AWP: A Numerical Reckoning

By Brian Watson

Morgayne Kelley and Brian Watson

A couple of months have passed since I attended the 2023 AWP Conference in my beloved Seattle. The serotonin high has worn off and, after a glorious vacation, I am at home and settling back into my writing practice. Time to reflect.

Although I was intrigued by Allison K Williams’ post here on the Blog that described the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference as an event easily simulated at home, I ignored that advice. I went for the full, in-the-flesh experience with a complete lack of expectations. As my three days at AWP unfolded, however, I began keeping count of a few things.

∞

patience expended by my husband throughout the AWP long weekend as he fretted about my time spent away from home in advance of our trip to Japan. (We left Seattle the weekend after AWP.)

Thirty-thousand six-hundred four

steps taken during the conference. This includes walking from the car to the light rail station, from Westlake Center to the convention center, and back three times, plus hurrying from session to session each day.

Thirty-four

photographs taken. I originally met Morgayne Kelley (pictured with me) during a virtual writing seminar in May of 2021, and even though we both live in and around Seattle, this was the first time we got to meet in person, and it was glorious.

Twenty-seven

escalator rides. The new Seattle Conference Center is stunningly beautiful but it’s six stories tall and there was AWP activity on every floor. Even with motorized help, it took forever to get from session to session, anxiously racing the clock.

Seattle Convention Center

Twenty-six

hours spent comfortably wearing a mask.

Twenty-one

notes taken on my iPhone, ranging from two words (the name of a publisher in British Columbia) to 175 words (notes from the session on podcasting).

Ones that stand out include:

-Subjunctive memoir as speculative non-fiction

-Grief annihilates the person you were when your beloved was alive

Nineteen

business cards given to other people. It’s a small number, I know, when taking the 13,000 attendees into account, but I’m an introverted extrovert. However, I did not offer business cards to my writing idols—I couldn’t possibly summon the courage to present myself in card form.

Twelve and six-tenths

miles walked over the three days. Surprising, given my predilection for sitting at home.

Eleven

new Twitter followers. This proved (to me) the value of my business card.

Nine

elevator rides. Elevating was faster than escalating, but there were long lines, and my inner New Yorker is impatient.

visits to the book fair on the ground floor. I had a list of publishers and magazines to visit, and the book signings I ABSOLUTELY had to be there for. The poet Chen Chen and Edgar Gomez, author of High-Risk Homosexual, were highest on my list.

hugs shared among writing friends.

Eight

presentations and panels attended.

Two of my favorites:

• The Future of Queer Publishing. Hearing how independent publishers were making space for other rainbow-dwellers inspired me to no end.
  
  
• The Future of Queer Aesthetics: How to Write Authentic LGBTQ+ Characters. Venita Blackburn had the room in stitches when she said: Maybe try the second person. Never mind that. Don’t be crazy. This panel gave me hope for a future where I try my hand at fiction.

Seven

staircases ascended. I am very much an escalator person, but here again my inner, impatient New Yorker took over.

Six

authors signed books for me. The phrase, can I fanboy?, worked wonders, even after waiting patiently for Matt Bell to exit the washroom. Chen Chen signed his two poetry collections, and when I asked after his chapbook, he retrieved his own copy from his bag and signed it for me on the spot.

Five and four-tenths

average hours slept in the nights leading up to the event. Excitement woke me at three or four AM all week long.

Five

times I said, with full sincerity, you inspire me.

new writing friends made; our yet-to-be-told stories lighting our eyes.

Three

negative COVID-19 home test results, after receiving an exposure warning on my iPhone Saturday night.

magazine publishers I thanked for previously sharing my work.

publishers I spoke to about submitting my memoir and proposal, all of whom encouraged me to submit, asking me to remind them that we met at AWP.

Two

authors who complimented me on my nails.

overpriced lunches consumed at the conference center.

One

person told me that I had inspired them.

author recommended I pitch my memoir to their publisher after hugging me.

moment when I realized that I finally understood the why for writing my memoir: I revisit the past to correct the present because I can help others do the same. Young queer people need the power I discovered within me, and I can teach them how I did it.

time I cried.

Zero

regrets.

———

Brian Watson (@iambrianwatson on Twitter and Instagram) has been a leader and mentor within the gay community both in the United States and Japan for more than thirty-five years. His craft essays and book reviews appear in Brevity and Hippocampus, and his first creative nonfiction essay, “Bending Time,” was selected by White Enso for their nonfiction award. A subsequent essay, “Unfolding,” was named a finalist for the Montana Prize for Nonfiction. His memoir-in-progress is Crying in a Foreign Language: The Deity that Answered My Plea. Find his other writing here.

A Review of Allison K Williams’ Seven Drafts

By Debbie Hagan

Imagine sitting at your computer for hours, working on your memoir, confident that you’ve made real progress, then a gremlin sneaks in and whispers in your ear: That isn’t a story. What a terrible beginning. You’re wasting your time. No one will read this.

You could give up or you could turn to Allison K Williams’ Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. 

When I thumb through my copy’s dog-eared pages, I’ll most always find that Williams has something encouraging to say, such as,

If you’re at the ‘I can believe I even started this crazy project stage, revive your enthusiasm by picking a smaller element from the Technical Draft, like dialogue tags or chapter endings. Work through those challenges to feel some progress and get back into the writing groove.

I do this, and, sure enough, my gremlin slumps out the door.

Williams is more than a desktop therapist. She hands you a blueprint to build your memoir from the ground up…in seven drafts. Maybe that sounds like a lot, but chances are you’re going to write seven drafts (at least) anyway. Why not follow a proven plan?  

Williams has worked with thousands of writers as a book and writing coach (some resulting in deals with the Big-Five publishers). She also runs Rebirth Your Book and Rebirth Your Writing retreats (in various locations around the world) and is a Brevity staffer.

In Seven Drafts, she writes as if she has pulled up a seat beside you, guiding you as you create a narrative arc, capture readers’ attention and hold it until the end. 

Step one is the “Vomit Draft,” which Hemingway famously referred to as the shitty first draft.  “Get it out get it out! It doesn’t matter if all the words are spelled rite,” Williams writes.

Whether you’re meeting Williams for the first time in the pages of this book or you’ve encountered her at a conference, workshop, or online seminar, you’ll discover she’s quick-witted, self-deprecating, and always your cheerleader. In this first draft (whatever you wish to call it), the goal is to express all your ideas without editing, shaping, carving beautiful sentences, drawing plot lines, or pruning. The goal is to get down all the raw material so you can shape it into a story.

Next, Williams helps you work through building your story. In the Story Draft you’ll address key questions: What does the protagonist want? What’s stopping them from succeeding? What happens if the protagonist does not succeed?  Williams writes:

Good memoir shares many elements with good fiction: a compelling protagonist, on an interesting journey past powerful obstacles and/or against a fully realized villain, who experiences permanent change within herself, while changing her world.

Next the Character Draft. Here, you’ll develop your protagonist into a well-rounded, intriguing character who engages readers’ imagination and compels them to read on. If you’re successful, readers will be riveted, and they’ll be compelled to turn the page to see if the protagonist succeeds.

Williams reminds us, “To write a truthful memoir, we must speculate—or ask—what happened when we were offstage. We must seek out what we don’t know.” In other words, you’ll probably need to do research. Not only do you need to have your facts straight, but it more information can help you add depth and detail to your characters and plot.

Four more steps: Technical Draft; Personal Copy Edit; Friend Read; and Editor Read. Plus, there’s a chapter on publishing.

In these 342 pages, Williams gives clear, succinct advice with diagrams and tips that work for both memoirists and novelists.

You may ask, isn’t there a Berlin wall between fiction and nonfiction?  

Yes…and no. Whether you’re telling your own story or inventing one, storytelling requires plot, inciting events, drama, and resolution. A memoir can be slow and ponderous like a long poem…or it can be a page-turner that engrosses the reader that it’s hard to put down. Think about Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle, Tara Westover’s Educated, and Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life.

Memoirs and fiction both rely on good storytelling: a compelling protagonist who’s on an interesting journey, facing obstacles and/or a villain, and experiencing major change.

Allison addresses fiction and nonfiction alike in writing about what you don’t know:

Writing what we want to know can be even more powerful than writing what we already know. Research beyond a novelist’s experience opens doors for interesting characters and new plot twists. For memoirists, genuinely considering a question like Why did my mother treat me like that? can allow us to resolve the past as well as creating a complex, nuanced picture of our personal history.

She also helps when the gremlins try to convince you, No one wants to read your story. Others have already written about it. Not true, Williams says. “It’s not originality that makes an idea compelling, but the specific expression of that idea,” she writes. Every person’s story evolves into a unique quest to find meaning and understanding. That’s why you can write on a topic that others have written about, and yours is different.

Some writers say, But I want to write what I want to write the way I want to write it. I’ve done that once before. This time, I’m enlisting Williams, through her book, as my Sherpa. She’s traveled this way before and, from what I can see, knows the way.  
__

Debbie Hagan is book reviews editor for Brevity, and a writer and educator. Her writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Hyperallergic, Critical Read, River Teeth, Superstition Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Her essays have appeared in various anthologies, including Fearless: Women’s Journeys to Self-Empowerment.

Time Well Spent (at Sea)

By Dinty W. Moore

I am not a cruise person. Or to be more specific, I have never been on a cruise, have never imagined myself on a cruise, and have always assumed I would live my life just fine here on firm land. My contrariness is probably misguided—it often is—but I am nothing if not stubbornly contrary.

Yet I’ll be crossing the Atlantic with 25 or so other writers in early 2024, aboard the Queen Mary II, and like my essay hero Michel de Montaigne, I suppose I would do well to explore my contradictions openly, on the page.

Reader, I am an idiot, sometimes, and a hypocrite, often. My life is filled with untested assumptions.

For instance, I am also constantly in search of ways to lessen the distractions in my life that keep me from writing. The idea, first put forth to me by my friend Allison K Williams, that a cruise ship is the perfect place for a writer’s retreat, an undistracted space, seemed fully absurd to me at first. Aren’t there costume parties, lavish meals, fancy lectures. Isn’t there, you know, the Atlantic Ocean?

Well, you can only stare at the ocean for so long, Allison reminded me, the masked balls and fancy parties are generally at night, and having someone else cook your meals frees up a bit of time. “The wifi,” she added, “is usually bad enough that you’re not tied to email or getting lost in research rabbit holes.”

In other words, you can stare at the water, you can eat well, you can even put on a glittery mask and sip champagne, but that leaves a boatload of unplanned free time to do as you wish. Which might mean, tackling that chapter, or that book, or that essay.

It takes a personal commitment, that’s all: I’ve got all of this extra time, so I am setting these many hours aside every day to write and I am going be there in my chair, writing. Come hell or high water.

So I’ll be on the high water in late April and early May, not just drafting my own version of Moby Dick but co-teaching a writing intensive with Allison and Jane Friedman. Any chance I can harpoon a few of you to join us?

Admittedly, a writing intensive on the Queen Mary II has its pluses and minuses. I’m aware, certainly, that not everyone can take the time, or bear the expense, for such a luxury retreat. That will leave a few folks out, of course.  (But you can do same thing, really, by booking a cheap hotel room near your home for a few days and ordering in.)  On the upside, the Queen Mary II is fully accessible, the decks are flat, there are no hikes up the sides of hills to get to your cabin. For some, this is an opportunity to join in on an activity that can often seem out of reach.

Perhaps the real benefit here is that any activity which draws us away from the worn channels of our daily routines, whether that is work, caretaking, family, or whatever, can be good for our writing. Steer a new course. See new horizons. Wake up to a different view.

As for me, I’m going on a cruise. And yes, I’ll show up, a sheepish landlubber wrapped in skepticism and a jaunty scarf, at one of those fancy evening galas. As Montaigne once said of Socrates:

“There is nothing more notable … than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”

No guarantee that I will like it, but maybe I will. My hesitations, clearly, are firmly grounded in untested assumptions and a lack of experience.

Montaigne said this as well:

“Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.”

___

Dinty W. Moore is the founding editor of Brevity and the Brevity Blog.

___

Interested in a week of ocean views punctuated by craft talks, editing panels, publishing advice, and a community of dedicated writers? Join Dinty, Allison, and Jane for the Rebirth Your Writing Craft & Publishing Voyage on the Queen Mary 2, April 28-May 5 2024. Find out more/or register now.

The Hard Sell: Why Memoirs Get Fewer Book Deals

By Allison K Williams & Jane Friedman

A writer asked me, “Allison, why are memoirs so much harder to get published than fiction?”

I took the question as fundamentally true—that memoirs are harder to publish than fiction—but why?

For one, fiction has genres, and genres have fans. Writing a mystery? There is an existing pool of mystery readers who want to read more mysteries. They are already on mailing lists. They are already browsing that section in the library or bookstore. Publishers know they can sell new mysteries, as well as science fiction, fantasy, literary fiction and a bajillion subgenres of romance.

Memoir readers are loyal to an author, but generally not to the genre as a whole. Memoirists must entice the reader with the story of their life itself (famous people) or the story they tell about their experience (everyone else).

All authors face craft challenges. Most novelists write several books before selling one. They learn through trial and error what was wrong with their first book, then fix those issues in the second book; then fix the second book’s issues in the third book, which might actually get a publishing deal. Most memoirists write one book (though there are famous sequels from authors including Mary Karr, Glennon Doyle, and our own Editor-in-Chief, Dinty W. Moore). First-time memoirists often have one story that’s powerful and important to tell, and may do many drafts, but it’s rare that a memoirist has several different manuscripts in the “practice-book” drawer. It’s harder to develop our craft retelling the same story, rather than trying different plots, new characters or fresh themes.

But then I wondered, was my perception right? Was there any actual data showing that memoirs are harder to sell? I asked publishing expert Jane Friedman for some hard numbers, and her thoughts.

Jane says:

I think the big reason is what you point out, Allison: each genre has a fandom, but you can’t really talk about an established fandom for all of memoir. It’s too specific to who’s writing the memoir or the topic.

You can see this clearly in the number of deals made for fiction vs memoir. In the most recent 12 months of deals at Publishers Marketplace:

All fiction deals: 1,828
Debut fiction deals only: 404
Romance deals only: 336
Memoir deals only: 267

And deals for all types of memoir (celebrities and “normal” authors) have been decreasing in recent years:

2023: 279
2022: 311
2021: 322

Seeing the types of memoirs that get signed helps reveal why it’s so hard to sell a memoir. If you’re not already famous or somehow established, you need an angle that the media will find interesting. Here’s a look at the authors of the most recent memoir deals reported to Publishers Marketplace. I’ve noted small press for those outside the Big Five.

• The creative director of The Atlantic, who has already published a book, about severe depression (small press)
• An actor on Game of Thrones who is also a DJ
• An artist who spent two weeks in a psychiatric hospital
• A journalist following her husband’s suicide (small press)
• Someone born with 15 birth defects who somehow survived
• An actor on One Tree Hill who has a podcast
• The cofounder of Van Halen
• A memoir-in-essays by a Black lesbian author who is a MacDowell fellow
• The Kentucky Poet Laureate who is already published and writes about Black Appalachia
• The longtime producer of This American Life
• A Black woman servicemember in the US Navy
• A woman who had relationships with some of the most famous conductors and musicians in the world (small press)

The hard truth is that most people’s life stories are not that interesting to the kind of general, mass-market readership that Big Five publishers serve. And at this particular moment in time, where I see more writers than ever writing about trauma, especially from childhood, the story lines can unfortunately start to look the same.

Back to Allison:

When we walk into a bookstore, memoir is one small section amid shelf after shelf of fiction. No matter how good our book is, we’re entering a smaller market. But that doesn’t make our stories not worth telling. Opportunities for self- and hybrid publishing have become much more common; we don’t need agents to send our work to university and literary presses; and plenty of memoirs sell to the small, specific audience who need to hear that story. Finding that audience means doing research in advance and promoting our own work, and many authors balk at the idea of “doing the publisher’s job.”

And yet, it is our choice: work hard to appeal to the masses necessary to attract a Big Five publisher; or work hard to discover who our readers are, and get our books into their hands. Neither is an easy path. But on the latter, you get to open the gate yourself.

______________

Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Manager and the author of Seven Drafts.

Jane Friedman reports on the publishing industry and helps authors understand the business.

Writing a novel, or know a novelist who needs the info? Join Allison & Jane for Getting Past the Gatekeepers, their webinar about strong queries and first pages that get manuscripts out of the slush pile and into the eager hands of agents and publishers. 1-3PM Eastern Time, March 20^th ($35, replay to all registrants). Find out more/register now.

Stop Interrupting! Better Ways to Use Reflection in Your Memoir

By Allison K Williams

Recently, I edited a well-written manuscript with a compelling childhood story. But there was one major issue: the adult narrator would not. Stop. Interrupting.

I’d be immersed in a compelling scene, full of tension or passion or dramatic action, and suddenly “it seemed like” or “I probably thought” popped up. This self-commentary felt like hedging: “This might not be 100% gospel truth so don’t take it super seriously!”

And bam! My critical eyes overruled the journey of my sympathetic heart.

Yes, readers need to know our honesty level. But genre covers that. In a book labeled “memoir,” we understand memories are personal; that dialogue is characteristic rather than transcription. Tell them once, in an author’s note—Dialogue is reconstructed to the best of my ability. Or early in the narrative: “I was drunk through most of 1985; black holes litter my memory.”

Yes, memoir includes reflection. In early drafts, reflection spontaneously arises, because we make meaning as we write. In revisions, make deliberate choices where to stay in the moment and where to step out and comment. Do this by identifying the reflective voice, the retrospective voice, and the narrative.

Reflective voice adds emotional or intellectual context, and is the weakest choice.

My brother was a terrible bully all through our childhood. He knew how much I’d wanted a cake with icing roses, and sure enough, after dinner, when the candle-lighting and singing started, I’d been greeted by a naked cake. My mother had gone across town to Wilson’s Bakery to get those yellow roses, and sometime that afternoon, he’d eaten them. Now I see he was crying out for attention, but then all I did was cry. My mother didn’t even notice, probably distracted by the divorce she wasn’t telling us about yet. I lunged across the table, knocking the cake to the floor, clutching at my brother’s throat. I’ve never yet stopped wanting to strangle him.

• First sentence gives away the entire story, announcing HELLO LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING BAD MY BROTHER DID. After “icing roses” we can write the ending ourselves.
• Past perfect tense establishes, “I’m telling you something that’s already over.” Things that already happened lack tension—the classic trap of memoir is that we know you’re OK, you’re writing a book about it. Authors must actively create tension in the past.
• The adult narrator interrupts the past scene with adult understanding and contextual information, further reducing tension by excusing past behavior that, to a child, was inexcusable and downplaying the emotional impact.

Save reflection for truly adult moments of realization, where you-the-writer have gained new understanding from examining the past. Put it at the end of the scene, not in the middle. Let the reader wonder/anguish/marvel with you before the explanation or evolution comes.

Retrospective voice is telling the past story from the present, but is still a report rather than the story itself.

I’d always wanted a cake with yellow icing roses. For my tenth birthday, my mother finally got one, from Wilson’s Bakery. But the cake sitting on the table had no roses—sometime that morning, my brother had eaten them. Now, I didn’t pick up his calls.

The frame of looking back as the justification for what happens now is better, but makes the past scene less important than the present reaction. The retrospective voice works best when the juxtaposition of past and present creates humor or drama.

But the cake sitting on the table had no roses—sometime that morning, my brother had eaten them. Perhaps that’s why, when he called to tell my voicemail he had liver cancer, I didn’t call back.

Narrative voice is usually the strongest choice. The reader experiences the scene with the narrator, sharing their reactions without softening explanations or excuses or how really, you’re a lot better now.

Mom stuck the pink Wilson’s Bakery box on top of the fridge, where we could only see it from kneeling (forbidden!) on the counter. After the plates had been cleared, I waited in the dining room, smoothing my skirt. From the kitchen, my mother sighed heavily. “Michael…” but then I heard the match strike. “Happy Birthday” carried them into the dining room, the candles glowing on Mom’s face. She set the cake before me, ready to wish and blow.

No yellow rosettes.

Under the candles were three spots of naked cake, bald of icing. Across the table, Michael stuck out his tongue. In the candlelight, it looked still coated with yellow sugar.

Here, the reader can feel the childish rage, and is ready themselves for future retribution—they wouldn’t pick up that call, either!

As you revise—and this is revision, not first-draft work!—stay in one voice per scene. Go completely into the past, or stay in the present, looking back.

Limit reflective framing. If the emotional impact isn’t clear, revise the scene rather than larding on extra boo-hoo, do you understand I was sad?

Intellectual reflection is strongest in the retrospective voice, juxtaposing the past with new information or new developments. Instead of analyzing the scene for the reader, let them meet you in understanding on the page.

What distinguishes “memoir” from “family stories” is removing most of the “I remember” and “probably,” keeping us in past experience. Edit the whole manuscript, removing “seems” and “felt like,” and assert your narrative authority. We know it’s your perception, because it’s your memoir; keep us fully in the world instead of hedging.

Shhhh, author-narrator, shhhh. We’re reveling in past-you’s story. Don’t interrupt.

________

Allison K Williams is Brevity‘s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts. Got plot problems? Don’t know how best to shape your story? Join her TOMORROW for the CRAFT TALKS webinar The Secrets of Structure: Shaping Your Powerful, Publishable Novel or Memoir ($25) at 2PM Eastern. More info/register now.

The Magic Question: Getting Real Feedback You Can Actually Use

Show your pretty necklace.

Just look at those beautifully dropped shoulders!

By Allison K Williams

A writer asked,

I wrote a short story recently, which wasn’t very good, and some people left comments complimenting it, but they were being nice, instead of telling me how they really felt. How do I politely ask them not to spare my feelings? While I appreciate the kindness, I wrote the thing as practice and would appreciate criticism, since I want to become a better writer.

There’s a two-part challenge here. First, most of our readers do want to be kind. If they’re writers, they understand how much a negative comment can interrupt or even squash the creative process. Second, if the commentariat are primarily readers, or early-career writers, they may honestly not know how to identify what’s not working, much less how to phrase that constructively, so they put away the unease and say something nice—or, as our mothers taught, they don’t say anything at all.

Direct, specific critique is a kindness in itself. When I started as an editor, I read ads in the back of writing magazines promoting “gentle, nurturing feedback” from “kind, supportive” editors. But my writer friends were asking, “Just tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it!” Yet, not everyone is ready for full-on directness. Even in my twenty-year relationship with the (wonderful! insightful!) editor of my plays, a brusque rejection of a new manuscript turned me off writing another script for nearly three years. Pathetic? Silly? Overdramatic? Yes—but feelings are facts.  

How can we get the feedback we need from readers who don’t want to hurt us? How can we help our writer friends improve without damping their creative joy?

Coaching circus in schools developed the foundation of my teaching style and pedagogy. When I started, I worried about “moving too slowly” and boring the students, but breaking skills into smaller steps at that grueling residency in Alaska (70 elementary kids! Total darkness!) actually led to faster learning, and starting with components before sweeping ideas serves my teaching still. One of my fellow coaches in Utah discovered the power of a positive focus instead of a negative correction. For a particular aerial position, where students were shrugging up to their ears, we all stopped saying “Put your shoulders down!” and started calling out, “Show your pretty necklace!” The imaginary jewelry, and lifting the sternum to “show it” helped students from preschool to adulthood correct their form.

Part of our coaching process was having students show work-in-progress, anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes of a group acrobatic or aerial routine, at the end of each rehearsal. With mixed age levels K-12, the feedback needed careful guidance to stay helpful and encouraging, yet offering critical insights to their peers helped the students improve their own work—just as identifying the challenges in someone else’s writing helps us see those same issues in our own. We started with “What do you see that’s working? What should they make sure they keep doing?”

Then came the magic question: “As they keep working, what should they keep working on?”

Try to stay in unison more—Jenny’s calling the moves at the right time, so can she be louder?

Point their toes harder, it looked really good when they did.

Even more of the funny moments, we liked the characters!

Not “you guys were out of sync” or “sloppy feet” or “undeveloped characters.” Positive focus, instead of negative correction.

The Magic Question is a very simplified version of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process, a more elaborate method that also controls what feedback is received and how it’s given. By identifying what the artists are doing well, we set our critical eyes to what we’re actually seeing/reading/hearing, rather than what we wish we had experienced. By focusing the feedback on what to do more or better rather than instead, we affirm the creators’ goals and respond within the framework of their creation.

As I keep working, what should I keep working on? enlists our readers as collaborative partners and colleagues, rather than elevating them to be our critics. The answers are a lot easier to receive, and the feedback becomes part of our own work plan. We’re not being told, “do this” or “don’t do that.” We’re being affirmed for the work we’re doing, and encouraged to develop our own next steps to make the best parts better.

It’s entirely possible that in the pursuit of improvement, we’ll discover we were working towards the wrong thing to begin with. Maybe the key isn’t pointed feet at all, but making sure the flexed feet look intentional. But making that discovery ourselves is more powerful than being told. And helping another writer find their own path is less fraught than informing them they’ve got the wrong map.

As we develop relationships with writing friends and within peer groups, our feedback style can and will evolve. I have plenty of friends who can tell me “That’s not working the way you want it to,” and to whom I can respond in kind. But for early-draft feedback, for stranger/acquaintance critique, and for assessing our own work, the Magic Question is a powerful way to give direct and kind feedback that’s also immediately useful.

______

Allison K Williams is Brevity‘s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book.

Get On Board: Keeping Readers on the Dramatic Train

By Allison K Williams

There is a glorious moment in almost every manuscript where the editor realizes, “Aha! THIS is where the story starts!” and breathes a prayer of thanks that the author does indeed have a book. Their labor has paid off, we discover, and we don’t have to send a diplomatically worded editorial letter suggesting they start again from scratch.

This moment is usually somewhere in pages 34-50.

Don’t get me wrong—I see plenty of strong first-page hooks. Intense confrontations, moments of critical action interrupted, or even just a powerful literary or comedic voice inviting the reader onboard to share a journey with the protagonist, lean forward and enjoy the story. But the pattern I’ve seen lately is 3-5 kickass opening pages—most authors, by the time they’re ready for a developmental edit, have carefully workshopped and developed their opening with plenty of feedback—and then…backstory. Family details. Worldbuilding. Relationship-showing. Well-written anecdotes that don’t connect. The destination sounded cool, but now we’re in the observation car learning about the upholstery and wondering when we’re pulling out of the station.

As an editor, I’m still carefully reading every word of the subsequent pages, spotting craft issues and great phrasing and sentences and paragraphs to salvage from the sea of not-bad-writing-just-meh. As a reader, I’m jittering in my seat, yelling (sometimes literally) “But what do you WANT?? What’s HAPPENING?” and startling the heck out of my husband who would just like to process some databases, please, at our coworking table.

I’ve fallen into the hook-‘em-then-meander trap myself.

I wrote a book some years ago, a manuscript I workshopped and friend-read and had professionally edited, and landed an agent. The book was shopped to publishers but nobody yet was buying. Then, as a student at a conference, I participated in a session where first pages were read anonymously to a panel of agents who rang a bell wherever they would have stopped reading. The reader got through my whole page, and after a moment of silence, the room burst into applause. Major ego moment!

So I thought, why not pull a few pages for the student reading? And as I leafed through the manuscript—boring, too much set-up, that’s unclear out of context, boring, porn, backstory, ugh—a revelation came upon me: the book wasn’t selling because the book wasn’t good enough. After the page that hooked the panel, there was an awful lot of explanation and muddling around, trusting my authorial voice and the shock of the concept were carrying the book.

They weren’t.

So how, fellow writers, can we carry out the promise of our glorious first pages?

By focusing on the dramatic arc. First, we must establish what the memoirist or the protagonist is longing for in those 3-5 opening pages—no matter how wild or tense or action-packed the scene, what do they need? Why don’t they have it right now? This can be stated or implied, but it’s something bigger than the immediate scene, a goal or desire that can’t be easily met.

In the next 5-7 pages, show when they are farthest away from meeting that need. This is often, but not always, the “here’s how the whole story started” scene. Meeting-cute for a bad relationship, becoming conscious of their poverty, going to the party where they’ll take that first hit. If we’re still moving forward chronologically, this is where we see the untenable existing situation and why the character needs more. They may already know they have the need, or it may be clear to another character, or maybe only the reader can see it, but it’s there.

Next comes the first turning point scene, where the protagonist begins changing: they gain a skill or a mentor, or face a big obstacle, or start running down the wrong path to reach the goal.

By page 20 (double-spaced, in case you’re counting), the character’s journey is established. After the immediate engagement of the opening scene, their dramatic arc has begun. The reader understands explicitly or implicitly what the character wants, why they don’t have it right now, the outside obstacles, and the inside change that must occur in the character in order to meet that need. The reader has seen the first steps towards the goal, and their curiosity is building about the path to the destination.

Throughout these opening pages, weave in backstory in small doses, where personal history is either a direct cause of the main action, or serves as context/contrast for the scene. The further you are into the book, the more grace the reader has for detail, setting, backstory, etc. But they need that initial pull to get on the journey. Show them the dining car and the observation car after the dramatic train gets going.

Take a look at your own first pages—you probably have a strong hook! Are you also showing what the character needs and why they don’t have it? Try highlighting everything that’s backstory or information in the first 20 pages—is the protagonist (possibly you!) taking actions on a journey that has definitely started?

Let us know in the comments what you discover.

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Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Editor. Ready to sell your memoir, or want to be? Join her for Proposal Bootcamp April 12-14, for three days of planning, writing and finishing your memoir or nonfiction book proposal. (Friends of Brevity use code BREVITY50 for a discount!)

Your Media IS Your Market

By Allison K Williams

How is the media you regularly consume supporting your book?

Writing a book is tough enough, but when we’re ready to bring our words into the world, we get overwhelmed and confused. What goes under Marketing and Audience in our book proposal? Which titles make great comps, showing the book’s place in the market? And, uh, who are your audience…and once you know that, where do you find them, and how do you get your voice into those places?

Scrambling to identify and reach a market at the querying stage, or right before a book launch is disorienting and discouraging. More than ever, authors are expected to know who they’re writing for and what media those readers already consume before the book deal is signed.

Didn’t publishers used to do all this work? Yes and no. Twenty years ago, publishers signed fewer authors and spent more money on marketing. But media was more focused: buy ads in the New York Times and USA Today, send out press releases to the dominant newspaper in each major market, and contact the handful of relevant book reviewers. Now, marketing can mean identifying the 100 or so most influential BookTok and Instagrammers, contacting key indie bookstores and writing specialty press releases for niche magazines and websites, while spreading the budget across Amazon ads, podcasts and the six major social platforms on top of traditional radio, TV and print outlets.

It was also easier to buy memoirs only from people who were already famous, politically prominent, or in the news. The “personal” memoir category has grown exponentially, which means more opportunities for writers, and more niche audiences to reach with a story that will specifically appeal to them.

So how do we find our niche?

A few weeks ago, I was listening to The Gist, with podcaster Mike Pesca interviewing an author who’d written about recent political developments in Guatemala. As it happens, I was working with a memoirist whose book largely takes place in Guatemala. My thought process:

1) There might be info in this podcast that the memoirist needs. I didn’t know there were 20+ different tribes of Maya, and she might want to give that context. Or maybe she wants to reference what’s happening in the Guatemalan lives around her, to give the setting and auxiliary characters more depth. Maybe the sea change in local politics reflects one of her themes or her own turning points.

2) This podcast host is at least passingly interested in Guatemala. The memoirist might listen to more episodes (or, shortcut, just read the show notes) and see if Mike Pesca covers other events in the region. She could add him to her book proposal as a potential press opportunity: she, or her publicist, or the publisher’s publicist, can send a press release and request to be on the show when her book launches.

3) The author being interviewed has written about Guatemala. Could his book inform the memoirist’s writing? Would he be a good comp? Is he someone to ask for a blurb?

4) Where else has that author been interviewed or published? Are any of them venues for the memoirist to send an essay, or get interviewed herself?

As an editor and book coach, I stay aware of the publishing marketplace. Subscribing to Bookbub’s weekly discount ebooks email (free!) tells me what books are getting an extra push from their publisher. Publishers Marketplace (not free!) shows me deals made for books coming out in a year or two. I pass info to the authors I work with, forwarding them links to podcasts, newspaper and magazine articles, and cultural trends that will support their work when their book is ready. But this is work you can do for yourself, too.

Start your own list of future publicity venues while you’re writing the book. Making a couple of notes a week for several months is much easier than scrabbling for info in a frantic rush when you’re ready to query or launch.

Start local: where does your subject fit in the media you already consume? What articles gave you great ideas, or a new spin on your own topic? What essays are wrong–and you have an opposing argument? Then expand outward–where else are those people publishing, or what else is published in that venue?

Where can you reach your audience right now? Who else is talking about your topic, or parallel issues, or cultural trends surrounding your work, and can you engage or publish in those communities? Who is reading those venues, and how are they engaging with what they read (comments, re-shares, social engagement, opposing editorials)?

Who do you want to be connected to? Which podcast hosts do you find lively and appealing? What authors should you follow on social media, or seek out their other work? If you review or comment on their work, sign up for their newsletter and start gently interacting now, they won’t be a stranger when it’s time to ask for blurbs.

Paying attention to your audience and your market, through the media you’re already consuming, will not only lay the groundwork for your future sales–it’ll help you reach the audience who needs your story. And by deliberately interacting with and considering the issues around your story, and the other writers discussing your topic, you’ll also write a better book.

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Allison K Williams is Brevity‘s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts, which she gleefully promotes on all the podcasts she’s ever listened to. Develop your own PR plan at Proposal Bootcamp, a 3-day live-on-Zoom event to write most or all of your book proposal with professional help and support. April 12-14, $425–Use code BREVITY50 for a $50 discount. More info/register now.

Memory Matters—But to Whom?

Photo of Unlucky-Economist347’s grandmother and mother in the Belgian Congo in the 1950s. (photo from Reddit)

By Allison K Williams

As an editor who coaches writers to publication, I’m often asked:

I have my [parents’/grandparents’] [love letters/diaries/journals/taped interviews] and [photos/memorabilia/public documents] about them. What can I do with this material?

The quick, crass answer: Nobody cares. Put them in a shoebox and remember to label them so your kids know who the heck those people are when they clear out your belongings. But that’s my most-jaded perspective. I’ve already realized that my own mother’s years of genealogy research, generations of family photo albums, and good china will never find a home with my brother and me.

And yet, as writers, it’s sacrilege to discard the evidence, to dismiss the care and attention our foremothers spent to record their daily existence, special events, and the love that literally brought about our existence. How can we meaningfully honor that effort without wasting our time on a project few others will read?

Plenty of bestselling memoirs dive deep into family history: Tara Westover’s Educated, Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. What made them work? Educated and Inheritance both tied in to current culture, with Westover writing about her survivalist family just as popular media turned its eyes to preppers; Inheritance dives into the discoveries many people made as DNA testing became widespread. All are well-written, with Angela’s Ashes perhaps gaining the most critical respect. As “misery memoirs” go, McCourt’s sly humor and lyrical voice “rounded the edges of a brutal tale and made it so compelling that you actually enjoyed reading about what he’d lived through,” wrote Suzanne Donohue at Off The Shelf.

Three things make family histories work as books: compelling story, brilliant prose, and cultural connection. You don’t need all three, but without at least two, you’re unlikely to find a wider audience.

Compelling story. In Educated, readers get insight into survivalism, hard-right religion, and the personal drive it takes to not only escape, but to recognize something’s wrong in the first place. Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died tells us right from the title: this isn’t a story you’ve already heard, and the author won’t be pulling any punches. When you share your story with people outside your family, do they ask questions beyond polite interest? Did you make counterintuitive choices, or have a remarkable experience?

This applies even more to “My mom/great-aunt/elderly neighbor has a unique personal story that I want to write.” What makes memoir compelling is that it happened to the writer. It’s rare for a non-famous person’s biography to be compelling. Consider fictionalizing their plot, and be supported by your powers of invention rather than held back by facts.

Brilliant prose. With all due respect to your relatives, it’s unlikely they were awe-inspiring writers; their actual documents may not be the most powerful prose you can muster. Consider instead how their story lives on through your own, perhaps interspersing very short moments from your archive to illuminate your story in the present. The more you polish your craft, the better understanding you’ll have of when a bon mot from Grandpa adds to your own journey.

Cultural connection. Too often, letters and stories from the past, while meaningful to the participants, no longer hold a mirror up to life as we know it. Does anything in your documents bear on a political movement or significant events? What’s going on in the world right now, that your past family embodies? Why do outsiders need to know? If you’re working with Grandma’s letters, is there something to be said about communicating on paper vs electronically? Did your parents have a unique relationship that might speak to modern couples? Consider testing one of those concepts as an essay, to see how it resonates with readers.

Of these three attributes, cultural connection is the simplest to manifest. Author Clorisa Phillips wrote about the meaning of her mother’s gift, a charm bracelet and years of commemorative charms. She tied her story to the current boom in charm bracelet sales by the jewelry giant Pandora, and the essay was published in The Ethel. Now, writing family history, Phillips is expanding her frame of reference so that her ancestors’ stories are specific examples of historic growth and change in their region. She’s uncovering how their habits, food, and anecdotes reflect a common history, and how that history is relevant to modern political concerns. 

You need not write for mass consumption to create a book for a specific audience. Family history/letters can be a beautiful gift to your descendants, so if you’re facing a pile of ephemera that feels valuable to you, don’t waste time convincing literary agents. Consider having the letters transcribed or professionally scanned and creating a book that looks great; then print 50 copies and distribute them as family keepsakes, perhaps donating a couple of copies to a regional library or museum. This could even be a wonderful joint project between you and the generation above or below, bonding over the writing and design process. 

The publish-ability of your family history does not determine its intrinsic value. Not everything worthwhile is salable. Not everything salable is worthwhile. To honor the efforts and records of your lineage, start sharing now. Host a family-stories party for your own descendants, or fellow members of your generation. Gather over a Jello salad with mayonnaise and ham to swap funny-grandma tales. Whisper past family triumphs into the ears of your pajama-clad progeny. As a woman said recently, “My grandchildren aren’t connected to my own grandmother at all. If I want them to treasure her jewelry, I’d better start wearing it.”

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Allison K Williams is Brevity‘s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book.

Writing a memoir of any kind? Sell it with a proposal, which also serves as your marketing map. Join Allison for Proposal Bootcamp April 12-14, live on Zoom, and write most or all of your proposal with templates, class time and professional guidance. Find out more/register now.

How to Know If a Publisher is the Real Deal

by Allison K Williams

Today’s essay is a little different than our normal posts. I’ve seen a wave of new publishing scams recently, and we all have to know how to protect ourselves before we buy into a story with a very unhappy ending. So I want to show you my real research process for finding out if a publisher is the Real Deal. You can watch this video, which shows exactly which websites I visited and how I evaluated the information, or you can scroll down and read the transcript, below my bio.

Reading in your email? Here’s the link!

Links to helpful sites for finding and evaluating contests and publishers:

The Alliance of Independent Authors and their Book Award and Contest Ratings

Writer Beware

Poets & Writers Small Presses list

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Allison K Williams is Brevity‘s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts. Develop your own book in Tuscany this fall with Allison & Brevity Editor-in-Chief Dinty W. Moore. Find out more/register now.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello Brevity readers—today’s blog is a little different because I want to show you my real research process for finding out if a publisher is the real deal. I’ve seen a wave of new publishing scams recently and we all have to know how to protect ourselves before we buy into a story with a very unhappy ending.

I recently got an email from a writer friend and she asked me, “Hi Allison Trio House Press are sponsoring a manuscript contest the Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award. In addition to the monetary prize, they will also publish the winning entry. Do you know anything about this Press, and would you recommend it for a submission whether part of the contest or not?

Now I hadn’t heard of them so my first stop was the Alliance of Independent Authors. They have a wonderful page that is Book Award and Contest Ratings. They’re really clear

about why are we judging these places, and how are we judging these places. Here’s their guiding principles: that the contest is there to recognize the writers, not to make a whole lot of money; there’s a clear, transparent judging process; you’re not giving up key rights; and there’s no weird upsells like hey buy a whole bunch of stickers for $70 to put on your book and say I won a prize that nobody’s ever heard of.

Now down here they have their ratings and reviews. There’s a key to tell you what each of the ratings means and you can either scroll alphabetically through the list to see what’s there, what’s recommended, what’s not, or I can just go ahead and type in Trio Press and when I discover hey it’s not listed there, Okay I need to do more research it’s neither good nor bad as far as the Alliance of Independent Authors is concerned.

So my next step is a basic Google search. Trio House Press. It’s a good sign that they own their domain name and as I scroll, I can see oh they are going to AWP. So they’re a member of AWP. They’ve invested money in their publishing business. Scammers don’t usually come to AWP because either they’re a foreign company and they don’t have a visa or they just don’t want to look people in the eye.

It’s a good sign that they have an account with Submittable. It’s a good sign that they have an Instagram. That they’re a member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses and hey, I’m going to note that down because that might be a place I want to look for more publishers in the future if I’m helping an author client shop for publishers.

I can see that they have a LinkedIn, they have an account with bookshop.org and I also double check they have an account over at Poets and Writers. They’re members of poetsandwriters.org. Over there I can check out their profile on poetsandwriters.org which is another place where you can research many small presses.Notice that they’ve listed some specific authors. I can check and see are any of these people I know or people my friends know.

It’s very clear that they have guidelines; they have a long response time, as do so many publishers these days. And hey, it’s good to know they accept unsolicited submissions.

You don’t have to have an agent to submit to them. So not only are we finding out, yes, Trio Press is extremely legit, we’re also finding out more opportunities for ourselves or for the other writers that we know.

The next thing I do is I visit Trio House’s actual website, and what I’m looking here for is a clear statement of who they are and what they do.

Things are spelled correctly. That’s always a good sign of a careful eye. They have interesting-looking covers. Covers that I would be proud to have my book be next to. Covers that look professional and that look like they’re going to help sell the book.

I can also go ahead and take a look specifically at their contest page, and here’s another green flag. They have listed specific judges. For example, their Trio Award judge for a first or second book of poetry is Jessica Q. Stark. She’s a poetry editor at AGNI, which is another legit magazine. She’s an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Florida. She has legit credits. All of these elements are stacking up to show that this is the real deal.

Be very aware if a contest hides who the judge is. If judges are hidden, or they’re just not specific about it, that probably means their judge’s opinions aren’t going to make a great big difference to your career.

Then I’m going to head over to Twitter and I’m going to check out the Press on Twitter. This lets me take a look at how they’re supporting their authors by their public presence, it lets me know a little bit about who they are, what kind of things they support, what kind of things they’re in favor of. And as I scroll down through, I’m also noticing they’re very supportive of BIPOC authors and I think that’s a really good sign.

I can also take a look back up at the very top and I can see, oh hey, I know Sean Thomas Dougherty. He’s a great poet and Sean follows Trio House Press and there’s other people who I follow who also follow Trio Press. That’s a good sign, too.

I can also take a look here and Google the specific contest. Oh look, other organizations are tweeting about it as well. That means at least one other organization thinks they’re the real deal. Then I think to myself, oh hey, isn’t one of my friends publishing with Trio House Press?

And I take a look and Casey Mulligan Walsh’s book, The Full Catastrophe, All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, is forthcoming from Motina Books, a different publisher entirely. One that I already know is the real deal.

My last stop, if I found any signs of worry, if the website looked bad or the cover looked bad or the social media presence was iffy or non-existent, at that point I would visit Writer Beware. And this is a great site to read regularly. Victoria Strauss not only names names, she shows what scams are made of so that you will recognize the ingredients when and if you encounter them.

So I go back. And I tell my friend, yeah, Trio Press seems legit. And in my email response to her, I ask her, consider what you want. Are you really hoping for the prize? Do you want the money? Do you want a specific judge to see your work? And keep querying while all that happens. It’s really rare that you’ll have to choose between a contest with a particular publisher and another offer from an agent or another publisher, but it sure is great to have that as an option if it happens.

Once I know the publisher, I file that away in my mental records and share their contest info on social media.I’ve already checked them out, so if my endorsement saves another writer some time, that’s literary citizenship that I can contribute. For your own research, follow these steps:  

1) What’s their online presence? Do I like the look of it? Are they on any watchdog sites?

2) Are they members of professional organizations?

3) Is there anything online about what they offer now?

4) Do people I trust, trust them?

5) Is their public presence professional and a personality I can connect with?

It only takes a few minutes to find the answers, but the confidence in your own judgment lasts forever.

Happy writing!