I have two quotes hanging on the wall behind my desk to remind me why I do this complicated writing thing when there are so many other, easier ways to make a living (like washing skyscraper windows, for example.  Or training bobcats to swim…)

The venerable C.S. Lewis warns, “In every department of life [is] the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.”  The most helpful thing about this quote is not Lewis’ acknowledgment of the labor, but rather how he invites me to face the unavoidable transition I’ll come up against when I push past my aspirational happy place to try to capture something on paper. Because sometimes this goes better than others, and it helps to recognize that I can’t go over or around this obstacle.  The only way through is through, so I might as well get typing…

Which brings me to quote #2: In my less graceful transitional moments, I’m inspired by these words from Jeff Heidkamp:  “You keep on…not because you’re so great, but because the terms of the game aren’t set by your limitations.”  Jeff was blogging about leadership when he wrote this, but I think it applies to everything we try.  Especially if you’re of a spiritual sort, it’s extraordinarily helpful to remember that we’re not the one calling the shots.

This is, perhaps, the best mindset I’ve found for aspiring writers (and trust me, until we type the words “THE END,” we’re all aspiring): The idea that our job is to navigate the transition from dreaming to doing, and trust the results to a power greater than ourselves.  Kind of mystical, I know.  But anyone who has been in this business for more than fifteen minutes knows that there’s no earthly way to predict which project will be a huge bestseller, and which will end up in the remainder bin.  There’s only so much we can do….  Which means, of course, it’s doubly important to do our part.

Thoughts on Doing Our Part

As you might have guessed, my main encouragement is to WRITE: whenever, wherever, on Post-it notes, napkins, journals, odd pieces of paper dug up from the bottom of your backpack….you’ll be amazed how much work you can accumulate if you stop for a minute and capture (and by this I mean write down!) ideas as they wander through.

Second: BE TEACHABLE.  Accept criticism, and adapt your writing style when necessary.  Two of my best editors—one a second year associate at the first law firm I worked for, the other the editor of my first memoir, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not—ripped my sentences to shreds, page after page.  But with each of them, when I put my ego aside, I could see that they were right—that their edits captured what I wanted to say, only with a stronger structure supporting it.   It’s an honor to have a better writer contribute their skills to your work. Don’t waste it.

After craft comes business.  It’s important to understand that publishing is a business.  This has benefits and drawbacks, but at the end of the day means this: there is a system, and we can learn how to operate within it.  Read books and blogs.  Dissect stories you like and see what makes them work.  Subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace and see who’s selling what, and to whom.  Look at the publishing world as a puzzle and ask, Where and how do I fit in?

Tips on the Technicalities

1.  Learn how to write a good query letter. Here’s a helpful post on query writing from my fellow Weed Literary author Therese Walsh, on her incredible blog, WriterUnboxed.

2.  Research agents and only contact those who represent the kind of project you have.  I found my agent, the brave and brilliant Elisabeth Weed, on the website of The Muse and the Marketplace, a great writers’ conference here in Boston.  The “a ha” moment came when I read her bio and realized I had a book she represented on my nightstand.  My memoir had similar themes (women looking for love), which I mentioned in my query.  This not only helped her sort my email from hundreds of others, it showed that it wasn’t part of a giant spam campaign to every agent I could find on the Web. 

3.  If you’re a novelist: finish your manuscript before you query—you’ll want a full manuscript to send if an agent requests it. 

4. If you write non-fiction: stop writing now!  Don’t finish your manuscript.  Rather, work your material into a proposal, because that’s what your agent will need to sell your project. 

Before querying Elisabeth, I read about fifteen different books with titles like “BEST BOOK PROPOSAL EVER!!!” and came up with my own hybrid style.  Here is a quick & dirty outline of the elements:

Title/subtitle

Overview (2-3 pages describing the project)

Target Audience (It might be  “Professional women ages 25-50 reaching the next step in their careers,” or “Teens who wish the days of the Mutant Ninja Turtles didn’t have to end.” The only limitation is that you can’t say, “Everybody.”  Think like a publicist: if you were going to pitch your book to one segment of the population most likely to love it, what would it be?)

Background story (Why are you writing this book?)

Strengths & Selling Points of the Book (Why does the world need this book?  What is unique about this story?)

Strengths & Selling Points of the Author (Why does the world need YOUR book?  What is unique about you and your point of view?  What credentials do you bring to the table?)

Target Market (In what section of the bookstore will your book be shelved?  Hint: you have to pick one.  We all think our books are so tremendous they can cross genre lines, but bookstore accounting isn’t set up that way.  So pick a market and target it!)

Related & Competing Works (What other books on this topic are out there?  How do their successes suggest that your book will sell?  How will your book stand out from the crowd?)

Table of Contents (This is a good place to show that you understand the narrative structure of your book—that you have a clear beginning, middle & end)

Chapter Breakdown (A few paragraphs on each chapter, outlining what you’ll cover in those pages. I like to include a story or anecdote that illustrates the point of each chapter, and then say, “In this chapter, I’ll discuss ABC, and how that influenced my decision to pursue XYZ…”)

Sample Chapter (One entire chapter, pithy, witty & wise, polished and ready to go).

No pressure, but you’ll want to make these the most sparkling, well-written, compelling pages of your life.  Think of them as an ad campaign for your book: you want every detail finely honed.

And my final piece of advice: Pray.  This isn’t easy stuff.  Writing is, as I mentioned, a complicated profession.  Word on the street is that you need tough skin to survive, and I don’t have tough skin.  But I figure that if the Bible and Bruce Almighty have anything to teach me, it’s that God has both a creative streak and a sense of humor.  So perhaps He has some assistance to offer regarding my own creative endeavors, and part of my job is to ask?  (My awe-inspiring, super-spiritual writing prayer?  Dear Jesus, help.  It ain’t fancy, but it works.)

*A special note for memoirists: I’ve always said that one of the gifts of my messy life is that it’s given me interesting stories to share at cocktail parties…and a writing career.  If you’ve had a messy life, too, you probably have a really interesting book inside of you. I want to encourage you to wrestle it down onto paper.  As memoirist Carlos Eire observed, memoirs are a rich treasure: not just for us, but for future generations and the historians whose life work will be to understand how we lived and what mattered to us. 

I run a workshop on the why’s & how’s of telling your own story, called Memoir: Behind the Scenes.  In it, we talk about the personal questions (deciding how much to share, telling your story without ruining your relationships), writing challenges (shifting timelines, changing names, crafting an honest disclaimer), and practical issues (what you can’t say in print without getting sued).  The next time it’s offered, I’ll do my best to record/videotape the gathering and share it here. 

If you’d like me to bring the workshop to where you are, email here, with MBTS Workshop in the subject line.

Here’s to writing success beyond what you or I can imagine.  Think of it this way:  Someone writes the books that are published, discovered, read, cherished, then blogged about/talked about/passed along to everyone the reader knows. Why not you?