Writing Communities – Interview with Poet Patricia Spears Jones
We met Patricia Spears Jones at Rutgers Writers Conference and knew we had to share her wisdom with you. She talked with us about poetry, writing communities, and her advice for writers.
Filmed at Rutgers Writers Conference 2019.
RELATED VIDEOS
Author Wayétu Moore on Publishing | When Art & Commerce Meet
Author Brad Parks on Journalism, Literary Agents, and Publishing Award-Winning Thrillers
Joshua Mohr on Writing and How to Publish a Book
PATRICIA SPEARS JONES
Patricia Spears Jones is the recipient of The Jackson Poetry Prize, one the most prestigious awards for American Poets via Poets & Writers, Inc.
Spears Jones was named in Essence.com as one of its “40 Poets They Love” in 2010. In 2018, her poem “Seraphim” is listed in The New Yorker’s Year in Poems.
She is author of the poetry collections: Painkiller and Femme du Monde from Tia Chucha Press and The Weather That Kills from Coffee House Press and five chapbooks including Living in the Love Economy. Her fourth collection: A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems from White Pine Press (White Pine Press Distinguished Poets series) which features her 2017 Pushcart Prize winning poem, “Etta James at the Audubon Ballroom.”
Learn more at https://psjones.com.
SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel for tips on how to successfully publish your book.
Our book, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, takes you through the entire process of conceiving, writing, selling, marketing and promoting your book.
Writing Advice from Grant Faulkner, NaNoWriMo Executive Director
We met up with our dear friend Grant Faulkner, executive director of National Novel Writing Month, at BookCon. Grant talks about fostering the right creative mindset, building a writing community, and his writing advice.
Filmed at BookCon 2019.
WHAT WE COVER
0:15 What is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)?
2:14 NaNoWriMo success stories & NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza winners
3:43 Opening up the publishing gates: NaNoWriMo crashes through the gatekeepers and encourages everyone to embrace their identity as a writer.
5:58 Writing advice: writing is about persistence and practice, not natural talent.
6:42 What is the editing process after NaNoWriMo?
10:30 Why should writers connect with other writers?
12:49 Should writers be envious of other writers?
13:10 Grant shares his advice for writers.
RELATED VIDEOS
Author Wayétu Moore on Publishing | When Art & Commerce Meet
Author Brad Parks on Journalism, Literary Agents, and Publishing Award-Winning Thrillers
Joshua Mohr on Writing and How to Publish a Book
NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.
On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel. Find out more at http://nanowrimo.org
GRANT FAULKNER
As a boy, Grant spent his allowance on all sorts of pens and paper, so there was never much question that he would become a writer. He received his B.A. from Grinnell College in English and his M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He’s also the co-founder of the journal 100 Word Story.
He has published short stories in dozens of lit mags and placed essays on creativity in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He recently published a collection of one hundred 100-word stories, Fissures, two of which are included in The Best Small Fictions 2016. His book of essays on creativity, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Prompts to Boost Your Creative Mojo, is out from Chronicle Books.
SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel for tips on how to successfully publish your book.
Our book, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, takes you through the entire process of conceiving, writing, selling, marketing and promoting your book.
When Art & Commerce Meet – Interview with Wayétu Moore
Wayétu Moore, author of SHE WOULD BE KING and founder of the nonprofit One Moore Book, shares the publication journey for her debut novel and reflects on art, writing craft, commerce, and more.
Filmed at Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival 2019.
WHAT WE COVER
0:35 Writing a draft of SHE WOULD BE KING and exploring identity as an African in America and as an African-American
2:19 Pressures writers put on themselves, writing craft, and not resenting your art
3:26 Writing discipline and respecting your art
4:01 Publishing industry trends
4:23 Wayétu Moore’s next novel is about mermaids
5:32 Publishing SHE WOULD BE KING
6:00 Meeting literary agents at conferences
7:06 Editing a manuscript with a literary agent and making a book as strong as possible
7:54 “If you’re writing for yourself, keep a journal, but if you do commit to writing for others and being mindful and considerate to the sensibilities of others, then you do need to be conscious of what readers would be in to, how they would process your work. . .”
8:23 Shopping a manuscript to publishers, dealing with rejections, and the reality of when art meets commerce
9:14 Publishing SHE WOULD BE KING through Graywolf and the benefits of being with an indie press
12:00 Cover design and avoiding cliches designers use for African, Islamic, and Indian narratives
15:04 The meeting of art and commerce as well as time and capacity in Big Five publishing
15:59 Versify, an imprint by Kwame Alexander, and One Moore Book, a nonprofit serving children who rarely see themselves in print
RELATED VIDEOS
Author Brad Parks on Journalism, Literary Agents, and Publishing Award-Winning Thrillers
Versify: an Imprint from Kwame Alexander
Joshua Mohr on Writing and How to Publish a Book
WAYÉTU MOORE
Wayétu Moore is the author of She Would Be King, released by Graywolf Press in September, 2018. Her memoir is also forthcoming with Graywolf.
Moore is the founder of One Moore Book. One Moore Book is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization that encourages reading among children of countries with low literacy rates and underrepresented cultures by publishing culturally relevant books that speak to their truths, and by creating bookstores and reading corners that serve their communities. Her first bookstore opened in Monrovia, Liberia in 2015.
Her writing can be found in The Paris Review, Frieze Magazine, Guernica, The Atlantic Magazine and other publications. She has been featured in The Economist Magazine, NPR, NBC, BET and ABC, among others, for her work in advocacy for diversity in children’s literature.
She’s a graduate of Howard University and the University of Southern California, and is currently a Margaret Mead Fellow at Columbia University Teachers College, where she’s researching the impact of culturally relevant curriculum and learning aids in elementary classrooms of underrepresented groups. Moore is an Africana Studies lecturer at City University of New York’s John Jay College and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel for tips on how to successfully publish your book.
Our book, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, takes you through the entire process of conceiving, writing, selling, marketing and promoting your book.
Brad Parks on Journalism, Literary Agents, and Publishing Thrillers
We sat down with award-winning thriller author Brad Parks at Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival. We picked his brain about how being a journalist influenced his fiction writing, the mistakes he made on the path to publication, and how he found the right literary agent and set himself on the road to publishing success.
Watch the video or read the transcript below.
David: Hello. We’re the Book Doctors.
Brad: I’m not a Book Doctor.
D: No. We’re talking to Brad Parks, who just told us that he has all his own teeth, and I think that’s important as a writer. Not that you can’t be a writer if you’re missing teeth. . .
B: No. It’s not necessary to the writing process. I’ve never tried to type with my teeth, but it’s good to know I could if I wanted.
How Being a Journalist Helps Brad Parks Write Novels
D: We were just talking about journalism, and you were a journalist first. I always tell people when they’re young and out of school that it’s a great way to learn how to be a writer because you’ve got to pump out the words in a small space.
Arielle: And on a deadline.
Finding a Story
D: Will you talk about how that helped you?
B: How did it not help me? For starters, I was a sports writer starting out, and in modern day sports, everybody knows the score already, like they’ve seen the stats, and so you’re going to the ballpark every day and it’s find a story, tell a story. Find a story, tell a story. That’s a great muscle.
And then there’s the discipline. You don’t say, “I don’t feel like making a deadline today. I’m not inspired.”
D: The muse hasn’t struck.
Meeting Deadlines
B: We were just talking off-camera–not that they would know–about my young days as a reporter for The Star-Ledger. I’d just gotten hired at the paper and our Yankees beat writer left, so suddenly they threw me onto the Yankees beat in a temporary situation. So big pressure.
The sports editor sat me down and explained that sometimes they would hold an entire edition of the newspaper waiting on the Yankees score. And you have to hit the button as soon as the game ends. He said for every minute the trucks and presses are waiting, it costs $15,000. “And what do you make a year, young man?” That’s a deadline, my friends.
D: We always say, “What are the stakes in the story?” The stakes are high.
B: The stakes are very high. And you can’t sit there going, “Is that really the word? I’m just, I’m not sure that has the right shading.” No, you’re just jamming it out.
Debut Novel Writing Mistakes
A: Before you sold your first novel and you were writing it, did you set your own deadlines?
B: No. So before I sold my first novel, I did everything wrong.
Lack of Discipline
I am the poster child for writing discipline because I would make excuses for myself, like I had this full-time job that involved writing and so I would do the worst thing you can possibly do, which is I would write really dedicated for a month or two and then something would happen, news would break at work or something would happen in the family, and two months later I’d be coming back to this going, “Wait, what? Aunt Ellie? Who the hell is Aunt Ellie? What was I doing with her?”
And then a beautiful thing happened. I sold a novel and signed a contract. Now I’m a journalist so deadlines are meaningful to me. I signed this contract in July that said the second book in the contract was due in January, and it was like, “Whoa!”
A: And you hadn’t written it?
B: I had not written a word.
We were offered a two-book contract and my agent was like, “Oh, you have a second book, right?”
And I’m like, “Oh, yeah. Of course I do. I just want to polish it a little bit.”
How Brad Got His Discipline Back
So I did a thing where I’m a nerd and I did a spreadsheet, and I figured a thousand words a day, that’s a newspaper article plus a little padding, and I can do that. What a difference it makes when it’s a thousand words every day and you’re into the story. I always say it maximizes your bottle-washing time. I call it bottle-washing time because we had small kids at the time so I was washing a lot of bottles. While you’re doing this monotonous thing, your brain is always churning on the story and you’re just staying in touch with it. So even now, I’m a thousand-words-a-day writer. That is my thing. That is my jam. That’s my discipline.
D: There’s some one, one of those old writers, Somerset Maugham or somebody, who would write 500 words in the morning when he woke up, and no matter where he was in the sentence at the 500th word, he’d put the pen down and say, “Time for a martini! That’s a good day’s work done.” You crank out 500 or a thousand words every single day, you’re going to have a book very quickly.
B: If you do a thousand words a day, you’re going to have a draft three months later.
And, of course, that Somerset Maugham reminds me of my favorite Somerset Maugham quote, which is: “There are three things that make a great novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.”
A: We have that quote in our book, actually. It’s a wonderful quote. We want to always know the publishing breakthrough side of your story because we are here to help people get published successfully. We’ve already heard something you didn’t do right.
D: And something you did do right.
Debut Publishing Mistakes
A: So in terms of the “I got my novel published,” what was something that really got you to that point that you think you did well?
The Wrong Agent
B: How much camera film do you have there? I’m gonna break the cloud if I’m talking about everything I did wrong. I did everything wrong, absolutely everything, because I did it like a newspaper reporter. I figured out I need to get an agent, and what I did was I said, “Who do I know?” “Who do I know” is not the way to go about it. I have become an evangelist for the query process and for actually doing it correctly because “who do I know” is not necessarily going to lead you to the right agent.
It led me to a woman who was very wonderful and very smart, I can say nothing bad about her, except she wasn’t truly a mystery/thriller agent. So when she would walk into those publishing houses and be pitching those editors, they were like “who is this lady?” because she didn’t have anybody else in the genre. That kind of led me to a spot where I wasn’t being taken as seriously.
A: Did you sell a novel with her?
B: I sold a novel with her. But did I sell it well, Arielle?
Before you publish, you think, “If I could just be published, that’s the mountaintop. There it is.” And then you realize it’s the base camp, and there’s this whole other thing you have to climb. I mean, it took a number of years for me to undo the mistakes I made early on in my career.
D: We always tell people to research when you try to find an agent because if you’re a mystery writer you don’t want to get a romance agent or a nonfiction agent.
B: That is very, very true. The wrong agent is worse than no agent.
D: It kind of is in a way.
B: That’s very true.
Making a Weak First Impression
A: Also it can be very hard to sell a second book if the first book doesn’t do as well as everybody had hoped.
B: I always say that you only get one chance to make a first impression in this business, and your debut novel is like this capital that you get to spend once. And everybody is going to be looking at the new kid in town. They’re going to be looking at Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing. And suddenly, Reese Witherspoon likes it. And by the way, Reese, you would love my books. Let’s talk.
You have that one time you get to be that debut novelist that everybody’s going to be checking out. Man, hit that one time right and everything else is smooth.
A: You’re saying you didn’t; yet, you have had prolific–
B: Here I am.
D: You’re the only writer who won the three awards that nobody ever has. . .
B: That is true.
D: What are they?
B: They are the Seamus, Nero, and Lefty awards, which is a little bit like saying, you know, nobody’s ever skied down a ski slope in Florida while making French fries. It’s an odd miss of awards because the Seamus Award is for hard-boiled PI, and the Lefty Award is for humor, and the Nero Award is, like, books written in the tradition of Nero Wolfe.
D: That’s a cool thing. It’s kind of a weird Triple Crown.
A: I think nobody does it exactly right.
D: Stephen King.
B: No. Stephen King struggled at first. David Baldacci did it right. He sold his first book for a million dollars and the movie rights for two million dollars. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.
A: Sometimes luck and doing it right come together. I mean, most people who are novelists aren’t even making a living at it. They are doing other full-time jobs.
B: Right. Making a living . . . (knocks) as I knock on this faux wood . . .
How Brad Found an Agent, Lost an Agent, Then Found the Right Agent
A: I’m going to take exception to you saying you didn’t do it right because you’ve done many things right. So at a certain point you said, this is not the right agent for me, and then what happened?
B: Oh boy, are you sure you have enough film footage? You know, so really, I had at that point launched a series, and it’s very hard to move a series as we all know, so we kind of formulated that, all right, you’re going to have to do a stand alone.
A: With the new agent?
B: With the new agent.
A Series of Rejections
So I have to do a stand alone with the new agent. I’m going to cut to the chase on this. I wrote one, threw it away. I wrote another, threw it away. I wrote another–
A: Wait, I have to interrupt you. When you say, “throw it away,” had you sent each of these to the agent?
B: Yes.
A: And the agent said?
B: This is good but . . .
Then we got to the fourth one, the one I really thought was it, he fired me. He said, “Look, I can’t do this anymore. You know, he got to a point where he felt like . . . I’d made a bad storytelling choice, admittedly, and I think the weight of the previous three novels, he just felt like he couldn’t.
Querying Again
It was a wonderful and devastating thing to have happen, but it really made me go back and I actually did the query process right for the first time. I actually said, “Okay, really, truly who do I want? What am I looking for?” I talked with a number of agents. I spent five months looking for an agent, which by that point, as a guy with my track record, I could have called somebody and said, “Will you represent me?” They would have said yes. Done. But I really wanted to make sure I did it right.
Benefits of Having the Right Agent
I found a woman named Alice Martell, who really worked the book with me in a rigorous way. It’s like that one person who can force you to dig deeper and say, “Nope, that wasn’t good enough.” And like, “Right here, you need to step on the gas pedal for about a paragraph or two.” I do? What? You want more? Okay, there’s more there, I’m sure. Somewhere.
D: The funny thing is when the person is right, you always go back and say, “How did I not see that?”
B: It’s so funny. Publishing moves so fast sometimes editors don’t really have time to edit. This is where being an ex-newspaper guy is a bit of a curse. If you write clean copy, they kind of go, “Okay, well, that’s good enough.” Here was somebody finally in my life saying this is not good enough. We went back and forth for about another five months doing, I think, three more rounds of edits. She finally said, “Okay, it’s time.” Within a week, she had two major houses bidding against each other, and that novel, Say Nothing, has since sold in 15 countries. It was a best seller in Germany.
It’s a wonderful story but it only took about seven years to get to that point.
How Brad Dealt with Rejection
A: One last question. When you had the agent, how did you deal with that form of negative feedback around your work? Did you go into a hole? Did you say, “I’m going to come and kill you during the night?”
B: All of those things. Actually, the first book I was okay. The second book . . . I always say that the first time I ever saw my father cry was when his dad died. The first time my kids saw me cry was when that book died. The third one, I felt I dealt with it in a much more mature way. I snapped at my kids for no reason, stormed out of the house, went to the local grocery store, bought a box of cookies, and ate them in the car with tears streaming down my face. That’s how you’re supposed to deal with your feelings. (Laughter.)
D: That’s a wonderful image.
B: Man, we don’t talk about this enough as writers, but it’s grit. You’ve got to have grit.
I’m fortunate in that I have no other marketable skills so it’s not like I had anything to fall back on. But man, you’re going to get knocked down so much, and you got to get up off the mat and try a different way.
A: Many people would have given up after the first one. And this is the thing that we tell people all the time is the perseverance.
B: It is.
A: That’s a beautiful story. Thank you.
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International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His novels have been translated into 15 languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major pre-publication review outlet. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Parks is a former journalist with The Washington Post and The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger. He is now a full-time novelist living in Virginia with his wife and two school-aged children. Learn more at BradParksBooks.com.
The Montclair Literary Festival is a community-wide event that aims to exchange ideas, inspire future literary works and engage with different points of view. Working closely with the Montclair Public Library, Watchung Booksellers and a team of local volunteers, the festival will also generate lasting connections between arts institutions, the schools and the community, benefiting a broad cross-section of participants and attendees.
Roxanna Elden on How to go from Teacher to Non-Fiction Author to Publishing Her Debut Novel
Roxanna Elden is one of our favorite authors. We met her in a class at Miami Dade College where we were teaching. From the very first time she raised her hand and opened her mouth, we knew she was something special. One of the consistent things we’ve found in our years of teaching and doing Pitchapaloozas is that teachers make the best public speakers. Anybody who can wrangle a class full of kids and live to tell the tale is prepared for anything. With the publication of her debut novel, Adequate Yearly Progress, we thought we’d check in with Roxana and see what it was like to go from nonfiction to novel, from novice to fighting-sophomore-slump author, from wide-eyed debutante to grizzled veteran.
The Book Doctors: Congratulations on your debut novel. Tell us about Adequate Yearly Progress.
Roxanna Elden: Adequate Yearly Progress is a workplace novel that captures teaching with humor, insight, and heart. It switches perspectives among a diverse group of educators as their professional lives impact their personal lives and vice versa. As an elevator pitch, I often describe it as being, “like the TV show The Office, but set in an urban high school.”
TBD: Your first book, See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers, was non-fiction. Is it different taking your experience as a teacher and writing fiction instead of nonfiction?
RE: I started writing See Me After Class during my sister’s first year as a teacher. The specific goal of that book was to help teachers make it through their first years with a mix of humor, honesty, and practical advice. As an unexpected side effect of trying to spread the word about the book, I ended up in situations I might not otherwise have seen as a classroom teacher: Silicon Valley ed-entrepreneur conferences, television panels, and schools around the country where I got to talk to thousands of fellow educators. During all this, I was still spending most of my time doing daily high school teacher things, like grading essays and watching students play with their phones underneath their desks. It felt like there had to be a way to capture this panoramic view of the education world, with all its colliding ideas and interest groups, and how all of this played out at the school level. A novel told from many different points of view turned out to be my best answer.
TBD: Tell us how you used the Miami Writers Institute to find an agent and start your publishing career.
RE: The idea for my first book hit me in 2005. This also happened to be the first year of the Miami Writers Institute, which brings well-known authors and publishing industry people to Miami. The first class I ever took was The Book Doctors’ course on the process of getting a book published. That class provided a roadmap through the whole process of finding an agent and publisher for the book that became See Me After Class. Over the following years, I went on to write a children’s book and, most recently, a novel. I also continued to take classes at the Miami Writers Institute every year, and found that each year’s class corresponded to specific events in my writing life. Recently, I distilled the notes from the classes and the lessons learned from twelve years as an author into a twelve-day email series. The result is part creative writing crash course, part mobile-friendly memoir of what it takes to build a writing career.
TBD: What did you learn as a teacher that helped you in your publishing career?
RE: Teaching builds the type of thick skin that helps in the writing world. Agents and editors might not return your emails, but at least they don’t fall asleep on their desks right in front of you. As an English teacher, I also taught a lot of the skills that improve writing at any level. Constantly discussing the qualities of good writing helped in writing the book. And writing the book made me feel like the advice I’d been repeating to students actually worked outside of the classroom.
TBD: Do you approach promoting and marketing fiction differently then nonfiction?
RE: The common wisdom about marketing nonfiction books is that they should have a specific target audience. Literary fiction is expected to have a wider appeal, with authors that seemingly rise from the ether as debut talent. Adequate Yearly Progress, however, always felt like it was somewhere in between. My goal was to write a page-turning story that anyone would enjoy, but it was especially important to me that all the details rang true to teachers. The audience for my first book also included many teachers frustrated by Hollywood versions of the profession, which made it a natural fit to spread the word to teachers first. Their enthusiasm has helped spread the word about the book to a wider audience.
TBD: How did you get such great blurbs?
RE: I was thrilled to have a front cover blurb from Steve Almond for Adequate Yearly Progress, and from Dave Barry for See Me After Class. Additionally, there have been some great recent write-ups for Adequate Yearly Progress, including in The Washington Post and Forbes. The most helpful takeaway from all of these experiences is less of a specific trick and more of a general mindset: most authors are our own publicists most of the time. We might as well take the job seriously. If you were paying a professional publicist upwards of $5K a month to represent you, you’d want them to at least try to approach some of your favorite authors and publications. If you do this yourself over time, you’ll get better at the job. And hopefully, you’ll get a few lucky breaks along the way.
TBD: Tell us about the comedian you’ve been following who interviews behavioral scientists wherever he goes.
RE: About halfway through writing the novel, I stumbled on a podcast called Here We Are, in which stand-up comic Shane Mauss interviews behavioral scientists in each of the cities on his comedy tours. One of my biggest goals while writing AYP was to make sure the characters rang true as people, and the scientists on Here We Are provided a constant stream of insight into why humans do what we do. Many of these insights found their way into the novel. Naturally, I was pretty thrilled to have a chance to do an episode of the Here We Are podcast about Adequate Yearly Progress. This ended up being one of the funniest conversations I’ve ever had about teacher movies. It also reinforced my theory that teachers and stand-up comics have a lot in common.
TBD: We hate to ask you this, but what advice do you have for writers? And teachers for that matter?
RE: As a writer, you try 100 things and only two of them work. It’s tempting to wish you could go back and skip the other 98 attempts. But the truth is, it’s notjust the two things that worked. It’s the fact that you tried 100 things, learning along the way, laying the tracks as you drove the train. That’s probably good advice for teachers, too. Your trial-and-error efforts add up over time.
Roxanna Elden combines eleven years of experience as a public school teacher with a decade of speaking to audiences around the country about education issues. Her first book, See Me After Class, is a staple in school districts and educator training programs, and her work has been featured on NPR as well as in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Education Week, and many other outlets. You can learn more about her work at www.roxannaelden.com.
May Cobb on How Book Fairs & Writing Contests Help Get You Published
The Book Doctors first met May Cobb at the 2011 Texas Book Festival in a town that is one of our all-time favorites: Austin. For those of you who haven’t been, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. It’s one of the great book festivals, in one of the great cities in America. May was one of the brave souls who pitched her book to us in front of a packed house at our Pitchapalooza . Think American Idol for books … only kinder and gentler. She dazzled us with her idea for a book about the great jazz musician, Rashaan Roland Kirk. We could tell from the moment she stepped up to the microphone that she had the nerve, skills, talent, and that indefinable je ne sais quoi that makes one think: Yes, this woman knows how to get things done. In fact, we liked her pitch so much that she won! As often happens, this idea was not the one that became her debut book. In fact, as she honed and refined the book she pitched us, she wrote a novel, Big Woods and got it published. One of the things that we love about being book doctors is helping a talented writer become a published author. So now that her debut novel is finally out in the world, we thought we’d pick her brain about writing, rejection, and how she navigated the stormy seas of the publishing world to get successfully published.
The Book Doctors: Congratulations on publishing your first novel. Tell us about Big Woods.
May Cobb: Thank you so much! BIG WOODS is a thriller set against the backdrop of 1980s small-town Texas and delves into the paranoia surrounding satanic cults. It revolves around the disappearance of a young girl, whom everyone presumes is dead except her older sister who begins having dreams about her, insisting she is still alive.
It’s based on a true, eerie story my mom told me while growing up in East Texas, where Big Woods is set. For two years, my mother, a nurse, worked in the psychiatric unit of our small town’s hospital. It was located in the basement and she worked the graveyard shift. One night, a young woman in ripped clothing appeared at the unit and begged to be taken into hiding. She kept saying, over and over again, “You have to hide me. They are going to find me and they are going to kill me.” I don’t want to say much more for fear of giving away the plot, but that story was the genesis for BIG WOODS.
TBD: How was the process of trying to find the right agent for your book, then finding a publisher of your own? Did it help that you found a publisher who does books that match up so well with Big Woods?
MC: Arielle helped me a great deal with my agent search (in addition to everything else!) After approaching a handful of agents who passed — some whom I’d met at conferences, others, referrals — Arielle had me write up a list of thirty agents I’d like to approach. She carefully reviewed this list and dropped a few names and suggested a few others. Next, Arielle helped fine-tune my query letter so that it was in tip-top shape and within 48 hours, I had an offer! Within a week of that initial offer, I had two additional offers and then had a very big decision to make!
My agents, Ellen Levine and Alexa Stark, found a warm and welcoming home for Big Woods. While the novel was out on submission, I was as cool as a cucumber and so much fun to be around! And I was wildly productive writing-wise. I’m kidding, of course, I was a bundle of nerves, developed insomnia, and couldn’t write a lick. But my pot at the end of the rainbow came in the form of getting the “yes” from Midnight Ink. I knew the minute I spoke with Terri Bischoff, my editor, over the phone that Big Woods had found the home it was meant to find.
TBD: What was it like getting published by a wonderful independent publisher, Midnight Ink?
MC: It’s been absolutely incredible, ever since that first phone call with Terri. Terri had fantastic notes for the novel and is so warm and brilliant — just a delight to work with, as is the entire Midnight Ink Team (waving at you Jake and Anna), as well as my publicist Dana Kaye of Kaye Publicity. Everyone is so talented and dedicated and collaborative!
TBD: How did you know about getting your Book Launch Party at one of the greatest bookstores in America: Book People in Austin, Texas?
MC: I’ve lived in Austin for the past twenty years and Book People is hands-down one of my favorite places in Austin as well as my favorite bookstore ever. Of course I’ve gone to tons of readings and signings there, and it has been a long-held dream of mine to have a book party there, so I was thrilled when they gave me the green light. And the literary community in Austin on the whole is so wonderfully supportive, I feel damn lucky to be living here.
TBD: Tell us about your relationship with National Novel Writing Month. How do writers benefit from NaNoWriMo?
MC: I shadow NaNoWriMo every November! I wrote a big chunk of Big Woods during a NaNoWriMo and while it sounds daunting to try and complete a novel in one month, I think the time crunch really helps silence the inner critic that is always, always lurking. It does for me anyway.
TBD: How did you go about winning the online Nanowrimo Pitchapalooza?
MC: I was aware of the contest from having the absolute privilege of working with you guys on my nonfiction project and was excited by the challenge of crafting a pitch to enter the contest. But I could not believe that my pitch actually won, and it gave me such a boost during a time I needed it most. Not to mention, your feedback was exquisite!
TBD: What did you get to start writing for the Washington Post?
MC: This literally came out of the blue. One day, while my husband, mother, and I took our young son to a park in Austin, the police were called on us because (gasp!) my son’s hair was a bit messy and his pants were a bit short. He is six and autistic, and the responding officers were so gracious when they arrived and questioned us because they could instantly tell that nothing was amiss, and that our son has special needs. I came home and immediately reached out to the editor of that particular column and she responded that she was very interested, but suggested that I sit with the story for a while. She didn’t want a vent piece and could tell that I was still upset by the incident.
So I did as she suggested and mulled it over for several weeks. Then one evening, the essay came together rather quickly and she accepted it. I did not anticipate the flurry of responses we would receive (both negative and positive) — the piece generated over 2k comments and the Post ran it on their homepage the following Sunday. Ana Navarro of CNN tweeted in solidarity of the essay, which, in turn, made my twitter feed explode, mostly with other parents in our same situation reaching out, which was so gratifying and I’m grateful for Ana for tweeting about it.
TBD: How did you get this great blurb?
“Stephen King’s Stand by Me collides with Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects in this exceptional thriller. Gutsy, gripping―and pitch-perfect in its resurrection of an era long gone.”
―A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
MC: I approached authors whose work I deeply admired and had been inspired by. In the case of A.J. Finn, I reached out to Finn before THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW was published. I was aware of it, namely because it had been such a spectacular deal with the film rights selling instantly to Fox, and also, I absolutely loved the premise of a woman who is shut in her apartment but believes she’s witnessed a murder across the street. Also, the title reminded me so much of one of my favorite novels from my graduate studies, Wilkie Collin’s famed, Victorian-era detective novel, THE WOMAN IN WHITE.
While I was waiting to hear if Finn would indeed blurb BIG WOODS, I read (devoured) THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW the day it was published and was completely gobsmacked by it. His prose is just astonishing — just so gorgeous and lyrical — and his gift of suspense and propulsion is unparalleled. And also, there’s this great wit in the novel. It’s one of my top favorite novels of all time. So, while I was reading THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, I was inwardly wincing, thinking, “He’s going to be so bored if he gets around to reading BIG WOODS.” And when I followed up with him and heard back that he was blurbing BIG WOODS (and comparing it to King and Flynn) my head spun! I had to read the email three times before I could believe it and I cried, I was so happy and so moved.
TBD: How did you get to be a finalist in the 2015 Writers League of Texas Manuscript? Did it help your career?
MC: As you guys know, BIG WOODS interrupted a twenty year nonfiction project which I’m currently finishing up. It’s the story of the late, jazz great, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and in 2015, I submitted a portion of the book to the Writers League of Texas Manuscript Contest. I was so thrilled to find it was named a finalist. I do feel it helped me get my query noticed by agents and editors and, also, the Writers League of Texas has just been instrumental all the way around with nurturing my writing path — such a fantastic organization.
And in 2016, BIG WOODS was chosen as the Winner in the same contest and I feel like that was very instrumental in my having the confidence to finish the novel!
TBD: We hate to ask you this, but what advice do you have for writers?
MC: Surround yourself with people who believe in you and shut out the chorus of voices that tell you writing is an impossible career choice. Also, keep your overhead low and find a good mechanic! And more than anything, realize that you can write in 15-minute bursts of time. Even if it’s a sentence or a single paragraph. It all adds up. Most of BIG WOODS was written in stolen moments — while my husband was bathing our son, while I could’ve checked into Facebook but didn’t — and I was able to hammer out the first draft in a year. And finally, it must be said: if you’re able to, work with the Book Doctors! I would not still be writing today if it weren’t for you guys.
May Cobb grew up in the piney woods of East Texas where her debut thriller, Big Woods, is set. After college, she moved to San Francisco, where she studied Victorian Literature for her Master’s, and then lived in Los Angeles for a few years where she worked for filmmaker/writer Ron Shelton and his wife, the actress Lolita Davidovich. For the past twenty years, she’s been working on a nonfiction book about the late, great, jazz artist, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, Austin Monthly, and Edible Austin. Cobb now lives in Austin with her husband and son.
Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry are co-founders of The Book Doctors, a company that has helped countless authors get their books published. They are co-authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It… Successfully (Workman, 2015). They are also book editors, and between them they have authored 25 books, and appeared on National Public Radio, the London Times, and the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Get publishing tips delivered to your inbox every month.
Jane Friedman On Giving Writers the Education They Never Get
We first met Jane Friedman online, which is where she is a lot. And quite brilliantly, she’s carved out a very cool corner of the publishing world by taking deep dives into analytics and numbers revolving around the Internet and books. We subsequently got to hang out with her in person recently at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference — which is, in fact, one of the great writers’ conferences in America! She was a panelist on our event, Pitchapalooza, and as always, was a font of wisdom. Yet another reason to go to great writers’ conferences: You meet the most amazing people. So we thought now that her new book The Business of Being a Writer is out, we’d pick her brain about writing, publishing, and what it takes to flourish in the brave new world of books.
David Gilmore on Finding Love in Strange Places, Writing About It, and a Colonoscopy
We first met David Gilmore many years ago during a writing conference in Tucson, Arizona. He stood out among the other attendees in part because he was just so smart, funny. He had already done so much work as a writer, and he was a fantastic listener. When we saw that he had a new book out, How I Went to Asia for a Colonoscopy and Stayed for Love: A Memoir of Mischief and Romance, we decided we would pick his brain about writing, travel, love, and colonoscopies.
Read this interview on the HuffPost.
The Book Doctors: How did you learn to be a writer?
David Gilmore: Pretty much everything I’ve done in my life has been self-taught. I learned to write because I needed to clear my head so I could have a good night’s sleep when Xanax was getting a little expensive and addictive. I also learned to write when I had my radio show on Public Radio International (Outright Radio). Back before that I used to write in my daily diary as a kid. I would open up the little red vinyl book and scribble something profound like, “Normal day.” Doesn’t that just scream future author? I dunno. I guess I learned to write by being an observant person. I listen. I watch everything carefully. I ask questions. I feel too much. And this all fills my mind and at some point, I have to just start emptying it onto the written page. So, one could say writing has become a survival skill in not becoming overburdened by everything and everyone.
TBD: What are some of your favorite books, and why?
DG: Mostly I read non-fiction because with politics these days, really, who needs fiction? Basically, I’ll read anything by Michael Pollan, Bill Bryson, and Beth Lisick. It doesn’t matter to me what they write about, I’ll read it. I recently found a copy of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid in Goodwill and I bought it for a dollar. Bryson’s hyperbolic style has me squealing with delight. And he takes us back to a time in America — his childhood in Iowa — when life seemed simple and people didn’t go around with semi-automatic weapons in their suitcases. I’m currently reading White Trash by Nancy Isenberg because all that’s going on with Trump’s rise to power is dissected in that book. I also am reading God’s Hotel by Victoria Sweet about a doctor who works at an old almshouse in San Francisco caring for the un-curable. I like books that fill me with someone else’s life experience or help explain to me what in Sam Hill is going on here, and frankly, right now I am in need of a lot of ‘splaining.
TBD: Tell us about the long and winding road to writing How I Went to Asia for a Colonoscopy and Stayed for Love.
DG: The long and winding road began in the States where I had become bored with my romantic life and unable to afford health insurance. Coming from a long line of intestinal malcontents I was in need of a colonoscopy. I had read that Thailand was the place to go for overseas medical care, so on a whim, I just booked a flight and made an appointment for the procedure.
After having a colonoscope make its way through my long and winding intestines, much to my delight I found that Thailand actually suited me. I had the time of my life! And when I came back to the States, my life seemed so empty and dull that I just kept going back to Southeast Asia and expanding out from Thailand to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and eventually Malaysia.
Then something really big happened. I don’t want to spoil the book, but I felt compelled, so to speak, to move to Malaysia. It wasn’t just a holiday. I gave up my life in the US and moved there. And within 6 weeks of arriving, I met the guy I’d been looking for my whole life. Thus began a storybook gay romance in a Muslim country, of all places. It was starting to seem like a plot from a book or a movie…something perhaps by Elizabeth Gilbert. I knew that if my Malaysian boyfriend and I ever got married, the book would have a full narrative arc and I really would have no choice but to write it. And that’s how it came to be.
TBD: We’re curious about how you approached publishing this book. Did you go after agents and publishers?
DG: I did go after agents. And there was some initial interest from several. I think, however, the raunchy beginning to the book may have put some of them off if they didn’t go beyond the first few chapters. However, I am of the belief that the publishing industry is no longer in its golden age and to be an author with an agent and a contract with a publisher isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve heard too many stories of authors getting little or nothing from their publishers. I know friends who have book contracts who have to pay for their own book tours and do all their own marketing. Or agents who never found a publisher for their clients. I began to wonder what the point of a publishing contract was. I felt that my story was begging to be told NOW and couldn’t wait for agents and publishers. Thus, I jumped on the self-publishing bandwagon.
TBD: What are the pros and cons, the do’s and don’ts of self-publishing? How do you avoid some of the pitfalls?
DG: The biggest con for most people is that you’re on your own to produce and market it. For me that’s not a con because I am by trade a graphic designer, and so knocking out the cover and interior design is something I can do while watching Sarah Huckabee Sanders do her sour face at the White House press corps. The plus side of self-publishing is that you as the author have full creative control and no one is going to reject you because you’re unknown or frankly, your story is kinda dumb. Anyone can publish, which is a blessing and a curse. People have been known to strike a chord with readers and hit it big, but it’s a long shot and it’s a game. And if you’re up for playing the game without getting defeated by the odds that you’ll be a huge success, the world is your playground. But you know, when your book is released and you check the sales tally and on your first day you only sold 17 copies, well, you have only yourself to blame. And when you find that you misspelled something, you can’t call the editor and have a hissy fit about it.
TBD: This is kind of a personal question, but what was your budget for making the video trailers for this book?
DG: Hmm, let’s see…my budget. OK, the Marketing Budget Office has deliberated and just released the figures on the video trailer budget. It was zero. In addition to writing, I also make films so I just pulled those together myself from videos I shot over the years of traveling in Asia. The trailers seemed to catch people’s attention. Whether they translate to sales remains to be seen.
TBD: What was it like to have a colonoscopy in Thailand?
DG: Now that is a personal question! Basically, getting a colonoscopy in Thailand was just like in the US except at about 1/10th the cost. A colonoscopy, however, no matter where you are, is kind of a disgusting proposition. Being in Thailand makes it more fun because I find Asians so fascinating and amusing. Sitting in the “bowel preparation room” in Bangkok (appropriately appointed with brown furnishings), I’m more likely to have fun chatting with someone or watching inscrutably bad Thai daytime television. I did enjoy a night of frolicking in the world’s most extraordinary sex club with the cleanest colon on earth afterward. Perhaps that should have been the title of the book? Really, though, the book is not all about my colonoscopy (who would want to read about that) or even sex. The book starts out there and moves on to more meaningful adventures like the slow boat up the Mekong River, the Flying Nuns of Luang Prabang, and negotiating a gay relationship in a Muslim country.
TBD: How did writing this book about rediscovering yourself in the middle of your life change you?
DG: Well, I lost something significant in Asia: my loneliness. And I got my life back. For years I moped around America complaining about being middle-aged, nerdy, and unlovable. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I took off the tight shoe of American life and let myself go on an incredible journey of love. And I got what I always wanted — a partner — and brought him back to the US with me. His name is Chuan and he tucks me in bed each night and tells me he loves me. Meeting him turned my life around. I went from being a cranky curmudgeon to being contented, playful, and at least somewhat hopeful about my life.
TBD: Was there any part of your book that was particularly difficult for you to write?
DG: Yes. There is a chapter about a young student I had when I was teaching for the United Nations in Malaysia. He was a Burmese refugee who fled over the border from Myanmar fleeing religious persecution. I taught him and a bunch of adorable kids in a filthy, run-down, absolute hole of a school in a slum in Kuala Lumpur. Well, something awful happened to that boy and it broke my heart. It pained me so much to write that chapter, and to this day I cannot read it without bursting into tears. That boy’s life touched me and I will never forget him.
TBD: We hate to ask you this, but what advice do you have for writers?
DG: I don’t know that I’m in the position to be giving advice to other writers, honestly. But if I had to say anything to anyone about writing (or any creative pursuit) I would say this: be critical. Be REALLY critical of your own work. Ignore that nonsense about defeating the inner critic. The inner critic is very important to your process of refinement. I’m not of the school of belief that anything we create is beautiful and worthy. I believe the PROCESS is valuable to simply write whatever is on your mind. But I don’t believe that it is necessarily going to be worth reading by others. Reading and staying aware of current events and thought trends and history and keeping your eyes open to all aspects of society is very important, not just to being relevant but for one’s output to be taken seriously.
David Gilmore is a freelance writer, photographer, and filmmaker living in Tucson, Arizona. He was the host and producer of the Edward R. Murrow Award winning radio show Outright Radio, featured nationally on Public Radio International from 1998-2004. He is a NEA and CPB grantee and has contributed essays to theGay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, The Advocate, and was a contributing author in Johns, Marks, Tricks, and Chickenhawks. He is the author of the bookHomoSteading at the 19th Parallel — one man’s adventure building his nightmare dream house on the Big Island of Hawaii.
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Grant Faulkner on National Novel Writing Month, Pep Talks for Writers, and Dostoyevsky
We first met Grant Faulkner at one of the greatest gigs the Book Doctors ever had, presenting our writing workshops in rural Alaska. There were eagles, there were bears, there were drunken sailors, and there were lots of amazing Alaskan writers. Going through the writing process bonds you with someone, and we feel like Grant has become part of our literary family. His new book, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, is out now, so we picked his brain about what it’s like running the amazing National Novel Writing Month organization and writing—and publishing—his own book.
The Book Doctors: Why in the name of all that’s good and holy did you decide to become a writer?
Grant Faulkner: I’m not sure that I had a choice. I’ve always felt like I was a writer. I took a fetishist’s delight over paper and pens when I was a kid. My mom bought me a little antique rolltop desk when I was 6, and I wrote my first story on that desk. I asked for a leather bound diary for my 7th birthday, and I’ve kept a journal ever since then.
When I was 20, I was deciding whether to be an economics or an English major, and I fortunately spent a semester abroad in France before declaring. I whiled away most of my time in cafes reading novels and writing. When I returned home, I spent the summer writing stories in a little shack on my grandmother’s farm. It goes without saying that I didn’t major in economics, and the field of economics is the better for it.
TBD: What were some of your favorite books as a kid? What are you reading now, and why?
GF: The book that most changed my sense of the world as a kid was Crime and Punishment. I was too young to truly understand it, but I stumbled on it in the library when I was 13, and I picked it up because I was writing a paper on crime. Dostoyevsky showed me the many layers and paradoxes of the human soul in a way I hadn’t imagined. I truly stared into the abyss. Raskolnikov still haunts me.
I just finished Leonard Cohen’s biography, and I’m now reading his book of poems, The Book of Longing. I can never get enough of Leonard Cohen’s voice in my head. I like the way the textures of his poetry influence the textures of my prose. I’m also reading Stranger, Father, Beloved by Taylor Larsen. I just met her, and I thought she was a fantastic person, and it turns out she wrote a really wonderful, probing book.
TBD: What was your inspiration for writing Pep Talks for Writers?
GF: I’ve talked to so many writers who want to write year-round, who want to finish their novels after National Novel Writing Month, but it can be challenging to keep writing. I think it can be a little like a New Year’s resolution. People buy gym memberships in January and show up to exercise for a month or two, but then it’s tough to keep going regularly the rest of the year.
I want people to prioritize creativity and develop a creative mindset so that they’re not just creative in November, but every day of their lives. Creative on the page—and beyond the page. The book offers 52 different angles on creativity, so I hope people will read an essay a week and work to develop a creative habit.
TBD: What were some of the joys, and some of the pains, of putting this book together, finding a publisher, and getting it out into the world?
GF: I’d never written a nonfiction book proposal, so that was a learning experience. I didn’t realize how involved the proposal would be. It was practically like writing the book itself—which was a blessing once I actually started writing the book. Fortunately, my agent, Lindsay Edgecombe, was a fantastic and generous guide.
Other than that, it was a great experience. I was fortunate to find a home for the book at Chronicle Books, which is the perfect publisher for it, and then I also had the perfect editor for it in Wynn Rankin. I hope the experience hasn’t spoiled me for upcoming book projects.
TBD: We give pep talks to writers all the time. What are some dos and don’ts of this very precarious activity?
GF: The interesting thing about being a writer is how intrinsically challenging it is, no matter if you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro. The anguish of self-doubt is always looming. The difficulty of making your ideas come alive through your words never ends. There are so many how-to-write books that deal with the nuts and bolts of craft, but the thing that matters in the end is sitting down to write, believing in yourself, taking creative risks, and writing your story.
That’s easier said than done, of course. Every writer, especially when finishing a long work like a novel, goes through cycles of despair. We all need to be reminded of why we’re doing this crazy activity of making art, putting our voice into the world. It’s easy to forget what a gift it is. It’s easy to forget that we need to constantly nourish our creative spirits.
TBD: What are you doing to promote and market the book?
GF: So many things. It’s been great to write articles on different creativity topics related to the book for publications such as Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. I’ve been on a lot of podcasts and radio shows, which have been really fun. And then I’m doing bookstore events, tweet chats, presentations at colleges and companies, and then speeches at writing and publishing conferences.
My favorite part of my job is talking to people about their writing, and promoting this book has deepened those conversations, so I love it.
TBD: How did you learn to be a writer?
GF: I learned how to be a writer mainly by writing. I unfortunately didn’t have a superhero teacher who mentored me along the way. I’ve read many writing guides and how-to books. I’ve taken writing workshops and even have a masters in creative writing. But I’ve learned most about writing just by showing up to write regularly, being in conversation with my favorite writers’ books, and experimenting in different forms.
TBD: You’ve been running National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for a few years now. What have you learned from rubbing elbows, and various other body parts, with all those writers?
GF: I’ve learned so much from the NaNoWriMo writing community. We writers tend to be solitary creatures, or that is how we often think of ourselves. And it’s true, a lot of writing tends to happen in solitude. But if you trace the history of literature, you realize how it takes a veritable village to write a book. Think of Bloomsbury, Paris in the ‘20s, the Inklings, the Beatniks. The writers in those communities created each other as they were creating themselves.
Frissons of creativity tend to happen with others. When you engage with other writers, you’re naturally combining an assortment of different concepts, elaborating and modifying each other’s thoughts. Meeting regularly with others to write or get feedback is important, and not just for your creativity— it also keeps you accountable.
The NaNoWriMo writing community is such a wondrous playground of ideas. It’s so spirited, so encouraging, so generous. It’s not only made me a better writer, it’s made me a better person.
TBD: We hate to ask you this, but since your book is about writing, we kind of have to ask. What advice do you have for writers?
GF: Sit down. Try to remember the first story you wrote, the glee you took in exploring your imagination on the page. Hold onto the feeling of that gift and write. Write your story, your way—as if no one is going to read it but you. Write some more. And then keep writing, never doubting that the world needs your story.
The Book Doctors will host the eighth annual NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza beginning in 2018. One winner will receive an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for their manuscript. Be the first to know about 2018 NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza.
Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Los Angeles Review. His essays on writing have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He recently published Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Prompts to Boost Your Creative Mojo with Chronicle Books. He’s also published a collection of one hundred 100-word stories, Fissures, two of which are included in Best Small Fictions 2016. Learn more at www.grantfaulkner.com.
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Peter Ginna on Getting Published, Saying No, and What Editors Do
We were absolutely delighted when we got a request from editor extraordinaire Peter Ginna to write something for a new book he was putting together called What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing. Because Arielle is an agent and writer, and David is a writer and book doctor, we have a very different perspective than most people who make money editing books. We thoroughly enjoyed writing our piece, but it was much more fun reading some of the amazing pieces in this book. So now that What Editors Do is out, we picked Peter’s brain on what it was like to go from being the guy with the red pencil to the guy waiting to see how many red marks would come back on his pages.
Read full interview on the HuffPost.
The Book Doctors: As your subtitle suggests, and as your introduction states, being an editor today includes so much more than editing. What should you expect from your editor? Or if you’re looking to become an editor, what skills do you need to do the job well?
Peter Ginna: Let me answer those questions in reverse order. As I said in the piece that you mention, editing encompasses many different roles. The core of the job is still working with an author to make his or her text as good as it can be. Some editors inside publishing houses, and most freelance editors, focus almost entirely on that task. But most editors, especially in trade publishing, have to shepherd a book all the way from the author’s keyboard into the marketplace, so they have to be very involved in marketing, design, production, publicity—everything that goes into bringing that work to readers.
If you’re looking to become an editor, nobody expects you to be an expert at that stuff right away. But you need to have an interest in learning about it, because it’s crucial.
If you’re an author, you should expect your editor to be passionate about your book, and to treat you as a valued partner in the publishing process. For a lot of authors, the publishing house is a black box. The editor owes them frequent and honest communication.
TBD: Why is it that in relationships, as in books, it’s so easy to see what’s wrong with someone else’s stuff, but so hard to see what’s wrong with our own stuff? Is there any way to bring the editor’s outlook to your own work?
PG: It’s incredibly hard to judge your own work! That’s why there are editors. At the risk of seeming to suck up, your chapter in this book on self-editing for authors has great advice on this. At a minimum, put your manuscript away for a week (or longer) and reread it with fresher eyes. Read it aloud so you can really hear how it flows, or doesn’t. Even better, enlist some “beta readers” whom you can trust to give you an honest response.
TBD: We have found that editing other people’s books makes us better writers, and being writers helps us as editors. What did you learn from writing and putting together this book that you will bring back to your job as editor?
PG: Hah! —I learned how hard it is to meet your editor’s deadlines! And continuing from your last question, learned, from the author’s side, how valuable it is to be forced to think about why you said something a certain way, and whether there might be a clearer or cleaner way to say it.
TBD: While we’re on the subject, what was it like exchanging your editor hat for your writer hat? And did you end up cursing your editor silently or out loud? And what advice do you have for writers when they receive an edit back on their most precious book?
PG: I never cursed my editor, who was wonderful. My experience in thirty-plus years of editing has been that authors rarely cursed me out. I believe that what authors want, more than praise or even success, is to be read. For a reader to connect with their writing. If the author knows you’ve read their work really closely, even if you are criticizing something or asking them to change it, they are usually grateful. I have definitely found that it’s the best writers who are most gracious and receptive to editorial suggestions. (With very rare egomaniacal exceptions…)
TBD: We always tell people that editors and agents are trained to say “no.” Can you speak to the experience of rejecting books? Is it rote at this point or do you actually feel anything when you are rejecting? And if you dealt with rejection with this book, can you tell us how it felt to be on the other side?
PG: I understand why you say editors are trained to say no—we do it 95 percent of the time, or more. And especially as traditional publishers compete with self-publishing, we’ve heard a lot about the editor as “gatekeeper,” an image that makes you think of a bouncer turning away people from a hot party. But that’s not how editors think about it—nobody comes to work hoping to turn down a lot of books that day. Editors live to find books to publish, and new titles are the lifeblood of a publishing house. Every day you open your email hoping to find something you love. It’s easy to reject a manuscript that leaves you cold, but editors really agonize when they come across a book that shows talent but that they can’t make an offer for—either because colleagues won’t support it, or because it’s too flawed in some way. Fortunately for me, my editor and I worked together on creating What Editors Do from the beginning so I didn’t have to go through the process of pitching it.
TBD: Can you tell us the process a book goes through at a publishing house once a deal is made? And are there any differences in the actual editing process between a Big 5 publisher, an independent house, or an academic press?
PG: Whew, the process is quite complicated and anyone who wants a thorough description of it should read the chapter by Nancy Miller called “The Book’s Journey.” The first part of it is the actual editing, where editor and author revise the manuscript (sometimes several times). But there’s also a multi-pronged marketing process that begins at acquisition and really ramps up when the final manuscript is delivered. At that point there’s also the complex work of turning the author’s text into a printed or digital book, which itself usually takes several months.
The principles of editing don’t vary between presses, but it is often the case that academic presses do a kind of triage on their lists. They don’t have the resources to edit every book intensively, so many books don’t get too much more than a copy edit. However, for books where they feel the effort is appropriate, scholarly publishers often do just as good a job, or better, than trade houses. My editor, and the whole press at Chicago, did a superbly thorough job on What Editors Do. I should add that there are chapters in my book by editors from independent and academic presses who discuss their work in more depth.
TBD: Speaking of academic presses, What Editors Do is published by The University of Chicago Press. Why did you choose to go with a university press? Does the fact that they publish The Chicago Manual of Style influence your decision at all, since this is a book every editor needs to have on her desk? What was the experience like and how did it differ from the publishing experience of say, Bloomsbury, where you were Editorial Director?
PG: Chicago, in fact, proposed this project to me, which was some form of kismet because I had been thinking for some time about the need for a book like this. This subject made sense for them, because good publishers are always looking for books in areas where they’re already strong—they know the market and have a head start on getting recognition for new titles in that field. And for me, because Chicago is a leading publisher in this area, I was thrilled to be on their list. For an editing book, to be marketed alongside the Manual of Style is a big advantage. It’s hard for me to compare Chicago vs. Bloomsbury from the author’s point of view because I have only been an author with one of them. I’d say the main difference is that Chicago is placing more emphasis on marketing to courses and libraries than most trade presses would, and is less focused on the trade market.
TBD: Is it possible for writers to approach editors at larger houses directly? What is the best way of doing this?
PG: Realistically speaking, I would recommend authors try to find an agent before approaching publishers directly. It’s simply much harder to get an editor’s attention when you submit “over the transom.” That said, as an editor I was always open to an intelligent, well-targeted query. If an author wrote me and said, “I saw that you were the editor of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse mysteries. I’ve written a new crime novel with a brilliant, enigmatic detective and classic whodunit elements that I think will appeal to the same readers who love Morse,” I would always give that person’s work a read. I knew that the author had at least done some homework and thought about why they were sending it to me.
TBD: Our essay in What Editors Do is about self-publishing. Many people ask us, “If I self-publish my book, will it ruin my chances of getting published by a bigger publisher?” How would you answer this question?
PG: You probably know more about this question than I do, but especially nowadays I don’t think there’s any stigma attached to having self-published your work. What’s important is to self-publish your work well. If your self-published book is full of mistakes, badly typeset, or amateurish-looking, it will reflect badly on you. (Covers are hugely important!) But if you do a good job with it—and especially if you sell enough copies to show there is an audience for your writing—I think that gives you a leg up on finding a publisher for future work.
TBD: You rarely hear a kid say “I want to be an editor when I grow up.” This is particularly true if you don’t grow up in a typically white, well-educated, upper middle class environment. Chris Jackson has a brilliant essay in the book about the fact that there is little to no diversity in publishing despite all the talk about the issue. If someone is reading this interview and wants to become an editor but doesn’t fit into these boxes, what tips do you have for breaking into the business? How can you encourage someone to make the effort to break down doors?
PG: I would urge anyone, of any background, to read Chris’s essay because it shows how a person who is passionate about books found his way in publishing despite both his own handicaps—Chris says he didn’t know how to type a letter when he started out as an assistant—and the structural obstacles in the system. It’s unfortunately true that, like many other old-school businesses, publishers are oversupplied with applicants from privileged backgrounds with fancy college degrees, and they still hire lots of those people because it’s easy to do. The good news is that most every publisher understands the importance of diversity and many houses have explicit efforts under way to increase it, so it’s a great time to apply for a job in publishing.
Also, I truly believe publishing is democratic in the sense that, if you really love reading, and really know your way around books, and you’re smart and willing to work hard, that will get recognized really fast. And it’s actually way more important than whether you went to an Ivy League school. This may sound silly, but what we all have in common in the book business is that we love books! And being among people who self-selected on that principle makes for a pretty congenial working life. Whatever “box” you fit into, if you are one of those people who spent your teenage years reading with a flashlight under the covers, you should think about a career in publishing.
Peter Ginna is an independent book editor and the author/editor of WHAT EDITORS DO: THE ART, CRAFT, AND BUSINESS OF BOOK EDITING. He has worked in publishing houses for over 30 years, most recently as publisher and editorial director at Bloomsbury Press, an imprint he founded at Bloomsbury USA. Before that he held editorial positions at Oxford University Press, Crown Publishers, St. Martin’s Press, and Persea Books. Authors he has worked with include James M. McPherson, David Hackett Fischer, and David Oshinsky (all winners of the Pulitzer Prize), Daniel Ellsberg, Michael B. Oren, Alice Kessler-Harris, Suze Orman, and Colin Dexter. He comments about books, writing, and publishing at the blog Doctor Syntax, and has written for Creative Nonfiction magazine, Nieman Storyboard, and the Huffington Post. You can follow him on Twitter at @DoctorSyntax.