Looking for recent posts by Deb? You'll find them at www.coastwriting.org. She's also a regular contributor on publishing at the IBPA Independent and on the craft of writing at www.49writers.blogspot.com.
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For writing and publishing advice, see Write Your Best Book and What Every Author Should Know.
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Thanks for reading!
The Self-Made Writer
A teaching series for writers
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Beyond the Book Launch: How an Author Exchange Can Expand Your Audience
Does there exist anywhere an author who
suffers from too many readers? Um, no. One of the primary difficulties of
making your way as a writer comes in expanding your audience, especially after
the launch buzz for your book fades.
With the idea of creating novel
opportunities for authors to connect with their readers, Susan McBeth founded Adventures by the Book. In
addition to hosting “Meet the Author” events and book-themed travel adventures,
she’s piloting an author exchange opportunity as a potential component of her AuthorPreneurs™ program.
For the pilot, Susan chose three authors
from San Diego to host three authors from Anchorage, with her and I acting as
event coordinators and liaisons. From April 3 to April 8, the Alaska contingent
descended on San Diego, where they reached new readers through unique events
that Susan tailored for their books.
Of equal value were the home stay
experiences and social gatherings. In the company of their hosts, visiting
authors Marybeth Holleman, Kaylene Johnson, and Debbie Moderow enjoyed warm hospitality,
enthusiastic conversations, culinary delights prepared by an acclaimed food
writer, and California sunshine.
A sampling of the outside-the-box events
Susan arranged for the visiting authors, with the help of her assistant, Kenna Jones:
·
Welcome dinner of Moroccan cuisine prepared
by food writer Kitty Morse
·
“Among Wolves” San Diego State University
Osher Institute of Higher Learning at the California Wolf Center, including an
on-foot observation walk and an author talk by Marybeth Holleman
·
Qualcomm (San Diego’s largest employer) International
Women’s Day event featuring Debbie Moderow and her book Fast into the Night
·
“Our Wild Alaska” author panels at the
Coronado City Library and the Carlsbad Library. In Coronado, attendees bought
stacks of books; in Carlsbad, the room was full!
·
“Striking It Rich,” a San Diego State
University Osher Institute of Higher Learning at Mission Trails Park, featuring
a one hour presentation by yours truly, followed by a gold-panning activity hosted
by the Southwestern Miners & Prospectors Association.
·
Invitation-only networking reception with
San Diego authors at Susan’s home
·
Lunch
event celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service at Kahala Travel,
featuring a presentation by Kaylene Johnson
Judging by the
response of the authors and readers involved in these events, this first
portion of the pilot was an overwhelming success. Here's hoping there's an author exchange in your future!
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
The Vulnerable Writer
Image from www.monahaydar.com |
Don’t get me wrong—I love writing. But in
nearly twenty years of writing and publishing, I’m also well aware of the
pitfalls of a writer’s existence, the cumulative effect of which results in discouragement
and thoughts of quitting, even for the cheeriest types.
On many fronts, writers are vulnerable.
But this isn’t all bad. Yes, Maslow identifies safety
and security as primary human needs. But risk is inherent to creativity, and
when you put yourself out there, you’re going to feel vulnerable. Vulnerability
also has much to do with why we travel, putting ourselves outside our so-called
comfort zones. It also has much to do with why we read—on the page, we
experience vicarious vulnerability without compromising our safety.
Safety
and security benefit with individual, but vulnerability furthers us
collectively, as a culture and as a society. It certainly enhances our creative
work. “A big part of writing is developing the capacity to expose yourself on
the page,” says Steve
Almond. Where we feel most ashamed, most vulnerable, we are also most
likely to connect with our readers.
In “You and Your Characters,” literary
agent Donald Maass
urges authors to find the points of connection between themselves and their
protagonists—and to delve deep into these parallels by probing shared
vulnerabilities. “What fear is closest to your own darkest dread?” he prompts
writers to ask. “What decision has an impossible cost, a cost you’ve paid
yourself?”
In a talk I gave yesterday at Beach Books, I spoke of how
vulnerability works into two titles that, on the surface, appear to be quite
different. In the novel Cold Spell, a
husband leaves his wife and young daughters. Vulnerable and exposed, the wife
becomes obsessed with a glacier and the latent power bound up in ice, while the
daughter struggles with the vulnerability and power in her sexual coming of
age.
Because I write less from ideas than from
voice and character, I wasn’t thinking of any connecting points from this novel
to Wealth
Woman, the biography of a nineteenth century Native woman, Kate
Carmack. In subsistence cultures like Kate’s, hunting and foraging involve more
inherent vulnerability than in well-established agrarian or industrial
societies.
The stories Kate grew up with were thus more about avoiding risks
than taking them. When we live in relative safety, we can afford to be
attracted to risk. Yet Kate made herself vulnerable for the sake of her
community, and her community in turn became vulnerable as outsiders stampeded
in search of wealth—wealth that on the surface would appear to bring safety and
security but which in many ways makes us more vulnerable.
In my writing—and I trust in yours—these
ideas reveal themselves after the fact, as the characters, real or fictional,
spin themselves out on the page. If you want depth in your work, you can’t
afford to go easy on your characters. You can’t coddle them.
“I want characters at the end of their
ropes,” Almond says. “It’s far too late in the history of our species for
sophisticated poses.”
Labels:
writing life
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Keep Writing or Quit?
Or not? Image from www.henryharbor.com |
Discouraged by a year’s worth of
manuscript circulation, revisions, and rejections by the A-list of editors
selected by her literary agent, a friend is pondering whether to abandon what
has been up until now her life’s pursuit. She’s already had success with one
book and scores of short-length work, but the strain of trying to break through
with a second title is taking a toll.
There are practical, logistical ways of
addressing her quandary—she could try smaller publishers, work on other
manuscripts, self-publish. But her larger dilemma presents itself to most of us
at one time or another: Do I keep writing or quit?
I’ve been at this a long time—next year
marks the 20th anniversary of the release my first major title, A
Distant Enemy. As is the case with most writing careers, it’s been an
up-and-down journey of successes, discouragement, breakthroughs, and missteps. I
can’t claim easy ways to decide how long any of us should continue to do what
we do, but there are important questions to consider:
Why
are you writing?
For authors such as Marilyn Sewell,
writing is a calling. Others have a single project that needs to come out, and
once it’s released, they don’t feel compelled to continue.
What does success mean to you? To address this
question, I suggest you write
for a few minutes about the fantasies connected with your writing life If
in five years, each and every one of your writer’s dreams were fulfilled, how
would it all look, in terms of income, recognition, your body of work, and how
you spend their time. Then take a few minutes to consider each of those
areas—income, recognition, body of work, and how you’d be spending time—in
terms of what you realistically think you can achieve within five years. Through
this exercise, you can learn a lot about what defines success for you: money,
fame, awards, the work itself, the creative life. You may also find that some of
your ideas about what would make you feel successful are misguided—either
internalized from others or skewed toward factors over which you have no
control. When measured in terms of what actually matters to you, your writing
may be delivering success in ways you’re failing to recognize.
Business or art? Where you place yourself on the
continuum between business and art affects your level of satisfaction with your
work. Some writers love the business angle and insist that to be successful,
all must embrace it. But while it may be impossible to publish and get away
from the business part altogether, who says writers must publish at all? Some
of the happiest writers I know are those who don’t care about sharing their
work beyond a small circle of friends.
Which stories need to be told? If your passion
for a particular project is strong, get it out in the world when you’re certain
it’s ready. But remain open to the possibilities for sharing it—the
process by which readers find it may be different from what you first
envisioned, or the timing may be at odds with what you’d hoped.
How would your life change if you didn’t write? If your days
would fill with other passions that bring you more joy, your decision is easy.
And bear in mind that no matter how long you’ve pursued it, writing isn’t your
identity if you can happily embrace the prospect of a life without it. There’s
no shame in abandoning a pursuit without having achieved every goal you’d hoped
for—that’s simply a fact of life.
Deb Vanasse is
the author of seventeen books with six different presses. For more on the
writing life, see Write
Your Best Book.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Twitter for Writers
When it comes to social media, I’m a big believer in
doing what’s useful, helpful, and enjoyable for you—and that’s it. But I’m also
an advocate for keeping an open mind about which platforms will fit the bill.
In what seems like another lifetime, I once vowed
never to text. If I had something to say to someone, we’d have a conversation.
Then my son told me about some great photos he’d taken, photos he would have
shared with me if I texted.
Photos? I was so dumb about texting that I didn’t
realize they were part of the package. I redrew the proverbial line. I’d text,
but I’d never tweet.
Before long, I again proved the truth of that old
adage never say never. A fellow
writer convinced me to try Twitter, and I discovered it’s a great fit for me.
In five or ten minutes a day, I stay informed about what’s going on with
friends, fans, fellow writers, and publishing news. Unlike certain other
platforms (are you listening, Mark Zuckerberg?), what I see isn’t controlled by
algorithms—I make those choices myself. I can have multiple accounts under one
email address. And Twitter cleans up now and then, casting out scammy
followers.
But to have a good Twitter experience, you have to do
it right. Here, some tips:
Getting
started: Go to twitter.com. Open your account, choose your
handle, which is the equivalent of your Twitter address. For most of us the
best handle is first and last name, or whatever variation of that isn’t already
taken. For instance, my handle is @debvanasse. In your profile, describe
yourself in 140 characters or less (and don’t worry – Twitter will tell you
when you’re over the limit, so you can adjust). Upload a photo of yourself
(lest you literally look like an egghead) and a background photo.
Follow
and get followed: The best way to get followers on Twitter
is to follow like-minded people. That’s because if you’re an average person
using Twitter—not a celebrity, not a scam artist—there’s follow-back etiquette,
meaning that when you follow a person like yourself (not a celebrity, not a
scam artist), that person will likely follow you back. To find people to
follow, visit the account of someone whose interests are similar to yours, and
follow the people whom that person follows. You can do this quickly and easily by
using the “copy followers” feature at Crowdfire (www.crowdfireapp.com). Also use Crowdfire to unfollow people who don't follow
you—some spammy-types follow and then unfollow as a way of ratcheting up
their numbers.
Know
the basics: When you post on Twitter, that’s tweeting
(not twittering, as you might hear others say, or twerking, which is something
entirely different, which we won’t go into here). You can put a hashtag (#) in
front of any word in a tweet to create a searchable term, and in turn you can
use the search icon (the magnifying glass), to search for what others are
saying about a topic that interests you, say #gardening or #publishing. Your
search results will show you which hashtags are most popular; for instance,
#gardenchat is more popular than #gardening, and #amwriting is more popular
than #writing. When you read a post you like, tap the heart. Twitter is all
about sharing, so when you read a post you want to share, you can retweet (RT) it
by clicking the icon with arrows. Everything you tweet and retweet will show up
in your feed, which others will see if they look at your Twitter page. To send
a direct message (DM) to someone, start the tweet with his or her handle (@).
When you mention someone (MT) anyplace but at the beginning of a tweet (or with
a period in front of the @ at the beginning – that’s a sneaky what to share
what otherwise appears to be private), everyone will see.
Use
lists: If you learn only one thing about Twitter, let it be
this: disregard your feed. Instead, make private topical lists based on your
interests, and only include in those lists people whose tweets you really want
to see. To make a list, go to settings (the gear icon) and click on lists.
Create your lists and then edit, manage members. Add and subtract from your
lists as you like; as long as you remember to make the list private, no one
will know.
Post
only value-added information: Posts are for sharing
information and thoughts that will actually interest people. Include links to
relevant sites and articles. Add photos for visual interest. If you want to
chat with a group, agree on a hashtag and include it in your posts.
If
you like to post regularly, use a free app to schedule your posts:
I use both Hootsuite and Buffer, each for a different handle.
Author of
seventeen books published by six different presses, Deb Vanasse teaches
on topics related to writing and publishing. She also edits and coaches writers
of fiction and nonfiction. After thirty-six years in Alaska, she now lives on
the north coast of Oregon. For more social media tips, see this popular
post.
Labels:
social media,
twitter
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
When—and How—Should You Publish?
from http://2-infinity-and-beyondxx.tumblr.com/ |
A short story by a relatively unknown
author gets top billing with a major urban news outlet. Sounds like fantasy,
right?
Last week, KGW
Portland, opened 6 pm news with an author reading from his recently
published speculative fiction, an unconventional short story set in the moments
following a big Cascadia earthquake.
Disasters—even fictional ones—tend to
pique interest, and people in Portland are understandably interested in a
seismic event that could potentially destroy their city, but there’s more
behind how this particular story got noticed. Author Adam Rothstein opted to
publish “Five Minutes” on Motherboard, an online magazine and video channel. The
first of a five-part series, the story opens on a page featuring an image that
undulates the way the land does during a major quake, an effect you can’t achieve
in traditional print or even in e-book format.
For the IBPA Independent,
I’m working on an article called “Updates from the Digital Frontier.” As I
interview publishing experts, it’s clear that much conventional thinking about
when and how to publish needs to be refreshed.
When the meteoric rise in e-book sales
slowed, sighs of relief sounded from many corners of the industry. Revolution
over, frontier closed. We could all go back to business as usual.
According to digital publishing experts, nothing
could be further from the truth. When pondering how to publish, these experts
say, we should be thinking beyond the traditional book, either print or
digital. We should be thinking beyond containers. We should be thinking instead
about purpose and audience, and then about seeking the best means of reaching these,
regardless of how unconventional. Rothstein, it seems, did exactly that.
What Marshall McLuhan
asserted decades ago—that the medium is the message—applies now more than
ever. But even as options expand, certain aspects of when to publish—and how—remain
evergreen. The ability to view your work with a certain degree of objectivity
is one indicator that you’re ready to think about publishing. Another is that
you have a good understanding of your audience and purpose, allowing you to
assess which formats and approaches to publishing will be most appropriate for
your project.
Long ago, we used to say that when you could
envision your book on a shelf, you might be ready to pursue publication. These
days, that visioning might not involve a shelf at all. Instead, the best way to
reach your audience and achieve your purpose might be via an app or an enhanced
website. It might even be a short story that turns up on the evening news.
For
authors who want to know more about their publishing options and how they can
know when their projects are ready, Deb has written What
Every Author Should Know and Write
Your Best Book. She hasn’t yet figured out how to get these projects top
billing on the 6 o’clock news, but she’s working on it.
Labels:
e-books,
publishing
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Author Success: The E-Newsletter
Last
week, I wrote about how successful
authors handle website development and maintenance. This week, I’m
following up with tips about the e-newsletter.
Authors
don’t have to have newsletters—or websites, for that matter. The only thing
authors absolutely have to have is a book. But if you want readers—well, there’s
the rub.
An
e-newsletter does for your fans what a Facebook post does for your friends—it
lets them know what’s happening with you that’s of interest and value to them.
Social media is great for sharing news, but you have no control over which of
your friends or followers will actually see your posts. In contrast,
e-newsletters arrive via the inbox of each of your fans. If the news isn’t of
value or interest, those folks will let you know by unsubscribing, a feature
that by law must be included in every e-newsletter (and for that matter, in
every promotional email that’s sent to a group).
Among
the best practices for e-newsletters:
Professional
platform:
When you create and send your e-newsletters via a platform such as MailChimp or
Constant Contact, you’ll minimize design time and maximize the benefits.
Analytics embedded in the platform will help you tweak your campaigns, and your
lists will be automatically culled of unsubscribers.
Sign-ups: By law, you must
tell subscribers why they’re receiving the e-newsletter. The best reason is
that they’ve asked to receive it, by signing up at an author event or on your
website. The next best is that they’ve indicated an interest in your work. Don’t
inflate your list by adding every person on your contact list. Keep in mind
that the ripple effect from a negative impression is ten times greater than
from a positive interaction. And don’t require a sign-up in order for someone
to access your website. That’s bad form, plain and simple. A sign-up tied to a
free offer for something of value works only if the content of the free offer
is closely tied to the sort of information you’ll be providing in the
e-newsletter.
Content: All of us are
drowning in information, so make so yours is relevant to your reader. The key
is to make sure it’s value-added—that the recipient actually benefits in
multiple ways from opening and reading your e-news. Less is more. Embed links
(to your website, preferably) for those who want to read more. And while social
proof is great, your fans will quickly tire if your “news” is just bragging.
Frequency: In general, recipients
don’t care whether your newsletter arrives on a particular day of the week or
month, or even whether you send one each week or each month. The exception: if
you’re reaching a particular audience with particular information that might
otherwise be posted in a blog—in which case, you’re better off just offering an
RSS feed option on your blog. A big reason for sending a newsletter is to
remind your fans that you’re out there doing what you love—writing books that
they’ll love. If your newsletter’s hitting the mark, you’ll receive personal correspondence
from a few of your fans each time it goes out.
Author of seventeen books published by six
different presses, Deb
Vanasse teaches on
topics related to writing and publishing. She also edits and coaches writers of
fiction and nonfiction. After thirty-six years in Alaska, she now lives on the
north coast of Oregon.
Labels:
e-newsletters
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