Exciting change is afoot at Ask A New Author! Starting next month, we have a brand new panel of columnists to answer your writing and publishing questions at askanewauthor@bookdivas.com. Introducing, the new New Authors:
- In Ellen Meeropol's debut novel, House Arrest (Red Hen Press, Feb 2011), a pregnant young cult member under house arrest and a by-the-rules home care nurse confront prejudice and the consequences of political activism. Set in Western Massachusetts and mid-coast Maine.
- Scott Sparling's first novel, Wire to Wire, is a story of train-hopping, drug-dealing, glue-huffing, and love, with love being the most dangerous. The story is set in Northern Michigan in the late 1970s. Sparling was born in Michigan and lives in Portland, Oregon. Wire to Wire will be published by Tin House Books in June 2011.
- Nichole Bernier is a contributing editor at Conde Nast Traveler magazine and a member of the literary blog Beyond the Margins. Her first novel, THE UNFINISHED WORK OF ELIZABETH D, is about a woman who inherits the journals of a friend, and realizes she didn't know her friend nearly as well as she thought, including the truth about where she was going when she died. It will be published by Crown/Random House in early 2012. She lives with her husband and five children west of Boston.
For Susanna's, Miriam's and Randy's final column, they decided to get to know the new columnists by answering their writing or publishing questions.
Ellen Meeropol asks: I've started getting reviews and letters from readers. I can't imagine not caring about them. Any advice about how to take what's useful from negative critical reactions without being devastated?
Susanna says: By far the most surprising thing about publishing, for me, has been the criticism -- both positive and negative -- and how I've responded to it. One thing I was told before the book came out, which I found to be true, is that by the time the book is in print, you've pretty much heard everything you're going to hear. In manuscript form, I had a father-in-law who hated the book, readers who loved it, rejections from agents and editor who told me exactly why they weren't taking it on, and accolades from the agents and editors who wanted it.
The successive months proved my friend's point: I'd already heard pretty much everything there was to hear.
People won't write you personally to tell you they hated your book. You'll have to find that for yourself. My advice is not to Google yourself, but I think whether you do has everything to do with disposition, so do what you will. Some sources, as you know, are more respectable than others -- maybe it's not classy to say it, but if you go seeking everything that's every been said on the Internet about your book, you'll need to be able to distinguish, at least quietly and for yourself, the worthy from the unworthy.
Though print reviews -- in newspapers and magazines -- will be mostly kind, there will likely be people out there who hate your book, and for the most part they will publish their hatred on Goodreads, Amazon, and their personal blogs. And they will be vicious in explaining why.
My old teacher Chris Offutt says that if you believe the good you have to believe the bad. I don't agree. I think you can revel in the good and think the bad is basically nonsense that has nothing to do with your work.
Because here's the thing: No author has ever assumed that everyone in the whole wide world will like his or her book. When you read that some blogger or insurance salesman or unpublished writer says that s/he doesn't know why s/he even picked up your book in the first place, you will probably think, “I don't know why you did, either. It's not for you.” And then you will forget about the whole thing, completely.
Because who do you let into your head when you're writing #2 and #3? It's a cramped space up there in your writing brain. Maybe you want your spouse, your agent, and a friend. Is there room, really, for an anonymous blogger who may or may not have compared your work to a tampon ad?
I digress.
Many, many people will write you personally and tell you that they couldn't put your novel down, related so closely to the story that they've bought copies for their best friends, and cried through the last half of the book. And you will think, “Now you and my book are a match made in heaven.”
(Small piece of practical advice here: Ask these people to publish reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. It might feel icky, but you'll wish you did when some nutjob gives you a one-star review and drags your whole average down.)Because it's not really about criticism at all -- it's about matching. Your book will find its readers. Unfortunately, it will also find itself in unappreciative hands along the way. (It seems like usually these detractors receive free copies of your book somehow -- so you're left without even the balm of the sale to heal your wound.)
So is there anything to be learned from the haters? In my opinion, no. You don’t love everything you've ever read. Hell, I recently read a new novel by an author whose work I usually adore -- and I hated it. It wasn't meant for me.
Publishing isn't for the thin-skinned. I knew that before -- theoretically -- but now I know it in my soul. I asked to be judged when I published a book.
So when I got an ugly review of my book in the free local weekly here in my hometown (which is exactly like getting an ugly review from one's favorite hippie uncle, by the way!) instead driving to the reviewer's [undoubtedly poorly decorated] house and smacking his [undoubtedly stupid] face and examining his [undoubtedly lacking] credentials, I reminded myself that although it doesn't feel like it, this is my prize. This is what I get for publishing a book. (And what did he get for writing a review for a free weekly? A haircut coupon? A restaurant gift certificate? Isn’t a nasty review worth it, especially when balanced against all the great reviews?)You wrote a book, and it’s being published. What other feedback could you possibly need?
Now, over the course of the next six months, repeat this to yourself no fewer than twenty times a day.
Scott Sparling asks: At what point did your focus start to shift from your first book to your new work? How hard was that?
Miriam says: Ahhh, the big question. For the many, many years that I wrote before being published, I prided myself on my ability to wear blinders-blinders to the world of publishing, blinders to the eventual fate of my work, blinders to the fame, fortune or lack thereof that eventually awaited me. I dug in daily and simply wrote.
But once I finally sold a book, oh what a heady experience it was! A book advance! A publishing house! An editor! A cover image! Blurbs! Jacket copy! Reviews! Book tour!
By the time the dust settled, my blinders were obliterated. To try to unknow all the ins and outs of the strange, wonderful, disappointing, exhilarating world of publishing, well that’s quite a bell to unring.
So it was tough to shift focus from Googling myself and checking my Goodreads page and my Amazon sales rank to actually getting back to the work of writing a book. Another book. Which raises the secondary issue to the distraction of publishing. I really loved The Local News. I loved my narrator. I loved the story. There is, between the end of any one project and the start of another, a genuine mourning period for me. This was only heightened by the fact that I had been through this super intense exhilarating experience with this book that I loved. We were bonded and fused.
But I tried to move on. The first summer after I'd sold the book, just after I'd finished revision on the final manuscript and months before it was published, I decided I would live off my book advance for three months and write my next book or at least get a good start on it.. I had big, big plans. This would be nothing like The Local News. I would blow publishers, critics and readers away with how different my second book was from my first-multiple third person narrators, a twisted love story, a dramatic car crash at the center of it.
I wrote and I wrote.
And the draft was decidedly horrible. For a number of reasons.
One, I'd just finished The Local News. I usually need a good three to six months between projects. Two, the new book idea was lifeless and contrived. I was preoccupied suddenly by the notion of writing to some imaginary audience - whom I desperately wanted to impress - rather than paying attention to my own ideas or inspiration. Three, I did not do well under the sudden pressure of living off my book advance. In all my adult life, I’d never taken time off from my day job like this. I thought it’d be a fantasy summer of languor and mojitos and writing and more languor and more mojitos. Instead, I became hyper aware with every moment of procrastination or every session of uninspired writing that I was wasting my advance.
So I scrapped that draft. And for weeks - and then months - I just played with my writing. Every day I opened a new document and gave myself an hour to take myself through writing exercises, my favorite being stealing a line from a random page of a book I love and using that as the first line of a freewrite. I opened myself back up to the process of having no pressure and of having no intention of showing my work to the world. I was regrowing my blinders.
And then one day I woke from a scrappy snippet of a dream that involved two twin boys. And I began to write. And I fell in love with the character and with the strange, elusive story. And I wrote and I wrote. And just this past December, more than two years after I woke from that dream, I finished a 401-page draft of my next novel, Knock Knock.
How hard was the process? Harder than writing my first book, that's for sure. But less hard than childbirth (although childbirth only took me three and a half hours, so I may have to rethink that answer).
Nichole Bernier asks: Did you do a book trailer, and what do you think it achieved, in relation to the work you spent making it?
Randy says: I did make a book trailer and it was worth it to me—of course the amount of money I spend was almost nil.
I can't measure the worth—but I think it's like a website at this point in as much as publishers and readers seem to expect it. Also, I think a well made trailer will provide a one-minute visual that can excite the reader to look at your book. It’s like well-written copy for a book jacket.
Book trailers seem to have leapt into being. I might have skipped making one, as even in the year since my book launched they've taken off so much, if an amazing high school fan-turned-friend hadn't surprised me with a trailer she made. I don’t use hers as my 'official' trailer (though it's on YouTube along with mine) but it pushed me over the edge in my decision to make one. She showed me how much you can do with just a small amount of text and graphics and I used her idea as my template.
I watched a multitude of trailers and found the 'professionally produced' ones were not necessarily better than the others. In fact, some of the best were 'homemade'—one in particular, was Tish Cohen's for her book Little Black Lies, which was made by her high school son. The ones I found most sleep-inducing were
1) Talking heads—authors droning on in front of a camera, "me, me, me."
2) Anything over perhaps two minutes—I believe under a minute is ideal,
3) Rolling credits of endorsements.
The ones that worked the best were:
Funny.
Dramatic.Left the viewer wanting to know "what happens?"
Short.Punchy.Graphic.
When making a trailer, each time you don’t think you can cut one more bit—you probably can. Be brutal.The only money I spent on my trailer was the images I bought from Getty. I wrote the copy (with inspiration from my high school friend.) My sister and I pored over images online. My sister’s friend wrote a short piece of music (you can also buy music online) and then my sister produced it all on her Mac.
- Remember, send all those burning writing and publishing questions to our NEW New Authors at askanewauthor@bookdivas.com.
