Half-Time - A Short Story for Your Ears

Earlier this year, at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace writer's conference, I recorded a short short story for The Drum (the literary magazine for your ears). It was an open mic, anyone could record a story with the understanding that if the editor (erstwhile Beyond the Margins writer Henriette Power) liked it she would use it for her online lit mag.

Alas, the story didn't make the cut. But she sent me the audio file to play with. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't make it easy to embed an audio file into a blog post. So I've posted it over at my other online playground, Lowell Postcard. If you're interested, take a left turn and check it out.

How to Survive a Writers Conference: Dos and Don’ts to Making it Out Alive

Putting the flick on hold this week in celebration of the lit. Today, head on over to Beyond the Margins and check out my just-posted interview with celebrated literary agent Mitchell Waters. He's worked for bigtime agency Curtis Brown for 16 years, and gives some great insight into the publishing business today.

Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace literary conference is this weekend, April 30-May 1st. Beyond the Margins will be there in full BTM regalia. We'll have our own table in the lobby complete with booksmarks, a specially-printed anthology of our work, smiles, and more. Also, from 6-7:30 PM Saturday night we'll be hosting an open mic event at Pairings Restaurant. And now that James Franco has bailed on his Muse appearance, our open mic will be the hottest after-hours event going. Although there's a 50-person limit in the room. But having too many people show up is a good problem to have, so bring it on!

If you're planning on attending the Muse, or just want to learn more about writer conferences, read on to find out what to expect:

Writer conference season is gearing up here in Boston with the upcoming Muse and the Marketplace on April 30 and May 1, and other New England conferences in the coming months—Wesleyan Writers Conference, Cape Code Writers Center Conference, and  Bread Loaf.  So if you plan to attend a conference, it’s time to brush up on your writer conference etiquette.

Writer conferences offer:

• À la carte workshops and panels that usually cover both the craft and business of writing.
• The rare chance to have your work critiqued by a professional author, agent, or editor.
• Ways to meet like-minded writers interested in starting writing groups, networking, and trading critiques.
• The opportunity to compress months of online research and networking into a few days.

No matter your area of interest or level of skill, if you’re a writer planning to attend a conference in the coming months, consider the following guidelines to ensure you get your money’s worth:

Come prepared. Bring an iPad, laptop, or a note pad (paper-based application) to take notes. If you have a business card, bring a stack. This is your chance to meet and greet, to schmooze and show off, and exchange vital stats with other writers. Plus you never know who you might share an elevator ride or cocktail hour with.

Follow the rules. If the conference guidelines state not to bring full manuscripts with you, don’t bring a manuscript with you to hand to every agent and editor you see. Nobody likes a writer who’s too pushy, and you want to make a good impression. If the dress code is business casual, don’t wear your favorite stonewashed jeans, ripped at the knees from stage-diving that Ramones show back in ’87. Dress appropriately.

Put into it what you expect to get out of it. Don’t attend a conference if you don’t plan on doing anything while you’re there. If you don’t attend workshops, readings by guest authors, or panels on the state of publishing, then you will leave with the feeling that it wasn’t worth it. You’ve paid money to attend, so get your money’s worth. If you don’t get your first choice for a workshop or class, make the most of whatever event you’re signed up for.

Bring your open mind. Maybe you have one reason to go to a conference and that is to see your favorite author read or meet with the one agent you know can get your book published. These are good reasons to attend, but you’ll be missing out on other elements of a conference. For example, one year I sat in on a non-fiction workshop on journalism. As a novelist, I had low expectations for learning anything pertinent about fiction writing. But it turned out to be an instructive session where I picked up some great tips about research and how to self edit my writing.

Also, if you’re just interested in learning craft, you may be missing an opportunity to learn more about how to write a query letter or what types of books agents are buying this season. Conversely, if you just want to network, you might miss out on learning about how to fix your novel’s structure problems or how to write better dialogue.

Manuscript consultations. If you plan to meet with an author, agent, or editor to discuss your work, plan ahead and sign up with the person that can provide the most appropriate feedback for your project. If you want a general critique of your work in terms of where it fits into the current marketplace, consider meeting with an agent that handles work like yours.

A publisher, while offering no less wonderful advice, is thinking only of the specific magazine or publication that she works for and not what other publishers want. On the other hand, if you consider your writing perfect for a certain publisher, then this is a great opportunity to get the specific feedback you need to get your foot in the door.

Spend a little extra…. Often conferences offer additional opportunities and special events that cost a little extra but can be worth it. Aside from a manuscript consult, you might also have the opportunity to eat a lunch or two with a selection of literary folk and engage in casual business chat. A little extra might get you five minutes to try out your pitch on an editor or to receive feedback on your query letter from an agent.  Who says money can’t buy happiness?

…but don’t spend it all. A few years ago I spent well over a week’s salary on a five day conference. It was a wonderful experience but the expense sent my finances into a hole for months afterward. If you can afford to attend a conference this year, go for it. If you can’t, start saving now for next year. Keep your eyes out for conferences offering grants and scholarships.

Enjoy after-hour events. An average conference day ends around 4 or 5. But that doesn’t mean the day’s over. Often there are related activities to keep you busy well into the evenings. Cocktail hours and open mics and after parties. Often events are coordinated in advance, but sometimes it’s just you hitting the closest bar with a few writer friends to compare notes and dish. If you have the time, these after-hour events are a great way to round off your conference experience. And who knows? Maybe that person you just struck up a conversation with at the bar is an agent who handles manuscripts just like yours.

Follow up. If you garner business cards and some face time with an agent or editor you would die to work with, don’t forget to follow up after the conference to thank them for their time, and remind where you met them and what you write. That way, when you send them a query, you’ll already have been introduced.

Have fun. Yeah, it’s an intense situation: you and hundreds of other hungry writers mixing it up with publishing industry luminaries. Just walking into the conference on that first day can be a fret filled journey of terror into the inky unknown. But remember, all the other attendees probably feel similar trepidation. So with that in mind, take a deep breath, push through that door, and smile. If your smile drops the minute you see that registration line, then go to Plan B: pretend everybody there is naked. Works for me every time. If you don’t know a soul, walk up to the nearest person and introduce yourself. And have fun. Seriously.

This post originally appeared on Beyond the Margins--used with kind permission by me.

Vestal McIntyre Reads at the Muse and the Marketplace

On May 1st I did a little pro bono videography for Grub Street at this year's Muse and the Marketplace. I shot a ten minute video of Vestal McIntyre, winner of Grub Street's national book prize in fiction, reading a selection of his work during the conference's tasty lunch break. Grub Street's Chris Castellani introduces.

It's posted on Vimeo, but you don't have to go there, when you can watch it here:


Vestal McIntyre reading at the Muse and the Marketplace from Grub Street on Vimeo.

Chuck Palahniuk at the 2010 Muse and the Marketplace

Chuck Palahniuk was the keynote speaker a couple weeks back at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference.

The conference was two days, and I was there Saturday helping Henriette launch her new online audio lit mag The Drum. She was recording walk-ins reading flash fiction and, between sessions, some of this year's panelists reading their work, including Maud Casey, Lauren Grodstein, Jon Papernick, and Adam Stumacher, among others.

Sunday was the keynote address. I didn't attend. If you missed Chuck's talk like I did, fear not. Here's the almost 60-minute keynote for your listening and watching pleasure:

Chuck Palahniuk from Grub Street on Vimeo.

New Interview with Randy Susan Meyers

Last  March I interviewed author Randy Susan Meyers. I had a great response to what turned out to be Randy's first interview. Now that her novel, The Murderer's Daughters, has been out for a few months, I thought it would be fun to conduct a follow-up interview and find out how things are going for Randy since the book came out. And Randy was gracious enough to agree.

Unreliable Narrator: This past January your first novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, was published in hardcover by St. Martin’s Press to excellent reviews. Unreliable Narrator interviewed you in March of ‘09, after the manuscript sold but before publication. At that time you said, “I am convinced, that for me, the less drama in my life, the more drama in my fiction.” Has your drama quotient changed, for better or worse, since the book came out?

Randy Susan Meyers: My life has certainly been busier and I guess a bit more dramatic, but all the drama, thank goodness, has been on the professional side, like waiting for reviews and the like. It’s been going wonderfully. This is drama I welcome and I am feeling truly blessed.

UN: For me, it was a great experience to critique parts of your manuscript in workshops at Grub Street, and then read the published version. I noticed at least one difference in the finished book, namely the scene where the father murders the mother. It seemed toned down, less violent and bloody, than in earlier iterations. Was this your choice or your editors’? Or, am I imagining things?

RSM: Hmm. That must have been my choice, because the few things my editor requested that I change stand out so large in my mind that I remember each one. It’s a funny thing, the editorial relationship. First, the changes requested get your back way up. What! Change that brilliant decision that I probably made on one hour of sleep?

Then, you let the editor’s ideas settle and slowly you see the wisdom and merit. My editor was great; her editing was light and smart. Many things she suggested I accepted, others I didn’t. We had a solid working relationship.

I imagine if I toned that first scene down, it was because I wanted the book to be about Lulu and Merry’s life, not about the murder or their father. And I think I also realized that when going through a traumatic experience as Lulu and Merry did, only very key moments would stand out and much of the painful scenes would be buried.

UN: Book tours, at least subsidized by publishers, are becoming rarer, especially for first-time novelists. Did St. Martin’s send you out, or did you book readings, etc., on your own?

RSM: I was not sent on a book tour, per se. St. Martin’s certainly did arrange for some speaking and readings—though they were more attuned to getting the books out to online sites and blogs (which was smart) than to my reading in bookstores. Debut authors do not equal big crowds was their belief, and I imagine they are correct. It certainly is a cost-benefit-analysis world out there. Other things they concentrated on, which were so important, were print reviews and the all-important Amazon Vines early reviewers program.

I did an enormous amount on my own. A wise agent, when speaking last year at The Muse and The Marketplace, said something that truly imprinted on me: No one will ever care as much about your book as you do. Not your agent, not your editor, not your publicist. No one. That’s true. I dove into promoting my book because I believe in it and I very much want people to read it.

UN: You’re great at blogging, keeping your author website fresh, tweeting, and facebook. I know you started doing these things, and more I’m probably not aware of, well before the book came out. How important have these social media tools been to the marketing of your book?

RSM: Enormously important (I believe) but still, one shouldn’t do things that don’t feel natural or pleasing. I found that I loved writing posts—my essays, for my blog. It’s a different form than fiction. It’s short and driven by my voice and opinions, not the ones I am giving to my characters. It’s a place where I can talk about what I love: books, magazines, writing and everything associated.

On Facebook and Twitter, I’ve made tons of new friends (even if my husband doesn’t believe they’re real). One builds a community of writers and readers who help each other. It’s lovely.

Face it, the world is online. Writers can’t really hide from it and why would they want to? It’s our medium—words.

UN: How about Amazon pre-orders and reader reviews? Did exposure on Amazon, and other retail sites like Barnes & Noble, help book sales?

RSM: I absolutely think so. St. Martin’s put The Murderer's Daughters in Amazon’s early reader program, which gives books to Amazon top reviewers before the book comes out. There is no guarantee here, and they are probably the toughest critics you can find, but I was blessed and most of them truly liked the book. These are the only reviews allowed up before the book comes out. It gives a book an early buzz on its reception. I consider Amazon Vines the canary in the mine.

Also, Amazon chose to highlight The Murderer's Daughters both as ‘Our Favorite Books to Read Right Now’ and as a ‘Find New Voices in Fiction’ Amazon Book Club recommendation. This truly helped the book.

UN: Sounds like Amazon was really supportive. When the book came out, it seemed to have a generous presence in big box and independent bookstores, at least in the Boston area. Are you satisfied with the push and print run St. Martin’s gave the book?

RSM: St. Martin’s truly showed their belief in The Murderer's Daughters through their large print run and the books solid presence nationwide, both in independents and big box stores.

UN: After the book was sold in the U.S., your agent, Stephanie Abou, started selling the foreign rights. When I interviewed you last, the book had been sold to five countries. Since then, have more rights sold? How has the reception been overseas? Any plans to travel to Europe to promote the book?

RSM: At this time, my wonderful agent has sold foreign rights to twelve countries. The first release was in Holland (where it was on the nationwide bestseller list for three weeks!) Then it came out in Australia and Germany, where it’s doing quite well. Next will be France, Great Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Israel, and Taiwan.

UN: Wow, that truly impressive. When will The Murderer’s Daughters come out in paperback? And what are the big differences between the hardcover and paperback publication?

RSM: The paperback version should be out around January 2011. I am not certain about all the differences, but I was surprised to learn that the paperback is brought out by an entirely different arm of St. Martin’s Press (though I get to keep my terrific editor). The cover may or may not change. (I hope it stays the same, as I do love my cover.) When the paperback comes out, there is a larger push for book clubs (such as including a questionnaire).

UN: I know a little bit about your next book. Can you touch on the status of that? Bottom line: when do we get our next fix of RSM?

RSM: Here I am in Provincetown just finishing the last touches! It’s a story of the collateral damage of infidelity, revolving around a child who was the product of an affair. I’m hoping to get this last revision to my agent very soon!

UN: I look forward to seeing your next book hit the stores. Randy, thanks again for taking time out to chat with Unreliable Narrator. And congratulations on the success of The Murderer's Daughters.

This Week's Boston Literary Scene

Lots going on this week in the world of Boston's literati. Let's get right down to it, shall we? 

Try To Remember

I'll start off with a big congratulatory shout out to fellow Grub Street writer Iris Gomez whose first novel Try To Remember is hot off the Grand Central Publishing presses.

"It's the story of spirited Gabriela de la Paz, a Colombian teenager struggling to forge her own identity in the changing cultural landscape of 1970s Miami, while keeping her increasingly volatile, mentally ill father out of legal trouble - in order to protect his green card status and save her family from exile in disgrace."

It's already garnering great reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Can't wait to crack it. Catch Iris on May 10th when she holds a discussion and book signing at the UMass Boston bookstore, May 12 at the Downtown Crossing Borders, and May 13 at Brookline Booksmith.

The Muse and the Marketplace

Hurry, time's running out! For what? For registering for Grub Street's 9th annual The Muse and the Marketplace writer's conference, which will be held this upcoming Saturday and Sunday, May 1st and 2nd. Registration ends this Tuesday, April 27th, at noon.

This year you can catch keynote speaker Chuck Palahniuk, along with guest authors Steve Almond, Donovan Campbell, Michael Downing, Hallie Ephron, Ethan Gilsdorf, Elizabeth Graver, Lauren Grodstein, Ann Hood, Victor Lavalle, Jennifer 8 Lee, Benjamin Percy, Michelle Seaton, Jessica Shattuck, Anita Shreve, Janna Malamud Smith, and Elizabeth Strout among many others.

Where else can you mingle with literary agents and editors from agencies and publishers large and small? No where else. Sign up to join the 500+ writers who will be in attendance. Register online, or give Grub Street a call at 617.695.0075.

Randy Susan Meyers

Be sure to catch Randy Susan Meyers this Thursday, April 29, at 7 PM over at Newtonville Books reading a selection from her novel The Murderer's Daughters. She'll be appearing along with Kelly O'Connor McNees, author of The Lost Summer Of Louisa May Alcott.

Tinkers

Belated congratulations to local rocker (drummer for Cold Water Flat) turned novelist, Paul Harding, who made more than good by winning this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Tinkers, which was published last year by independent Bellevue Literary Press with a an initial run of 3,500 copies. This week Perseus Books Group (parent company to the book's distributor, Consortium) is readying another 100,000 books for shipment.

Read Geoff Edgers' article in The Boston Globe about how Tinkers rose from collecting dust in the author's desk drawer to prize winning novel. It's a great underdog story. What writer doesn't like to hear that a tiny novel, with a small first printing and a 1,000 dollar advance, can climb into the heady clouds of year-end top ten lists and then ascend even farther to be the first novel released by a small press in thirty years to win the Pulitzer? Not this writer.

Here's Magnetic North Pole, the Cold Water Flat song Boston's WFNX played in the mid-'90s:

Muse Redux

An excerpt from my post about this year's Muse and the Marketplace was just published in the summer issue of the Grub Street Free Press. The excerpt covers highlights of the three workshops I attended on the first day of the conference. A selection of photos taken at the conference accompanies the article.

Read the original full post. And check out Grub Street's Flickr page, featuring nearly 200 photos from the conference (in case you missed it live).

Muse and the Marketplace 2009 -- Recap

Last weekend I attended Grub Street's 8th annual Muse and the Marketplace writer’s conference. This was my third Muse, and my best experience thus far. Which is saying a lot, since the others were wonderful.

For the first time the Muse was held at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel, apparently the only facility in Boston big enough for this year’s conference, proving how unstoppable a force the Muse and Grub Street have become. Also, for the first time I did not participate in the Manuscript Mart part of the conference. This is where a literary agent or editor critiques 20 pages of your writing. It’s an intense experience, and it can feel like the conference becomes a framework on which to drape these agent/editor meetings. This year I wanted to simply go to the conference and not worry about a critique. Also as a first, I volunteered Sunday, coming away with a wholly unique vision of the conference; meeting fellow writers I would not have otherwise and getting new perspectives by sitting in on workshops outside of my interest.

Saturday

Saturday started with a panel discussion called The State of the Industry. Participants included Hallie Ephron (writer), Jane Rosenman (editor, Algonquin Books), David Langevin (director of electronic markets at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and Joseph Olshan (writer), moderated by Sorche Fairbank (founder of Fairbank Literary Representation). Here we got the inside scoop on topics such as publishing in the digital age, the struggles a working author faces, and trends in fiction. I gleaned some interesting tidbits such as:

- Good writing is always in demand, whether published traditionally or digitally (online, ebooks, etc.).
- There are now fewer editors for agents to send material to.
- Good ideas to garner a bit more attention include: writing a novel in serial format, incorporating non-fiction hooks (social, historical, civil rights, etc.) in your fiction, and publishing online (agents do troll the Internet for talent).
- Alternatives to traditional publishing: ebooks, podcasts, cell phone novels (novels written on a cell phone—huge in Japan).
- Publish in magazines/lit mags to get agents/editors attention.
- Non-fiction sells better than fiction.
- It’s easier to get a published book reviewed than a self-published book.
- Self-publishing success can lead to a publisher.
- There is a genre called narrative. I hadn’t heard of this. It’s a cross between literary fiction and storytelling. Which I take to mean, plot-driven literary fiction (correct me if I’m off base here).

This was neither encouraging nor discouraging, but followed what I already believed about the current state of publishing. It’s always good to hear that good writing doesn't go out of style.

The panel ended with each panel member touting one or more contemporary books that they love (I may have missed one or two):
- The Outlander, Gil Adamson
- Beat the Reaper, Josh Bazell
- Dog on It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery, Spencer Quinn (I think I heard this right)
- Invisible Sisters, Jessica Handler
- Story of a Marriage, Andrew Sean Greer
- Mudbound, Hilary Jordan (more than one panelist mentioned this one)
- How Do We Decide, Jonah Lehrer (non-fiction)


Next I attended Lewis Robinson’s workshop, Eternal Rocks Beneath, the Relevance of Setting. Here Lewis handed out four excerpts, samples from novels and stories. We discussed the use of language to convey a sense of setting, and how we can learn about characters from their relation to and with the locations in which they pass. We learned about over-describing setting, where all objects carry the same weight. Or keeping it too generic, where location description is not from a particular character’s point of view.

Lewis equated writing about setting as describing to someone how to get someplace they are unfamiliar with. Imagine leading the way with a lantern that illuminates the reader’s path. By the end of the workshop I realized all the pieces we had discussed (from Revolutionary Road and Brokeback Mountain, to Louis’s own story, Puckheads) used settings not just as locations in which to place characters, but as if they were characters themselves, equally important to the story.


On to…Lunch! I sat at a table with Randy Susan Meyers, Ginny DeLuca, Tara Mantel, Stacey Shipman, and others. We were welcomed by Grub Street’s artistic director Chris Castellani, and development director Whitney Scharer. Then there were readings by Alan Cheuse and Dinty W. Moore. As you can see, every moment of the Muse is crammed with activity. You always get your money’s worth.

My afternoon workshop was Stephen McCauley’s Building Character. He discussed the best ways to introduce your characters, keeping in mind that first impressions stick with readers throughout a book, so you’ve got to write descriptions that count. Stephen read an excerpt from The Great Gatsby, when the character of Tom Buchanan is introduced. It’s a stunner, as Fitzgerald sweeps us across the front grounds of Buchanan’s sprawling house like a movie camera and right up to the man himself, standing with legs apart, surveying his domain. It was a great example of how to use action to help introduce a character.


Stephen then used Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls as an example of bad character description. Lots of vague language, like real and really, and describing a woman simply as beautiful without much elaboration. The woman’s eyes—they weren’t just blue. They were really blue. Sky blue, but glacial. Stephen admitted to loving Valley of the Dolls, even if the writing wasn’t always classic.

Toward the end of the day, it was time for the Hour of Power, five workshops that were open to all, and we were free to roam in and out at will. I wandered into a workshop about writing a non-fiction book proposal. Didn’t take long to figure out that it wasn’t for me, considering I’m all about the fiction. So I skeedaddled over to Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Open Mic. Here writers of every ilk read their pieces before a room of people and then Hank gave a spot critique, offering advice about how to choose a piece (read an excerpt that has a natural arc) and how to read with impact (when to hold a beat, when to raise your voice). These are details I hadn’t really considered. Good to know, as the few readings I’ve given could have used a little HPR guidance.

On to the cocktail hour. I’m not a big schmoozer, so I wasn’t prepared to bully some unsuspecting agent into representing me or an editor into a book contract. It was just relaxing to talk about the day with fellow writers and compare Muse stories. I also got the skinny on a few Manuscript Mart experiences while enjoying an exotic imported beer.

Sunday

I had initially planned to attend only Saturday, so when I heard they were looking for volunteers, I threw my hat in the ring for Sunday. I arrived around 7:45 A.M., and was introduced to Kim. Kim showed me and another volunteer, Kathleen, around and told us how to manage the workshops to which we were assigned. Then I was stationed by the elevators to answer questions and guide participants to appropriate workshops or the Manuscript Mart.

By mid morning I had a few extra minutes so I sat in on Jenna Blum’s Extreme Research workshop. Jenna was a great speaker, as were many of the writers and instructors appearing at the Muse. She was generous and concise, quick on her feet, and funny as hell. When answering questions about how she approached interviewing Holocaust survivors, she explained how she put her subjects at ease and didn’t push too hard for details from those reticent to talk.

My first workshop as a volunteer was for Carlo Rotella’s Nonfiction Storytelling. Again, I’m a fiction writer. So I expected this session to be a little dry and off-topic. But Carlo is another great speaker, and he’s had so many interesting experiences as a journalist that he was a pleasure to listen to. And I found many of his comments about research (how to handle too much, how to get more), organizing, and editing really refreshing. He was happy to discuss his techniques and the problems he encountered whenever he wrote a magazine piece. How it’s easier for him to revise and finish an article than it is to start one.

Lunch time. Another great meal from the staff at the Park Plaza. Have I mentioned how this place ran like a precision watch, and the food and service were excellent? As a volunteer I wasn’t sure where to eat, and walked into the huge Georgian Ballroom looking for anyone with this year’s Muse t-shirt (the uniform for volunteers). Randy flagged me down and so I sat with her and other writers like Cecile Corona, Stephanie Ebbert, Christiane Alsop, and Jennifer McInerney. It’s great to talk to like-minded writers. Whether or not they’ve got an agent, a book deal, published stories, writers can always find common ground for discussion.

Anyway, it was time for keynote speaker Ann Patchett, (Bel Canto, Run). She bounded onstage and spoke for over an hour with fierce conviction and wry, candid observations. The first thing she said was, “The muse is bullshit,” and spent about 30 minutes explaining how creativity isn’t something you wait for, it’s something you earn by sitting your butt in the chair and writing. Then she said, “The marketplace is bullshit,” and spent 30 minutes explaining how mercurial the writing business can be. How you may have to throw away your first novel and set to work on the second if you ever want to get published. How you can’t get caught up worrying about trends and advances or you’ll never write a true word (I’m paraphrasing here, or maybe I’m writing my own keynote speech). She took a few questions from the avid audience, and then she left as quickly as she had come, back onto a plane and home to Nashville. She was a hell of an entertaining speaker and I didn’t want it to end.

My afternoon workshop was run by writer Richard Hoffman, called Starting From Solitude: Interiority and the First-Person Narrator. Again, I was able to apply a non-fiction perspective to my experience as a fiction writer. Much of the workshop consisted of Richard feeding his small audience (these rooms held no more than 50 people I’m guessing) writing prompts. I followed along with the exercise. He had everyone choose a particularly emotional time in their lives, reminding us that adolescence is usually a good place to start. And indeed, there I was scribbling away to prompts like, where are you? (Walking on the beach.) What have you just come from doing? (Going to church youth group.) Who are you with? (My dog). What advice do you have for this version of yourself. (Don't take everything so damn seriously, and to give himself a break.) Richard called on participants to read, and it was pretty amazing to hear these micro memoirs put together on the spot.



When Richard’s session ended, I went down to the registration desk. It was pretty quiet, so I spent some time looking over the selection of books brought by Porter Square Books. Many, if not all, of the authors who participated over the weekend were represented. I decided to take a chance on an author I’d never heard of, and found The Missing Person, a novel by Alix Ohlin, who was around Saturday giving a workshop on time travel in fiction. Then I talked to fellow volunteer Kathleen about writing and publishing. It was a great way to end the conference; just talking to another writer about writing.

If there’s a takeaway from the conference, it’s the knowledge that all writers, no matter their level of success, confidence, or technique, share a common task. Ann Patchett said, If you’re good, you’ll get published. The panel on the state of publishing echoed, If you’re good, you’ll get published. And the only way that’s going to happen is for any writer to take all this advice, go home, sit down, and get to it.

My So-Called Writing Life

Work’s busy, evenings I’m beat, and there’s always a lot to do on the weekends. I write for about an hour each morning before work on weekdays, and for a few hours on weekend mornings. So it’s easy to let slide an aspect of writing life that’s imperative to moving forward: getting published.

It takes an entirely different writing muscle to send out material for publication or agency placement. It doesn’t matter if you’ve attended the most prestigious MFA in creative writing program ever, all that learnin’ won’t help you place your brilliant writing. (Okay, an MFA can get agents’ and publishers’ attention more easily, but that’s another story for another blog post.) It’s after you finish your poem, story, or novel that a new sort of dogged creativity gets tested. Now it’s time to write the perfect query letter, research the agents and/or publishers that seem the best fit for your manuscript, and target the literary mags that best suit your stories. This is a full-time job. It can get immediately disheartening and even the small stuff can throw you off your game.

Recently I looked at my Excel spreadsheet where I keep track of my query activity on the novel front, and submissions on the story front. For "A Little Disappeared," the novel I worked-shopped at Grub with Ms. X, I have about five or six queries still out to agents and publishers. I have about eight or ten instances of stories or novel excerpts out to literary journals. Some of these have been out for over a year.

I realize, looking at the sent dates, that there’s a new publishing biz practice. No longer will an agent, publisher, or lit mag guarantee a response. If the answer is no, you may never get a response. I suppose I understand this behavior, as they are getting more and more queries and manuscripts, and have fewer and fewer employees to handle the slush piles. Still, that great big NO meant closure, allowed me to move on to try again somewhere else. Now, with no real NO to work with, I need to remind myself to move on myself after, say, three months.

I always try to stick to a self-imposed schedule: send out a story or query once a week. But, after a few weeks I always fall off the wagon, either because my writing isn’t going well or the rejections become overwhelming. I recently showed a new story to Liz. She had some good ideas, and I rewrote the story. Then had my writing group critique the story. I got a good response and also some great ideas on how to make it better.

So, for the first time in a few months, I’m excited about sending out writing again, and this is bleeding over into trying to again place "A Little Disappeared", and getting back to my so-called writing life.

Muse and the Marketplace Update

I was alerted this week to the workshops I will be attending next week, and I’m happy with the choices:

- Marketplace Panel: The State of the Industry
- Eternal Rocks Beneath: the Relevance of Setting, with Lewis Robinson
- Building Character, with Stephen McCauley

Writer's Conference: Muse and the Marketplace

Two more weeks until the Grub Street writer's conference, The Muse and the Marketplace, April 25-26. There are still some workshops that have not sold out, so register now if you haven't already. Unfortunately, the ever popular Manuscript Mart is sold out. I didn't have a manuscript ready for a critique, so I didn't sign up.

I'm attending the Saturday session and will be a volunteer for Sunday. I haven't found out which sessions I'm attending. Meaning, I've signed up for a first and second choice. It's first come, first served, so I find out this week which workshops I got into.

Here's my wish list, by session:

Session 1:
- Marketplace Panel--An overview of the current state of the publishing industry, with panelists: Hallie Ephron, Jane Rosenman, David Langevin and Joseph Olshan. Always good to hear a realistic and up-to-the-minute discussion about this timely topic.

- From Premise to Plot, with Tess Gerritsen. She talks about how to come up with a story premise, then and how to turn that premise into a novel. Sounds good to me.

Session 2 (I chose 2 out of the following 3, but I forget which!):
- Eternal Rocks Beneath: The Relevance of Setting, with Lewis Robinson. She talks about how choosing your story locations is just as important as dialogue, characterization, plot, etc.

- Traits, Quirks, and Habits: Creating Characters from the Inside Out, with Lynne Griffin. She discusses how to create believable characters and making their motivations psychologically real.

- Literary Idol. This last one sounds terrifying. From the Grub website: "Professional actress Marty Johnson will perform the first page of YOUR unpublished manuscript for the audience and a panel of three “judges.” The judges are agents and/or editors (as of press time, Sorche Fairbank, Kirsten Manges and Asya Muchnick are the judges) with years of experience reading unsolicited submissions. When one of the judges hears a line that would make her stop reading, she will raise her hand. The actor will keep reading until a second judge raises his hand. The judges will then discuss WHY they would stop reading, and offer concrete (if subjective) suggestions to the (anonymous) author. If no agent raises his/her hand, the judges will discuss what made the excerpt work so well. All excerpts will be evaluated *anonymously.*" Yikes! Can't wait!

Session 3:
- Building Character, with Stephen McCauley. Talks about how to build a strong cast of characters, by "...look(ing) at specific examples from the Greats and Not-So-Greats to understand the ways in which writers bring their characters to life."

- Marketplace Panel: Agents on the Hot Seat. All struggling writers need an agent, so these panels are an invaluable addition to any good writer's conference. Includes panelists Mollie Glick, Rob McQuilken, Lane Zachary, and Elisabeth Weed, with moderator Michelle Seaton. They'll answer, among other questions, "What does an agent actually do? Do you really need one? How do you choose the right one to approach? What are some general “do’s” and “don’t’s” for sending them manuscripts? Then (they'll) open it up for a free-for-all Q&A.;" Because the publishing business changes every day, these panels are great for staying current.

I don't care which sessions I get into this year because they all sound like great and necessary tools to further a writer's craft and career. And that, my friends, is why they call it the Muse and the Marketplace.

At the end of the day comes the "hour of power," from 3:45pm to 4:45pm. There are a choice of five large-group seminars with no pre-registration, which makes it easy to check them all out:

Option 1: Blueprint for Book Publicity, with Jocelyn Kelley and Megan Kelley-Hall of Kelley and Hall Book Publicity. They answer the questions, "What makes a book a blockbuster? What pushes it to the top of bestseller lists, onto bookshelves across the country, and into the hands of eager readers? What helps an author create a strong following?" Interesting for the published and non-published.

Option 2: Jumpstart Your Writing, with Adam Stumacher. "What better way to end the day than by producing new work to take home with you? One of Grub Street’s award-winning instructors will provide unique and inspiring prompts that get you brainstorming ideas for new stories and writing new scenes." Sounds good. I better bring a pad and pencil. I never thought I could write from prompts until I took Rusty Barnes' 10 Weeks, 10 Stories class at Grub a few years ago. He gave a prompt each week as a jumping off point for a short story. I was amazed that, a) I wrote a story a week for ten weeks (albeit not always keepers), and, b) the prompts didn't stymie my output, but gave me new ideas that pushed my characters and plots down paths I never would have otherwise gone. Note: Rusty Barnes is the co-founder and editor of the most excellent Night Train magazine.

Option 3: Writing the Non-Fiction Book Proposal, with Chuck Sambuchino, Editor, Writer's Digest. I'll probably skip this one, not that it doesn't sound juicy. Just not for a novelist.

Option 4: Guided Open Mic, with leader Hank Phillippi Ryan. I've done two or three public readings, and each time I fripp it up. I generally read a piece that's too long, and either send the audience to sleep or speed-stumble through the text. I've heard Hank read before. She's excellent and will make the perfect leader for this shindig. I don't plan to read but I might check it out to see who is.

Option 5: The Art of Column Writing. With Suzette Martinez Standring. Being a blogger, I guess I fall into this category. Especially with a review gig (currently only one-time, but hopefully that'll change) at the The Review Review, this will be another helpful workshop.

After that, if you still haven't passed out or hyperventilated from the stimulation, there's a Meet and Greet (cash bar) from 4:45 to 6:00. At 6:05 all writers turn into their pale, exhausted true selves, donning coffee-stained bathrobes to chain-smoke clove cigarettes while revising pages.

So, maybe I'll see you at the Park Plaza in Boston in a couple weeks. Tune in to the Unreliable Narrator after the conference and I'll let you know how it went.

Chester is upset that he was not invited.

Writing Groups, Conferences, and Critiques

A few posts back I talked about being in a writing group. We’ve met three times now, critiquing a total of a hundred pages each time (from one or two writers) while also discussing publishing topics and trends.

This past week we all got a glimpse of Randy’s new Kindle, and agreed that while Kindles and like-minded applications are convenient and fun, they will never replace the experience of browsing for, buying, and reading a paper bound item with printed text. Also, fellow-writer Stephanie mentioned that she signed up for the Manuscript Mart at Grub Street’s upcoming Muse and the Marketplace conference. During the Manuscript Mart, established editors and agents critique twenty pages of a writer’s work. I’ve been through the Manuscript Mart experience twice now with the first twenty pages of "A Little Disappeared," so I gave Stephanie some advice (don’t meet right before lunch when the editor has low blood sugar) and told her my experiences.

Which are these: the low-blood-sugar editor wasn’t enthusiastic about my writing. She explained that my novel structure bordered on experimental and the prose of my younger narrator read a little flat. I wasn’t prepared for this critique, so I was stymied. Had I been better prepared, I might have been able to ask better questions and get more out of our meeting.

Undaunted, a couple years later I came back with the same pages, newly revised, and signed up for an agent. The agent had a tough reputation but we seemed to hit it off. She liked my writing but had questions about my choices and wanted to know how the story ended. I answered her questions to her satisfaction and came away from the meeting with her business card and firm handshake. A couple months later, after I had revised my manuscript enough to feel comfortable sending it out, I contacted the agent and asked if she would be interested in seeing the complete manuscript. She said yes. I sent it off. After a few months I sent a series of prodding emails. I eventually I got a form rejection back from her agency.

Everybody’s Manuscript Mart experiences vary. I learned that editors are interested mainly in manuscripts they can publish; while agents spread their net wider in terms of knowing which publishers they think would be right for a particular story. There’s a learning curve to the publishing biz, one I haven’t mastered yet. This year I’m attending day one of the Muse and the Marketplace. If I had a manuscript ready, I’d sign up for another agent for a Manuscript Mart critique. Maybe next year.

But so anyway. The writing group meets again in two weeks it’s my turn to bring in pages. What to bring? I haven’t been working on a novel since last October (right around the time I started this blog) so I’ve been revising some stories. I have about five or six candidates for critique, and am excited to get feedback on short-form pieces. This is what I need help with: finishing. I get an idea, I write write write. But my endings are usually crap. And when I realize I’ve written a story with another crap ending, I lose all inspiration. So, I need more eyes to help me with this writing problem. And I need to take suggestions and critiques and actually incorporate them into the stories.

I’m excited about getting back to work on a novel, either starting a new one, or revising an existing one. On the other hand, I wish I could focus on shorter pieces to place more stories in lit mags, getting my name out there more. It’s an ongoing struggle. A compromise has been to try and turn excerpts and outtakes of my novels into stand-alone stories. This too has proved difficult, as I need to come up with frameworks for these sections that don’t always comprise a smooth beginning, middle, and end.

Are you a writer? Have you had similar experiences trying to carve out pieces of longer works? Let me know what works for you. And I’ll let you know how my next group meeting goes.