Showing posts with label pub rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pub rants. Show all posts

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Courage and the Writer....

How does a writer find the courage to keep going? 

That is the theme for this weeks post. Over the last week I have been thinking about the highs and lows of writing.

The lows. 
You look at some books that have been published and wonder how they got picked up and then you hear that the writer thinks ‘the work is wonderful and writing is easy and they’re going to publish another one of my stories.’ Meanwhile you struggle away researching, crafting strong plots and sentences, working hard on dialogue, submitting carefully, waiting for nine months... only to get a rejection.

The highs.
When the writing is flowing, the characters are real inside your head and you are just the medium to make them live. Your enthusiasm is high. Ideas are being bounced around your brain. Your writing buddies are just as inspired and the world is a sunny place.

The most successful authors I know summon up enormous courage and fortitude when they begin to plow through the long process of writing and promoting a new book. It amazes me how they do it but as a developmental editor working closely with writers for more than 40 years, I’ve learned what helps sustain such a Herculean effort.
Alan shares 11 tips to sustain the writer.
Tania Roxborogh shared a fabulous video with Elizabeth Gilbert the author of Eat Pray Love talking about the courage to write another book after Eat Pray Love was such a run away success. She talks about genius and how in ancient times it was seen as an external force but in recent times genius has become internalised and so we suffer.
Over On the Other Side of the manuscript, Agent Nathan Bransford has a series on his popular blog about being an agent for a day. He is stretching the day out to a week.
On Thursday we discussed the query process and whether or not queries adequately reflect a underlying work's quality. Can someone really make an assessment of a book project based on a query? Really really? Let's test it out.
Nathan solicited one days worth of queries from his readers. 150 responses. He used a random aggregator and selected five query letters which he put up on his blog. The next day he posted the pages that went with the queries. Each day the readers are asked to vote which one they would select. This is an interesting exercise and gives you a feel for what makes a query stand out. (its still going so check in to see what makes the cut.)
Continuing on the other side. James Bridle of Publishing Perspectives has a thought provoking post on Publishers and How they can learn fearlessness.
In the Penguincubator we see several desires converge: affordable books, non-traditional distribution, awareness of context, and a quiet radicalism. And it’s not a huge leap of the imagination to see how these apply now. I see the same bored gaze on the bus and tube today, as people reflexively flip open their phones and start poking at email or casual games, as Allen Lane saw on the platform at Exeter in 1933. And slowly — oh, so slowly — publishers are seeing that what we are presented with is not the death of everything we trust, value and hold dear, but a similar widening vista of opportunity to that which arrived with the mass-market paperback.
And back we go to the writer and the writing life.
As I was researching something else I came across the teaching author site. This is a group of six authors who teach writing in schools and workshops to children. As a large part of being a writer for children includes school visits, this is a great resource. These writers have put together a great blog which markets themselves and have extended it into the classroom to market their writing workshops.
I think in the future we will see more groups of writers banding together to market themselves collectively. As I am finding out in our collective author writing project - get a group of authors together and the energy ideas and enthusiasm of a shared project gives you wings.
This kind of networking among authors can only lead to a more positive environment for the writing community. I have noticed in my short time on Facebook that writers are using it very much like office people use their coffee break. Jumping in through the day to contribute jokes, advice and encouragement or shared anguish...the highs and lows of being a writer.
I have also noticed the blog comments have dried up because they are all commenting on Facebook...ah well.
Now in a link back to last weeks post...
Over On My Amplify Page
I have a link to,
An article about John Grisham’s first book for children.
Cory Doctorow on e-rights on your work.
An article about YA authors tweeting advice to their younger selves (what would you say to your 15yr old self?)
Do aliens exist-if so will they kill us? - advice from Stephen Hawking.
A very costly typo in a Penguin cookbook.
And a link to a mind meld cap the Pentagon want to use...
Finally a little video with some Pitching advice...because I was asked by an august writers association to give them advice on running a workshop on it...because of my involvement in the Spinning Gold conference last year...funny how doing such things spark ideas for other people... 




maureen

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Amplifying into the future...



Blogging demands commitment and so I trawl the web searching for interesting information for my weekly post. (well that's my excuse)

Often I find lots of interesting stuff which is not directly related to the topic of Author Marketing. So what to do...? I could make my blog articles longer....No (they are way to long already.)

 I could post more than once a week. No (because I have a computer addicted personality and I would never get any writing done if I gave myself any more permission ‘to research.’ )

Follow what I'm reading on Amplify

Amplify to the rescue. In my sidebar you will see the amplify button. This will take you to a cunning page that I have set up called CRAICERPLUS. 
On this page are comments and links to sites and articles of interest to writers and publishers. There are links to futurists Mike Shatzkin and Guy Gonzales who have both posted interesting blog posts on future change in publishing. 
On CRAICERPLUS you can comment on what you’re reading back to me if you like.

So what made it to the Blog today.

Bologna, ah Bologna...Oh don’t I wish I was there....however Agent Kristin of the very popular Pub Rants blog is and she is letting her readers know about the latest trends there. Midgrade is making a comeback...yippee coz I love midgrade and that’s what I write. And werewolves and vampires are mostly over.

David Meerman Scott is writing about Brand Journalism...Companies need Journalists or Writers to mange the content of their online business. This cannot be left to IT departments. He has written an open letter to Journalists to tell them about the new opportunities he sees.

You don't need to compromise your integrity. You still tell stories. You still practice your craft. You still have followers who care about what you do. You still change people's lives.

The Huffington Post has a very popular post on the eleven most surprising banned books...Judy Blumes, Are You There God? is on it.  I can’t for the life of me think what is so bad about that book....

Justine Labalesteir has a great post on teenagers and reading...Yes they are and No don’t get worried...

But even if we could reach a consensus on good writing—so what if a teen is only reading books you consider appalling? Plenty of adults are doing ditto. The pleasures of bad books are many. The pleasures of reading a book your parents don’t want you to read are even greater.

Have a great Easter...
Maureen

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The changing face of publishing...



I’m squeezed for time....so I am going to give you a short blog post...(yay i hear you say..)

This week I have been mulling over the impact of the iPad and digital publishing on the publishing industry....We are in a state of change and authors...not to mention publishers and their staff are probably feeling like they are on a hillside covered with shale...one misstep and down they go.

So how can we feel our way through the shale?

I am reading interesting commentary, on the web about the publishing future...and I note that in the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts-Writers and Readers week, on at the moment here in Wellington, that some of the writers have commented on the future of e-books and that the industry panel on Publishing in the 21st Century has sold out for Friday.

Everybody wants to know what the future will look like.

Here are two voices with slightly different points of view on the future of publishing.

Mike Shatzkin of Idealog has a wide following and his blog post looks at the challenges and changes of this new world.

We are now seeing the early signs of what will soon be a tendency, then a trend, and then a stark reality: you just can’t sell as many copies of most books if you don’t have a proprietary position with a vertical audience.

Craig Mod has started a blog specifically in response to the iPad and the challenges of the new digital mode of publishing verses the old from a book design perspective. He has lots of pictures to illustrate a very comprehensive post on the future of the airport blockbuster.

I want to look at where printed books stand in respect to digital publishing, why we historically haven't read long-form text on screens and how the iPad is wedging itself in the middle of everything. In doing so I think we can find the line in the sand to define when content should be printed or digitized.

This is a conversation for books-makers, web-heads, content-creators, authors and designers. For people who love beautifully made things. And for the storytellers who are willing to take risks and want to consider the most appropriate shape and media for their yarns.

If you have no idea what the iPad is and what it will do- take a look at this video of the Penguin CEO taking an audience of industry professionals through the possibilities of content publishing using Spot and DK Human Body.




And finally another video....this one from Pub Rants Guest blogger Simone Elkeles and how she came to have a book trailer shot as a movie...for her second YA Book...the comments after the blog post echo my thoughts as well...there is still money to throw around...with a seven figure advance to a new teen author from Harper Teen last week.

(warning- a bit steamy...)







maureen

ps Cool links at Nathan Bransfords blog

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