Ouch, but in a good way

(Part 1 of 2) I just received some tough feedback on a book. So herewith a response: criticism is a gift, and hard criticism is one of the greatest things any fellow scholar can do for you. A true professional's one and only response to negative feedback on work should be "Thank you," followed by a serious and thoughtful consideration of each of the critic's points. Sometimes critics are wrong (and we've seen that from time to time in Booklab from peer reviews), but sometimes they are absolutely on-point correct, and other times the truth is in the middle. It is imperative, however, for any serious scholar to get and read the criticism, and to recognize it for the blessing that it is.

Wendy Belcher tells an interesting story about a scholar whose article was ripped at a top journal. The scholar revised based on the valid points, and submitted to a second journal, where it was ripped again, albeit more gently. After that revision, the scholar went to a third journal of equally superb quality, where it was accepted, along with editorial comments that they rarely see a piece so strong on the first bounce.

Amen. Therefore I nod to all critics in gratitude, and I will revise immediately (no waiting) for the good of the book, for the benefit of my colleagues, and for my own personal sense of professionalism and academic integrity.

Finding versus making time

One of our faculty authors sighed and started to tell us all this week about how she "just wasn't able to find the time" to work on her overdue book, because her daughter has swine flu, her department hosted a conference, and her husband had to go out of town to meet with caregivers about his mom.

She was just launching into the final busy anecdote when she realized how much she sounded like the people in the Paul Silvia book (How to Write a Lot) where he laughs at the notion that one "finds" time for writing. You make time. After all -- she said after she caught herself saying this stuff -- she had "found" time to watch the news on TV, and shop for and bake something for a school sale. When it occurred to her that she could have recorded the TV show, bought some cupcakes at her favorite neighborhood shop for the sale and gotten some of her writing done, she smiled. I never preach here (I'd have to preach holding up a mirror, because I do this stuff, too, although at the moment I'm deeply into that article).

Writing doesn't have to take long. We only ask for an hour a day, although you can give it more if you're so inclined (a typical Booklab faculty member with a family does between 1.5 and 2 hours a day five days a week if a project is underway, and adds weekends only if it is due). Just that small commitment can yield more than most professors ever produce, and it can easily result in two articles per year and a book every two-three years.

38 University Presses at MLA 2009

Wow. I've been to great university press events before, such as the Association of American University Presses convention in Philadelphia last June, but it is still so exciting to count 38 university presses that will be represented at MLA in December. Some of my four readers will yawn and say it's not such a big deal, university presses are always there, but this is the first time I've approached MLA with quite this focus.

When you go to a university press booth, whom do you meet? As nice as it would be to fantasize that the editors are sitting there all day every day waiting to talk about books with whomever strolls up, that isn't the case. Editors will be in and out depending on the value of the conference to their publishing area, and whether or not they have pre-arranged business with booth visitors.

I will contact all 38 university presses during the month of October (2 per day for 19 days) and ask the following key questions: who will be at your booth in December; how do you prefer to interact with potential faculty authors; what do you want us to understand about your booth ahead of time (i.e. what materials/people do you send to a conference and why); and (big picture question) what is the meaning of conference representation for your press? How do conferences help the press?

Getting ready for MLA in Philadelphia

Booklab now offers pre-conference planning, and we're in the early stages of figuring out exactly what that means. The short answer is that many faculty make book deals at conferences, so they become high-value activities in publishing. We're putting together a strategy to start thinking about conferences a year or even two years ahead of time in order to have a wonderful experience there that includes establishing key publishing contacts.

But beyond book publishing, a flourishing scholarly career includes membership and participation in the appropriate professional organizations. Although I'm a life member of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, I've only gone to some of the conferences, and I'm guilty of having reduced the annual Modern Language Association conference to an afterthought (or worse, a job-hunting event). Now it all moves front and center as I resolve to (a) become an active, contributing annual participant in these two professional organizations; and (b) encourage and guide the authors who work with Booklab to do the same for their respective groups.

This means Philadelphia for the MLA in December, and I will also blog about it. Advance duties include learning what publishers will be represented there; guiding my authors to think ahead about prospectuses, sample chapters, and appointments with editors; making my own appointments at the event in order to meet even more university press people; and finally, grasping conference culture as its own professional milieu and discovering new and exciting ways to participate in conferences actively, rather than in my old guise of the slightly edgy lurker.

Name the source of that quote

One of our authors read in a book that you should "touch your work every day," meaning that you should keep the project you're writing in a place where you can find it, and you should sit down to visit the work each day even if only briefly, in order to move things along. I completely agree with this. Some days it feels as though all I can commit to is opening the computer file, but once I begin then the body in motion does truly tend to stay in motion, and often I keep writing. Science is cool that way.

But what is the source of the quote? In an online book search (including Amazon's nifty advanced feature) I got nothing when I hunted for it. In a regular search (Yahoo and Google) I came up with two websites that mention it, and a commenter attributes it to a magazine editor and author named Kurt Rheinheimer. Any other suggestions?

Such compelling excuses

Some members of the scholarly book groups and the article group are starting to e-mail in with excuses (I have trained them please not to phone). From scheduling to grading to general mayhem, a small percentage of Booklab authors are letting life sweep writing out of the way. We've had engaging discussions about how scholarly writing and publishing is as important as teaching (not more important, not less). It's different, though, because teaching always happens. No excuses. Faculty show up for every class period unless something has been prearranged with ample advance notice.

So question: if you don't show up for your book group, what will happen? Answer: nothing. The group will sail on. Its members will publish (we are publishing -- it's a miracle to observe!). Only you will know what's happening in your own world, on your own c.v. But if you are always there for your students, year in, year out, then it is also possible to make certain that you are always there for your scholarly writing. We've already proven your time at the page need not be long or burdensome. Curious about this? Then send e-mail for more information.

(The above photo depicts teaching in Healy Hall, one of my favorite venues. I have taught many a class there.)

When a publisher acquires a book, everyone isn't always on board

Publishing houses don't always agree on books, and that may include your book. Yes, your editor wanted it. That's usually a given unless your editor left and someone else took it over. But sometimes that editor prevailed over the skepticism of other editors, or of the marketing team, or even of the editor-in-chief. Sometimes editors get shot down in contentious acquisitions meetings, but other times they prevail. That still doesn't mean that everyone loves your book, and it could account for some of the ambivalence you feel from the publishing side.

Is this bad? I personally think it is neutral, and just part of the real world versus the imaginary one. It's like being hired at a company and fantasizing that everybody voted for you. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't, and sometimes you have to deal with the guy down the hall who applied for your job and didn't get it.

If you know going in that publicity is difficult, that publicists have a whole catalogue of books to love and care about, and that yours is certainly important, but not the only consideration in their day, then you can start to think constructively about how to work with your publicist. One editor in a recent edition of Poets & Writers suggested flowers. My personal style would lean more toward a terrific sandwich platter sent to the whole publicity team with a thank-you card. Either would be a great start. Along with this outreach, consider making a personal, 40-minute visit if you live close enough, or at least plan a phone conference with your publicist about six months before pubdate, armed with the attitude that you want to learn how to be the best author ever when it comes to teaming with your publisher to sell your book.

Gifts, thanks, and a terrific attitude? These will go a long way toward engaging publicists in your cause beyond routine efforts, and they can also overcome any in-house ambivalence that may have lingered around your (or any) book's initial acquisition.

Publishing cliché series -- is it true that "Editors don't edit anymore"?

I've decided to start a little series dedicated to the shopworn publishing clichés I hear in this goofy, amazing profession. The first is something I hear from unpublished authors mostly, that "Editors don't edit anymore." Then Ecco editor Lee Boudreaux brought it up again as a sore point in the March/April Poets & Writers. Boudreaux points out "Having worked at two different houses, I literally do not know who they're talking about. Who just acquires and doesn't edit? I feel like everybody I've ever worked with sweats blood over manuscripts. And you reap the rewards of doing that."

Agreed. My editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard, worked so hard. I was amazed at the dedication, the time invested in back-and-forth work over drafts, and the general sense of care and craft that went into Elisabeth's work.

When some people hoist this particular canard (and yes, I know that I'm combining clichés here), they also like to cite Maxwell Perkins -- the longsuffering editor of Thomas Wolfe's Southern Gothic doorstop Look Homeward, Angel -- as a real editor. Oh please. Even Wolfe finally decided that the interdependence had to end, and he left Perkins's publishing house, Scribners, to sign with Knopf. If you're going to cite Perkins as a real editor and the rest as pikers, then I'll consign you to a corner of literary hell where all you can read for eternity is The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises over and over and over and over again.

More about whether "your field" is your field

Several people wrote to me privately about the last post. Apparently there is a good bit of personal anxiety out there among many academic professionals about whether or not they're in the right field. I wish some of them had posted their thoughts in the comments, but in these days of Eternal Internet Footprints, many are shy about doing that, and I certainly understand. Still, my e-mail was lively.

Beyond the case of the assistant professor with the mashup disguised as a specialty, there are those who enjoy what they do, but don't quite know how they got there. They feel as though their careers are some sort of cosmic accident -- that they are experts in one thing when it could just as easily have been something else.

And then as if the universe were in some sort of secret accord, this quote came from Steven Pinker in today's New York Times Magazine: During my first book tour 15 years ago, an interviewer noted that the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had dedicated his first book to his father, who took him to see the dinosaurs when he was 5. What was the event that made me become a cognitive psychologist who studies language? I was dumbstruck. The only thing that came to mind was that the human mind is uniquely interesting and that as soon as I learned you could study it for a living, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. But that response would not just have been charmless; it would also have failed to answer the question. Millions of people are exposed to cognitive psychology in college but have no interest in making a career of it. What made it so attractive to me?

He goes on to try and analyze it, and you can read his thoughts at the link above, but I consider his question more interesting than the answer. What, indeed, made any of us turn right instead of left, or this way instead of that way? I remember the moment I decided to study the 18th century. About eight of us were in a scholarly editing class at the University of Virginia with David Vander Meulen, and we sat around a table in the rare books room at Alderman Library. He showed us the University's copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sitting there, seeing that hand-printed document, and realizing that the 18th century was one of the fields my particular graduate program was best known for, made it fall into place like a puzzle piece clicking. Perhaps I should have known what field I wanted before entering grad school (many people do), but I was fortunate that one of UVA's best offerings happened to be a perfect fit. I wouldn't change it if I had it to do over again; rather, I would have begun earlier and studied even more deeply.

But if that day hadn't happened (and if I hadn't grown up near Alexandria, Virginia, an 18th-century port city), would I have been happy doing something else? Of course, or at least I think so. Would you?

Above image from an optical illusions website.

Are you sure "your field" is really your field?

This interesting conversation happened with a pre-tenure faculty member who was having trouble placing her manuscript. "There's just so little understanding," she said, "of what it is that I do." She kept referring to "my field," but when I asked how she defined that field, she launched into a complicated explanation of a how it was a cross between two distinct areas of historical research, with a third cultural component thrown in. The mix made not-so-much sense to me because both of the historical aspects were from the Dutch late-1600s, and her literary/cultural monkey wrench was from France in the 1920s. Both were fascinating eras, but also much-studied yet oddly tacked onto one another in a "see if you can follow my logic here" way that felt both obscure and culturally disjointed. I soon found myself mentally humming "One of these things is not like the others..."

Call me old-fashioned, but I think if you're going to refer to an area of research as a field, it should probably have more than just you in it. Otherwise you risk being just another lonely laborer out standing in his field. Sure, you can define a field, and that's bold and important work, but it's also usually best done post-tenure. In fact, her field wasn't really so much an area of research as the resulting mashup combining what she had studied in graduate school with what she liked to do now.

I asked her whether she had considered writing about something a bit more accessible. Something -- perhaps -- that a university press might actually be able to list in its catalogue and sell. She sighed. "But this is what I'm trained in. It's my expertise." She held on to her topic, and who knows? Maybe she will find a home for it, though I don't see how. But what I do question big-picture is how hard it would be to take some post-doctoral courses at (for example) Johns Hopkins that is just an hour away, and branch into a second area of expertise that more clearly connects her to a recognized field. I'm not saying she needs to give up what she loves, but rather it seems she is defining "her field" so narrowly that she can't quite imagine doing anything else. And is she really an expert? Her qualifications at present are quite slim -- just a few graduate courses, and a dissertation. Why can't this change, expand, grow?

Many scholars choose a number of areas in which to educate themselves as experts. A doctorate is hardly a badge of perfection in any field. As some of my advisors liked to say, it's just a union card.

Photo above of a woman out standing in her field taken from Somebody's blog.

Since when are an author's lies the editor's fault?

I grow weary of armchair critics who blame editors and fact-checkers for bold, audacious falsehoods by authors. "What happened to editing?" these critics cry. "Where are the fact-checkers?"

They're right where they've always been, stupendously overworked and underpaid. Do these critics seriously believe that a busy editor with 50 nonfiction books on her list is also personally responsible for making sure that every one of them is absolutely true? Or that an underpaid fact-checker who works for an entire publishing house, not just one editor, can possibly think of and then catch everything in every manuscript?

I'm not talking about having a basic fact-checking procedure. Some of that is routine, and if my own experience at FSG is any indication, it does happen. Not only did I have to provide evidence of certain facts to the publisher, but I also had to spend a couple of hours on the phone with a lawyer going over the potentially actionable parts. All fine, all good, but (I would add), all my responsibility as an author. The fact-checkers and lawyers were there to advise and instruct, not to police. Even if they were there to be the truth cops, if an author has the deep-seated, pathological ability to fabricate things that happened years ago in a place that no longer exists, how would an editor or fact-checker ever know?

If you think you're so smart and no one would ever pull one over on you, take down any major nonfiction bestseller from your shelf and ask yourself how you would start proving that the important, big-picture aspects of the book are true. Where do you begin? Someone says, for example, that they should have checked to see if James Frey ever went to prison. Really? Okay, but if you don't know that's the suspect fact, where does it fall in a list of maybe 2,000 other facts that need to be checked? Now multiply the book in your hand by dozens of books, piled up all around you. They all need fact-checking. Where do you start? How long will it take? Whom do you hire, and what happens when most of the facts do check out? At what point do you stop and conclude the book is true?

Sure, it would have been nice if somebody knew that a young woman in starving Eastern Europe in wartime couldn't hide a stash of apples to toss over a fence to a boy in a concentration camp, and that her beau couldn't have made it to the fence in the first place. But that fact amid all the other checkable facts becomes a needle in an amazingly complex haystack. In retrospect we know a lot of things that are not at all evident in the moment.

I believe the critics should give editors and fact-checkers a break. The responsibility for telling the truth rests with authors.

Vanity, thy name is option clause

The author was ecstatic. Not only had she been offered a publishing contract, but they wanted her next two books as well! Oh glory! Whoo-hoo!

Slow down.

I made her a cup of my amazing fresh-brewed coffee with lemon zest, and I convinced her to sit by the fire at Booklab a minute and take a breath. Yes, it sounds flattering when a publisher includes mention of your future works in a book contract. But dear author, this is what is known as the dreaded Option Clause, and it always benefits the publisher, not you.

The clauses are generally written in tricky ways. You usually have to show your publisher your next work of the same genre (for example, your next work of nonfiction), and give them right-of-first-refusal. Doesn't that sound innocent and also flattering? It does, but it isn't. First of all, it gives them a chance to bid on the book with no competition, so they can "buy" you on the same terms as your first book, even though presumably you're worth more on book two if you are angling your career the right way. Second, it prevents you from shopping book two around when it is in the earlier stage of proposal and sample chapter, a stage at which many publishers may want to give you a deal. This option clause won't be satisfied if you show your current publisher that same amount of work -- you still owe them a look and a bid on the whole manuscript. The overall effect is one of squelching healthy competition.

There is an old gentleman's agreement in New York publishing (although it is rapidly falling by the wayside along with such niceties as job security) that says if authors are bound by option clauses to publishers even in a manner that they can technically wriggle out of, other publishers won't bid. The general thought was -- and sometimes still is -- that you should satisfy your obligation to the publisher by producing the books that the option clause stipulates before you are free to go elsewhere, and other publishers would expect the same, so they back off. Would this hold up in a court of law? Of course not, but publishers know that turnip-poor authors aren't usually going to go crying to the judge over such matters. They can't afford to.

There are two ways to handle an option clause if you don't have an agent. The best way is to get the publisher to strike it out altogether, and if you do, that's a complete victory. Then the publisher can bid just like anyone else for your next book. But most publishers won't do this, and unless you are valuable and they're nervous about losing you, I don't blame them... why would they? What you usually can get, however, is a time limit. I prefer sixty days, but you can negotiate and perhaps settle at ninety. Once you close the loop by giving the option clause an expiration date, you at least render it into a gentler thing, if not completely harmless.


The book image above comes from the University of Nebraska Press.

Thoughts on submission for 2009

Now that I'm back at Booklab after some decidedly non-bookish time in the Florida sun, I've had a chance to think about some of the odder aspects of publishing. The oddest for me personally is the submission process, as I have blogged before. The word "submission" carries strange overtones, primarily one where the writer is the supplicant and the agents and editors -- who supposedly hold all the power in the submission process -- are the grantors. Over time, a sensible soul might logically step back from the gatekeeping process and ask if this is really the only way to the page. It isn't.

The sane writer (whether of books and essays, or a singer/songwriter, or a playwright, or a poet) learns to thrive on internal validation, and understands that creative output is a God-given gift and right, not a gatekeeper-dictated privilege. It is not dependent on age (in fact, most bestsellers come to authors over the age of 55), it does not favor youth and innocence, and it need not stop if one gets what some people love to sneeringly call a "real job." Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive. Rita Mae Brown was once a bricklayer. (I've always found that really cool.)

If I could impart one useful phrase to everyone who visits Booklab discouraged over rejection, it would be this: "Who are these people?" Submission is often necessary, and I believe in heeding wise agent or editor counsel, but submission does not overturn the essential authority of you as an author. You're the one who chooses when you start, how you progress, when you stop, and -- even if it has been decades -- when you start again. No other person -- parents, teachers, mentors, employers, agents, editors -- controls a bit of it.

I guess this is the part of the post where I sum things up in a pithy way, and then add an image about perseverance. But I'm feeling too contrary for that. After all, some people really aren't good writers and never will be. Yet who am I to decide? I can think of five or six people on the bestseller lists right now who write books that I find problematic in the extreme, with issues ranging from poor writing to "ew" subject matter to aimless execution, and I can name a host of wildly talented people who aren't published and possibly never will be. Far be it from me to say your good work will prevail in the traditional submission process if you are diligent. Maybe it won't.

But you still get to decide. It's still your life and your ride. And if you silence yourself because you didn't get one over in an arbitrary, power-laden process called submission, you may deprive me and others of your breakthrough work.

Here's an interesting quote from Spike Lee when he learned that Barack and Michelle Obama went to one of his movies on their first date in Chicago: "Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, “Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to Soul Man. Michelle would have been like, ‘What’s wrong with this brother?’ ”

Lee made that movie, and all the others, without asking anyone for permission. In fact, Lee never really participated in the submission process as it is traditionally defined. Read his bio here, and you won't see one word about how he offered his work to someone else and silently begged for validation.

Blogger bait part two

My second "I took the bait" post about this month's Poets and Writers concerns the cover. P&W gives them this front-cover line: "Four next-generation agents reveal what they love, what they hate, and ten things writers should never do." The list enumerates glitches that are hallmarks of the uninitiated, such as sending letters addressed "Dear Agent," gushing about how Oprah will love this book, sighing about how many times they've been rejected before, etc.

But why would anyone in publishing complain about this? Such mistakes are harmless enough, and it's not as though we don't all see them. Can't people be given room to learn? In fairness, I think the agents were just answering the question (after a bit of wine... it was a dinner interview). It was P&W's editorial decision to go the classic "never-ever," ruler-on-knuckles direction.

I have always loved the words of that great man of letters, Lewis Lapham, who once said that he received submissions to Harper's "with gratitude." I suggest that is how the literary profession should treat the submission letters or e-mails that come our way. Instead of instructing them on how they should dare approach the throne (the belly crawl? or perhaps the miserable grovel with a flourish?), we might consider remaining ever grateful that would-be authors think well enough of us -- and of their art -- to even try. If they get it wrong, we could simply bless them with the kindest words we can muster. (After all, even the least likely may become bestselling authors one day -- and here I think of Tennessee Williams, who legend says began with few social skills and spoke like a yokel when he first approached super-agent Audrey Wood, and who was known to write dialogue on cocktail napkins.)

We don't live long, any of us, and our relationships would benefit from more mutual ease and forgiveness, and fewer "don't" lists, especially from writer-focused magazines.

Funny postscript to the Roy Blount bit below

This follow-up e-mail arrived later in the day after the earlier one. I assumed no permission was needed, but apparently others were more cautious:

The Guild's staff informs me that many of you are writing to ask whether you can forward and post my holiday message encouraging orgiastic book-buying. Yes! Forward! Yes! Post! Sound the clarion call to every corner of the Internet: Hang in there, bookstores! We're coming! And we're coming to buy! To buy what? To buy books! Gimme a B! B! Gimme an O! O! Gimme another O! Another O! Gimme a K! K! Gimme an S! F! No, not an F, an S. We're spelling BOOKS!

Yours,

Roy

The Authors Guild sends a holiday message

With the blood running in the streets of New York publishing, and editors leaving to become lawyers or something, this is a timely message from the Authors Guild. I personally will make all of my gifts new, full-price hardcovers, as a show of solidarity:

I've been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren't known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don't lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. A government bailout isn't in the cards.

We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let's mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that's just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children's books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they'll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: "Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see... we're the Authors Guild."

Enjoy the holidays.

Roy Blount Jr.

President

Authors Guild

Lincoln's doctor's dog (with a nod to Bennett Cerf)

Book groups can make the careers of some authors, and for a few years now it has been painfully obvious that many authors are writing specifically to pander to book clubs. When the book is a gem like The Guernsey Literary and Potato-Peel Pie Society, then fine... even though the title reads like a fawning bid for the book group business (the late author herself was encouraged by her book club to write it), it also happens to be an excellent little charmer, so no harm no foul (although I still chafe at the title, and I would object even more if I were in a book club).

But what about all those other books with book club code words in the title, such as "Knitting Society," or "Friday Night," or some other semaphore that screams "We're pandering to yooooooooou, book clubbers!" Many of them even include book club discussion questions at the end. Often you'll see the name of a famous author such as Jane Austen invoked to give the book gravitas, but it usually ends up being sacrilegious, akin to using God's name to sell used cars. Some howlers are on the way in future titles, and although I do not use this blog to put down any book by name, you can find some of the forthcoming ones if you go to Amazon and type in a few of the code words above. It's enough to make you run screaming from the bookstore. ;-)

The bloodbath layoffs in publishing this week

Brave leaders figure out how to keep the team together when times get tough. They encourage everyone to think creatively about how to turn things around. They set an example of both thrift and foresight, and they act like heroes. They remember that publishing was never primarily about the money, and they resolve to get through temporary hard times with their integrity and organization intact.

They do not lay talented people off in December in a blistering economy to fend for themselves, precisely at a time when a lot of similar talent is hitting the streets looking for the same jobs.


NB: I speak, as always, for myself, not for any organization or other individual.

A response to common writerly advice

If I hear one more writing teacher at one more conference say "murder your darlings," I'm going to commit a crime! Seriously, it's terrible advice, but it gets repeated over and over again simply because Faulkner or Elmore Leonard or Fitzgerald or somebody Important was supposed to have said it. It is unwise counsel from the same blather machine that gave us the Worship of Hemingway Style (spare, muscular prose, or at least supposedly so), and the Church of Strunk and White (a.k.a. "How to write like a terse New Englander").

Because of this proliferating nonsense, authors with glorious, Gothic, indulgent, magnificent passages set to work paring them back to leaner stuff that is a repudiation of everything that makes that particular author wonderful. Don't even get me started on writers' workshops where these same energetic authors go in with their own voices and come out parroting MFA program product.

I'll offer a counter-bit of advice. Nurture your darlings. If you love a passage, keep it! Lean into your own writerly indulgences, and enjoy them. Give yourself shivers, and then thrill when your readers get them, too. And don't listen to too many gurus at writers' worshops or conferences. If anyone ever gives you advice that makes you either feel depressed or like you did something wrong with your work, just blow them a kiss and walk away.

Indulge yourself, your subconscious, your impulses, your dreams . . . all on the page, all wonderful, all alive. And leave the best bits for me to read -- don't edit them out, please!

Whose book is it, anyway?

A scholar I know is struggling with the pitch for her fourth book. She was energized for years with an idea she had for an offbeat history, and she was excited that her career was growing to the point where she could do her book her way. Then her agent stepped in and pointed out how much more money she could get if she entered the national conversation at a different level, writing a different kind of book entirely. Since my scholar colleague just lost a lot of money in the stock market, she's cash-sensitive right now, so she took the agent's suggestions.

During this back-and-forth on the proposal (which I have been privileged to view in each stage) I've seen the book morph from the scholar's original vision to something the agent thinks would sell. And now I have a pointed question for the author: whose book is it? Seriously. Is the agent the true author, and does that agent simply speak through you? Are you an author-for-hire who realizes the agent's dream and vision in words? Or is it your book and are you the author? Another way of asking the question is "does the agent work for you, or do you work for her?"

Movie poster from the entry for "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" at NYTimes.com.