Putting Yourself "Out There"

Last week, my daughter’s ADEC choir (all-district elementary choir) had the honor of performing  in front of the Texas Music Educators Association Convention.  They were one of eight elementary choirs chosen in the state. I have to say, I’m so impressed that my daughter made it this far with her gene pool. I’m tone deaf, and her dad sounds like…uh… well…*coughs into hand* he sounds better than me.

Driving from Dallas to San Antonio was a trek, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. 

The whole choir experience made me think about my blog post. ADEC is a qualifying choir.  My daughter had to try out at her school before moving on to the next level; auditioning at the high school. 

When I was a sixth-grader, I would never have cleared the first hurdle: putting myself out there.  Singing in front of people by myself? No way. As a writer, that's exactly what we must do. But our words are written, instead of sung. Our practice "matching pitch" is perfecting the craft of writing and finding our voice. And we try out in front of trusted critique partners, in preparation for agents and publishers.

If writing with the intent to publish, at some point your writing will have other eyes. While we writerly types count on an agent, critique partners, and beta readers, for help, once the book is sent, it's out there for everyone to see. And just like music, there's a lot of subjectivity related to taste.  What one person loves, another may not. 

Our job as writers is to follow Janet Wrenn’s advice and Research Before Submitting; find the right eyes, or ears, before launching yourself out there. Remember, even if you feel like you’re standing there in your underwear, the person reading your words is wearing underwear, too. If they aren’t, well, that’s another blog post.

And if you do have to sing, or write alone, it’s nice to know your friends are rooting for you. Because you have to take that first step, putting yourself out there.

Is Publishing Slow? Depends on Your Perspective

If you’ve been in the publishing industry for any length of time, you’ve probably heard that publishing is slow. Sometimes we say “publishing is glacial,” or even “publishing moves at a glacial pace.” If you Google any variation of this phrase, you’ll find hundreds of examples where someone used it to explain the mind-boggling amount of time that goes into querying, revising, pitching, editing, and publishing.

 

In full disclosure, you should know that I’ve even said it (scroll down into the comments of this blog post if you want to catch me red-handed).  I’m not sure where I first heard this phrase, but obviously it stuck. I’ve been in the publishing industry for almost two decades as a writer, a self-pubbed author, a freelance editor, and an editorial assistant at a publishing company, and it just flew out of my mouth like the parental “because I said so.”

Fellow publishing professionals, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot with this phrase. We’re hanging on to old-school platitudes that don’t make sense anymore.

Here’s the truth: In this digital age, publishing moves at different speeds for different writers, and the key is finding the best fit for you.

Some publishing paths are slow. If writers won’t settle for anything less than the top agents and the Big Five publishers…well, they might as well grab an icepick and make an igloo, because they’ll be camped out on that glacier a long time. Eventually they’ll sell a lot of books. Maybe.

But some are fast. Self-publishing is by far the fastest option out there. HOWEVER, writer beware: with speed comes error. Across the board, quality control is an issue for self-pubbed authors. At the next level we have new agents and small presses, who can move more quickly than larger institutions. Take it from me, there are many small presses out there in your genre, waiting (and hoping, with fingers crossed!) to read a well-written and compelling manuscript. They might even be able to edit and publish your book within less than a year from your submission date. No lie.

There are shortcuts. Regardless of which publishing method you choose, a savvy writer/editor/agent can maneuver the system. While writing is a form of art, publishing is a business and therefore follows the basic rules of business practice. Networking, negotiation, and commitment go a long way to making your dreams come true.

Anything is possible. At this pivotal time in history, the publishing industry is literally up for grabs. Writers, listen up: WE HAVE OPTIONS. Want to self-publish but afraid of sacrificing quality? There are numerous professional freelance editors and proofreaders out there. Maybe they just got laid off or want to supplement their income. Maybe they’re at home with a baby. But they are trained and ready, and probably charge much less than a proofreading service. Same goes for cover artists and publicists. Think outside the box and use your social media skills.

 

And for the love of all things literary: let’s stop saying that publishing is slow (or glacial, or that it moves at a glacial pace). We’re not doing our troubled industry any favors when we fall back on moldy clichés birthed from the brick-and-mortar era of publishing. Those days are over.

In this digital age, publishing (in whatever form) moves at the pace we choose.

#ElasticHeart

Better late than pregnant.

Say what you will about the crazy, Shia can GET IT!


I was dreaming while I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray.  Actually I’m just hungover.  Give me a hot bartender and I’ll put anything in my mouth.

I’ve been a very bad blog brother to my sisters of the pen on here.  Yes!  I am reading their great posts, but just HAVE NOT been able to comment or pimp their posts on my various social media.  Bad on me.

Last night I had to say goodbye (for now?) to one of the biggest loves of my life and one of my most abusive relationships, besides the one in my head.  Say what you will about my work hours and my new duties on this project just heaped upon me at good old MaBell, but there’s always been something else taking up my time and at some points sucking the living essence out of my already fatigued heart and mind.  See, I was fat, sullen, morose child, who read Mary Higgins Clark and Jackie Collins and was too effeminate and nerdy to ever survive a gym class.  The cruelties of high school aside (there really is something to this homeschooling thing), I never thought I’d fall in love with a sport.  Of course I had to pick a “girl” sport, but hey we gays love our strong women.  That sport, volleyball, is and, at this point, was a big challenge to master.  Add into the mix, a predominately gay league, after surviving my college team, and you have the basis for one of my works-in-progress.

Maybe I miss Knots Landing a little too much or I just wanted to know what it was to be one of the popular kids.  It’s both, or the latter, I’m still mulling that in my head.  And much like Lillimae yelling at Josuha or Cady and Regina fighting, last night put me over the respective ledge or threw me in front of the bus.  Life is for the living, right?  And mother has LIVED!

All that aside, my burst of writing that came with the holidays all but fizzled at this point.  Words and scenes are still alive in me.  Those words and scenes are no good to the world because they're not meeting the page.  Unlike the me of my last post, the story is dying inside me!

Well, I don't want that.  Next chapter, life.  Time for the next chapter.

Writing Research: A Valentine to People I'll Never Meet

My last three big writing projects were an urban fantasy set in now-ish L.A., a contemporary romance set in now-ish Seattle, and an m/m romance set in 1955 Seattle. I've loved working on all three, but trying to capture 1955 was a unique challenge.

And you know what? I loved it. I loved the historical angle, discovering the rhythm of the language, throwing around terms like Aqua Velva and dungarees and Brylcreem. I loved it so much that I've jumped into a new historical project, one I've affectionately designated Victorian Goth QueerPunk. Everyone wears gloves and refers to each other as Miss and Mister, and I'm having too much fun!

Maybe writing historical fiction is my true calling. It makes a certain amount of sense. I'm old enough that my take on the contemporary time period is filtered through the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s, so might not feel all that contemporary. Also, I love detail, even though it drives me crazy.

And I love research.

Now we're getting to the heart of this piece. Nothing makes me happier than an open browser and all kinds of time. There are at least three pages open on said browser: Google (because it'll take me anywhere), Wikipedia (because duh), and spl.org.

Good ol' spl.org. Not one you're familiar with? Well let me tell you a thing or two. It's the website for the Seattle Public Library, and their main page will take you to a wonderful place. The Seattle Times on-line archive. Seriously. Someone(s) uploaded every page of the Seattle Times newspaper from 1900 going forward.

I love them. This nameless, faceless person - or more likely a group of people - who scanned page after page of fragile newsprint, and the nameless, faceless person(s) who created the super-fantastic word recognition software. Their keyword searches seem to be quite sensitive, and I have yet to pose a query this program couldn't handle.

Let me give you some examples on how useful this can be for writing historical fiction. I'm not an expert, by any means, but when I have some success at something, I like to share it so others can have the same success.

Example 1

I wrote a short story for a Christmas anthology, set in Seattle in 1911. Part of the premise was that the upper middle-class heroine had just graduated from college (without her M-R-S degree). One beta reader commented that a woman in 1911 wouldn't have gone to college. From Google, I was able to determine that the University of Washington's first graduate was a woman, in 1876, and that the school's 1910 catalog listed nearly as many female students as male (follow the link and scroll to the last several pages).

I also searched the Seattle Times archive and found the University of Washington Sunday Pages, a weekly feature provided by the staff of the UW newspaper, The Daily. On the Sunday pages, there were articles about fraternities and sororities, and about the women's track and rowing teams. I also found an enlightening article about the debate over weather a woman's education should focus on preparing for her future as a homemaker, or if it should have a broader application.

Seriously good stuff - and it shows how the newspaper enabled me to flesh out the facts I was able to find from other sources.

Example 2

I used the archive extensively on a more recent project. A good friend of mine was researching a book about the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a World's Fair-type event that was held on the University of Washington campus in 1909. She emailed me to ask if I knew anything about the baby incubator exhibit on the fair's midway.

Um, no.

In my conversations with Paula, I learned all about the turn of the century fad for displaying live "premature" infants in incubators. People paid $0.25 to see them, and the newspapers did a great job of selling these littlest stars to the general public. My friend asked if I knew which hospital was the first in Seattle to have baby incubators, and although I'd spent my entire adult life working in the field of neonatology, I couldn't answer her.

But the Seattle Times archives could.

Using the archive, I was able to reconstruct a rough history of premature baby care in Seattle. In doing so, I uncovered gems like this, from 1907...

According to the accompanying story, the poor man was running up 2nd Avenue with a tiny newborn baby wrapped in a shawl, begging for someone to direct him to a hospital where he might find an incubator. He and his wife were new to the city, and were staying in an unnamed hotel under the care of an unnamed doctor. Someone on the street apparently directed him to a hospital, though the reporter was unable to learn whether he found an incubator or if the baby survived.

I can see the plot bunnies from here!

More than that, without the Times archive, I wouldn't have been able to answer Paula's question about which hospital had the first incubators. I know this, because I tried. I talked to my older colleagues and friends, but their collective memory didn't go that far back. Even Sr. Theresa from Providence Hospital couldn't tell me, and she was in her 90's and had been working there forever. It would have taken a search of every hospitals' archives, looking for meeting minutes and budget data, for me to come close.

As it is I can say with some confidence that the first hospital in Seattle to care for infants in an incubator was Monod Hospital (a place I never knew existed) in 1902, and the first hospital with a designated unit for premature babies was likely Seattle Children's (then called Children's Orthopedic Hospital) sometime in the late 1950s.

Example 3

So I've talked about how I used the Seattle Times archive to fill in the gaps around facts I found elsewhere, and how I used it to construct a rough historical record. I used both of these techniques when writing Aqua Follies. From other sources I learned that the Follies had happened during Seafair throughout the 1950s, but it was from the Times archives that I was able to start coloring in those bare facts.

I saw articles about how the water ballet team and the dance troupe were from Minneapolis, that they traveled by train, and that they stayed in the the UW dorms while they were here. They were media darlings, and photographers caught them brushing their teeth and curling their hair and practicing their routines, then put those pictures on the front page of the paper. Beyond that, I learned that the summer of 1955 was quite cool and rainy, which impacted attendance at the outdoor Follies.

All those things are in the book.

I also used one of the articles for a major plot turn. I needed something to interfere with my two heroes and was brainstorming possibilities when I found a tiny article about one of the Aqua Dear swimmers. Seems she inhaled water and required first aid, then treatment at Harborview County Hospital. (I badly wanted to crop the article out and paste it here, but couldn't get the pdf to cooperate.) I don't want to give anything away, so won't say HOW I put that poor swimmer to work for me, but she's there.


The Seattle Times isn't the only newspaper archive on line. I was digging around the Boston Library website the other day (because research geek) and saw one of that city's major papers has an on-line archive too. Obviously the record is limited to how far back the paper was printed and how much they scan, but there's tons of information out there if you know where to look. You can use these on-line archives to learn facts, to flesh out what you already know, and even to help inform your plot.

And while you're at it, send a big Valentine's smoochie to the hardworking, patient soul(s) who made your research so much fun!

Cheers,
Liv

In the interest of sharing what we know, if you've got other ideas for how to apply on-line archives - or other sweet research tips - leave them in the comments. I'd love to learn from you...

Circling the Drain of Self-doubt

Today we're going to have a little chat about perseverance.

Who am I? Well, probably no one you've ever heard of. 

Yet. 

But I am an expert on my best friends, fear and self-doubt. So I thought this might be a good topic for me to tackle, and tell you the story all about how my writing career got flipped turned upside down.

Picture it: 2010.....an emotionally charged new mom with little sleep, and a traveling husband, decided to write a book. Friends and family encouraged her, said her words were great, and she should try and get it published. Naive mom decided, yes, this sounds like a great idea. If friends and family love it, the rest of the world surely would as well.

Well, let's just say reality hit me hard. Rejections ate my soul. And many times I wanted to give up. But there's something special about the writing community, and once they grab hold of you, they don't let go. They don't let you give up. They become your friends who pull you off ledges, reel you in from the sea of self-loathing, and make you keep going. Because while friends and family may be supportive and encouraging, writing friends understand what you're going through on a level no one else ever will.

How does one obtain said writerly friends? Lots of ways. Join local chapters of associations, writers guilds, enter online contests, find writing forums. Some of my best friends have come from Twitter and writing contests online. And if it weren't for them, I wouldn't be here today writing this blog post. Let's face it, friends are cheaper than therapy and a hospital stay from alcohol poisoning. 

But sometimes, fear and self-doubt still turn up like bad pennies or exes. And no matter how many times my friends talk me down from the walls, my writing life looks like this:

It's hard when you pour your heart and soul into words on a page, characters who live in your head finally make it to paper and the world just doesn't love them as much as you do. Trying to find a home for your book babies is a harsh business. And it plays with our head and hearts.

It's hard to stay motivated when you're facing a pile of rejections. How many times can you hear, well just write another book. Often times success doesn't happen with your first book. Or even second or third. I've heard stories of people who wrote ten or fifteen books before ever landing an agent or publishing contract.

These stories never made me feel as encouraged as people probably meant them to be. Instead it turned me into:

Did you know there's an actual scientific name for the hysteria I possess?

Suddenly, I was never going to ever get published. Everything I ever wrote sucked, and I would just sell insurance for the rest of my life. Because I was going on book number five and still unpublished and unagented. 

Granted, the more books I wrote, the better my writing had become and more requests came my way. Over the years I've learned more about my craft, honed my skills, made tons of amazing friends and even mentored others just starting out. And suddenly, things didn't seem so bad. 

Then one day one of my best writerly friends encouraged me to try writing a short story for her publisher who had a call for an anthology. She suggested I take a break from writing my usual stuff and just try writing something completely different. So I set out to write a short for a sexy anthology about uniformed heroes. I thought, why not. 

While I sat waiting to hear back on the anthology, she encouraged me to write a novella for one of this publisher's other special lines called Naughty Fairytales. My mainstay had always been science fiction and fantasy so I thought, well yeah I could totally write a sexy fairytale. So I did. And wrote one in a few days and subbed that.

And low and behold, that email came from the publisher and they wanted my short story for their anthology. Then they wanted my naughty fairytale too. And I totally sat at my computer looking something like this:

Suddenly I'm scrambling to set myself up a pen name and a whole new persona for my new writerly life writing sexy fun-time stories. I'm still trying to find an agent for my more mainstream novels. But now a whole new world has opened up for me on the side writing more romantic and fun sexy stories to pass the time. So sometimes you have to shake things up. Try something new. Success isn't always what you think it may be.

There will be many hills and valleys. Many highs and lows. But the key to it all is perseverance. 

For some, reaching their dreams may happen over night. Sometimes it's all about being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it's knowing people. Sometimes it's just dumb luck. Often times it's hard work and just never giving up.

So if you're at that point where you want to throw in the towel....maybe throw in the towel on one thing, but pick up another towel and snap that one around for a little while. Sometimes you just have to go in a different direction to achieve a goal. Will I give up on my other persona? Never. I'm just detouring and enjoying this new ride for a little while.

And now, February 13, 2015 my very first book is getting published with Evernight Publishing. My naughty fairytale, UNBEARABLE will see the light of day. 

And on February 27th my short story will be out in the Uniformed Hero anthology!

So, if you're feeling down and out about life in the writing lane, don't give up. Remember:

The Perfect Shade of Blue

My daughter is in high school pep band. Not long ago, I drove her to the school so she could play at a basketball game. It was early evening, and the sun was going down. The underneath of the plump clouds were the pinkish-orange of Ruby Red grapefruit, while the tops were a soft pewter.

My daughter didn't notice the clouds, though. Instead, she said, "the sky is the perfect shade of blue."

I asked her what she meant, and she said, "I don't know, that color of blue just makes me happy."

That got me started thinking. Is there a perfect shade of blue? Or green? Or brown? Or purple? Or any color? Or is it entirely subjective?

For her, apparently the perfect shade of blue is the baby blue of a cheesy tuxedo.

 
For me, when I think of blue, I remember the big crayon box from when I was a kid, and the blue I always reached for was Midnight Blue. I loved the dark, rich, mystery of it. I could imagine sinking into a world of midnight blue.

When I'm talking to my composition students about description, and trying to get them to show, not tell, one of the exercises I give them is meant to force them to practice description beyond the simple and obvious.

I tell them, it's easy to describe what someone looks like because human beings depend heavily on our sense of vision. But how do you describe what lemonade tastes like to someone who's never tasted it?

 What a headache feels like to someone who's never had one?

What a cinnamon roll smells like to someone who's never smelled one?

What a rock concert sounds like to someone who's never heard one?

Suddenly you have to reach beyond sweet, tart, painful, delicious, and loud into shared feelings, experiences, and thoughts in order to convey the essence of those things to your readers.

It's not an easy task.

Which brings me back to colors.

I'm going to give you a writing exercise now:

In the comments, write a descriptive paragraph about your favorite color. I don't mean just blue, or red, or yellow. I mean cerulean, or garnet, or goldenrod. Describe it as if your readers have never seen it, exploring what it reminds you of (things and memories), or what it makes you think or feel. Connect with readers on the level of common experience.

I can't wait to read what you come up with!

~Margaret

A Career In Books?

An editor in New York recently said to me, "This is one of the last true apprenticeship fields." Although she meant it as just an interesting aside, the more I thought about it, the more I realized this is both a problem and an unfortunate truth in writing and publishing.

If you're like me, as many in our field are, you spent your childhood with your nose in a book. Late nights under the covers with a flashlight, sitting on the sidewalk while others did sports, and hours at the local library are the bright, shiny, happy spots in your memory.

Books, books, books. Must read all the books.

Sadly for me, as I got older, reading became less an obsession and more of a hobby. My English class in high school was uninspiring, and few of my peers read like I did. I was from a small town and a child of poverty, so although I had dabbled in writing here and there, there was no concept of being a writer for a living. I was privileged enough to go to college, but there was no way I would waste that opportunity on an English major. I didn't know taking a literature class was an option, let alone having a career in books. (This belief prevails. Check out this Slate article: Major Exodus: How do post-recession English departments attract students to a field losing popularity?) Thus I got my B.S. and reading was further pushed into the "something I only do for fun," area of my life.

What am I doing with my life?

Ironically, it was my career in biology that reunited me with my love of books. As a field biologist I got to witness many of the amazing creatures nature has to offer. That being said, I was also twiddling my thumbs, a lot. You do quite a bit of "observing" in the field, which means waiting and watching for something to happen. That's when the ideas for a novel started crowding my brain. I spent my nights tapping away at the computer, and it rekindled the love and obsession I had as a child. One year later, ta-da! My first complete novel.

Ta da! I will be a famous novelist!

I was going to make a living as a writer! This was what I should have being doing all along! Of course as anyone in the publishing world will tell you, it wasn't ready. But I didn't know that. It took 100+ rejections, a MFA in Creative Writing, self-publishing my next novel, and a 2-year unpaid internship at a literary agency for me to understand, six years later, what "ready" meant.

What makes you think your book is special?

All of that experience was my apprenticeship, and it opened my eyes to the world of publishing as a potential career. If you love books, despite what people tell you, teaching English or starving writer are not the only career options. The book industry world needs managing editors, literary agents, book-marketing gurus, book buyers, bookstores, designers, proofreaders, copy editors, ghost writers, book reviewers, writing conference leaders, distributors, publishers, the list goes on.

I only wish someone had pointed this out to the little girl with her nose in a book. I would have started earlier, done the unpaid internship in college, taken the courses in writing/literature, begun my career path sooner, so that the struggle would have been at the age it should have been. The MFA programs are equally as guilty, many of them focus on writing as art, scorning the "commercial" world, which is where most people in the book business make a living.

You write commercial fiction?

Many others who work in the book industry have a similar story to mine. They fell into it later in life, and realized they were in love, but it took some time to get to a moderately successful career and there were many financial sacrifices along the way. And still others don't make it that far. The path to publishing is littered with ex-editors who couldn't survive on such low salaries, ex-literary agents who didn't have financial support in those first few penniless years, ex-interns who had to get a paying job and more.

Why can't being an author and working within the book industry be a viable career path for everyone? Why can't more universities offer programs like Columbia's Publishing Course? Why are we expected to toil away at un-paid/low-wage apprenticeships just to get our foot in the door? Why is it that there is not a career path for novelists the way there are for so many other jobs? Why is there so little money in such an important field? And why is most of it concentrated in NYC, one of the most expensive cities to live in the world?

I don't have to put up with this, do I?

It was luck and privilege that I was able to follow my dream career at an older age, which included a partner willing and able to support me and an educated mother who taught me to love to read. People say that publishing/writing is a career for trust-fund kids and retirees. This is not true, but it is definitely an uphill battle if you don't have those advantages. One of the biggest reasons for this is a lack of information/opportunity available to those with less means. There are not many options for the not-so-privileged, the need-to-work-for-a-living, and the few paths to work in books that are viable for us are buried under negative stereotypes of post-English-major lifestyles.

Hey there. I work with books!

Books are considered a luxury commodity, even though reading and writing have proven again and again to be a crucial aspect of human nature. See the Guardian's Reading Fiction "Improves" Empathy Study Finds, or the New York Times's Writing Your Way to Happiness or NPR's How Orwell's 'Animal Farm' Led a Radical Muslim to Moderation.

Yes, you can work with books.
(And maybe the next doctor will be a POC. Maybe.)

The world needs more (and diverse) people working in books, but how will that happen with the current lack of support in the education system and society in general?