Writers’ Mill Minutes September 15^th 2019

Only 12 people attended Sunday’s meeting – perhaps we need to encourage more new member to join us and stay with us, or else we need to encourage you to brave the weather. If you weren’t at the meeting and feel we’re not addressing your needs, please reply to this email and let me know what you would like us to do differently. We are WRITERS HELPING WRITERS and this is YOUR group.

Those who were present introduced themselves and their genres, covering:

• Literary
• Historical
• Mystery, murder and detective stories
• Magical realism, fantasy and vampires
• Christian and inspirational
• Memoir, novels and short stories (including some aspiring anthologists)
• Neurotic women
• Cross-genre fiction and
• editing

Our guest speaker, Steve Zell, introduced  himself as an author of literary, magical realism, supernatural suspense, (nice) horror and detective fiction. He’s also been a session singer and the background musician for David Hasselhoff facing dead and dying lifeguards in Baywatch! So how on earth did he end writing award-winning novels? Find out more at the end of these minutes.

Matthew brought snacks for the middle of the meeting (many thanks), then Glennis handed out very appropriately September-themed awards for September’s “Days Dwindle” contest (with much appropriate rolling of drums as well). (Many delighted thanks to Glennis too!) Awards went to:

1. First place, Judy for Steps we Take
2. Second place, Sheila for Under and Autumn Shrubbery, and
3. Third place, Robin for Done Soon

Contest deadlines are always the 1^st Sunday of a month. We meet on the  3^rd Sunday, and our voting deadline is the Tuesday before the meeting. So even if you’re numerically challenged, as I am, it’s not hard to work out when things are due.

Contest word limits seem to be 1,200 at present, though we’re open to change. Entries can be any genre but preferably PG, and should be emailed to contest @ portlandwritersmill.org. The winner picks a topic for 3 months hence. And our upcoming contests are:

• October: The Truth is the Disguise – take it wherever you will – from Robin
• November: The Future – only rule is it has to be set in the future – from Matthew
• December: Family Traditions – with a request for sensory detail – from Zita

Sheila reminded us that, while planning to write (or not write, but preferably the former) for the contests, we should also be sending in our entries for this year’s anthology, for which the deadline is the END OF SEPTEMBER (i.e. SOON!). At present we have 6 authors represented, with 2 to 5 entries each. The longest entry is a triptych coming in at just over 2,000 words. The shortest is a poem at just over 100 words. We have 2 pictures, 2 poems, around 10 essays, and the rest short stories; 7 set in the past, 9 in the present and 4 in the future. And each member is welcome to submit:

• Up to five entries
• With a total of no more than 5,000 words (so one novella at 4,500 plus four poems at 100 words each is okay BUT, one novella plus five limericks is too much)
• Plus up to two pictures, though Sheila may send out begging letters for more! If your picture goes with your story, please be sure to let Sheila know that’s where it belongs!

And the overall topic, to be interpreted however you choose, is Looking Back and Looking Forward. So…

• If you’re still trying to cut down the number or wordcount. maybe choose to send something futuristic since we’re a little short there, or email Sheila nearer the deadline and ask what we need.
• If you haven’t come up with anything yet, look at things you wrote in the past. You could always preface something with “Looking backward into the annals of my writing life, I found this…” and end it with “Looking forward, I think I’ll write…”
• Entries should be readable in Word, or the text should be included in your email. Please email them to anthology @ portlandwritersmill.org

Finally, Jim led a lively and interesting critique of Joe’s first chapter, with lots of suggestions about places where the chapter might be developed, different directions the story could take, and the effect that different changes would have on the story.

1. With only a first draft first chapter to look at, the novel could go in many directions, from cozy mystery to coming of age drama. How would you make it clear, in a first chapter, what type of novel you are offering your readers?
2. The title – Three Teas and a Coffee and a Dog – is certainly enticing. Again, it gives some hint of what kind of novel is being offered – presumably not too dark and sad. How do you choose titles?
3. The first paragraph is the author’s first chance (after the book cover, title and blurb) to entice the reader. A sense of who the characters might be (sixty-year friends) provides interest, plus a sense that something strange is going to happen “today.” But how might the author let readers know when “today” is – present, past…?
4. Given the premise of a 60-year friendship that started with hostility, readers wanted more information about the ladies as children. Lots of information might lead to a coming of age drama. Lightly scattered information might suggest cozy mystery. How do you decide what to include (show) and what to just allude to (tell)?
5. Scenes with more dialog, and scenes with more description (particularly ones where the reader felt “inside” a character’s head) were the most memorable, suggesting a sense of the author’s strengths. How do we play to our strengths when we write?
6. Headings – time, place, point of view character – are a good way for the author to keep scenes in line with each other, but might need to be replaced with short sections of “telling” to get from one scene to the next. How do we make scene changes natural?
7. Readers were interested in the characters and believed in their religious leanings, but wanted more sense of which character was which – what they look like; how they speak; what mannerisms characterize them. How can an author describe characters without slowing down the story?
8. Humor in dialog works well, but humor in the character’s head might require the reader to want to be in their head first. How do we decide which head we want our readers to be in?
9. Details bring people, times and places to life. Too much detail overwhelms a story. Too little leaves nothing for readers to grasp on to. How do we pick details?
10. Transitions from past memories to present events pose problems with past and present tense writing. How can we make backstory transitions easier? Does writing the whole story in the past help?
11. Too much backstory would make for an interesting drama, but could lead to it taking too long to get to the events that drive the story. How important is that? How do we balance what readers want to know with where we want to lead them?
12. How do we choose where to start a story? What difference would it make if this novel started with the characters as children rather than as sixty-year-long friends?
13. How quickly does the dog need to be introduced if it’s in the title? Does the author need to get to the meat of the story in the second chapter, or can it take longer?

Don’t forget to submit your entries for the journal BEFORE THE END OF THE MONTH. Meanwhile, Happy Writing!

The Road to Publication, Self-Publication, and maybe back again, from Steve Zell’s talk on September 15^th 2019

Session singer, lyricist, artist, animator… how did Steve Zell get from there to being an award-winning author (and fascinating speaker)?

• First he read books. When someone gave him some vampire books, he read them, felt he could write better than this, and started writing.
• Then he wrote. 400 pages into his book, he had no ending and no idea how to end it.
• Then he learned from his mistakes, and is determined to always know the ending before writing 400 pages. We should learn this too!
• He listened to criticism, accepted advice, and moved on to write something else (with a well-planned ending).

But writing a good book isn’t enough to get you published. You also have to enjoy that element of luck – knowing ( and speaking to) someone who knows someone who happens to be sitting near someone at a restaurant, who overhears a conversation about bad books and has the manuscript of your good book in their bag at just the right time… No, that doesn’t mean we should all stop writing because we don’t know the right people. But it does mean we should be ready to grab the opportunity when it arises, and we should put ourselves in a place where opportunities arise. How?

• Steven joined a society of horror, fantasy and sci-fi writers.
• They talked about characters they had killed!
• They shared ideas and experiences and what led them to write.
• Goodreads is a good place to meet readers and writers and get advice.

So, what led Steve to write horror (or horror light)? And how can we decide what we want to write?

• He didn’t decide what genre to write. He let the story go where it needed to go, and that defined the genre.
• He looked for what felt good as he wrote. If it feels good to write it, it’s probably what you should be writing.
• BISAC codes define hundreds of subgenres. You really don’t have to be bound by “I’m writing this so I shouldn’t include any of that.”
• Steve has always had a sense of magic, a sense that there’s something “more” out there that might make things and people “better” than they are. What is your inner sense that you want to convey in your writing?
• He likes to write about kids because they still have a sense of magic. If we know what’s important to us as we write, it might help us know what sort of characters it will be important to as well.
• And for his breakout novel, WiZrD, he found inspiration while stuck in traffic, watching a building being gutted and wondering what it would be like if a whole town could be gutted and reinvent itself. There was a picture of a wizard on the wall. Are we looking for inspiration? Keep looking.

WiZrD was published by St. Martin’s Press – a big publisher – a huge achievement. How did that happen?

• With a lot of magical realism as the stars aligned, people knew people, met people in cafes, and liked his writing.
• The parts we control are writing a good story and being willing to talk about it. The parts we don’t control are what happens afterward.
• What happened afterward was an 18 month wait from being accepted to being published. First came the hardback novel, released for adults. Then…
• YA horror was selling really well, so they wanted to release the paperback as YA. But kids aren’t meant to swear in novels for kids, and his kids swore… a lot, so
• More editing ensued. Some of those swearing kids now said “Gosh,” which didn’t sit well! Meanwhile “adult” situations had to be rewritten, and a scene where someone swears at the kids for swearing too much…
• Then came a British edition and the suggestion that no one would understand who Frosty the Snowman is
• Then… much later (the first print book was in 1994) there were ebooks and the vexed question of who had the e-rights
• And now audio…

Then there’s selling the book. Clearly St. Martin’s Press did a good job of selling it, but luck (not always good luck) still played a part:

• That year St. Martin’s Press had fallen out with the North American Booksellers Association, so they didn’t take his book to the convention
• Then his publicist had a baby and left the book in someone else’s hands.
• And Ingram didn’t tell them when the first print run sold out.
• But it still reached #14 in horror in Great Britain, with a cover that looks remarkably like the original cover, which was designed by the same artist who did some Steven King novels. How? Because they asked what sort of cover Steve would like, he mentioned Steven King’s novels, and they knew the artist. Don’t be afraid to ask for something good! Good luck happens too!

So, the book’s been published, sold, and it’s doing well. Then what?

• Sometimes what looks like good luck is an illusion. DON’T STOP WRITING!
• If your book has been published, DON’T STOP WRITING!
• If you haven’t found an agent or a publisher yet, DON’T STOP WRITING!
• If you’re surrounded by great people who really want to make your book into a movie, DON’T STOP WRITING!
• If you’re deeply involved in possible screenplays and contracts, DON’T STOP WRITING!
• The next book is what really matters (especially if your contract was for two books!)

Steve still had good ideas for a good book, so he wrote a 55,000 word good book, but his publisher wanted 80,000. He padded it out; they wanted a subplot. He added more words and they wanted another subplot. And he didn’t like the book anymore. So now he’s self-published the original and might turn the padding into a prequel and a sequel.

Why self-publish?

• You get to choose how long the book should be. (55,000 words is ok after all.)
• You choose your fonts and format (but do you want to?)
• You choose to publish when you’re ready instead of waiting 18 months (so you can take advantage of good timing for your subject)
• BUT, you have to have someone read it – typos are invisible to the author. Even if it’s just a cousin, a school-teacher, a friend…
• Amazon is great (and Amazon’s not great – remember good luck and bad luck can look almost the same). Kindle has good tools for print books (like the old Createspace). Ingramspark’s got good tools too. (And Steve’s an artist-animator – he can do his own covers)
• And you can do ebooks and audio books without worrying about the rights. (Steve’s a musician – he can record his own audio, though getting it right for ACX is very time-consuming – rules say you need to keep volumes between certain levels, background noise below certain levels, etc…).
• But selling will always be difficult. How do you get your books in front of readers? Just getting it on Amazon is a start, not an end. Use Goodreads to get it in front of readers – FREE word-of-mouth advertising which really helps. Have a website (a cheap one…)

Why think of going back to a “real publisher”?

• Because you’ll have someone behind you who tells the readers your book is worthwhile
• And a publisher who can get your book into the “advertised” books on Amazon
• And a publisher who looks good in Kirkus reviews etc.
• So you’ll sell more books. You’ll still have to do your own selling and set up your own book-signings (maybe one a month), but the publisher gives you support. They send books to the store instead of you having to do it. They get deals when they buy expensive ads, so you don’t get sucked into spend more than you can afford.
• BUT your first book has to sell, or they won’t look at your second one.

So what’s the takeaway?

• Keep writing
• Make sure someone else reads your writing
• Try to find a publisher but remember it takes luck. Ditto finding an agent.
• Keep writing
• Remember luck only happens if you’re looking for it. Be ready to say what you’re doing. Be ready to try self-publishing. Remember to talk to people.
• Keep writing
• Join Goodreads and get a CHEAP website so you can meet potential agents, editors and readers.
• And keep writing.