The morgue of scraps

One frustrated scholarly author detailed how she edits and excises material. She doesn't want to discard it entirely, but she also doesn't want to use it in the present work, so she saves it in what she drily referred to as "the morgue of scraps." We all laughed. I have one of those -- bits of articles, stories, and ideas from heaven-knows-where, collected over the years on computer files and too good to toss. When computers changed from floppy discs to CD-rom to flash drives, over time some of these scraps became inaccessible (or not easily retrieved), so I resolved to let them go, like throwing out memories from a bygone relationship.

Do you have a morgue of scraps? Or is there a gentler name for it? Are all writers like packrats with yarn and fabric stuffed away in closets, attics and drawers, ready to be used "someday?"

Image from Little White Paw.

Our 12-week adventure into scholarly articles

The articles-only group has taken the plunge, working together on the introduction and Chapter 1 of Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks. Interestingly, though, authors in the book groups are considering it, too, as a way to think about book chapters. 12 weeks seems a bit long to work on just one chapter (that's almost a whole semester!), so some of the book people are experimenting with doing two units a day from the articles book. Two chapters a semester sounds great for someone who is really focused and writing daily. That would provide the December break for revisions, and the following summer to go over all four chapters and complete the prospectus. Some books are longer than others, but this schedule would produce a well-considered eight-chapter scholarly book in two years.

Petrified Squid at Booklab

One of my favorite blogs is The Daily Coyote, where photographer Shreve Stockton documents her life in Wyoming raising a coyote her friend rescued and gave to her when it was a puppy. My preferred way to read The Daily Coyote was from the beginning, clicking back to the early days and working my way forward a few pages at a time. Gradually what began as a photographic journal became a story, and sure enough, Ms. Stockton got a great book deal.

What I love about this is a validation of the process of blogging as a way to work through ideas with an audience, and of letting them take natural shape. Your blog need not have millions of readers. My Booklab blog has only seven, but they are all dedicated. Instead, the blog is a way to socialize ideas (thanks to Gary in one of my scholarly groups for that term), and to get comfortable with them in an environment that's a near-perfect combination of scratch pad and microphone on stage. I believe that she did end up with zillions of readers, but her audience grew naturally as the blog matured.

Shreve Stockton sells petrified squid that she finds on her property in Wyoming (she says this is legal). I bought some and it will sit in a bowl on the mantel above the fireplace at Booklab as a reminder to anyone who asks that blogging is actually real writing, and it can lead to very real books.

The so-called tyranny of the blank page

The faculty fiction writers' group just left, and one of the last things some stragglers and I discussed was the ridiculous notion that writers are supposed to sit in front of blank pages or blinking computer cursors and suffer. What kind of self-flagellator does that? We're big fans of getting out into life, notebook in hand, and doing or discovering something worth writing about. Stumped for something to write? Then grab a notebook or a digital audio recorder and go to the farmer's market, the waiting room at the county jail, a rodeo, or the local rowers' boathouse.

It baffles us that how-to-write books often discuss the writer's office as a necessary dungeon, and the ritual before blank paper with attendant suffering as some inherent part of the creative process. As if! All of those horrid lines about gluing oneself to the chair or chaining oneself to the desk. Twaddle! Guilt-producing gahr-bage.

This fiction group is amazing and I love it. Booklab has ten groups for scholarly writers, and one for fiction as a fun middle-of-the-week respite. Everyone is focusing on different kinds of things. We dove into literary magazines today, with actual copies on hand. I did a short presentation on The Missouri Review, to set up a model, and then Chris took a copy of Ploughshares to discuss next week. Matt walked out with a copy of VQR, which he'll study and dissect for us two weeks from now.

We do not believe in butts in chairs until we know why we're there and what we have to say. We believe in butts out in nature, in the big, bad city, or on the ranch, cowboy. We believe in writers as actors, participants, observers, creators, anything but inmates in office-prisons.

Weird chairs above from coolbuzz.org.

Another question from the web page -- proposals!

A blog reader writes in with this timely question: "I've just written a nonfiction book. What do I do next?"

First order of business is congratulating yourself on having completed something so challenging. Second is stepping back from your masterpiece and thinking about a professional nonfiction book proposal. Usually I recommend these before you write your book, since most nonfiction trade books are sold on the basis of a proposal and a couple of sample chapters rather than a whole manuscript. Why? Because nonfiction editors often like to think with the author on the crafting of the book -- it has to work on their particular list. But there is certainly no rule one way or the other. You can create a proposal now based on the book you have already written.

Think of a proposal as a business plan for your book. It demonstrates to a publisher who you are, how your qualifications make you the perfect author for this book, who will read it and why, and how you plan to promote your work. There are other aspects as well. Your future editor will likely take copies of your proposal to an acquisitions meeting where it will be discussed in business terms. Different houses have different ways of deciding what books to acquire, but a great proposal is the basis of just about everyone's system. If you click the link at the upper right of this page you'll see a list of books I recommend, and there are two proposal titles.

If you're a tenure-line faculty member at Georgetown this is free. If you are not on Georgetown's faculty, you can hire Booklab to work with you on a professional nonfiction book proposal. Please send e-mail for a sheet that details just some of the ways we work with authors on this all-important aspect of nonfiction book publishing.


The image above shows a different kind of proposal.

The Booklab Workout

Authors sit a lot, and therefore need to think a bit more about fitness than perhaps people who have on-your-feet kinds of jobs. So voila the Booklab Workout. All that butt-in-the-seat is especially destructive when it comes to muscle tone in the lower abs!



We're thinking of installing treadmills at workstations (ones that move v-e-r-y slowly, apparently all the rage among lawyers). Oh, and I'm wondering if it makes sense to buy a Pilates machine. Ideas? Anyone?


Image from engadget.

Speaking of feeling a little crazy somtimes

I rarely comment on pop culture, because I don't really get it. That's not a snob attitude, it's a clueless one... and I've been that way since childhood. But the video that's all over the news about the Kanye West/Taylor Swift moment at the VMA awards last night brought up something different for me... the sense that they enacted right there on the stage most authors' secret fears -- that someone will come rushing up and shout "Imposter!" right when you're ready to celebrate an achievement.

One of my friends is a judge, and even after almost two decades on the bench, he said he still sometimes thinks someone will burst into the courtroom and shout "You're not a judge, take off that robe and leave the bench this minute." Another friend reported that the night she received a major international book award, she wasn't happy, she was terrified and a bit blue for all those who hadn't won (she told me she wanted to be first runner-up). When she did get to the stage, she kept waiting for someone to say "We're sorry, there has been some mistake, that's supposed to go to a real writer."

I've felt like a fraud in public many times. Others with far more achievements than mine say the same thing. Without judging the parties involved (it doesn't feel appropriate given that I can't name a song by either artist), I will say this much: wow... watching that video was like living out my worst nightmare.

Now on to another day at Booklab where we all reassure each other that we're whatever it is we need to be (not perfect, not the living end, but good enough on most days and committed to professionalism and perspective).

Illustration by Sir John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland.

Is your book making you crazy?

Quick question -- has anyone ever thought you were going crazy because of a book that wasn't going well? An author this week told me that he felt that way, and it reminded me of my own state of mind in 1999. Nuts! (Things are much better now, thank you -- Booklab= happiness.)

Any and all "crazy author" stories are welcome.

Are Writers Conferences Helpful or Necessary?

I'm going to admit -- publicly! -- that I am somewhat edgy about the subject of writer's conferences. Even though every year that they'll have me I'm a fiction judge for the Maryland Writers Association (love them), and even though I've spoken at three writers' conferences, I still have nagging concerns about the format, based on admittedly small-sample experiences. They just felt all kinds of awkward, and I was unconvinced that writers got what they hungered for at most of them.

Instead of opining, however, I'll open the question up to all five of my readers, some of whom send me personal mail even when they don't comment here. What's your opinion of writer's conferences? Have you been to, say, Bread Loaf? Was it a good experience? You may be (as always) anonymous, or else first-name only.

The hilarious illustration is from palblog, the blog of comics artist Peter Laird.

Authors and editors sometimes want different things

Sometimes there is an inherent conflict between a typical author's goals (publish me, publish me, publish ME!), and an editor's goals (I want to enhance my list... when you see my list you see what I value and why... to get published, fit on my list). Average authors are all about individual recognition, whereas typical editors focus on the content and message of their lists as intellectual and artistic collections.

Authors frequently ask "Why didn't the publisher advertise ME more," whereas editors more typically ask "What's the best use of promotional resources for the group, for the imprint, for the house?" It's not that authors are all ego-maniacal while editors are altruistic. That simple split can't work, since so many editors are also authors. But their goals are sometimes at variance when they inhabit their respective roles. It's also no wonder that some editors become successful authors, because they learn to think like editors and so they often make more successful publishing bids. The more that authors focus on editors' complete lists, the more likely the two camps are to gradually share goals, or at least come at divergent goals from more harmonious bases.

How do you find editors? Follow the trail of books you admire. Sites like Amazon have advanced search features that let you see all the offerings from a particular publishing house. Choose an appropriate house, select a range of books in your field, and find out who edited them. This can be more accurate than simply looking on the website and finding the editor who handles "all" of a particular type of book, since there is often a bit of overlap, and editors can wander onto one another's turf.

By the way, getting to know editors and their lists is not the only way to go about getting published. I know some authors who don't give a hoot and who are extraordinarily well- published. The only rule is that there are no rules, but knowing editors and their works is one of my personal preferences.

Journal Experiments: Starting Again, and Again

I'm still energized by the Journal Experiments, and every time I return it is with wonder and amazement at just how useful/fruitful they are. For those of you unfamiliar with them, the original post is here, from a year ago. We examined some cool journals between then and now, but with the new faculty fiction-writing group starting last week, it's time to get into them again even more seriously.

This week's journal is The Missouri Review, a 30-year-old literary magazine based at the University of Missouri. It is extremely high on my list of must-subscribes, and I encourage anyone who is thinking about submitting to it to read back issues from the library to get a feel for it, and then subscribe as a way of supporting this amazing world.

The editor, Speer Morgan, is also a literary practitioner, with several novels, plus award-winning fiction in The Atlantic Monthly. I was struck by the fact that although -- as is customary -- his essay about this edition precedes the entries, he chose to list that essay at the end of the Contents. Hard to say if that was a deliberate nod to his authors to put them first, but it sure seemed that way and I liked it. Poetry editor for the summer '09 issue Katy Didden has a number of publication credits as well, and she is a doctoral student. The poetry editor listed on the website, Marc McKee, has a similar background.

Why do I pay attention to editors? Because I have a personal bias toward knowing who editors are and thinking about them as people with tastes and preferences before submitting to a journal. Usually the individual editors do not make all decisions (it tends to be more collaborative), but they are often the first readers of submissions. I admire editors, and I consider myself as an author an applicant for a position on their lists, not just someone saying "Hey you! Publish me!"

Journals are such little worlds. The Missouri Review is a spectacular one. I will soon add it and other much-loved literary magazines to the recommended list at the upper right of this blog. As I read this issue, I'll post more about contents.

Marketing James Patterson

The next time I hear an author whine that the publisher didn't do enough to promote his or her book, I'll send them to this Harvard Business School study of author James Patterson. Authors are usually shocked, shocked to learn that their platform is their responsibility, but the example of Patterson can offer a bit of consolation. Even rich writers sometimes put their own money in the game (Grisham did it, Patterson did it, there is nothing wrong with it), and the bestsellers get there for a reason.

Related article from Forbes.com, "Why James Patterson is Worth $150 Million."

If you wonder what this has to do with scholarly book and article publishing at Georgetown, the answer is "everything." We learn from the playbook of the great trade success stories in order to adapt some of their real-world savvy to our own boutique titles. And why not? A smart idea is a smart idea, whether it's for a beach read or for a book about history, biology, psychology, and more.

Handwriting at Booklab?

There's a handwriting craze going on, and I'm tapping in (accidental pun!). My own handwriting used to be pretty, but has degenerated to a scrawl over time. Apparently that's normal, and fixable. Emily Yoffe (an interesting Slate writer who may wish to explore more serious books -- she'd be great) embarked on a handwriting experiment with her eighth-grade daughter, and they both came out with a happy result. Now I want to seek out the same Maryland-based guru, Nan Jay Barchowsky, and learn more about how to have elegant, readable, italic (not the droopy Palmer loops you probably learned if you're over 40) handwriting.

Hmmm, I wonder if those skills will help me read old wills and other original documents I encounter from the 1680s through the 1710s?

If you're interested in studying handwriting at Booklab, let me know and I'll think about setting up a weekly class.

Finally an audiobook my aunt might use

I love audiobooks and I listen to them all the time on my field digital audio recorder, downloaded from audible.com. However, because of the tech hurdle, they tend to miss one of their most important audiences: older people who use computers rarely or not at all, but who would welcome the audible version of a story.

My aunt is a case in point. She does not read anymore because of her eyesight, but that exempts her from a computer as well. She isn't just unlikely to download something -- the act is impossible for her. So audible.com and its ilk are out, even though she has the potential to be a good user. Her grandsons might be able to load audiobooks onto an iPod for her, but she won't work the little buttons and she'll get confused about where she is in a book... she needs a large, easy interface.

A company called Playaway has a solution she might actually use. It's a device somewhat shaped like a book and marked like one, with large buttons and a headphone. You put on the headphones and press play. Instead of touting how many of the little suckers you can stuff onto one memory device, this is the opposite: one book per. It is admittedly expensive at about $40 per title, but on the other hand, it's the only way she's going to use audio, so it might make sense for her public library that serves many seniors.

Now the big question for me -- is there a way to adapt scholarly books to this? Seabiscuit and its ilk will always find their way to various formats, and that's fine. I love Seabiscuit. But what about books that aren't front-and-center in the big bookstores? Thinking... thinking...

David Gewanter and Deborah Tannen in Fall for the Book

I just received the new list and noticed that Georgetown University poet David Gewanter and nonfiction author Deborah Tannen will be part of 2009 Fall for the Book. Also, one of my former students in a Gothic fiction class at Georgetown, the incredibly talented Jayanti Tamm, will feature Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult.

Wow, now I'm combing through the lists to see if there's anyone else I know.

Two meanings of "book plus"

For very good political reasons, Booklab does not dispense tenure advice. The first of these is a practical one -- there are too many different departments with varying standards for any individual outside of those departments to be able to guess what constellation of publications will work for a tenure or promotion bid. The second is more subjective: tenure advice is really too much pressure to put on an individual or an office. After all, what if a professor were to ask for tenure advice, and then I gave it and was wrong? Does that mean the botched tenure bid is (gulp) my responsibility? Those are just two of probably many good reasons for Booklab staying out of the tenure advising business.

Therefore what follows is NOT tenure advice, but rather a definition of how some people have interpreted the variable statement "book plus." It often means a pattern of publishing over time where books -- if they are desired in the discipline -- are accompanied by a penumbra of articles both before and after the appearance of the book. Ideally these articles will be artfully spaced over time, but the author does not always have control over this because different journals have different incubation periods (anything from 6-8 months to as much as a year and a half, and very occasionally even more).

Then there is another competing meaning of "book plus" that involves one published book and significant progress toward a second one. I have heard faculty assert vociferously that the only correct meaning of "book plus" is one or another of these. Whichever one is used, however, it is generally done so in the context of distinguishing the university or department in question from what is known as a "one book" institution, meaning a place where you can get tenure for a book on its own, without accompanying articles or progress on a second book.

So what does your university mean when it uses the term? Have you heard another interpretation of the term "book plus"?

Testing the waters

Booklab receives many inquiries from authors who would like to write thrillers, and I welcome them. Washington, DC has always had more than its share of insiders who actually know first-hand how things work at the Pentagon, the White House, the FBI, and the CIA. I have seen many realistic, this-could-have-happened thrillers from first-time authors in DC. Now and then Georgetown University makes an appearance as part of the plot (apparently a lot of high-level operatives are running around campus).

But often the aspiring author pours everything into one book, and then announces that she or he is "testing the waters" with it. If the book sells, then that's a green light from the industry that this is a viable avocation. If it fails to sell, well, there's always the day job. This attitude isn't reserved for thriller fans by any means. Numerous authors give me a version of the the story that they have everything riding on one manuscript, and often a beginner one at that.

This is stinkin' thinkin' (to quote Zig Ziglar) on several levels. First, it puts way too much pressure on a novice effort. Second, it assumes that acceptance or rejection by agents and editors reflects reality (if that were the case, then the oft-rejected A Confederacy of Dunces would never have seen daylight, let alone won a Pulitzer). Third, it assumes that this plot and these exact characters are the ones readers will connect to, when many veteran thriller writers, for example John D. MacDonald, had whole series of published stories with prototype characters that morphed over time into memorables such as Travis McGee. Finally, it exempts the potential thriller author from one of the most important things any newcomer to category fiction can possibly do -- plan an encore, and another, and another. By the time a manuscript is making its rounds, the author should have two or three more in the pipeline, with at least one ready to go within a few months.

For a sense of how to do this and succeed at it, you might want to consider Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, one of the recommended books in the link at the right. He discusses thriller writing as a career. Another book I love is by Donald Maass, and Writing the Breakout Novel. Yes, they both address mechanics, but they also discuss big-picture what the life of a series fiction writer is like, and they will back up what I'm saying here. One test-market book is not an indicator of anything. Master the profession by reading everything you can, attending classes (mediabistro.com has some good ones) and writing many books. One of them just might be the one that breaks through.

Question from the mailbag

Anyone is welcome to ask questions and have them answered on the blog. You can be identified by first name, or kept anonymous. Today's question:

Q: Is there a rule of thumb within the political science field regarding the simultaneous submission of a book manuscript to university presses? Is it common practice, or is it frowned upon?

A: This is a particularly timely question now, because many university presses are in transition, moving from more traditional scholarly practices to ones that resemble practices at trade houses. My answer to you is based on what UP editors have told me (I've personally visited Chicago, Northwestern, Arizona, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Oxford, and NYU, plus the academic division of trade houses Alfred A. Knopf and W. W. Norton; my publisher was Farrar, Straus & Giroux). I also ran this answer by a roomful of university press staff, including editors at places like Yale and MIT, at the Association of American University Presses conference last spring, and it received a 100% positive response.

You may send a prospectus and sample chapter anywhere. To a university press, a submission is an entire manuscript sent to an editor in the hope of triggering the peer review process, so a prospectus and a sample chapter alone do not a full submission make. Just to be sure that the editor understands this, however, I also include a very brief cover note with this package that says clearly "This is an inquiry only, not a full submission." In other words, you're just trying to gauge interest, and that's perfectly fair. You may send as many of these as you wish, as long as that "inquiry only" language is up front.

My recommendation is that you research presses respected in your field (especially important if you are up for tenure or full professor), study their catalogues, and identify books in your field you admire. From this industry-based research, make a list of 3-4 editors who might be appropriate for your work, and send this inquiry package to all of them. Once the yeses and nos come back, rank the yes responses and then submit your full manuscript to them one at a time as per the traditional approach. Everyone will feel that you played fair with them. Two good rules to follow are to only inquire at a press where you would actually want to be published, and to be transparent whenever possible so that an editor does not mistakenly think she or he has a lock on your book.

This process is a huge blessing for academic authors who want to be able to weed out the no responses early, and get on to the potential yeses. This can save months if not years of time.

The William Morris Agency at Booklab

Eric Lupfer of the William Morris Agency will be my guest for a Georgetown University faculty book talk at noon on October 15. I'll have more details on the blog closer to the date, but if you are a Georgetown faculty member and would like to attend for lunch, chat and a Q&A, by all means let us know by sending e-mail at the right or contacting me in person.

If you are not a faculty member but would still like to attend, non-faculty can participate in all Booklab offerings on an academic/course fee basis. Please contact us for more details!

The book above is one of Eric's most recent titles.

The joy of the 8 o'clock hour

The first faculty writing group of the new season met this morning at 8 a.m. Although I'm traditionally a morning person, 8 a.m. for the first meeting of the day still seemed daunting. It's one thing to be at the office at 8, but quite another to be sharp and ready to roll.

It turned out to be one of the best groups. Fortified with hot coffee (I hope I made it strong enough), we updated one another on what we did since the summer groups ended, and what we want for (1) this entire semester; and (2) just the coming week. We assessed the past, looked to the future, and set specific goals that included writing time per day and thoughts about how to balance writing and teaching. This group was a technologically focused bunch, with the majority from the School of Foreign Service conducting research with an international aspect (Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and India).

Two more groups meet today: 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. There are still limited spaces available, so please notify Carole if you would like to reserve a place.


Tasty coffee image from The Coffee Company in Australia.

Wisdom from Robert Boice

I love the research of Robert Boice, author of the 1990 book Professors as Writers. Although his research has been incorporated and stated somewhat more accessibly by Paul Silvia in How to Write a Lot, which I also love, Boice is The Man when it comes to research, data, hard numbers, or whatever else you want to call it. They make a great pair. Booklab doesn't focus as much on how we feel about writing, and neither does Boice. Instead, we care what works, and that makes Boice our go-to guru.

Today's tidbit is from Boice Chapter Five, Generative Writing, and his fondness for what he calls the "results-first approach." Boice thinks you have to write something before you can edit or perfect it, but he notices that most academic authors do the opposite, trying to be perfect on the first bounce. He isn't recommending spontaneous writing (he thinks that's a big Fail for different reasons), nor is he suggesting binge writing. Generative writing is more substantive, but it is still produced without judgment. It creates the stuff that can then be edited by a completely different part of the brain.

Over the course of the semester I'll post tidbits from Boice. A great way to read him is to buy both books, read Silvia first, and then read Boice second for backup material.

And speaking of Peeps...

Speaking of Peeps, I'm also obsessed with the diary of Samuel Pepys (yes, his last name is pronounced just like the marshmallow confection). Pepys was one of the great diarists in English history, and his diary -- written in a shorthand code as many men did in his day, both for privacy and for expediency -- forms one of the best firsthand accounts of 17th-century England. Pepys lived through both the Great Fire of London and the Plague. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and he knew Isaac Newton. His remarkable library is one of the jewels of Magdalen College, Cambridge (as a classical radio announcer I learned to pronounce that "Maudlin." It's a sideways pronunciation, kinda like Peeps.).

An English web designer and actor named Phil Gyford runs the Best Site Ever if you're a 17th-century history geek like me -- The Diary of Samuel Pepys. This is Gyford's decade-long effort to put the entire magnum opus on the internet, day by day with links. Wowie. I like it so much that I read it every day and I also sent a monetary contribution to Project Gutenberg as he requested (he also has an Amazon wish list, so I sent him Season One of "Arrested Development" at his request -- he doesn't accept money, but he'll allow the occasional DVD of Gratitude).

Above is Pepys's signature from England's National Archives.

A new take on rejection

Publishing necessarily entails the "ask," the moment where an author offers work to an editor or agent (EoA) in the hope of having it accepted for publication, or representation. One might think of this as a yes/no moment, and sometimes it is, but the closer you get to "yes," the more complicated the transaction becomes. EoAs faced with the prospect of actually accepting something go through a complex internal process of gauging what this will cost them in time, effort, and actual dollars.

Yes, publishing your work costs them money. Surprised? Don't be. Most authors think about the $ coming in, without consider what those brave souls known as publishers have to pay to produce a work, and I'll consider this in detail in a future post. Beyond the warbucks, the act of publishing you or me will require an investment of their time, and also an emotional commitment. They're not just clerks processing Halloween peeps mindlessly in a marshmallow factory. Your work becomes part of their careers, too.

Interestingly, authors tend to hear "no" when an EoA actually said "maybe." For example, sometimes an EoA will say "This would be interesting if x happened" (e.g. if if were more narrative, if it was told from an eyewitness perspective, if it was more scholarly, less scholarly, etc.), and most of the time authors will return to me with "They rejected it." Another typical EoA answer is "The author has a great background, and it would be wonderful to see a book pitch that works off of that base." Again, the author usually hears this as "No," when in fact the EoA was making a bid for a potential future relationship. "Try me again" usually means just that as well -- the EoA sees potential and wants to hear more. But the typical author simply tucks tail and skedaddles.

The next time you think you're hearing no, stop and wait through it. Instead of responding, just be quiet with it for a while, maybe even a day or two. Is it really a rejection? Did the person actually say no? Or is that the pre-recording in your head left over from the fifth grade, and was the answer actually more ambiguous, and potentially much more interesting?

Image from Sugar Shop.

Fiction and the academic author

Most of us who work in the publishing-focused realms of academia are here because we love research and scholarship. We like archives, libraries dusty books, and obscure stuff. We don't think it's dry at all, we think it's tasty! However, once the academic publishing is well underway or comfortably accepted at a great university press or a journal, many academic authors confess to me that something else lurks in their computer files or desk drawers: Novels, poetry, essays, plays and more. Fiction! Yes! I said it!

The new fiction group starts this week at Booklab, and another will begin in January. Just like the scholarly book groups, this one will run for twelve weeks, meeting once a week. Some of the fiction group members will work through the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Since 2002 I have facilitated five groups based on The Artist's Way, and they're wonderful. Other group members who choose to work on their own (either because they've done AW or because it isn't quite their cup o' tea), will simply check in and let us know how their fiction progresses.

Each week we will also focus on a different literary journal, viewing examples and discussing how to learn more about a journal, and how to submit work to it. For week one beginning Wednesday, September 9, we will focus on Ploughshares, published by Emerson College.

This new season of book groups comes with a pledge to you, my readers. I commit to publishing at least one post per day for this entire book group season, beginning today and ending December 11. This means several things:

**	A revival of The Journal Experiments (whoo-hoo!);
**	Exploration of how each of the ten book groups is going. Participants will be anonymous, but the blog will feature real-life book publishing trials, tribulations and joys;
**	More about my own day-to-day publishing process. Much has happened since I began a scholarly book last year based on research and writing from the past 15 years, and I'll include it in the third person under the name Fortuna.

The new Folger poetry schedule is available

Sometimes poets come to Booklab, asking me about the market for their poetry. Believe it or not there is one, although I don't call it a market per se.

Naysayers who insist poets "can't earn a living" are -- to put it gently -- wildly mistaken, and just a few evenings with some of the world's successful poets will lay that misconception to rest. There are a number of distinguished literary worlds wherein poetry is read, published, and valued, and (yes) where poets are paid.

One of these worlds is exemplified by the reading series available at the Library of Congress, and another one across the street at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Hmmm... I've often wondered if they compete. Whatever the case, each of these institutions works hard to bring in prominent poets for events that are usually low cost or free and just terrific. If you live in Georgetown, there is even a direct bus from Wisconsin Avenue to the Hill! Here is the reading list for the Folger. If you want to sign up to attend, the link is here.

10/9	O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize Reading: Juliana Spahr
11/3	Arthur Sze and Afaa Michael Weaver
12/14	Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute: Lucie Brock-Broido
1/11	Kim Addonizio & Kyle Dargan
2/8	Charles Wright
3/1	Patricia Smith & John Burnside
5/3	W.S. Merwin
5/18	Folger Poetry Board Reading: Richard Wilbur

The above image is from the Folger's own archives.

Tracy Kidder's writing life

One of the most helpful things in my world as a writer has been going to readings or other live events and hearing how famous authors discuss their process. Some of them complain about being asked what they perceive as a silly question ("How do you write each day"), but the answers are more illuminating than most of them realize. For example, I learned from a reading with Jane Smiley that she only writes about a page a day. She is slow, but methodical, because she writes every day and over a year it adds up. Most of the authors I've seen live (John Irving, Sebastian Junger, Michael Crichton, Anne Perry, Harry Shearer, Anthony Bourdain -- there have been many of them) do report one consistent thing -- they tend to write on a predictable schedule rather than catch-as-catch-can. Writing becomes part of the fabric of their lives, rather than some sort of marathon they run once in a while.

Here's a bit from today's New York Times about Tracy Kidder's work schedule. You can read the entire piece here. He's known for many books, but the one above -- for which he won the Pulitzer Prize -- is also the one I liked the best.

What is a typical day in your writing life?

I tend to start early in the morning, the time of day when l feel most nearly capable of thought. When I’m writing a rough draft, I have a hard time staying with it for more than a few hours. I used to be able to spend 12 hours or more a day when rewriting, but I can’t do that for many days in a row anymore. In the summertime, I go fishing after writing, for me a lovely antidote to frustration.

The Google Books Finger

I admit to being a bit of a Google books junkie when it comes to 19th-century stuff. This old, hard-to-find, well-out-of-print material was often the thankless task of the literary sleuth who just wanted to find (for example) as many 19th-century references as possible to one obscure 18th-century author. If the name is unique enough, Google books can bring up a lot of references.

It can also bring up a lot of fingers. Turns out that people scanning Google books have also reasonably often inadvertently scanned their fingers or whole hands, sometimes in color. I wish I was the first to notice this, but as soon as it occurred to me to blog about it I checked for "google books finger" and came up with plenty of hits. Others have noticed. Others have laughed.

Feeling embarrassed over a draft

I've isolated a particular moment in the writing process that can lock up scholars -- finding an error in a draft, and feeling embarrassed about it! Now, one would think that the draft stage would be the appropriate place to identify errors, but for some reason I felt an enormous sense of not only shame, but potential public humiliation, when I saw a mistake in the title of a draft of one of my book chapters this morning. Immediately thoughts popped to mind: "What if it had gone out that way?" "What if the editor saw it and thought how stupid I am?" "How could I have missed that after looking at it so many times?" None of these recriminating questions was particularly helpful, but they made up for that by being loud and persistent (or as a version of the old saying goes, he was slovenly, but he made up for it by being rude).

The frog above agrees that shame is the only appropriate response to any mistake. Visit him and other disapproving critters at one of my favorite websites, Cuteoverload.com.

Booklab takes your questions

Are you an author or author-to-be? Do you have a pressing question about book publishing? Write to Booklab, and I'll answer for free if your question is selected, and if you agree to have it posted on the blog. It's all anonymous unless you wish to be identified. Booklab does charge for classes and professional literary advising, so this is a great way to communicate gratis. Maybe it will turn into a column!

HINT: To really keep it anonymous, post your question as an unsigned reply to any blog entry.

The never-ending quest to spout the best book advice, ever

After a bit of a hiatus from NPC events and festivities, your book blogger will be back at the National Press Club tonight for a panel event, "Make Your Book a Reality," sponsored by the Club's Professional Development Committee. My copanelists will be Paul Dickson, an accomplished author and fellow club member, Howard Yoon, an agent with the DC's venerable Gail Ross Agency, and editorial expert Barbara Hart.

We will each speak for about 10 minutes on what we think makes a book successful, and I'm on the fence. Part of me wants to say "Model greatness" by looking at what has succeeded before, and another part of me wants to say "Forget all that" since so many wonderful books have arisen out of their authors' own quirky vision of the world. Part of me wants to say "Write about something you love and care about," when my more pragmatic side whispers that many excellent books have been written because someone commissioned the book, or because the author did it for the money. There is nothing wrong with doing something for profit, and sometimes fine work is the result. I think the bottom line is to build your workbox of professional tools by writing a lot and publishing everywhere you can, so that you're really good at what you do when you sit down to write the book. But then again, I know first-timers who wrote terrific books, so maybe that's wrong, too.

Write or wrong (pun!), I'll be there tonight with fellow book lovers. If you want to come, the sign-up information is at the link above. And the photo is of your book blogger looking as geeky and happy as possible standing next to Anne Perry. The National Press Club is a great place to meet famous authors and pretend you know them. :-)

Save August!

Summer book group participants are starting to flag. The excuses are pouring in (we're leaving for vacation on Thursday and I have to get the car inspected; my husband had the kids for all of June and July after day camp, and now it's my turn; I'm already anticipating September and all the work that will hit me when the students return; blah, blah, blah), and groups are smaller.

But ladies and gentlemen of the summer book groups, I am here to remind you of one profound, inarguable fact: August is 1/3 of summer! It's still a big chunk! Giving up on August would be as silly as giving up on July. August is a spectacular writing month, and unless you are going on vacation (I believe in true vacation), if you're in town then you can and should be cranking on that manuscript.

Here are some tips from this week's groups for making August work for you:

1. If looming work in September is starting to freak you out, write your woes down on a sheet of paper. Put the sheet of paper in a mason jar, and tighten the lid. Set it aside during your writing time, with a promise that you'll take it out of the jar and worry when you're finished writing. This trick has been known to appease the scientifically identified Worry Center of the brain.

2. If your days are feeling even blobbier than usual, make a schedule, share it with a friend, and check in with each other every morning to commit to it. This can be a nice excuse to meet someone for coffee. Yes -- check in every morning. August requires desperate measures.

3. Try to define a chunk of writing that -- when completed -- will represent a successful August. Then break that chunk down into smaller pieces that will become your weekly and daily tasks. It is only August 4 today, so imagine what can and should be true 27 days from now.

4. If you've tried and you're still flagging, make an appointment to write at Booklab every day if you have to.


Image from August: Osage County, a play I saw in NYC in June.

Shapeless days and shapeless nights . . .

Yesterday in one of our faculty summer book writing groups, a professor commented that her days have been feeling "shapeless" in the summer time. We're all supposed to be writing and oh-so-productive, but in the absence of a daily office structure that can be more difficult than it sounds.

The groups have come up with several smart ways to impose add shape to our summer days and get your academic book done. First -- and most important to all of us -- is joining and committing to a weekly faculty book writing group. We find that peer pressure is a terrific motivator, and that on days when we just don't feel like writing, the sense that friends/colleagues who care about our progress will want a full report is often enough to get us moving.

Second is setting up regular -- even daily -- writing dates with fellow authors. For example, it's Friday and I don't have any faculty book writing groups today, so it might be tempting to whittle away my whole morning on e-mail and low-value busywork. However, a faculty member is coming over to write for an hour and a half at 10 a.m., so I need to have my act together when he gets here. He has been here to write every day at 10 all week. Voila, structure!

If you're worried about wearing out a colleague's good will, then spread the energy around by writing with more people. Five authors come here at different times of the week to write (I write during most of these sessions, too), and in the fall there will be more.

Parking your car on the downhill slope

Two of the nine summer book writing groups for faculty have yielded the same tidbit of writing advice that they heard "somewhere." It goes like this. When you're having a great writing day and the time you allotted for writing is up, instead of going on and on until you burn out, stop your work while you're still on a roll, and leave yourself notes for where to pick it up the next day. Then you'll be excited and eager to return to the task, and you'll have a much better time getting started.

Hmmm. Has anyone heard this before? Any idea where it comes from? And does it work?

A completely lazy web search yielded these links about it, and suggest that it may come from the book Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day:

http://www.43folders.com/2005/04/27/park-on-a-downhill-slope
http://is.gd/1FOp3


Above image for sale at art.com.

My friend says you can't do that

Now and then a faculty member will come to one of the summer scholarly book publishing groups with a nervous message for me. It often goes something like this: "I told my friend what you told me about querying university press editors while you're working on a book, and she said you can't do that, because if they ask for the whole manuscript and the book isn't finished, they'll be pissed."

I hope these faculty members forgive me when I laugh before I answer. Hmmm, you can't do that? Or "they" will feel a particular way? Like Dick Van Dyke said in the old 1960s TV show, I want to ask "Who's this they?"

In reality, querying editors while you are working on a scholarly book can be a powerful way to gauge interest early without committing to one press, and also of getting helpful feedback. I originally got the idea from speaking to university press editors themselves. Two key lines will help you as you do this. I like to say "This is an inquiry only, not yet a full submission," and "I anticipate completing the manuscript by x date," so that nobody accidentally imagines that it is sitting on your desk ready to go.

By the way, scholars, the trade press world snickers when they hear that we have been taught to completely write our books before submitting them. That's a little like designing a suit without knowing what show it is going to be in. Most university press editors are more proud of their publishing lists than they are of their own children, and even though your work is uniquely you, it also has to work on one of those lists. It will be shown as part of a set, not as a one-off.

Also, the editors I have met tend to be intelligent, collaborative, and brimming with good ideas about what might make books work and why. They've been through this a time or two, so why not give some of them the opportunity to communicate early? You just might end up with a deal before you finish your book, and wouldn't that be a comforting way to spend the last months of your writing?


Stack o' books above is the work of Czech artist Matej Krén, whose terrific work using books as a medium can be gawked at here.

Scholars on crime

Crime is always an interesting topic. Crime in the summertime is nearly irresistible. Amid the fleet of scholarly books underway right now, crime studies are the pirate vessels...

Dr. William F. McDonald has a new book, Immigration, Crime and Justice, part of Emerald Book's Sociology of Law and Deviance series. Whoo-hoo! Here's a description: "Driving the white-hot arguments over immigration are myths, fears and political correctness. As the US Congress prepares to take another shot at comprehensive immigration reform, you will want to know the many unexpected and vexing facts about this complex topic. William F. McDonald’s Immigration, Crime and Justice tells the whole story: immigration reduces crime; immigrants are victimized in numerous ways; local police disagree as to what role they should play; laws and policies intended to better manage the immigration phenomenon have unintended negative consequences; open borders policy is seen as the answer by some.

The only readers for whom this book is not relevant are those who have no ancestors who were immigrants in the past."

Given that all of my ancestors on one side came from the Italian town of Calabritto, in the hills near Naples, I can relate.

Image from Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, upcoming in July.

Brian Tracy on How to Write a Book

Every now and then I need a fresh hit of Brian Tracy. He's an old-school motivational speaker, and I've learned so much from his materials. We have somewhat different perspectives (he's far more ambition-oriented, and I am currently gleaning much from the more contemplative, "little way" path), but if you feel that you need to get moving, Brian Tracy can do it. Here's a link to his audio on how he has written books that have sold over 50 million copies.

Back from the AAUP

AAUP can stand for two things in academic circles: the American Association of University Professors, and the Association of American University Presses. I have been invited to speak at both over the years, which makes it doubly confusing. But it was university presses that had my undivided attention this weekend as I joined three bookish colleagues on a panel, "From Book Labs to Publishing Liaisons: University-Based Programs for Authors.”

My buddies were moderator Amy Benson Brown, Director of the Manuscript Development Program at Emory University, whose genius was behind the panel in the first place; Rebecca Sestili, the Author-Publisher Liaison from the University of Michigan; and Steven Feldman, Book Publications Officer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. We bonded the night before over a Chinese dinner in Philadelphia, and then Saturday morning we enjoyed a lively event with about 35 attendees (pretty much a full room).

The biggest things we learned from one another are that many faculty publishing concerns are universal:

* Weird writing issues that crop up when the job is on the line? Check.
* Faculty nervous around most university press editors? Check.
* Confusion over publishing requirements, industry standards and more? Double-check.

It was a great weekend, and I plan to attend the full conference in Salt Lake City next year, along with the rest of the panel.

A week at Collegium Colloquy

The blog has been quiet while I spent a week in Collegeville, Minnesota at Collegium Colloquy, created by Dr. Tom Landy as a way for faculty and staff from Catholic universities to discuss faith and intellectual life. One need not be Catholic to attend, and in fact he always encourages more participation from non-Catholics, including nonbelievers. The point isn't to look at things a certain way, but to gather fresh perspectives on whether and how there is something unique and worth preserving in Catholic higher education that may be lost over time as fewer people choose to join the religious orders that founded these campuses long ago. Does it matter that the orders such as Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, Salesians, and other groups are shrinking? Can lay people -- both those who share the faith of the founders and those who do not -- take up the slack, and more important should they? Is this even reasonable to ask of any faculty member, ever? Some say yes, others no, and the debate was engaging and smart. I had a great week.

Of course, writing can and should be part of this as a way of collecting and crystallizing ideas that groups like Collegium generate. But another interesting point about writing came out of Collegium, and that's the model of Collegium itself. There is a way to think about our books as potential beneficiaries of Collegium-type thinking. What if, for example, when undertaking something enormous such as a volume dedicated to the life and career of a major author, it were normal to gather a group of scholars and collectively consider some of the important aspects of the project? This kind of "brain trust" thinking is antithetical to the lone-wolf scholar approach, but that's part of why I love it. Collegium reminds us that there can be great wisdom in a collection of like minds. Although I'm not crazy about committees per se, this isn't committeethink, but rather a way to percolate ideas without having to all agree on the outcome.

Above: A group of great minds on our way to dinner in Minneapolis. Your book blogger is at the far left.

I almost forgot to mention the book

In the post below, Menand's article focuses on The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard UP 2009) by Mark McGurl, associate professor of English at UCLA.

Quote about workshops that hits home

People who know me and my rants know that while I love writer's groups, I loathe "workshops," specifically those squads of usually unpublished fiction writers or poets who get together to comment on each other's art. A writers' group can be a wonderfully productive, supportive, collaborative enterprise. But Workshop in the way it has come to be defined in MFA programs and the creative writing side of English majors can be unnecessarily brutal, and more often than not just plain wrong. It can help to have a successful, published author guide you in your writing. It does not help to have a wannabe who has never published a word eviscerate you in front of your peers.

Louis Menand of The New Yorker said this better than I could when he wrote the opening paragraph of his article about such matters this week: Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views of the efforts of other aspiring writers.

Amen, and I breathed a sigh of appreciation at his understanding when I read it: "He gets it." Menand has published some wonderful books, including with publishers I love such as Oxford and FSG, yet I can hear in his words a yelp of pain that surely he received from a remembered blow in one of these courses somewhere, sometime. Either that or I'm imagining things (that never happens).

Meanwhile, the summer book groups proceed apace. We meet, we challenge one another, we offer support and goals and accountability. But we never, ever tear into each other, not even in the name of "constructive criticism." There is a place for such things, but in private, and only from someone who has published and who is offering genuine, caring guidance.

Photo of Louis Menand from the Harvard website. He even looks like someone who would understand. A-men.

A Booklab Baby

Charlene Brown-McKenzie, who is the Director of the Meyers Institute for College Preparation at Georgetown, and her husband Alton had another baby. Maybe we should start a tradition of posting pictures of Booklab Babies (Charlene doesn't work at Booklab, but Carole sometimes teaches summer school writing for Charlene's program, and she has tutored on Saturdays during the school year).

Say hello to big brother Micah McKenzie holding new baby Gabriella Rose.

Do you have to write your book ALL by yourself?

The headline is not rhetorical, it's a serious question. Who says you have to do every bit of your book all alone? Participants in the summer publishing groups (six groups! forty faculty members!) are gasping with joy and relief when they learn that it's perfectly fine to assign portions of their books to graduate students we have identified who are eager to help with publishing projects. One professor has hired a grad student to do all of her translations. Another has asked a student to take all of his data and findings and write snappy, accurate prose captions for each of the charts (38 in all -- and a lot of work!). Still another has a grad student double-checking all of her citations and making sure they are in Chicago style. The grad students love this because it's rewarding summer work, there's some pay involved (usually an honorarium), and they are adding actual books to their CVs so that they can hit this bleak job market with experience in addition to the coursework. Book experience is vital for any student who wants to go into publishing, so these are desirable jobs. And of course, every grad student gets a mention by name in the books' acknowledgments.

I worked on three published books during graduate school, and even though only one book offered any pay at all, I made valuable contacts including editors at the W. Alton Jones Foundation; Yale University Press; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; and Ballantine Books. One of those editors went on to become my editor for two books, both with FSG. So if you're a faculty member worrying that you are somehow "exploiting" grad students by enlisting them on your book, think again. You need each other.

Amusing ant image from http://www.strate.co.za/Strate/AboutUs/Strate+DNA/

Booklab seeks experts

One of the wonderful benefits of operating from a university campus is having an entire faculty of experts to help this office guide authors to book publication. When authors from outside Georgetown hires us, they aren't just hiring me and my staff. They also get a consultation with an internationally recognized expert in their subject area. This usually means that the expert reads either the manuscript or the materials that exist in lieu of one (such as a proposal, sample chapters, or notes), considering the professional opportunities and possible publishing trajectory for such an author (articles first? more studies? time to pitch this as a book?), and meeting with the author for one hour to discuss all of this. A follow-up editorial letter memorializes your work together and helps the author think about next steps.

If you are a faculty member who would like to guide authors in your area of expertise, please contact Carole to discuss what's involved.

James J. O'Donnell on the BBC

Listen to more about The Ruin of the Roman Empire, plus Jim O'Donnell's "Sixty Second Idea," a moment about 18 minutes in when host Bridget Kendall asks him to change the world in just one radio minute, all on "The Forum," a program from the BBC World Service.

NEW June 5, he also has a forum on "The Reality Club," from Edge.org, responding to The Impending Demise of the University.

The Tribble With Translations

An article posted on the New Directions Poetry blog shows just how maddeningly subjective and imprecise translations can be, especially of poetry but certainly of any text.

Literary agent Matthew Carnicelli on May 20

Next week we welcome literary agent Matthew Carnicelli of Trident Media on Wednesday, May 20 to discuss how academics can think about writing their books for larger audiences. He began his publishing career as an editor at Dutton, where he worked with such authors as Vice President Al Gore, Martin Duberman, Judith Warner, Jane Mayer, Cornel West, and many others. From Dutton, he held senior editorial positions at Contemporary Books and McGraw-Hill, and worked with such authors as John Wooden, Victoria Moran, Roland Lazenby, Picabo Street, and Robert Kurson. He has a broad list of authors writing in history and biography, current events and politics, business, science, fiction and memoir, sports, science, and health.

Where? Leavey Program Room (across from the bookstore in the Leavey Center)
When? Wednesday, May 20, 10 - 11 a.m.
What? Talk plus Q&A
Who? Open to faculty, staff and graduate students, and coffee and snacks will be served.

Another summer, another clear pattern about publishing

This summer's book publishing groups are shaping up; about 40 faculty members have asked to be teamed up with others working on similar projects. The excitement is infectious, and I can't wait for the first groups to meet next week.

However, a clear pattern is re-emerging, one that I've seen before. The people who want to be put in groups tend in general to already be published. We have some first-time book authors, but most people who are asking for help now have already made some progress in the publishing world.

So where are the beginners? Right where they've always been since I established this office in 2006... hiding in their offices, lingering under the toxic misconception that writing a book is supposed to be solitary work. It doesn't help when those ghastly, finger-wagging "How to write" authors snark about how writing is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, or that it's all about applying butt to chair. That kind of advice (a) produces guilt; and (b) just isn't true. Most of the well-published authors I know are collaborative, collegial, and willing to take advantage of every opportunity to learn from others. They are the spiritual opposite of the writer stereotype: the scrivener in the garret subsisting on stale cheese.

So if you're working all alone this summer and feeling isolated and pressured, why not come out of hiding and join us? We have cookies. We have inspiration. We have contacts in the academic publishing world. And best of all . . .

**We have each other.**


Art above from Dorothy Frankel sculpture.

Creativity is a product

Herewith a wonderful quote from visual artist Joanna E. Ziegler, the Edward A. O’Rorke Professor in the Liberal Arts at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts: Although young people like to believe creativity is a possession -- either you have it or you don't -- creativity actually is a product, built on a foundation of practice. The very essence of practice is habit and daily routine.

From chapter 3: "Practice Makes Reception: The Role of Contemplative Ritual in Approaching Art," in As Leaven in the World: Catholic Perspectives on Faith, Vocation and the Intellectual Life, edited by Thomas M. Landy.