft, draft. Struggling with the wording for a letter, email, phone call, or other challenging interaction? Want to send a heartfelt greeting to a loved one? Start writing out your thoughts in your journal, knowing that you can cross out, insert, mark up, walk away, come back, rewrite, and polish in private until you have what you need.

7. Sit with a trusted friend. I’ve called my journal my silent companion. Not an exaggeration, that describes the bond I feel with the once-blank notebooks that have accompanied me for decades. I rely on my relationship with my journal and know it has the power to support me.

8. Figure out what’s feeling off. Something’s not right. But what? Start writing about it. Often the pause—to step back and consider in your journal—is what you need to get to the heart of whatever needs to be addressed.

9. Name the emotions. Research suggests that emotions won’t hijack our mental, biochemical, and physiological processes when we are able to recognize our emotions, feel them, and release them. When you sense that you’re in the grip of your emotions, you may need a place to focus on what exactly is going on. Grab your journal and find the words for how you’re feeling.

Once you’ve been journaling for a while, you can then add the following ideas:

10. Revisit old entries for retrospective fodder. In search of lost time? Use past entries to discover what you wrote about back then. The choices you made—your entries as well as your omissions—are as important as the contents. Looking back can offer tremendous insight. Patterns emerge and a new way forward reveals itself.

11. Study in your research library. Need specific information about a specific day or date range? Your previous journal entries will provide some you-were-there immediacy.

Amid all the uncertainty and unrest, center yourself with a journaling practice. Trust your inner wisdom to show up and give it a safe place to be seen and heard.

The Benefits of MFA Programs: Q&A with Alan Davis

For a long time, now, I’ve seen writers on social media either asking questions about the real-world benefits of MFA programs or complaining about the MFA’s focus on literary fiction. Recently, I happened upon a long Twitter conversation that questioned the logic of MFA programs not including a course on the publishing process. Because I think these are important questions and valid criticisms, I asked one of my former MFA professors, who is also my writing mentor, if he would address those questions and criticisms—some of which are also my own. Our exchange follows.

Alan Davis is a writer who has published three prize-winning collections of short stories: Rumors from the Lost World, Alone with the Owl, and So Bravely Vegetative. He co-edited ten editions of American Fiction and Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan.

Davis was born in New Orleans, grew up in southern Louisiana, and now lives in Minnesota, land of the wind chill factor, where he taught, collaborated in the creation of an MFA program, and served as editor for over fifteen years of an iconic literary small press that he helped revive as a teaching press associated with Minnesota State University. He teaches in a low-residency MFA program at Fairfield University and writes, often spending winters in the Sonoran desert.

Kristen Tsetsi: What is good writing, and can it be taught?

Alan Davis: Anything can be taught except inspiration, vision, and voice. Craft is pedagogical.

Taking a writing workshop buys a student time, first, and a mentor (or mentors), second. A student’s peers also take writing seriously and often respond passionately to work-in-progress.

Craft is easy in the sense that it’s pedagogical; it’s difficult in the sense that it’s an all-at-once process, with momentary decisions (word choice, syntax, rhetoric, rhythm, alliteration and assonance, metaphor and metonymy, etc.) too numerous to count, and with workshops providing a barrage of often-contradictory critiques.

Writing, as I like to define it, is speech frozen on the page. A writer can return to a draft and revise until time runs out (a deadline, a semester, a lifetime), but craftsmanship without inspiration, voice, and vision, although it can get you an “A” and get you published, will leave a reader, finally, unsatisfied if the story is only discursive (one page after another) and not recursive (words calling out to words, theme holding forth dramatically, voice serving vision and capturing the attention of a busy reader in a world full of ridiculous distractions).

And good writing is meaningful. Bob Dylan once said, of his own mentor, “You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.” That’s high praise.

Most MFA programs emphasize literary fiction. What does literary fiction do that other fiction doesn’t?

It speaks to the heart, brain, and soul all at once. It teaches you how to live. It does more than merely entertain. Unfortunately, crass entertainment often drives out art. That’s not to say, as Joseph Heller pointed out, that one of his contemporaries, Mario Puzo (author of The Godfather novels), didn’t get up as early in the morning as he did and work as hard at his craft every day as Heller did when writing Catch-22 or Something Happened (a very long novel in which almost nothing happens).

There’s no dishonor (quite the contrary) in writing popular or genre fiction if plot emerges from character; I love the mystery novels of James Lee Burke and I consider the best science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson to be literary achievements of the highest order. Shakespeare elevated sordid stories or common tropes into art through his use of language until stereotypes were transformed into unforgettable characters still with us centuries after his time.

My point is that literary fiction is a hybrid designation; it’s not limited to realistic writing about contemporary or historical characters. It’s related not only to craft, which is essential for any good writing, but to vision and voice, whereas most bestsellers, as Ursula K. Le Guin pointed out, “are written for readers who are willing to be passive consumers.” She continued: “The blurbs on their covers often highlight the coercive, aggressive power of the text—compulsive page-turner, gut-wrenching, jolting, mind-searing, heart-stopping—what is this, electroshock torture?”

Unlike pop fiction, literary fiction is news that stays news, whereas it’s usually quaint and tedious to read some throwaway popular novel that was a bestseller in its day. Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004), a what-if book in which the Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh becomes President and a minority (in this case, Jews) fear relocation and the grotesque handprint of fascism and bigotry, is powerful fiction about a particular family in New Jersey that’s timeless. I read it last month and it made my neck prickle: it was that good and that relevant to our contemporary problems with authoritarians and bigots.

Schools offering MFA programs will often list as one of the advantages of an MFA the connections that can help a writer’s career. This sounds like, “Having an MFA can help you form networks that will be useful *wink wink* when you want to publish a novel.” How true is this, realistically, for the average MFA student?

Networking is a thing in every profession, but the degree itself won’t get you very far, so the quote in your question is not very true, given the number of such programs and the proliferation of such degrees. (It goes without saying, some degrees are more prestigious than others, which is true in every profession.) It’s a union card: a terminal degree if you want to teach at a post-secondary institution. It’s also a chit, though, that tells an editor or agent you’ve put serious time (and probably a decent chunk of change) into acquiring the skills needed to write a good book.

The connections, though, are very real: your mentors, if willing, can make the case for your books, introduce you to agents or editors (or at least recommend where to send your work), and invite you to events where you have the chance to make acquaintance with publishing professionals. Most, if they know your work, are willing to write advance comments (or blurbs) when needed.

It’s inspiring to think that a work of fiction or creative nonfiction can speak for itself to agents and editors, and that sometimes happens, of course, but writing is a business, sometimes a corporate business, where logrolling and backslapping can be legion (as well as offensive to those of us not good at it).

A writer without such connections who’s earned an MFA and who’s introducing herself to prospective representatives and publishers should mention the degree, and if a mentor or two who knows the book is willing to speak up for it, those names are worth mentioning (and any advance comments worth including), but it’s the work itself that makes your best case.

I read something recently by a writer who, in her piece, admits she’s bitter about seeing her peers’ names in impressive places while hers is comparatively less prominent. She blames herself: she chose to write what she wants to write rather than what her agent has told her might sell better, and the consequences are what they are. But that it was her choice doesn’t necessarily make the reality easier to accept.

This probably happens a lot: writers who are writing well, but not what will sell, and who are therefore feeling a sense of relative failure. What do, or would, you say to writers who are just starting out about this potential future frustration?

If you’re writing to become the next Jennifer Egan or Jesmyn Ward or George Saunders or Marlon James, good luck. I recently read a Ted Gioia essay about the late singer Eva Cassidy, who died 25 years ago, at the age of 33, and whose now famous album, Live at Blues Alley, was self-financed; she cashed in her pension to rent the venue and pay the musicians. She died unknown except to a coterie of fans; since then, she’s sold more than 10 million records (and, I might add, deservedly so).

It’s a heartbreaking story—she came close on at least one occasion to a record contract—but paradigmatic. She sang what she loved without regard for fashion.

Publication, literary fame and monetary compensation either come your way or they don’t. Either way, writing well is always the best reward and, sometimes, the best retaliation against those incapable of recognizing the worth of your work. We all want our work to survive and join the literary conversation that takes place over time, but a life’s work is a life’s work, whether it takes place in the spotlight or in the contemporary equivalent of a garret. Keep at it. Don’t let the naysayers get you down. Keep at it. And join that conversation. Write and read widely.

Has there been any evolution in the MFA program toward evenly blending literary and commercial/genre fiction studies not only so students can learn the techniques and approaches of each, but also to ensure the instruction offers equal value to those who will go in different directions with their writing post-graduation?

Yes. Many MFA programs, especially low-residency ones, accept students interested in writing popular fiction, including fantasy (and, in at least one case, romance), sci fi, mystery and thrillers, and, of course, leprechaun fables. Most low-res programs make it a point to invite editors and agents to residencies and often incorporate the option of internships in publishing. As competition for students grows fierce, the business of writing increasingly receives attention in such programs.

A perplexing aspect of the MFA experience is that the program emphasizes the writing—attention to the craft, what effective writing looks like, why certain writers’ novels have lasted through the ages, etc. A student writer might think, “This is great. All I have to do is produce something good, and I’ll be golden.”

However, once out of the program, what begins to look more important is whether the writing—no matter how good—is traditionally published. The same people who profess to have a profound interest in and respect for, first, The Craft are also some of the first, if not the first, to decline to even acknowledge self-published writing—regardless of its quality—simply because it’s self-published. Can this be explained?

Yes. Once, universities scoffed at MFAs. Now, in many cases, it’s their meat and potatoes. Self-publishing, in contemporary terms, is in its infancy. Most readers like gatekeepers so they can avoid reading dreck. Publishers have been traditional gatekeepers. And publishing is also a business. There are lobbies, interest groups, corporations, logrollers, hierarchies with vested interests. Those with power, even limited power, won’t relinquish it without a fight.

It’s a dirty little secret in literary publishing these days that many competent and applauded presses require subventions, either the purchase of a minimum (but large) number of copies of one’s book or a sizable subsidy to cover publication costs, sometimes with the tradeoff that the writer receives a higher royalty rate. I’m not talking about vanity presses, though they exist; I’m talking about reputable presses (you would recognize their names) that have adopted a hybrid model (sometimes openly, sometimes under the table) to make ends meet. For years now, reputable presses have required contest or reading fees, and many prestigious literary magazines won’t read even a regular submission anymore without a fee attached.

I feel obligated to point out that self-publishing gets a bad name because some who self-publish write dreck or don’t even copyedit or proofread, but self-publishing is an honorable and honest means of publication.

If I decide to self-publish, I have a track record, reviews and advance comments and the like, and can point to my deep and long editorial experience as a gatekeeper myself to establish credibility. The question then becomes, however, how to do for myself the many things—distribution to bookstores, publicity and promotion, review copies, foreign and other rights, etc.—that an agent or publisher would otherwise take care of.

Part of what I was getting at with my question is that a self-published writer can have a track record, reviews, and advance comments (and from authors whose names or opinions should carry weight), and even that won’t satisfy—because the work is self-published. Period. A writer I recently interviewed, for example, admitted to having “an old-fashioned bias against self-published work.”

Can you speak to this attitude, having spent so much time in the community of professional literary writers? Is it as simple as snobbery?

I think genre fiction that’s self-published has an easier time finding its audience online (as ebooks and sometimes audiobooks) than literary fiction. Literary culture is nothing if not snobbish. Snobbery is its middle name. We take ourselves very seriously. Recently, I was one of three finalist judges for the Minnesota Book Awards (Novel and Short Story category). I don’t have a list of the preliminary titles that other panelists pruned, but I can guarantee you that none were self-published.

To be fair, it’s not as simple as snobbery. There are only so many hours in the workday. When I was co-editor of the annual American Fiction, at a time before my co-editor and I had assistants, I read 500–600 stories and my co-editor did the same, to find the 20 or so we’d publish and send to our Judge (Ray Carver, Anne Tyler, Joyce Carol Oates, etc.) to pick three prize winners. I had wonderful assistants and interns I trusted, but the reading burden, in retrospect, was so time-consuming that, as mentioned above, my own work suffered. (It’s almost like PTSD to think about it.) Readers of American Fiction didn’t have to read 1,200 stories to find the 20 or so that stood out.

Stakeholders have often wagered their professional lives on the chits, awards, grants, book contracts, and sinecures handed out by gatekeepers, whose own professional lives are defined by such gatekeeping. The idea that a writer can decide for herself that a manuscript is ready to hit the streets, and publish it forthwith, goes against everything they hold true and dear: Mom, Pop, apple scones, and whatever flag they fly.

I’m no expert on this stuff, but my considered view as a seasoned writer and editor and teacher is that the publishing industry at present is clearly a work in progress and the only thing to do is write often, write as well as you can, and insert yourself, by hook or crook, into the literary conversation. Write for the internal listener you know so well by now. Tell that listener the story that only you can tell.

Many writers entering MFA programs must have publishing as a goal, ultimately, but most programs don’t include a course covering the path to publication—how to research agents, how to write query letters, traditional vs. self vs. hybrid publishing models, etc. Why do you think most MFA programs don’t offer such a course—and is it something you can see them adopting?

Yes, you see such programs and tools offered much more frequently now, especially in low-res programs. As competition for MFA students increases, more programs will do as you suggest. The truth, though, is that most disciplines teach students how to do a job or have a career, not how to find work, and send them to career centers if networking and logrolling and the like doesn’t get a particular graduate a sinecure (or, in this case, a book contract).

Many students attended (and attend) traditional MFA programs not only to write a book (or books) but to get a terminal degree and teaching experience to find work in academia. The MFA industry was once a growth industry, but I don’t know, given the proliferation of such programs, if that’s still the case. Demographics and a dearth of jobs in academia argue against traditional MFA programs (if a teaching career and not publication is the significant goal); students earn a degree and often work as TAs, teaching mostly freshman composition and rhetoric, hoping for employment after graduation as college or university instructors.

The camaraderie of such programs is lovely and often life-changing—students make lifelong friends, find long-term mentors and fellow travelers, and write a book—but many end up, if academia is the goal, as adjuncts working for slave wages and sending their revised MFA theses to numerous contests and publishers each year, hoping for a break.

Low-res MFA programs, by contrast, draw students from all walks of life who often already have satisfying careers but want to write books on the side and get them published. You can be 25 or 30 or 50 or 70 or even 80 and decide to enter such a program (without relocating) to help you along in your journey towards telling your story.

Meanwhile, you can find numerous courses and workshops online about paths to publication. This blog is a good place to start, and Jane Friedman’s books, among many others, offer the guidance you mention.

Many writers want to enroll in MFA programs, but either they aren’t accepted, or they don’t bother applying because they can’t afford today’s college costs or the high interest loans. What books on your syllabus should DIY-MFAers buy or check out from the library, and what should they pay attention to as they read?

Good craft books are legion these days. One such, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing, by the New York Writers Workshop, promotes itself (on Amazon) like this: “Get the core knowledge of a prestigious MFA education without the tuition. Have you always wanted to get an MFA, but couldn’t because of the cost, time commitment, or admission requirements? Well now you can fulfill that dream without having to devote tons of money or time. The Portable MFA gives you all of the essential information you would learn in the MFA program in one book.”

Every workshop leader has favorite craft books. Many community education programs offer inexpensive writers’ workshops. There are numerous affordable summer writing conferences. Online workshops are also affordable, as are reputable writing consultants. Blogs like the one where this interview appears can be invaluable to find resources and advice.

Most important, read the kind of books you’d like to write yourself and develop a writing practice. Read as a writer, noting chapters, scenes, details, and structure. Write as many days a week as possible at a fixed time. A devotee of meditation meditates. It’s the practice that counts. Writers write, and organize their lives around writing, which means convincing yourself and your loved ones to take your devotion to writing seriously rather than as something you can put aside when your partner needs a floor scrubbed or repairs made. It might not make money but it’s not a hobby, it’s a vocation, and you, and those who love you, should treat it as such. (But don’t use writing as an excuse, especially if you’re a guy, to avoid your fair share of household duties!) Finally, when you’ve written something that’s reached a point where it requires somebody else’s attention, find a reader you trust or a workshop group to join.