Advice for the Beginning Writer

After my blog yesterday on all the "helpful" (really confusing) advice for beginning writers available in the multitude of writing magazines and manuals, I ran across this bit of sage advice from John Gardner in his classic The Art of Fiction:

What the beginning writer needs, discouraging as it may be to hear, is not a set of rules but mastery -- among other things, mastery of the art of breaking so-called rules.

How does one achieve mastery? According to John Gardner one must both read widely and write not only "carefully but continually."

Here's a thought: In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, reporting findings on why some people succeed more than others, Gladwell asserts that mastery in a craft is likely attained by reaching a number measurement. When do we reach mastery? Gladwell claims it comes with 10,000 hours of practice.

Okay, I've taken liberty with his research and simplified what Gladwell reports, but it's reassuring to know that "mastery" is not some unattainable, unquantifiable, nebulous thing. We're not talking "perfection," we're talking "mastery." I can handle that notion. I can practice writing a certain number of hours, with Gardner's carefulness and consideration, "assessing and reassessing" what I write. That's doable.

So, today I got some good advice I can grasp onto and use. Just thought I'd pass it along. Let me know your advice for the beginning writer.

First post of 2010

January is almost over and this is my first post in 2010. When I started this blog, my goal was to post entries of inspiration and information, material that kept me going, writing day to day. It's so easy to say "I'll get to it tomorrow" and "I'm not feeling it right now."

The good news is it worked. I have been writing more. What that means is I've been working on the novel draft more and, thus, on my blog less. I never intended to create a blog chronicling my progress with the book painful page after page, whining about the struggle for the best opening line, lamenting over point-of-view issues. But, hey, leave it to me to head off one direction and do an about-face. Having said this . . .

I'm 120 pages into the first draft of the novel. I say first draft, but I revise a lot along the way, so much so I rewrote chapter one eight times before I felt satisfied going on to chapter two. The months of May and June of '09 were spent thrashing back and forth over where to begin the story and that elusive first sentence. Damn, you, opening lines ...

You hear everywhere that you've only got the first few pages, possibly the first few paragraphs to grab an agent/editor/publisher, and every article gives the same contradictory advice. Don't open with dialogue, but grab the reader with compelling dialogue or we'll chuck you in the recycle bin. Don't bore us with setting openings, but create a sense of place that's rich and evocative or we'll file 13 you. Jump into the initiating event right away but build character from the beginning. Don't start with a passive sentence but Toni Morrison's opening of Beloved, "124 was spiteful.", is one of the best openings ever (which is totally true). It's enough to make your head spin. Not just spin, but spin off, careening into the YA section of B & N, which, by the way, is a dark and scary place to be right now.

So, the first few months I didn't get past chapter one. Since then, it's been better, slowly. I'm about over the panic that when I sit down to write, nothing will come, that I'll end up crazed and homicidal, typing "All work and no play makes Kimberly a bad girl."

Now I just feel a bit nautious and worry that I won't make my word quota each time, which I usually do. It is just a matter of setting up a routine and doing it. In the last six months, I've learned to take all the helpful writing advice with a grain of salt, or a glass of wine somedays, and just try to do good work scene by scene. At least that advice helps me keep my head on straight.

Hope for the Beginning Writer

I believe in the new year, we beginning writers need all the inspiration we can find. Today's writer's quotation is for the beginning writer worried about the current trends and what agent and publishers want and don't want.

Be persistent. Editors change; tastes change; editorial markets change. Too many beginning writers give up too easily.
-John Jakes

In 2010, let your motto be "Persist. Persist. Persist."

For an inspirational story on sticking with it, check out this article from writersdigest.com by Jordan E. Rosenfeld, "The Power of Persistence."

Best Reads of 2009

Slate.com has come out with their Best Reads of 2009, as recommended by the site's writers.

Slate.com's Best Reads of 2009

Slate's range of suggestions, from the highbrow (Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life) to the unconventional (Bank Notes, a compilation of notes employed in bank heists), provides something for everyone.

Personally, I was glad to see Alice Munro's short story collection Too Much Happiness make the list. Munro is commonly called a writer's writer.

After I saw her work on this list, I pulled out my copy of Writers & Company (1993), a wonderful collection of interviews conducted by Eleanor Wachtel, to reread her interview with Munro. In the interview, Munro speaks of happiness, how it is "muddled up" in life with sadness, depression, elation. She speaks of how she would never set out to write a story that was depressing, but how so many stories she loves have been described by others as depressing.

Much of the interview I didn't remember reading. It had been ten years since I read it, afterall. Remarkably, I do remember how intrigued I was by one line of the interview. Munro is speaking of the nature of happiness and remarks, "As I said, the constant happiness is curiosity." I've been studying brain chemistry lately and the brain's role in happiness (for anyone interested, I recommend The Science of Happiness by Stefan Klein, PhD) and find it telling how accurate, when it comes to the chemistry of our brain, Munro's statement is.

I think one of my New Year's resolutions this year should be to exercise my curiosity more. I may begin with Munro's newest collection. Maybe later, I'll check out Bank Notes. You never know, with as hard as it is to make a living as a writer, it might do me good to brush up on my note-writing skills if I need to knock over a bank or two.

Top 100 Children's Books of All Time

My favorite gift to receive has always been a book. This holiday season, I'd like to encourage everyone to give books as gifts, especially to children. What other gift can transport one through time and space to distant lands, where adventure awaits with every suspense-laden turn of the page, where we can exist in the mind of compelling, provocative, even dangerous characters, where we can lose ourselves or petty problems for a brief time, all for under $25?

If you're still looking for a gift for the special child of any age in your life, check out this Top 100 Children's Books of All Time list at childrensbookguide.com.


At the top of the list is my favorite children's book, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. I remember being about seven or eight and reading Sendak's classic, wishing I could travel from my small room in Cleveland, Oklahoma to a wild fantasy land where I could be the Queen and romp through the forest. I wanted to be Max on an adventure.

Also, making the list are two more of my favorites, The Lorax


and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

Here's hoping this Christmas, children eagerly unwrap the latest toy, the sweater from Grandma, and, also, the book they'll look back fondly on as an adult and say that was the best gift ever. In the spirit of giving, please shop your independent, local bookstores. For a list of your local independent bookstore and to find out more about the need for shopping locally, check out indiebound.org.

Amazon's 'Predatory' Pricing Practices

I've got to stand up and applaud Bob LiVolsi's comments at the recent MediaBistro E-Book Summit, accusing Amazon of "predatory pricing."

LiVolsi Calls Amazon Pricing 'Predatory'
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 12/17/2009 6:50:00 AM

The comments came in regard to Amazon's decision to charge $9.99 for many frontlist e-books. I'm not in the publishing industry and have yet to finish the first draft of my novel; however, as a former bookstore owner, predatory pricing is a practice of which I am painfully aware.

When my husband and I opened our bookstore, we were seven miles or so from the nearest big box bookstore, a Books A Million, so I figured that local folks in the beach town area in which we lived would come out to support an independent bookseller. If nothing else, we'd get area residents that didn't want to drive out to the somewhat rundown BAM or over the intercoastal and into town to Borders and Barnes & Noble. For the most part, I was partially correct. What I underestimated were the number of folks that were happy to walk into our store to browse for books and then go home to buy them cheaper on Amazon, often telling us how much they loved our cute, up-scale bookstore/gallery and how much we added to the community but how they could say a few dollars online.

So, when LiVolsi, founder of the independent e-book retailer Books on Board, says that customers will change their minds about the $9.99 price once they understand the consequences of the pricing strategy on authors and, we presume he hopes, small, independent retailers, I say don't hold your breath, Brother. Walmart has conditioned shoppers to expect low prices. I could rant all day about the effect that BJ's, Costco, Walmart, Target, Amazon and the like have had on independent retailers but I'd be wasting my time. Better to get another cup of coffee and try to pound out some pages of my book draft. I've given up on focusing on "literary" fiction, opting for "contemporary" (commercial) fiction instead. With all the predatory pricing in the book business, I'll be lucky if I make enough money as a novelist to pay for the printer ink to send off query letters and manuscripts.

Defining "In Book Form" and E-books

Tensions are building between Random House and the Authors Guild with Markus Dohle's recent letter to agents, concerning the rights to reprinting backlist books in e-book form.



Authors Guild Calls Dohle Letter "Regrettable and Unhelpful"
By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 12/15/2009 7:50:00 AM

Random House chairman Markus Dohle may have sent this letter to agents in the spirit of collaboration, but that isn’t how the Authors Guild is seeing it. In a message sent to its members this morning, the Guild said it was “regrettable and unhelpful that Random House has chosen to try to intimidate authors and agents over these old book contracts.” The Guild rejected RH’s argument that its older contracts that grant rights to publish “in book form” or “in all editions” is a grant of electronic rights. (The Guild has no problem with RH’s interpretation of more recent backlist contracts since over the last 10 years electronic rights have been licensed with print rights).

Read the entire article at the link above.

I'm not sure I can blame publishers for trying to claim rights to publish a book in any form they can, existing or not-yet existing, in perpetuity under the guise of the "in book form" clause. If I were them, I'd probably try it, too. However, I take exception to the notion that e-books can be considered a printing "in book form." A book is words printed on paper and held in one's hands. I don't understand their logic for e-books, bits and bytes transmitted electronically into a computer, even if the hardware is flat and shaped to resemble a book. An e-book isn't a book, anymore than an e-zine is a magazine, the picture of an apple is an apple, or paying an escort for "the girlfriend" experience makes her your girlfriend.

Even if Random House could win the "in book form" argument, it's sort of prickish for a publishing house to hold onto rights for technology not-yet invented or specifically named in past contracts. What if they decide not to publish a backlisted book in e-book form? The author and agent can't sell the rights to anyone else. Does that mean that in the future the the rights to any non-existent, non-imagined form of publishing exclusively belongs to the publisher? I would suggest in light of Random House's letter, authors and agents tighten the language of book contracts. Though, I guess this is good news for the lawyers. They're needed now more than ever.