Six Great Books

Twitter Teacher's Pets?

What does Twitter have to teach us?  Brevity, at the very least.  Keeping tweets under 140 characters forces us to choose our words carefully. 

Some high school English teachers believe that incorporating Twitter into homework assignments will make students better writers.  However, as this article in the Washington Post points out, asking students to tweet about Hemingway or The Canterbury Tales may make them more vulnerable to online predators, including their teachers.  Virginia is calling for regulations regarding instructional use of social media, and some states have already banned Facebook and other digital tools beyond school control.

Will keeping Twitter out of schools protect young people?  Twitter is a new technology, but relationships between students and teachers are hardly a new problem.  Central to the plot of my novel, Blind Girl's Bluff, is an illicit liaison between an art teacher and a blind boarding school student in 1985, when computers were virtually absent from secondary school curricula.  What makes my protagonist Lucy vulnerable is not the art that brings her to Monsieur Touchefeu's bed, but the trauma of having lost her father and the naivete of her perception that she is a grownup at age fifteen. 

Blaming art or technology when bad things happen between teachers and students is far too simplistic.  That's the kind of blame we could tweet in 140 characters or less, and that's why we still need novels and other traditional storytelling vehicles to capture the emotional complexities Twitter cannot.  My hope is that teachers using Twitter to enhance their students' engagement act purely out of good intentions.  In other words, I hope they are not slimeballs like Monsieur Touchefeu. 

And for those of you who would like to meet my slimeball, here is a link to an excerpt from the first chapter of my novel (this comes immediately after the prologue, which appears on the "About Kelly" page of this site).

"Tweet This, Buddy!"

If you’re a writer looking to become a first-time published author, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the importance of having a “platform”.  You better “friend” everyone you’ve ever known on Facebook down to your pre-school playmate from 40 years ago, and “link” with everyone whose hand you’ve ever shaken on Linked In.

I understand the rationale, but for me the need to develop a “platform” has been complicated by the fact that I haven’t told my siblings or most of my friends that I’m writing a family memoir.  My book is roughly two-thirds written, but I’m still not ready to broadly share the news.  I’m just not ready to explain that no, my childhood didn’t include any murder, sexual abuse, or even alcoholism, but yes, it is a story worth telling and will be a book very much worth reading.  And I feel like writing a book is hard enough, but the additional pressure of worrying about my siblings’ reactions to what I’ve written while I’m still working on the writing is too much for the writing process to bear.  And as for my friends, I would rather tell them about my book when I’ve got an agent in my corner, or at least after my first draft is finished.

Enter Twitter.  A few months ago, I dutifully created an account, but I didn’t spend any time on the site.  Sure, I’d hear about all the various celebrities and politicians and their “tweets”.  It seemed everyone was asking for me to “follow” them, or asking for “tweets”.  But I would just scoff, and my crass alter ego would say to myself in response, “Tweet this, buddy!”

And then, a couple of weeks ago, I re-visited Twitter and guess what?  I get it!  I finally understand the beauty and the magic of Twitter.  Twitter isn’t only about connecting with people who you know.  Facebook and Linked In and the others can do that.  Twitter is mostly about connecting with people you don’t know, but who share your interests.  So, you can get your political news alerts from the sources you count on, book and publishing news from various sources, and you can even follow the agents you’re interested in to get an idea of what they’re thinking about and working on.  All in one spot.  And even more, in the context of building a “platform”, you can attract followers who are interested in what you might have to say about books or writing or whatever else you might be thinking about on any particular day.  If you’re witty and prolific enough, perhaps you’ll draw a following large enough to turn the head of a potential agent.

Of course I’m not there yet, but I’m committed to start.  My first substantive “tweet” was in response to #whyIwrite.  I “tweeted”: Because there is tremendous satisfaction in creating art (hopefully!) from the experience of life.  And since then, I’ve “tweeted” a few times, and I plan to “tweet” much more in the days and weeks ahead – about writing, books and the publishing industry, family and family history, and about life.

It is with that in mind that I invite you to:  Follow me on Twitter @JanetHWerner.

And, oh yeah: “Tweet this, buddy!”

 

The First Rejection

It came in at 12:42 a.m. via email: 

Dear Donna,
Thank you for sharing your work. Unfortunately, I feel that in today's market, I cannot take on projects unless I feel strongly about them. I'm sorry to say that it didn't happen with this one. This of course is just my opinion and others may feel differently. I wish you the best of luck with all of your publishing endeavors.

So there it was, my first rejection. I felt those five sentences but it wasn't the crippling blow that I thought it might be, there was an odd sense of relief - I had gotten the first one out of the way. Yes, the agent passed on my manuscript but I was still standing. She didn't rip me to shreds, she actually wished me well.

When I started sending my manuscripts out to agents I wondered how I would react to a rejection. I'd heard Kathryn Stockett in an interview talking about her debut novel, The Help. She'd sent her manuscript to between 45 and 75 agents (after a while she stopped keeping track) before she found "the one." Now, her highly rejected manuscript has been on The New York Times Best Seller List for 102 weeks.

So when I got my first rejection, Stockett's conviction, determination and resilience is what I thought of. No time for self-pity, figure out which agent to send my manuscript. One down - more to go - so who's next.

Abandon Manuscript

The New York Times arrived soaking wet a couple of  weeks ago and I called too late to request a replacement. Not wanting to go out in the pouring rain for another copy, I pulled out the laundry drying rack and carefully hung my favorite sections up to dry. It took all day but the essay, Why Do Writers Abandon Novels by Dan Kois, on the last page of the Book Review was worth the wait. 

Kois interviwed successful authors about books they've abandoned - pages that never would and in the author's opinion, never should see the light of day. The reasons vary but the outcome is the same - countless hours and words wasted. Or, maybe not. Writing, like any great profession is a practice, right? Every author interviewed went on to another successful project. A few even found a way to repurpose the abandonded material into another novel years later.

Something to think about when I wonder if the novel I'm writing is worth anyone's time and energy. If it sells it was worth it, if it doesn't then it was great practice and a head start on my next novel. Either way it's a win-win.

YA or the Highway?

Although my oldest daughter is still months away from qualifying as a “tween,” I’ve got teen troubles.  My problem is Lucy, the fifteen year old girl who is the protagonist of my first novel, Blind Girl’s Bluff.  She has plenty of problems of her own, considering that she lost her vision and the person who mattered most in her life when her anarchist father suicide-bombed a post office.  When formerly homeschooled Lucy goes to school for the first time on a scholarship at a progressive boarding school in Arizona, she meets new friends, but also finds new problems.  She falls in love with painting, which puts her in the awkward position of being unable to see, and therefore judge, her own work.  The unscrupulous teacher who encourages her painting, French artist-in-residence Monsieur Touchefeu, becomes her lover and, ultimately, an exploitative promoter of her work. 

Lucy is a problem for me because, according to the prevailing logic of the literary marketplace, her problems are supposed to appeal primarily to a teenage or young adult audience.  When I pitched the book at a writers’ conference, each literary agent who heard the basic outline of my story was quick to associate it with “YA,” which is shorthand for what has become the hottest category in fiction.  In other words, this meant my book might have a sliver of a chance of selling.  One agent argued that my story would “work” as YA if I set it in 2010 instead of 1985 and changed the anarchist father to someone like Joe Stack, the guy who flew a plane into the IRS building.  I ignored that last bit of advice, but began to submit queries to agents referring to my book’s potential “crossover young adult” appeal.  A handful of agents have requested the full or partial manuscript, but some of the ensuing feedback suggests that Blind Girl’s Bluff does not quite fit the YA mold—or break the mold in quite the right way.

Why I Write

The Movable Type Literary Group (that reps for me) is promoting this clever Twitter hashtag  #WhyIWrite to encourage people to share why they have a burning desire to write. It’s an interesting question since I believe everyone has a story to tell. So I joined the conversation @porndaughter and posted ”I write so my family’s rich history and fascinating story never dies or fades away.”  This also got me thinking about all the reasons I wrote before I started my memoir Daughter of Pornography. Writing has been such an important part of my life and career. 

• As a social worker I wrote to advocate for my homebound elderly clients.
• At the National Mental Health Association (@MentalHealthAm), I wrote to raise awareness and give hope that mental illnesses are treatable.
• At the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare (@nationalcouncil), I wrote to give mental health providers valuable information so they could provide mental health services to their communtities.
• At 2tor(@2tor), currently, I write to tell the world about an incredible online Master of Social Work program available through the University of Southern California School of Social Work.

I know I’ll always write.  I would love to hear more about why you write. Share your thoughts here, on Twitter at #WhyIWrite and Daughter of Pornography Facebook page. We look forward to hearing from you.

Re-Posted from Daughter of Pornography

Our Not So New Year's Resolution

This blog has been more or less on hiatus since Thanksgiving.  This is partly due to our focus on the writing that really matters to us--our six great books.  So, we talked at our writing group meeting the other night about ditching the blog or dedicating ourselves anew.  We decided on the latter.  It's never too late for new year's resolutions, so look for new posts from us soon!