Kern Carter's Blog, page 58
February 14, 2022
Call For Submissions — No One Loves You
Sorry, this sounds like an accusation and it really isn’t meant to be. We know you’re loved, and hopefully, you know it, too.
That last part is really what this prompt is about. I think most of us go through a point in our lives when we don’t feel loved. Doesn’t matter who is around you, for whatever reason, you just don’t feel cared for in the way that you need.
For this week’s call for submission, let’s talk about not feeling loved. Sometimes that feeling is real. You may have experienced a time in your life when there really wasn’t anyone there for you. Contrarily, you may have experienced a time in your life when plenty of people were offering support but you still felt unloved.
Or maybe there’s a completely off-the-wall story you’re willing to share about love. We want to read it.
Same rules still apply:You can submit to this or ANY of our past writing prompts. Just scroll through our previous newsletters. They’ll be marked “Call for Submissions.”If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.[image error]Call For Submissions — No One Loves You was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
February 12, 2022
A good book idea vs a sellable book idea
My thoughts on why some writers get book deals and some don’t
This is something that I didn’t understand till very recently. It took gaining then losing an agent, going through the publishing process, and finally securing an agent before I fully understood the difference. In this edition of Writers Are Superstars, you’ll learn some of the characteristics that make up a valuable/sellable book idea and how those differ from a good or even great idea.
A good book ideaI started writing the manuscript for Boys and Girls Screaming in July of 2018. I was pushing myself to finish a first draft by mid-August so I could pitch at a conference in New York. That gave me about six weeks, which is the fastest I’ve ever completed a first draft of any of my books.
In the original premise of Boys and Girls Screaming, a teenage girl named Ever gets completely overwhelmed and depressed and takes her own life. However, the main premise of the story was the aftermath of her suicide and how her friends and family were left to pick up the pieces of their own lives after such a sudden loss.
When I pitched this story to agents, I got five requests for the full manuscript. Needless to say that I was excited and already counting down the days until I signed with a dream publisher. But that never happened. After submitting my manuscript, none of the agents made an offer. I was devastated but nowhere near ready to give up.
I took a step back and started reading other books. Books that had won awards or were established as bestsellers. I also took a novel-writing course at a local college which lasted about 6 months. During that time, I realized where my manuscript went wrong.
These were my mistakesWhen reflecting on what made my book a good idea and not a sellable idea, I came up with the following:
My story was too complicated: The second half of the book, in particular, was too difficult to grasp. There wasn’t a clear plot or point to the story.The book didn’t have a clear audience: Some of the main characters were teenagers, but the mother also played a big role in the original manuscript which made the narrative feel more mature than I actually wanted.I killed the character that people would identify with the most: The most interesting character in the book died in the first third of the story.A sellable book ideaWhen I took a step back and started reading other books, I focused on genres I typically don’t read much. I read thrillers/suspense and YA books. Why? Because there’s a simplicity to the storylines of those books that was absent from my own. In the books that I read, I’d read the synopsis first and immediately understand what I would be getting into when I turned the pages. I wanted that for my story.
There was also something about the pace of those books that was intriguing. They moved fast but the detail left clear images in my mind and I could always follow along with what was happening without much effort or rereading. I made note of all these things as I considered how to revise my own novel.
Once my novel-writing course was over and I felt like I read enough books, I knew what I had to do.
Here are the changes I made to my original manuscriptI kept my main character alive: Instead of having her take her own life, I created drama around her.I simplified the plot: Instead of a more complicated narrative, I focused the plot on a simple storyline that anyone could follow.I wrote with a specific audience in mind: This was a new tactic for me, but I wrote Boys And Girls Screaming specifically for a YA audience. This made a huge difference in the creative choices I made.I developed characters that were just as interesting as the main character: This was important. I believe supporting characters need to be intriguing. I really made an effort to write my two main supporting characters with the same depth as my main character.What I learnedAfter making those changes, I had one of my author friends read it over and her excitement and feedback gave me the confidence to start pitching. I was able to secure an agent a day after they read the full manuscript and a couple months later, I signed my first publishing deal.
What I took from this experience is a couple of things:
Creativity is just one part of the equation when writing a novel. I wanted my book to be published and that meant creating a story that could sell. Publishing is a business just like any other, and every creative decision a publisher makes is also a financial decision.In no way did I sacrifice or even compromise my creativity. Boys and Girls Screaming is the most ambitious book I’ve written. Writing it stretched my imagination and challenged me in ways that my writing has never been challenged. I’m proud of it and just because I chose to structure it in a way that made it more commercial doesn’t change anything for me.I really did have to make a choice. To get my novel to the point I did, I deleted more than half of the original manuscript. To me, that’s just editing, but to others, that may feel extreme. As an author, I think one of our talents has to be the ability to judge our own work and decide on the expectations for that work. I wanted a novel that could be published and that was commercially viable. If those aren’t your goals, then you can make different decisions.Listen, there are books with complicated storylines and unique structures that get published all the time. I’m not saying don’t write those books. What I'm saying is that there are ways to make a story more commercially appealing, and therefore more sellable, and I chose that path.
So far it’s worked out, and I wanted to share this so you are aware of the differences and can make informed choices when you write. Read this article again and then decide which parts of it make sense for you. There’s more than one way to get published.
[image error]A good book idea vs a sellable book idea was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
February 11, 2022
February 10, 2022
Inside the Bubbles
Photo by John Thomas on Unsplash
“And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire —
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.”
-Edgar Lee Matthews, Spoon River Anthology
The regret is palpable. It bubbles up unexpectedly. It suddenly bites me when I am nearly asleep or it tries to steal my breath when I am dreaming. Other times it is almost imperceptible but still lurks just below the surface as I float aimlessly through the years.
My grandmother was acquainted with this dilemma. She ignored it at first, then swept it under the rug but her vacuum found it and couldn’t suck it up. Later she fought it with pure spite and I watched it harden her until the line between her eyebrows was permanent.
So I know that the only way to get rid of it is to take action not against it but with it. Allow it to guide me towards my purpose. I don’t have the luxury of steering in any direction I choose; that ship sailed long ago. I may still be the sailor but regret is the old rudder that I can only push so far.
I can be neither casual nor cavalier. If I move too fast, the chance to find out what I’m meant to be will burst like a fragile bubble, never to be seen again.
Therefore I must seek out small bubbles of moments and within them, allow a pause. Bubbles never last but inside of them is where I try to visit myself every day.
So much waiting. My mind drifts and I begin to rot with inertia.
When I am four I walk the beach with my grandmother and I must wait for her because she is old and she likes to collect the shells. I try to mimic her but I am too impatient and I run ahead, laughing with abandon.
So much distraction. The accomplishments I’ve stacked up never removed the sense that I failed myself.
When I am thirty-four my grandmother dies and I fail her because I am incapable of mourning properly. She floats to me in a dream and we are on the beach laughing. She forgives me but I cannot forgive myself.
So in the bubble spaces I ponder and wait yet again for it to come to me. The thing I’m meant to do. I knew it once, but too long ago now. It was my childhood seashell I buried hastily upon reaching the shore of maturity and eagerly forgot.
In time the sand shifted to reveal it but it was too much to look at naked in the harsh light of day. I buried it anew.
Yet even if I build a castle on top of it to hold it in, the castle will erode overnight with the tide.
I equally long for it and fear it. So therefore I ignore it. Hence the dilemma.
And then I fall out of the boat.
Only the surprise of this moment, at the intersection of restlessness and mediocrity, does the answer appear with sober clarity:
I feel a tug on my sleeve and look back to see a young girl in overalls, hair in plastic barrettes. She is on the precipice of puberty, just before adolescence plunges her headfirst into the sea of self-doubt from which many never recover. The sea whose leftover foam touches my toes far too often even now. This girl still knows herself and her truths. She fixes me with a pointed gaze that I recognize because it is the one I give to people before telling them something important. In a soft but earnest voice, she simply says: “Write.”
Then the bubbles escape to the water’s surface and so do I. Nothing is trying to steal my breath and I take deep inhalations and swim to the shore with ease. As I climb out of the water I notice that sand has collected in the rolled-up cuffs of my overalls and there it is, my seashell, bathed in brilliant sunlight.
Almost as though it had been with me the whole time.
[image error]Inside the Bubbles was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
