Writer's Craft
02/17/2013
Making the Mundane Magical
02/01/2013
06/11/2011
Six Great Questions Writers Need to Answer for Readers
If both nature and nurture are what it takes, my kids will be stronger readers and writers than I am. They have my genes and my passion for literature, but they're also benefitting from superior reading and writing instruction. Their public charter school uses "reading workshop" and "writing workshop," a curriculum Lucy Calkins of Columbia Teachers College developed to empower students to read and write with increasing sophistication at each grade.
My daughter's fourth grade teacher, Ms. Helms, made all her students a laminated refrigerator magnet with the heading, "7 Questions good readers ask (and can answer!) about our books." It is on the side of our refrigerator and often catches my eyes, luring them away from the cutting board or stove and reminding me that good writers have to make sure these questions are a pleasure to answer. I share with you here six of these questions (the seventh is more relevant to specific moments in a book rather than the whole book) along with the answers I would want readers to be able to provide about my novel-in-progress, Au Pair Report.
1. Who is telling the story? How do you know?
Au Pair Report uses third person "limited" narration. This means that I use "she" and "he" rather than "I," while also focusing exclusively on the point of view of my protagonist--Liza, the mother of a toddler and a "work from home" counselor for an au pair program. It's obvious that my narrator is not omniscient because we only see other characters (au pairs, host parents, etc.) through Liza's eyes.
2. Where and when is the story happening (what is the setting)?
Au Pair Report conveys a strong sense of its time and place. It takes place in workaholic Washington, DC where au pairs make many host parents' busy careers possible. The novel opens in the miserable heat of a DC summer (like the one we are in the midst of now). More specifically, it's 2010 and one ambitious host mom has her eye on the next presidential election, which turns the heat up a little higher for Liza.
3. What kind of person is the main character? How do you know?
Liza is a character who worries a lot. Being the primary caregiver for her mischievous toddler, Zora, while also keeping peace among au pairs and host parents, gives her plenty to worry about. On top of these responsibilities, she also has a mentally ill mother. Having grown up with a constant fear of "going crazy," she now worries about how to protect her own child from this genetic legacy. The novel's third person limited focus on Liza gives readers intimate access to her memories, experiences, and thoughts.
4. Who are the other characters? What do you know about them?
This novel has many other characters, including au pairs from various countries and their host parents as well as Liza's own family members. While much of the novel's action revolves around the exceptional cases (difficult matches and other crises), readers get to see a broad sampling of the types of young women who come to this country as au pairs. Readers know about all these other characters only as much as Liza knows.
5. What's the big problem the character faces?
Liza's big problem is that competing priorities in her life pull her in too many different directions. Does that sound familiar? My guess is that most parents feel this way--and probably plenty of non-parents too. My hope is that this book will have broad appeal to readers because of this quasi-universal theme of feeling overwhelmed by the imbalances of modern life.
6. (After finishing book) How did the main character change during the story?
I haven't finished writing the book (it's about forty percent done), but plan to have Liza take charge of her life by not letting other people's problems overwhelm her. Ultimately, she finds a better balance between her family and work priorities while also finding a way to highlight the issue of child care to the policy wonks laying the groundwork for the 2012 presidential election.
Thinking through these answers to the questions on my daughter's refrigerator magnet is helping me through a rough spot in my novel. Until recently, my writing group has loved my submissions of chapters from Au Pair Report, but my last submission was more problematic. It makes me think of the one question on the refrigerator magnet that did not make it onto the above list:
What picture do you have in your mind of what's happening in the story now?
I know the picture readers had in the earlier chapters was vivid, and now it's gotten muddled. It's time for me to do some revision--looking back on what I've written--but it's also time to look ahead at the big picture of my whole novel. Thanks, Ms. Helms, for inspiring me to write a book worthy of the good readers you are helping to nurture!
05/23/2011
That Vision Thing
What was it that George H. W. Bush used to say, something about “That Vision Thing”? Well, I must admit that I’m having my own problem with “That Vision Thing” concerning my memoir Poor Relation, now roughly two-thirds complete. It’s not that I don’t have a vision for how it will all come together. I do, and it is crystal clear in my head. However, conveying that vision to others has always been and continues to be a challenge for me. Part of that difficulty is because the book has gone through a pretty major evolution as I’ve been writing it. It started as a book mostly about my mother, who gave up her two children from her first marriage before she married my father. But it has evolved into a book about my childhood and the impact that my mother’s decisions had on my family, and how I got from there to the happy place where I am now.
But those are big topics, and understandably, when people (i.e., my writing group) are reading a book that is not yet complete, they may wonder just how I am going to wrap this all up in a neat and tidy 300 or so pages. The answer is, I will.
But the fact that readers in my writing group are sometimes asking these questions alerts me to the probability that agents and others who will take up my manuscript will also have questions. While they will not be burdened with the chore of reading the 60 or so pages that I subjected my writing group to that I have already discarded, they will certainly have some of these same questions if I am not careful.
So, this is telling me three things: First, I need to be brutal in editing down the first third of the book so the reader gets into the meat of the story earlier. Second, I need to work on more clearly articulating, both verbally and in short written form, exactly what the book is about. And third, I just need to write, write, write to finally finish this first draft. I’ve been working on it for so long, and now that I do have the vision for how it will come together, I need to find every spare hour that I can to work on it, so I can finally make “That Vision Thing” a reality.
05/18/2011
Readers Envy and a Writer's Life
I've been an avid reader all of my life. However, when I began to write my own novel, I could no longer just read. Something an author writes triggers a line or idea for my own novel and immediately I'm digging around for a scrap of paper to jot down a note for my manuscript. Reading has become a forensic exercise - I dissect how other authors communicate/structure action and emotion, how they pace the story and what devices they use to move it along. I have become a student of the craft of writing as much as I am a fan of literature. That push and pull, reader/writer- writer/reader, can make the continuity of reading a book a challenge.
There is also the guilt. Read something that's off of my novel's topic and I feel guilty because I should be writing/researching/editing/building a platform - anything and everything related to my book! It almost feels like I'm "cheating" on my manuscript. Sounds strange but writers know what I mean.
Even with these distractions I must read, it is as necessary for me as breathing. I still quiz my friends about what they're reading, exchange books with my daughters, I pour over the NYT Book Review and source new reading material from places like NPR and the apps I found on Galley Cat that tell you what folks in the WWW. are reading. Life was simpler when I was just a reader.
But I am a writer. A writer with a 400 page manuscript that I'm aggressively seeking an agent for. And, I've got two novels working their way out of my head and onto paper. Even with complications and compromises, nothing beats capturing your own characters and their stories on a page for readers to read or other writers to analyze. I may have reader's envy but I am ever so grateful to have a writer's life!
04/11/2011
Time Away
Early this year I took a hiatus from my novel, Provenance. I spent a couple of weeks traveling throughout Ethiopia and several weeks before that getting ready to travel to Ethiopia (you know how that is). When I got back from my trip a little health problem kept me from my manuscript for a few more weeks. All in all, it was nearly two months before I got back to my novel.
Since I began this quest for publication four years ago I had never taken that much time away from this thing that I love so much - writing. Just like when you ignore any thing or anybody you truly love, the guilt was enormous. At least until I realized that not a day went by that I did not find something that added to or enlightened my knowledge of what my novel was about. Once I gained that insight, I realized how beneficial time away really was.
Throughout the two months away I thought extensively about the story I am trying to tell, about the characters and the situations I have put them in and about time, place, action, language, and emotion; about my prospective readers and how I would market to them. Whether I had a platform or a prayer of getting Provenance published.
My time away was time very well spent. Without the task of composition, the tyranny of word and page output - I was able to think critically about the story. By experiencing different places, people and situations I was able to absorb sights, sounds and emotions that I know will find their way into the pages of this novel or the next.
I found that a writer never really spends time away. I may not be at my desk or on my computer but I am doing what writers have to do - observe, experience and analyze the world in order to write. Now, I 'm back to my writing schedule and I am all the better for having had that brief respite - now, back to work!
04/05/2011
Agent Hunting Rules and When to Break Them
Writing is all about following rules and knowing when to break them. We observe the rules of grammar and usage, but then we flout them to create a unique narrative voice or make our dialogue more authentic. Our stories emerge in the context of literary conventions about genre, style, and audience, but the best stories defy and reshape those conventions. The rules only get stricter when we finish our books and try to publish them.
Like all gatekeepers, literary agents establish rules for entry into their domain, and their grasp of the rules publishing houses and editors impose earns them a fifteen percent commission of their clients’ profits. However, as is the case for that better known category of agents—real estate agents—literary agents do a lot of uncompensated work. Many literary agents who appear in Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents claim to have a rejection rate of ninety-nine percent. In order to cut down on the huge number of query letters they receive, they have clear submission guidelines that include injunctions against such no-nos as sending email attachments or making telephone inquiries. Many of the most successful agents simply inform writers that they “do not accept unsolicited queries.” In other words, they prefer to sign on clients through direct referrals or they just do not want more clients.
Continue reading "Agent Hunting Rules and When to Break Them" »
03/27/2011
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).
03/24/2011
"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!”
03/18/2011
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.
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