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Rachelle Gardner: Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2012 1:54 PM
Today I discovered a wonderful blog directed at the family members and friends of writers. The advice offered by Rachelle Gardner comes from long years of experience as a literary agent. Here's just a part of what she has to say:
Here are a few “don’ts” for you: • Don’t belittle or demean your writer-in-residence for their dreams. • Don’t assume “success” must be correlated with income. • Don’t ever refer to their writing time as “wasted” and don’t think about how much money they could be making if they spent the time differently. This is who they are. • Don’t say “have you finished that book yet?” Instead, say things like, “did you have a good day of writing?” Support your writer and show you care by doing things that are meaningful to them.
You could do things like: • Help them to create a special writing space inside your home, whether it’s an entire room or just a corner somewhere. • Help them create time for their writing, and encourage all members of the family to respect that time. • Ask them about their writing, or why they like to write, or what their hopes and dreams are for their writing. • Get them little writing-related gifts that show you’re taking them seriously: books about writing, new desk or computer supplies. • Give them a gift certificate for something like a weekend “writing retreat” at a local hotel; or a few days away at a writer’s conference. • Ask them how you can help support their writing.
Most writers are smart, passionate, interesting, driven, and eager to share their words with the world. (And yes, okay, a little moody and possibly bi-polar.) Enjoy the fact that they have depth and ambition, and something to say! And definitely make sure you have your own hobbies, passions and interests. You’re going to need them.
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Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 9:11 AM
Some time ago, I read a blog post that argued for making a distinction between an author and a writer. I haven't been able to find it again, but the main point has stuck with me. I think it went something like this:
"The Writer" works in the present tense. You are a writer if you regularly pick up a pen or turn on your computer and start using words to express your ideas, your dreams, your fantasies, your fears. You are a writer when you put words together to communicate with others. You can write on paper, on a screen, or in your mind. You can be a writer without ever publishing a single piece. You can write a secret diary that will never see the light of day. You' can be a writer of letters, a writer of a blog, a writer of headlines, or a writer of the next great American novel. Genre doesn't matter. Format doesn't matter. What really matters is that you are actively doing the writing.
"The Author", on the other hand, lives in the past tense. An author is someone who was once a writer, and then published what she wrote. Again, the genre doesn't matter; the format doesn't matter. What matters is taking that final step--publishing the written word in an effort to communicate with a reader. You're not an author until you've finished the writing.
Another way to look at the difference is this. Writing is a solitary occupation. Being an author requires a reader to complete your effort. And that's important. I think it was in the same article that a second distinction appeared. A writer can be an introvert. An author must be an extrovert.
I've been thinking about all of this because I'm entering my least favorite part of the writing process. I'm finishing a book manuscript. "The Road to Frogmore" is over 85% finished. Four or five chapters to go, and then will come the editing, the polishing, the design decisions, the pre-publication steps, the launch, and then the marketing of this book I've been harboring in my imagination for the past three years. It can be an exciting time, but . . . introvert that I am, I'd rather be writing.
There's something exciting and inspiring about starting a new book. I love the research, the period of character development, the plot outlining. I'm happy as can be in my little office hideaway, pounding out sentence after sentence, chapter after chapter. I'm eager to know how it all turns out. But when a book is finished, I'm less enamored of the role of author. That means appearances, book signings, advertising, promotional bric-a-brac, reading reviews, and counting sales.
And then comes the real dilemma. Do I ride this book into the sunset? Or do I start a new one? And can I do both? Is there time to promote the books that are finished and explore a new world of colorful characters and intriguing plot twists at the same time? At the moment, I don't know the answer to those questions, and I'm feeling very unsettled.
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Posted on Sunday, November 20, 2011 2:07 PM
Today I ran across a blog post that asked, "If you had to choose between teaching and writing, which career would you pick?" The question was obviously of interest to me, since I've had careers in both, but I was particularly intrigued by one of the responses to that question. It was written by another college professor turned historical fiction author and self-publisher. So here, with her permission, is Mary Lou Locke's answer. I've abbreviated it slightly from her original post, but you can read the whole article here.
"A few years back, probably one day while I was slowly making my way through a stack of midterm essays I was grading (my least favorite part of teaching), I started to add up all the students I had taught over my more than 30 years of teaching, and I came up with the startling figure of 10,000. 10,000 separate college freshmen, who had sat in one of my US history and US women’s history classes over the years. . . . short, in my career as a college professor, I had gotten the chance, and even sometimes succeeded, in both entertaining and teaching over 10,000 students.
"But it took me nearly thirty-five years to reach that number of people.
"It took me only a year and half to reach an equal number of people through the publication and sale of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune.
"As I have written before, I first came up with the plot of Maids of Misfortune while working on my history doctoral dissertation. I had been working for four years researching and writing a 375-page manuscript entitled, ‘Like a Machine or an Animal’: Working Women of the Late Nineteenth-Century Urban Far West, San Francisco, Portland, and Los Angeles, and I knew, even if I was fortunate enough to ever get it published (I wasn’t) that at the most, if it was a real winner and history professors decided to assign it to their graduate students, fewer than 500 people would ever actually read it.
"It was then I became intrigued by the idea of using a mystery series, as Ellis Peters was doing in her Brother Cadfael series, to show readers what life was like for a specific group of people, who lived in a particular historical time and place, in my case–women who worked in late 19th century San Francisco. I wanted to tell these women’s stories, make their lives real, and do it in a way that also entertained. That was my dream. So, when people who have read Maids of Misfortune consistently comment on how well I portrayed Victorian San Francisco, how they had never thought about how difficult a servant’s life could be, how interesting it was to see how an independent woman maneuvered through the social mores of the nineteenth century, and how they can’t wait for the sequel, I smile, my dream finally realized.
"10,000 people have bought Maids of Misfortune. And I didn’t have to grade a single essay."
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