Staff Blog

Joyce Carol Oates on blogging

Ron Kovach — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:20:00 GMT

At her website, novelist Justine Musk passes along some comment from Joyce Carol Oates that may surprise you. She offers an account from a friend who was on a panel with Ms. Oates:

Someone in the audience asked the venerable Ms. Oates what she would do today, if she had to launch a writing career all over again.

She said

(drum roll please)

“I would blog.”

She said

(I am paraphrasing)

“I would blog before I wrote a book. I would create a voice that connects, and I would build an audience online, and then I would write a book in that voice.”

Someone from the audience asked, So you would consider self-publishing?

“Yes! Of course!” In today’s publishing climate, she added, publishers won’t do anything to promote you “ ... until you’re ... well ... until you’re me.” However you’re published, the job is the same: finding and developing your audience. Breaking free from anonymity.

Someone from the audience asked, So you would abandon traditional publishing?

“No. Why not take advantage, when you can, of what they do best? But first, I would create a voice that connects with people. I would blog.”

— Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

' … A world that can’t stop talking'

Ron Kovach — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:59:00 GMT

Calling all introverts, or half-introverts! (I’d guess one of those phrases accurately describes a majority of the thoughtful, book-wormish readers of The Writer, not to mention its contributors and editors.) Your bible has finally arrived, and it is perfectly titled Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.

Introverts of the world, unite! If you're tired of quiet substance and competence losing out to the cult of personality, this is the book for you. If you’re tired of the silliness and mistaken judgments foisted upon quiet, reflective people by extroverts, this is the book for you. If you’re tired of chatterboxes in general and their endless public cell-phone conversations in particular, this is the book for you. If you’re tired of self-centered people who don’t listen, this is the book for you. If you’re not a joiner and think group process in general is overrated, this is your book. If your idea of the perfect cruise is a ship called The Introverts’ Dream where every room has a private balcony and all of the souvenir T-shirts read “Leave Me Alone” or “No Talking; I’m Busy Processing,” this is the book for you.

OK, I’m kidding around. Seriously, though, Quiet is a very stimulating book. Quiet makes some noise. Here’s a little bit more about it, from author Cain:

“Before I became a writer, I practiced corporate law for seven years, representing clients like JP Morgan and General Electric, and then worked as a negotiations consultant, training all kinds of people, from hedge fund managers to TV producers to college students negotiating their first salaries. My clients have included Merrill Lynch, Shearman & Sterling, One Hundred Women in Hedge Funds, and many more. I went to Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

“From all this you might guess that I’m a hardcore, wonderfully self-confident, pound-the-table kind of person, when in fact I’m just the opposite. I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing, and cozy chats to group settings. I like to think before I speak (softly). I’ve never given a speech without being terrified first, though I’ve given many. And somehow I know that everything I’ve ever accomplished, in love and in work, I owe to these traits, annoying though they may sometimes be. I’ve explored this paradox in [the book].”

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

Writing help is on the way

Sarah C. Lange — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:38:00 GMT

If you are having trouble finishing a writing project—or getting one started—the May 2012 issue of The Writer magazine, on newsstands now, is an issue you won’t want to miss. In it, you’ll find articles that provide practical tips to help you get the book in your head onto the page. For example:

J.T. Bushnell, a fiction writer, teacher and contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review, discusses an alternative to the typical writing critiques that too often focus on problems in a piece. He and a fellow writer decided to provide only positive feedback to help each other get through the first drafts of their novels. “That doesn’t mean we lie to each other,” he explains. “It doesn’t mean we compliment flaws or inconsistencies or overwrought descriptions. It means that, for now, we ignore those things, instead searching for elements that perk our interest, elicit pangs of sympathy, provide sharp sensory experiences, make us laugh. We describe the developments we see in the characters, the conflicts, the themes. And every week we conclude by assuring each other we’re dying to find out what comes next, to which the writer usually responds, ‘So am I.’ ” You can find out more about their “positive workshops” in “Hitting his stride.”

Another strategy you may want to try is joining a “writing marathon,” such as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November or the summer version, Camp NaNoWriMo. In “Cross the finish line with a writing marathon,” Rochelle Melander, author of Write-A-Thon: Write Your Book in 26 Days (And Live to Tell About It), shares how creating a time frame for your project can help you reach your writing goal and offers specific advice for sticking with the challenge. Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants) and Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus) wrote their novels marathon-style. Maybe this tactic will work for you, too.

Finally, with his usual flair for words, Arthur Plotnik, author of The Elements of Expression, delivers meaty suggestions for overcoming writer’s block, as well as (dare we say) entertaining stories of famous writers who struggled themselves. “Sometimes when you finally hit bottom a survival resource kicks in—dramatically,” he writes. “For Carson McCullers, blocking on A Member of the Wedding at the Yaddo writer’s retreat, it was lying stomach-down on the ground and beating her fists on the manuscript and calling ‘Mother! Mother!’ Use no polite method,” he advises. Or, for a more dignified approach to getting out of a creative mess, read the rest of Arthur’s strategies in “You can conquer writer’s block.”

—Sarah C. Lange, associate editor

Biographer Robert Caro a force of nature

Ron Kovach — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:27:00 GMT

Chances are, serious fans of biography keep on eye on the writer who is one of the greatest practitioners in that genre, Robert Caro. The fourth volume of Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power, has just come out--38 years after he began work on volume one.

For Caro fans, two fine articles about him and his writing methods are now out and available online. First is Charles McGrath’s article in the April 12, 2012, issue of The New York Times Sunday Magazine. The magazine's cover headline was:

Robert Caro is a dinosaur…and thank God for that

The other article is Chris Jones’ Caro profile, titled “The Big Book,” in the May 2012 issue of Esquire.

Here’s a little flavor from McGrath’s piece:

“Caro is the last of the 19th-century biographers, the kind who believe that the life of a great or powerful man deserves not just a slim volume, or even a fat one, but a whole shelf full. He dresses every day in a jacket and tie and reports to a 22nd-floor office in a nondescript building near Columbus Circle [in New York City], where his neighbors are lawyers or investment firms. His office looks as if it belongs to the kind of C.P.A. who still uses ledgers and a hand-cranked adding machine. There are an old wooden desk, wooden file cabinets and a maroon leather couch that never gets sat on. Here Caro writes the old-fashioned way: in longhand, on large legal pads.”

I’ve been through the first volume of the LBJ epic and, like many Caro fans, will never forget his rendering of how electrification changed the lives of people in rural Texas. That section moved writer Stephan Harrigan to remark in The Texas Monthly in a 1990 profile of Caro, “He took … what should have been the most boring subject on earth—the advent of rural electrification—and turned it into a chapter called ‘The Sad Irons,’ which may be the most brilliant single passage of prose ever written about Texas.” (Caro, according to McGrath, spent several nights sleeping alone in a sleeping bag in Texas Hill Country to better understand rural isolation.)

Caro’s LBJ project is the ultimate in exhaustive, in-depth reporting, involving thousands of interviews; and perhaps, too, his attitude is the ultimate motivation for writers doing any type or length of biographical work. In carrying out some of his research at the Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, Caro has been the first writer to open some of the most revealing files there, McGrath says. “Over and over again,” he tells McGrath, “I’ve found crucial things that nobody knew about. There’s always original stuff if you look hard enough.”

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

Larry McMurtry’s talented son

Ron Kovach — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:10:00 GMT

When a friend asked if I wanted to hear James McMurtry perform at Shank Hall in Milwaukee last week, I figured what the heck. Being quite snug in my usual musical orbit of jazz/blues/R&B/classical, I thought the change would do me good, broaden my horizons a bit. It did.

Because James is the son of the famous Texas novelist Larry McMurtry and I knew nothing about him, I wondered whether he would be some average musical talent riding on daddy’s coattails. He’s nothing of the sort. He is a seriously good songwriter and a smoking-good acoustical guitarist. (That’s him at left.) Stephen King has called him “the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation.” And, while James' Dylanesque voice is the weakest part of his act, he makes it work, turns it into a style that serves his tunes well. Don’t know why, but the voice sounds better in person than it does on YouTube.

It was just James and his guitars, which included a rich 12-string, and it was a big sound, full of passion and rhythm. He paints word pictures in his songs just like his daddy does in novels. My friend, born and raised near the Kansas flatlands, has loved Jame McMurtry’s music for years because it speaks to him about the kinds of characters and landscape and incidents he grew up with. Here’s a little flavor of James’ lyrics, from the tune “Lights of Cheyenne”:

Look off down the highway

at the glittering lights

Like windshield glass

on the shoulder tonight

As the diesels come

grinding on up from the plains

All bunched up like pearls on a string

And I guess time don't mean nothin'

Not nothin' at all

And out on the horizon

the broken stars fall

Old broken stars they

fall down on the land

And get mixed together

with the lights of Cheyenne

James seems offbeat and terse like his father (at least as dad comes across in newspaper articles). My guess, though, is that if you approached him with a little caution and courtesy, he might turn out to be pretty friendly (and full of stories).

The day after the concert I looked up some interviews to learn more about him and wound up finding a new book to read. Interviewer William Michael Smith, for the Houston Press, asked James about his favorite Larry McMurtry novel. “Cheyenne is certainly a standout in his early work, but Duane's Depressed is still the one for me,” he said. “It's just about perfect. Dad said he knew right from the start that one was just going to work. He said it was like knowing you were going to hit a home run before you'd even stepped in the batter's box.”

I ran out and got Duane’s Depressed from the library and am now nearly done with it. It’s very enjoyable, both poignant and funny.

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

A basic skill every writer needs: sentence building

E Abbe — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:49:00 GMT

In addition to presenting “Top Ten Things to Know About Getting Published Today” at the San Francisco Writers Conference, I had the opportunity to visit other sessions by top-notch presenters, such as Constance Hale, author of Sin and Syntax, whose “Principles to Take your Prose Up a Notch” was a succinct, witty and inspiring reminder that no prose should go unpolished. Compelling stories, she said, begin with compelling sentences. Consider “every sentence a mini-narrative.” So build your story on the strongest foundation with concrete nouns and active verbs. She offers more good stuff on her blog. Hale’s new book Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, will be out from W.W. Norton in the fall. In the meantime, watch for her posts in the "Draft" series of the New York Times Opinionator blog.

-- Elfrieda Abbe, senior contributing editor at The Writer
@literaryworker

Fun in the sun

Ron Kovach — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:41:00 GMT

At The Writer we just put the June issue to bed, and the ridiculously balmy (by Wisconsin standards) March weather made it easy for us to connect with one of the articles: a roundup of “25 great beach reads” for the summer.

We deliberately went after a good variety of contributors to this article and I think you’ll find some new titles for your list, regardless of your reading taste. The mix includes suspense novels (but of course), good chick lit, memoir, biography and actors’ autobiographies.

Chipping in with suggestions were Stephanie Dickison, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Jeff Ayers and Jack Brady, as well as my magazine colleagues Sarah Lange and Martha Lundin and yours truly.

Look for the June issue in early May. Other highlights in that issue include writing insights from four top fiction writers: Pat Conroy, Maeve Binchy, John Jakes and T.C. Boyle. Why not learn from some of the best?

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

Can books change the world?

E Abbe — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:24:00 GMT

Michael Larsen, who with Elizabeth Pomada directs the San Francisco Writers Conference, is a great believer in using writing as a tool for change. At this year’s conference he moderated the inspiring panel discussion “Being a Change Agent: Writing for a Better World.” Larsen’s passionate belief that books can change the world might be linked to San Francisco’s creative roots. In a San Francisco Examiner essay written in 1977, he had this to say about what then was a visionary book coming out of the city, the Whole Earth Catalog:

“…the vision of the “Whole Earth Catalog” was do-it-yourself reliance, small-scale living, the unity of nature, and our responsibility for Spaceship Earth. This lifestyle replaces:

* the artificial with the natural
* consumption with simplicity
* possessions with experience
* economic growth with personal growth
* the desire for more with the need for enough”

Sound familiar? These ideas planted the seeds of sustainable agriculture, going Green, the DIY movement and buying locally grown food.

The panelists consisted of publishers who also believe that books can be part of change: Georgia Hughes of New World Library, Jan Johnson of Red Wheel, and Jeevan Sivasubramanium of Berrett-Koehler. It’s one thing to write a book you think will change the world, another to get it published. Without getting too caught up in the idealistic, Sivasubramanium offered some practical advice.

“Many people have great ideas for nonfiction books that help change the world politically or socially that help individuals grow in spirit and purpose.” The question to ask is: Does the world need this book? He offered seven questions you to ask yourself when formulating a book proposal.

What about you: Do you think writers can bring about change? What books have in some way changed your life?

-- Elfrieda Abbe, senior contributing editor at The Writer

3 tips for conference newbies

Sarah C. Lange — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 20:04:00 GMT

Last week senior editor Ron Kovach and I (pictured above) headed to Chicago for the annual AWP conference. Thanks to everyone, especially our readers and contributors, who stopped by The Writer’s booth to say hello.

Maybe you didn’t make it to AWP this year, but you’ve chosen another conference that’s right for you. How can you make the experience worth your time?

Prepare. Review the conference schedule before you get there to plan out what sessions you want to attend. This is particularly helpful if you’re going to a conference such as AWP or ASJA, where you don’t need to register for a lot of the individual events ahead of time. Bring business cards and practice your elevator pitch.

Schedule fun events and time for yourself. A large conference like AWP can be overwhelming, so don’t make your whole day about networking and information gathering. Attend readings or check out a jazz club (Thanks, Ron!) during the evening. Don’t feel pressured to make it a late night, though. If your body is telling you to take it easy, relax in your room with a good book and get in a full night of sleep. You’ll feel much better the next morning facing another full day of activities and/or travel.

Follow up. If you introduced yourself to an editor at a pitch session—or during an informal encounter—hoping to land an assignment, be sure to follow up with a query or submission. At the least, you can send a quick thank-you message with a promise to send story ideas soon—that is, if that’s your plan. Don’t waste your opportunity, and don’t worry if something doesn’t pan out right away. If you make a good impression, an editor might come to you with an assignment later.

Finally, if you’re concerned about the cost of a conference, see Joyce B. Lohse’s “10 reasons you can afford a writing conference” in our April issue, which also includes a list of more than 50 upcoming conferences as well as a closer look at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in June. The issue hits newsstands March 13.

—Sarah C. Lange, associate editor

A sendoff for our publisher, Elfrieda Abbe

Ron Kovach — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:13:00 GMT

At a staff lunch and company-wide sendoff over the last few weeks, we fondly bid adieu to The Writer’s publisher and former editor, Elfrieda Abbe, who retired. (That's her in the photo at left.)

Naturally, we harbor a special affection for those who hire us to a job we covet, and I’ll always have Elfrieda to thank for giving me my first chance at magazine work a decade ago after 24 years at newspapers.

But beyond that, she’s been a real pleasure to work with, and so steadfast and talented in remaking and guiding The Writer under a new owner. In between work duties, you could talk to Elfrieda about anything under the sun, but for us it was usually books, writers, movies, music, family, food, sports and travel. (I hope I didn’t leave anything out.)

At The Writer we’ll miss the charming, gentle woman with a sly wit, but wish her well in retirement. I’m sure we’ll stay in touch, and you’ll continue to see her articles in the magazine. Given all of Elfrieda’s interests, I think retirement will suit her just fine.

We also welcome aboard our new publisher, Terry Thompson, and look forward to working with him.

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

On the way to AWP in Chicago

Ron Kovach — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:35:00 GMT

My colleague Sarah Lange and I are off on the Amtrak Hiawatha on Wednesday morning to the big AWP writing conference in Chicago, where we’ll join about 9,000 other attendees, including representatives of more than 550 publishers. (AWP, by the way, stands for The Association of Writers & Writing Programs. I sort of think of it as The Association of Every English Professor and MFA Student in America.)

Sarah and I will be manning and womaning The Writer’s booth at the Bookfair, so if you’re in the area please stop by and say hello. We’ll be at booth #706.

And if you need further incentive to visit our table, how’s this: You’ll be able to register there for a free drawing for a $199 Kindle Fire.

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

The novel that just keeps on giving

Ron Kovach — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:04:00 GMT

If you're a fan of the book (1960) or film version (1962) of To Kill a Mockingbird, I can highly recommend the recent documentary Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird, by Mary McDonagh Murphy. I caught up to it on Netflix streaming and found it very well done. (The documentary’s DVD cover is at left.)

Writers especially will enjoy the interviews with the likes of Wally Lamb, Anna Quindlen, Richard Russo, Scott Turow, Allan Gurganus, Rick Bragg and Lee Smith. Among other literary issues the film discusses are a real case of good, old-fashioned writer jealousy, and the possibility that hitting a grand-slam home run on your first novel, as Harper Lee did, may not be the best thing for a writer. (Mockingbird has since sold some 30 million copies worldwide.)

Of course, the notoriously publicity-shy Ms. Lee herself would not give an interview for the film, but the director worked hard to make up for her absence. Fans of the film will particularly enjoy the interview with Mary Badham, the actress who played Scout at age 10.

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

What a former book editor learned

Ron Kovach — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:02:00 GMT

Chris Pavone has been getting a lot of early buzz for his first novel, The Expats, and it’s no wonder: The spy thriller has earned starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Booklist, as well as other raves. And this is a month before the book is even officially published, on March 6.

“Fans of John le Carre and Robert Ludlum,” wrote Publishers Weekly, “will welcome [this] meticulously plotted, psychologically complex spy thriller. . . . The sheer amount of bombshell plot twists are nothing short of extraordinary, but it’s Pavone’s portrayal of Kate [his protagonist] and her quest to find meaning in her charade of an existence that makes this book such a powerful read.”

But what also got my attention in the same magazine was the author’s comment in a Jan. 6 interview. It turns out that Pavone (pictured at left; photo by Nina Subin) is a former book editor, having worked at a number of publishing houses over nearly two decades. PW asked him, “In what way did your experience as a book editor affect the way you approached writing The Expats?"

Pavone’s answer: “As a book editor, you need to pitch every one of your books again and again, dozens of times, for months on end. From a quick conversation with your boss or a letter that’ll be read by just one person, to a five-minute speech in front of 50 colleagues or cover copy that’ll be in front of millions of eyes. So when I was working on The Expats, I kept that eventual pitch in mind, helping me focus on what was most compelling about the story I was trying to tell.”

To read the entire interview, click here.

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

Resisting the tide

Ron Kovach — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:09:00 GMT

In a cover interview in the February issue of Keyboard magazine, the brilliant jazz pianist Keith Jarrett drops an arresting line in one of his answers. Never one to mince words, he laments “this stupid world we live in” in the context of people’s ability and willingness to engage in sustained concentration. He is talking, in part, about the audience for great music, but more, too. He explains:

“ … You can feel the attention span of the world dwindling; you can feel people not paying attention to things that are difficult. When I read a book, I try to sacrifice myself to the book, even if it doesn’t occur to me until 400 pages into it what the voice of the writer is like. Then finally I get it. If I didn’t go that far, I would have never figured it out.”

From this much-traveled man a great line to ponder: “You can feel the attention span of the world dwindling …” There are many reasons, of course, for this short-focus problem, beginning, in my view, with technology and visual media, but also the failure of many parents to regularly read to their small children and engage in other activities that develop young attention spans, and to restrict television viewing.

One of the means by which the adult can purposefully try to counteract the “stupid world” of which Jarrett speaks is a quiet room. So simple and, amid our technological blizzard, so ironic. Doesn’t have to be big. Just a quiet room, and no interruptions. In this way, you read a great short story word for word, listen to a great symphony or concerto end to end, enter entirely into every note of a jazz improvisation, get thoroughly immersed in a novel. (Pascal: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”)

Lately, for me, I’ve tried to slow the world down and lengthen focus by getting on a biography kick—currently, the wartime story of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt (by Doris Kearns Goodwin); upcoming, Michael Slater’s life of Dickens, Janet Browne’s second volume on Darwin, and John Lewis Gaddis’ new biography of George Kennan. It is a genre that, when well done, takes you deeply into another time and life and helps you understand the arc of a notable human journey.

Later on at dinner, though, I’ll have the iPod on for some music, and of this Mr. Jarrett would probably heartily disapprove. “The listening part—today it seems like it’s bits and pieces, and ‘What’s your favorite track?’ ” he says in the interview. “People walk around with a thousand tracks on their little machines. But it is a process, and the awareness of the process is being lost.”

-- Ron Kovach, senior editor, The Writer

What motivates your characters?

Sarah C. Lange — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:53:00 GMT

We’re told that to create an engaging story we need to know what motivates our characters. What do they want? What do they long for? What’s at stake?

“Motivation, based on a character’s beliefs, family, and environmental and cultural background, provides a trajectory for characters to act and grow on. Motivations compel action, create goals in scenes, and drive characters to achieve goals,” writes Jessica Page Morrell in Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us. “Motivations provide characters with credible reasons for their actions.”

So what might drive your character? Consider these 8 motivators:

1. Home/a place in the world. Think of (the literal) stories about orphans as well as coming-of-age tales and characters moving to a new town (or country).

2. Meaning/purpose. You could write about a character who decides to take a risk and follow her dream. Or who finds, or loses, his faith.

3. Knowledge/wisdom. Could be an intellectual or a spiritual quest. Is your character seeking answers? Is she a student—or a teacher?

4. Connection/love/friendship. Maybe your character desires romance and/or marriage. Jeffrey Eugenides’ recent novel The Marriage Plot gives this type of story an interesting modern spin. Or perhaps you’re more interested in delving into bonds of the platonic variety.

5. Wealth/financial gain. Ebenezer Scrooge (pictured above) initially thinks of success in monetary terms, though his motivations famously change.

6. Revenge. Look no further than the classic revenge tales “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

7. Fame/recognition. You might dream up a character focused on a career in the spotlight, or maybe he merely wants to be honored for all the hard work that he feels goes unnoticed.

8. Justice. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher helps strangers because he believes it’s the right thing to do.

Of course, this list is hardly comprehensive. “Boredom as a motivation is vastly underrepresented in literature,” Francine Prose, author of My New American Life, told Sarah Anne Johnson in an upcoming interview for The Writer. “People think everyone does something out of a passionate need for this or an intellectual desire for that. But I think people do a lot of things because they think it’s going to be interesting.”

For a nuanced discussion of character motivation, see novelist Aimee Bender’s essay in The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays From Tin House, in which she warns against oversimplifying: “We’ve been trained to believe that psychology is cause and effect, but, actually, our motivations are complicated and messy, and how our actions tie into our motivation isn’t always clear.”

And for more help with motivation, check out Robert Olen Butler’s From Where You Dream as well as:

Gotham Writers’ Workshop instructor Brandi Reissenweber’s tips for coaxing out the conflict of your story
Memoirist Gregory Martin's checklist for characterization and conflict
Catherine M. Wallace’s advice for giving your work subtlety by turning the methods of professional mediators inside out
Wallace’s form for determining character motivation

—Sarah C. Lange, associate editor