When I began the quest to get my first mystery published back in 1998, I didn’t know a soul in the publishing business. I did all my research like the lifetime student I was: Locate the best books on the subject and study their advice. One of the most useful books I found was Elizabeth Lyon’s THE SELL-YOUR-NOVEL TOOLKIT. And I’ve recommended it to hundreds of aspiring writers since then. Elizabeth is the guest blogger at Jungle Red Writers today, and I’ve posted part of her interview here.
All the way from Oregon, welcome Elizabeth! I have so many questions. Let’s start with this one: Can good writing be taught or are you born with talent?
ELIZABETH: Yes and yes. We all learned how to write the equivalent of “See Spot run.” We can all learn the fundamentals of good writing. We are all born with talent–differing in degrees and manifestations. I don’t believe you need talent to get published. Polished good writing founded on authenticity of character and author passion can win the day.
ROBERTA: When we hear panels of agents talk about what excites them, the number one answer is probably “voice.” Please talk about what that means and where the heck we can find ours.
ELIZABETH: Voice is the expression of individuality in a writer’s choice of words that is appropriate to her characters and stories. We’re each unique so in theory all writing should be stand-out original. But for the fact that we learned how to write through conforming–to grammar and syntax, diction of the culture and times, and other forces of expectation, social mores, and censorship.
We can find our original voice behind the big rock of these factors–by practicing riff-writing–free-associating and pushing what you let out on the paper to an extreme. Take tight or “right” writing and open it up by letting the outrageous come through. Later you can revise to delete what you don’t want. We’re great monkeys, too, so imitate by replicating or modeling other authors’ writings. Imitate to then innovate.
ROBERTA: What would you say are the top mistakes beginning writers make?
ELIZABETH: Quitting. Expecting instant success. Not finishing a first draft. Revising till the cows come home. Not revising till the cows come home. Writing in a vacuum–without critique, support, or editing. Repeating the same mistakes but expecting a different outcome and blaming the agents for rejection. Using “look” too often.
ROBERTA: Any advice for writers who are discouraged about the publishing business today?
ELIZABETH: Broaden your repertoire; write in a different genre. Write as much as you can as often as you can. Study marketing and get savvy. Go to workshops, author talks, conferences, and get-away retreats. Enter contests and apply for fellowships. Study and apply what you learned. Use your connections and be as helpful to every other writer you encounter as you can. Use a print-on-demand outfit like Lulu to complete the artistic circle and share with family and friends. Then keep writing; keep marketing. Be as flexible as Gumby and as persistent as Wiley Coyote.
ROBERTA: What are you working on these days?
ELIZABETH: I’m writing a memoir set in 1967, in Greensboro, North Carolina. I was 17 years old, and the only white student at a summer humanities program. I’ve started this memoir in various forms at least half a dozen times over the years, never finding “the voice” or the entry into the whole piece. Now I believe I have found both. That experience was my coming of age about race, about community, and about writing. After completing this work, I have two other memoirs, one novella revision, and a new novel all circling O’Hare waiting for landing instructions.
It’s my pleasure to introduce another great beach read from one of my girlfriends’ cybercircuit friends: MoonPies and Movie Stars by Amy Wallen.
Amy Wallen chronicles the journey of a group of spunky Texas ladies from their small town to the glittery streets of Hollywood in her enchanting and funny debut, MOONPIES AND MOVIE STARS (Plume; 978-0-452-28895-9).
Ruby Kincaid has her hands full these days. In addition to running the bowling alley after the death of her husband, Rascal, she has the daunting task of caring for her two boisterous grandchildren, since her daughter Violet disappeared without a trace four years earlier. It’s 1976 and Ruby and her nearest and dearest in Devine, Texas are watching their favorite soap opera at the bowling alley when they see Violet in a Buttermaid commercial. Expecting it will only take a little motherly guilt to rein in her wayward daughter, Ruby loads up the Winnebago and heads for Hollywood to try and bring Violet back to the Lone Star State.
Along for the ride are Imogene, Violet’s over-bearing and pretentious mother-in-law (who’s ready to assume the title of “celebrity-in-law”), and Loralva, Ruby’s wild sister who is itching to visit Tinsel Town because it’s where all the game shows are taped – and nothing’s going to stop her from making it to her favorite, The Price Is Right. Rounding out the group are Ruby’s grandchildren Bunny and Bubbie who are confused, sad, and excited at the prospect of finding their mother. They give Ruby the courage she needs to track Violet down and try to make things right.
While MOONPIES AND MOVIE STARS is great fun and a lot of laughs, it is also a poignant story of dreaming big, finding home, and coming to terms with family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Amy Wallen has studied with a number of acclaimed writers, including Janet Fitch (White Oleander). She has taken those talents cultivated in the workshops of these great writers and brought them to her own creative writing classes at UC San Diego Extension. Amy also hosts an open mic night in San Diego, Los Angeles and New York called Dime Stories Live, in collaboration with the national public radio show airing this summer. This is her first novel. Visit her on the web at AmyWallen.com.
ROBERTA: Dr. Rebecca Butterman, the protagonist in my advice column mysteries, is a clinical psychologist (like me.) If your protagonist made an appointment to talk to Dr. Butterman, what would that first session be like? What deep dark secret or problem would she be there to discuss and how much of it would she tell?
AMY: Ruby Kincaid would be scared to death to go see a psychologist, although she’d be fascinated. She’d spend the first part of the hour asking the Dr all about herself (the dr.). She’d tried to avoid talking about herself because that would be rude in her opinion. Even though that’s what she’s paying for. But she would be there to find out why would someone not respond to being loved. She’d want to know what she was doing wrong to make her daughter run away. She’d want to know what she could do to make it all okay. But most importantly she’d want to know if Dr. Butterman could tell her the future, because she’d think that the dr would know things about people that she could figure out what was going to happen to, say, her grandchildren. She’d finally, at the very end of the session, that 5 minutes before the hour is up when all the good stuff comes out, she’d say she was very afraid that her grandson’s attraction to fresh roadkill has her worried that he was going to grow up to be a serial killer.
ROBERTA: At the times you fall victim to writers block, what’s most likely to be going on in your life? What gets you out of the woods and back on the writing path?
AMY: I’m usually trying to please too many other people, my editor, my agent, my reader friends, and not myself and not the characters in the story. I get back on the path when I stop, regroup and remind myself that I need to just be an artist and put down on the page whatever comes to me and shape it into whatever it’s supposed to be. I have to quiet all those voices in my head.
ROBERTA: If you were magically transformed into your protagonist for a day, what would you most look forward to experiencing? And what might you dread?
AMY: I would look forward to spending the day with my friends. I would dread having to eat pork rinds and pickled eggs.
“With a pitch perfect ear for comic dialogue and fine sense of the absurd, Amy Wallen writes herself a place on the porch swing of great Southern writing, as she follows the misadventures of three determined Texas ladies sworn to find a runaway daughter…”
–Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
“[S]pirited and honest… Wallen capably illustrates that it is not only possible but also compelling to be funny, captivating, and compassionate, all in the same book.”
-Los Angeles Times
“A delightful and exhilarating journey, kind of like being on a tour bus
guided by Eudora Welty on speed.” –Mary Gordon, author of Pearl
“Wallen launches a funny, touching, and bittersweet ride in search of family, but what her characters find is bigger than Texas and better than MoonPies.” –Booklist
MOONPIES AND MOVIE STARS
By Amy Wallen
On-sale: June 24,2008/Price:$14.00/ISBN: 978-0-452-28895-9
A Plume Trade Paperback
I had a wonderful though quick dash to New Hampshire over the last two days, starting with a visit to Sally Sugatt, a sandplay therapist in Exeter. Sally was a huge help to me as I wrote ASKING FOR MURDER. She advised me on many fascinating details of what her office looked like, how she works with her clients in sandplay therapy, and the meaning of certain arrangements of figurines. All of this will be revealed as Rebecca Butterman’s good friend Annabelle Hart takes center stage in ASKING FOR MURDER. (Coming September 2…)
Here’s Sally in her amazing office…
Next I made quick visits to two gorgeous independent bookstores, Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, and River Run in Portsmouth. Look for your advice column mysteries there and support your local independents. If you happen to be in Exeter on friday, stop in and say hello to Julia Spencer-Fleming, signing her newest Clare Fergusson mystery, I SHALL NOT WANT.
I capped the visit off with a book group meeting at the most adorable Blaisdell Library in Nottingham. Librarians Rhoda Capron and Donna Bunker made me feel most welcome–and there was a healthy crowd too! This kind of night is what an author lives for! And for the lady who was salivating for Dr. Butterman’s cornmeal/cheddar scones, here’s where I found the recipe.
Last week I began to wonder why I don’t have any psychology links on my blogroll…which gave me license troll the Internet. Result: some really cool links in the sidebar, including websites on new psychological research, procrastination, forensic psychology, the musings of 3 shrinks, and more. Go have a look. I really enjoyed the latest podcast from Dr. Dave on Shrink Rap Radio in which he interviewed Dennis Palumbo, former screenwriter, now psychotherapist to creative types. Palumbo is the author of “Writing From the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within” and a new book of short stories, “From Crime to Crime.” Click on episode #159.
Also, another grand book to recommend: SWEETWATER by Roxana Robinson. Falling into the category of literary fiction, the book follows the trail of one woman’s first marriage, and in alternate chapters, the exposure of the fault lines in her second. Just about the point where I was thinking I might set it aside as slow read, all hell broke loose. Masterful really! ( This morning Robinson’s latest book, COST, was reviewed in the NY Times Book Review.)
I’ll be heading up to the Blaisdell Library in Nottingham, New Hampshire this week for a book group. I was delighted to have this wonderful review by Rebecca Rule about PREACHING TO THE CORPSE come out in the local paper. Come join the discussion if you’re in the area.
No, this is not a blog complaining about my husband, with whom I just celebrated a sixteenth anniversary–hooray!
I’m happy to introduce another member of the Girlfriend’s Cyber-Circuit, Melissa Senate, whose book QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE MARRYING is now on bookshelves everywhere. Congratulations Melissa! Here’s a taste of the book:
A very popular New York Times article lists fifteen questions couples should ask (or wish they had) before marrying. Ruby Miller and her fiancé, Tom Truby, have questions 1 to 14 almost covered. It’s question 15 that has the Maine schoolteacher stumped: Is their relationship strong enough to withstand challenges?
Melissa is the author of seven novels, including her debut, the bestselling See Jane Date, which was made into a very cute TV movie for ABC Family, and Theodora Twist, her first YA. A former editor of romance novels and teen fiction, Melissa lives on the southern coast of Maine with son, his Pokemon cards collection, and their two witchy black cats. She’s hard at work on her next YA for Delacorte, and just sold her next two adult novels to Pocket Books.
And here are her answers to insider questions from Roberta’s blog:
1. Dr. Rebecca Butterman, the protagonist in my advice column mysteries, is a clinical psychologist (like me.) If your protagonist made an appointment to talk to Dr. Butterman, what would that first session be like? What deep dark secret or problem would she be there to discuss and how much of it would she tell?
Ruby is so private that her estranged twin sister, Stella, who essentially kidnaps her on a three-thousand mile road trip from Maine to Las Vegas so she can convince Ruby not to marry her “all wrong” fiance, can’t get her biggest secret out of her. But if Dr. Butterman pressed, Ruby might confess her feelings for another man. Ruby, a conservative school teacher, would not hesitate to mention how irritated she is by her twin, a professional muse and “face reader” who is searching for the father of her unborn baby without knowing the guy’s name.
2. At the times you fall victim to writers block, what’s most likely to be going on in your life? What gets you out of the woods and back on the writing path?
If I’m suffering from writer’s block, it’s because I’ve got too much on my mind and can’t focus on my book, can’t hold the scope of it in my head to find the connections I need. What always works is a long walk (no music!) or sleeping on it. I very often wake up at 5am with a lot mysteriously worked out. If I could write from 5am to 10am every day, I’d be working at my best time, but my five-year-old son seems to magically sense in his sleep when I’m awake and trying to work.
3. If you were magically transformed into your protagonist for a day, what would you most look forward to experiencing? And what might you dread?
Ruby very unexpectedly reunites (which is not quite the right word for what happens) with her biological father, who she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl. I often write about the “missing” father because I’ve stolen it from my own life. I think I’d look forward to meeting him again and dread it equally! This is the second time I’ve sent a character—siblings, actually—on a search for a missing father. The first set don’t find him. I tried to do that with Ruby and Stella in Questions To Ask Before Marrying, and my editor very wisely suggested I do have them find him. This is what I love most about writing fiction: I can make anything happen, however I want.
Sounds like perfect beach reading Melissa. We wish you all the best with the new book!
I just finished THREE CUPS OF TEA by Greg Mortenson and David Olive Relin. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this book. It was chosen as my book club’s May read and the only only only reason I started it was so I wouldn’t be considered a bad sport. No, no, not one more onerous tome about the miseries of the Middle East, I moaned, as I turned the first few pages. But I ended up enjoying it very much. Mortenson’s astonishing work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan is enough to give the most entrenched skeptic a glimmer of hope–no wonder it lurks near the top of the bestseller list. I found myself fascinated with this man’s complete disregard for his own physical safety and comfort–so not my cup of tea!
And then I sailed through an old favorite’s new book: Ellen Gilchrist’s A DANGEROUS AGE. The characters are familiar from decades of her novels, though I’ve forgotten much of their history so I don’t think it would be difficult to start with this book. A DANGEROUS AGE is set in America during the first years of the Iraq war, and Gilchrist’s characters are all affected by it in one way or another. Really lovely writing and engaging characters. But sad…
And last night I finished Julia Spencer-Fleming’s I SHALL NOT WANT, the sixth in the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series featuring an Episcopal priest and a small town police chief. I loved this book! Well-drawn characters, heart-stopping action, and tons of steps on the rocky road to romance. The last installment in the series left readers in a pit of despair, wondering how lead characters Russ and Clare could possibly recover from the tragedies thrown at them. Spencer-Fleming handles the sequel masterfully, providing believable police procedure (Hey what do I really know?), sharp insights into her people, a light but fascinating touch of religion, and tension on many levels.
Next up on my nightstand: CAPTIVITY by Debbie Lee Wesselman, to be followed by ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS by Jennifer McMahon.
Hope you all had a relaxing weekend. Mine was not–but in a good way! Filled with friends and family and home-related chores, which I haven’t had enough time for this crazy spring. And now it’s time to seriously get to work on my new book idea. Meanwhile, over at Jungle Red writers, join us to talk about “lost possible selves”–what might have been had our lives taken a different turn. Or two.
Roberta
As I mentioned last week, I’ve joined a new group of cybergirlfriends who are supporting each other’s book launches. I’m delighted to introduce the first in line, Maggie Marr. Maggie is a writer and producer for Six Mile Ridge Productions and Dahooma Productions. She began her Hollywood career as a motion picture literary agent at ICM Talent Agency in Los Angeles, where she represented writers, directors, and actors. Prior to becoming an agent, Maggie was an attorney. Her first novel, Hollywood Girls Club, introduced us to four fabulous Hollywood heavyweights and best friends - Jessica, Celeste, Lydia, and Mary Anne. Now, in SECRETS OF THE HOLLYWOOD GIRLS CLUB (Crown, April 15, 2008), these high-powered women take on a new challenge-the Hollywood rumor mill.
One of the fun things about this tour is that I’ll get the chance to ask all the authors my own set of questions. Here’s Maggie’s take on them:
1. Dr. Rebecca Butterman, the protagonist in my advice column mysteries, is a clinical psychologist (like me.) If your protagonist made an appointment to talk to Dr. Butterman, what would that first session be like? What deep dark secret or problem would she be there to discuss and how much of it would she tell?
Let’s see. Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club has four leading ladies but Celeste ‘Cici’ Solange is a huge A-list celeb so she is by far the most interesting…and perhaps the most damaged. Her deep dark secrets would be her childhood growing up with her grandmother, abandoned by both parents. Her warped relationship with her first husband film-producer Damien Bruckner. How she sacrificed her self-esteem and pandered to Damien’s low brow tastes by letting him film their most intimate moments. And now, divorced, Cici is paying the price, since the sex tape that Damien made, has gotten out.
2. At the times you fall victim to writers block, what’s most likely to be going on in your life? What gets you out of the woods and back on the writing path?
I usually get stuck around the middle of a book, especially in my first draft. When I get to the middle I know the ending, but I’m not sure how I’m going to get there. Sooo, I write down a number and five words about each chapter I’ve written, and then I go backwards, writing down the five words about the ending I’ve decided on…and then I fill in the middle.
3. If you were magically transformed into your protagonist for a day, what would you most look forward to experiencing? And what might you dread?
Let’s see, if I’m Cici the A-list actress I’m loving my mani-ped, my make-up artist and my wardrobe. I’m dreading my workout with my sadist trainer. If I’m Lydia the studio executive, I’m loving the meetings, the expense account, the writers and directors but I’m dreading the endless corporate meetings. If I’m Jessica the producer/manager I am loving being on set, spending time with my husband and son but dreading the crazy people that sometimes inhabit film sets. And if I’m Mary Anne Meyers the screenplay writer…well I love sitting down at my computer and typing out a great story, and dating my ultra hot boyfriend. Dreading? Really…when you’re a writer..what’s not to like?
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