So You Want To Write

Or more like you have a need to write?  That's a very good thing; it means (1) you're not dead, and (2) you have something to say.  About the world.  About the people in it. About your place in it.  Most people don't feel a need to express themselves or to examine their own lives (which is what writing is really all about).  So a tip o' the hat to you no matter what level you're at in your attempts to write and publish.

That said, let me list a few things that might help you along the way.  Earlier blog entries address most of these in more detail, so we'll consider this a kind of grocery list for the would-be writer:

1.  You should be reading.  A lot.   Read in the genre in which you hope to publish--read in volume, as if you're carbo-loading for  marathon (which writing a novel nearly always is).

2.  But when you're writing, stop reading.   Reading other authors' work while writing your own manuscript can cause hair loss, hives, headaches, nausea and low self-esteem.  It can also wreck your literary voice not say your prose style.  Don't read anybody and don't listen to anybody while you're writing.  Stay focused.  Your novel, your short story--it has to be all you.

3. Everybody who wants to write does so because they have Ideas.  But a good idea does not a good novel make.  It's in the How you write.

3a.  Or, as Alexander Pope wrote, "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance/As those move easiest who have learned to dance."   There's walking (writing sentences and paragraphs) which most of can do, and there's dancing (writing smooth-flowing expressive sentences), which precious few people have mastered.

4.  In other words, your goal is to Tell A Good Story but you must tell it well.   The true goal is a Good Story, Well Told.  And the latter is more difficult than the former.

5.  So after you've got your story clear in your head, after you know where it's going, now you have to focus on delivery.  That is, your fictional style.  This part takes times and practice, but is what, if you "get it"--if you take the time to see the subtleties in really good writing--will  separate you from the millions of people who, like you, just want to write.

(Look deeper in this blog for more on Fictional Style.)

Here Comes the Judge: Reading for Literary Contests

I've been remiss on the blog but for  good reason:  I'm a reader for a national literary contest.  I won't name competition herewith, as work is ongoing.  And I truly mean ongoing.   I have 275 novels to read over the course of 4 months.  Nearly every day the courier comes with another box.  These are young adult novels, but some of them run to 400 pages, and every one must be given its due.  Its fair shake.

I'm one of five other readers, who are also writers like me.  We live across America, and meet on a Google document/spread sheet where we log in our comments for each book, and rank it. I can't say more about that, as work is ongoing.....  You get my drift here.   A serious competition like this is perhaps like a trial, wherein everyone says, "I can't comment because matters are under litigation."

But I can a few things generally:  reading novels in bulk, in volume,  is like getting an aerial view of publishing in America.  The predilections of some publishing houses are clear (girls books, genre fiction, seriously literary, fantasy).

I can also see the common "mistakes" that authors make.  I'm not talking English language here, but rather failures of vision--failure to see the work clearly.  As an artistic whole.

I approach each book with great hope that this will be THE ONE that will cut through the noise.  Will have the perfect balance of heart, vision, assemblage.  And I read until the author gives me an excuse to stop.  Which, dear reader (and writer), is the heart of the matter in terms of our writing

When I'm out the other side of this summer of reading, I'll be back here to talk about writing and everything I've learned from reading 275 novels in a row.  And why editors/judges stop reading your manuscript and move on to the next in the pile.

Self-Publication: The Debate (Stage Version)

                                        A Brief One Act Play With No Resolution

Scene

(Tidy home office full of books and manuscripts.  A baseball bat leans prominently against the desk of middle-aged male WRITER.  He is motionless, hands in lap, as he stares at blank computer screen.  He appears frozen. Standing to his left, dressed darkly in jeans with shirt tails fashionably out, is EVIL TWIN.  To the right, wearing pressed khakis, light colored shirt and tie, is GOOD TWIN.  They are arguing.)

Evil Twin

. . . But just weeks ago you wrote “Don’t Do It."  A commentary all the world see in the Huffington Post books section, am I right?

Good Twin

Yeah.  But I was talking about self-publishing real books.  The ones with hard covers, paper, glue and ink.  Self publishing E-books might be a whole different thing. . . .

                                                            ET

That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!  I do not see why you stay with your New York publisher.  Those bricks and mortar house are going the way of the telegraph.  The steam engine.  The cassette tape.  The–

                                                           GT

Hey, I like having professional editors.   Writers can only take a piece so far; then we need a pro to help us see it through.  And copy editors–they save us writers from looking stupid.  I couldn’t do without them.

                                                            ET

Are you kidding?  You can hire all that shit done.  There are a million freelance editors out there begging for work.  They’ll work for food.

                                                            GT

And how am I supposed to feel about that?

                                                            ET

That’s you’re problem, don’t you see?  You’re too . . . too moral!   

        

                                                            GT

(Shrugs).  Various editors have taken a chance on me over the years. Some of them have made money—big money—for their publishing houses.  Others have gotten stiffed or maybe even lost their jobs when one of my books hasn’t sold. So yeah, it is kind of a moral–or at least a loyalty thing.  Plus editors are bright, fun people, the kind you want to have drinks with.

ET

And then these “nice people” take years to bring out your new book.

GT

(Shrugs again.) Big ships turn slow.  But they’ll get you there safely–and in style.  Publishers like  HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster and Farrar Straus & Giroux put out high quality books, not the amateur crap you see online.

                                                            ET

But you’re not an amateur, don’t you see?   You could do all of it yourself:  write the novel, hire an editor and a copy editor, pay an artist a few hundred bucks to do a great cover, a computer geek to format the e-book, and launch the thing next day through an e-distributor.  I ask you, how long has your upcoming young adult novel, The Survivors, been in the pipeline with your precious New York publisher?

                                                            GT

                                                (greatly annoyed)

That’s a special case.  I was way late on delivery, and they're repackaging the prequel for a simultaneous release with the prequel, Memory Boy–it's gonna be a very big deal.

                                                            ET

Dude, you sound like Willy Loman.  It's been almost three years for The Survivors in editorial and production, am I right?  The woods are burning, man! 

                                                            GT

(silent but clearly agitated)

                                                            ET

And royalties–what is your precious old school publisher paying you?

                                                            GT                                                    

About 10 percent on hardcover and 6 percent on paperback.

                                                            ET

Self-publish through Amazon and you get over twenty percent–which is a major gouge and is not going to last.  Do it all yourself, and you keep up to 70 percent.  You could sell your e-book for under five bucks–think of how many more copies you’d sell.  Think of the money you’d make!  You've got kids in college–think of them.

                                                            GT

                                                   (swallows)

Now just hold your horses.  Sure, I get lower royalties from the old-school publishers, but they’re also going be there when some fly-by-night e-platform or e-agency, whatever you want to call them are long gone.  Do you actually think some e-distributor is going to keep paying me–or my kids– royalties when their business, which is probably run by 20 year olds, doesn’t have a fucking address?

                                                             ET

Whoa!  I'm sensing some anger here.

GT

 Bricks and mortar publishing houses are like the bond market– unspectacular but safe.  E- publishing  on the internet is probably like investing in a hedge fund–the returns look great, but there’s a 20 year old Bernie Madoff lurking in the shadows.

ET

Yeah, well, you’re not getting any younger, my man.  Remember how you thought “Pong” was a really great game, and how your little green screen Apple IIC was the coolest thing since  toaster tongs?  But, circa 1975, you didn’t buy any stock in Apple or Microsoft?  Well we’re back to the future, amigo.  Don’t be stupid. The big wave is here–you want to miss it again?

GT: 

         (grabs baseball bat)

Now you’ve gone too far, you %Y&%@$&_&*!  Come here.  I've got something for you!

(GT and ET, shouting, chase each other around and around the writer’s desk.  He remains motionless, staring.  Curtain falls)

Writer's Life: Visit to Readers Behind Bars

There's nothing juvenile about the Prairie View School–at least from the outside.  Its an old State Hospital–built in the 1930's is my guess–set on a hilltop on the outskirts of Waseca, a farming town in southwestern Minnesota.  Foreboding on the outside with heavy roofline brows and stone sides, wire-meshed windows and fenced passage ways between buildings, the school has a similar gloominess inside.  Worn granite flights of steps, heavy cast iron radiators cranking out the heat in the classrooms–and keypads on every door.

Buzz in, buzz out.  Know the code.  I have arrived with my books, my thoughts, and my No. 16 stock car and "motor novels" for young adults.  I'll be here all day talking to the kids, ages 13-18.  My crew chief and some staff unload the car from our enclosed trailer, and secure it on a (fenced) tennis court between buildings.  I head inside to get oriented and prepare.

The Prairie View staff is a mix of men, women, younger and older, and they have the tonal quality of outdoors people.  They are always watchful, observant; they seem to know what's happening behind them and in all directions.  They have peripheral vision–especially when the students arrive.  

Single file.  It's an arresting image (poor choice of word) to see the kids enter in single file and wait for instructions.  A handful of girls must sit on the left.  Boys on the right.  They are conditioned to ask permission for nearly everything.  I do not know and have not asked why they are here, but a staff member confided that a few will eventually be "sentenced" for "up to two years."  Some quickly re-offend in order to get back here, where there is order, not family chaos; where there's  food and heat and a bed.   Some say outright that their future will be prison.   

In my first session (20 students, which is good), there is no real introduction, and I tell them about myself.  Farm background.  Small town high school.  Hunt, fish, write, play some piano, father, husband. etc.   I need them to have a sense of who I am.  I go around the room and get their first names and where they are from (all over MN).

I talk some about college days, when I was partying too much my first two years, and had to change my scene.  There's an uptick of interest, and I get a few questions about that.  I talk about how sometimes we all need a different, a new set of friends. . . .

They've read a couple of my books.  "Kids read quite a lot here," a staff member told me earlier.  There's very limited TV, no internet access except in class.  I talk about writing books–it's a process not a miracle–and make a big point of writing realistic fiction (as opposed to sci-fi or fantasy).  Writing out of my own experiences.  Taking my own life seriously.  Trying to make sense of the life and times I landed in through no choice of my own.  They have some good questions about the fiction.

When we talk about my stock car novel, I tell them about Skyler Smith,  my 18 year old driver–how he was supposed to be here today but he's in "trouble".  That he's in danger of not graduating from high school, and so losing his "ride."  Trying not to be heavy-handed, I talk about Skyler holding up (or not) his end of our bargain.  Of being (or not being) a good team member.  The staff, interspersed around the room (and always watchful) nod their heads slightly.  Their entire curricular theme is about Personal Responsibility....

To break up the session we go out to see the "Bookmobile" close up.  Single file.  Girls first.  I notice something else about their movement:  the kids stop at every doorway, every threshold, to look up or to hear permission to step through. 

Outside in the biting air, we move in an orderly circle around the car.  I explain things:  the engine, chassis, safety features.   "No, you can't sit in it.  No we can't start it up!"  The students laugh and are having fun.  Then, too soon, it's back inside.

I read to them for awhile, do more Q & A, and soon my first session is over.  On the way out, in a stolen moment at the back of the line, two boys pause.  "Tell me again about why you had to switch schools and ditch your friends?" one of them asks.  There's an urgency in his voice.   

I say,  "I had this feeling that I wasn't going anywhere.  I was stuck.  I wasn't moving forward."

"That's us, right now," the other boy says, and they laugh.

But it's a good laugh, and the first boy adds, "I've only got four months left."

After two more sessions, interspersed with a pot luck lunch put on by the staff, I meet with the teachers for half an hour of "professional development" chat--as if I could help them.  But  I promise to follow-up with a list of good YA fiction, authors I know that these students will like.  We deconstruct the sessions.  I ask about a thin, blonde girl in the third session, who alternated between annoyance and being totally absorbed in my talk--even raising her hand a couple of times to ask me things.

"She's new," a teach says.  "It takes them a few days to let down their guard and understand that no one here is going to bully them or pick on them, like in regular high school.  That doesn't happen here.  Once they understand that, we can start to make progress."

Then I press them a bit about their jobs--about how they remain positive.  "Humor," they say, and all laugh.  A couple of older boys appear in the doorway.  They each hold one of my books.  They are 'graduates', in transition to the community on work internships, and I go to say Hello and sign their books.   We chat briefly.  They have a strong handshakes–a built confidence from their time here. Their grip on my hand, and their eyes directly on mine  fill me with hope for all the kids, and a deep appreciation for the adults who help them.

As I leave the building, a sheriff's van arrives.  Four teenagers get out.  A large Deputy ushers the kids toward "Intake", as its called in the prison business.  The kids walk awkwardly, and then I notice that they have leg restraints to keep them from running.  

Finding An Agent

I recently had an aspiring writer contact me and ask about finding a literary agent.  I wrote back that the formula is pretty basic:  track down a list of agents and submit a sample of your work.  If he/she likes it, you will be asked  for “the rest.”  If they like the whole manuscript they’ll take you on.

There are lots of avenues toward finding an agent.  I found my agent via an article in the Minneapolis Tribune.  A Twin Cities writer had a big splash with a book, and the agent’s name was mentioned.  I tracked him down and sent him a chapter.  He liked it, asked for all that I had, and sold the novel within three months to a New York publisher.

Trade writing magazines like Writer, Writer’s Digest, etc. have useful articles on agents, and sometimes lists of current agents, but the internet would be the place nowadays to find agents.  Obviously you must be wary, and use your usual spidey senses when doing business on the internet.  A key indicator of an agency's legitimacy is the list of authors it represents.  As well, an agent should charge you only if he/she sells your work.  Commission is usually 15 percent.  This sound like a lot of money, but the larger question is:  "Fifteen percent of what?"  If the agent can sell your work, be happy to give him/her the money.

Big agency versus small agency is a consideration.  Small agencies, often just one person, are agile and attentive, but you are more vulnerable if that agent has any kind of personal or professional trouble (which has happened to me).  Giant agencies move slowly and are impersonal, so I would look for a small-to-medium sized agency, one with at least 3-4 agents all of whom have worked in publishing prior to becoming an agent.

The previously-mentioned magazines have useful articles on “submissions” to agents.  Try to find one of those and model your letter accordingly.  On the other hand, so many people probably read those and follow the  boilerplate instructions exactly, that you might catch an agent’s attention by an ‘original’ letter—one that suggests that you are a writer but not a cliche'.  A good, fresh, short letter, and of course your gripping, can't-put-down sample chapter.

A more creative approach:  Say you read a book recently that you really liked.  Don’t be afraid to track down the author and ask for his/her agent’s name.  If you can “sell” yourself through your email, which means a short, clear and polite query, then the author more often than not will give you the agent’s name–at the same time making clear that they are not recommending you, but only giving you information, which is fair for everybody.

 Securing an agent does not happen via presenting your life story, your "connections", your resume' or your sense of humor as displayed in the world's most clever query letter:  it's about the sentences in your fiction submission.  An agent cannot sell a dead fish (as they say). If your manuscript reads well–is a good story, well told– an agent will see that immediately and be in touch.

Natasha Tretheway

Last night I had the pleasure of listening to a fine poetry reading by Natasha Tretheway, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2007 for her book Native Guard.   She was up in Minnesota as part of the Northwoods Writers Conference, held by the lake on the campus of Bemidji State University.

Born in 1966 in Mississippi to "mixed" parents (her father was white), a elegant woman dressed in blacks and grays and wearing some nifty heels, she reminded me several times of Barack Obama in complexion and manner and use of language. Many of her poems were about, literally or metaphorically, the matter of "mixed blood" and being in the "middle".  Her poems were about mothers, grandmothers, the Civil War, the gulf coast, Vicksburg, visiting the plantation mansions for "living history"--in short, plumbing deeply her personal narrative.

As I listened to her poems, I thought of writer John Champlin Gardner's point that the best writers often have a "wound" from which their art flows, and which I have mentioned in other blog entries.  Certainly Ms. Tretheway's wound was her dual-culture background, and the many issues surrounding it. I thought of other writers and their "wounds":  Tim O'Brien and the Vietnam War;  Harper Lee and black-white tensions; Flannery O'Connor and her intense, pressing Catholicity; Truman Capote and sexual orientation as it bore on his art.  The idea of "wound" can likely be recast in more positive language--let's call it a "well"--because it's the source from which artistic expression flows, and in the end the writer should honor it, as Ms. Tretheway does in her poems.

Speaking of true sources, Tretheway commented on being at the headwaters of the Mississippi River as opposed to the far end of it in the Mississippi Gulf, a poet's territory for sure.  However, she also spoke to the language and form of poetry during Q and A, using the phrase "the elegant envelope of form", as she tried to explain how she tries, with each poem, to push beyond the "usual arc of the poem that ends in epiphany."  Most of us would be happy to master that kind of poem (which she writes as well), but her point was hyper-literary and most interesting as she described how certain closed forms let certain poems become more than they would have been, had she gone with the 'old-fashioned' (my term) free-verse ending in epiphany.  I have to think more about that idea, now, as I read her work--the irony of a poem becoming 'larger' within the confines of a closed form.

The lesson here, beyond the necessity to be a reader if you want to be a writer, is to go and hear other writers.  You always come away filled with ideas useful to your own work.

Teaching, Gender Roles and Ichabod Crane

A recent national report bemoaned the lack of male teachers in the lower grades: only nine percent of elementary teachers are male, which is a 40 year low. While the percentages go up in middle and high school, children in grades K-12 are far more likely encounter women teachers than men. This disparity has various causes: teaching is traditionally “women’s work”, the education degree is perhaps not challenging enough to men, etc. Analyzing the same report, ABC Nightly News speculated that some of the problem might lie in our modern discomfort with men in close contact with children, but that most of the dilemma is based in teacher pay. Me? I blame the lack of male teachers on Washington Irving.

Irving (1783-1859) was one of our early American writers. His story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is not only a great Halloween tale, but a closer read of the narrative exposes the roots of our of current disappearing male teachers–and the prejudice and image problems they encounter still, and not just in the lower grades. In Irving’s story, Ichabod Crane is an itinerant teacher in the Dutch settlements of upstate New York in the 1790’s. He’s clever, though lazy; he’s musical, and well-liked by the ladies for his conversational skills. As Irving describes him, “Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves. . . a scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.”

On his teaching circuit, Katrina Van Tassel, the “blooming” daughter of a rich farmer, catches Ichabod’s eye–but he has a competitor, another farmer named Brom Van Brunt. Irving describes Van Brunt as “. . . a burly, roaring, roystering blade. . .the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff, but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean power his nickname was Brom Bones.”

The competition between Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones peaks in Sleepy Hollow itself, that eerie, fog-ridden pathway between farms wherein Crane one night encounters the headless horseman and a smashing pumpkin. Crane flees in terror, and is never seen again. Shortly after his rival’s disappearance, Irving writes, Brom Bones“. . . conducted the blooming Katrina to the altar.” While no one knows quite what happened to Ichabod Crane, whenever the story was told, Brom Bones“. . . was to look exceedingly knowing.”

As a former English professor, I was never the kind to strap a story or a poem to a chair and beat the symbolism out of it. However, the larger meaning of “Sleepy Hollow” is as clear as the "long snipe nose" on Ichabod’s face: the intellectual, artistic and articulate male is vanquished by the brute force of a “roistering” macho man–or, as we say nowadays, a man’s man. In a nutshell, the male teacher does not measure up, and is run out of town.

Literature provides other, more modern examples of the uncertain role of the male teacher. In his first adult novel, Staggerford, Minnesota’s Jon Hassler provides a striking portrait of the ambivalence with which the male high school English teacher is regarded. “The women of Staggerford tended to overestimate [male] teachers’ intelligence, while the men of Staggerford tended to underestimate their ambition,” Hassler writes early on in the novel. The main character, mild-manner Miles, is crowded and dogged by the football Coach, Mr. Gibbon (no small symbolism there), in a competition not unlike that of Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones.

The stereotype of the male teacher as less than masculine persists to the college and university level. Once, many years ago at Bemidji State University where I spent my teaching career, the campus ROTC cadets were rappelling from the roof of the library. One of them, a young woman, spotted me walking by. “Hey Professor Weaver, want to try?” she called from the roof top. “Bet you don’t dare.” I waved politely and passed by. I didn’t mention that I had been a member of the University of Minnesota skydivers club back in the day.

This whole tug and pull of male identity reared a more disturbing face in a recent Star Tribune front page article on National Guard member, Staff Sergeant Chad Malmberg, 27. For his valor in an Iraq firefight, he was awarded the Silver Star. Now in college at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Malmberg was portrayed as a “different kind of student” in contrast to the “slackers in their flip-flops” hanging around the campus. No disrespect to Sgt. Malmberg, but I always found those “slackers” (true slackers don’t go to college) to be some of the best students: open-minded, curious about ideas, willing to learn, and courageous in their opinions. They had a different kind of courage than Mr. Malmberg–the ability to make hard decisions about service to their country based on a different set of assumptions: that joining the Peace Corps, or teaching in an inner city American school would be a good–or even better–contribution to America than fighting in a misbegotten war in Iraq. Governor Pawlenty called Malmberg a “true hero, no doubt about it.” Malmberg himself said he felt like a hero “just putting on the uniform.”

Brom Bones, in his clever trick on Ichabod Crane, wore the cape of a headless, revolutionary war soldier. In real life, however, there are plenty of men who don’t feel the need to wear a uniform to feel like a man. Reid Benson, 24, and a friend of our family, is serving in the Peace Corp in Cameroon. His village, as Joseph Conrad might say, is in "darkest Africa"; it has no electricity, and candles and kerosene lamps, and bed bugs in his mattress are his daily life. He's teaching there, and says that the villagers still have a great respect, even love, for America; when his "tour" is done, he will have deepened that linkage to and respect for America. However, when Reid comes home there will be no parade, no medals, no public honor (that all goes to the "warrior males" in our culture). In short, until we give our male teachers the respect (and the pay) that they deserve, we are still living in Sleepy Hollow.