Issue 67

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By Alex Miller

I remember how differently I thought in 2007 than I do now. I had just finished work on my first book, a memoir, The Heart of a City. Oh, how happy I was to have achieved such a stellar accomplishment at such a young age. How I danced and pranced about my apartment. I had no idea what a “vanity press” was. Heck, I didn’t even know what a printing press was. Joking on that last part, but you get my drift.

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Whether ‘Tis Bolder in the Mind of the Web

By Jessica Quillin

Over the past week, I have spent at least an hour a day pouring through page mockups, selecting images, and writing text for a website to represent my new company. Putting together this business website has become a strangely intimidating process. I say “strangely” because web content development and communication strategy are two major components of what I do for a living.

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By Amanda Linsmeier

The novel tells the story of Lucy Fisher, a young woman who goes on a Hawaiian vacation with her two friends. When she returns home, she’s shocked to discover all her belongings on the lawn, her fiancé unwilling to talk to her, and the locks on their home changed. To top it off, she’s recently been fired from her job. What’s a girl to do? She stores her stuff at her friend’s house and moves in with her sister and nephew, exploring possibilities in the new life before her. Unfortunately for Lucy, she is hit by a bus in the process.

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By L.L. McKinney

This week we’re going to talk about a crime we all commit, not just as writers, but also as human beings: procrastination. When I say we all have done the delay dance, I mean all. I see you hiding behind your pile of excuses. Yes, you too.
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WNW talks with author Robert Hays

We recently spoke with author Robert Hays about his latest novel, The Baby River Angel, and his other stories, Circles in the Water and The Life and Death of Lizzie Morris.

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This week we’re going to talk about a crime we all commit, not just as writers, but also as human beings: procrastination. When I say we all have done the delay dance, I mean all. I see you hiding behind your pile of excuses. Yes, you too.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I’m so guilty of postponing things that if you could go to prison for an offense against the process of advancement, I’d be the one with the longest sentence. I’m not as bad as I used to be, but it still happens in every aspect of my life, including writing. I should say especially writing. Now that I’ve actually wrapped up my first draft, the task of writing gets set on the backburner more often than it did before I typed that last page.

It’s so easy for the fact that I finished one manuscript to take root in the back of my head and make it ‘okay’ for me to be too busy to get around to other work. I said I finished it—I didn’t say I completed it. Two different things. It is my belief that after completing a first draft it should be left alone for a period of time; I should work on something else, then come back with a fresh eye. Granted, I only gained this belief after reading On Writing, by Stephen King a few days ago (highly recommended) but it’s something I am going to try. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Back to the point at hand. Before I finished my first draft, I would sit down and type out upwards of 20 pages in one go. I blew through chapters, telling myself I had to get it done. Now? I’m starting to slack. I’m not proud of it, but there you have it. The drive to ‘get it done’ has tapered off into a nudge to follow through, and it started to really bother me before I even realized what I was doing. Correction: am doing. Right up until the moment I started writing this article, it was an ongoing issue.

The bad part? This is not intentional procrastination-- the kind that comes to mind with that little voice saying “I’ll do it later”-- no-no. This procrastination happens when things get ‘in the way’. I need to do the dishes, I need to do the laundry, I need to think about what I’m going to make for dinner. While life is life and needs to be lived, as a serious writer, I have to put my foot down and say that my work on projects is just as important as these other things that need to get done. For me, it’s more important than those things.

I’m not telling anyone who has children to look after, and a household to run, that your families are not as important as your writing. Not at all. What I am saying is if there is time to watch that episode of Real Housewives, then there is time to write. We have to want it guys, want it bad enough to turn that excuse of “I want to write but I need time” to “I want to write so I need to make time”. No one is going to do it for us.

My family supports what I’m trying to do with my writing, yet it’s still pretty low on the totem pole of things they think I need to do around the house. That’s just the nature of the beast; until you start seeing profit for your work, to everyone else, it’s just a hobby. Do you see your writing as merely a way to pass the time? I certainly hope not. Jigsaw puzzles are hobbies. Scrap booking is a hobby. Sudoku is a hobby. Writing is not a hobby. It’s what I want to do with my life. If you feel the same way about your writing then you have to make it known. The laundry isn’t going anywhere. It’s not going to expire or go bad and will still be there ready to be folded and put away in 15 minutes or two hours.

Along with making time to write, a serious author needs to make time to read. Stephen King said it best, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write. Simple as that.” And he’s right. Reading is learning by example. It’s one thing to read how it’s done—in a how-to or self-help book—and another thing entirely to see how it’s done. That’s why instruction manuals often come with pictures. The only thing I’ve found I’m able to do by instruction alone is cook. Even then I’m sometimes left wondering what I messed up to turn my spinach tortellini orange.

We have to read. We have to write. If we don’t want our works in progress to wind up on a shelf in our bedroom closet until our great-grandchildren pull them down to reminisce, then we have to take charge. If writing is a part of your life, make it (and reading) a tangible section of what encompasses your day-to-day existence. Don’t need the time, make the time. Fight for it if you must, make it into a habit. Work it into your routine, and toss out something that isn’t as important. I seriously kicked and screamed when I had to put down World of Warcraft (yes I play video games, don’t judge me!) to get my writing/reading done. Then I put down television. Then I put down outings to the coffee shop with the girls, unless I had a book in hand. Don’t become a recluse, no one is demanding you forgo all human contact, but you get the idea. Our writing starts out important to us and only us, so in the beginning it is up to us to convey that importance to everyone else.

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a single word on paper.” E.B. White

Happy writing.

L.L. McKinney is a freelance writer, a published poet and a playwright. As an active member of First Tuesdays and YA Lit Chat, she is currently seeking representation for her young adult paranormal urban fantasy, Swayed.

Over the past week, I have spent at least an hour a day pouring through page mockups, selecting images, and writing text for a website to represent my new company. Putting together this business website has become a strangely intimidating process. I say “strangely” because web content development and communication strategy are two major components of what I do for a living.

Yet, as a writer, it has been a difficult mental shift to translate my perception of my own writing from the more casual land of my blog into the formal realm of a business website.
After the decision of “to write or not to write,” the decision of “to blog or to website” is one that almost all writers face as they seek to keep themselves relevant in the ever-widening writers’ market.

For my part, even though I’ve now answered this question, I have been battling it non-stop since leaving my full-time job as an education researcher in April to start my own company and become a freelance writer. Over the months, I glared at the question directly in the eyes a few times, but always fell back out of shyness or out of sheer lack of time, relying upon a makeshift blog/site, which doesn’t quite do what I want it to do as a blog and only partially functions to represent my company.

In concept, the blog seems highly appealing due both to the ease of figuring out a free online template and to the opportunity to showcase one’s written abilities in an immediately accessible way. However, the blog brings with it the pressure to create a concept, maintain it regularly, and find new and innovative incentives to draw in readers. Also, while sites like Blogger and WordPress offer the opportunity to create sub-pages within your main blog site, templates can constrict design and the overall product focus is inescapably the blog itself.

A website offers safety in branding and professionalism, as well as the versatility of displaying your fuller portfolio, links to previously published works, and your complete resume. However, it can be a lot more work than a blog in terms of cost, design, and maintenance, particularly if your end goal is to do the legwork to set up a site to represent yourself and all you have to offer as a writer.   

So, how do you judge whether a blog or a website is most appropriate for your needs as a writer? Or, to put it differently, would all writers benefit from a good website, or is a simple, well-presented blog enough?

Obviously, individual choice comes to play a major part in this decision-making process. There are highly successful writers who have minimal presence on the web. But then there are many websites and blogs, writing related or otherwise, that are old, rarely updated, or, worse, lapse into solipsism, blissfully or willfully ignorant of the public nature of the Internet.

This requisite attentiveness to readership and presentation as well as the time it takes to assemble and maintain either a blog or website are sources of potential downfall and thus concern for many writers as they contemplate establishing a web presence. Yet, as many writers recognize, the multiplicity of audiences on the web, its stylistic flexibility, and its revenue-generating potential are key advantages for anyone who can write well and organize his or her ideas clearly.
So, the question of “to blog or to website” comes down to those basic literary concepts of author’s purpose and intended audience. In other words, what do you write about? For whom are you writing? For what purpose do you want to direct people to your written works?

If you are a burgeoning freelancer or professional writer, then you might find that a blog is a good place to start. Blogs are inherently approachable, interactive, and casual, which is an ideal and immediate way for many writers to educate readers about ideas, trends, and events. However, more established writers or writers who have a variety of clients may quickly find that a website offers more flexibility in permanence and more solid branding.

I began with a blog simply to get my bearings and reorient myself to my own writing. However, I quickly realized two things: 1) as an arts critic, I like to write a lot, as in essay type pieces, because, well, it’s what I do, only this format does not necessarily work well in a blog; and 2) my writing was unfocused because I was trying to write about too many topics at once in an effort to present the variety of clients my company targets.

I am proud to be a multifaceted writer (hence my column title) with a diverse background that enables me to write across a range of sectors. However, since my business represents a larger concept than my own writing and also involves other writing professionals, the “to blog or to website” decision came down to one of corporate branding and mission.

Perhaps inevitably, I came to a compromise to separate me from my writing business, if you will. I am creating a business website for my company but am maintaining my blog—only now with vision and purpose. Thanks to a fabulous graphic designer friend, my website is moving along, while the blog remains a work in progress. I am trying to write shorter, more focused entries, yet I feel as if I’m still learning a lot about the medium.

While I have made my web decision for now, I am certain that my writing and my company, and in turn my blog and my website, will develop in many new and unexpected directions over time. For instance, I ultimately want to start my own arts and lifestyle magazine with a core focus on good writing. But, how do I to get there? I leave that quandary for a future column….

Jessica Quillin owns Quillin Consulting, LLC, a consultancy in Washington, DC, focused on content development, research, and strategy for the public and private sectors. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Cambridge.

By Kirk B. Young

I’ve misplaced my voice, my vocal chords are silent lacking speak and the floorboards here creak under the willowing weight of a ghost, phrases are a feat and my tongue it can’t compete as communication comes through in the dark these concrete abstractions of time and space and if I were to erase the letters before these it’d make just the same amount of sense, which is to say somewhat striking as the sun shines in during the midnight hour. The crisis of a life that hasn’t seen much strife amounts to little more than identity, formed and fitted and impulse transmitted through fiery arches of synapse and sync until I start to sink into sleepy eyed persistence my resistance to the distance is a polarized existence watch the light go on and off and on and off and before you know it there are four and twenty of the years gone by and I cannot comply with the call to cease the words even though it’s just a surge of nonsensical data points with syllables through and through. But what does it mean to you, because words are just a collection of sound emotion is interpretation even when smiles abound, so hopefully I will fall asleep soon to join my lady in her dreams, it’s an oddly soothing place where everything’s as it seems and you can play with clouds until you move the earth. Ramble and rest and return to the river of consonants and constant couplings of letters and phrases and if you can’t forge or find any meaning in them then no worries be had for more will come on down the line, we’re only playing with this language you and I, this is just a dream and since we’re in these fifteen walls encapsulated we can make our own world. I will move the earth. I will move the earth. I will move the earth.

by Alex Miller

I remember how differently I thought in 2007 than I do now. I had just finished work on my first book, a memoir, The Heart of a City. Oh, how happy I was to have achieved such a stellar accomplishment at such a young age. How I danced and pranced about my apartment. I had no idea what a “vanity press” was. Heck, I didn’t even know what a printing press was. Joking on that last part, but you get my drift.

And so, off I went into the world, believing that I’d soon be a millionaire author with a couple supermodels on either side of me to feed me grapes in my lounge chair on the beach. But alas! I had published my book through a vanity publisher that wanted to charge me an additional $3,000 for editing services (on top of the $1,000 I’d already paid for them to provide me with ten copies of said book). Figuring it would be okay to release a book rampant with errors, I opted out of paying that 3K that I didn’t have just lying around the house. The end result? You’ve never heard of me.

I said that getting published is guerilla warfare, didn’t I? I should have said getting published by a reputable publisher is guerilla warfare. The truth is, just about anyone can get published, including Lulu the Dog Girl. Vanity presses, some of which are owned by big-shot houses like Ingram Book Group and Time-Warner Publishing, bring in billions in revenue each year. The problem is, these vanity presses have millions upon millions of clients. In order to get published by Ingram itself, you’d better don your camouflage face paint, grab those old combat boots, slap on a trendy headband, and drag a literary agent into the jungle. If that agent doesn’t take you on as a client by the time you’re done, it’s time to call John Rambo.

But seriously. Humorist Don Marquis put it best when he said, “Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”

I suppose somewhere, at some point in human existence, a person’s talent was all it took for them to become well-known. Nowadays, it would seem the contrary is true. How often do we turn on the television and learn that someone has become famous merely because their last name is Hilton? How often is recognition given to those out there with better smiles than God, with better hair than Zeus, and with better skin than all the supermodels suffering from Botox and collagen overdoses combined?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not all about the accolades and the money. If that were the case, I would have bought a few shares of Halliburton stock a long time ago. Truly, the real joy comes from writing. But writers are professionals, and just like all the other professionals out there, we’re looking for success. I’m not Alex Rodriguez, making it known that I won’t step on a plate if I get paid one penny less than $30 million. If someone has to pay you that much to do what you love, there’s definitely a problem.

My gripe lies with the Industry. This thing is tough. To quantify the number of hours I’ve spent drinking because of a rejection letter would be meaningless. Astronomical distances aren’t nearly as large as the amount of failure I’ve felt heaped upon my shoulders after being “positively” turned down by a publisher. The amount of energy produced by a quasar dulls in comparison to how hard I have struggled with my personal demons.

Sometimes I wonder what our world would be like without writers. It’s hard to imagine, really. What kind of boring, soulless, homogeneous existence would that be? Think about it: No TV shows, no movies, no music and no singers/songwriters/musicians, no books and therefore no libraries to house those books, no laws and no Congress to enforce those laws, no journals or diaries, no future for young Agatha Christie, or Samuel Longhorn Clemens, or William Shakespeare. What a world.

People ask me why I keep trying. Why do I remain steadfast in my pursuit of literary success even though it would be easier to lie down and die? Why? Because this is war…a war against the ones who don’t want me to make it. The ones waiting for me to fail. Those are the same ones in the Industry that I’m standing up against. So I’m bringing my guerilla warfare to the table—it’s all I have left.

By Sarah Schiavoni

Romance novels are described as romantic escapes for trapped housewives, soft core pornography for women, and women’s fiction. They follow a fairly well-defined format: a man and woman meet and get to know each other. Sexual and emotional tension build and several passionate kisses ensue before the two finally make love. Just when everything seems perfect, a conflict arises and the lovers are drawn apart, but in the end, the two are brought back together to live happily ever after. Though these books are geared toward women and meant for casual reading, the way they portray characteristics of masculinity and femininity, as well as the way they construct gender roles, generates a lot of discussion—particularly, are they worth reading and how do they affect the women (and occasional men) who read them.

As a student of English and Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as the occasional reader of trashy romance novels (gimme a break!—they’re fun to read at the beach!), I often have the topic of romance novels and their worth come up in my day-to-day life. During a discussion of gender in the media in a Communications seminar this past spring, my class discussed romance novels at length—why they are or are not valuable reading for women (and men), what purpose they serve, and what problems they present. The great part about romance novels is, well, the romance. You get the physicality of love--the trembling of hearts, the passion of the first kiss, the flaming desire behind the first sexual encounter—but you also get the story behind that love. The not-so-great part about romance novels is that you typically get a stereotypical man-to-woman relationship, in which the man has all the power and the woman goes weak in the knees for him.

Personally, I’m all for reading a crappy romance novel every once in a while. While I wouldn’t pick one up at the bookstore, I’d be more than happy to pluck one off of a hotel bookshelf while on vacation or borrow one from a friend on a rainy day. Romance novels are typically light, easy to follow, end happily, and essentially give us (women) the same feeling that a chick flick would. Okay, so maybe I’m playing right into a female stereotype, but I like reading about romance. I like watching two people fall head-over-heels for each other, and I like to pretend sometimes that life can follow the same cookie-cutter format that romance novels do. The problem comes in looking at how romance novels have traditionally portrayed men and women. Romance novel leading men are typically strong, lustful, and independent. More than likely, they’ve had more sexual partners than you can count, and they insist they’ll never get married. The typical leading lady of romance novels is what I call a Taming-of-the-Shrew-woman—she feigns independence and strength, insisting she doesn’t need a man, but in reality, she’s a virgin who just wants to be saved by a man: a man who she hopes will someday see how much he needs her—sees that she is “different” from all the others. It’s hard to be on board with something that gives men so much power and women so much weakness. My only advice to rabid romance readers is to not get so wrapped up in the story that you believe this is how all love stories should go—that cookie-cutter format is not all it’s cracked up to be and real love rarely seems to play out in such a way. Read the novels for fun, and perhaps for study, but don’t take them too seriously and don’t worry about seeming silly for reading them. I myself enjoy a trashy romance novel every once in a while, and as much as I hate to admit it, sometimes I really love when the leading man, a sort of knight in shining armor, saves the beautiful maiden, and they live happily ever after in anti-gender studies bliss.

By Amanda Linsmeier

I’ve enjoyed Laurie Notaro’s non-fiction works before, like The Idiot Girls Action Adventure Guide. When I read that book years ago, I laughed—hard. I didn’t know she also wrote novels. I was recently perusing the bookstore when a brilliant chartreuse cover caught my eye. The title? Spooky Little Girl. The author? Laurie Notaro, who I didn’t even know wrote novels. The novel tells the story of Lucy Fisher, a young woman who goes on a Hawaiian vacation with her two friends. When she returns home, she’s shocked to discover all her belongings on the lawn, her fiancé unwilling to talk to her, and the locks on their home changed. To top it off, she’s recently been fired from her job. What’s a girl to do? She stores her stuff at her friend’s house and moves in with her sister and nephew, exploring possibilities in the new life before her. Unfortunately for Lucy, she is hit by a bus in the process.

When Lucy wakes up, she is in a bright room, surrounded by beds and sleeping people. She is confused and doesn’t realize she is dead until she is brought up to date by Ruby, the tough and fun “Ghost School” instructor. Lucy can’t believe this is happening to her and resists learning to become a ghost. She is hurt and bewildered when no one but her sister and nephew show up to her funeral. She doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve this. Just when she thinks things can’t get worse, Lucy is plopped in the middle of her old home, living with Martin and his reality-TV-show-loving girlfriend, stuck having to haunt them for reasons she’s unsure of. She has to see Martin interact with a woman she despises with only her dog to see her or keep her company. Then, the ghosts lay another surprise on her: she won’t have to haunt alone. Her dead grandmother is going to keep her company. What follows is a series of funny events, brought on many times by Lucy’s hilarious grandma. Throw in a couple of ghost hunters and pranks and you have a very fun, light-hearted novel.

Spooky Little Girl explores an interesting concept and contains a number of funny moments. While Notaro shines brightest in her non-fiction work, her novels are certainly worth reading. The tender moments of Spooky Little Girl are the best in the book, though they appear less frequently than I would like. I also very much liked the last chapter, which tied the story together nicely and offered a truly happy ending, one of my absolute favorites among the books I’ve read.