Scholarly and Literary Journal Experiment: In VQR's Living Room

I strode into the living room of the Virginia Quarterly Review this week to have a look around. No, I didn't drive to Charlottesville. Instead I sat down with the Fall issue and a cup of coffee and read. For all seven of you who follow this blog regularly, this is part of a journal experiment where VQR is the first victim of my scrutiny.

"Reading" in this instance involved more than the actual literary content, although that was crucial. I did read each article, story, and poem, but I also read the masthead and looked up people there whose names I didn't recognize; I read the bios of every contributor; I looked at the artwork (so much a part of this journal's unusual affect); and I even considered the advertisements, all telling a story in themselves. I further read about VQR's history online, to get a sense not just of where it is and where it wants to go, but also where it has been. I read even an appreciation/ obituary for its longest-serving editor, who stepped down in 1975 after 33 years.

Knowing a journal is like tasting a wine or appreciating a color or a texture. Once you get a sense of it you can think about what might pair well with it. You establish quickly a sense of whether or not your writing style is compatible with its editorial vision (or could be), and what sort of work would make sense to share. Think of this exercise as planning a dish to bring for a meal in someone's home. Every dish doesn't work in every gastronomic context. What work will you offer not just as a sampling of who you are and what matters to you, but of who those editors are and what would enhance their overall vision?

The journal does feature writing by women, but its overall tone is decidedly masculine with a global focus. It almost feels like the literary companion to a newsmagazine. Its emphasis remains on the stars that it naturally draws through the stature it has built over time, but it appears open to less-glittery contributors as long as they share what I perceive as dual characteristics (neither taking precedence): great writing, and a journalistically slanted global perspective. Sebastian Junger's current forays in Afghanistan would offer perfect core material, but so would your experiences working in an AIDS orphanage in Senegal.

VQR appears to reflect the precise editorial vision of its current editor-in-chief Ted Genoways in as specific a way as Harper's for a long time reflected Lapham, or The Paris Review reflected Matthiesen and Plimpton. I can't imagine a poem, story or essay appearing here that would work equally well in other literary journals, so the exercise of sending your stuff around to see where it sticks would seem futile in this case. I think to hit VQR you've gotta know -- and savor -- the target.

All of this is my opinion, not VQR's words, so I'd be interested to hear from anyone at the journal with thoughts either way.

Q: Did Hemingway really call Rolling Rock "The Green Muse"? (A: Uh, no, that would be absinthe)

This is sort of scholarly. Author Horst Dornbusch will host a Smithsonian Associates event at the Brickskellar on October 25, featuring his new book Prost! The Story of German Beer. Smithsonian Associates likes to hold events in restaurants; I was once part of their event at 1789 Restaurant, where we celebrated Joan Reardon's books about M.F.K. Fisher. Fisher was a legendary 20th-century food writer whose work I taught during my "Nonfiction as a Literary Form" classes at Georgetown. Here's a link to the Smithsonian event. These tend to sell out, so order early if you're interested.

I took the blurry image above during our university trip to Kenya in June. Some of us drank Tusker pretty much every day...

A tiny tip that will save you hundreds of hours

Time saver extraordinaire: Before returning any source (especially if you have traveled to a distant archive) do four things: (1) Enter the complete citation into your electronic end-note source such as RefWorks, and make sure it is absolutely letter perfect; (2) double-check your page numbers and your quotation of the source; (3) take a photocopy of both the publication page and the quoted text itself, in case your computer crashes or is stolen; and (4) write up your thoughts about those sources while they are still fresh for you.

Does this sound like beginner's advice? Then you'd be surprised how many famous scholars come to me with end notes that are a mess, and without complete certainty that x set of notes came from y archive. One stopped by recently with over 500 haphazard citations and a pitiful question, "Will someone in your office please check all of these for me?" The answer is of course was no (it would take months if not more than a year of quite a few hours per week from one individual), but someone must do it before his book is published.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! If you do just a few citations as you write, you'll get there, and you'll be so relieved not to have to face it all at once.

Out of the spin cycle: Balance between research and writing

I met with a woman who had researched a subject for two years, and was trying to get up the energy to begin drafting her manuscript. She sighed and looked at the pile of books in her bag -- "I'm at a distance from much of the early research. I was halfway through a book this week before I realized that I already read it back in 2006, and simply forgot."

Many academic authors come to me caught in this interesting spin-cycle of research and note-taking. This period can last for many months or even years, and some authors never leave it. I know of at least one project that was in the research phase for over twenty years! The resulting lovely book went on to win a Pulitzer, so the effort wasn't wasted, but those of us who know the story well also understand that it didn't have to take that long. And yes, like the woman above, the author probably forgot much of the early research and had to re-trace his steps a few times.

Some authors strike a productive balance between research and writing. Many focus on one aspect of the book at a time (this requires discipline, because it means not reading everything else that comes to hand, and not checking out every possible book on the larger topic, but noting them on lists for later). They then they write up the research on just that bit, even if they know it will change later.

Meanwhile, some of those who get stuck in the research phase also become overwhelmed by potential sources, and a few express fear at the notion of having to change anything after writing it. They don't want to step out of the research phase long enough to write because they dread learning something new that will overturn their conclusions. But why? They're just words on paper. You can change them. Promise yourself that you will change them if you learn something new, but if you're stuck in the spin cycle, try writing your research up in tiny-bit text form anyway. Not only will you make steady progress, but you'll have the luxury of drafting your book while you're still fresh on each source. This is also a great plagiarism prevention device, because it's easier to check and make sure you didn't inadvertently copy anything without attribution.

Writing bits of actual text as you go and paying meticulous attention to the notes will yield something amazing -- a book that grows bit by bit, organically, rather than being rushed along in a too-fast writing phase. This can potentially yield text that has more depth, richness, and character.

Image of Ukraine’s Central State Historical Archives in L’viv borrowed from www.usukraine.org.

Sabbatical is sacred (in more ways than one)

"I'm supposed to be on sabbatical," he said, "but of course I keep getting dragged back in to the department for busy work."

The first time I heard this from a faculty member, I assumed that he simply had personal issues with boundaries and saying "no." The second time I heard it (this time the professor was female), I thought perhaps it was a characteristic of a certain type of individual who needed to feel needed, even during the time for travel, research and writing with which universities have traditionally rewarded their successful post-tenure faculty. By the third time, however, I realized we have a mini-epidemic on our hands, and one that every university should address: sabbatical is sacred, and it must be respected both by the individual on sabbatical, and by the colleagues back in the home department. Allowing oneself to be dragged back from sabbatical for meetings, political squabbles, personnel matters, and other department business is a disservice both to oneself and to the home university. No other profession is so generous in offering an academic year off for travel and research, and everyone should treasure it and work to preserve it.

But what really happens? How does sabbatical break down, and why? I'd love to hear from readers about it, and why you think it's so hard to stay away. Is it the individual professor's fault? That of the department? The university as a whole? Is it just human nature? I'm sure that many people take their sabbaticals and return with manuscripts in hand, but what happens when that doesn't happen? I'll hunt to see if there are any journal articles on this important subject.

Oscar Wilde's library

Via Arts and Letters Daily I found this engaging article in The Literary Review about Wilde's library... I'm now adding Oscar's Books by Thomas Wright to my reading list. At present it's only available in the U.K., and I've ordered a copy, but perhaps soon it will find its way across the briney.

The book journal, part six: becoming anxious during research

Several authors have reported a phenomenon that I have also experienced. In the middle of historical research on something that you find exciting and engaging, it is possible to become seized with a peculiar dread that someone else has seen this and written about it, and that you are busily researching the obvious. A related concern is one I addressed in an earlier post, that another scholar will beat you to your own results. A competitive, paranoid nervousness can set it, accompanied by twitches and strange thoughts.

[As background, I've been up to my dusty eyebrows in library materials about an 18th-century subject that I'm planning as a book. Right now I'm deep in the research stage for the sample chapter that will go out with a book proposal (in this case a hybrid between a scholarly prospectus and a trade nonfiction proposal) to potential university press publishers. I'm noting progress on this blog in the hope that others will also share their book writing experiences and chime in.]

In the middle of all this, the odd dread came upon me, and I had to sit down on the floor of the library stacks to get over it. Perhaps it was the fumes from all of those old books (I'm working with some of the oldest that are still on our shelves in the hope of finding traces of my author mentioned in works by others, with many of them pointing to books and documents that no longer exist except as reference notes), but I had a vision of turning a page or completing a computer search and seeing my own words under somebody else's name, but not plagiarized, because the article had been written years ago! Of course it was all a fantasy, but it had the effect of reality... I had to step outside for some fresh air and a reminder that nothing is new, it's what the researcher brings to the study that matters most. Most of us strive for originality and unique contributions, but we so often find traces of others in the scholarly past, laboring quietly in a solitude now covered over by time and quaint obscurity. I just know that I have a 19th-century intellectual doppelganger who touched the same pages, took similar notes, and drew startlingly like conclusions about our shared 18th-century interest. I just haven't found her or him yet. If I do, I'll simply travel back in time, crying "Thought thief!"

Scholarly and literary journal experiment: The new VQR is here!

It is remarkable how exciting the arrival of a journal becomes once you have declared an interest in it. In this case the journal is the Virginia Quarterly Review, which I chose as the first journal in an ongoing literary experiment (see explanation at right and blog posts below). Whereas before it just came in the mail and I put it on the coffee table stack along with the others, today when the mailman dropped it through the front door slot and I heard it plunk to the hardwood floor, once I saw what it was I actually felt my heart rate rise. I cared.

Is there a danger that your book will "fall into essays"? Is that a valid concern?

Twice since June I've had authors express concern that their books-in-progress will "fall into essays." Each time the author used the same phrase to describe what was perceived as a pitfall to be avoided. Through probing we learned that the concern was more structural than thematic -- there was in each case a sense that all of the chapters belonged together, but that they somehow might fail to cohere in some sort of logical or necessary way.

My answer is to step back and ask if any nonfiction book is really more than a collection of essays. Theoretically any chapter should be able to stand on its own with a reason for its existence, and a beginning, middle and end. There is a sort of ideal model that wants all of the chapters to be necessary, and that hopes they will link somehow to keep the reader interested and turning pages, but readers tend to dip in and out of books (especially nonfiction, but even fiction sometimes... have you ever heard of the mystery reader who gets the gist and then turns to the finish? They're out there!), and we know that many nonfiction readers prefer going back-to-front, whether in a magazine or in a book. Some magazines actually structure themselves that way, to reward the right-to-left reader who likes to start at what English-speakers would consider the back of a publication. And think of all the major world languages that read right to left. There is nothing particularly special about left to right and about the order of chapters as many of us in English-speaking universities understand them.

A book is what an author decides it is, and its chapters relate to the extent that the author declares it so. If two chapters don't seem to connect naturally, then it's the author's job to build a helpful bridge that demonstrates the link the author perceives. Just as transitions take us from one idea to the next in a well-structured essay, so chapter transitions lead us from one to the next, preferably with a bit of enticement so that we don't do what most readers do at one time or another -- drop in a bookmark and never pick up the volume again.

Keeping readers is a secondary challege to getting them in the first place. There are a number of ways to do this, and building engaging and easy-to-use transitions among chapters is surely one of the most helpful. Then it won't matter whether a book is at risk for falling into essays... for the infrastructure will be there to keep it together with much more than just two covers and some library stitching.

Is what Booklab does "coaching"?

This morning someone sent me an interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about book coaching on campus. It cites the program at Emory where I have spoken with Amy Benson, who guides authors (although it does not name her), and also programs with more of a clinical psychology focus at Vanderbilt and UMass-Amherst; it also mentions a couple of private academic coaching firms. They all sound valuable and necessary, but they bring up an interesting question, at least to me. Is what we do at Booklab coaching?

Eh, I'd say sort of, but most authors who come to Booklab have no trouble motivating themselves to write. They have earned their jobs because they did and do write and publish, and typically by the time they find themselves with a job at Georgetown they've overcome most issues they have with time management, deadlines, goal setting and more. Although this office was originally imagined as a resource for all book authors, but especially first-time ones, it was surprising to observe that most of the people who consult Booklab have published before and are now interested in moving their careers into an even higher sphere of literary influence. (I eventually learned that it is a characteristic of many well-published scholars to ask for help. It is often a characteristic of the unpublished to disdain it. Ponder and report.)

The issues that I address with our faculty usually involve this bigger career picture, tackling questions such as how one transcends mere productivity and moves into becoming essential in one's field, or where the prizes are for particular kinds of scholarly publishing. What is out there to reach for besides tenure, or the rank of full professor? What university press titles win the Pulitzer and why? How does one become a public intellectual and participate more consistently in the discussions on NPR, CNN, C-SPAN Book TV, MSNBC, and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and, for that matter, The Chronicle of Higher Education?

This may be coaching, and I certainly enjoy the psychological aspect of this job, but it is also envisioning, and it involves me and my own writing trajectory as much as my authors. We're all in this together, imagining among ourselves what Georgetown can and should be in terms of its publications, and how we as colleagues can challenge ourselves to think about our books and articles in ever-more ambitious and publicly necessary ways. In a media-soaked world still thirsting for meaningful intellectual conversation that speaks across disciplines and to thinking people outside of academia as well, what we do is vital. Fun, yes, and rewarding as can possibly be imagined, but also darned important in a world that likes to say "publish or perish" as though that's all the goal is about.

Jim O'Donnell at Politics and Prose with "The Ruin of the Roman Empire"

A standing-room-only crowd filled Politics and Prose on Saturday, September 20 to hear Georgetown's Provost James J. O'Donnell read from and discuss his new book, The Ruin of the Roman Empire (HarperCollins/ Ecco). Among the animals joining him at the podium was a donkey, and it stood as more than a mascot -- it was a harbinger of a book to come.

You can also listen to his interview with Lewis Lapham on The World in Time, his weekly program on Bloomberg Radio.

Alternative thoughts about approval (helpful when submitting work to book publishers or journal editors)

"I don't want people's approval. I want people to think the way they think.... 'You there! Stop your internal life and focus over here, on me! I absolutely know that it's in your best interest to approve of me. I want that, and I don't care what you want.' But you can't control someone else's thinking anyway. It's a house of mirrors. Seeking approval means being stuck in the thought, 'I'm a this,' this little speck, this limited thing." (Byron Katie, from Question Your Thinking, Change the World.)

This was interesting for me to read, and my new answer to it is to more regularly send work to editors without confusing their responses with approval. Publication is not validation. If I desire to feel better about myself as a person, a scholar, an artist, then I meditate or seek guidance. If I desire someone to publish what I have written, then I seek an editor. I try not to confuse the two.

Scholarly and literary journal experiment part 2(a): Eighteenth-Century Studies

Although there is much more to do with the Experiment Part 1(a-whatever), I hereby declare that this is both a scholarly and a literary journal adventure, and therefore the upcoming scholarly journal will be Eighteenth-Century Studies, to which I have subscribed for a long time. Again, you are invited to participate in this and let me know the results of yours as well. I opened the blog to comments in the last few days (it had previously been closely moderated, but no longer), so feel free to post, participate, etc. in this weird thing.

David Gewanter hosts a cool reading series

Poet and professor David Gewanter is the host of the "Georgetown Writers Series" that he bills as readings and conversation, Wednesdays at noon. It will feature some of our (many!) novelists, poets, scriptwriters, directors, and essayists. Here's his lineup for the fall semester:

September 17 Norma Tilden, Creative Nonfiction: “The Wreck and Not the Story”
September 24 Carolyn Forché, Poems: “The Lateness of the World”
October 1 Maureen Corrigan, Writing memory: “Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammo”
October 8 James O’Donnell, Writing The Ruin of the Roman Empire
October 22 Derek Goldman, From text to stage: Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi
October 29 Dennis Williams, Fiction: King Alfred Rides Again
November 5 Scott Heath, [be nameless]: poetry in performance
November 19 Jennifer Fink, Experiment & Error: Exits & Entrances to the Novel
Special date:
Monday, Nov 24 John Glavin, “Film-Making and Writers”

Scholarly and Literary Journal Experiment Part I(a): Virginia Quarterly Review

The Virginia Quarterly Review, or VQR (no italics), is the premier literary journal of the University of Virginia, where I had an amazing time in graduate school what is becoming quite a few years ago now. It is thick, shiny and beautifully printed, a reality that smacks of financial support beyond subscriptions and prayers. The editor in chief is Ted Genoways, an accomplished poet with many laurels, including awards for his helming of the quarterly.

Its cover stories tend to be heavy, serious and political, but once you go inside it is surprisingly accessible. Here is its editorial philosophy as stated on its electronic submission page (I LOVE their requirement of online, electronic submissions, yesh!)

Editorial Philosophy

VQR strives to publish the freshest, most accomplished writers of our time. We are partial to work that is conscious of language without being self-conscious, that pulls readers in with drama and emotional risk, rather than holding them at arm's length with gimmickry and tricks. In short, we seek writing that uses intensely focused language to affect the way that readers see the world. A well-crafted poem, story, or essay is, at its heart, a statement of refusal to accept conventional wisdom and instead study the world for oneself. We seek that writing which illuminates what we, as a culture, may learn from such close inspection.

To me that says "Write originally and like yourself, not like a safe, imitative MFA program product." That may not be what is meant, but I completely hear and agree with the whole "work that is conscious of language without being self-conscious" thing. Dunno if that's what I'll be able to accomplish (I can type nonsense that's as tepid as the next monkey's), but hey, it's a start. There are a lot of other wacky submission rules such as only one per six months (whatever) and them having a reading period that lasts only from September to May (double whatever), but I have always ignored such things. I send what I want when I want, and if it is roundfiled, well, peace be upon you. My experience is that solid submissions are always welcome.

A careful reading of the author biographies in the Summer 2008 issue is illumating, and intimidating. Natasha Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize for a collection of poetry. Two of J. Malcom Garcia's contributions to VQR were named notable essays by The Best American Travel Writing. James Kirchick is an assistant editor at The New Republic. Gregory Orr, whom I knew of as a professor in the writing program at the University of Virginia, has had fellowships from NEA and Guggenheim. There are more. I'm quite intimidated, and I mean that unsarcastically. Why the heck am I starting a public experiment like this one with VQR?

To get to know the journal better I'll read some back issues (the ones I should have read when they arrived), absorb every meaningful article I can find about VQR and Genoways, and also do some research about upcoming issues. More in a (b) post.

The scholarly and literary journal experiment and challenge

I'm a fan of the idea of both scholarly and literary journals, but like so many other people I think about them more than I actually buy and read them. I've had recent subscriptions to The Virginia Quarterly Review, Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Oxford American, Studies in Bibliography, Lapham's Quarterly (more of a history review), and more, but when the physical thing actually arrives in the office it tends to sit around, less-than-read (which is to say "not read"). Would that these journals were more like The New Yorker, with all those lovely middlebrow comics to keep the pages turning. But somehow I get the sense the journals would say that's Not Funny. There is something serious about scholarly and literary journals.

To support them, though, I propose a new challenge. Submitting and financially contributing to them. The rules will be simple, and invite anyone reading this blog to join with me in doing it, and I'll happily post your results as well as mine:

(1) Get to know some scholarly and literary journals. This involves taking a little tour and learning about them. I'll start with one I already subscribe to (VQR) and then branch out. I'll blog about each one.

(2) Read said journals more closely than usual for a while to get a feel for how they function and what their rationale is beyond the stated thing. Get a sense of who's the company and why.

(3) Submit to 'em. For me this does NOT involve entering writing contests (transparent fundraisers in which somebody "wins" and the rest "lose," and bad for the arts generally, contests are cruel), but it does involve sending a check with each of my submissions. Of course none requires money with submissions, but I want to support journal publishing, so I'll add $10 as a voluntary reading contribution. This is on top of actually subscribing to the journal, which I do whenever possible.

(4) Blog about it. I'll write about the weirdness of submitting in this way, and the excitement of it, and what it feels like to get various kinds of responses from editors.

The scholarly publishing tends to be self explanatory. For the literary work, I'll use the helpful guidance of Newpages.com and Poets & Writers magazine (another one to which I subscribe) to choose places to send work. If you edit a journal and you would like to get on my dance card, please drop a note. If you're an author/reader and you'd like to participate in the submission game, that's great too. Tell me your experience, and some of you will get the chance to blog here about it.

James Michener now has a stamp...

... and he joins these authors, poets and playwrights.

AUTHORS

Louisa May Alcott (1940)
Horatio Alger (1982)
James Baldwin (2004)
Stephen Vincent Benét (1998)
Pearl Buck (1983)
James Fenimore Cooper (1940)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1940)
William Faulkner (1987)
Edna Ferber (2002)
Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss (1999)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1983)
Ernest Hemingway (1989)
Langston Hughes (2002)
Zora Neale Hurston (2003)
Washington Irving (1940)
James Weldon Johnson (1988)
Sinclair Lewis (1985)
Jack London (1986)
Herman Melville (1984)
Margaret Mitchell (1986)
Dorothy Parker (1992)
Edgar Allan Poe (1949)
Katherine Anne Porter (2006)
Emily Post (1998)
Ayn Rand (1999)
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (2008)
William Saroyan (1991)
John Steinbeck (1979)
Ida Tarbell (2002)
Henry David Thoreau (1967)
James Thurber (1994)
Mark Twain (1940)
Noah Webster (1958)
Edith Wharton (1980)
Thomas Wolfe (2000)

POETS

Dante Alighieri (1965)
Emily Dickinson (1971)
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1975)
T. S. Eliot (1986)
Robert Frost (1974)
Robinson Jeffers (1973)
Sidney Lanier (1972)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1940)
James Russell Lowell (1940)
Edgar Lee Masters (1970)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1981)
Marianne Moore (1990)
Ogden Nash (2002)
James Whitcomb Riley (1940)
Carl Sandburg (1978)
Robert Penn Warren (2005)
Walt Whitman (1940)
John Greenleaf Whittier (1940)

PLAYWRIGHTS

George M. Cohan (1978)

Moss Hart (2004)

Eugene O'Neill (1973)
William Shakespeare (1964)
Thornton Wilder (1997)
Tennessee Williams (1995)
Meredith Willson (1999)

A neat little article about writing and teaching

Author David Gessner has an article in the Times Magazine this week about why he teaches as well as writes. He thought he'd always be a Cape Codder, but now he writes from UNC-Wilmington, one of the loveliest campuses in the United States, located in one of our most under-rated coastal cities (and the residents would probably like to keep it that way!). Wilmington has crashing waves, historic ships, a thriving downtown arts scene, a wonderful public radio station, and it even sports the occasional palm tree. I was the producer for a play there a decade ago at Thalian Hall, and I had the pleasure of working with our actors on NPR member station WHQR.

Bonus: here's a funny video of Gessner skiing the beach in Wilmington, linked from his website. He has interesting thoughts at the end about enjoying where you are:

élūcidātus or /ɪˈlusɪˌdeɪt/ or [i-loo-si-deyt]

I've been using the word "elucidate" too much. Instead of cheating by going back and editing it out, I'll simply cop to it. Hey, it's better than The New York Times with "limns," or that ever-present word in book reviews of novels, "luminous."

I hear your anger, and it makes the sound of a cliché

A handful of my trade book authors (I call all of the more than 300 authors who consult with me from time to time "mine"... make of that what you will) are angry -- furious with Big Publishing for not yet having the vision to accept them, and hurt by a process of submitting to agents that they often describe as "heartbreaking." They have come to me in frustration, in therapy, in tears.

Part of me sympathizes, but another part wants to know why such stress? Why not start with smaller bits and build up interest until a book is all but inevitable as an outgrowth of those more modest "gets"? When I suggest to these authors that they gain some creative yes-es, such as publication in regional newspapers or on regional public radio, or acceptance from various literary journals, their anger can sometimes rise higher. "Little" wasn't the goal! New York Publishing or bust!


Okay, okay, I hear that (I say to them in my mind), but what I hear louder is the cliché of that.

Many glorious careers start small. Others who soar in the literary firmament and who have multiple books deliberately return to their roots in order to keep it real, hone their craft, etc. The truly great are never too big to work regionally, to publish intimately. Remember the poet Jane Kenyon? She was a brilliant woman who could publish her work anywhere, but she chose (among other things) to consistently write essays for her local New England newspaper because she wanted her neighbors to read her work, and she knew that for the most part they did not read poetry or subscribe to The New Yorker or Ploughshares or whatever.

Can someone really beat you to your own book?

Being "scooped" in the publishing world is perhaps a universal anxiety. I certainly feel it when I'm writing, and other authors report it to me as well. One of my favorite colleagues said it best in an e-mail this morning: "What [concerns] me is that maybe someone else, with less expertise, might publish a book about [this] . . . sorry for my vanity."

Someone else writing "your" book is an interesting concern, and certainly one I respect (the worry feels so real!) (it gets me right in the chest), but it is also almost never a problem. From a publisher's perspective, finding other books on a particular topic can help justify publishing a book -- it means the subject is viable in book-length form. Many publishers worry about making a book out of what should really be an article, and suffering the resulting low sales that result from producing a book that no one really wants or needs. From an author's perspective, no one else can write your book. Even if a book on your topic should appear while you're writing, that simply gives you one more interesting obstacle to push against, and (we hope) argue with. If you're lucky, it will be a book with which you disagree so thoroughly that you can have a wonderful time taking it to task. Both you and your "opponent" author will benefit from the exposure.

Firsts are overrated in publishing. What counts more is bests. Do a terrific job, and you'll be the one everyone turns to and quotes. Yes, readers can tell the difference, and just because someone beats you to the finish line doesn't mean that anyone will necessarily think they wrote the best book. My shelf is dotted with quickie treatments of the author I'm writing about. They're good books, but there is a lot they missed, and the precise one I'm writing has never been done. I don't fret a moment that it will be done, because only I can write my book, and only you can write yours.

Aren't any of my observations original?

After blogging yesterday about the trust fund titans who founded many of the great publishing houses, I found that New York magazine had beaten me to it, albeit differently. Scooped!

Articles about publishing's doom

I just read an interesting article by Boris Kachka in the online version of New York magazine about the demise of corporate-run publishing. People wring their hands about what may happen to publishing, but in the long view what will happen is what has always happened -- people who want books (or book-length collections of words) will get them. Smart readers who don't have all the time in the world to wade through dreck hunting diamonds will prefer books that have been vetted by intelligent gatekeepers.

Because of this, I certainly believe editors will always have jobs, but they may not remain in the New-York-focused edifices that were built in large part by trust-funded intellectuals in the 20th century. Don't believe me about the trust fund part? Bennett Cerf of Random House was independently wealthy through his mother's status as the heiress to a corporate fortune. Although I can't speculate on Michael Korda's wealth when he started out in publishing, as a child the former Simon and Schuster editor-in-chief went to the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, one of the most exclusive in the world (someone footed the bill). Roger Straus, co-founder and chairman of Farrar, Straus & Giroux (my former publisher, heaven bless its box-lined halls), was the son of a Guggenheim. By comparison Alfred A. Knopf was more of a working-class fellow, but only just; his parents were extraordinarily successful by the standards of the day, and he was a law student before switching fields.

Publishing was an exquisite profession for gentlemen of means with fine minds who didn't wish to idle away their lives. And one reason (of many) why publishing salaries remain low to this day is that a good number of the people who went into publishing also didn't need the money. A 93-year-old friend of mine worked for legendary Broadway agent Audrey Wood in the 1940s, brainstorming manuscripts with authors such as Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, William Inge, and Moss Hart. When I asked how she lived on the Upper East Side on a play reader's salary, she smiled and said "Oh but darling, my father sent me a small allowance. Everybody had one." Her father happened to be an Oscar-nominated cinematographer who had worked in Hollywood since the days when the MGM lion was a bony, beloved zoo castoff in a cage on the lot, and the movie sets were in tents outdoors. He had secured her job in publishing with one coast-to-coast phone call. Although working-class by Hollywood standards, he had one of the most generous contracts in the business, and this "small allowance" meant enough money for this young writer to live in style, including the purchase of a fashionable wardrobe, rent for the right address, and mad money for a lot of club-hopping. "We spent our evenings at Elmo,* the Stork Club or Twenty-One, and we went to the opening nights of each other's shows. Nobody paid to get in anywhere, and in publishing the books were always free." Sometimes she even offered to forego her modest pay -- "I think literary judgments are purer when one doesn't worry about how much one is making."

Yes, those particular and doubtless glorious publishing days may be waning, but so what? Some other lovely and nostalgic-in-the-future model will take their place, and I'm confident that it will be a durable one for a new era. Why? Because selective readers have both the means and the power to make it happen. It may not center itself in New York City (and hallelujah, saith some in this nation, especially those of us who consider Small Town America full of fine and green places to set up shop), and it may not be housed in a handful of specific, iconic buildings, but authors will write, editors will gatekeep, and words will find their carefully selected way to readers who have always cared, and who always will.


*El Morocco, not the Sesame Street character

Should you start with the introduction?

When I work with an author on the whole manuscript (versus just the nonfiction book proposal or scholarly prospectus) it involves that individual sending me sections of the book as they are written. I'm surprised how many authors start with the introduction. This may be helpful as a throat-clearing exercise, but for the most part, introductions work best when they are crafted last. Ditto first chapters, that can sometimes serve as gateways into the rest of the book. After all, an introduction should reflect a full understanding of what the book is and what it accomplishes -- yet few writers truly grasp this when they start writing. Most of the writers I've worked with (myself included) have to go through the journey of crafting the manuscript and paring/editing it down to size before we realize what sort of horse we've carved.

Or perhaps it's a bit like cupcakes. You make the little thing first, and then ice it. (Okay, I'm reaching here, but it's only 9:10 a.m. and I already want a snack.)

*Image swiped from howtoeatacupcake.net.

Try these unbreakable rules of structure and content, as consistently elucidated by all editors everywhere

When it comes to structure and content, I've heard a number of authors fret over "getting it right," that interesting notion that there is a right way and a wrong way to decide upon the form and content of a book, and they are much concerned about discerning the right way. One woman asked me "When you set up chapters, do you have to do x?" as though there's a rule for this, and that I could quote it for her. A man recently asked me to help him know "what editors expect" when it comes to scope and content, as though there is some sort of quantifiable concensus among editors on anything, ever.

Books are in one sense physical utensils, and their apparatuses have developed over time in response to readers' collective needs. Chapters are simply a further organizational tool -- a way to make sense of a long train of words in readable units. Books, sections, chapters, headings, etc. exist to serve us, not we them. Content and scope are responses to format... you can't go on forever in one book; you have to stop somewhere. By asking what the material requires in order for it to be best comprehended by busy, distracted readers with many other choices, we'll get a lot closer to helpful answers than by worrying about what's "right," or what an imaginary group of conferring and agreeing editors might have decided in their Uniform Code of Scholarly Desirability.

These imaginary publisher expectations contribute greatly to authorial anxiety, and existing examples in book history can act as calming guides. Books that have pleased you personally and also prevailed in a crowded marketplace can yield satisfying and stress-reducing structural templates. I'm not saying you should copy them, but that such models frequently offer workable inspiration. And what a joy it is to sit in the cafe of a big bookstore with a stack of potential literary models, mapping them on paper and fruitfully whiling away a glorious afternoon.

This post speaks for itself

How to write a novel -- the Henning Mankell version

Today we had the Marino Family International Writers Workshop at Georgetown, and those of us fortunate enough to teach had the opportunity to guide groups of first-year students through a discussion of Swedish author Henning Mankell's Before the Frost. Mankell's 40 novels have won numerous awards, including two Swedish Crime Writers Academy Awards, the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger, and the Nils Holgersson Prize.

During his talk, he elucidated some of his thoughts on how to write a novel. In at least one aspect his observations echoed those of Sebastian Junger last year -- he believes in writing what you don't know, and he enjoys challenging himself to write about things he didn't previously understand.

This is a not-quite-word-for-word-but-close transcription of what he said. English is not his first language, although he communicates comfortably in it: "There must be something about something that I don't know. Then I start to plan the story [until] I know what it is going to be about. Then I do the real, real structure. Most of the work is done before I [actually sit down to] write the book. People ask, 'Before you write, do you know how the story will end?' And I ask, 'On Friday night when you go out with your friends and you say "I have a story to tell you," do you know how that story will end? Of course you do!'"

He cited two main requirements for what he considers meaningful storytelling. First is an ability "to tell the story for someone else than yourself." Second, he believes "you have to have your own language," rather than imitating other writers or even sounding precisely like your speaking self. He didn't mention authorial "voice," however, and I was pleased because it's an over-used term that has become entangled in disparate ideas.

Mankell is fascinated with actual language -- words, foreign languages (he speaks and reads five, including fluency in Portuguese that rivals his native Swedish), printed pages, the meaning of religious texts, and more. The notion that he would prescribe "your own language" for a fiction writer makes sense given his world view (he lives half the year in Mozambique), in which he views global illiteracy rates as one of the greatest tragedies.

When he discussed global illiteracy earlier at a faculty lunch, he also told us what he considers the most important book in the world, and now I think I agree with him. It's the A-B-Cs.

The book journal, part five: more about the file box

Enthusing about a file box may seem a bit like Steve Martin in The Jerk shouting as he runs up the driveway "The new phonebook is here!" But I'm really impressed with what I now call the Twyla Tharp Filing System (to go with the Alastair Fowler Writing Method) as a way to organize a book. Setting up the file folders is similar to dividing a book into chapters. Each of my red hanging files equals either one chapter or one portion of a chapter. The manila folders within each hanging file correspond to sub-sections of the book. If I decide to intellectually re-arrange the furniture, it's simple: just pick up and replace a file folder. The whole thing ends up as a 3-D representation of the book itself, something that my little brain understands much better than stacks of paper, or even paper put into other file systems.

When I write tidbits of the book (what I guess I'll have to call the Anne Lamott Picture-Frame Strategy, to go with the other two), I print them out, note their computer file names, and drop them in the box.

Okay, okay, I know that's what the computer is supposed to be for. But to my concrete-and-real-world-representation-loving eye, this works better, and I can tote it around the house like my special friend. It's sooooo cool.

The book journal, part four: how do you start writing, and when?

Knowing when and how to start writing a book is a skill acquired over time, honed through the actual writing of books. Every author is different. Some prefer to research the entire thing thoroughly before settling down to a draft. Others write things up as they go. There are many disparate methods, but this is a journal, so I'll tell you mine. It is a method developed in the writing of my first two books, and it is one I will refine and use for this third book.

Instead of starting the story chronologically, or making myself write preliminary matter before getting to the meat, I like to dive right in with a bit of the story that interests me and that I understand now. It doesn't matter what I don't yet know -- those things will come in time. What does matter is that I know one tiny piece of the thing, and that I feel good enough about it to start drafting it.

In graduate school I was initimated by the academic writing process, so I knocked on the door of a famous scholar named Alastair Fowler, who is now Regius Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He taught at the University of Edinburgh half the year and at the University of Virginia the other half. Lucky us. I don't know what came over me that day in 1990, or why I thought he of all people would help me given his international standing in Renaissance studies, nor do I know why I was so blunt that morning, but when he asked why I had come I blurted out "I don't know how to write a paper for graduate school." He laughed and motioned for me to come in and sit down. "I wish," he said, "that more of your colleagues would admit it." Then he gave me a 40-minute talk on getting your thoughts on paper without putting them in straight lines or any particular order (he preferred using oversized white paper that allowed you to write all over the sheet, be circular, etc.), not setting them in concrete too soon, but allowing your written musings to naturally coalesce into meaning. "Ideas are like sheep," he said, indicating that they want to wander and to a certain extent should, "but then you have to put a pen around them." He showed me his method of circling related ideas and gathering them into intellectual units that would eventually become paragraphs and chapters.

It worked so well that I yammered about it to all of my friends, and a number of them went traipsing to him. Eventually he began offering it as a talk for graduate students, and last year I noticed that he published a book with Oxford called How To Write. Some like to say it's for novices, but I laugh at that notion. Many of the most seasoned writing veterans keep about them the "novice mind," and accept instruction willingly from new sources. I think anyone should read it, no matter how well-published, because Dr. Fowler's insights are unlike any other.

NB: I have no idea if my blurted-out question eighteen years ago actually inspired this book, but I like to flatter myself and think so. At the very least I believe I contributed to it by helping blaze a path for other graduate students to his door.

So how do I start writing? Simple. I take the aspect of the story that interests me the most, and I map it out with the Alastair Fowler Writing Method, hearing his words all the while in my ear "Ideas are like sheep..." I don't pressure myself to make this written bit long or short -- it's just a bit. Some pages. I don't even worry about where it will go in the book. Instead I marshall the research for that tidbit, read it, think about it, map it (mindmaps are also good for this, and I used them often), and then in straightforward prose write it up. Those few pages are just a snippet, but they represent what I can see now. It's like Anne Lamott's concept of the one-inch picture frame from Bird By Bird. She says that her only job is writing down what she can see in that tiny space, nothing more.

So today I'm writing about the day my author went to prison. I don't even know how she got out, but it doesn't matter. I simply know that she went, and I'm sticking to the documented facts of the case (what we have from newspaper accounts and judicial records). I'm writing my one-inch picture frame, using Alastair Fowler's insights, and standing on the shoulders of these two giants.

The book journal, part three: choosing a press

What? I'm choosing a press now? But the book isn't even written yet! Shouldn't an author choose a press after writing the book?

Absolutely not; many successful authors aim for particular presses, and even specific editors, long before they begin to write. Here's a simple example: if I assign you the task of building a ship to sail to a destination, you would logically ask "Where are we going?" One takes a different sort of vessel to Belize than to the Arctic Circle. In many ways a book is a vessel -- it is a paper repository of thoughts expressed as words that somehow must find its way into the homes and hands of readers. Many never complete that journey, but happy is the ship builder whose literary vessel sails true. Choosing a publisher early makes sense in this analogy, because different slants and styles of books work at different publishers.

Typical authors, especially first-time academic authors, write whatever they want to write, and then go knocking on doors trying to find someone to publish it. Seasoned authors, however, are aware that presses have specific characteristics, and that the more one knows about presses and even individual editors, the better the chances that the book will communicate with those professionals, and through them to a precise audience. Also, many editors see themselves as partners in the shaping of the final book -- their jobs are intellectual, not clerical, and they are there to help you craft your work to fit in that artful collection known as their list.

How can you get to know presses? The simplest way to start is through their official self-representation in their catalogues. Publisher catalogues are often works of art in themselves (I collect attractive covers), and they reveal much about the identity of a press over time. If you want to see a lot of them at once, make friends with a bookseller and ask to view back catalogues. Many publishers have good web sites as well, and you can peruse these sites for more than a simple roster of authors and titles. You're searching for editorial identity -- what makes one house distinct from another. In the case of university presses this is often an extension of the university's own stature and image.

I have chosen a press, although for the purposes of this online journal I won't name it until/ unless my proposed book gets in. What I will say is that it is a press where (1)I have visited in person; (2) I have studied its catalogues going back ten years; (3) I have chosen a target editor based on her/his stated editorial interests and upon the output over time that I respect (this is so important -- you need to know what an editor has done -- look at the final product and read her or his books!); and (4) although it is a university press, it has a strong track record of books that have been successful in the big bookstores. Only a handful of university presses fit this last description.

Whether or not my book makes it in at this press, I am improving my chances simply by knowing where my boat is supposed to go. If I do get in, it will be partly because research and forethought pay off. If I don't get in, I have still improved the chances that my book will find a home elsewhere because I have crafted it to actually fit a stated and successful editorial need.

(Hint: It's not the press in the photograph!)

The book journal, part two: setting up a file box

In Chapter 5 of her 2003 book The Creative Habit, one of a handful of books that I re-read, award-winning dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp writes "Before you can think outside of the box, you have to start with a box." She then explains how each of her dances begins as a cardboard file box with a lid (the kind you buy at office supply stores and assemble yourself). "I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.... If you want a glimpse into how I think and work, you could do worse than to start with my boxes." One Broadway show can fill as many as twelve boxes. She cites other artists such as Maurice Sendak who have different but also organized systems, but she loves hers as order among the disorder.

She puts certain iconic things in each box, for example blue index cards with her stated goals for the project. She tries to make these goals simple and clear, such as Tell a story or make dance pay for the dancers. For the show Movin' Out (for which she won a 2003 Tony), she included the first line of the Iliad, "Sing to me muse of the rage of Achilles." She adds copies of movies or music that inspire her, notebooks that she fills with thoughts about the show, even meaningful tchotchkes. "That's how a box is like soil to me. It's basic, earthy, elemental. It's home. It's what I can always go back to when I need to re-group and keep my bearings. Knowing that box is always there gives me the freedom to venture out, be bold, dare to fall flat on my face."

I'm not exactly Twyla Tharp (she just received the Kennedy Center lifetime achievement honor). But I grew up with the idea of her, and I've paid attention since age nine when I first learned her name. So in honor of her, I started a file box for this book I'm writing in public. Books are more paper-based than dances, so I put red hanging files in it, and manila file folders carefully labeled (using the Brother P-touch 1180 labeler) as I begin to grow the materials for this new book. I also included the first of what will probably be several file cards for goals, blue just like hers. Upon the first one I wrote clearly: Tell a story.

The book journal, part one: why write?

Over the next few months I'll publicly track my progress conceiving, pitching and writing the book that I need in order to justify my job. No one has said that publishing a third book is mandatory, but ongoing publishing is part of my personal value system. It has always been my firm belief that teachers should be current practitioners, and I bristle (or become outright hostile) when I hear ignoramuses spout the line "Those that can't, teach." Ahem. Some of the finest practitioners I know in various fields also teach, and do so wonderfully. Teaching is an honor, and it should be the fruit of a thriving career, not the refuge of a failing one. Now my goal is to publish a third book in order to justify this great privilege.

Thrashing about like this in public feels a bit odd, given that I don't even have a contract yet, but in another sense it is quite freeing. Public accountability is an important part of productivity, at least for me, and many of the authors who come to Booklab also say that they want and need someone or some thing to answer to. A university tenure or full-professor-promotion committee can function as that taskmaster. But university life can also become a "velvet coffin," for once you pass a certain level of acceptability (publishing a couple of books, getting tenure, receiving the acknowledgement of peers), it's easy to put it on autopilot for the next twenty years.

Career autopilot is not what Booklab, or Georgetown for that matter, has ever been about. A global university that aims not just for relevance but for essential status in the 21st century requires active, publishing scholars. Publishing in this model becomes not merely a tool for getting tenure (ack, what a low bar!), but a means of participating in public intellectual life in a powerful and life-changing way for author and audience. As Sartre pointed out in his 1947 essay "Why Write" -- an essay I've taught undergraduates at Georgetown so many times I can almost recite it by heart -- the author requires a reader in order to exist. "Since the creation can find its fulfillment only in reading, since the artist must entrust to another the job of carrying out what he has begun, since it is only through the consciousness of the reader that he can regard himself as essential to his work, all literary work is an appeal" (emphasis added). In this sense both writing and reading are bound inextricably together in what he terms "the greatest act of pure freedom."

So I will celebrate pure Sartrean freedom on this blog by mapping a new book project, writing a proposal, and sending it to publishers, all in public. Onward.

How a book on plotting thrillers helps with scholarly nonfiction

Okay, here's a revelation (or at least it was for me and two other academic author friends who tried this). A good book on how to structure a plot can work wonders with the organization of your scholarly work. Why? Because any narrative -- whether fiction or nonfiction -- benefits from the application of some basic storytelling principles. Just because you're writing about something that really happened, and just because you've heavily end-noted it, doesn't give you a license to bore us silly, or for that matter to confuse us. A crucial element of what we know as readability has to do with your book's basic structure.

Chronology -- the "structure" that most academic authors initially use when outlining their books -- is almost never the best choice for a literary plan. How many dull biographies have begun with "So and so was born on a wind-swept day," yacketa, yacketa. And how many first chapters of books have begun with prehistoric humans and their cave paintings as the "background" to a subject that begins millennia later? (I have an odd habit of looking in the first chapters of various nonfiction books to see how many start in prehistoric times... quite a few!) Many of these same books save the information on the exciting, relevant cultural meaning of the person or phenomenon until the last chapter or even an epilogue, in the naieve belief that readers will actually make it that far. In those cases, if I'm editing the book or if the author asks my opinion, I usually pluck that material wriggling from its shell and plop it down as Chapter One. Much of the time, this simple re-structuring works.

But now I'll have even better ideas. The book that helped me and my two author-buddies so much is Plot and Structure by lawyer-turned-author James Scott Bell ("The suspense never rests"), better known for fast-paced thrillers with titles like Deadlock than anything having to do with university presses. So why am I gaga over his book in this context? Because more than any other that I've read on plot (and Lordy, have I struggled with a few), this one provides strategies you can actually use to make more sense of any story you're trying to tell. It solved a problem that I was having with a narrative about an 18th-century author, and it did so in such a simple and straightforward manner that I could not believe the challenge had vexed me for two years! Give the book a whirl, and post comments about it here.

Creating a list of works cited? Ask a librarian BEFORE you start!

I keep forgetting what an amazing resource professional reference librarians can be, but then life rises up to remind me.

Of course, being a good introvert, I started work on my new book alone in an upstairs office. Zzzzzzt! Shoulda asked a librarian. After spending hours compiling a cut-and-paste bibliography and remembering what a mess it was to advise a fellow faculty member on how to format hers for the University of Pennsylvania Press (they wanted Chicago style, and hers were all MLA-from-memory, many with typos), I started searching online for endnote software. I found several competitors, and began to get excited. The best ones not only format your notes in whatever professional style you request (changing formats at the touch of a finger), but they also collect the data from online research resources directly, without you having to re-type a thing. They can even use full-text resources online to provide you with archive .pdf copies of articles. Amazing.

Thinking I was hot stuff, I started to sign up for one of the most popular of these. Then a tiny voice inside my mind whispered "Have you asked a librarian yet? Maybe Georgetown's library professionals have already solved this problem." Hmmm. First I sent e-mail to my friend Jill, the Humanities Reference Librarian in Lauinger Library. Jill and I have known each other since 1997, but still I often forget to ask her questions in a professional capacity.

While waiting for Jill's reply, I fuzzily remembered that the library probably already had answers to questions like these listed. So I looked at the Research Help tab on its home page, and voila... a link to RefWorks that the university supports and has already signed up for. There's a free tutorial available either at the library or in my office (I'm going to the library as a fun excuse to take a break). By the time I found the answer, Jill had gotten back to me confirming that yes, that was the answer. Oh, why didn't I just contact Jill weeks ago?

Total time I spent futzing around with my own cut-and-paste bibliography: about seven hours spread out over several weeks.

Total time I spent search for endnote software online when I thought there must be a better way: about one hour earlier today.

Total time it took me to find the answer once I consulted the library's research resources: one minute, rendering my e-mail to Jill redundant/unnecessary.

Um, next time I'll check online to see what the library offers instead of trying to re-invent the wheel all alone, and if I don't find it, I'll ask a librarian.

Funny Footnote to the Byron Katie Post

When I first discovered Loving What Is (below), I wanted to tell everyone. I started ordering books for people. But then I stopped out of some merciful realization that my well-meaning impulse might be insulting to others. As Byron Katie writes, "If you want to alienate your friends and family, go around saying 'Is it true?' or 'Turn it around" if they're not asking for your help . . .. It's uncomfortable to believe that you know more than your friends and to represent yourself as their teacher." Amen. So I stopped ordering books for people, but I did blog. :-)

The Best Book on Writers Block, Ever

I have a shelf full of books on writer's block. It is one of the key problems authors face in Booklab (though they rarely label it as such), and I'm honored whenever I can help. I've faced it myself, and I read whatever I can find on the subject. Many books are smart, interesting, informative and comforting, but for the most part they don't really change anything. They can lessen the burden, but none I have found truly lifts it.

Then I discovered Byron Katie's book Loving What Is. She's been around for years with a fascinating model for questioning your thoughts and freeing yourself from the tyranny of what she calls "your story," the litany of mind-pictures and words that make up what we call reality, whether present, past or future. To understand Byron Katie's Work (capital W, "The Work," the process for which she is known), read her books and also watch the helpful videos on her website that show it in action.

To my knowledge she doesn't address writer's block directly, but here's an example of how I observed The Work zapping blocks. She asks participants to write a judgmental statement (the harsher and more rudely honest the better), and then analyze it using her four questions and what she calls a "turnaround." [NB: Before trying this, please read the book and visit her website -- my thumbnail version is not sufficient!] Her four questions (1. Is it true? 2. Can I absolutely know that it's true? 3. How do I react when I believe that thought? 4. Who would I be without that thought?) effectively challenge the statement in a way that most people's minds can accept.

Statement: I have writer's block

Question 1: Is that true? (Yes, of course it's true)

Question 2: Can you absolutely know that it's true? (Well, no, not absolutely. But it feels true.)

Q2: I invite you to commit to a yes or a no. (Okay, no. No, I don't absolutely know that it's true.)

Question 3: How do you react when you believe that thought? (Depressed. Like there's no use. Lazy. Unworthy of my title or position in this university. Secretive. Sad. It makes me want to write even less.)

Question 4: Who would you be without that thought? (Wow, if I didn't have that thought? Much freer. Loose. Open. Unburdened. Happier. Able to write freely like I did when I was a kid.)

Turnaround: Now turn the statement around. [NB again: there are several ways she teaches you to do this, and I'm still learning how to do the turnaround] 1. I don't have writer's block (opposite of the statement); 2. (substituting the word "my thoughts" for "writer's block") I have my thoughts (or "I only have my thoughts" or "My thoughts have me.").

Byron Katie does NOT ask you to drop the thought "I have writer's block." Trying not to think about something doesn't work. Instead, she asks you to analyze it, to submit it to the rigor of the four questions and the turnaround. The more you shine light on this area of your own mind and your story that plays in your mind, the more you free your mind to drop the thought on its own.

The result? Nothing short of miraculous. Once I questioned my own self-analysis of writer's block, and once I began helping authors in this office question theirs (I don't try to be Byron Katie Jr., but I lead them to learn The Work directly from her), things changed. Writing began to happen because there was no Story saying that it shouldn't or couldn't or that we were good or bad people if we did or didn't do it. For my own part, I began writing more as I did as an unfettered teenager, when I poured out my thoughts in spiral notebooks and enjoyed the process for its own sake. It wasn't enough just to question the thought "I have writer's block," though. I had to question a whole host of persistent thoughts that made up My Story, the one I have carried around in my brain for so long. The Work is ongoing, and whenever writing stops for painful reasons, I will continue to do The Work on my thoughts.

Byron Katie likes to describe herself as "a woman without a future" because she has questioned the thoughts that used to lead her to write a Story in her mind about what the future will be. Having no future helps blocked writers as well, by guiding us to question the future-stories about what we're writing (this will be a bestseller, this has to satisfy my agent, this won't be crowd-pleasing enough, I have to earn a big advance, etc.). As writers without pasts, and without futures, we can just be, and thus unburdened, we can just write.

Will it be any good? Who knows? In a hundred years the world will be populated by all new people and it won't matter. But for right now writing is happening, and that's the first step, yes?

Cary Goldstein's Talk -- the Reviews are in!

A record number of Georgetown faculty turned out to dine and chat with acquisitions editor and chief publicist (yes, both roles can reside in the same professional) Cary Goldstein from TWELVE. What struck many participants about Cary's talk was how affable he is, and how easy it was to communicate with him about books. The myth is that New York editors expect formal interaction and prefer stiff introductory letters that will make or break your case by paragraph two. The reality is that they're just people -- smart, well-read people with a lot of experience in publishing -- but human nonetheless, and a good deal more approachable than folks in many other professions. I've been getting e-mails all afternoon from faculty who were inspired by the event and who are interested in thinking about their work for a larger audience.

Academic vs. trade is an interesting choice. Most recently hired scholars choose academic for professional reasons (tenure), but that's not a sufficient reason to choose one press over another. Scholarly work should be crafted to speak to colleagues and to work beautifully within the university press publishing realm. Trade work -- even if based on the same research -- must be written differently, and operate in a way that meets the demands of a fickle and volatile book market. Cary emphasized the importance of the work itself -- not the pitch for the work, or the stature of the author, or the needs of the market, although all those elements are important -- but the art of the words on the page and the way they do their job.

As conceived by founding editor Jonathan Karp (the editor behind Seabiscuit and The Orchid Thief among many others) TWELVE only publishes twelve titles a year, so it is committed to a challenging combination of selectivity and success in a way that other presses are not. It can't hedge its bets by publishing 50 solid choices, and hoping that ten break out. Every book should pull its weight both in the intellectual arena of The New York Review of Books, the few other book reviews that are left (Cary cited NYTimes, Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle as the last three papers with separate book review sections, and I've heard the latter is in flux), in the intellectual blogosphere, and in the bookstore. It's an enormous challenge, and one that it was exciting to hear about from such an exceptional publishing professional and one of its two intellectual guiding forces.

Write your book in five (days, weeks, months) or less, guaranteed!

I confess to being occasionally charmed and even lured in by those "write quickly" schemes. They're all over the internet, but they've been with us forever -- smiling gurus promising that you can produce a draft of your nonfiction book or novel in a specified and seemingly short period of time.

To a certain extent I believe them. We make a much bigger fuss about writing than it actually deserves. Writing is really just a sibling to speaking, and many of us speak all the time -- eloquently -- about things we believe and care about. What you can say to a friend in a few hours of chat on a beautiful drive out into the country you can surely share on the page. Usually, however, something is lost in the communication between brain and page, and that's where I end up having a job to do. If writing were as easy as speaking we'd have a completely different set of books in the bookstore because there would be so much more available and (I suspect) the bar for publishing would become much higher. The more people who actually write their work, the better for letters generally, because the more there will be to choose from which would give editors the luxury of being even more selective.

Mediabistro.com (which I love and to which I gladly pay subscription fees) is the best of these, to my eye. Mediabistro courses are taught by working professionals with exceptional credentials -- kudos to them for getting people who are fruitful in their chosen fields to teach -- and I've written here before about how much I enjoy them. Here are just some of the "write quickly" titles they offer: "Start (and Finish!) Your Screenplay in Three Months"; "Weekend Warrior: 2-Day Film School"; "Write Your Young Adult Novel in Three Months." (As a note, I only recommend their in-person courses. I took one online and it was dreadful, but the in-person ones have been amazing.)

What charms me about all of these "write quickly" schemes -- whether or not they completely work all of the time -- is that they kickstart amateurs into the world of working, professional writers. People who earn a living from their pens don't have the luxury of writers block or delayed projects that stretch on for years. Writers in history from Henry Fielding to Helen Fielding have understood the art of writing quickly and well. A poet friend of mine is currently writing a poem a day for a month, just to see if she can. Are they by definition either bad poems or good ones? Of course not -- they're just words, and as such some will "work" and some won't, but they're as valid as any other poems she writes. It's a marvelous scheme.

But of course this leads to a touchy question -- can you write and publish serious academic work quickly as well? I believe you can, and that many of the best-published scholars do. The trick, however, is to have a rich fund of ongoing research upon which to draw so that you are regularly plucking the fruit of it and offering it up as conference papers, articles, and books. There is a certain bravery to simply getting the idea out there and sharing it with colleagues without slaving over it for years. In future posts I'll ponder scholarly books that were written (relatively) quickly and also managed to be very good or even excellent.

James J. O'Donnell and "The Ruin of the Roman Empire" at Politics and Prose

Jim O'Donnell will be at Politics and Prose bookstore on Saturday, September 20 with his new book, The Ruin of the Roman Empire. The bestselling author of Augustine: A New Biography will discuss his fresh take on a not-so-well-known story, and sign books. 1 p.m. A map to Politics and Prose is here.

Editor and Publicist Cary Goldstein of TWELVE Comes to Booklab

On September 4 at 12:30, Director of Publicity and Acquiring Editor Cary Goldstein at Hachette's estimable imprint TWELVE will be our guest at a faculty roundtable to discuss how academic authors can become quoted experts in today's voracious news climate. How do serious works (history, investigative journalism, politics, etc.) rise to the top in the age of the internet and 24-hour news? From framing your nonfiction book proposal to anticipate this question, to the differences between the academic and commercial book markets when it comes to writing your work, Goldstein will analyze nonfiction from both of his unique perspectives: as an acquisitions editor, and as a senior-level publicity strategist. He'll also discuss TWELVE and what distinguishes its editorial and promotional approach from other houses. Faculty are welcome and lunch will be served. RSVPs are an absolute must, so please drop a note to booklab for confirmation and the exact location.

A recipient of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Poetry Prize at New York University, Goldstein's poetry has been published in The Literary Review. His reviews and articles have appeared in Publishers Weekly, The Village Voice, and Time Out New York. Goldstein has handled publicity for all sixteen titles published by TWELVE, eight of which have been New York Times bestsellers, including Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, Microtrends by Mark Penn, The Commission by Philip Shenon, and The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee.

Time for a writing and publishing tune-up?

Summer is a traditional season for academic authors to write, because of the relatively uninterrupted stretches of time that are supposedly available. What usually happens, however, is that summer school crops up (such a tempting extra paycheck, for engaging work), book research travel turns into a mini-ordeal (all that effort just to arrive at the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona and learn that the collection you want to examine has a restriction on it from the family, and nobody informed you of this before you spent $5,000 and traveled 3511 nautical miles -- 4040 of the regular kind -- to get there), and motivation often flies out the window because it's summer and summer is Just That Way. August slams up before you know it, and the book still isn't done.

If you find yourself needing a mental recharge to get going (after all, it's only July 27 -- there's still time!), you might try something I enjoyed: one of mediabistro.com's many publishing workshops, in-person in New York. It is ridiculously easy to get from Washington to New York these days; I prefer to stroll across the Key Bridge and hop the Vamoose Bus, but there are other cheap, comfortable choices such as the Bolt Bus and the Chinatown Bus. This ain't the scary old Greyhound -- today's sleek motorcoaches have internet, restrooms, and they're comfortable enough to snooze on. They cost about 1/5 as much as the train, and if you factor in travel time to and from Union Station, they take you to the same places almost as fast. Vamoose put me at Madison Square Garden, just five blocks from the seminar building over near Park Avenue and 31st.

I have taken several mediabistro classes in the past, but mostly in DC, and one online. Not to be a snob about it, but the New York ones are so much better. My course was taught by Joy Peskin, a senior editor at Penguin with a successful career. Networking with her alone was worth the tuition for a four-hour class (what's the value of meeting and chatting with an editor in person?), but when I saw the caliber of my fellow writers, I fell in love with the idea of visiting New York once in a while for an energy transfusion. There was another employee from Penguin in the group, plus a fashion designer with a sterling resume, an editor for a higher education publication, a renowned Sherlock Holmes expert, and so many more. Although mediabistro can seem to have a youngish and greenish online image, the age range was all over the place, and most of us were experienced writers in mid-career. Total out of pocket (bus fare, course fee, and what I spent on lunch, coffee, and crab dumplings for dinner): $175.

I enjoyed the four hours to New York and back reading manuscripts from Booklab authors and studying Italian, so travel time wasn't wasted, and it flew by. I left at 7 a.m. and was home before midnight, recharged, refreshed, and ready to face my own summer manuscripts again.