A writer's blog: articles and discussions on blogging, memoir, fiction and non-fiction, emerging writers, reviews, profiles, and book launchings.
........Author: Nancy Hinchliff
"...everything in life is writable...if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."..... Sylvia Plath
OK. My manuscript is essentially done. I've had feedback from my critique groups, suggestions from Beta readers and completed three re-writes...the last very major. I've finished an update of my proposal, and query letter. I've been on Agent Query and started an appropriate agent list on Query tracker. I've scoped out agents I think I will send my proposal to and checked out their blogs and/or websites to make sure they accept my genre and to get a feel for their personalities, likes and dislikes, and experience.
I'm ready to send out my first query letter. Right? Well, you would think so after reading the above. Ok then, why haven't I done it? This is the question that was haunting me when I woke up this morning....and still is. Instead of systematically sending out letters to potential agents, I keep going back to my proposal and the chapters in my memoir and re-reading them over and over, tweaking here and there....and actually re-writing in some places.
Am I procrastinating? Or just being careful? After all, I keep hearing from authors, editors, and writing experts how important it is to have you work perfectly polished before you sending it to an agent. And that's what's getting to me. Is this the best I can do. Honestly, I don't think so...but then again I'm one of those people who always thinks she can do better. It just occurred to me that maybe I need some imput from my virtual friends.
So...what would you do?
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On this, my third major re-write of my memoir, I have tried to learn and incorporate what I feel are the most valuable ideas from authors, editors (who've read my pages), and readers (who've read my pages). Currently, I'm reading two books on re-writing memoir: Fearless Confessions by Sue William Silverman and Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon. I'm learning a lot from both.
William Silverman's book has focused my attention on a number of things: internal story and depth of writing, showing feelings, and emotions, using metaphor, and discovering and delineating the theme in each chapter or piece. I have only read half of her book, so I'm sure there will be much more for me to learn. But these particular issues are ones I've been grappling with for a while. So, in my re-writing, I've been going chapter by chapter and attempting to delve beneath the surface of my story text, develop appropriate and interesting metaphor, and focus on theme.
I was particularly interested in her third chapter on theme. According to my beta reader, in one of my chapters the theme was not carefully delineated. I was all over the place. I knew what I wanted to say but was letting the story get away from me. After reading what William Silverman wrote about theme, I analyzed the chapter in terms of focus. At times, I just sat and repeated the theme over and over. I found I had to go back and delete everything that was not slanted towards that narrow theme, which was " moving to Louisville." All that deleting was hard at first.. But as I re-wrote, the theme revealed itself more succinctly. William Silverman says "the discoveries we make during revision are a vital part of the writing process." And I can't agree more. When I realized the specific message I was trying to get across, it made the deleting easier.
Furthermore, as I focused on the theme, I started "slanting" the details, as she suggests, so as to reveal more about how I was actually feeling about moving. As always, I attempted the use of sensory language and the technique of showing instead of telling. It sounds so easy, and it does get somewhat easier as we remain aware of what we're trying to do, but in reality, it's not easy. And we must always be vigilant. I've already caught on to thinking of each event in my memoir as a scene, like in a movie. And that helps with the "showing." but I discovered that I was relying too heavily on just telling my story without letting the reader in on the whole picture.
It's a slow process, but a rewarding one.
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This is what I do: I run a bed and breakfast, I write 4-5 hours a day, and I read and research a lot. Yes, I have help in the bed and breakfast so that I am free to think and write. I also have four blogs of my own and maintain a blog for the Louisville Bed and breakfast Association. I occasionally blog on She Writes and BlogHer. In addition, I write for the following online magazines: Examiner.com, EyeonLife.com, Hub Pages, Pink and Salon. I also guest post on a lot of websites.
I started a memoir about a year and a half ago and have written around 56,000 words so far. I am now on my third re-write. I have a Beta reader who is reading my chapters and giving me lots of feedback. And I belong to a critique circle of writers, who are giving me critiques chapter by chapter. Recently I hired a professional editor to help with the final editing and polishing.
You probably think the first thing I’m going to say is that the answer to keeping up with this kind of schedule is organization. And, that is partly true. But there are some other components that are just as important. I’m referring to: flexibility, work ethic, and the ability to stay and to switch focus easily. Lastly, it doesn’t hurt to have a good sense of humor, a positive attitude, and the motivation to keep going day in day out. Let me add one more thing here, despite the fact that I am eighty years old, I am in great health, get a little excersize, get 7-8 hours sleep every night, and socialize occasionally...but only occasionally, and always with close, positive friends. Most of my socializing is with guests who visit my Inn. I meet a lot of interesting people from all over the world.
Do you have to give up anything for the sake of your writing? The answer to that is a rousing yes! I have given up friends and acquaintances who drain me or who are totally negative. I have, for the most part, stopped watching TV, gabbing on the phone for extended periods, going to business meetings, and shopping in stores. Except for groceries and meds and sundries, I do everything on-line. In place of those activities, as breaks from the writing, I run a business, play word and brain games on the computer, go to the gym, and read a lot. Right now I am reading mostly memoirs and books on fictive techniques.
I have people ask me all the time how I handle writer’s block, how often do I blog, and how do I come up with ideas for posts. Amazing as it sounds, I never have writer’s block. I try to post on all of my blogs at least once a week, sometimes more. Finally, the secret to coming up with compelling copy for posts and/or articles is to be compelling and interesting yourself and to focus on interesting things. How do you do that? By reading magazines, books, newspapers, other peoples blogs, on line articles, etc. There's a wealth of information out there...the world is full of it. Also, traveling, engaging in conversations, watching TV and listening to the radio will generate ideas. Another place to look is at yourself: Do you have hobbies and talents? Are you a good mom? a good cook? and so on.
You absolutely do not have to come up with something thought provoking for every post. You can post a recipe and talk about how your baby wont eat vegetables and what to do about it. Or post a video. Or do a book review or review a TV Show or movie or a new CD just out and why you think it's awful. If you’re new to blogging or have not tried it yet, try this: Just start writing about the things that interest you...the thought provoking stuff will come later after you get used to blogging. The more you write, the easier it gets. Jot down ideas for blogs as soon as they pop into your head. Good luck! I'll be looking for your posts.
Finally, the reason I emphasize blogging is that it will definitely help your all over writing. You can experiment with various styles, find your “voice”, and start feeling comfortable about putting your writing out there for all the world to see. This is how I got up the courage to start a memoir. This is also how I found my “voice”, the one I’m using to tell my own personal story. If you don’t have a blog already, I suggest you go to Blogspot or Wordpress and start one. You’ll never regret it.
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For those of you who are still working on you query letter and looking for more feedback, here's a idea you might want to try. I thought the following might be helpful.
I started writing my query letter a year or so ago, around the same time I was nearly finished with my memoir and also working on a proposal. Since I'd never written a query before, I spent a lot of time reading books and searching on-line to learn as much as I could about writing good queries.
After I had a handle on it, I began posting my letter in places where writers could read it and give me feedback. One of the best places, a place where I got a lot of feedback that helped me end up with my final copy, was SheWrites.com.
I spent a lot of time re-writing the letter, incorporating the best suggestions from other writers, and finally got it to a point where I was just about satisfied. I say "just about" because I don't think any writer is 100% satisfied with her writing. She always feels like it could be better...and this may be true.
A couple of months ago, after the letter had been sitting on my desk for a while I decided to submit it to Marla Miller, a writer and editor who has her own on-line query critique page at Writer's Magazine. Below I've posted my query letter and then the video of Ms. Miller critiquing it.
Query Letter
Dear Agent,
Demanding divas, naked Irishmen walking in their sleep, and amorous honeymooners leaving remnants of unforgettable wedding nights are all part of the parade of flamboyant guests who came in and out of my life as an innkeeper.
Despite being a reclusive, retired schoolteacher with no business experience and little start-up money, I took a risk, purchased a turn-of-the-century mansion, and turned it into into a charming bed-and-breakfast. Operatic Divas and Naked Irishmen: An Innkeeper’s Tale is the humorous and sometimes poignant story of my 17-year journey through a minefield of contractors, housekeepers and eccentric guests looking for Southern hospitality and gourmet breakfasts. I have included recipes reflecting the content of each chapter and descriptions of how and why many of them were developed at our inn.
I am co-author and editor of Room At The Table, a cookbook written for the Bed and Breakfast Association of Kentucky, for which I won the president's Award in 2009. In addition to maintaining several websites and several blogs, I write online for examiner.com, eyeonlife.com, Pink Magazine, Salon, and Hub Pages. A teacher of music and English, I have taught and written creative nonfiction, poetry and lyrics throughout my adult life.
Operatic Divas and Naked Irishmen, a 65,000-word memoir, combines wit and humor with delicious recipes, a subject that may appeal to a wide audience—more specifically, to women ready to reinvent themselves, whether they are starting a second career late in life, coming out of a divorce, or forced by the recession to stop mid-career and rethink their options. In addition, it may appeal to the same audiences of books by Ruth Reichl and Maya Angelou.
A manuscript is available upon request.
Thank you for your kind consideration,
Query Critique
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I actually started writing my memoir a couple of years ago without even realizing it. I joined a writers site and began posting as often as I could, which was just about every day. I wrote articles on every topic I could think of. I even wrote poems...a whole slew of them. I got hooked on writing short pieces. I wrote about Johnny Depp, how to plant and take care of an herb garden, and how to make Christmas cookies. I had the attitude there was no topic I couldn't write about. I was encouraged by all the good feedback I got from my readers.
Then I started writing about things that were closer to me; my interest and expertize in music, my work as a teacher and as an Innkeeper, and closest of all, my family. I wrote about my mother and how she translated everything in life into something positive. I wrote about my father who was a jazz musician. And I wrote about my grandmother, who was the rock of the family. The only family I didn't write about were my daughters. They both told me they were off limits.
When I wrote my first post about my bed and breakfast, I received a lot of feedback...all positive. Readers said they wanted more. By this time, I was more relaxed in my writing and felt extremely comfortable writing first person narratives and publishing them on-line. So I continued writing about my experiences in the bed and breakfast and started grouping them under the title, Tales From an Innkeeper's Crypt. Pretty soon I had quite a following just waiting for new tales. After a while they started encouraging me to make a collection of all my stories.
I thought about it. And thought about it. I wasn't real sure I was up to it, but one day, I decided I would write a memoir of the seventeen years I'd been an Innkeeper, rewriting the basic stories I already had and adding more. I just wrote and wrote, not paying much attention to the format. I finally ended up with around fifteen chapters, in no particular order.
I've been working on my stories for over a year and although they are coming together individually, I'm still not sure how to group them. Right now they are not grouped chronologically and I think they'll stay that way. Although most of the stories have a story arc, some do not. And I'm not sure I want to change that. The all-over narrative form does not seem to meet the traditional model. But I'm wondering if I should, as the title of this post suggests, experiment with the form.Would you?
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"The narrative hook - also known as a literary hook - is the literary device whereby you hook the reader's attention and intrigue her enough so that she'll keep reading.
When a reader (whether a beta reader, or a literary agent or publisher, or hopefully a real-life genuine member-of-the-public reader) - picks up your book, you literally have only seconds to impress him or her.
There is so much competition for that reader's attention - whether it's the slushpile, (in the case of agent or publisher) or all the other books in the bookshop (in the case of the end-use reader).
And so, he or she will only allocate a very short period of time - maybe as few as thirty seconds! - to deciding if your work is worth reading.
Therefore, your job as the writer is to make absolutely sure that the answer to that question (“Is it worth my while reading on?”) is an absolute categorical 'yes!' - and the narrative hook is one way to do that.
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The most popular way to use a narrative hook - and the easiest to carry off too - is to pose a question in your reader's mind, so that she just has to read on to find out the answer to that question.
There are two options here. The first is to pose the dramatic question early (e.g. Will the hero save the world?). The reader will have to read the whole book to find out the answer to that one!
The other option is to pose a smaller question (examples are given below, in the list of opening lines of famous novels). And, of course, by the time you've provided the answer to that question, you'll already have posed another question to keep her reading to find out that answer, and so on. As I often say: a writer's first job is to keep her readers reading!
Popular advice is to begin in medias res, which literally means in the middle of things. This surely has the advantage of intriguing and hooking the reader. It's not without its difficulties though, as whatever happened to get the characters in that situation then becomes back-story with all the challenges that entails."
I found this question on a writer's site the other day and thought it was somewhat interesting. I decided to post it here to see what the rest of you thought.
Question: "...do you think that you can spend too much time in one day working on the same novel? I've got all this energy to write, but I'm thinking what if I get to a certain chapter and I take the story off on the wrong tangent because I didn't have that plot developing revelation in the shower three weeks from now. Will those magical unforeseen developments unfold as you write faster? Or do you have to wait for them?"
My Answer: "I think the amount of time spent writing on a novel in one day depends completely on the writer. If the story is gushing out and you're trying to get it all out and it doesn't tire you, and you can keep going, I say go ahead.
Even if the story goes off in the wrong direction, let it go. You don't want to be editing yourself , especially on a first draft, as you go along. That's what re-writing is for. And cut and pasting! Never stop yourself from writing. You may squash some amazing stuff.
Faster is not necessarily better. Learn to just go with the flow. Some days will be faster than others. Stop thinking about how fast you're writing and just write. You will re-write over and over, revise and craft later."
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"Alfred, there you are." Roxie appeared at the doorway. "I've been calling you. It's dinner time. Come on girls. Your mother will pick you up later."
Roxie was tall and beautiful. As a young girl, she had shiny black hair, a gift from her Cherokee herb doctor grandmother. She and Alfred, my grandfather, met in North Carolina where they were born and married. Both were raised in large God fearing Baptist families; the kind that stuck together through thick and through thin and were slightly rigid and dogmatic in their thinking. But Roxie was amazingly liberal. She eventually rejected her Baptist upbringing for the Unitarian Church.She had a strong personality, was assertive, and outspoken. She definitely ruled the roost at home. Alfred complained a lot but usually, although grumbling loudly, did everything she asked.
Roxie pulled on both oven mitts, opened the oven door and lifted out a delicious looking roast chicken, and baked yams. I could see there were two pies in the back of the oven, probably apple and cherry. Both my favorites. Bebe and I washed our hands and seated ourselves close to papa who was already at the head of the table. Roxie returned to the oven and came back with a huge bowl of rice and a covered baking dish full of collard greens and salt pork. Bebe and I hated cooked greens, but they were always the first thing that papa reached for.
When I was around seven or eight, Roxie owned four boarding houses in Detroit. They were popular in the '30s and '40s. She cooked breakfast and dinner at one of them and was responsible for all of them. The house I remember best was huge. It had three floors and the building itself was a red brick, sort of an eclectic Georgian revival-Arts and Crafts bastard of a style with a huge back yard. There she would set up a very long table and feed boarders, family and friends just about every evening. Sundays would always be special. Although she had help, she did most of the cooking and there was always plenty to eat. My sister and I and our cousins would play hide and seek and run all over the yard. Roxie cooked in the basement where Papa had put in a full kitchen for her.
She needed a large space to work because she was usually cooking for 20 boarders or more who had rooms upstairs. At that time, papa's tiny room was way up in the attic. No matter where they lived, he always had his own little room hardly bigger than a closet. That's the way he wanted it. He smoked and Roxie didn't. And he didn't want to have to listen to her go on about what a nasty habit it was and how he should stop. Being an excellent plumber and carpenter, he had no problem building extra rooms in all of our houses or customizing them the way he wanted.
ALFRED with his parents
By the time I got to high school, they had moved to Tampa. Papa built the house they lived in. I would go down and spend all of my summer vacations with them, helping him finish building the house and palling around with him. Eventually, when I graduated, I lived with them for a year and attended Tampa University. When I didn't have classes, Papa would wake me at 5:00 in the morning and we would go digging for clams by ourselves. He would pack a lunch, grab his clamming equipment, hitch his row boat to the back of his truck, and off we would go on another adventure.
I still remember those wonderful early daybreak mornings walking on wet sandy beaches, my summer pants rolled up, the morning air filled with the fishy smell of the salty sea. There was always a warm breeze brushing against my skin blowing my hat away so that my hair would be flap around and tickle my face. The tide was on it's way back out and seagulls were swooping back and forth screeching overhead. As soon as the tide was out we would clamor for clams in one of the little alcoves or along the shore, where there always were other clam diggers doing the same thing.
We'd put on our old sneakers so the sharp shells wouldn't cut our feet. and wade out into the water. The water was clear enough so we could see down to the sandy bottom. The clams could tell when there was danger near, so they would start to burrow down beneath the sand. The object was to grab on to the clam and pull it out before it disappeared. Sometimes we would use clamming tongs, which were easier for me, but Papa was used to using his hands.
Another place we looked was on the wet beach just a ways beyond the water's edge. There would be small holes all up and down the beach. Papa could tell which ones had clams hiding underneath. We'd use our hands to dig through the sand until we found the clam and throw it in our pail. After a couple of hours, we would have a bucketful of clams and a very red sunburn. We'd then find a shady spot, under a weeping willow and have our lunch. It was only 8:00 in the morning but lunch hit the spot.
We'd ride home, sandy, wet feet and all, with the windows down and the wind blowing our hair around and playing havoc though out papa's truck. What a glorious start to the day. Roxie would be waiting at the door for those fresh clams to make her famous clam chowder.
