Today it is my pleasure to introduce my guest, Patricia Fry, to you. Patricia is a writer, editorial consultant, and speaker. With over four decades of writing behind, Patricia has written many articles as well as 45 books. Her experience in publishing and editing makes her an ideal consultant for projects of many kinds. More about Patricia in her bio below. Join me in welcoming Patricia Fry to the blog.
Before putting pen to paper, I always recommend that hopeful authors study the publishing industry before getting involved in this highly competitive business. Most new authors consider publishing an extension of their writing—something they can ease into once the writing is done. But while writing is a craft, publishing is a serious, complex business. Before ever entering into it, an author needs to know something about his or her publishing options, the possible ramifications of their choices and their responsibility as a published author. Nearly 78% of all authors fail—that is, they sell fewer than 100 books total. And the two main reasons are, they do not fully understand their publishing options and, either by choice or ignorance, they do not put enough effort into promoting their books.
By getting your stories published, you are creating a following – by landing an article writing assignment in appropriate magazines and newsletters you will get attention from your target audience. This is building the authors’ Continue reading →
My guest today is Kay Ellington, co-author with Barbara Brannon of The Paragraph Ranch. Kay is sharing lessons the two writers learned while navigating the process of platform building, writing their book, publishing it, and now using social media to market their début novel. Please join me in welcoming Kay to the blog!
WIP seems to be the acronym du jour for authors. Work in Progress. That’s a pretty apt way of describing the massive undertaking my co-author, Barbara Brannon, and I are attempting— to capitalize on social media to market our debut novel, The Paragraph Ranch (Seattle: Booktrope Editions, 2014). If we’re successful, watch for the sequel next year.
For authors, our primary job—besides writing the book—is to build the platform, the audience, the fan base, if you will. But how do we do it? Here’s our WIP and the thinking behind it.
1. Rule number one, there’s only so much you can say about The Book. We knew that going in, so we picked topics and themes in our novel—creative writing, care-giving, and family—that would lend themselves to social media marketing.
We’re building our social media presence based on loyalty. At the top is email marketing. Your newsletter is social media, even if it doesn’t have a cute icon that you can hotlink. Why do you need it? To connect with your proven followers when you have something new they want to hear—and your email provider won’t let you mass-mail to a large list. Followers who sign up for your email newsletter have a genuine interest in you and your work. We’ve both worked in publishing for decades—me in newspapers and Barbara in book publishing—and through the years we’ve collected emails as though they were rare, precious truffles and nourished those contacts, so that when the time came to launch our author newsletter we wouldn’t be dinged with spam reports.
We mailed our first issue earlier this month to 1,264 people. Our 29% open rate was pretty high by industry standards, and we had only a few opt-outs. We hope that following this intro letter, we’ll fine-tune topics to be of interest to our followers. There are many well-known solutions for email newsletters. We’ve done Constant Contact and MailChimp; we like MadMimi. It’s fun and not so technically challenging.
2. After the newsletter Facebook is next on the loyalty scale. We’re assuming that if you’re reading this post, you’re savvy enough to have your own personal Facebook page and a separate Facebook author page. The latter should avoid photos of your poodles and grandchildren, unless, of course, your book is about poodles and grandchildren. And to minimize Unlikes, make sure only 1 in 4 of your posts relates to The Book. To grow your community of loyal followers, post about the general interests contained in the book and the people you wrote the book for.
We wrote The Paragraph Ranch for writers, people who love Texas, caregivers, farmers and ranchers, and women who love romance, and we’ll post on those topics. We started at square one in May, kind of late in the game for a September pub date, but right now we’re closing in on 500 Likes. When we start having book events later this month, we think we can rachet those up.
3. Twitter. We’ve followed everyone and their dog, it seems, on Twitter. How did we choose? We started with author, bookseller, and local friends we already knew. And then we spied on their profiles and followed the influential authors, publishers, bloggers, and reviewers they knew. If we had read and genuinely enjoyed a book, we tweeted praise. If someone we didn’t yet know followed us, we tweeted thanks. And we retweet interesting bits on writing and authors we know, and interests we share.. We’ve hitched our tweets to the hashtag wagons of similar topics as well. Within the first week we expect to crack the three-digit mark. The 1-to-4 posting ratio for The Book–to–everything else includes Twitter.
4. Pinterest. Best practices say that authors should create five bulletin boards on Pinterest. We’ve been at it for about ten days, and we have six bulletin boards that range from social media for writers to Dr. Dee’s Rules for Writers, drawn from our own book. We expect followers to number in the hundreds by the two-week mark.
5. Instagram. We’ve taken Instagram pics of the book and we’ll use it to post photos at our signings and events. We were tickled pink when one of the 51 people following us asked us to provide a link to buy the book, which we promptly did!
6. Google+ We’ve used Google+ to promote our full schedule of book-signing events this fall, and we’ve tagged content in the book, and linked to how to buy information. We’ve exceeded 200 people in our circles.
7. We started this posting by talking about a long-form tool, and we’ll wrap up with another. Our blog is called The Working Writer (a nod to the fictional writing guide in our novel). We recognize that writers follow many paths to publishing. We’re working to build a community of writers helping one another with best practices to achieve the greatest success possible from their words—whether through sales or self-fulfillment.
Kay Ellington, co-author of The Paragraph Ranch, has spent three decades working from coast to coast in newspapers for companies such as Gannett and the New York Times Regional Group. She consults with clients on traditional and new media at MediaGarden.
Today my guest is David W. Berner, author of Any Road Will Take You There: A Journey of Fathers and Sons, recipient of a Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association. As part of his WOW! Women on Writing blog tour, David shares his thoughts on how to be true to both the living and the dead when writing memoir. Join us in the comment section to share your own thoughts on this topic.
Welcome, David!
Author David W. Berner
There’s an exchange in my memoir Any Road Will Take You There between my father and me as we sit at my kitchen table late one night. My young child, my first, and their mother are in bed. The two of us are alone drinking bottles of beer and talking about my new role, fatherhood. It’s a key scene in the book. Still, no one else but the two of us could have remembered that conversation.
I wrote about that moment after my father had died. So, I had to recall a decade old dialogue the best I could and rely on only my shaky memory. I didn’t expect to recall our exact conversation, of course, and honestly didn’t need to, but I was determined to write about that night in the truest, most authentic way. I wanted to capture the essence of that evening. Of course I had only my own recollections. But is that fair? Doesn’t Dad have a say here? And how could he have a say now?
There is no other way to a write a personal story than to tell it like it is. But what if you can’t run the details by someone, check the facts? First of all, you are not writing journalism, but you do want to recreate the spirit of the truth. Be honest with your story, honest with what you remember, and even if others have passed on and you can’t verify, try to step away to consider other perspectives. I truly believe the reader will know when you are not being honest with yourself, and ultimately will sense when you are not being honest or mindful of how another may have remembered that moment, incident, or conversation.
And what about the living?
In my first memoir, Accidental Lessons, there are several scenes with my ex-wife. First, I must tell you, the two of us are good friends. It is far from the stereotypical friction laden relationship of former spouses. Despite this, my publisher insisted on signed releases from everyone mentioned in the book. When I presented the release to my former wife, this is what she said: I’ll agree with one condition. When it’s made into a movie, Susan Sarandon plays me.
Just for the record, no movie deal yet and nothing in writing from Susan.
In general, I believed everything I wrote about my ex-wife was quite flattering. It wasn’t that I necessarily set out to write all great things about her, it’s just that what was needed for the narrative, her part of it, did not need to be about the times of our lives that were entangled in disagreement. So, when she read the manuscript, she had little problem with any of it. Was it true? Yes. I needed to reveal only what was needed.
But what do you do when someone you write about is absolutely appalled by what you plan to publish or is outright angry about your words? Maybe their version of the same incident is much different in their eyes, and this creates serious tension, risking the relationship with that individual.
If possible, let all those who are main subjects in the story read your manuscript. Prepare them for what you have written; let them know it may not be easy to read and that you are writing about difficult matters. Then, allow them to tell you exactly what they think, to point out errors, minor or major, and permit them to suggest changes. And if possible, ask them to write down their version of the scene or incident in question. Our truths are completely our own. They are no one else’s, and you must be true to your story. But permitting input from others can help you understand their truth, and some version of their story might actually be very good material to add to a redraft. It could, and many times will make your story better.
In the end, the narrative is your responsibility and you alone should decide whether or not to include others’ suggestions, thoughts, or versions. In the end, no matter what, the story you have written is yours. Keep it yours.
Get to Know David Berner:
David W. Berner–the award winning author of Accidental Lessons and Any Road Will Take You There–was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he began his work as a broadcast journalist and writer. He moved to Chicago to work as a radio reporter and news anchor for CBS Radio and later pursue a career as a writer and educator. His book Accidental Lessons is about his year teaching in one of the Chicago area’s most troubled school districts. The book won the Golden Dragonfly Grand Prize for Literature and has been called a “beautiful, elegantly written book” by award-winning author Thomas E. Kennedy, and “a terrific memoir” by Rick Kogan (Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio). Any Road Will Take You There is the author’s story of a 5000-mile road trip with his sons and the revelations of fatherhood. The memoir has been called “heartwarming and heartbreaking” and “a five-star wonderful read.”
Any Road Will Take You There: A Journey of Fathers and SonsAny Road Will Take You There: A Journey of Fathers and Sons is a heartwarming and heartbreaking story told with humor and grace, revealing the generational struggles and triumphs of being a dad, and the beautiful but imperfect ties that connect all of us.
Recipient of a Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, Any Road Will Take You There is honest, unflinching, and tender.
In the tradition of the Great American Memoir, a middle-age father takes the reader on a five-thousand-mile road trip–the one he always wished he’d taken as a young man. Recently divorced and uncertain of the future, he rereads the iconic road story–Jack Kerouac’s On the Road–and along with his two sons and his best friend, heads for the highway to rekindle his spirit.
However, a family secret turns the cross-country journey into an unexpected examination of his role as a father, and compels him to look to the past and the fathers who came before him to find contentment and clarity, and celebrate the struggles and triumphs of being a dad.
Paperback: 242 Pages Genre: Memoir Publisher: Dream of Things (September 17, 2014) ASIN: B00NVBMDZ0 / ISBN-10: 0988439093 / ISBN-13: 978-0988439092
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Joan Rough is an artist, poet, and writer of nonfiction. Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, and are included in the anthology, Some Say Tomato, by Mariflo Stephens. Her first book, AUSTRALIAN LOCKER HOOKING: A New Approach to a Traditional Craft, was published in 1980. She is currently at work on her upcoming memoir, ME, MYSELF AND MOM, A Journey Through Love, Hate, and Healing.
You can follow Joan’s blog on her website at http://joanzrough.com and on these social media networks: Twitter: https:// twitter.com/JoanZRough Facebook: Personal page: www.facebook.com/joanz.rough Author page: www.facebook.com/JoanZRough.Author
Please join me in welcoming Joan!
I’m getting close to finishing up what I hope is one of the last of the revisions of my memoir, ME, MYSELF, AND MOM, A Journey Through Love, Hate, and Healing. Some of the work on this project has been easy. Some of it has been very hard. The toughest part, for sure, was making myself sit down and revisit the memories and places that I wanted to hide away forever in a dark closet whose door I never unlocked. But struggling with recovery from PTSD and a bout with endometrial cancer, I knew I needed to clean up my act if I was ever going to be ready to pass onto the next level of existence, feeling good about myself, and the legacy I hoped to leave behind.
I’d watched both of my parents die without making peace with themselves or with those around them. They were difficult, painful deaths that I believe could have been less emotionally charged had they taken the time to examine the baggage they’d carried around with them all of their lives.
I did not want to leave this world the same way they did. I sat myself down and had a long talk with myself about what I did want. On the list were things like peace, clarity, authenticity, and the crazy idea of writing a memoir about the most difficult period of my life. That last item arrived with clanging bells, shrill whistles, and choral music performed by an invisible choir of characters, along with approval from my remaining family members and friends who wanted to know my story.
Today please welcome my guest, Jerry Waxler, author of Memoir Revolution and several other books. Jerry shares with us the relationship between counseling and memoir writing. Jerry, thank you for being here today and helping lift the fog on the question posed. And thank you to WOW! Women on Writing for hosting Jerry’s blog tour.
Welcome, Jerry!
This is a terrific question, because it relates directly to the reason I wrote Memoir Revolution. I think that memoir writing is one of the most exciting developments in psychology in the last 100 years. And, unlike other systems, it wasn’t invented by a genius or by a team of researchers. Instead, the use of memoir writing as a form of healing was developed by a groundswell of individuals intent on finding the stories of their lives. Here’s how I came to this understanding.
When I had outgrown childhood and realized I was going to need to become an adult, in addition to all the usual challenges of picking a career and finding a relationship, I had many emotional problems. I was depressed, confused about how to relate to people, what I really wanted to do and so on.
After I settled into steady employment, I started on a long-term commitment to talk therapy. These weekly discussions helped me put in words the things that had been bothering me. Ten years into this process, I switched to a different therapist and I had to introduce myself all over again. Naturally, I attempted to reconstruct the bits and pieces I had been explaining for years. After the second or third session, my new therapist said, “Have you ever put all that on a timeline?” I couldn’t grasp what she was saying. Not only had I never put the events of my life on a timeline. This was the first time the notion even occurred to me.
“How would that work?” I asked.
She grabbed a piece of paper and drew a horizontal line. Underneath the line she listed a sequence of years, and said “write a few sentences about each major event and place your descriptions along this line.” The method was so simple. Why had I never thought of it?
So I went home and listed key bits of information, such as the year I went to college, the year I was in a riot, the year I moved to California to become a hippie. On paper, the sequence shifted from a collection of confusing memories to the skeleton of an interesting story. For the first time, I considered the possibility that with a little more work, I could turn that whole mess of memories into a sensible sequence.
Eventually, I went to graduate school and earned a Master’s degree in counseling psychology. By fifty-two, I was the one who sat and listened to clients, providing for them the same survival tool that my therapists had provided me. However, based on my experience, I wished I could find a way to help them collect the whole journey into a continuous narrative. With a chronological understanding, perhaps they would be able to feel more whole, just as I had done. But my education as a psychotherapist did not include such a method, and I had not yet come across the world of memoirs, so I forged ahead with hourly sessions.
Around that time, to increase my writing ability, I joined a writing group near my home in Bucks County Pennsylvania where aspiring writers could drop in anytime to talk with other writers, or to take classes. The reputation of the group grew, and people drove 50 and 100 miles to participate. This group experience introduced me to the fact that writing does not need to be isolated. When writers come together, magic happens. I realized that if I could teach writing workshops, I would be able to be around writers a lot more.
From this experience, I began to develop self-help workshops for writers. My notes for those workshops evolved over a period of years to the book I now call How to Become a Heroic Writer. To help writers become more courageous, I developed a technique I called “story of self” in which I explore ways to see yourself as a writer. I began to tap into this notion of “story of self” as a self-help tool, and realized the connection between the story we tell ourselves, and the way we see each other.
From the first time I took a memoir class, I was hooked on the potential for memoir writing as a way of healing. I recognized in memoirs that everything I had learned through my years of self-help, the wisdom I had gained through my own journey, even the experiences of spirituality and love, could be contained in a holistic story of myself.
By studying other people’s memoirs, teaching memoir writers, and continuing to develop my own story-of-self, I have come to appreciate the power of memoirs to provide a simple method for anyone to develop a keener, clearer understanding of their life experience, draw lessons, heal wounds, and eventually through effort, craft, and polish, share themselves with readers.
Meet Jerry Waxler:
JERRY WAXLER teaches memoir writing at Northampton Community College, Bethlehem, PA, online, and around the country. His Memory Writers Network blog offers hundreds of essays, reviews, and interviews about reading and writing memoirs. He is on the board of the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference and National Association of Memoir Writers and holds a BA in Physics and an MS in Counseling Psychology.
Memoir Revolution is Jerry Waxler’s beautifully written story as he integrates it with his deep and abiding knowledge and passion for story. In the 1960s, Jerry Waxler, along with millions of his peers, attempted to find truth by rebelling against everything. After a lifetime of learning about himself and the world, he now finds himself in the middle of another social revolution. In the twenty-first century, increasing numbers of us are searching for truth by finding our stories. In Memoir Revolution, Waxler shows how memoirs link us to the ancient, pervasive system of thought called The Story. By translating our lives into this form, we reveal the meaning and purpose that eludes us when we view ourselves through the lens of memory. And when we share these stories, we create mutual understanding, as well. By exploring the cultural roots of this literary trend, based on an extensive list of memoirs and other book, Waxler makes the Memoir Revolution seem like an inevitable answer to questions about our psychological, social and spiritual well-being.
Today I have the pleasure and honor of welcoming Anne Peterson, author of Broken: A Story of Abuse and Survival. Anne has graciously prepared a post recalling how she came to write Broken and what the process of that writing was like. As I prepared Anne’s post for publication, I was struck by many of her words and their combined power as an affirmation of the healing benefits found in writing. Please join me in welcoming Anne!
I knew it would be hard. I just didn’t realize how hard.
When I started writing my memoir Broken: A Story of Abuse and Survival, all sorts of challenges met me head on. You don’t write painful events without reliving them. And in my case, it was a full length movie.
Loss is hard
Loss has been a recurring theme in my life. I was actually introduced to loss when I was a little girl. Our neighbor called out for her son. Into the street he ran after his ball. He just never came back. All night long his mother wailed through open windows on that summer night.
But that wasn’t the only loss. They would come one after the other for years upon years.
Why write a book about loss? It’s what I’ve known.
Experiences are great teachers
We are products of the experiences that make up our lives.
We don’t have control over many things that happen to us. But we do have control over how we respond to them.
I found as I continued to pour my life into the pages of my book, I found healing. It’s not the first time I had shared these stories. For years, I’ve shared them to various groups of people. Highlighting how God taught me about his character through my pain. And what was the benefit? Apart from pain, I would never know God’s comfort. Continue reading →
