On Writing and Publishing

Are you inspired by your Peace Corps service? Do you have an affinity for writing? Looking to write a memoir or book about your Peace Corps experience? John Coyne (RPCV Ethiopia 1962-64), editor of Peace Corps Worldwide, has arranged with National University in California to offer an online MFA program in non-fiction, fiction and poetry writing for PCV and RPCV writers. Courses are currently under development and will be taught by published Peace Corps authors and National University faculty members. Coyne will teach the introductory class and serve as an adviser to Peace Corps students. The inaugural program is slated to begin in Fall 2016 – will be accepting a class of 15 exceptional students. The MFA is flexible program. Students can complete the degree in between one to two years, taking a single one or two-month class at a time. As the course is online, students have the opportunity to progress at their own pace. This also allows . . .

CAREER ADVICE Be a Literary Agent John Coyne profiles six literary agents and offers suggestions for that career path for the Association of Writers & Writers Programs Website. April 2016 I called a novelist friend (Mary-Ann Tirone Smith Cameroon 1965-67) and asked her if she knew of any MFA graduates who were employed as literary agents and she replied, “MFA graduates are writers, not agents.” She was categorically right, but she wasn’t totally correct. Just as there are book and magazine editors who also write fiction, nonfiction, or poems, there are also literary agents with BAs in English and/or MFAs in writing. Some later change horses and become agents, putting their own literary knowledge into play when advising their clients. Others continue to write but work as agents for the sake of having a steadier income while finishing their next novel or waiting for the last one to be made . . .

If you are interested in writing books, especially ebooks, you might want to check out Mike Shatzkin’s blogs on the net or his ebook entitled, The Shatzkin Files, Volume 1. Shatzkin has been involved in the publishing business for nearly 50 years. For the past two decades he has been focused on the digital changes in publishing. Recently he published a blog item about Hugh Howey. Howey is best known for the science fiction series Silo published on Amazon.com’s Kindle Direct Publishing system. Shatzkin quotes Howey: “Too few successful self-pubbed authors talk about the incredible hours and hard work they put in, so it all seems so easy and attainable. The truth is, you’ve got to outwork most other authors out there. You’ve got to think about writing a few novels a year for several years before you even know if you’ve got what it takes. Most authors give up before they . . .

  Reading the Winter 2016 issue of Authors Guild Bulletin I came across Angela Bole’s column on “Indie Publishing: A Primer” Bole is the CEO and executive director of the Independent Book Publishers Association and her current column in the issue covers all sorts of publishing in today’s world. However, her paragraphs on self-publishing were interesting for a number of reasons. She writes that the fast-growing segment of independent publishing is self-publishing, and that Bowker — the “world’s leading provider of bibliographic information” — reports that in 2013, 458,564 self-published titles came out, a jump of 17% since 2012, and 437% over 2008. There are basically two kinds of self-publishing, assisted self-publishing and DIY self-publishing. She is not a fan of DIY self-publishing, saying, “Considering the complexities of the publishing business, there are almost no circumstances in which I’d recommend a fully DIY self-publishing approach.” She goes onto write, “The . . .

The current issue of The Atlantic has a long article by Nicholas Dames entitled “The New Fiction of Solitude” where, according to Dames, “For an influential group of writers, the purpose of novels is to bear witness to the spectacle of aloneness.” In this article, Dames refers to a long, long conversation that the novelist Marilynne Robinson had with President Obama last September which was published a few months ago in The New York Review of Books. That “conversation” touched on a number of topics, from troubled relationship between Christianity and democracy to the fragility of public institutions. Dames (as did others) wondered why Obama focused time and attention on a novelist, such as Robinson, and Dames linked the Obama conversation–some of you might remember–that took place at Hyannis Port in 1960 when JFK, then running for president, met with Norman Mailer, according to Dames, “in order to rouse the discouraged liberal elites who were . . .

Cupple House, St. Louis University This is an article I wrote for my college alumni magazine at Saint Louis University about a writing professor of mine who also was the teacher of several other PCVs in the early years of the agency. This professor was the mentor of dozens of future poets and writers and shows, I hope, how one professor can influence and encourage students to write, whether they join the Peace Corps or not. • “To Burn With A Hard, Gemlike Flame” Let me tell you what it was like to be in the English Department in the ’50s during the Silent Generation, at the time of the Beat Poets, when Gas Light Square was in its infancy, and everyone was on the road. I came to Saint Louis University in 1955 because of the Writers’ Institute founded by Dr. James Cronin. Dr. Cronin was the first person to tell me . . .

Thanks to a “heads up” from Bill Preston (1977-80) I heard that Leonard Lopate ( WNYC All Things Considered) interviewed the curator of the current Hemingway Between the Wars exhibit at the Morgan yesterday, January 5, 2016. Declan Kiely is the Curator and Department Head of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum, he offered an inside look at the exhibit  which explores a vital period of creative development in Hemingway’s life between WWI and WWII, a period that influenced his seminal works. The exhibit includes rarely shown manuscripts, letters, photographs, drafts, typescripts of stories, first editions and artifacts. It runs through January 31. You can listen to the 16 minute interview. Here’s the link: http://www.wnyc.org/story/declan-kiely-discusses-hemingways-creative-explosion-during-interwar-period/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+%24%7 Blopate%7D+%28%24%7BLeonard+Lopate%7D%29&utm_content=%24%7Bfeed%7D

The sixth Poets & Writers Live event was held at the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Mediatheque Theater on October 17, 2015 in Portland, Oregon. The editors of many of the area’s presses and literary magazines joined the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine to explore the art of writing and the business of independent publishing. One of the speakers was Tom Spanbauer (Kenya 1969-71), author of Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, In The City of Shy Hunters, Now Is the Hour, and, most recently, I Loved You More (Hawthorne Books, 2014) winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award. He presented a talk on Dangerous Writing, an innovative approach to writing that forms the basis of the workshop he has been teaching in his basement classroom in Portland for years. Dangerous Writing, Tom says, “is to go to parts of ourselves that we know exist but try to ignore–parts that are sad, . . .

At some point you’ll want to ask “someone” to read your novel while it is still in manuscript. This might be your partner or a friend who loves to read, or one of those strangers in your writing class. When that time comes, I want you to recall the exchange between Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald when Hemingway asked F. Scott to read his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Fitzgerald did, and then wrote a letter to Ernie. This was in 1926. Fitzgerald suggested to Hemingway that he drop the first two chapters, characterizing the novel’s opening as “careless and ineffectual.” Fitzgerald then went on to write in his letter to Hemingway: “About this time, I can hear you say, ‘Jesus this guy thinks I’m lousy, & he can stick it up his ass for all I give a Gd Dm for his ‘criticism’. But remember this is . . .

Your Novel Needs a Structure You Need a Structure The hardest part about writing a novel is writing a novel. Now there’s a declarative sentence! But it’s so true. To write a novel you need a structure: a beginning and middle and end. Characters. Plot. Scenes. Events. But more importantly you need a frame for the length of your book on which you can hang your story: the action, characters, metaphors, plot twists, and drama. Think of your novel as a room you have to measure with a long industrial ruler, one of those big, fat ones carpenters carry and whip out of their pockets like an old fashioned six shooter. That’s your plan. Your focus. Your design. That is how you will tell your tale. You will measure the scenes and incidents, the drama and the dialogue and make sure everything fits. That’s your plan for writing your novel. . . .

I was reading recently that while less people are reading, books themselves are getting longer. James Finlayson at Vervesearch analyzed more than 2,500 bestsellers list and found that the average number of pages in a book has increased by 25 percent in the last 15 years. Books published today have on average about 80 pages more than they did in 1999. According to The Guardian “The first five years of Booker-winning novels average out at around 300 pages, but even taking into account Julian Barnes’s 2011 triumph with his 160-page novella The Sense of an Ending, the last five years of Booker laureates weigh in at an average of 520 pages. This year’s winner was brief only in name: Marlon James’s 700-page A Brief History of Seven Killings.”

Novel Writing 101 This short series of blogs will be on writing your novel. All of you who were smart enough to major in business or international affairs or science while in college now have a chance to take an on-line creative writing course. If you are thinking of writing a novel, here’s a quick course (for no credits) on how you might go about writing your book. Point of View Welcome back to Novel Writing 101 I want to talk about the Point of View for your Novel. “Point of view” is a term that refers to the relationships between the storyteller-you–the story, and the reader. A story can be told basically from three different points of view – first person, second person or third person. Many writers are inclined to have a narrator tells his or her own story in the first person. Think of J. D. Salinger’s . . .

Novel Writing 101 Session One This short series of blogs will be on writing your novel. Over the next few weeks, I’ll post Novel Writing 101, blogs on writing and publishing your novel. All of you who were smart enough to major in business or international affairs or science while in college now have a chance to take an on-line creative writing course. If you are thinking of writing a novel, here’s a quick course ( no credits, but it is free!) on how you might go about writing your book. We will begin with What Genre Is Your Novel? What Genre Is Your Novel? We’re all drawn to certain genres. In fact, some of us only read one type of novel. What are the books that you read? There are basically two types of fiction when it comes to novels: Genre Fiction and Literary Fiction. We’re going to focus . . .

The # 11-Key Step: This extra step is like the 19th hole for golfers. You’re back in the bar at the club house going over your score and declaring if you had made a couple of putts on the front nine, or if that wedge on the par- 5 hadn’t  checked up below the hole on 17…. why instead of 87, you could have posted a 72 or 73. That’s golf. That’s writing a novel. So, with your first draft finished, push back from the computer and pour yourself a drink and think: “Now who’s going to play my protagonist in the movie they’ll make of my book?” Let your mind wander….. will it be??????

The # 10 Key Step: Imposing a structure on your book. When I was writing my first published novel, The Piercing, I imposed a structure on the plot that complemented the religious overtones of the book. As a specific time frame for my story I chose the 40 days of Lent. I then divided the book into 40 chapters, one for each day. This structure enabled me to pace the story while always having an overview of where the plot was going. You will be surprised that even an artificial structure, like a scaffolding to a building, will help you write your book. You can discard the building blocks later, if you want, but the device will help you write your novel. For example, if you want to write a novel that takes place all within twenty-four hours, you have that security of a structure to pace the story but . . .