The book journal, part nine: Don't just do something, stand there!

When book writing is going well, writing can feel so pleasurable. But when the writing must stop for some reason (often after the submission of a chapter to an editor or agent), it's easy to hear the party music come to a screeching halt and wonder where the momentum went. Feeling a little down-in-the-dumps at these times is not unusual (this is also common right after submitting the completed manuscript).

If you freeze, thawing out again can be tough, so I have adopted a mechanical approach. I give myself some simple, time-restricted jobs, and I complete each one carefully, almost doltishly, with a constant awareness that it is real work and that it does serve the book. The best jobs for this are ones I can do in one or two hours, tops, and that have a definite beginning and end. Here are some examples of some good start-again tasks for the new chapter:

1. Make sure that I have accurate computer entries for every source I used in the just-handed-in chapter, plus photocopies of the title page and quoted pages for the file so I don't have to look it all up again if I lose my computer file.

2. Make sure I have a triple backup of the chapter. This means (a) e-mailing it to myself to put one on the server; and (b) e-mailing one to my mom, who never deletes anything. In addition to the computer file, these two extras are a little bit of insurance and they're pretty reliable.

3. Return all the library books that won't be needed for this new chapter, and check out the news ones that will. Organize them on the bookshelf, and mark appropriate chapters with Post-Its so I don't have to flip around while writing.

4. Re-read main sources for the chapter. This can be important! Sometimes I'm a few weeks or months from the last reading, and memories can fuzz. Re-reading is such an easy, relaxing prep for writing, and often it can be quite helpful.

5. Type out material that I know I intend to quote, and make sure an accurate citation is attached to it to avoid accidental plagiarism (a sin that is easier to do by mistake than you might think).

6. Use the Alastair Fowler writing method (discussed elsewhere in this blog) to brainstorm some ideas for the new chapter.

7. Write a teeny something, even if only a line or two, to get going again. This works rather like priming a pump.

Usually by this time I'm writing, but I confess that early first drafts generally feel stupid, unformed, confusing, and not very promising at all. That's okay. If I get stuck again I do another simple little task. If the writing is still going slowly, then sometimes I go out for coffee, bring a notebook, and commit to write one paragraph before leaving the cafe.

Oh, and by the way, I now have a proposal plus 75 manuscript pages. Some days I only wrote part of one page, and other days I wrote ten or more pages. Even on the part-of days, it adds up.

Image from weirdomatic.com.

If you write longer books, is that better?

One of my academic friends has written 15 books. He comes out with a new one every other year with comforting regularity. I've been to several of his book events, and it's fun. He has a readership, he is well-compensated for his efforts, and within his field he's famous. He keynotes at academic conferences and he enjoys the professional perks that go along with being well-published (full professorship at a superb university, excellent publisher, better salary, pretty much unassailable politically on campus, all that comforting stuff).

His books are also very short. As in really short. As in "Don't you think this should be an article?" short.

That last phrase -- and I'll blog about it more in the future -- is a line I hear over and over again from people who think articles are short and books are long, and if a topic is focused narrowly then it's an article, not a book. I say it's up to the author and the market, but it is just fine to publish short books.

Authors come to me often with the stress that they haven't written "enough" for a book (whatever enough is). Sometimes they'll ask if their chapters are long enough in manuscript. Long enough? Hmmm... like you should add breadcrumbs to the ground veal to pad a chapter out if it's too short? How would I -- or you the author -- know when it was "long enough"? Would we hit a magic page or word count?

Personally I think length is irrelevant when considering either chapters or books, and I also have an enormous fondness for short. Not too short, not Hemingway short (I have no taste for his astringent style or for the recommendations of that annoying and terse Strunk & White book either) not "I didn't say what I meant" short, but tastefully brief, just-right, well-considered and well-said.

Here's a charming Newsweek article from last March on short books. The image comes from it.

There's a writing spider at Booklab

Oh now this is too cute. Years ago when I lived in Carrboro, North Carolina, my novelist friend Marly Youmans lived right down the street. One day Marly had a spider on her bushes, and it made a strange, white zigzag in its web. I looked it up and learned that it was a writing spider. Marly was charmed by this (she was and is a so-prolific author), and her kids drew pictures of it. Flash forward to this afternoon, and I was leaving my house in Georgetown to take the dog for a walk. There was a spider in my pumpkin patch (okay, not quite a "patch," but one vine), and I immediately recognized it as the same kind -- a writing spider!

And what about the Nobel prize?

Oh yes, and they announced the Nobel Prize for literature today. I'm not sure with which book of winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio to begin, so I'll ask for input.

Reading a book just because it won a prize

There are many ways to decide what to read. Though overwhelmed with manuscripts, I still like to keep up with new books, and following prize winners is one great way to do it.

But prize committees are complicated organisms, and many of us have read the confessions of past participants who admit they skim the books (how can you not, if you have to get through 70 or 100 to make a decision, and you also have a full-time job?). Also, inherent in a group vote is everyone picking the same book as a lower-rung choice, but with many books vying for #1, so the prize ends up going to a book everyone liked but nobody loved. Finally, the prize is usually awarded every year, even if a great choice isn't available each year. So sometimes an author gets a prize for being the best of a lesser bunch, whereas other times an author does not get a prize simply because someone amazing was in the running that year (or cynically, someone more famous whom prize judges thinks finally deserves a win).

Still, even though I understand all of this this (and I've served on several prize committees, one of which I resigned in disgust after the ranking phenomenon, when everyone's #3 won a huge scholarship, and the higher-ranked ones were left thinking they hadn't rated because we could not agree on them), I'm going to take a chance and read the book that just won the Thurber Prize because (a) I love humor and don't read enough of it; and (b) I've never read a Thurber-prize book before.

The book is Larry Doyle's I Love You Beth Cooper, and the publisher is Harper Perennial. I'll read it on my trusty Kindle and post my thoughts about it later.

The art of creating a "forcing system"

As all seven of you who read this blog know, I'm a big fan of success literature. It's my mental junk food. Whereas others tell me they like to read cat mysteries, or chick lit, or classic science fiction, when I relax I love to read (or more precisely, listen on audio to) some of the better podium-pounding success writers. Three of my favorites are The Success Principles by Jack Canfield (seven full listens so far), Loving What Is by Byron Katie (two reads, since I don't have it on audio, with more reads to come), and Goals! by Brian Tracy (at least eight listens). Here's a fun clip of Brian Tracy ("Your better life goals coach" -- gotta love it!) talking about thoughts.

The beauty of multiple reads or multiple listens is that you glean fresh kernels of insight each time. For example, I've listened to Goals! about twice a year for the past four years, but only now did I really hear what he has to say about a forcing system. Here's what he says on pages 97 and 100, in the chapter titled "Measure Your Progress."

"Your subconscious mind requires a 'forcing system' composed of deadlines that you have imposed on yourself for task accomplishment and goal attainment. Without a forcing system, it becomes easy for you to procrastinate and delay and to put off important tasks until much later, if you do them at all. . . . One of the most helpful actions you take in your own career is to set benchmarks and create scorecards, measures, and deadlines for every key task that you must complete on the way to one of your goals. In this way , you activate your subconscious forcing system. The forcing system will then motivate you and drive you, at an unconscious level, to start earlier, work harder, stay later, and get the job done."

Tracy doesn't spend a lot of time defining what a forcing system is exactly, but I immediately thought of several in the context of academia. Tenure review is the first and most obvious for book authors. Every faculty member at a university like this one must publish active scholarship in book form with a university press of appropriate stature (the measure of these factors being up to a committee of senior peers) in order to keep their jobs. It is even more desirable to get a second project under contract, although interest in this varies by department and discipline, and it cannot be considered a rule so much as a bit of an insurance policy, and some universities require two books. Tenure review is a classic "forcing system," and for the most part it works -- people publish. The bid for full professor is a milder forcing system, simply because there is no threat of losing one's job, but there is usually the lure of stature, pay, and improved retirement.

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully," quoted Boswell from Johnson, and quoth WAY too many people now (I almost apologize for using it because it is so hackneyed, but it fits!). If you have no forcing system in place to concentrate your mind wonderfully, try inventing one. I added book publication to the requirements for my job, so that I would have to publish in order to stay at Georgetown, and so far it seems to be working. My agented book is now at a university press awaiting the opinion of an editor I admire and whom I hand-selected. Would it have been there if I didn't have to publish? I certainly hope so, but I can't know that for certain.

The fantasy says that we should always be self-motivated and not need a cosmic parent to make us clean our rooms or do our homework. The reality is that most of us need accountability, and the stronger the better. A forcing system -- whether inherent in your profession or set up by you as a way of keeping honest -- is a fine way to do this.

Weedle tidbit

Ploughshares magazine at Emerson College has a new editor who used to be at a university press. Here's the blurb from their website: Ploughshares is proud to welcome our new Director / Editor-in-Chief, Ladette Randolph. Prior to her move to Emerson College, she was associate director and humanities editor at University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of a short story collection, This Is Not the Tropics (winner of a Nebraska Book Award), and the editor of two award-winning anthologies: A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers and The Big Empty: Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction Writers. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe grant, the Virginia Faulkner Award, and her work has been reprinted in Best New American Voices. Her novel, A Sandhills Ballad, is forthcoming this spring from University of New Mexico Press.

Ploughshares is certainly on the list of journals to write about in the occasional series.

The shown cover is from the Winter 1992-93 issue, where Georgetown poet David Gewanter published "Conduct of Our Lives."

Reading the OED like a novel

Oh I love stuff like this . . . bibliophile Ammon Shea, who collects dictionaries, decided to read all 137 pounds of the Oxford English Dictionary in a year. Then he wrote a book about it. Particularly interesting (to me) was the way he began to lose access to everyday words such as "milk." We say we want more powerful memories, but as this experiment demonstrates, do we really? Forgettories are useful, too.

Whose book is it, anyway?

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

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

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

Do you STILL expect your partner to read your drafts?

"I'm so disappointed," said Clarinda. She flopped down in the seat across from me at the coffee shop, looking dejected.

My raised eyebrow asked her to go on, and she proceeded to pour forth a litany about how her fiancé the engineer wasn't sufficiently interested in reading her manuscripts. "He makes every excuse," she wailed. "He's riveted when it's something ridiculous on television, but all I ask him for is an hour or two once in a while to comment on a chapter, and . . ."

I waited while she went on, and on, and on about his general failings. Worse, she said, the last time he actually did sit down and read something of hers, he tore it apart. Why, she almost thought he was jealous. Of a silly book!

If you are like the majority of us, then the loved ones in your life (spouse, partner, children, parents, friends, extended relations, even fellow scholars in your department) can be the absolute worst choices to read your unpublished work. Don't be surprised if, along with perfectly natural jealousy, you also encounter large-though-perhaps-artfully disguised doses ignorance and fear.

Poets report to me that their sisters read their drafts and pronounce them "dirty," following that up with a warning that publication could potentially embarrass their parents. Novelists wail about how mothers or fathers stop halfway and say the book would be much more interesting if it resembled the work of Mitch Albom, John Grisham, or Mary Higgins Clark. Scholars kvetch that their spouses seem more interested in slowing them down than helping them get ahead ("Don't you think you need to go to Russia before you can write something about these Russian authors?" "Why not put this away for a few years and work on something else?" or "Isn't this really something an expert should write?").

After years of hearing about these subtle put-downs, frenemy comments, undermining attitudes and general lack of literary support coming from the very people that my authors wish would form their core fan base, I have adopted a firm position. None of us has satisfactory colleagues. We all come from cretinous dog-packs that barely pass as human families. Each of our worthless, self-absorbed friends fails to meet the mark. This is true for every last one of us! That's why we need to seek our support elsewhere (and it's also part of why this office exists).

So please, everyone who has been living in disappointment that the lawyer you want to marry doesn't do a very good job of reading your work, lay down your arms. Form or join a support group of fellow writers instead, preferably ones who do not live with you, compete with you, or have to see you at family get-togethers (i.e. readers outside of your department, or better yet not even on your campus!). Populate it with folks of similar accomplishment and goals, and set some ground rules about who reads how much how often, and precisely how feedback is to be offered.

The sooner you get your loved ones off of the hot seat where they never belonged in the first place, the happier (I promise) everyone will be.

PS: This also goes for those who think their partners want to read their work. One time out of ten this is correct. The other nine times those longsuffering folks will almost weep with relief if the author seeks pre-publication feedback elsewhere.

Image, Charles Joseph Traviès de Villers, 1804-59, French caricaturist and painter, illustrator of Balzac, "Literary Criticism," from allposters.com.

The Book Babes have a new book!

Oh, I'm so intrigued by the Book Babes. These erstwhile Floridians are controversial, smart, and they've been writing about books long enough to have a lot to say. One little-known fact about your own Book Blogger is that besides being a Washingtonian passionately in love with Georgetown (both the university and the community in which I live), I'm also a Floridian. My family has lived on the Gulf Coast for decades, and I consider myself a citizen of that wonderful state where I have lived off and on, and where I visit at least six times a year to loll on the white sand beaches and sip the tasty margaritas. I have long admired the Book Babes and even once wrote a review of the book Lincoln and Whitman for The St. Petersburg Times before Book Babe Margo Hammond retired from her celebrated role as its book review editor.

Anyhoo, they have a forthcoming book-about-books with the unsurprisingly provocative title Between the Covers: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures.

Hey Book Babes! If you want to come to Book Fair at the National Press Club on November 18, we'd love to have you! We have an all-star lineup and you'd be perfect... drop me a note (I'm this year's chair), and we'll get you in.

Lionel vs. Calvin

Re the previous post, am I the only one who sometimes says Lionel Trilling when I mean Calvin Trillin, and vice versa?

Deeply touching conversation

Today I met with an author. We were talking about our respective publishing interests, and she mentioned that she worked on a novel for years, and re-worked it to the point where it felt over-revised. It hurt because she poured a lot of love and energy into it, and she couldn't let it go, but she also couldn't get it to the point she wanted. Agents and editors gave her positive feedback, and all sorts of professionals had an opinion about what it needed. She agreed that it needed something, but she couldn't decide whose counsel to heed and whose to discount. Over time it became a burden for her; she described it as something like pie crust that can become overworked, and no longer tender and flaky when baked. I loved that image, and I also ached in an empathetic and connective way to hear her talk about her novel, because something similar happened to me.

I started a novel back in 1993, in graduate school, in response to a specific event (a helplessly deteriorating friendship, the demise of which felt like mostly my fault). Years later even though the friendship had long since slipped away, I still futzed with it, producing three chapters that an editor at a major house said she liked and would be willing to publish if the rest of the book maintained that momentum. That plus the jealous feedback of a love interest who didn't want to compete with a book for my attention was enough to freeze me up for years. When I finally finished it with the help of a writing group in 2002, it was so old, marbled, re-worked and memorized that I had lost all objectivity. It sits in boxes under my bed today, technically finished but spiritually unloved, and a symbol of what felt like the Longest (and ickiest) Learning Experience Ever.

Do you have an overworked piece of long fiction that has bothered you far too long? Would you be willing to post about it?

It felt so comforting to hear another author say that she had suffered with a novel that wouldn't resolve itself, but also wouldn't go to sleep and let her be. I thought I was the only one! Perhaps you have thought you're the only one, too.

Interestingly, while writing this post, I searched on the words "unfinished novel" and found what looks like a lovely new book about an unfinished novel by the late Lionel Trilling by Geraldine Murphy from Columbia University Press. Pure serendipity! I've ordered a copy, and there's a photo of it here.

The book journal, part eight: authorial food fetishes

I'm writing a book, WHICH MEANS I'm developing a serious snack problem. I think many writers perhaps indulge food fetishes when they're deeply involved in their projects, and my particular sin has generally been traffic-cone-orange-colored baked Cheetos.

But now I've discovered something worse! Wisemiller's is an iconic quickie-market a block away that sells the junk students like to eat. I claim to be above it, but in reality I'm in there a bit too often buying beer, Haagen-Dasz, or Cheetos, plus my standard poodles' favorite, string cheese. Tonight, however, after hours spent deep in research from the 1680s for a book chapter, I dog-walked over to Wisemiller's for a snack. I happened to look up and see a huge display of Cheez-Its. There were four different flavors (regular, cheddar, white cheddar, and spicy). I did not grow up with Cheez-Its, but I figured the store must know its audience and what they like, so I bought a package just to try them.

HEAVEN. Plus they are ultra-fattening -- 450 calories for a tiny bag! A bonus!

Do any of you authors out there suffer from food cravings that become pestilential when your book is truly underway? By all means share...

Oxford Hears a Hugo

Oxford University Press launched a Hugo-award-winning book: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher.

Hugo awards look different every year. I've included the 2007 one because the design makes me smile. Here's a link to past designs. Hugo's trademark design proves that Kurt Vonnegut was right (if you need to ask, send e-mail).

New fiction imprint at Northern Illinois University Press

This is from a recent edition of Publisher's Weekly. I'll try to get more news on it:

Northern Illinois To Launch Fiction Imprint
by Claire Kirch -- Publishers Weekly, 9/26/2008 1:19:00 PM

Northern Illinois University Press in Dekalb, Ill. is launching a new regional fiction imprint, Switchgrass Books. NIU said Switchgrass is “committed to enhancing the cultural landscape of the Midwest” by focusing on literary fiction set in or about the Midwest and written by authors with significant ties to the region. According to Alex Schwartz, NIU Press/Switchgrass Books director, agented manuscripts will not be accepted for consideration, in order to provide both emerging and established writers a venue to “have their Midwestern voices heard.” Two books will be released under the Switchgrass imprint each season, with the first release scheduled for fall 2009. NIU Press will continue to focus its nonfiction line of books on U.S. history, Russian studies, transportation, religion, and regional studies.

Cool piece of NIU trivia: One of its graduates is Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson! NIU also boasts Dennis Hastert, and Tim Bennett, the president of Harpo Productions.

The book journal, part seven: Knowing editors and agents as people

Getting involved in the book industry is one way to establish yourself as an author. Even if you have already published a book or several, I find that authors can sometimes be book industry loners when it is just as easy to make these vital connections. This linking can mean going to academic conferences and meeting successful editors in your scholarly field (I'll share my trademark pub meeting method later), or hosting university press editors at your campus for book talks. However you go about it, there's no substitute for befriending members of that group of superb professionals before you need them. Of course, friendships alone won't get you an academic book deal, but once you have a scholarly product worth selling, these esteemed colleagues can be pure gold when it comes to helping you take the next step.

This worked for me in an interesting way. This weekend I signed with an agent, and I wasn't even looking for one. She is actually my second agent -- my first was a wonderful man who represented me from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s when my writing was going a completely different direction. Back then I dreamed of mainstream media success (newspapers, radio, television), but when it began to happen I discovered that I missed the academy and traditional scholarship, so I completely switched direction (name change, all of it). The agent remains a good friend, but he manages a different type of literary career than the one I'm building now. We let each other go in the kindest way possible -- and I have since sent him other authors.

This new agent as of two days ago is an industry veteran just like the first, but she is more on the scholarly side of the aisle, and she represents a number of academics. By coincidence she is also very good friends with the previous agent. Usually scholarly books don't make money, which is why I didn't expect to find representation, but she has always kept a few of us on her list for (I guess) the prestige factor (something quite valuable in its own way).

The most interesting part of this, however, is that I didn't ask her to represent my book. I didn't even ask her to read it! We met through this business and bonded as colleagues and eventually friends. We enjoy one another's minds and spirits outside of work-related matters, but of course we also see eye-to-eye on most of those. When she asked to read the sample chapter and proposal of the book I've been blogging about here, I sent it to her thinking she'd have a glance and tell me what university press editors might want it. When she actually offered to represent it, as the Brits would say "I was gobsmacked." Add to that I was honored, pleased, shy about it, you name it.

Surprise connections like this one are what I also want for some of you as readers of this blog -- literary friendships that may grow into wonderful partnerships (I'm well aware that others of you have more industry connections than I could ever hope for... but I'm speaking to those of us who can be more reticent about such matters). So often book writing devolves to an exercise in jumping university press hoops for tenure or full professorship, or trying to satisfy trade editors in order to make money, but books can connect people in larger ways -- they can link authors, presses, agents, and editors, all of whom (we hope) love books and the creation of them. The best agent will care about your career, and that can only happen if she or he gets to know you dimensionally. The nervousness and sometimes neediness that so often accompanies agent submissions can be antithetical to a comfortable and easy collaboration.

I highly recommend it this way instead -- get to know many editors and agents as people, and develop your book at the same time. Then when you have something to share, you'll have a number of colleagues from whom to choose, and one of them might just step forward and say "Please, allow me . . ."

What your author biography says about you

Writing the "about the author" section of your book proposal is a bit like being asked to stand undressed in front of a three-way mirror in a harshly lit department store and describe what you see. Self-image issues slither into the scene, and for many people (myself included), it can feel so awkward. Here is a note I recently wrote to an author who was struggling with the "about" section. The author had mentioned being an outcast in high school, and it was easy enough to see a tale-within-a-tale in that deceptively simple paragraph.

"Now for the bio . . . what I heard most in your earlier versions was the echo of negative self-mythology. When we define ourselves by how popular we were or weren't in high school, we're essentially ratifying the opinion of a coven of adolescent middle-minds (whether we think we were hot stuff or not). Once I busted open those stories I told myself about who I was in school, I personally began to flourish as a much quirkier and more interesting person who no longer shadow boxed with uninteresting and largely imaginary characters from a so-called past. I also began to have different -- and equally valid -- memories about those same years that were much richer. It was as though the Big Mythology bad memories had crowded out the flowers, but once I learned to question my thoughts, they vanished. I now have an entirely different internal narrative of what school "was," and better yet, it changes all the time because I constantly question it."

The author had an interesting time learning to challenge the degree to which he bought into others' definitions of who he was from two decades earlier (he is now 38), but he also tried a trick which I heartily recommend: he asked people who like him now to write the bio for him. He didn't just ask one person, but he solicited the comments of five. Not only was he quite surprised at how seriously they took the task and what a good job they did (far from simply flattering him, they truly attempted to define why in their opinions he was an interesting author and how they perceived his history), but he ended up with a much more dimensional and truthful self-portrait, since the loving eyes of others will always see us in important ways.

Image: "Studio Self Portrait" by Boston artist Jeff Hayes.

Bring out yer dead!

Do you ever start writing a piece only to find that it goes nowhere? I have files full of these. A well-published writer friend wisely advised me to keep every scrap, because you never know what form it will take later. In fact, my very first published short story was based on something I had begun a decade before and discarded. An editor asked me for a submission, and I panicked until I remembered that file. There was a begun-but-never-finished tale, ready to go. I shined it up just for her, she loved it, and I felt like a cheater until I pondered that -- uh -- it was all my work, just at different times in life.

Now here's a fun Monday morning literary challenge if you're up for it. Go back and find the oldest, most forgotten bit that you began and never finished. If there are many years between you now and you then, it should be sufficiently settled not to feel like unfinished work (with the attendant guilt), and simply seem like words. My challenge to you is to think about where it might work, finish it with an eye toward guiding it to that place, and then submit it it there.

Endings are some of the most challenging parts of a piece to write, second only to beginnings in difficulty (at least for me). What I like to do is come up with a wonderful ending and then write toward that rather than starting a piece to see where it leads. I stole this idea from Truman Capote, who once claimed it was the only way he could work.

PS: I'm working on a book now based on an idea from 18 (count 'em) 18 years ago, and it's happening! Time is no-time. Bring out yer dead...

Interesting dilemma

By blogging about these journals, I'm sort of setting myself up. How can I send a literary contribution and a donation to a journal I just blogged about? Won't that be, um, awkward? I don't kid myself that the readers will be aware of this experiment, but it could happen. Although I can't imagine the words on this blog affecting an editorial decision one way or the other (it shouldn't matter at all), we live in the real world, not the fantasy one, and this could potentially be odd.

I'll take Eighteenth-Century Studies off the list, and instead blog about other scholarly journals where I don't plan to send my work. And as for VQR? Hmmmm, haven't figured that one out yet. If some of my Georgetown faculty readers have read about VQR and now feel inspired to send, however, that would be great.

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.