Validation

In her excellent post on Wednesday, Bonnie touched on our need for validation, and where one should or shouldn't seek it. No matter who we are or what we do, we need validation. We need to know that what we spend a good deal of our time doing isn't wasted time. That it matters. As writers, oh how the time adds up. We can spend months, even years working on a novel or non-fiction book, and feel every minute as if we're walking a tightrope without a safety net. A book can release to great reviews only to garner mediocre sales numbers. As we wade through the disappointment, how do we determine which one tells the real story? Maybe neither. Or maybe both.

~

"Validation is an illusion," Bonnie says. Well, at the very least it can be fickle. We have to take it all with a grain of salt, and most assuredly we must consider the source. Best friends and mothers are not the most reliable validators. Because they love you, they love your work. Or they'll say they do to keep from breaking your heart. Bless them, but don't rely too heavily on their praise. By the same token, good reviews don't guarantee a best seller. See what I mean? Fickle.

How to Avoid Looking Silly in Public

In the past two weeks, we’ve covered diverse ground on Novel Matters. Week before last we talked about various aspects of marketing, from word of mouth, to social networking. Then, last week, Katy Popa pointed out how easy it is to be caught with our metaphor around our ankles. She said, “Metaphors are not toys. If you don't know how to handle them they can hurt you - or worse: they can make you look silly.”

Today, I’m going to combine these two topics and (and paraphrase Katy’s quote to suit my purposes) talk about life in the public eye.

Social networking is not a toy. If you don’t know how to handle it, it can hurt you – or worse, kill your writing career.

Roundtable: Words of Encouragement

Recently, a good friend shared with me that after many years of writing in snatches of time and late night/early mornings and doing battle with discouragement, he finally has the attention of a New York agent. The agent loves his manuscript and is working with him to fine tune and rewrite it. When he finally gets that book contract, I will share his name and book release date. Even though he has not yet signed on the dotted line, he is absolutely elated that a professional in the publishing industry has validated his work. No more wondering whether his manuscript sings or stinks. He's on Cloud 9 right now. He is jazzed about therewriting process and the loss of sleep is no longer a problem, I think.

As writers, we work so long with insecurity and self-flagellation over our writing, wondering if it's really worth the time spent away from family, late nights and bleary-eyed mornings, getting so close to success, only to have it slip away. Of course, we write because we love it or we would come to our senses and get a normal hobby that wasn't such an emotional roller coaster. But at some point, we all need to have some encouragement, some validation to keep going.

My first true encouragement came from a much-published author who I'm sure has absolutely no recollection of me or the impact she made on a newbie writer. Her name is Lauraine Snelling, and I took her fiction track at Mount Hermon the first time I went to the conference many years ago. She gave us the opportunity to turn in our proposals for critique, and I rushed to turn it in and waited on pins and needles for her response which would come through the normal submission channels of the conference. As it turned out, she came over to me during the book signing event and asked me why the manuscript hadn't been published. I said I didn't know and asked what was wrong with it. Her response was, "Absolutely nothing." That manuscript was never published, but her encouragement, her validation was all I needed to keep going. Thank you, Lauraine!

The Assault and Battery of Metaphors

Lean in closely. Are you listening?

Metaphors are not toys.

If you don't know how to handle them they can hurt you - or worse: they can make you look silly. Here's proof, from a unwitting author who shall remain nameless (because I don't know her name):

"As far as my writing career goes, this project could be the gravy on the cake."*

Oh, I hope it isn't; I do. But if she writes like that, she could find herself sitting on the bench.

Right next to Barack Obama, who said in 2008:

"Now, Senator McCain suggests that somehow, you know, I'm green behind the ears."

Maybe somebody should look.

Next to him will sit - however unwillingly - Sean Hannity ("That may sound great on paper") and Rush Limbaugh ("...who were going to fight you hook, line and sinker.")

Sometimes the gaffs are so glaring, you wonder - hope - they are intentional. Perhaps, you think, the speaker is making a joke:

It's as American as killing two birds with one apple pie. Gary Swing, Colorado candidate for House of Representatives

So silly, you think. You don't have to be an expert to spot a mess like that.

But be careful! Botched metaphors aren't always obvious. Because so much of our language is figurative, we forget that certain words paint pictures. Which means we'd best pay attention to what they are painting, or we could end up with something truly bizarre:

Over all, many experts conclude, advanced climate research in the United States is fragmented among an alphabet soup of agencies, strained by inadequate computing power and starved for the basic measurements of real-world conditions that are needed to improve simulations. The New York Times, 11 June 2001**

At first I thought of crackers, fragmented in the alphabet soup, and it almost worked. But then he strained the soup - so there went my crackers - and said we - or someone - was starved. Which was no surprise if he is going to go around straining the crackers out of the soup.

We must be so careful.

The Care and Feeding of Metaphors

We have a winner! Laura Davis wins a 5-page weeding of her manuscript by Patti Hill. Thanks to all who commented. We enjoyed the conversation very much!

When sweet Patti and I were at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, MI in April, we heard the astounding story of Kate DiCamillo, who began her writing career as a 29-year-old working in a book warehouse in the children’s section. This award-winning author of Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread related that by reading the books she stocked, she began to have some ideas about what makes good writing. But Kate soon discovered that exposure to good writing was not enough, talent was not enough, and even hard work was not enough (though she says it is a major part of her success.)

DiCamillo said that while people can teach others many writing skills (and Patti’s post on Monday brought out some marvelous techniques for identifying and pruning extraneous language, for instance), no one can teach metaphor. You either have the skill of creating it or you don’t. This isn’t exactly news: Aristotle who lived over 2000 years ago said

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance. –Aristotle, Poetics

I … dunno about that genius bit. But I know that my mind has been percolating as I finish a novel (my regular thinking is Mr. Coffee ™ drip system; when I’m writing I’m a Bunn ™ pourover coffee dispenser with the water always boiling ready to spill into brew.) Yep, I’m full of metaphors.

Well, most everyone who reads this blog is a writer. Do you think in metaphors? I bet you do. I’m going to get you started with a list of writing metaphors from my hot little carafe, so to speak.

• Last week I referred to the oft-quoted saying that writing is easy, all you do is sit in front of a keyboard and open a vein. Writing my present WIP is more like doing your own bone marrow extraction.
• If I’m successful in luring readers into my literary world, it will be by slathering them with an emollient atmosphere until they feel so weightless in it that I can pull them along with invisible spider threads.
• Rewriting feels like a heifer chewing cud: I do it because of my faith that the result will be great; but if I have to be involved with the process one more time I fear I may regurgitate and not be able to swallow it again.

Come on! What does writing feel like to you?

Weeding Your Manuscript

Contest Time! Every writer packs his/her manuscript with unnecessary words or phrases. I do it and Stephen King does it. Right, Steve? The best way to heighten your awareness of clutter is to ask someone else to bracket the words that can be deleted without losing meaning. If you leave a comment today, you'll be eligible to win my services. I will bracket the clutter in the first five pages of your manuscript. I am very kind.

I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal

Extraneous words are the weeds of a manuscript. A garden with weeds is still a garden, but its enjoyment is diminished. Likewise, a novel’s enjoyment is diminished by unnecessary words.

Note: I’ve bracketed words or phrases [in my text] that can be deleted without changing the meaning of the sentence.

And I am the [absolute] queen of unnecessary words. I pound out a [quick] rough draft, and must, with a pen as a hoe, thrash out redundant words and phrases.

In editorial lexicon, redundant words and phrases have a name, pleonasms. It sounds like a disease, and it is death for the novel. Pleonasms fatigue the reader and make her cranky. This is counterproductive for the novelist who wants her reader to [completely] indulge herself in a story.

In everyone else’s writing, pleonasms glow in the dark, attracting the editor’s pencil like a moth. However, they’re invisible in our own writing. Our speaking habits leach into our written words. It takes practice, vigilance, and a determination for excellence to unclutter our writing.

Are you game?

Start with adjectives. First of all, adjectives are not evil. They are [absolutely] necessary for clarity in the English language. I know workshop teachers are telling you to strike every last adjective [out]. That would be a mistake. Here’s a passage from a novel I just finished reading:

This is not a vivid place. Our only strong hue is green, and this we have in every shade: the emerald velvet mosses, the glossy, tangled ivies, and in spring, the gold-greens of tender new grasses. For the rest, we move through a patchwork of grays.–From Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Lovely!

Rather than eradicate adjectives, let’s start by eliminating only the redundant.

Example: Unexpected surprise and end result

Surprises are unexpected by the qualification of being a surprise, and a result is something that happens at the end of an event, leaving us with the [fully] adequate nouns, surprise and result, no modifiers needed.

Onto the [much] maligned adverb. In the hierarchy of [naughty] writer sins, overusing adverbs is ranked among run-on sentences and passive voice. The adverbs of manner—like cheerfully, appealingly, assiduously, etc.—seem to focus our rage.

Example: The theater is completely filled.

There is no other way for a theater to be filled than to be filled completely. "Completely" can go.

And now for the truly insidious redundancy in writing, the pleonastic clause. In our drive for clarity, we tend to overstate and bog down the pace of our sentences.

Here’s a [common] example: She sat down in the chair.

Where else is she going to sit? If she does sit someplace evocative, like a throne or a thorn bush, please include that.

Prepositional phrases provide a helpful cue [for me] when looking for weedy words. For instance, I’m forever striking the phrase “for me” out of my writing. If a first-person character is talking about herself, the phrase isn’t always necessary, as in this sentence: Looking back, I believe it was important [for me] to put some distance between my past and my future.

It [really] helps to read a manuscript [through] two or three times to weed out redundancy and/or unnecessary words. I read using an accent to slow me down. ("Cheery-o, this is a smashing manuscript!) It’s magical how the unnecessary words and phrases pop out.

At this point, you may be thinking, "Isn't this my editor's job?" Oh, how I wish it were. It's laborious weeding a manuscript. No one will care about the uncluttered beauty of your manuscript as much as you.

How do you weed out unnecessary words? Will cluttered prose force you to put a novel down? At what stage of your writing do you weed? Any tricks to share for making redundant words and phrases pop? Do you have a pet phrase you’re forever weeding?

Social Network Marketing

Ariel Lawhon started us off this week talking about Word of Mouth as a valuable means of promoting our work. She and Marybeth Whalen know a thing or two about word of mouth when it comes to promoting the work of Christian authors. They developed She Reads (our sister blog) for just that purpose. In less than a year's time they have 10,000 visitors a month, and more than 120 bookclubs under their umbrella. We here at Novel Matters appreciate the great work they're doing on behalf of Christian fiction.

Bonnie concluded her post on Wednesday by saying, "... and while aspects of Word of Mouth will likely remain a mystery, there are foundational beginnings -- the rock first thrown into still waters -- that set things in motion ..." The social network is like concentric circles on the pond. Often you make an initial splash, but then one by one the outer circles disappear until there's not even a ripple left where the rock went in. That's not at all what you want. You want your circles to ripple out and cause more circles that ripple out and cause more circles that ripple out, until the whole pond is affected. That's what you want, what you hope for.

~

Mostly, that doesn't happen.

~

But when it does, it's quite a thing to behold. Two examples: The Shack and the Twilight series. Both are phenomenally popular ... and both are overwhelming evidence that a book doesn't have to be well written to create a tsunami effect on the pond. I read The Shack after my brother told me about it, just as the buzz was getting started. I wasn't far into it when I stopped and turned back a few pages to see who had published it. I would have staked my life that it was a self-published, non-edited book ... and would have lived to see my next birthday. Unfortunately, The Shack is making news again because the author and, ahem, editors -- I use the term lightly -- are suing each other for authorship and royalties. Nice. And I finally caved and read Twilight after people I love and respect (who shall remain nameless) went on and on about it. I attempted to read it, that is. Halfway through the first book I literally threw it across my rather large living room. "How could something so poorly written Sell So Many Books?!" I asked my envious self. While there's some comfort in the fact that The Shack and the Twilight series will not be remembered by anyone as literary classics, I'd love to have their sales numbers -- all created by reader buzz. (I'll resist the urge to say, "Shame on you, readers!")

~

Okay, I'll take my tongue out of my cheek (and send a book to the first person who can give me the etymology of that ridiculous phrase -- and I don't just mean the Wikipedia definition. Really, tell me how the phrase originated, because I mean, how do you do that? It's not so easy. Go ahead, put your tongue in your cheek and try saying your full name. Now try it on the other side. Even harder, right?) and get back to the subject at hand. So what are some of the ways to increase book sales by word of mouth through social networking? And does the time spent really pay off? Because anyone who's logged in to Twitter or Facebook knows an entire evening can be gobbled up before you know it. I conducted an informal poll with some of the author loops I participate in and most everyone who responded cited Facebook as their most productive social network site, followed by Twitter and Good Reads. But remember, those are just the results of my very informal, poorly-participated-in poll. "Social networking has been invaluable," says one author who responded. "It is the gift that keeps on giving." And for some, that's the absolute truth.

~

Janet Grant, of Books & Such agency, who represents three of the authors here on Novel Matters, recently sent an email to the Books & Such loop, reprinted from an article in "The Book Marketing Expert newsletter" on the benefits of Internet marketing, which made a number of good points. Here's an important one:

"Don't get too myopic on doing just one thing for your marketing. The truth is, you need to do a lot of different things, balanced out over a week or a month for your marketing to really make sense."

After the release of Every Good & Perfect Gift and Lying on Sunday in 2008, my own social network buzz-creating efforts barely caused a ripple on our hypothetical pond. Of course, I know more about social networking now than I did then. But still, barely a ripple. So there are things I will do in the future that I didn't do the first time around, and things I did that I won't next time. For example, I won't pay someone to do a blog tour for me when my next book releases. I have enough contacts on my own to work on that myself. I will continue to increase my Facebook friends, and hopefully reach the readers among them each time I have a new release. I will try to reach as many book clubs as I possibly can, and offer to "participate" in their group discussions via Skype or telephone, unless they're close enough to personally attend. Of all the personal appearance things I do, visiting with book clubs is my favorite, probably because it's one of the more intimate ways to interact with readers. And of course, I will do my utmost to put out a novel that my readers won't be tempted to hurl across their living rooms.

So, what have you read lately that caused you to participate in word-of-mouth promotion? Let's add to each other's TBR pile. I'll start. Where the River Ends (and anything else) by Charles Martin. It's not a new book, but it gets an A++ rating from me.