Power in sharing what's working

I've often written here about the work of Pat Schneider, who founded the Amherst Writers & Artists practices I use in my writing groups. But Pat had a font of practices to draw upon while building up the AWA network: the writing and teaching of Peter Elbow.

While Elbow's seminal book is Writing Without Teachers, I'm told his best volume on writing is the follow-up Writing with Power. The book is 25 years old. More than 20 years after Writing with Power first went into print, Elbow wrote the forward to Schneider's book Writing Alone and With Others (our guidebook as AWA group leaders). In his forward, Elbow says:

In [her book's] section about writing groups, she has made an interesting rhetorical decision: She presents the material in the form of advice to someone who wants to... lead a writer's workshop... She makes palpable a crucial theme: Groups for sharing and responding require wisdom and firm leadership.

Many people have found to their sorrow that it's no good saying, "Let's get together and share our writing — and we'll just see what happens." There are crucial guidelines and rules of thumb that at least one person much take responsibility for.

Otherwise, Elbow says, these un-led groups will form with people likely to take advantage of one another, give unhelpful advice or give it in an unhelpful manner, and usually abuse each other's privacy.

His comments in that forward echo Elbow's writing in his own book. We learn best together, sharing what works. A few days ago I met a writer working on a several projects, and so I explained what we do in an AWA group. I stressed our listeners' positive response on first drafts. She replied, "Oh, I don't need someone to tell me what's working in my writing. I know that. I need someone to tell me what's not working."

An AWA workshop is not for everyone, but I'd beg to differ from that writer's belief. Elbow says that reading aloud the fresh writing "is push-ups for the specific muscle used in taking responsibility for your words."

And it is so easy to become a facile writer, easy with the process, while holding back that kind of responsibility — the deep prospect that shared writing in a safe environment offers. "Sharing gives readers the painless practice in just listening and enjoying what they hear," Elbow says, "and learning gradually to be confident of their reactions."

Positive response can change writing for the better, Elbow explains.

For improving your writing you need at least some readers to be allies, persons who wholly cooperate in the communicative transaction. I believe you will improve your writing more through freewriting and sharing than through any other activities described in this book.

He goes on to set the foundation we use in the AWA Way: If we cannot identify what is working in a piece of writing, we have little or no hope of understanding what is not working. Elbow says when you hear a group member read every week who's no better than you — and then that writer comes up with a passage that's terrific — you sometimes can learn more about how to improve your writing than you learn from clear explanations of what's wrong with your writing, or good advice on how to fix it, or inspiring lectures.

Matters of tone and voice are particularly hard to talk about or teach. They are best learned through hearing what you like and imitating it — and hearing what you don't like, and getting rid of it.

This advice comes from a professor who has taught writing at MIT, Wesleyan University, the Harvard School of Education and Evergreen State College (the last the alma mater of Steve Jobs and Simpsons creator Matt Groenig.) Finding someone who'll tell you what to fix in your writing is often not the best way to maintain your progress as a writing. Hearing from readers can be a rare thing in a writer's career, one with surprising gifts. It can inspire you, as Elbow says in his forward to Schneider's book. "Pat's book makes you want to sit down and start writing."

So does Elbow — and his spark, and the AWA distinction, is built upon sharing.

Mockingbird's mother surfaces at last

Harper Lee had one good book in her, but it's sold millions. To Kill a Mockingbird has sold 30 million copies since it was first published in 1963. The book still sells a million a year, taught at all levels of school and beloved by fans so ardent that Harper calls them "Birdies."

Despite working on another novel for years after her only finished book, Lee never published another novel. Magazine articles she wrote seemed forced in the years afterward, according to her biographer Charles J. Shields. It was as if she was funny and honest when she was certain nobody was reading her, Shields said on The Bob Edwards Show this morning on XM Radio. Edwards interviewed him on the release of Shields' book Mockingbird, a Portrait of Harper Lee.

Then there was a second novel attempt, according to what Shields was able to sleuth out in Alabama. But that manuscript "was stolen, according to her sister. It seems an excuse on a level with 'the dog ate it,' " he quipped during the interview.

Lee is a notorious recluse, appearing just once a year at the Alabama state capitol to congratulate the winner of the To Kill a Mockingbird essay contest. Now she's bringing her prose back to the magazine pages with an essay about reading habits, scheduled for Oprah's magazine this summer.

Lee has referenced her memoirs several times in correspondence. Her biographer said he hopes she has at least that book left in her, since she's a dedicated letter writer. Seeing her friend Truman Capote descend into drugs and disillusion after publishing In Cold Blood spooked her, apparently. Be careful of being published. It can change your writing, if the mother of "Mockingbird" is any measure.

Poring over your first five, and why you should

The air was thick with a tiresome tone last Sunday, the final day of the Agents and Editors conference in Austin. Most of the crowd had been pursuing the people on the dais for days. We listened to three editors and 17 agents. One panelist after another, with few exceptions, told stories of what not to do while querying them. A query is opening a business relationship, so there are preferences and protocol to observe.

Don't write your cover letter on a half-sheet of legal paper, longhand. Don't address your letter to another agent (a failure of Word's mail-merge). "Don't tell me you've written a fictional novel," said Mike Ferris of a Dallas agency named after him. "Unless you expect a fictional reply from me, one I don't have to send."

Be sure to get the honorifics right, one added: "Don't address me 'Dear Beth,' " said Beth Vesel. A few of us looked puzzled at that one, looking down at the program where she was billed as "Beth Vesel," also of a literary agency named after her. Oh, I get it. The correspondence to the leader of the Beth Vesel Literary Agency should be addressed "Dear Ms. Vesel:" Or "Ms. Vesel:"

Beth (sorry for the familiarity, but now I feel like I know you better) said she won't read unsolicited e-mail queries. Put your unsolicited paper query in the mail and send it to her Fifth Avenue office in New York City. (Not to be put off by that address. The office is at 50 Fifth Avenue, a few blocks from the Village and Union Square in NYC.)

She said she wants writers to look at her Web site to see how to submit a manuscript. (Doesn't appear to be a listing for her agency's site in my searches via Google or Yahoo.) After 15 years of work at another agency, Vesel started her own in 2003, and according to a 2004 listing at the Agents Actively Looking Web site

is actively looking for new clients. Beth handles serious psychology, cultural criticism, narrative nonfiction and literary fiction. For non-fiction please include a query letter, CV, proposal, and SASE. If a finished proposal is not ready please supply a synopsis, full outline, and related clips.

For fiction please include a query letter, synopsis (with word count), sample chapter and SASE.

Why query her? Because she's been an agent since 1988. Because she specializes in psychological thrillers, among her interests listed in the conference program. Most important, because she's hired to get your manuscript in the running for a deal with a major publisher, if she or her readers can get through the first five pages of your writing.

Vesel was blunt and funny. She said she thinks that "literary fiction" is a genre created out of "bullshit," to quote her term. (She was the only agent to use that word to describe the habits of an industry full of it.)

If it sounds challenging to get a open-minded read from Ms. Vesel, well, that's the nature of the publishing game at a New York level. You don't want to think that bright, accomplished people like the agents at that conference would dismiss a work of art in less than 10 pages. The truth is that they do, all the time. And that's a fact that Noah Lukeman built a book upon: The First Five Pages.

This book's subtitle is "Staying out of the rejection pile," and Lukeman begins by saying his book might not be a good use of your time.

Most people are against books on writing on principle. So am I. It's ridiculous to set down rules when it comes to art.

Of course, he goes on to set down not rules, but a chapter-by-chapter examination of where to go wrong while you try to stay out of the recycle bin; how to get past the MFA grad student or under-published writer who reads for an agent. Lukeman's first chapter deals with presentation, and offers this advice, only partly in jest:

Don't try to contact an editor or agent between 12:30 and 3. They will be lunching with other editors or agents. Don't contact them before lunch, because they will be settling in for the day. Don't contact them between 3 and 4, because they will be recovering from lunch and returning calls from those who called during lunch. Don't call them after 5, as Hollywood is finally waking up about then, and they are also preparing to leave for the day. So — if you absolutely must call — then call at exactly 4:30.

Or 3:30 if you live in Texas. I do see another opening there, by calling during lunch.

You can read a few basic chapters of that kind of advice in the early part of Lukeman's book, but the bulk of it is much better than that. He says it's not a book about publishing, but a book about writing. Face it, there's not much you can do about the habits of business people focused on honorifics, the color of your paper, who they believe you shouldn't call, or how you refer to your work. (Self-published already? Don't hide it, they advise. Open your kimono and tell them about your sales, they say.)

What you can do something about is your writing — and like Lukeman says, that's a very different subject than publishing. Agents are all about publishing, and whatever they suggest about your writing will always have this motive attached to it: Do this, and it will help me sell your book. That is the outcome a writer wants, after months or years of creative work. Expect requests for change to get a deal done. So it's better to have your writing done well enough, early enough in your piece of art, to be able to proceed to the "we need these changes" conversation with a professional reader, editor or agent — some of whom revealed sometimes picayune requirements with relish.

Starting later, then saving on education

Many writers begin their stories too early. In my novel Viral Times I've written three chapters of prologue. They likely will never see an editor's desk, but I needed to write them to know more about some of my characters.

Starting too early in a story, even if it's well-written, still won't make it past an editor who wants to hear the tale, not revel in the backstory of vivid characters. (Don't get me wrong, there's a place for backstory. Just read Empire Falls to see how Richard Russo makes the history of main characters so essential to understanding their current-day personalities.)

But most of us aren't so clever as Russo. Even an award-winner like Val McDermid, according to the blog site The Writing Show. Quoted in an online interview , McDermid tells about a difficult amputation that taught her, and where else a writer can get an affordable education.

How do you decide when and in what context to reveal details about your characters and your story?

VM: It’s not a conscious decision-making process. It’s a combination of instinct and acquired technique. The first draft of my second novel, Common Murder, began with five beautifully crafted chapters of back story for my protagonist, Lindsay Gordon. When I sent it off to my agent, she said, ‘Lose the first five chapters. They’re lovely, but they don’t tell the story. Everything you’ve told us here can be fed in as and when we need to know it.’ That taught me a very important lesson, and I think it’s now so deeply embedded I don’t have to think about it any more.

Do you make a conscious decision to tell a certain proportion of the story through narration as opposed to dialog, or do you go by feel?

VM: Always by feel. I’m not at all formulaic about my writing. Most of what I do is informed by what feels right to me. I think the best way to develop these instincts is to read, read, read. You can learn as much from a bad book as a good one. Other people’s mistakes are a very cheap way to discover what not to do!

A body of advice on salable memoirs

At this weekend's Agents and Editors Conference here in Austin, agents broke down the basics of getting a memoir sold to a major publisher these days. You know, the era where the memoir A Million Little Pieces by James Frey turned out to be about a half-million pieces made up, with the remainder remembered.

"We've beaten the brains out of this genre," one agent said, which probably sent a shiver through a serious section of the 200-plus writers in the Marriott meeting room Sunday. Lots of memoir-driven books out there among attendees, from my informal conversations.

Another agent was frank about a form that big publishers have driven to the point where they've glutted the market. It's not enough to be famous, even, or have lived a good chunk of a very interesting life. "You've got to stop my heart with your story," the agent said. That's a body shot, as the boxing term goes, to a lot of memoir. There's always the smaller presses, where the agents don't like to play. It does not pay well enough for them.

The panel of agents — who outnumbered editors 3:1 at the conference — showed a good share of old-school thinking about several topics, and all shared horror stories about submissions and queries. "Don't stalk my authors," one agent warned. Hopeful and eager writers had contacted a few of her authors to find out if she was any good as an agent.

Okay, there were some gasps from the audience. But what other profession do you know where seeking out a recommendation or a customer reference is referred to as "stalking?" (Even brain surgeons have references a customer can contact. Agenting isn't brain surgery.) The clock is probably running out on this kind of thinking. That's a prospect that will stop a few hearts among the agent industry, or at least such elite gatekeeping practices.

Changing the mood with word alerts

Although William Zissner's On Writing Well is subtitled "An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction," the book has advice for all writers of prose. A section called "Bits and Pieces" offers Strunk & White-like summary counsel on writing's brick and mortar: words and punctuations.

Within that chapter, however, there's a subsection called "Mood Changers." He covers the specific power of certain words to help readers keep up with your changing moodes. Zissner warns us, if you're going to change the mood of the writing from one sentence to the next, then use a word to alert the reader. Zissner suggests these words, with a comment on each:

but
yet
however
nevertheless
thus
still
instead
therefore
meanwhile
later
today
now

Those last four can be especially important to writers of narrative. "Writers often change their time frame without remembering to tip their readers off," Zissner says.

As his book is primarily a guide to nonfiction, Zissner also weighs in on his favorite kind: memoir. More on that on Monday, when I can compare what the Agents at the Writer's League of Texas conference have to say about memoir in the post-James Frey era.

Is it about the sexes, or sex?

Every evening at the Writer's Workshop group meetings we discuss a handout we call On Chair — because it's left on the group members' chairs as they arrive, or set down during the break for brownies. Last night I dropped off "Pry open your characters with sex," revised with more detailed notes from the Small Spiral Notebook article by Steve Almond, "A 12-Step Program to Writing About Sex."

It's a ticklish subject. One group member asked, "Are we talking about the sex of a character, or characters having sex?" It was a fair question. We're talking about characters interacting with sex, the character-driven scenes which are about relationships as much as they are about intimate moments.

The best book I've found on this subject is The Joy of Writing Sex by Elizabeth Benedict. In her acknowledgements she, well, gushes about the joy of the assignment, to write about writing about sex:

In addition to being paid to read sexy books and think for long periods about nothing but sex, another perk of writing this book is that I always have something to talk about at dinner parties that everyone wants to weigh in on, which is more than can be said about writing a novel. I am certain that I will never have it so good, conversation-wise, as I did while writing this book.

Benedict's book is a recommended text for my upcoming "Writing About Sex" seminar at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, but I picked it up at Powell's iconic bookstore in Portland, in the summer of 2003 when I studied at the Tin House Writer's Workshop. Slim volume, worth owning — especially for the sly looks it can draw at the coffeehouse while you read it. Everybody's interested in the subject. That's why the writing about sex is so essential to knowing your story through the hearts of your characters.

Pick a Path that's more personal

In The Writer's Path, by Todd Walton and Mindy Toomay, writers get a few exercises (among many in the book) that use the letter form. Letters are more intimate, a way to get at style and voice that might be escaping you in third person writing, or the constraints of writing a novel, or a story, instead of simply telling a tale.

The book says that "the difference between stories written for publication and [those] written as a letter to a friend... may have no technical difference whatsoever. But the difference in our sense of love and trust for the people who might see or hear our words is enormous."

So in one exercise we practiced tonight in the Writer's Workshop, we wrote a letter to a friend about an interesting person in our lives, or in our stories. The writing came out with extra voice, compressed detail that did not seem forced, vivid images, and no affectation. On a revision, you might be able to use this writing inside a story or novel itself. At the least, it gives you a grip on voice for a narrator, as well as character details that are most important.

Letting voice lead your body out of block

John Lee tells us in Writing from the Body that our throats can bottle up what we want to say in our writing. He has an exercise he suggests to clear our throats, so they are not "knotted with unspoken dreams and uncried tears."

Yell and shout from deep in your belly into a pillow, Lee says, sending all that blocked energy out of your throat. After you rest your voice an hour, you'll notice your voice has dropped a register.

He says by repeating this exercise you can clear the unspoken words from your throat and find your voice and writing are both deeper, and with more power. It reminds me of the mornings after I've been to a great game, basketball or baseball, shouting out loud among a crowd for several hours. I interview people the next day and tape the conversations, then play them back later and notice how much deeper my voice has gone. And yes, so goes the writing for that day.

Lee adds that "our greater voice in writing occurs naturally, when we are off guard, writing with a certain simplicity of mind." That's what we work to create in our meetings at the Writer's Workshop, using our AWA exercises to switch off the left brain and get to the heart of the words we were born to voice.

Library resources old and new

I live at the fringe of the Austin city limits, just a few blocks from a wonderful branch of the Austin Public Library. The Spicewood Springs branch has been closed several months for expansion, so I've had good reason to visit other APL branches like the downtown Main and Old Quarry.

One thing I've learned while building up my practice of workshops is to borrow books from those libraries. I say that I "audition" them, since it's practical to purchase a reference book or textbook I believe will help our group members. But it's much better to buy something you've had a few weeks to sample and use.

Managing my loaned books is easier than it used to be, here in our online age. An APL card entitles you to an account on their computer system, where you can track whatever you've checked out, and when it's due. You can even renew a book for a second three-week period, if no one has requested it. Tick a box next to the title and it's yours for 21 more days.

At the same time, the APL still maintains a Telephone Reference Service, which might seem like a throwback in the era of Google. But call 974-7400 Mondays through Fridays 10-5 and you can talk with a librarian who will work to answer questions about grammar, geography, history, help with homework, or deliver answers on famous people, TV, film, sports, poetry and quotations.

That reference desk operates a lot like the more modern Internet adjuncts for research. There's plenty of Ask Jeeves and About.com, but there's always a "pay us to search for you" option somewhere nearby those sites. The library offers a less costly way to get those reference answers from a person — who can make associations much faster and better than Google.

Voice is personal

Donna Levin wrote Get That Novel Started, a hardback that's been in my library longer than I'd like to admit. (Especially considering how many drafts Viral Times has been through, especially its beginning.) But once you start thinking about finishing a novel, you are urged in Levin's book to consider "How It Looks Once You're Finished."

And so she considers voice as part of the challenge:

It's the spirit of the writing; it's what makes your work as unique as your DNA. With a compelling enough voice, you can get away with anything.

Levin goes on to quote Muriel Spark's novel A Far Cry From Kensington. In it, a character working at a publishing firm advises "clever authors of uncertain talent:"

You are writing a letter to a friend. And this is a dear and close friend, real — or better — invented in your mind like a fixation. Write privately, not publicly; without fear or timidity, right to the end of the letter, as if it was never going to be published, so that your true friend will read it over and over, and then want more enchanting letters from you.

Don't try this on your lit-mag editor, kids

Submission is a scary word to some writers. Well, most of us, really; that's one reason we use a different word in the Amherst Writers & Artists practices. We call the act of sending a story up for manuscript response, or potential publication, offering our writing. To submit is such a hierarchical act.

But act we must, if we expect someone else to buy the paper, ink, staples and distributor trucks. So we imagine a literary magazine editor as the ultimate gatekeeper, impossible to please. It might be simpler than it seems, to a point. So much of what a lit mag editor gets in the mail breaks easy-to-follow rules.

Or so goes the rant from NYC editor Felicia C. Sullivan (left) sporting an MFA from Columbia University. Pushcart Prize nominee, fellowships from Tin House magazine & SLS Literary Seminars. The works, the real deal, with books written and on the way. Sullivan founded the literary journal Small Spiral Notebook. A link from Thomas Hopkins (see yesterday's entry) pointed out her rant about the flotsam she found in her submissions mailbox after a summer break:

I become quite angry with some people (coupled with those culprits who submit to the online journal and you know who you are wretched people who psychologically toy with my emotions) for the following reasons:

Please, oh, please send me your 75 page tome. Please send me your entire pile of poems written on scrap paper plus a few short stories thrown in for good measure. Please single space everything, submit in Comic Sans font, please draw little pictures on your submission. Because us editors make up these guidelines for fun, of course.

Please don’t think that since you went to Columbia, we will readily accept your work ... Don’t name-drop, it’s ghetto. Same thing if you went to IOWA, edit the ROCK STAR LITERARY journal review, or any other fancy-shmancy affiliation

Did I mention the cover letters that start with “This story sucks” or “I wrote this at 3AM drunk” or “You will probably hate this but…” You must really be self-loathing.

Did I mention the submission where the writer asked me to get them an agent?

You can read the whole rant at Felicia's blog. Just don't do this stuff. It will spoil your chances that your good writing can create for you. If Iowa or Columbia won't impress a lit mag editor, it might really be about the writing after all.

Two guides to start any story

Trying to turn off the editor while you draft those tales? Try this trick from Thomas Hopkins, a short story writer who penned The Samoan Assassin Calls It Quits in One Story. The little lit mag posts a Q&A on its Web site with each of its writers, a chance to pass on lessons on craft. Hopkins said his story started like this:

About a year and a half ago I asked my brilliant writer friend Jessica Anthony for two story restrictions: a topic and a rule. I love challenges like that—I prefer wrapping my mind around a specific task, rather than staring down the nothingness of the blank page, even if the original task gets lost in the final incarnation. She wrote back: "Topic: Leaf-peeping. Rule: Must include Biblical metaphor."

Hopkins refers to some sound advice in the Q&A: Annie Lamott's "Write shitty first drafts." Also:

Something Julio Cortázar said in his Paris Review interview about how he did not write every single day, which I found encouraging. Something George Saunders wrote in his essay The Battle for Precision: "Specificity, precision, and brevity, applied in language, drive us towards compassion."

One Story, many ways to publish

Short stories have been under seige for the last decade, starting from before the year when Story Magazine had to close its doors. The Atlantic Monthly, probably the most prestigious venue for a piece of prose, stopped publishing a story an issue in 2004. Its fiction editor C. Michael Curtis, who's been reading (and mostly rejecting) stories since 1963, had this to say in 2005 about how The Atlantic was going to keep its short fiction prestige:

This summer The Atlantic is publishing its first ever fiction issue, composed entirely of short stories, related commentary, and poetry. With fiction no longer featured every month, this issue embodies the magazine’s continued commitment to a literary tradition envisioned by its founders when they described The Atlantic Monthly as “a magazine of Literature, Art and Politics.”

Except that the Fiction Issue — I haven't seen mine yet in my 2006 subscription — only ran eight short stories, instead of 12. If The Atlantic can't seem to find a readership for short stories, what's happening instead?

Look to One Story to see a novel, alternative approach. Each issue carries just one story, printed in a 5x7 format. They put out 18 a year for $21. Outpublishing The Atlantic, and with award-winning stories, too.

The days of slick, literate magazines are fading. There are many places to submit your work, publications that don't believe glossy paper implies glossy content.

Structure your synopsis

One of the most daunting things a writer must do is summarize their book. A synopsis can run anywhere from one to 10 pages, although the single-page synopsis is really more of a contest creature than an agent or editor's tool.

It's important enough to the writer, though, to work on the synopsis throughout your projects. Once a month is a good idea, or weekly if you're a blazing-fast novelist. You will find the synopsis changes. You might even see some relationships and connections by writing your snyopsis you did not spot during the writing of scenes and chapters.

Advice on synopsis is ample on the Web. Absolute Write, a Web site for writers, includes several articles on how to format, what to be sure to include, and what not to do: leave questions unanswered. To get one writer's get of rules, look at an article called Mastering the Dreaded Synopsis.

A synopsis can grow from a book blurb. You can be writing the text that will go into the inside left flap of your jacket cover throughout your project, too.

I also recommend the book The Sell-Your-Novel Toolkit. It includes a great section of nine different synopses, with a breakdown of each.

Digital brings publish power to writers

In a recent NY Times article, the power of digital media and worldwide distribution over the Internet got a thorough review. Plainly put, authors are already reshaping the rules on publishing. One author put his entire book on the Internet for free; nearly 20,000 downloads have put it into a circulation category greater than more than half of the world's book authors.

Compensation for Yochai Benkler, a Yale University law professor, is another matter, but he thinks of it as

"an experiment of how books might be in the future." That is one of the hottest debates in the book world right now, as publishers, editors and writers grapple with the Web's ability to connect readers and writers more quickly and intimately, new technologies that make it easier to search books electronically and the advent of digital devices that promise to do for books what the iPod has done for music: making them easily downloadable and completely portable.

The Pulitzer winners, best-seller perennials and icons of fiction are howling about all this. But the unpublished author, who finds the eye of the publishing house needle growing ever smaller, well, they experience access to the world's readers on the basis of their writing — not on the basis of how profitable it will make a publisher.

For unknown authors struggling to capture the attention of busy readers, however, the Web offers an unprecedented way to catapult out of obscurity. Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer who started a political blog, "Unclaimed Territory," just eight months ago, was recruited by a foundation financed by Working Assets, a credit card issuer and telecommunications company, to write a book this spring. Mr. Greenwald promoted the result, called "How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok," on his own blog and his publisher e-mailed digital galleys to seven other influential bloggers, who helped to send it to the No. 1 spot on Amazon.com before it was even published.

This Sunday it will hit No. 11 on the New York Times nonfiction paperback best-seller list. "I think people who are sort of on the outside of the institutions and new voices entering will be a lot more excited about this technology," Mr. Greenwald said. "That's one of the effects that technology always has. It democratizes things and brings in new readers and new authors."