If you plan on reading Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, I’ve included a brief personal commentary in the “Book Reviews” tab (above). Take a peek. (Scroll down and click on the link in the alphabetical Contents list.) Tell me, have you read Isaacson’s book on either Einstein or Ben Franklin? Did you enjoy it? Wondering if I should put it on my list.
Splitting my time between Maine and Florida, I maintain a membership in both the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (MWPA) and the Florida Writers Association (FWA).
MWPA was founded in 1975. It is, according to its website, “a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization that works to enrich the literary life and culture of Maine. We are the only statewide organization solely devoted to supporting and promoting Maine’s writers, publishers, booksellers, and literary professionals.”
A visit to FWA’s website reveals a different type of organization. Its initial and continuing purpose is “as a trade organization for writers of all genres–to share learning tools and writing advice as well as to provide members with an incredible networking system … [It] is focused on the beginning and the advanced writers within a professional atmosphere.” However, FWA has also formed Florida Writers Foundation, “a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation committed to promoting literacy throughout Florida.”
I love that FWF’s web page ends with this reminder: “To quote the immortal and practical words of W. Fusselman, ‘Today a reader, tomorrow a leader’.” Ain’t that the truth!
I also want to share with you something in the most recent newsletter from MWPA’s Executive Director Joshua Bodwell. He wrote: “Many authors who write on their computers have a small ritual of beginning each fresh writing session by first selecting their favorite typeface. It’s almost as though we believe the typeface will somehow help set the tone for our work.” There’s some truth to this, for sure. When I’m not limited to Times New Roman, for instance, which publishers still prefer to see in submitted manuscripts, I’m partial to Palatino, Schoolbook, and Calibria depending on either my mood or my audience. In truth, I’m partial to a lot of other typefaces as well, but those three are probably the most readable among my other loves.
Bodwell made his statement about writers and favorite typefaces as lead-in to the cool video below, created by Ben Barrett-Forrest. Enjoy.
(If the vid doesn’t embed, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOgIkxAfJsk)
Typewriter image credit: Surachai at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Some artists, brave souls, create in full view of their audience.
The greatly improved manuscript for Great Wharf is now in three others’ sets of hands: a good friend with a critical eye; a fiction editor with a critical eye; a selection of #PitchWar mentors (click here for contest description)with critical eyes. In the latter, my current pitch and first five pages are competing for the selected mentors’ attention with upward, I estimate, of 50 other aspiring novelists. Some mentors have reported about 30; one has reported 2,000 (really). It is highly doubtful my work will compete successfully at this stage, but I’m in the game!
By having the material in different hands for critiquing this month, I have freed myself to start writing something new (and get my holiday cards out!). I have an idea too, but daren’t share it with you just yet. Suffice it to say that while I’m working hard with Great Wharf to enter the authorial portals (can that be a term?) of traditional publication, my new work will test the waters of Kindle Singles. Very different product; very different timeline; very different royalty terms.
In the meantime, happy December days to you all. Are you creating during this month?
“The only way to do all the things you’d like to do is to read.”—Tom Clancy (Thomas Leo “Tom” Clancy, Jr. / April 12, 1947 – October 1, 2013)
In the meantime, hoping more will come out eventually, here’s a quote of his I relate to as a fledgling fiction writer, followed by two links you may want to check out.
The only Clancy book I read was The Hunt for Red October, which was excellent. I didn’t read more of his because my interests didn’t match his, and therefore I found them a little hard to comprehend… For an annotated list of his books (Wikipedia provides an annotated list of all his books and also a (major characters) Jack Ryan/John Clark universe chronology. Click here.
Entrepreneur magazine has a brief article titled and including 5 of Tom Clancy’s Most Inspiring Quotes.
Image credit: biography.com (don’t know if they hold the copyright)
Most useful things are constructed one piece at a time – and the pieces shift before they’re finally right. (Image (c) Meredith Ann Rutter)
I started the ad campaign with 46 Likes on my page, of which 72% (or 33) were personal friends/family. In the more than two years since I started the page, it had attracted only 13 Likes from people who weren’t already in my network. Pitiful, except for the silver lining, namely that my errors got only limited visibility while I learned the ropes. This is why “they say” you should get started early on these things, well before any book of yours might be published. But now, as I’m hard at work on a near-final draft (please oh please), it’s time to nudge the Likes upward a bit.
Facebook makes it very easy to create the ad you want within the budget you specify. Very easy. It even allows you to easily create one-offs of the basic ad in order to learn which image or wording attracts more attention. Thanks to this option, I used the same wording with four wildly different images: (a) my bathrobed arms typing on my laptop, (b) my picture – the same one you see in the right margin near the top of this page, (c) a friend’s precious gray kitten, and (d) a sepia photo-studio print of three siblings ages 8 mos to 6 yrs sitting next to each other. Care to guess which caused the most clicks? The least clicks? I’ll give you a moment to think through a rationale for your guesses.
One of the images was far, far, and away the most effective, to such a degree that midway through the test I put a permanent pause on the other three images. As of that moment, the least effective in garnering clicks was the kitten (just barely less effective than the picture of me)–in fact, you could say that both were completely INeffective. The most effective, by far, was the sepia photo of the children.
Of course, the true test in this sort of campaign is whether, when the clicking-people reach the FB page, they like what they see and say so by clicking on the Like button. I’d say I had good results. Over the weekend my total Likes grew from 46 to 179, which was a 289% increase in page Likes. And it kept growing a little, now at 190 Likes, perhaps because a few people have recommended the page to some friends. (I do see a few of my friends have recently joined in, too, unrelated to the ad campaign. Thanks, guys!)
If you’re on Facebook but haven’t yet been to its Yours In Books page, click on the button near the top right-hand margin here (the Facebook label associated with my picture) and take a look. Any posts I make to this blog are automatically linked there, but I also post items that aren’t on this blog at all. For FB users, I think that’s the best way to stay abreast of what Yours In Books finds useful or interesting in the book biz on a more daily basis than my relatively far-between blog posts.
So, did you guess the most/least effective images correctly? And if you’re on Facebook have you Liked the Yours In Books page?
You know how, when you’re doing a major housecleaning, there comes a moment when you look around and see everything in shambles? You think your place will never be nice again. But you keep at it, and the next time you look around (it seems), everything is gorgeous. Well, that’s where I’m at with my novel, Great Wharf. The reason it’s in shambles is that I hired a former Random House editor to take a look and give me some feedback. Six single-spaced comment pages later, I knew I’d hired the right person. Now I’m about three months into absorbing her comments and about sixty percent done incorporating them. Summer travels, etc., have kept me from making faster progress, but I’m looking at a couple weeks of concerted effort now. And I’m hopeful.
The umbrella concept for many of the changes is that the novel currently straddles two genres and therefore won’t satisfy devoted readers of either (general fiction vs. suspense fiction). I’ve now committed to general fiction with a lot of suspense. Toward this end, I’m making two of the characters suffer more than they did before, which will create more intensity for the reader. I also need to pay more attention to the main protagonist’s character arc and to making sure she is somehow key to the resolution of the plot – which is perhaps my biggest challenge with the way I had structured the plot to begin with. Other changes include replacing certain summary descriptions with actual scenes, and switching from an omniscient point of view to multiple third-person point of view.
All told, I’m pretty much revising every single page to some degree or other. Thus, my manuscript is in shambles. I look forward to a clean printout down the road.
What’s the shambles in your work these days?
Photo credit: Just2shutter
Today I have added to the “Book Reviews” tab (above) my brief review in Goodreads of David McCullough’s history book 1776. It’s a rare event for me to read a book of history, and I do highly recommend this one if you are interested in that year of U. S. history and know as little about it as I did. (Having finished the book, I think there are many of us!)
I just found this video of an excellent interview with David McCullough. (If the below “embedding” doesn’t work, try this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N64v5STEPCs.) The interaction focuses less on 1776 (the book McCullough was promoting at the time of the interview) than it does on writing and on teaching. It’s worth watching especially if you’re a writer or teacher and, of course, want to spend a half hour on it… It’s a great way to wake up in the morning.
So said Stephen Fry (actor, writer, and more) in a June 24 excellent post on his suicide attempt last year.
Fry in “Happy Birthday to GNU” (2008), photo from Wikipedia entry
I’ve come up with these so far:
A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (thinking Boo Radley)
In a singular way, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Was there loneliness in The Hours by Michael Cunningham? Or in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway? It’s been too long since I read those two, but I suspect loneliness was in them.
Do you recall a book you have read where loneliness played a role? Please tell me in Comments here or on my Yours In Books Facebook page or as a tweet. I’m truly curious!
By the way, I learned about Fry’s post in one of Dave Pell’s NextDraft emails, always full of cool bits about doings out there in the world. If you’re interested in getting on his list, visit this site and subscribe. You’ll enjoy his wit and can click through on the links that interest you from there. Now, any books where loneliness figures in?
Hubby and I were treated Sunday night to a delightful home-cooked dinner at our friend Anne’s friends Bonnie and Ron’s home—in a heretofore unexplored (by us) location. Our Garmin failed us as we neared their residence, and our sense of direction did, too. But luckily, the hostess had said they were on a circle, so we figured out we could keep going and we’d get another chance at it. I did joke, as we parked in the driveway, that anyone living out in this neck of the woods must want to stay hidden. Imagine my glee, as we walked along their well-tended garden path and I spotted this Book Shop cottage decoration (above). I later learned that Bonnie volunteers at the town library, including creating a whole garden for them.
We had a great time meeting each other, oohing and ahing over several quilts Bonnie has created and the house Ron and she moved/rebuilt/expanded from the original small cottage that sat several feet in front of where it is now. On the interior walls were three pieces of artwork by three artists we also have in our collection (Kim and Philippe Villard have books [thus the mention in this blog] and paintings/woodblock prints, and Jean Swan Gordon [recently deceased] has ink/watercolor paintings). Our mutual friend Anne was right that we would all get along well, though who could have predicted that would include artwork connections as well as personalities. Perhaps a books-connection could go unstated, since Anne and I both gravitate toward readers.
Bonnie and Ron and I were happily surprised to learn, over dinner chatter, that they were reading Denise Kiernan’s The Girls of Atomic City and that I had recently done a review of it. The conversation immediately veered to a discussion of the different times we now live in. In 1943-45 the work at Oak Ridge—building the atomic bomb—was a secret even to most of the people working there, let alone to people “off the Reservation” (as it was called) and around the world. Contrast that to what had happened the very morning of our Sunday dinner, when Edward Snowden’s interview with The Guardian revealed him to be the leaker/whistleblower about the NSA’s use of metadata, unbeknownst to most of the population but now very much known.
Secrets are not kept today, for better or worse. Mr. Snowden has gotten his wish. He certainly got our table of five talking about something we wouldn’t have known to include without his revelation.
Do you belong to a book club, or are you thinking of starting one? I love the suggestions in a short piece yesterday in the Washington Post, referring to the “Third Tuesday Book Club.” First there is a list of books the club has enjoyed most over fifty years. Following that list are ten rules for book club success. The rules are wonderful. Click here to read them.
What’s your favorite rule? Hard to pick, isn’t it, but I’ll have to go with number 3.
By the way, there’s a lead-in article that describes the Third Tuesday Book Club’s history. You might enjoy reading that, too, if you have some time. Click here.
Image from FreeDigitalPhotos.net
