Rachelle Gardner Calls for Romance
Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner has announced on the Rants and Ramblings blog that she's adding some new genres. She's now actively seeking romance, cozy mysteries, and female-driven suspense.
Fair warning: Rachelle is specific about what she wants. First, the author needs to be previously published. (This disappoints. I know a couple of writers who deserve the chance to submit.)
Second, the book needs to appeal to female readers and to contain at least one strong female character. Guess what? This is a trend in publishing in general - and one that isn't about to change anytime soon. Jump on. Strengthen those women.
Third, she's looking for manuscripts that fit four specific romance lines: Barbour's Heartsongs Presents, Harlequin's Love Inspired, Summerside's Love Finds You, and HarperCollins' Avon Inspire. She details each and encourages authors to examine the series and the publisher guidelines further before submitting to her.
Share on FacebookEditor Unleashed: “Why I Write” Essay Contest
The blog Editor Unleashed, partnered with Smashwords, has just announced their Why I Write essay contest. The top 40 essays will be published in an anthology on Smashwords (an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, and readers). One Grand Prize winner will receive $500 and promotion on the two sites.
Further details (Rules) will be revealed November 2 on Editor Unleashed.
You can post entries November 9 - December 31, 2009.
Voting on entries happens January 4 - 29, 2010.
Share on FacebookThe Novelette.com: The Beauty Contest
Central Park October 2009
The Novelette.com, a site for writers, artists, and readers, is hosting another of its writing contests. The theme this time around is Beauty.
Take a look at all the beauty in the world.
Then write a story — 750 words max — and enter the writing contest.
The next contest opens now and runs through November 15th. Two winners will win $25 gift certificates!
Beauty — a terrible thing to waste, so write about it.
Many of the entries are already posted--and so many of those are wonderful. The site also features new photographs of autumn out on the East Coast. I encourage looking at those, too, while you're over there. Indeed, they'll probably offer inspiration for the contest.
Share on FacebookNaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo
Sunday marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. Do you have your plan in place?
I cannot help but love an organization whose website includes something called a Procrastination Station.
As all the writing blogs are gearing up for the manic month of typing, words of wisdom are popping up all over the web. At Write to Done, Leo Babauta gives sage advice in How To Write a Novel in 30 Days. I particularly like this gem:
Plan beforehand. Some people go into NaNoWriMo competely blank, with no plan, but I think that’s a mistake. While you can definitely overplan, it’s best to have a decent idea what your novel will be about (be able to say it in one sentence) and a general idea of the characters and plot. Don’t overdo it — half a page to a page will do. I recommend the Snowflake method. Do this before Nov. 1 — maybe in the week leading up to the month (not the night before).
And this one:
Shut off the Interwebs. Seriously. Use a utility such as Freedom to shut it off. Turn off the phones and Blackberry. Clear your desk. Have no distractions. But especially the Internet. If you don’t heed this tip, you’re very likely to fail.
Heck, that last one could be useful the other eleven months of the year. In fact, the first bit of wisdom up there will help you write a novel even if you happen to begin in December.
Meanwhile, over at his blog, agent Nathan Bransford echoes agent Kate Schafer Testerman: Agents don't want to see a flurry of submissions the first week of December. NaNoWriMo creates some great first drafts. Take a few months and polish them up.
Share on FacebookObservations on Writing from Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore (Photo: Linda Nylind)
In the current issue of Tin House, Hope/Dread, Michelle Wildgen offers up "A Conversation with Lorrie Moore" about a writer who's inspired her for many years. In the interview, they discuss the midwest, humor, teaching, and her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, published in September 2009 by Knopf. Here are just a few of the gems:
On the problem of stiff characters--and the solution of roughing them up a bit:
Sadly, all my characters are alive for me. Even the ones that seem like zombies to others. So it's not me they must come alive for. But if characters seem dead on the page, they simply need to say or do more. Or they need to have a really interesting thought. Even a thought so banal it's interesting. Or they need to be killed or maybe not killed but just roughed up a little or they need to be driven out of town on a rail, an expression I've never used before and so am not highly confident about its meaning. Also? I never talk about sensitive matters with my kid while driving. I think that's not a good idea. We listen to the radio and bounce around or else fall into silence. The car is part disco, part church. But I never turn it into therapy. I made the mistake of buying a car with a moonroof, which could be used as an exit if sensitive topics were being broached. There is a writing lesson in there if you look hard.
If you can glean the writing lesson at the end of that passage, let me know!
Then, on paying attention to the place where you're living while writing (for her, Wisconsin) and what it offers:
I live in America's diaryland and breadbasket, and the way food has become both politics and art is really breathtaking. But when you live where food is grown it should be part of the world you write about, it seems to me. There are times that we eat in a way that people on this planet never before have--on the deliciousness scale, I mean. I was interested in a character whose dad was providing food to restaurants she herself couldn't afford to go to. I had that meal in mind from the very start of the book: that somehow she would finally have to go and taste her dad's potatoes in that fancy place. When I finally got to that scene I probably put too much food in it. I was so excited.
A Gate at the Stairs
As a lover of food and cooking, that comment set my mind racing. More remarks on writing from this acclaimed novelist and short story writer can be found in the interview. So, too, are Wildgen's awestruck observations about Moore's prose:
Her work is also so particular and so singularly observed that a reader can recall these images years later: a teenage girl noting that her mother's shaved armpit resembles a prickly fruit, the fingerlings potatoes lopped off at their bumpy little knuckles, the tiny mouse heart packed in snow that is a blood clot in a baby's diaper. But while any decent writer can turn a phrase, Moore's language reaches beyond describing. It isn't about guyssying up the page, but is the evidence that the writer preceives, in almost unbearable detail, the moments most of us wish went undetected in our bodies, our conversations, our reachings toward and failures at connection.
I'm running off to get the book....
Moore is the author of several books and story collections, including Birds of America: Stories, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, and Self-Help.
Share on FacebookA Change is Comin’… (On Chick Lit, but observations we should all be aware of)
Prospect Park West by Amy Sohn
This fabulous Chick-Lit-meets-Hardcore-Reality book came across my desk recently. The first thing I did after reading it? Search out what's been going on with Chick Lit these days.
I meant just to see what new books were being published. I wanted to make sure my prospective client's idea was as "fresh" as it immediately seemed. Instead, I encountered a debate over the current facelift of Chick Lit. In The Death of Chick Lit: How the Recession is Transforming the Genre, UK author Susan Bilston chronicles how the collapse of the international financial system led to fast and furious plot revisions of the US edition of Sleepless Nights. She needed to avoid the "cheery consumerism and "aimless career-dithering" typical of the genre and insert strife and character growth. Her solution? Emphasize the threat of lay-offs and restructuring and have the characters seriously reflect on what they really want to do. She sums up:
I’m guessing chick-lit authors around the country are penning similar lines. In the next months and years, expect to see plots that turn on overcoming repossession and job-loss, not shopping and sex. The frothiest novels must respond to a more sober age. Like many American businesses, chick-lit must reinvent itself—fast—if it’s going to survive.
It seems that the recession has left its mark on even the fictional Bergdorf shoppers.
The women's magazine Jezebel, not surprisingly, responded to this shift with a great deal of cynicism in Is 'New Chick-Lit' Just a Different Kind of Obnoxious.
The new, recession-era chick lit may tell the stories of women who pare away the fat in their lives to find true happiness, but this is a lot easier if there's some fat to begin with.
Doree Shafir, in Women's Lit: Chick Lit Gets an Update, wants to just get rid of the term altogether given what she considers a serious revamping of the genre:
Welcome to the new narrative of the New York woman—just don't call it chick lit. If these three recent books are any indication, the genre is about to get an update. “The Prince Charming narrative is just not accurate to people's lives,” [Amy] Sohn [author of Prospect Park West] says. “There's so much anxiety around finding a mate that no one really thinks about the actual marriage when they're trying to find someone.” Froelich concurs, with a twist,“None of my friends are about, 'I must get married,' ” she says over lunch. “They're about, 'I want to stand on my own two feet.'”
... Sohn, Froelich [Paula Froelich's Mercury in Retrograde] and Grazer [Gigi Levangie Grazer's Queen Takes King] are eager to move beyond the idea that for today's New York woman, getting the man is the key to happiness, instead choosing to portray women's lives as complicated—from career problems to loveless marriages and divorce, and conflicted feelings about having children.
After reading these articles (plus this one and this one), I started contacting people I knew were writing not only Chick Lit but also women's commercial fiction. Why both? Because what's happening in the Chick Lit world does have some bearing on what happens in women's commercial fiction. While Jezebel and many others might define Chick Lit more strictly as fiction featuring Shopaholics and trust funds, many writers find their ostensibly literary or mainstream novels marketed or reviewed as if Chick Lit. This includes writers from highly acclaimed MFA programs.
I can't help but see this facelift as a good thing, whatever you think about Chick Lit (or that elder version so pejoratively called Hen Lit). If you're pitching a novel about a contemporary female character facing relationship and career changes, then consider including some measure of financial realism into the tale. I've seen too many books as an editor where the character's dream job just fell into her lap or when the mentioned job seemed superficially considered at best. Such a fuzzy crafting of character bio makes it difficult to see the foundation from and on which the character develops.
By the way--that incredibly fresh Chick Lit book that appeared on my desk? That character's job is insane. Revisions are underway. I can't wait until you get to read it.
Share on FacebookDedicated to the People of Darfur: Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope
Dedicated to the People of Darfur: Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope. Edited by Luke and Jennifer Reynolds
While I was off in New York these past weeks, a nonfiction collection appeared in the mailbox: Dedicated to the People of Darfur: Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope. The essays range in approach, voice, and subject matter.
In the volume, J.C. Hallman, author of The Chess Artist, the anthology The Story about the Story, and the short story collection The Hospital for Bad Poets, weighs the risks of a writing life:
Looking back, the guy who told me that becoming a writer was hard didn't have it quite right. Implied in the way he put it--or in the way I heard it--was that once you got there and were a "writer," it wasn't hard any more. You'd made it. This seems to be a prevailing opinion, and just about everyone who "succeeds" experiences the various tiers of anticlimax--first it's publication, then it's a book, then it's a couple of books, then it's the next book. Conceptually, success keeps receding.
For a metaphor to make sense of this, I can return to Dostoevsky and gambling. You'll know what I mean if I say that writing is a long-shot bet, but that's not quite accurate either. It still implies that you can win. Rather, writing is like a roll in craps: you come out on a number, back up your bet, and then you just keep rolling, with everything you've got on the line, and you never really win or lose. For Dostoevsky, this was both literal and workable material. The Gambler wasn't one of his better books, but critics have argued that his struggle with gambling informed the spiritual crises of his best work. It seems that experiences like the ones I had and literature both are fairly risky endeavors, differing only in quality. Psychoanalyst Linda Scierse Leonard, writing about Dostoevsky in Witness to the Fire: Creativity and the Veil of Addiction, argues that "all creation is a risk! The difference between the risk of addiction and the risk of the creative process is that the former leads in the end only to slavery and self-destruction, while the latter opens up new worlds."
-J.C. Hallman, "On the Line"
Dedicated to the People of Darfur: Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope, edited by Luke and Jennifer Reynolds, came out this summer through Rutgers University Press. All royalties from the sale of the book are donated to The Save Darfur Coalition.
The impressive contributor list includes Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, O.Henry award recipients, and many best-selling authors. They include: Jane Armstrong, Lindsey Collen, Nadine Gordimer, Tom Grimes, J.C. Hallman, Ron Hansen, James McPherson, and George Saunders.
Share on Facebook“Look at the Birdie” by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut speaking at Case Western Reserve University, Copyright Mike Sands
The Los Angeles Times posted an unpublished story by Kurt Vonnegut this week: "Look at the Birdie." It is part of the new short story collection to be published by Delecorte Press, an imprint of Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
Share on FacebookWhy the Short Story Matters, Part 2: The audience you want to reach reads them.
The Best American Short Stories 2009
On Monday, I posted about the value of publishing short fiction and highlighted the site Emerging Writers Network (EWN) as a resource for researching print and online journals. For emphasis, some repetition: If you're having difficulties finding representation or publishing that first or second novel, it's time to develop and to place shorter fiction. It increases your visibility and develops what is so adorably called your "platform."
Agents want to represent "career" authors (the terminology I see many agent websites using). If they're going to invest time in you, they want to know that the effort will bear fruit beyond that initial book. That doesn't mean, however, that they're eager to hear all about the trilogy you got planned in the middle of the pitch about your first (and unrelated) novel. That's what you might do.
A list of well-placed publications--and better yet, a few awards--demonstrates discipline and an awareness of the business of being a professional writer. But an author, believe it or not, can hope for more than merely impressing an agent during a pitch.
How about impressing an agent--or, better yet, an editor--during her lunch break, ride home, or lazy Saturday morning coffee?
In a recent and optimistic post, editor Alan Rinzler points out that agents and book publishers read short stories and short story collections in search for new talent. I do not doubt that this is true. Given that Rinzler has worked in the industry for decades, his words make me do a little dance. I just had to link to his article.
I do feel, simultaneously, that Rinzler's examples are a bit rarified. It takes a lot of luck--plus the prior dedication to writing and placing short fiction--to be picked up by a major publisher like Michael Chabon, Annie Proulx, or Wells Tower. And it seems that many of the commenters on his post also recognize the hopeful, glass-half-full spin about getting noticed by publishers--while enjoying Rinzler's discussion all the same.
Rinzler's point, however, is spot on. If you want to get noticed by someone in the industry, get your work placed where they can see it. This includes not only in anthologies but also in literary magazines, both printed and online.
The comments on Rinzler's post are as interesting to ponder as Rinzler's own discussion. Should you place a story for free or hold out for pay? I'm of the opinion that short fiction rarely pays a lot (unless your Chabon, Proulx, or Tower), so place it for free. There's also some debate over the viability of the short story collection by a single author. Rinzler states that short story collections have a large market, but I believe he means anthologies with multiple writers more than collections by a single writer. From what I know, it's tough to sell a single-author short story collection. You need to be a known quantity (usually by publishing individual stories) and have an agent firmly behind you--plus be ready to beat down lots of doors for a pretty small advance.
How does an author find anthologies or collections wanting submissions? Keep your eyes and ears open. Sign up for the feeds and the newsletters of your favorite magazines. Also, look in the back of Poets & Writers. There are always calls for submissions in the classifieds. What about contests so you can capture attention with your awards? Creative Writing Contests keeps a running list of those, as well as of literary magazine themes and of writing residencies.
And here are a couple more links to lists of magazines and journals that print short fiction (thanks, Alan Rinzler!): NewPages, which describes a large selection of literary magazines, and Duotrope's Digest, whose online resource lists over 2650 fiction and poetry publications.
Share on FacebookWhy the Short Story Matters, Part 1: Emerging Writers Network
Publishing a first novel means beating the odds. I was talking with an editor at a McKnight Foundation event in Minneapolis recently, and he mentioned some rough numbers pertaining to Milkweed, a local small publisher in the city (but not the small publisher he worked for). For every manuscript bought, about 450 others sat in the slush pile.
450 manuscripts. And that was just in the slush pile--the place where manuscripts submitted without agent representation are placed. If we include the manuscripts submitted by agents, the real number is higher. And that's at a small publisher. At the blog Editorial Ass, the editorial assistant "Moonrat" recently gave the scoop on her indie publishing house. She gets about 100+ novels for each one they accept--and that's just the novels submitted by agents. If you don't have representation, she tells us, save yourself the cost of postage and the headache of going to the post office. It isn't happening.
The problem for emerging writers is being unknown. And getting an agent alone won't change the fact you're an unknown quantity. What needs to change? Writers need to get their voices out there. In print. On line. Anyplace your audience goes to to uncover new material--and anyplace agents and publishers go to to discover new voices.
The emerging novelist needs to publish short fiction.
With this in mind, I'm starting to tell everyone to look up Emerging Writers Network (EWN), one of the most valuable resources on the web for writers. The focus of the reviews and articles is literary. If you're a science-fiction, mystery, or romance writer, you might not find much here. If you are a writer of mainstream fiction or nonfiction, however, there's lots of luscious information to gather from this site. Indeed, if you're a mainstream or literary writer, you want to featured on this site. (Write that in your planner, journal, or wherever else you stick challenges.)
From well-written reviews to links to interviews and other blogs, EWN provides endless entertainment for the more word-hungry of us in America. I want to direct your attention, however, to the site's margins. Look at all that glorious information available! On the left we find: Bookseller Blogs, Litblogs, & Author Websites (again, you want to be on this list), as well as some Booksellers and Reading Series (radio based). Those lists should be enough to salivate over.
But the right side holds some holy grail lists that really caught my eye.
First in the right side margins: a long list of Literary Journals. Second: an even longer list of Best of the Web-Online Journals.
These two lists are both overwhelming and inspiring. Within each of these links are opportunities for inserting yourself into a conversation with other writers, readers, and thinkers.
And if you're muttering (to yourself or to me!), "But I still have to finish writing/revising my novel!"--you're, well, wrong.
But that's for Part 2...
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