Writers’ Roundup: July 30

I could care less what Chelsea Clinton wears at her wedding this weekend. What I DO care about are great links from this week on writing and social media. Enjoy.

• Super helpful interview from MediaBistro’s GalleyCat with author Rachel Shukert on her new travel memoir. Her ideas are good enough to copy.

• Speaking of authors with great ideas, this woman published her memoir on Scribd. Jane Friedman interviews her about how she did it.

• A guest at Lisa Romeo’s blog writes about how personal essay writers think.

• Mashable reminds us how social media can make us more productive.

On Monday we’ve got an interview with the author of The Art of Solo Travel about e-book publishing and, of course, traveling solo. Don’t miss it!

Writers’ Roundup: July 2

Wow, lots less time to go through my Google Reader this week now that I have clients! But it’s a good trade. Here’s what I’ve got for you:

• At The Huffington Post, a publicist asks, Does Twitter sell books? Why, yes. Yes it does.

• Punky Brewster is coming out with a memoir! Well, the woman who played her is, anyhow. Who else will buy this?

• Heads-up, adventure travelers: Mashable profiles a new travel networking site called GlobeTrooper.

• Soon-to-be-author Jody Hedlund gives us an inside look at advanced reading copies.

• At Little House on the Southern Prairie, Emily’s got a post I love: If you want to quit your job, you CAN find a way.

• The Big Catch-22 for Memoir Writers, from Writer’s Digest. I just ordered this month’s issue, which focuses on memoir.

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Happy holiday weekend!!

Taking honesty to a new level (in your writing)

Writing an awesome memoir requires being honest with the reader.

This is pretty basic, Memoir Writing 101. You’ve got to reveal your true self through your story, because if you don’t, readers will know it. They might not be able to put their finger on it, but they’ll know something’s off. If you’re not completely and utterly honest, your voice won’t feel authentic and the story won’t work.

So we know the importance of being honest with the reader. But what about being honest with yourself?

During my last round of revisions, I kept feeling like something was missing from my story arc, from my tale of personal growth. It took a lot of digging, but I finally realized I wasn’t being completely honest with myself about why I chose to travel alone.

I’m not going to tell you exactly how this plays out in my manuscript because it’s crucial to my book’s theme, and I don’t want to give it away. It has to do with my deep-down fears and how they affect how I live. But my point here is that it took me this long — I’ve been working on my memoir now for a year and a half — for this light bulb to go off in my head. It took me this long to peel back the layers (cue the onion analogy) and see my story for what it really is, and to see myself for who I really am.

Let me tell you, I never expected to confront — or even think about — my fears through this memoir. After all, I’m writing a fun story of adventure travel! But the story arc gets stronger every time I peel back one of those layers. And I’ve peeled back so many by this point that I’m recognizing pieces of myself that I didn’t know existed. I never knew I had grown in this particular way until now. That’s the coolest thing about writing memoir — It has forced me to analyze myself, my motivations and my goals, and helped me learn more about me.

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So next time you sit down to work on your personal essay or life story or even understand the motivations behind a character in your novel, take the whole being-honest approach to the next level. Don’t just ask yourself whether you’re being honest with readers. Think hard about whether you’re being honest with yourself.

Querying your memoir: manuscript or proposal?

So you’re writing a memoir. Should you complete your manuscript before approaching agents? Or query with only a proposal?

I’ve touched on this topic here and here and here, but it comes up so often in the memoir-writing community — and there’s so little advice available online — that it’s time I addressed it outright.

Here’s why this is even an issue:

Writers working on nonfiction projects often query literary agents before they’ve written the entire manuscript. That’s because agents sometimes sell nonfiction based on a proposal, a summary document that includes an overview of the book and author, a promotion plan and sample chapters.

Fiction works differently. Because the saleability of a novel depends heavily on the quality of the writing in addition to the idea, most agents prefer new fiction writers complete the manuscript before querying.

Memoir — that lawless genre that refuses to be put in a box — falls somewhere in between. It’s nonfiction, of course, a true story. But whether it sells depends on how the story is told, which makes it similar to fiction.

For that reason, most literary agents recommend completing the manuscript before querying, like you’d do for fiction. Even then you sometimes need a proposal, too.

But in practice, a good number of agents seem to take on memoir clients based only on their proposal. How do I know this? Because I talk with a lot of memoirists, and most of the ones I know who are represented by an agent established that relationship before they’d written their entire manuscript. In some cases the agent found them through their blog or magazine article. Other writers successfully queried with only a proposal, and their agent picked them out of the slush pile.

What’s the lesson here? There’s no right answer. You’ve got to do what’s right for you.

Me? I decided long ago to write my entire manuscript before querying, partly so I could pitch my best product rather than one that was still evolving, and also because I thought more agents might consider me that way. To cover all my bases, I also wrote a kick-ass proposal (in first person, since my manuscript is in first person). I want to give agents every possible reason to represent me.

If, however, your idea is particularly timely or you’ve got a great platform or there’s some other reason your story will stand out, you might consider querying with only a proposal. Whether or not that’s acceptable depends largely on the agent you’re querying, so check out their submission guidelines, as well as what other writers have written about them online.

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What do y’all think? If you’ve already been through the query process, which approach did you take — an did it work? If you’ve yet to query, will you wait until you’ve completed your manuscript or have a go with your proposal?

Writers’ Roundup: April 30

Hooray for links!

• Mashable tells us how freelancers are using social media for real results. If you’re not doing this, you’re missing opportunities.

• MediaBistro’s GalleyCat offers a list of the best books on writing. Be sure to read through the comments for more recommendations.

• Why are chef’s memoirs popular with people who don’t care to cook themselves? Because they’re not really about food, says The Guardian’s books blog. The message here applies to other types of memoir, too.

• The Intern blesses us with tips on how not to write a non-fiction book proposal. As usual, I’m sensing a bit of sarcasm.

• This deserves an OMG! A collection of Marilyn Monroe’s writings will be released this fall, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy blog. I love her. And I love the title: Fragments.

• For journos and social media peeps: the Huffington Post launched their Twitter Editions this week. Pretty cool, as Twittermedia explains.

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See you next week!

Writers’ Roundup: April 23

It’s Friday! That means links:

• The Boston Globe brings us the story of a Pulitzer-winning novelist who almost went unpublished. While we’re on the topic of Pulitzers, I also enjoyed this article from The Washington Post about what the prize won’t do for a reporter and the subjects of his work.

• Do tell-all memoirs really help heal? From Newsweek: Our era of (airing our) dirty laundry.

• Literary agent Jean Naggar writes at The Huffington Post about how the agent’s role in the publishing process is becoming increasingly editorial. (This post ran in early March, but it’s new to me.)

• Should you take a MediaBistro class? Writer abroad evaluates the classes she’s taken so far — personal essay writing, travel writing boot camp, from essay to memoir, and non-fiction book proposals — to help you decide whether it’s worth the investment.

• At Chuck Sambuchino’s blog, 10 questions you should ask literary agents before you sign.

• Two overlapping stories on technology startups: Awesome piece in New York Magazine about how startups are overthrowing old media, and The New York Times focuses a much-needed spotlight on the lack of women in the startup community.

Happy weekend!

Writers’ Roundup: March 5

Happy Friday!

Some weekend reading for y’all:

• Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book, from the New York Times. Just how much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one?

• At True/Slant, a great list of the Best Journalism of 2009. A few of Conor Friedersdorf’s categories: exceptional storytelling, short essays and travel.

• The best advice for writers? Read. Solid post from The Guardian’s book blog about how reading improves your writing.

• Literary agent Rachelle Gardner explains why she doesn’t ask for memoirs about overcoming adversity: “Lots of people have a story similar to yours; only a few will be able to write it in such a way that it could become a bestselling memoir.” There’s also an interesting conversation in the comments of Rachelle’s post, Does the query system work?

• Editorial Ass offers a helpful explanation of how multiple book deal advances are divided up. It’s good to know because we’re all going to get multiple book deals, right?

• Resources for journalists using Twitter. A great list from Steve Buttry.

• For fun: Big Africa Cycle. This guy is biking through the continent. It’s so fun to read his posts and see his photos, partly because I’ve been to some of the places he has visited recently.

It’s almost spring! Enjoy your weekend.

Writers’ Roundup: February 12

It’s the weekend! Time for links!

• From my favorite blogger, Penelope Trunk: How to write about your life.”Write your own messy life, and let it spill out,” she says.

• What to ask a literary agent when you’re offered representation. From Casey McCormick at Literary Rambles.

• A guide to Search Engine Optimization for WordPress from a marketing blog called ViperChill.

• Author Dani Shapiro (who visited us here on the blog recently) has an piece in the L.A. Times about how new authors are now expected to sell books from the get-go, instead of selling as they gain experience.

• New York Times Book Review says new release A Mountain of Crumbs could be taught as a master class in memoir.

• Editorial Anonymous, a children’s book editor, writes about what editors can and can’t fix in a manuscript.

• Occasionally I link to the New York Times Modern Love column (because reading it makes you a better writer). This week’s piece spoke to me because it’s about Africa.

• The Evolution of the Travel Memoir, from MediaBistro. I wanna be this guy.

Happy writing!

Writers’ Roundup: February 5

I am so close to finishing* my manuscript that I’m giddy. Giddy! It helps that I love revising; turns out this is my favorite part of the process. Everything is right there on the page and all I have to do is make it better!

But. Enough of me being overly excited (especially since the hard part — getting this sucker published — hasn’t even begun). Links!

• Literary agent Kristin offers some good insight into Why Prologues Often Don’t Work. Make sure yours doesn’t fall into one of these categories!

• An Op-Ed in the New York Times by Jenny Finney Boylan on Salinger and the public life of writers. Boylan was a professor of mine at Colby College! Woot!

• At The Murdock Editing Blog, advice about including enough but not too much backstory in memoir. “Trust the reader to find his or her own connections,” the editor writes.

• Tips on writing the Competitive Analysis section of your book proposal, from literary agent Chip MacGregor. Thinking about the purpose of this section helps, he says.

• A guest post at Guide to Literary Agents on tips for Author Platform and the Debut of your Book. Broken down by fiction and non-fiction, and for memoir I’d say you could do it all.

• Lisa Romeo says she gets more writing done when she has less time. Me too.

• This Awesome Foundation grant might be worth applying for. Via Mira’s List.

• Some good examples of log lines and book summaries at Literary Rambles. Also links on how to write them.

• Why some memoirs are better as fiction, from The Daily Beast. Not sure I buy this, but it’s food for thought.

• Great post on Writer Unboxed about How to get a book deal while avoiding the slush pile. “Find a way to create your own success,” Jane Friedman writes.

Have a great weekend, y’all!

*When I say finished, I mean as good as I can make it, ready to be sent out to agents. We all know that if I land an agent and publisher, I’ll probably face many more revisions.

Discovering how to tell the story

Author Dani Shapiro said something in Monday’s interview that struck a chord with me:

The art of memoir isn’t in discovering what happened, but rather, in how to tell the story.

If she’d told me this before I wrote my memoir, I wouldn’t have believed her. Memoir is largely about recounting what happened during a life span. In my case, my travel memoir recounts my experiences over a six-month period. How many ways are there to write about what happened during those six months?

But as I moved forward with this project, the more I wrote and revised, I watched my book turn into something I didn’t expect. The premise — a woman traveling solo through Africa — hasn’t changed; it’s still what I envisioned from the beginning. But where it begins, how it ends and the parts I decided to leave out — most of that was unexpected. I knew what happened, but I didn’t know how I would write the story. I had to get it down on paper to see where it took me.

I remember walking in the woods with a writer named Andrew during my residency at Hambidge. He told me that he had sat in front of his computer the night before to rewrite a chapter, and his character did something he didn’t expect. The surprise had something to do with death — the character had died one way in the first few drafts, and then, suddenly, it seemed he wanted to die differently.

This was all fine and dandy, but Andrew was writing fiction. That will never happen to me, I thought. I’m writing memoir. I always know where the story’s going.

But the next morning — the very next morning — it happened. I typed on my keyboard, trying to figure out how my second chapter would begin, and out spewed a scene that I’d never considered including in my book. It’s about my sister and I, looking at a map of Africa in her apartment, the first time I told her exactly where I planned to go. “What if you get malaria again?” she asked, reminding me of my bout with the illness during my first trip to Cameroon.

That scene works. It still opens Chapter Two. (Although I can’t promise an editor won’t nix it along the way.) And I had no idea it would be part of my manuscript.

Other things reveal themselves through memoir, too — things that are bigger and more important than a scene. While writing this book, I’ve made connections, had realizations and drawn conclusions about my trip, the people I met and myself, ideas I never would have come up with had I not taken the time to reflect with purpose.

Writing a memoir is a journey of self-discovery. You may already know what happened, but in discovering how to tell the story, you’ll also discover pieces of yourself.

What have you discovered through your writing?