Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 77

Should You Hire a Social Media Assistant?

Today’s guest post is by author Barbara Linn Probst.

I hate social media. It’s an addictive rabbit-hole.

I just don’t have time. Social media takes away from my precious writing time.

I’m no good at creating those visuals and posts.

I hate all that self-promotion.

I’ve heard many authors—myself included—express frustration and dismay at the expectation that we will not only produce wonderful books, but also carry out what amounts to a second full-time job as our own marketing team. Most of us don’t mind holding events, whether live or virtual, where we get to engage with readers. Nor do we mind interviews, written or recorded, where we can talk about our books and our writing process. But what so many of us do hate is the seemingly bottomless pit of social media engagement.

Facebook, with all those reader and writer groups. Instagram. Twitter. Pinterest.

“Likes” and “follows.” Comments and messages and shares.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone else could do all this for us?

Someone else can—for a price, and with a few caveats.

What is a social media assistant?

Whether they call themselves virtual assistants, social media consultants, or author assistants, these are people who will manage your social media for you. Unlike publicists, who seek media coverage on your behalf, or direct marketers, whom you pay to advertise your book on their sites, such an assistant takes over tasks that you could, if you wanted, do yourself or learn how to do yourself. They may do it more attractively, strategically, or frequently—but they have no special credentials like the high-level media connections of a good publicist, nor any special access to important gatekeepers. What you’re buying, in effect, is time—and the freedom to use that time in other ways.

The questions are: How much is that time worth to you, and are there other benefits, besides freeing up your time, that a virtual assistant can offer?

These are the questions that I decided to investigate as I thought about how I wanted to launch my second book, coming next April. My debut (April 2020) had a great launch despite the onset of the pandemic, but I wanted to consider what I did not do—or didn’t do very well.

What I wanted a social media assistant to help with

Like many others in my cohort, I didn’t grow up with social media and secretly wished I didn’t have to use it. Being both naïve and overly-aggressive, I made some mistakes which I still regret. For example, having misunderstood the absolute meaning of “no self-promotion,” I am now banned forever from two of the biggest reader groups on Facebook. There are ways around that, of course, such as getting others to post for me, but I still feel great remorse for my actions, which serve as examples of what not to do.

I’ve learned a few things since April 2020, when Queen of the Owls made its way into the world. I now understand that social media is a long game, not a quick grab. It’s about the slow, steady development of connection and engagement. Like all relationships, it takes time and commitment. You have to show up every day, not just on birthdays and anniversaries. And that means a hefty investment of energy.

Not everyone wants to do that. After all, there’s no end to what we, as authors, might do to reach out to readers! Another thing I’ve learned is that no one can, or should, do everything. I advise those who ask me: “Just do the stuff that’s fun for you, and outsource—or forget—the rest of it.”

And there’s the heart of the matter: what should we do ourselves, what should we jettison, and what should we outsource?

Sometimes the answer is clear. If you want to pitch to the book review editor at The New York Times, you need a professional publicist to do so on your behalf—and even then, there’s no guarantee. Many authors I know are unhappy at what they now consider to be a poor “return on investment” after hiring a publicist at a cost of anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000. They’re wondering if there isn’t a middle ground between spending that kind of money, which most don’t have, and doing it all yourself.

A virtual assistant—someone who can manage author promotion on social media—can seem like an attractive option.  At a cost far below that of a publicist, with a direct appeal to readers that can actually be tracked, social media assistance is a rapidly-growing alternative.

And for those of us, like me, who do have a publicist, a social media assistant can—maybe—take over an important piece of the book promotion that publicists don’t do and that many of us authors don’t do very well.

I decided to look into it.

Here are the 5 types of social media assistants that I encountered

I spoke with seven people who offer social media assistance. While that’s not a huge number, they do span a wide range of services and packages, and thus provide a framework for pondering the question posed in the title of this essay. Some of them focused specifically on authors; some did not. Most, though not all, required a three-month commitment; prices ranged from $300/month to $1300/month.

I also spoke with two people who offer “social media coaching”—with far higher price tags—but am not including them here because that service is quite different; nor am I including the many webinars and workshops that are available, for free or at minimal cost, to teach authors how to enhance their social media skills. I didn’t want someone to coach me on fishing techniques; I wanted to hire a fisherman.

Below are five composite summaries of the models I encountered—what they offer, how they work, their strengths and drawbacks.  In all cases, it’s important to remember what a virtual assistant cannot do. Since a VA has no access to your phone, she can’t post photos of you doing book-related things. Her posts will, of necessity, have a certain “artistic distance” to them.

VA #1 is a self-published author of several books who has a side-business helping authors with services ranging from proofreading and editing to developing marketing plans, social media coaching, and query critiquing. Her experience and familiarity with the writing world made her an attractive choice. I also liked the fact she offered three options or levels of service, although her prices were at the high end. However, she also had a full-time job and a book of her own launching soon. I wondered if she would really be able to give me the kind of ongoing support I was looking for.

VA #2 is a polished professional, whose website and proposal were evidence of the strong visual style I was looking for. She also provided references so I could see the Instagram accounts of several clients she manages, and the same quality or “flair” was evident there. She offered an expensive prix fixe package, with no flexibility—although her proposal was comprehensive and strategic, and included features like a weekly Instagram Story Reel that other proposals did not. I was hesitant, however, because she had never done social media for an author, and the demographic that her posts seemed to be targeting was not mine. Her work seemed to be geared to a younger, more style-conscious audience, and I wondered if she would know how to target the kind of readers (and book-buyers) I sought to attract.

VA #3 also focuses solely on authors, and has five years of experience. She offered the widest variety of packages (at a variety of prices), with or without features such as: direct publishing, responses and follower interactions, profile optimization suggestions, hashtag creation, alerts and schedulers, insights and analytics. Like VA #1 and VA #2, she required a three-month minimum engagement and included one 30-minute video call per month to review strategy and results.  What made her stand out was her strong focus on the analytics—that is, on the quantified effectiveness of what we were doing. What made me hesitate, however, is that I found the visual quality of her own posts to be exceptionally poor, with virtually no engagement. Since she couldn’t show me a client’s account, citing confidentiality, the only way I could assess the quality of her work was from her own account, and I wasn’t impressed.

VA #4 is a team, not a single person, each of whom has a different strength. While they haven’t worked with authors, over the past eight years they’ve offered a range of services—from email newsletters and website design to social media management—to mature female clients who are artists, wellness coaches, lifestyle consultants, motivational speakers, and so on. Their strengths, for me, were their familiarity with the demographic most likely to read my books, their range of experience, the possibility of “one-stop shopping” should I decide to do a newsletter as well, and their flexible pricing. They charge by the hour, with a monthly minimum, and don’t require a three-month commitment—although I’m aware that billable hours can add up quickly without necessarily producing the result I was hoping for.  

VA #5 is a book lover who is actively engaged on social media, especially the sites that focus on authors and books, but is young and inexperienced in the role of freelance consultant. She’s trying to forge a career and sees this as a natural way to turn what she knows and loves into a business. Aware that she’s brand-new, she’s set her fees very low. The price tag is obviously attractive and I know she would be eager to do well, yet I’m troubled by her lack of experience and wonder how well our styles would fit.

How to assess your options and choose a social media assistant

Which of the models is “best?” It depends on your goals, budget, the demographic you want to reach, and your personal style. What’s best for me might not be best for you. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Do you want to turn over your entire social media presence to someone else, or do you want to be an active partner in developing the content of the posts? Are you looking to outsource entirely or to collaborate? Will you be adding personal posts, as well?Do you want to do your own captions and commenting, or do you want someone else to learn how to represent you and comment as if they were you? Are you looking for someone you can trust to be your voice?Which platforms, and how many platforms do you want to engage on? What is your target audience of readers, and where do they tend to hang out?What sort of frequency are you looking for in your posts? Do you want to include stories, links to video or audio, questions for discussion, or anything besides the post itself?How important are ongoing analytics to you? Do you need to have quantified data on a regular basis? If so, how do you plan to use that data?What other marketing strategies do you have in place, and how central or important is social media in that overall plan?What time frame are you willing to commit to?How much money are you willing to spend?

In case you’re wondering, I’m probably going to go with VA #4.  I like the chance to ramp up gradually and see how it works. I’m clear about which aspect I need to outsource (the graphics and visual presentation) and which I can do, and prefer to do, myself (the background research and concept development). If that division of labor can work, then I think I can manage the hours to suit my budget. We’ll see—the flexibility of hourly billing allows me to keep my options open as I learn more.

Again, it’s a matter of knowing what you’re good at and have time for, deciding what you need to outsource, determining a budget, and finding someone who suits your temperament and goals.

You might even decide that what really makes sense is to manage your social media yourself, and that’s okay too.

Why Waiting Too Long to Register Your Copyright Is a Big Mistake

Today’s post is by former trial attorney-turned-author Liani Kotcher (@RektokRoss). She offers a free masterclass teaching the five most costly copyright mistakes she encounters (and how to fix them), which runs October 27 through November 3 and is accepting enrollment now.

Under the current Copyright Act of 1976 and its subsequent amendments, your creative works are protected by US copyright law as soon as they are put in a tangible medium, so long as they meet all the other elements required for copyright protection (i.e., they must also be original and must contain at least some level of minimal creativity).

For works created prior to 1978 that fall under older copyright acts there are other requirements like notice and registration, but currently there is nothing else you need to do and no other formalities you must adhere to in order for your post-1978 work to be copyrighted.

However, this does not make registration obsolete. In fact, far from it. Though registration with the Copyright Office is no longer required for protection, there are still a multitude of reasons why registration is important, including:

Registration is evidence of ownership.You’ll absolutely want to register your work if you ever want to consider licensing it.You must register your work to initiate an infringement lawsuit if someone steals your work and you want to stop them from using it.

With respect to the last bullet point, litigation is expensive because the majority of copyright cases take place in federal court (with very few exceptions), which requires a certain level of legal expertise that quickly racks up attorney fees and court costs. This often makes full-blown litigation cost-prohibitive for everyone except high-earning authors, big publishers, and media corporations. That said, even if you don’t think you (or your publisher) have the funds to actively pursue litigation, there are affordable ways to enforce your copyright that still require registration, making this a must-do action item to protect your work.

Sending a takedown notice

First, before ever having to file an expensive lawsuit, you can send what’s known as a “Takedown Notice” to a site like Facebook or Instagram if you see your work being used without your permission on their sites. You don’t even need to hire an attorney to do this. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), there are strong copyright penalties for infringement on the Internet. Social media providers like Facebook and YouTube, and even sites like Wattpad and Swoon Reads have an obligation to supervise and control infringing activities.

However, there is a very specific way you need to inform these online providers of the infringement, and when you send this notice you must include a statement that you are a person authorized to act as a copyright owner. If there is any dispute about ownership, you’ll want to have your work registered in order to refute this and show evidence of ownership.

Sending a cease and desist

Another way to stop an infringer is to send a “Cease and Desist Notice” that informs the individual they are using copyrighted work without permission. Again, similar to the Takedown Notice mentioned above, in order to prove you are the real owner of the work and convince the infringer to take the work down, you have to include your copyright certificate showing proof of registration. Sending a Cease and Desist letter is also possible without hiring an attorney, though use of counsel can help if you aren’t experienced in how to phrase these letters.

Filing a lawsuit

If the two above methods are not successful and you need to protect your rights, you’ll most likely have to file a lawsuit. Still, there are ways to make this more affordable. For example, not all lawsuits proceed to the stages of discovery, hearings, or even trial—which are the processes in litigation that make it costly. In fact, lawsuits can often settle before expenses can get out of hand. But to have the best chance of settling, you’ll need to have leverage to convince the infringing party that settling is in their best interest.

This is where the importance of timely registration comes in.

Now we’re getting to the good part, and why you’re most likely reading this post! Here’s the biggest mistake I most often see writers and even publishers make regarding copyright registration. They know registration is no longer required, and they know you only need to register before the lawsuit in order to bring a lawsuit, so sometimes people drag their heels and wait to register until something bad happens. But by doing this, they inadvertently put themselves in a terrible position and undermine their chances of a successful outcome in a copyright battle. Here’s why.

In order to recover two special types of damages in a lawsuit—statutory damages and attorney fees—you must register before the infringement occurs.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. You want the option of statutory damages because typically in a lawsuit you must prove “actual damages,” which means you must show through evidence the loss of profits/sales or some other quantifiable harm. This can be difficult to prove. However, in the simplest terms, “statutory damages” basically means you just need to prove your work was stolen and then the court can award an amount set by statute—ranging between $750 and $30,000 per infringement, with damages as high as $150,000 in cases of willful infringement. You also want to be able to recover attorney’s fees because this means the losing side will have to pay you back for all the fees you spend on attorneys during the lawsuit.

Being able to obtain statutory damages and attorney fees can make potential recovery much more lucrative and therefore make litigation far more accessible to writers and indie or small publishers. Because the costs of litigation can often be so big it isn’t even worth suing, the ability to recover statutory damages and attorney fees can mean the difference between suing or allowing infringement to go on. Remember, it’s things like discovery, the hearings, and trial that are so expensive. Simply filing a lawsuit and then settling may be more affordable than you think—and being able to threaten attorney’s fees and statutory damages gives you far more settlement leverage, putting you in the absolute best position to make your infringement claims.

For this reason, the best practice is to register copyright as soon as your work is published publicly and, thus, at risk of infringement. But at minimum, you should register within three months of publication.

Why three months? That’s because under the current Copyright Act and its amendments there is an exception to the general rule that you must register before the theft in order to obtain these two types of special damages, creating a safe harbor for works registered within three months of publication. So long as you register within three months of publication, you can still recover statutory damages and attorney’s fees.  

So there you have it! If you’re going to spend the money and time to register anyway, why wouldn’t you do it the best way—as soon as possible, or at the very minimum within three months of publication, and take advantage of these additional benefits?

How One Author Landed a Publishing Deal for a Gift Book: Q&A with Sarah Chauncey

I first met author Sarah Chauncey when we consulted in May 2018. After a 25-year career in writing and editing, she had written her first book, an illustrated gift book for adults who are grieving the loss of a cat. But Sarah didn’t realize that gift books require a platform. Luckily, she was able to interest an agent anyway, who—rather than reject Sarah’s project out of hand—told her to go and build a platform. Once that was accomplished, the agent promised she’d put the book on submission.

Some of you may know my opinion on this matter: it is very hard to write a book then successfully build a platform for it. Usually the book grows out of having a platform. But Sarah was not deterred. By 2019, Sarah had developed a growing and engaged audience, and her agent sold More Than Tuna to Sounds True. In the following Q&A, I ask Sarah about some of the most challenging aspects of writing and publishing a gift book like More Than Tuna.

Jane Friedman: I’ll start by stating the obvious: a lot of people lose their cats on any given day of the week. But they don’t end up writing a gift book about it. This is your first book, too, which makes this an unusual situation. Can you tell us about the critical moments that led you to write this and then look for an agent?

Sarah Chauncey: In December 2016, two days after my cat Hedda died, my friend Dianna’s husband, Francis, sent me a drawing of Hedda with a note “from” her that ended “P.S. I love you more than tuna.” I bawled, of course, and then I thought, “That would make a great book title.”

The whole story is kind of amazing—I’d never planned to write a picture book, nor a “cat book.” Five months after I received Francis’ gift, I learned I’d have to leave my home of nine years. I did a six-month live-work exchange at a center that hosted meetings and retreats, which was much less peaceful than it sounds (LOL).

I’d planned to turn my passion project, a blog about finding inner peace (Living the Mess), into an ebook or course, but I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to work on it in a conference center environment. A little voice nudged me to work on Tuna. I joined QueryTracker, and my (eventual) agent’s listing asked for a full proposal. I wrote one, and Francis drew sample illustrations.

In my research, I calculated that 5.5 million domestic cats die each year in the United States. On any given day, an average of 15,000 Americans have to say goodbye to a cat they love. I naively believed that meant the book would sell itself, and that I wouldn’t have to build a platform. Whoops!

How did you build your platform—and how long did it take?

I’d actively avoided “visibility” for years. I signed with my agent in the fall of 2017, then spent all of 2018 trying to figure out how to build a platform that could encompass the three branches of my business: editing commercial and literary nonfiction, Living the Mess (broadly speaking, mindfulness/nature), and Tuna.

The first big step was building online communities. I was already connected to several people in the cat rescue community on Instagram, so that was a natural place to start. On Facebook, I started a More Than Tuna page and whenever I could afford it, I boosted original posts (like this one). I also promoted the page to people with cat-related interests (a level of granular targeting that’s no longer available). My intent was simply to let people know the page existed.

From the beginning, one of my goals for Tuna was to help people appreciate the time they do have with their cats. By pitching outlets that bridged all three of my strands—for example, , a Buddhist magazine—I was able to weave my long-term intentions (e.g., writing about inner peace) into the Tuna platform. By placing essays rather than, say, listicles, I was able to show potential editing clients that I can write. Essays are much harder and more time-consuming for me, but it was worth it.

I pitched a series of essays to Ingrid King of The Conscious Cat, whose audience aligns well with Tuna. I’ve now written eight or nine guest posts for her site. She not only enthusiastically agreed, she has continued to use her considerable platform (225,000 Facebook fans) to promote the book.

I also pitched dozens of articles to targeted mainstream outlets. I received three acceptances, of which one was killed; two “please pitch again” passes; and otherwise…crickets.

How did you decide your platform was big enough? Or did the agent tell you, hey, you’re done and let’s go on submission!

The latter. We went on submission at the end of May 2019, accepted an offer at the end of June, and had a signed contract by mid-October. The whole process was almost exactly two years from agent signing to book contract.

My agent represents some authors and author-illustrators with truly huge platforms (multiple millions of social followers). I’ve always been keenly aware that, platform-wise, I’m a minnow on a list of blue whales. Those people made it possible for her to take a chance on me. Understanding that helped me have patience (and gratitude).

A big obstacle for many writers who want to do an illustrated book (for adults anyway) is that they’re not an illustrator and they don’t know how to go about finding one. Tell us about working with Francis on this.

Conventional wisdom, which our submissions process bore out, is that it’s better for writers to submit without an illustrator in mind. Publishers like to make their own contribution to a book, typically by bringing in an illustrator they know and like. So a writer with no illustrator is actually in a strong position.

Print / Ebook

In our case, Tuna began with an illustration—the gift Francis sent me after Hedda died. That was one of several reasons that I felt strongly he was the right illustrator for this project. There was a stretch when he didn’t think he’d be able to do the book, and I continued on my own for six months, but I just couldn’t imagine this book with any other illustrator.

We did receive several passes along the lines of “the illustrations are too playful/don’t match the text/we don’t really get them”—which, to me, said that they didn’t ‘get’ the overall vision. That’s fine; it just meant that they weren’t the right publisher for this book.

Francis and I had previously discussed working on a book together, but we’d never found the right material. As he now says, “This book found us.”

Don’t Hold Out for Publishing to Make You Feel Seen. Here’s Another Goal Instead.

Photo credit: joshzam on flickr / CC BY-NC-ND

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers a first 50-page review on works in progress for novelists seeking direction on their next step toward publishing.

Every year, I return to teach creative writing at a summer program offered by the school for the arts where I attended high school (though this year, I had to do so virtually). And every year, at the end of an intense week of workshops with young writers ages 14–18, I do my best to engage in a bit of time travel.

Which is to say, I do my best to tell these talented young people what I wish someone had told me when I was their age.

Walking the tree-lined paths of my old school always brings me back to that time: My awe in discovering poets like Galway Kinnell, Lucille Clifton, and Mary Oliver, and writers like James Joyce, Raymond Carver, and Joyce Carol Oates. The strength of my yearning to write that well, to be that big—big enough that my work would be studied, in time, by kids like me, in schools like this.

And the first step toward that great success was, of course, publication. Like all my other peers, I dreamed of getting my first short story published, of attracting the attention of an agent, and publishing my first book—and at eighteen, I thought I’d accomplish all this before I was twenty.

Instead, it took me until I was thirty to publish my first short story, and until nearly forty to publish my first book. Which meant that I would go on to spend many years of my life fruitlessly pursuing the dream of publication, with what felt like very little to sustain my spirit.

At the end of this high school writing program, we have a kind of convocation, in which we instructors attempt to offer words of wisdom to our students. And every summer, when I look out into the crowd at their fresh young faces, I can see all that yearning shining back at me.

The last thing I want to do is to discourage these young writers in their ambitions, but the fact is, publishing is a tough industry, and the apprenticeship period for fiction can often feel interminable. I know from personal experience many of the most talented writers in any class will eventually just give up, because that yearning inside them has begun to sour and, in time, turns into something that feels a lot like grief.

So here’s what I try to tell these kids: Publication may feel like the thing you’re yearning for, but in reality, it’s something deeper.

What you’re yearning for is the sense of being seen.

That’s what drives us to spend the untold hours required to write a book, to tighten down each scene and sentence until it truly holds the emotion we’ve poured into it, the insight we see in it—to the point where what’s inside us can be understood and experienced by others.

We’ve been taught that publication is the key to this thing we long for, this connection with the reader. But sometimes that’s true and sometimes it’s not.

Yes, publishing my first book was amazing—especially when readers took the time to tell me what had touched or moved them about it. But really, those moments were few and far between; publishing my first book was more of a marathon of publicity efforts and review-seeking and travel than anything else.

As for the shorter pieces I’d published by that time, each byline felt largely like checking off a box, even when the publication was one I admired. Looking back, some of the greatest fulfillment I received from publishing wasn’t from the “big” bylines at all, it was from publishing a column in a free newspaper where I lived at the time in a little mountain town.

Because people actually read that column, and actually talked to me about it. Publishing that column made me feel seen.

So when I take the stage at this annual gathering of young writers, here is what I say: Don’t hold out for publishing to make you feel seen. When you publish is in many ways out of your hands, but feeling seen is something you can offer each other right now.

This means that instead of sitting in judgment of each others’ work, and viewing each other as the competition for a limited number of “slots,” be they bylines or awards—or your writing instructor’s praise and approval—seeking to truly see the author’s intentions for their work, and doing whatever we can to help them manifest that vision on the page.

This is harder than sitting in judgment, because in the apprenticeship stage, the author’s intentions may not yet be all that clear. But taking the time to look beyond the flaws of a piece of writing to the heart of it, seeking out the truest and most significant impulses behind it, will not only make you a better person, it will make you a better writer.

I started my study of creative writing in high school, and continued through both undergrad and graduate school. Along the way, I saw many of the “best and the brightest” give up on the dream of being a writer—as far as I can tell, simply for the lack of this in their lives, the sense of truly being seen in their work.

And I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a shame.

So I’d like the extend this invitation to all of you still slogging away on that long, hard climb to your first byline or first book deal: We all have the power to sustain one another, to hold one another up, and to give each other what we’re really longing for, whether it’s as members of a workshop or critique group or as beta readers.

We all know what it feels like when we’ve shared our work with someone who really gets it, regardless of how polished it may be. That person has taken the time to understand our intent, to see our vision, and they’re reflecting back to us the truths of our own heart—the truths perhaps they themselves hold dear but have never seen anyone else articulate.

That—not publication—is the real goal of writing, to create a real connection. And while publication is elusive, that sense of connection is something we can all extend to each other, right now.

I Spent Nearly Two Decades Writing and Editing My Book. It Finally Found a Publisher.

Photo by Анна Васильева from Pexels

Today’s post is by memoirist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth McGowan (@ehmcgowanNEWS).

When I dipped my bicycle tires into the Atlantic Ocean in Yorktown, Virginia, in early November 2000, my yelp for joy was followed by a lengthy sigh.

At last, I had finished my absolutely-must-do, solo, cross-country trek of 4,250 miles. Completion liberated me to focus solely on conservation and energy articles for newspapers, magazines and online publications. Or, so I thought.

Then somebody, a supposed friend, suggested I write a book about my adventure. After all, I had a natural start with the journal entries I had posted online. But a book seemed a reach to me.

Still, the friend offered to connect me to an acquaintance, a New York City literary agent. I guess vanity trumped common sense because I pounded out a few chapters and sent them. The agent offered words of encouragement, but said I would have to dig much deeper to accomplish what it seemed I wanted to do. She suggested I keep in touch. 

Three months later, when the chaos of 9/11 erupted, a book seemed irrelevant. I set my puny manuscript aside and delved into my paying job. When home, I avoided my computer, because looking at it filled me with angst about my book albatross.

Finally, tired of my cowardice, I began picking at my chapters to see what I could salvage. In my head, I was intent on weaving together three themes: my physical journey on the bicycle; the mental part of duking it out with melanoma for more than a decade after being diagnosed in my early 20s; and how my ride helped me rediscover and better understand my father, who died of melanoma at age 44 when I was 15.

By 2008, I reconnected with the New York agent, who offered to review my draft. I wasn’t too surprised, but still slightly crushed when she told me over the phone that, sorry, it wasn’t a story she could market. Ouch.

Too headstrong to quit, I enrolled in an evening workshop at a local writers’ center the next year. Each week, the 16 or so participants critiqued our classmates’ efforts. Their insights revealed where I had fallen short. At semester’s end, the instructor told me I should dedicate time to writing and polishing, not more classes. Persist, she urged, because too many people give up on hard projects.

I wrote and rewrote. By early 2015, I was ready to seek an agent—again—because that’s what I thought I had to do. Though I earned my living with words, book publishing mystified me. I knew my query letter had to be stellar—and short. The five or six New York-based agents I mailed the letter to immediately said yes to reading the manuscript. Yay! Then, most of them got back to me, telling me it was a wonderful, but likely unmarketable book. Boo!

Stung, I delved into a book proposal, figuring it would lay out the plot and show publishers how I would hustle to market it. Following advice of marketing gurus, I perused local bookstores to find books similar to mine. I jotted down the names of agents, authors and publishers. I sent out 10 or so individualized queries and proposals. The four responses I received were friendly, but nobody was receptive.

Feeling stuck about what to do next, I signed up for an October 2015 presentation by Jane Friedman at the National Press Club about book proposals and publishing. It was informative, but painful. My sinking feeling was confirmed in a follow-up conversation with Jane. She told me the chances of finding a publisher are exceptionally small because memoirs are one of the most competitive categories and “it’s a cancer memoir, which puts you in an even worse position.” She said she didn’t want to offer false hope that her editing of my proposal would change that scenario.

Jane also spelled out how my three themes made the narrative complex and that my existing journalism platform didn’t match my book. “Agents and editors come off as unfeeling and rather horrible people for basically saying what amounts to, ‘No one cares about your cancer story,’” she said. “But they’re nearly impossible to sell, and while as humans we care, we’re also aware of the business reality.”

Ouch. I felt as if the oracle of publishing had spoken and her words hurt like a gut punch. I panicked. Should I shelve the whole thing? Explore independent publishing? Rewrite it as a work of fiction? Although I intensely explored the latter two options, I decided neither was a good fit for my psyche or my skillset. Instead of rushing to a decision, I set the book project aside for several months and focused on my reporting.

When I revisited the manuscript in 2016, I remembered how I’d heard similar bluntness from the surgeon tasked with removing a cancerous tumor that had sprawled beyond my liver in the early 1990s. Even perfect execution, he had told me, might not be enough to keep me alive.

Yes, this was only a book, not my body. Still, I was determined to put it in the hands of readers. I sought out a reasonably priced development editor who gave me concrete ideas about streamlining the flow of my manuscript, and I burrowed in. By 2017, I hired a line editor to tackle my manuscript. I wanted it to be in the best shape possible before circulating it again.

Later that year, I was ready to try again—with a sharper focus. This time, I combed through a lengthy list of smaller, niche presses, carefully reading each website for openness to memoirs and requirements for proposals. That meant skipping the agent route.

I received an immediate “yes” from one small press affiliated with a university. But hope was dashed by nope when that publisher ghosted me via email. What followed was a succession of “almosts,” “no’s” or no response at all. I chugged on, clinging to the comments about how well-written my story was. It confirmed what Jane and so many others had stated: It’s a business decision, not a personal one. Still, who wouldn’t take three dozen rejections personally?

By mid-December 2018, slightly down, I plopped down on my living room couch, wondering how I could muster the energy to endure another year of this. The name of a local reporter-cum-author popped into my head. She had written a book about reconnecting with a father who had abandoned her years ago. I had heard her speak. If she could find a publisher, why couldn’t I?

My trusty laptop revealed her publisher—a small press in Baltimore that wasn’t on any of my lists.

I revamped my proposal and query letter, and sent them off with a full manuscript in the wee hours of December 24. Later that day, the Baltimore publisher sent a note: “Great pitch. I’ve begun to read.”

My heart rate jumped, but my wary Irish side told me to tamp down any excitement. Then, four days later: “Finished it. Loved it. Let’s talk Monday.”

Oh my. That evolved into my best Christmas present ever. We did indeed talk and I signed a contract a few weeks later. Maybe settling for the first “yes” isn’t right for everybody, but I trusted my instincts. I wasn’t pursuing a get-rich-quick scheme.

He set the publication date for June 2020. I figured I could last another 18 months, after my circuitous route to acceptance. Then, a few weeks after we photographed a new book cover in June 2019, I was admitted to the hospital.

Intractable abdominal pain had forced me to go to the emergency room. A CT scan revealed a very large tumor lurking under the enormous horizontal scar that already bisected my belly. I braced myself for the worst and wondered if a God I didn’t fully believe in could be cruel to write me out of my own story before my memoir was published. But a biopsy during the four-hour surgery revealed the tumor as a cyst generated by an uncooperative ovary. It was benign.

Print / Ebook

I didn’t tell my publisher about my medical saga until he resent an email asking if I had seen the box of galley proofs he had mailed. Rational or not, I feared he might dump a client who wouldn’t be able to follow through on a long list of marketing promises. Instead, he told me how sorry he was and to take time to heal.

About half a year later, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Wisely, my publisher opted to delay release of my book from June 2020 to September, figuring the country would regain some sense of normalcy by then.

Well, we all know what has unfurled. And now my book is part of these bizarre and uncertain times. I’m in the midst of navigating this hurdle, too. Hey, at least people are still reading.

What You Can Learn About Platform From a 12-Year-Old

Photo by 周 康 from Pexels

Today’s post is by writer and book coach Michelle Melton Cox (@michellemcox).

My 12-year-old transferred to a new school this year. She experienced some initial joy when they made the decision to resume in-person instruction, but that joy was soon replaced with dread. Worries about COVID-19 and the discomfort of wearing a mask became secondary to the dire possibility of being friendless. At the age where friends and fitting in are paramount to survival—and let’s face it, that’s a concern at all ages—her anxiety threatened to overshadow what would make her successful in her new surroundings.

The advice I offered to prevent fear from paralyzing her aligns closely with the advice I give writers who seek my help in building an author platform:

Show up and be your best self. Being your best self means presenting yourself well. Smile and say hello.Share something about yourself.Be helpful when you can.Invite someone to sit with you.If that someone declines, invite someone else.Once you have a taker, talk to them.Others will see you talking and want to join you. Invite them and talk to them, too.

My daughter took my advice and by the time I picked her up from school, she was grinning from ear to ear because she had been added to several text group chats with her new friends.

All of those pointers can work for your author platform efforts, as well. But before I explain, I think it’s important to share how I define author platform. My favorite definition stems from what Jane has said or written on the topic, combined with my experience in the industry.

What author platform is: it’s wherever people can find and interact with you and your creative work. It’s the place or places where authors listen to their potential readers and then serve those individuals by providing value via expertise, content and creativity.

What author platform does (or has the potential to do): it builds relationships and loyalty with readers, which, in turn, grows your author platform through sharing and purchasing.

Now, back to my kid and what her experience can teach you.

Show up and be your best self.

You can’t build a platform if you don’t put yourself out there. You must put your creative work and ideas into the arena. It feels scary and vulnerable, and it is both of those things. But do it anyway. You cannot create a fan base for your work from a place of obscurity.

And when you step into the arena, you need to be yourself, which means being authentic and real. Yes, you can be authentic and professional at the same time. You can be politically active and engaged in social causes and professional at the same time. You can be angry or sad or grieving and also in control of yourself.

If you know your ideal readers, you also will know what their expectations are when it comes to professionalism, and you’ll know when you can push those boundaries. Just make sure that when people encounter you on your author platform, they get the sense that you chose to write or say what they are reading/hearing, even if it isn’t practiced, scripted, perfect or free of difficult emotions.

Along the same lines, your creative work on your author platform should be the best it can be. That doesn’t mean perfect, because “done” is still better than perfect. Shared is better than perfect. But if you regularly make sloppy mistakes, you’ll lose followers and fans because they will make assumptions about you and your work.

Share something about yourself.

People will connect more with your creative work if they feel connected to you. While many (most, all) writers are introverts at heart, I still tell my clients that they can be introverts without being hermits. They don’t have to reveal their private aspirations, childhood trauma or the names of their children, but everyone can share something about their writing process or their pet, a hobby or favorite book. Give your ideal readers a way to connect with you on something other than your work and you’ll increase their loyalty.

Likewise, share even more about the things that make you the perfect person to be writing the things you’re writing. If your book is about life in a trailer park and family dysfunction related to alcoholism, then sharing stories about your experiences with these things is a powerful way to connect with potential readers. (See the example set by Teri Case, author of Tiger Drive.)

And if you’re writing a nonfiction book on generational dysfunction and healing, it’s important to showcase professional knowledge of the topic.

Even better for building trust with readers? Share personal stories related to the topic, like my book coaching and author platform client Gina Birkemeier has done in several posts on her blog and on her LinkedIn profile.                         

Be helpful when you can.

You know things that other people don’t know, either related to writing itself or related to your writing subject matter: How to write a book. What online classes are helpful to writers. How to build a doghouse. What foods increase fertility.

Share these things in the form of content or giveaways. When you help people once, they remember you. Help them repeatedly and they become loyal to you.

Personally invite someone to sit with you.

You have to invite people to join you. Invite them to visit your website if you have one. Invite them to subscribe to your newsletter. Invite them to comment on your content or post. Invite them to share your content. People want to be asked and invited.

But think about it: If you simply post a need for volunteers to help at a soup kitchen, you might get a few helpers. But personally invite people to volunteer and you’re more likely to fill the slots you need. The same is true for your platform, newsletter, etc. Post a link and people might click, visit or subscribe. Post a link and invite people to visit, and you’ll get better traction. Personally invite them, and your results are much higher. And inviting one person who accepts your invitation is more valuable than posting to hundreds via an ad on social media that may not result in any takers—especially in the early stages.

Of course, personal invitations aren’t feasible as your numbers grow, but you can learn ways to personalize the invitations when the time comes.

Once someone accepts, talk to her.

Engagement on your platform is more important than followers. Let me say it again: Engagement is more important than followers. Thousands of followers who never share, like or comment on your content are not worth the digital space they occupy. But two dozen people who are loyal fans can create more fans like themselves when they talk about you and your work. And they become loyal fans when they know you. And they get to know you when you engage with them. Don’t just post content and move on. If people comment, respond. Even better, comment on the content they post, as well. Try to use the 80/20 rule. You should be commenting about eighty percent of the time and posting about 20 percent of the time.

Others will see you talking and want to join you. Invite them and talk to them, too.

When you’re at a large, crowded holiday party and you see two people sitting silently on a couch, do you join them? Or, do you gravitate toward the two (or three or ten) who are in the middle of the room talking and laughing? See how it works? A social media post with lots of engagement draws attention. It shows up on more social media feeds, even if the conversation is just between two people. So if you post something on LinkedIn and one person comments, respond back. If you write a blog post and someone reads it and comments, answer her. When someone new comments, welcome her. If the opportunity presents itself organically, invite her to join your newsletter or follow another post related to her comment.

Preventing overwhelm

Knowing everything isn’t necessary, but knowing two things is critical.

Know your main message. What are you trying to say to the world? If you were handed a microphone and told to address a conference full of the people you are trying to reach with your work and you get to make one point using one sentence, what would it be? And if you were given the chance to deliver one more sentence? You should be able to articulate these two sentences.Know who makes up your “ideal crew.” Some call these people your ideal readers. I call them a crew because a crew is a group of friends who hang out together. You want your crew to hang out with you. And knowing who they are (and who they are not) is important. Think of my 12-year-old. She wouldn’t have made many friends if she’d gone looking for connection in the senior hallway at school. Or the teachers’ lounge. But she knew who her crew was: other seventh grade girls. Did she limit her audience? Absolutely. And by doing so, she found her crew.Do a platform audit to determine your strengths.

This will help you get started without spreading yourself too thin at the risk of doing everything poorly and inconsistently. I’ve developed a free platform audit worksheet that uses a series of questions and a simple scoring process to help you put metrics around the most popular places for platform building. With that number in hand, it’s easier to choose a launching point or an area of focus. Download the free worksheet here. 

Prioritize your efforts and start with just two things: your strongest platform based on the results of your audit, and a website—because you need a way to capture email addresses and showcase more of your creative work.

Building and growing an author platform is necessary, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Follow my 12-year-old’s lead and you’ll be in your very own “group chat” with your growing crew in no time.

The Benefits of Writing Flash Fiction

Photo credit: art_practice on Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Today’s post is an excerpt from the new book Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction by Nancy Stohlman (@nancystohlman).

Consider flash fiction an opportunity. Let go of your tricks and your clever exposition techniques. Let go of your need to explain. Discover what you don’t need to say.

Let go of description—one perfect detail will do the trick. Let silences be potent. Don’t rush to fill them.

Let go of extra words: create meaningful gaps.

Let go of the urge to linger.

So what’s left?

What’s left is a tightly crafted nugget of concentrated gold. What’s left is flash fiction.

Writers arrive at flash fiction with different strengths and weaknesses. Prose writers, including novelists, memoirists, and short story writers, are usually comfortable with narrative but can struggle with the word constraint. Poets are usually good working in small spaces, but they can struggle with narrative, creating vignettes or prose poems that may or may not be telling a story.

A good story has urgency. Something has to happen.

The flash fiction story bends with tension like a fish caught at the end of a pole. There’s movement, a sense of something unfolding—or having just unfolded.

Flash fiction has an almost desperate need to tell a story before it’s too late.

The Zoom Lens

One of my favorite approaches to writing a flash fiction story is what I call the zoom lens—taking an ultra close-up shot of what’s potentially a much bigger story. It’s like narrowing the focus from a wide-angle landscape to a single flower. In flash fiction, the single flower can be the whole world.

To begin, make a list of stories or potential stories you intend to write/rewrite. Now for each of these stories identify the actual timeline—how much chronological time does this story cover from beginning to end? A week? Three weeks? A year? An hour? Several months? One day? Ten years?

Once you’ve decided, ask yourself: what’s the most important 5 minutes?

Now write that and only that.

When you zoom, the whole story happens in one frame. There’s no room for backstory or extraneous description. Resist the urge to explain anything, no flashbacks or other tricks of exposition—just “drop” us into that little slice of story.

Five minutes later, leave.

Implicate the Reader

There are only two “rules” to flash fiction: it should be 1,000 words or less, and it should tell a story. But how can you tell an entire story in such a small space—sometimes as few as 50 words? We do it through very purposeful implication. As writers, we can imply all sorts of things—from action to description to backstory. For instance—if I tell you I just flushed the toilet, I’m implying and you’ll assume I just used the bathroom. If tell you I sat on the porch, you’ll assume I had to open the door and walk outside. If I tell you I got on an airplane, then you’ll assume I had to arrive at the airport, check my luggage, etc. A writer doesn’t have to describe the security check or the turning of the front door handle as long as they are obvious assumptions.

Now if I was flushing a gun down the toilet or getting on a private jet, I would need to explain.

Entire settings can be implied. One writer sets his stories in places like airports or hotels so he doesn’t have to describe the setting. “Airport” and “hotel” are familiar and already bring up a host of implied descriptions. But if the airport is filled with goats or the hotel concierge has a glass eye—you better describe that.

Is the Story Too Long? Embrace Constraints

My story is just over 1,000 words—too long for flash? The answer is technically yes (though I’ve occasionally seen flash defined as 1,200 or even 1,500 words), but I’ve found that a story coming in at 999 words is usually written by someone who’s still trying to “make it fit.”

Writers new to flash often find the constraint arbitrary and infuriating: why such a stickler on the word count? So what if it’s a few words over?

But I believe the magic of flash fiction happens because of the constraint. Interesting things bulge against boundaries. From sonnets to prompts—even deadlines—many writers find they produce their best work when pushing against a constraint: you can only paint with the color green, you must finish a film in 48 hours, you have to write a story without using the letter E. Beethoven wrote his most important symphony when he was deaf.

Embracing the constraint is the true gift of flash fiction. So, if your first attempts are ending up at 999 words, don’t worry. The more comfortable you get, the more your stories will naturally shrink. Here’s how you’ll know you’ve crossed over: you’ll never need to look at the word count again.

Flash Myth #1: Smaller Is Easier

Let’s debunk Myth #1.

Housed in the Chicago Institute of Art are the Thorne Miniature Rooms, tiny replicas of actual historic rooms painstakingly crafted on a scale of one inch: one foot. You press your face up to each of the 68 windows and gaze at the fully formed world inside—complete with exotic woods, fabrics, chandeliers and intricate, hand-woven rugs. The attention to detail in each room would be impressive even at life size, but the true fascination is the fact that they are just so damn tiny!

One of the reasons people love flash fiction is because, like the Thorne Rooms, there is something awe-inspiring about entering a perfectly formed tiny world. When done correctly, tiny is part of the art: the Mona Lisa on a grain of rice, a sculpture of Charlie Chaplin balanced on an eyelash. And it often requires more skill from the writer, not the other way around. Creating something tiny takes a different level of expertise and precision.

Sometimes when people discover flash fiction they assume: oh, it’s cute, it’s small, it’s easy. But to fully appreciate flash we must assume mastery: the story is small because the author has decided to tell it this way.

Flash Myth #2: Readers Have Short Attention Spans

This is probably the most common flash myth. But readers aren’t enamored with flash fiction because they have short attentions spans—that’s like saying the sculptor of the bonsai tree didn’t have the attention for a full-grown tree, or that people who eat sliders don’t have the attention for a quarter-pound hamburger. Maybe, just maybe, they like sliders and bonsai trees?

In the same way, readers love flash fiction because it’s complex and breathtaking and accomplishes so much in such a tiny space.

In fact, flash fiction requires a more sophisticated reader. The story demands the reader to “pay close attention”—every sentence, every word takes on a new significance, if only for the limited number of them. The reader must jump the gaps, fill in the blanks, follow the breadcrumbs, and inhabit the purposeful spaces left by the writer. Which means that flash fiction is cultivating a new symbiosis between writer and readers, on and off the page.

As readers, we’ve gotten used to sitting in the audience and being entertained. But it’s nearly impossible to passively consume flash fiction. Leaving things unsaid and undigested requires effort and interpretation; the reader steps out of the role of voyeur and becomes an active participant in the story. It’s this act of interpretation that keeps art vital—no longer just watching from a darkened audience, flash fiction invites the reader up on the stage, hands them a tambourine, and tells them to keep up.

Flash Myth #3: Bigger Is Better

“Important” literary works are big. Therefore, some people still dismiss flash fiction as trivial. How could anything important be accomplished in such a small space? Flash fiction is good for barroom bets, not for serious literature.

The implication here is the more we have of something, the better it is. War and Peace is “important”: it’s long, it’s hard, it’s complex, it’s 1,200 pages. But The Old Man and the Sea is only 120 pages and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Should we assume that Tolstoy worked 10x harder than Hemingway or that his work is 10x more important? The truth is they can’t really be compared. Flash fiction should be judged on its own terms.

It’s meant to be digested in one sitting—it encourages speed, not languishing. Longer literature is meant to be enjoyed over time. But flash fiction doesn’t look for sweeping vistas. Flash fiction is not the epic saga. Flash fiction is that guy on the beach with the metal detector. We don’t need to know his history, we don’t need to know what he looks like. Just tell us what he finds.

I’ll be honest: I had a hard time going short. After more than 10 years writing novels, my first “flash” stories were cannibalized from various longer projects, fixed with new titles, and called flash. And this sort of worked, for a minute, but it felt like cheating (and it was). I hadn’t really written flash at all.

I think most writers spend some transitional time as flash frauds. Eventually you run out of excerpts or longer stories to butcher or prose poems to pass off and are forced to do what you should be doing from the beginning—conceiving stories in flash. I knew when I finally wrote a real flash piece: it felt different.

And once I started “seeing in flash,” the stories were all around me like 3D images emerging from an optical illusion—finally presenting themselves.

Flash fiction has created a new sort of genre freedom with only one rule: tell us a story in 1,000 words. I don’t care how you do it. Just make it work.

So many of the joys of both writing and reading flash fiction are the literary acrobatics that happen when plots are forced to bend in such small spaces. Flash stories can be circular, change tenses or points of view, told as monologues or in a found form, told backwards or completely in dialogue. A flash story might be one long circular breathless sentence. We are telling stories that could not be told in any other form.

As a writer, that’s incredibly exciting.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Nancy Stohlman’s new book Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction.

2 Methods for Structuring Your Memoir

Photo: maldoit on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Today’s post is by Allison K Williams (@GuerillaMemoir). On October 21, Allison will be teaching an online class, Nail Your Memoir Structure By Thinking Like a Novelist.

Most of us write the first draft of our memoir chronologically, setting down what happened in order, or thematically, thinking of what happened and expanding from that time, place, or feeling. Both are terrific ways to generate a first draft.

But memoir is a rare country. Making the map of personal experience, writing the guide that says, This was five stars and everyone should do it. Don’t waste your time on that, is not unlike rappelling. The more control you have, the less compelling it becomes. Or, a memoir as straight guidebook—detached, evaluative, arranged by area or chronology—is a dry thing.

Still, the writer must never lose the rope entirely. The ramblings of a diary are indecipherable, plotless, sans perspective. Only your little sister wants to break the lock and read that.

Structure is easier in a “quest” memoir. Climbing a mountain, beating cancer, and overcoming addiction tend to have turning-point decisions and physical setbacks that map easily.

In a “quiet” memoir, personal growth must be presented as dramatic action. You treat your permanent change as a dramatic goal you didn’t know you were working toward. “I’m worth more than I thought I was” is a dark goal. The Character of You moves toward change blindly, but You the Writer knows when you got there. The author can see the pattern and invest moments with deeper meaning than they may have had at the time. For example:

When it happened: I had to pack all my stuff and get out and it broke my heart that I couldn’t take my mom’s painting.What you know now: That was the first big sacrifice I made to get out of a bad relationship—I just didn’t learn enough not to get into the next bad relationship.What you do as the author: Leaving Jim was the turning point of Act One. Mourning the loss of the painting is my low point opening Act Two. I want to show that losing that painting cost me a lot, and when I stayed with Brad, part of my decision was not wanting that pain again.

But! Don’t spell that out in your narrative. Let the reader put it together.

Look at the difference between:

I thought about leaving Brad, but then I remembered sitting there in that crappy motel room and mourning my mother’s painting. I didn’t want to feel that pain again, and I guess that was enough reason to stay, or so I thought at the time.

And:

Brad’s slap burned on my cheek like the poppies in the painting I’d left behind. But our threadbare couch was better than another night in a crappy motel room.

Show us what’s happening. Let the reader deduce what it means.

That brings us to the two structures are particularly useful for memoir. They’re also great for blog posts, essays, and magazine and newspaper articles.

Letter e Structure

The story flows like a lowercase e. Start at the crossbar in a moment of action or a key decision, and move forward for a short time.

“I met my gynecologist in Starbucks and she acted like she didn’t know me…”

—Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

“I lost my boot off the side of a cliff, but my feet were so screwed up at this point, I went ahead and threw away the other boot.”

—Wild

Circle back around the top of the e—how did you end up here? Fill in just enough backstory to return us to the point of action. Give the events that are the context of your decision, not your whole life story.

“I grew up in Texas in a weird family with a lot of taxidermy. Then I met Victor.”

“My mom died and our family splintered. I got into heroin. I decided hiking the Pacific Coast Trail would change me or kill me.”

You’ve reached the crossbar of the e again. Skip to the end of the scene—or to the consequences of the action—and continue forward. Depending on how much backstory is needed, you might be at the end of Act One or going into the last act. If you’re still early, use another structure from here.

For more Letter e structure examples, check out “high trash” books, like Judith Krantz’s Scruples. Yes, really! Krantz is a master at reaching a turning point in the main action, introducing a new character and their backstory, then returning to the main action.

Circular Structure

Circular structure is great for essay collections but tough for single plot line books, because it’s hard to make a series of attempts satisfying for that long. However, if your memoir is voice-driven—people just want to spend time with your funny or beautiful writing—or a “collage” memoir of dreamy prose-poem scenes, circular may be enough.

Start by identifying the key challenge or question you’re facing:

How did I grow into being myself as a young gay boy, and how do I still relate to the world in those ways as an adult? (Me Talk Pretty One Day)How is who I am now rooted in being from Florida? (Sunshine State)How did I become a blogging celebrity who hides under tables from anxiety at my own events? (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened)

The first scene shows that challenge in action: how does it actually harm or impede your life? Then, show the protagonist trying to change with an anecdote or action that was ultimately unsuccessful, or succeeded enough to keep moving forward. Pair this with analysis or reflection about what happened and why it didn’t work, or why it wasn’t satisfying enough to end the story. Keep repeating attempts paired with reflection until the narrator reaches permanent change. Close with a scene showing this changed self in action, often one that mirrors the opening scene. Now the protagonist can react differently.

With each scene, you’re searching for an answer to your main question. Each scene resolves when you find an answer and like it (or not!), or you don’t find an answer but deal with the question in another specific way.

Eat, Pray, Love is a circular memoir, and Elizabeth Gilbert raises the stakes in each round: Eat to recover from a bad relationship; Pray to rediscover herself and her spirituality; Love to move forward in her life as a healed person.

Circular structure usually works best for shorter work. A circular book must actively raise the stakes in each successive repetition. Your prose must engage the reader at every turn. Even if the reader sees “uh-oh, here we go again…” they need to feel “oh gosh I hope it works out this time!”

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, check out Allison’s upcoming class Nail Your Memoir Structure By Thinking Like a Novelist on October 21.

Letter Writing as a Powerful Prompt

Today’s guest post is by editor and author Stuart Horwitz (@book_arch).

When Franz Kafka handwrote a 45-page letter to his father, he may not have been conscious that it would end up as a literary document to be studied through the ages. When Bob Dylan wrote a not-very-nice 20-page letter to an ex-girlfriend—whom he had the courtesy never to name—he probably didn’t know that he would end up extracting from it the lyrics to “Like a Rolling Stone.” But what these examples, and many more throughout history, show is the power of letter writing to benefit a wide variety of projects, from memoir to creative nonfiction to fiction.

My forthcoming memoir started as a letter to my daughter when she went off to college. I chose someone with whom I could be honest and self-revealing; fortunately, we have that kind of relationship. Getting to intimacy with an imaginary reader is hard; if you write to someone you can talk to, on the other hand, you can more easily achieve a confessional and arresting tone. This is because there is no such a thing as “voice” in the abstract. There is the voice of a speaker, and there is the audience of a listener or listeners, but what carries the words from one to the other is the tone of voice. This tone is carried by everything from word choice to content that reflects a shared approach to life.

If you choose the right addressee, eventually, the general reader can become a stand-in. You will be able to remove the direct address yet retain the warmth of tone. The best writing makes this journey from being a personal exposé to a larger, cathartic vision of how we all can live. The author Susan Steele once put it to me this way about her memoir: “The first draft was the gory, adult, vengeful Susan; the second healed me; the third healed my family; and the fourth was the story others needed to read.” I saw that firsthand with my own process, even though I would describe the finished product a little differently: The fourth draft really felt like the draft I could live with select other people not loving.

Your specific addressee does not need to be someone you see eye-to-eye with. In both Kafka’s and Dylan’s examples above, they were writing to someone with whom they had a difficult legacy. Some very powerful personal writing can be addressed to once intimate connections with whom you have fallen out. Not to complicate matters too much, but you may find both audiences present at once: someone who you believe will understand what you are saying, and someone who you fear won’t (or will refuse to) understand.

Your addressee may never read your letter in either its pure or its refined form. Sometimes issues of libel come up, and sometimes there are other considerations, such as wanting to continue to have Thanksgiving with your family members. But getting into your material via the prompt of letter writing—with the understanding that you don’t need to send the letter as is—can help you dig deeper into the things you think you can’t say. Without the fear of being interrupted, you can really hear yourself think. True confessional moments bring up grief, anger, and shame—those emotions we prefer to keep to ourselves. That material is why readers turn to writers in the first place—because writers are people who are brave and put themselves out there to help others through their struggles to be conscious.

What you can’t say face-to-face, you can say in a letter, especially one you will continue to work with. How you shape the material after that is up to you, of course. You might turn it into fiction, using the same hallmarks of storytelling you can employ in a letter—finding the scenes that ground the discussion through sensual detail, action, and point of view. You might write a letter from the point of view of one character to another as an exercise that can help reveal the inner workings of the relationships in your novel. Novelists often know each of their characters deeply in a one-on-one relationship, but those characters may not always know each other as well. The drama of a closed fictional world is always enhanced when characters are more clearly aware of what they want from others and what information they are withholding.

Whether you use your letter as a starter to get you somewhere else or use it to help you heal a living relationship in real time, letter writing can be more than a prompt or an exercise. It can be a portal that projects you into the discovery of a world.

Writing and Publishing Horror: Q&A with Todd Keisling

In this interview, horror author Todd Keisling shares what scares him, the authors who taught him the most about writing within the genre (and, simultaneously, beyond it), his experiences with crowdsourcing on Kickstarter and Patreon, how he feels about trigger warnings for fiction, and more.

Todd Keisling (@todd_keisling) is a writer and designer of the horrific and strange. He is the author of several books, including Devil’s Creek, Scanlines, and The Final Reconciliation, among other shorter works. He lives with his family somewhere in the wilds of Pennsylvania, where he is at work on his next novel. Share his dread on Twitter, Instagram, Patreon, or his website.

On Writing

KRISTEN TSETSI: In a since-deleted interview on Medium, in answer to a question about your attraction to horror, you say, “I’m one of those weirdos who enjoys the exploration and what I might find waiting for me in the dark, even if it terrifies me.”

That’s all well and fine in fiction, but in real life, standing at the edge of very dark woods, would you step into the trees? And, when standing at the edge of very dark woods (literally, not metaphorically), if there is fear, what is your fear? What do you imagine is in there?

TODD KEISLING: Do I have a flashlight? If so, then yeah, I’ll probably step into the woods.

I used to go on long hikes and bike rides with my dad in the state parks of Kentucky and Tennessee, so the woods themselves don’t scare me. I’m more afraid of tripping over something, falling into a hole or from a cliff, or disturbing a nest of snakes. Yes, I’m terrified of snakes. And ticks. Lyme disease is no joke.

What does scare you in the tradition of horror?

Anything disembodied. Like hands reaching out of some dark place, and you can’t see what they’re attached to.

I tend to incorporate that imagery in a lot of my fiction. For me, the fear aspect isn’t based so much on the hands reaching out, but what’s waiting for me in the dark. It’s the knowledge that something is there and I can’t see what it is.

Who did you read before you started writing, and who do you read now? Which of those authors taught you an early, key lesson you still hold onto today, and what is that lesson?

I read a lot of R.L. Stine and John Bellairs when I was younger. Their stories about children caught in these fantastic, often dangerous situations engaged my young interests and got me addicted to reading. That led me to King and Koontz, whose work was a natural graduation from what I was already reading—higher stakes, more grotesque scenarios, more “grown up”—and later when I began writing in high school, the work of Chuck Palahniuk and Albert Camus.

Camus’s The Stranger showed me a complex philosophical idea can be communicated simply and effectively through narrative and character interaction. Palahniuk’s work, specifically, taught me experimentation in narrative was plausible, and I tried to emulate his style for several years into college.

I didn’t really find my own voice and style until after I read a trio of longer books: Gaiman’s American Gods, Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Barker’s The Great and Secret Show. All three books mesh multiple genres and taught me I could write a horror story about philosophical concepts. The Monochrome Trilogy was born from that epiphany.

Who to you is the most effective suspense writer, and what do you think is necessary to create genuine, deep feeling, nail-biting suspense? Beyond the bullet-point lists you can find online that tell you to create high stakes, a looming deadline, etc.

Thomas Ligotti. He’s not a suspense writer so much as a weird fiction (and philosophical horror) writer, but the guy’s work oozes dread. A Ligotti story is a nightmare in literary form. He’s capable of capturing the general wrongness of an upsetting dream in his work and uses that to instill a sense of dread for the reader.

To me, that’s the most effective form of suspense—creating that crawling dread for the reader. It’s the feeling that something isn’t quite right, something is slightly off, but even you, the reader, aren’t sure what it is. I’ve compared it to the scenario of arriving home and knowing something is wrong, but not because something is missing—it’s because something is there that should not be, and you aren’t sure what it is.

I’ve also heard it compared to the uncanny valley, which might be a better comparison. The concept of the Uncanny Valley is derived from an object’s resemblance to a human being and a viewer’s reaction to said object. A more human-like appearance correlates to a heightened sense of revulsion in the viewer. Consider a mannequin and the sense of unease one feels to be in its presence, especially if the mannequin is clothed with painted facial features.

I use the Uncanny Valley as a comparison because of this correlation. You arrive home and it looks normal at a glance, but the longer you study the scene, the more you realize something isn’t right—and you can’t figure out what it is.

Is there anything you do too much or too little of in a first draft, and do you recognize it as you’re doing it, or does it take the first full read-through to see, and be nauseated by, it?

I tend to reuse certain phrases and actions, but working with my longtime editor, Amelia Bennett, has taught me to recognize them as I go along. Of course, some of them still slip through and mock me in subsequent drafts. One of Amelia’s greatest victories is teaching me to avoid usage of “it” and be clear with my language.

You’ve been open on Twitter about the anxiety you’re experiencing and that seems to be caused, in part, by the recent loss of your job. But you’ve also expressed gratitude that you have much more writing time, now. Which is stronger: job fear or writing bliss?

I would like to say the writing bliss is stronger, but the job fear really drags it down.

There’s a constant worry about savings running out, the arrival of unemployment compensation (which has been extremely delayed due to COVID), and the growing pile of bills coming due. It’s hard to focus on a story when a nagging voice in the back of your head is telling you to stop wasting time and find a job.

There’s also a constant anxiety surrounding job prospects, trying to branch out and find jobs outside of a corporate environment, and the fear of jumping back into a role that hasn’t treated me very well over the last few years. It’s a big knot of emotion and stress that isn’t easy to unwind when you’re tied in the center.

All that said, I’m trying to break through it one day at a time in small bites. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

On Publishing

In a publisher’s blog post about your limited-edition chapbook Scanlines, Dim Shores (your book’s publisher) provides a trigger warning about the story. What is your opinion of having trigger warnings for fiction?

I tend to agree with this article Max Booth III wrote for LitReactor a few months back: “Horror is supposed to be dangerous […] It should be dangerous. But it doesn’t have to be damaging.”

He’s right. I wrestled with the idea of a trigger warning for Scanlines for the very reasons he outlines in the article. At the end of the day, however, the last thing I wanted was for my story to trigger a suicidal episode in a reader. So, a trigger warning made sense in this case, and I think that’s how they should be handled—on a case by case basis.

I’d love to know what was behind the decision to make Scanlines a limited edition release. How did that conversation happen, whose idea was it, why do it, and what was the result?

There wasn’t really a conversation about it. The limited release is part of Dim Shores’s business model. They only publish limited runs, and I knew that going in. The rights term wasn’t long (six months), so I had no problem with the book being limited to 150 copies.

However, what I didn’t expect was the interest from readers and the critical reception the book received. It’s an immensely dark story about suicide, not what I would call a commercial hit by any stretch, and yet it’s become a sought-after title. As of now, the book is officially sold out, but I’m hoping a publisher will pick up the reprint rights next year.

You’re managing a Patreon account right now that offers members access to things like deleted scenes from your previously published novels, movie parties, and blog posts. 

Around a decade ago, your Kickstarter funded the publication of your novel A Life Transparent.

So, you’ve had some experience with this.

It can be hard, if you’re new to the crowdfunding arena, to know what people want, and even harder to keep up with the rightful expectations donors have of a certain consistency of output. How did you decide what to offer donors and at what frequency, and what have you learned about using crowdsourcing sites that would have been helpful to know in the beginning?

Crowdfunding has changed a lot since that first campaign a decade ago. That said, research is a necessity, and so are the economics of what you’re offering.

I’ve seen a lot of crowdfunding campaigns not take costs into account, like shipping, production, etc. When I organized the campaign for Anthony Rapino’s Greetings for Moon Hill, we spent months going over the costs of everything to make sure we didn’t run short. You basically have to become an expert in cost analysis.

So, if I had to give advice to anyone thinking of crowdfunding, it would be not to jump into it until you’ve absolutely mapped out every expense.

With Patreon, I’m far from an expert. I tried offering a number of different tiers and rewards last year and found it to be a source of anxiety.

Most people, I found, just wanted to support me rather than get something in return, and there was very little engagement from patrons in response to my posts. A lot of times I felt like I was talking to a wall. So, when I lost my job in August, I decided to keep things simple. All tiers, regardless of price, receive access to everything—which is anything I post. Works in progress, deleted scenes, movie nights, live Q&A—anything that might involve the community I’m trying to build.

Some things, like the movie nights, are a hit. Others, not so much. It’s very much a trial and error process.

How does an author amass the kind of audience that makes Kickstarter and Patreon a success? More specifically, how did you develop your audience? Was it strictly word of mouth, or was there a particular marketing strategy (or even a single campaign or platform) that seemed especially effective?

Honestly, it was word of mouth. I’d made a concerted effort to try every trick in the book when I was self-publishing—freebies, ad space, blog tours, et al.—and the experience wasn’t fun. I hated it. You can put so much work into a marketing strategy only for it to fall flat.

Which of your efforts fell flat?

Here’s an example. When I published my second novel, I organized a huge Amazon freebie for the first novel. Thousands of copies of that book were downloaded for free. The intent was to convert those freebies into sales of the new book, which was a sequel. I set aside some money to serve as an advertising budget and promoted the hell out of it.

After all was said and done, about 1% of those downloads converted to sales. It was a huge misstep, and I haven’t done a free Amazon giveaway since. That situation forced me to take a step back and review how I was valuing my work.

So, after many failures and a lot of frustration, I stepped back from self-publishing and focused on the writing. I started submitting to markets again, and as I sold stories, I picked up a following that way. I let the work speak for itself. So far, it’s worked far better than any conscious attempt to target an audience via ad space or other marketing gimmicks.

In an interview at A Line A Day, you say, “Indie publishing—and really, indie authors—are at an advantage in the respect that they can stand out by offering something different. I chose the indie route because I knew that traditional publishers wouldn’t like my work for its unconventional merits. I write horror stories, but they’re also thrillers, mysteries, suspense, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, and philosophical stories as well. You can’t package that and put it on a bookshelf. There isn’t a category for it. If your book can’t fit into a single category, it’s harder to promote and sell. The Big Six would say, ‘There’s no market for you,’ and in some respects, they’re right.”

With that in mind, how do you market your work? How do you classify your novels when exploring publicity opportunities?

Hah, that quote shows its age. The Big Six are now the Big Five, I guess.

Anyway, I’ve been targeting the horror and weird fiction markets for several years, now, as those seem to be the best fit for my work. Pretty much all of those markets are small or niche to some degree as the larger markets are afraid of the H word.

Will you please expand on this? Because it seems like the larger markets—with Koontz, King, etc.—have made a lot of money marketing horror explicitly.

It’s a common misconception, because those names referenced were around during the horror boom in the ’70s and ’80s. The commercial viability of horror fiction died in the ’90s, which led to most of the horror-focused imprints of the larger publishing houses closing their doors, and the horror sections in big box bookstores to dwindle.

For King and Koontz, their names are their brand, now; larger publishers don’t have to say “Horror” in relation to those guys because their work sells by name alone. Most of the mid-list horror writers from those days either focused on other genres (which were still selling) or switched focus to the smaller niche markets, which is where horror has continued to thrive.

Nowadays, you’ll see phrases like “supernatural thriller” used to describe what would’ve been considered horror if published twenty years ago. You won’t see novels like Bird Box or A Head Full of Ghosts marketed as horror, even though they most certainly are.

Knowing my work is usually horrific or weird to some degree makes the marketing easier, as it’s just a matter of getting the word out to reviewers and readers who enjoy those genres. In most cases, the publishers who specialize in those genres also have their own following, and they tend to overlap my own efforts.

Having self-published and been published by someone else, how would you say the experiences compared from a writing/creative standpoint, and what did being published by someone else do for you sales- and publicity-wise that you wouldn’t have been able to do for yourself?

I find that being published by someone else is far less stressful. I don’t have to worry about the particulars of getting a book listed in the retail space, making sure the Bowker info is accurate, and so on. It allows me to keeping moving forward as opposed to slowing down and focusing on the business side of things.

Aside from the time and money saved, it’s opened a lot of doors for me. Many of the smaller indie presses have their own fanbase, so anything published by them automatically has a large audience. There’s an immediate publicity and sales benefit there that would take substantially longer to accrue on my own.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had to do most of the publicity and marketing-related projects. However, being with a publisher has given me access to their followings through which to promote. I haven’t had to worry about finding an audience because the publisher’s fan base is that audience. There’s the benefit of having their attention right out of the gate. From there, it’s a matter of figuring out how to engage them, which is usually the fun part.

All that said, I’ve been fortunate in working with publishers (especially Silver Shamrock) who have gone to great lengths to get my work into the hands of reviewers, podcasters, booktubers, and more. There were at least 100 print ARCs of Devil’s Creek sent out to reviewers, and the publisher managed all of that. The publisher got also got the eBook listed on NetGalley. I didn’t have to worry about whether reviewers had the book. Instead, I could focus on different ideas for how to promote—from live readings and Q&A events to something as simple as tweeting a tiny bit of trivia about the book.

There’s also the added benefit of getting the book into stores, which never would’ve happened without the support of a publisher.

What about the writing? Have you ever felt like you needed to write in a way that would appeal to your agent/editor/publisher for marketing purposes, as can happen with the bigger presses?

Not entirely. When I first signed with my agent, I pitched two ideas to her and asked which one she’d have an easier time selling. The one she picked became Devil’s Creek. In that scenario, I already had the concepts, and they would’ve been written regardless.

However, with the short fiction markets, you’ll often find open calls for stories that fit a certain theme or concept. In situations like that, I often have an idea in mind, but will tailor the concept to fit the theme in some way.

Beyond that, however, I write for me. How something will be marketed, how it will appease a certain editor or publisher or even my agent, is something I don’t take into consideration.

Thank you, Todd.