Telling Herstories: The Broad View

Another LinkedIn Sunday

Kendra Bonnett--Getting Read #11

This month’s post is a bit of a megillah. Sunday started innocently enough as I spent some time browsing several of the LinkedIn groups where I like to hang. But as I began reading and thinking…well one thing led to another. As is often the case among LinkedIn’s writing, marketing and blogging groups, I found several threads dealing with the challenges of getting published and using social media for book promotion. The discussion usually goes something like this:

Question: Do free social media sites really help you sell books? Or, Is Twitter a godsend or a waste of time? And sometimes, Who’s selling books thanks to Facebook?

And then the comments start. Respondents run the gamut: The Touters (as I like to call them) extol the benefits of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and more. Each has his or her pet tool or resource. The Deniers (I see fewer of these all the time) either claim they are happily living in a pre-WordPress world of publishing (or, if they’re bona fide Luddites or honest-to-god curmudgeons, they must reside in a pre-Internet, alternate universe). Then sooner or later the Dupes show up, those who have suffered loss and mischief at the hands of Internet cons, crooks and scammers. And don’t doubt it, they are out there.

This Sunday was no different…although perhaps a bit more extreme.

The Touters Led Off the Discussion…

…with their praise for Facebook, Twitter, blogs, social networks, Ning, to name just a few of the tools—everyone has their own personal favorite. I read their words, agreed with most, but didn’t add a comment of my own. I noticed, however, that even the Touters had their caveats and cautions. Social networking is their religion, and yet almost universally they admit to making near Homeric commitments of time and energy, replete with the challenges, setbacks and strange encounters worthy of a modern-day Ulysses.

As I said, I didn’t comment on any of this. I know their journey all too well. It is true that the challenge of building a following exclusively via social networking is daunting. You must work at it every day and not expect any significant returns for a year. Yes, results in six months are possible but not the norm; you need to budget a year, which is why Matilda Butler and I always counsel clients to start their blog the same day they start writing their book.

As to which tool or tools to build your strategy around…I believe it depends on your personal preference. If you like Twitter’s microblogging approach, go for it. I recommend you commit to Tweeting a minimum of nine times a day: three in the morning, three in the early afternoon and three in the evening. And your Tweets must have teeth: solid content, links to your blog or links to interesting (related) content you found on the Internet.

If you like Facebook and if you haven’t yet set up a Fan Page, what are you waiting for? I can’t say that Fan Pages are the future of Facebook, but they are most definitely the present. Your posts are seen on Facebook feeds (Groups do not appear on the feed) so if you post aggressively you’ll gain considerable visibility. And with more than 300 million people on Facebook, you can draw on a large universe. Fan pages also allow you to be more commercial in your posting. You won’t get “slapped” or worse, thrown off Facebook, for promoting your book and posting a link to your sales page.

For myself, I can’t complain about putting in the time and effort necessary for building social traffic, given that I’m not having to spend money on Google AdWords or banner ads. Time is money, and it all costs one way or another, but I personally don’t want to invest in buying traffic…at least not until I know I have a winning formula for converting visitors to paying customers.

And one more consideration: If you want to take advantage of the any of the many free social networking tools, don’t wait. These may not remain free forever. Investors want profits, and if advertising and corporate deals don’t bring in revenue, I think we can expect many tools to disappear, consolidate and/or become fee-based. My advice is put in the time now while the only cost is time and energy. To make social networking part of my day, I get up an hour or two earlier to do my blogging, Tweeting and posting so that it doesn’t cut into the rest of my day.

There’s Always a Denier…

This week only one joined into the discussion. Actually she didn’t discuss; it was more of a “drive by” comment. She made her pronouncement, gained the ire the Touters and disappeared into the night. In the midst of the cacophony of Touters talking up Fan Pages and Twitter Lists, Ms. Denier announced with all the tact of a Sherman tank that she has no use for book marketing (of any sort). She prefers to simply write her proposal, cash her advance, hand her book over to the publisher and wait for the royalty checks to arrive, and then begin the whole process over again.

I admit it. I had to comment, and I wasn’t alone. In addition to wishing her good luck with that, I pointed out that almost 75 percent of books never sell more than 100 copies. In other words, most authors will never see a royalty check if they put their fate exclusively in the hands of their publisher. Furthermore, if an author sells only a couple 100 books and doesn’t appear to be developing a reader base, I can’t believe that future book deals are waiting in the wings. This brings us back to marketing and social networking.

But Beware the Fate of the Dupes…

For all its benefits, the Internet is not without risks, and this week’s Dupes reminded us by alerting us to some new scams. Some authors have been using ezines to promote their work. But rather than submitting press releases or posting their articles on an established ezine aggregator such as EzineArticles.com, they have been hoping to get paid for their content. The results have not been universally positive. There are reports of what appear to be fraudulent (nonexistent) ezines that send authors forms to fill out with their name, address and Social Security number. But the payments never arrive. Now these authors are afraid they may become the victims of identity theft and have put a watch on their credit. Don’t give your Social Security number to any stranger online (or off, for that matter). And while I’m on the subject, if you list your birthday on your Facebook page and it’s visible to anyone other than you, go into your settings and fix this right now. An email address and your birthday may be all someone needs to steal your identity. Enjoy social media, but be careful with your personal information.

This is how I spent part of my Sunday…reading. As for the thinking and what I believe all of this means to authors, please follow this link to my post on Women’s Memoirs.

Difficult Memories: Finding Voice and Grace in the "Hard Stuff"

How do we handle the hard stuff in our life stories? How do we write about the memories that are controversial, painful, or just no fun to remember? We'll practice writing techniques that strengthen our voices and reveal the grace and wisdom to be found even in hard times.

That's the description of "Difficult Memories," the workshop I'll be teaching at Story Circle Network's Stories From the Heart V Conference, in Austin, Texas, February 5 - 7, 2010. 

When I proposed the workshop last spring, I was thinking about my process in writing my memoir, Walking Nature Home, and my struggle to find the wisdom in the painful and outright hard parts of my own story. When I wrote the first few drafts of that book, I was still angry and hurt by some of my experiences. Writing out my feelings was therapeutic, but didn't result in particularly good memoir.

In fact, some of the initial drafts are so bad that re-reading them is more than embarrassing. It took me decades--and many rewrites--before I learned to chip away at the narrative to find the gift of gold in the hard stuff, before I found the grace to tell my story in a way that was respectful, honest, and compelling. When I finally did, reading the story was exciting instead of painful. It finally felt right--and I felt good about writing it.

Here's an example of finding voice and grace in the hard stuff, from the first chapter of Walking Nature Home:

That Labor Day weekend, we went backpacking with friends and an early fall snowstorm moved in. All I remember from those three days is a steady rain of wet, white flakes falling silently, muffling forest and lake and rock, pressing down on the roof of our small tent until I felt like I would suffocate. On the long drive out, even the cab of our pickup truck seemed to have shrunk. I looked over at Kent and said,

“I need space. I think we should separate.”

His jaw clenched hard, but he didn’t turn his eyes from the gravel road. “You’ll be dead first.”

I moved out. He attempted suicide. I saw a counselor. 

Those four paragraphs paint a vivid picture of the disintegration of my first marriage, conveying the salient points without portraying every gory detail. The last line shows how dramatic paring events down to their essence can be: "I moved out. He attempted suicide. I saw a counselor."

There's obviously a lot more I could have said. That chapter did in fact originally include much more material, all of it vivid and dramatic in its own right.

Over time as I worked on the memoir though, I realized that this particular part of the story had come to "weigh" so much that it disturbed the overall balance. Writing out the intimate details of the disintegration of my first marriage may have helped me come to peace with my decisions, but it distracted from the larger point, a love story on several levels: me learning to love myself, the loving bond I found with my second husband, Richard, and the love of nature, the community of species with whom we share this planet, that sustained me through those years and still does.

As I re-visited the painful story of my first marriage, my ability to tell the story well grew as I grew as a person. I can't say which came first: my ability to understand myself or my ability to write the hard stuff with clarity and grace. But I know that we grew together, that memoir and me. 

Now I need every bit of that clarity and grace as my beloved Richard and I walk hand in hand through the "hard stuff" of his brain cancer. I know my practice in learning to tell the sometimes painful and traumatic stories that make up Walking Nature Home is helping me keep my balance today, both in writing and life. Wrestling with difficult memories not only taught me how to write a story that novelist Sandra Dallas recently hailed as "a moving story... filled with hope and joy," it also taught me how to make a hopeful, joyous life--no matter what comes.

2009 December Podcast

Join us this month for a chat with Karen Ballinger as she interviews Brit William about her writing life.

We also have Nancilynn Saylor reading two poems.

So tune in and listen to your Story Circle sisters! 

We love to hear from you! Don't forget to let us know what you think of the podcast! Call our Listener Line at 641-715-3900, ext 19212 or leave your comments here. Thank you for listening.

Do you enjoy listening to these stories and interviews? We're looking for help arranging interviews, finding content, and recording  segments. No experience is necessary for contributing content. And if you know how to edit sound files on your computer, that's even better! If you'd like to help out with the podcast, send a note to podcast(at)storycircle.org.

Tune in next month when Rhonda Esakov will talk about her writing life and her life as "The Tax Lady."  resakov.wordpress.com/

Episode contents:

Interview - 14:00

Poems- 3:00

This podcast is released under a Creative Commons license. Contributing authors retain all rights to their work. Music in this show was provided by the Podsafe Music Network.

It's All About the Words

Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.
Susan Sontag

 

I’ve met very few people, virtually or actually, in SCN--writers all--who are not also avid readers-or as I’ve been described. a rabid reader. (I don’t think I threaten to bite when my reading time is interrupted, but hey…) Reading and writing just go together. We read stories, we write stories. We live and breathe stories.
 
If you’re a bibliophile too, the SC Book Review Site is for you! It’s an important part of Story Circle Network. As we write, books inform us as we do research, inspire us as we read another’s prose or poetry, and even relax us when we need a break from our own words. Not a woman, but knowledgeable about the art of writing, Stephen King in his book, On Writing, said “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or tools to write.”
 
It’s all about the words and the stories. At SCBR, our reviewers use their words to communicate the essence of someone else’s stories. And, oh my, the words they use...

Consider this: “Lit, the new memoir by Mary Karr, is a book to be inhaled and imbibed, a fitting fate for a story about falling down a bottle and the slippery climb back up to some version of sanity and grace.”-–the opening of our Review of the Month written by Linda Joy Myers. How could you not want to read her review, being drawn in like this? I not only read the review; I’ll read the book.

Can you relate to this? “Sue Monk Kidd, as she reached the same passage, articulated many of my feelings about that milestone. Becoming an "older woman" stirred a new level of awareness of her mortality, of the loss of her children as they became adults, of a need to simplify and intensify existence, and especially of a deep longing for renewal in her creative and spiritual life.”  Susan Schoch connected deeply as she relates in her review of Travelling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and co-authored by her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor. This is a great read for mothers and daughters, and one of our Editors' Picks.

In a few descriptive sentences, Susan Tweit distills the essence of The Good Times are All Gone Now by Julie Whitesel Weston: “Hence this unflinching and beautifully written memoir of place, in which Weston recreates that hustle and bustle, drawing a compelling portrait of the town she knew and the people who animated it, from miners and labor agitators to lawyers, women's clubs to whorehouses. Included are her own memories and the stories of her family, including her father, a hard-drinking doctor as revered for his skilled and compassionate care at the town's only hospital as he was feared at home for his temper, along with the recollections of dozens of people she interviewed in researching the book, the complex geology of the mountains, the history of the mines and strikes, and the fortunes made and lives lost.” These words give me reason and desire to delve into this book. It sounds fascinating!  By the way, Susan T. also interviewed the author, and this is posted on the SCBR site as well.

In her review of Thirsty by Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, reviewer Judy Miller makes this observation: “Bair O'Keeffe doesn't turn away from the pain or oppression, but addresses it head on with grace, and honesty. Her writing is deep, powerful and vivid. Although the story revolves around domestic abuse, it is not a downer, but a story of hope, survival and peace. A must read.” If I had only read a blurb about the book, describing it as troubling story, I might shy away if I wasn’t up to just dark and depressing. Instead, Judy’s words provide me with a different perspective, and thus informs my choice.

These are but a few of the excellent reviews waiting for you on the SCBR site. Our reviewers have been busy and we hope you will take advantage of their effort and talent.  Follow us on Twitter and you’ll know whenever there is a new review.

We’d welcome your words too. You are invited to become a reviewer for Story Circle Book Reviews.  Look here and you’ll find all you need to know about the process. If you still have questions, write to me or one of the other SCBR editors. You love words, right? Let us put some of them online for all the world to read and enjoy.

Happy Holidays to all of you from all of us at SCBR, with hopes for peace, love, and good books!

Put Story Poems in Your Memoir Tool Box!

During Stories from the Heart V (February 5-7, 2010 in Austin, Texas) Story Circle Network’s National Memoir Conference will be abuzz with myriad ways of storytelling. Among these workshops will be mine: “Story Poems: A Tool for Writing Our Stories.”

The story-poem is an often-overlooked form for telling our stories. We'll discuss the genre and its unique niche in storytelling. We’ll compare samples of prose and story poems. Then you’ll practice turning your own prose into a story poem.

What is a story poem? A story poem combines highly compressed narrative, musing, and observation using poetic techniques such as alliteration, imagery, and metaphor. In the story poem, as in prose, the sentence rather than the line is the primary unit.

Besides introducing the story poem genre, we’ll examine when the form is best used. What are its advantages and disadvantages as a writing tool? Would your own writing projects benefit from using or borrowing from the story poem form?

Poetry is an excellent genre for memoir because it condenses the story, handles emotion deftly, and is open to non-linear constructions. The story poem fosters dialogue, character, event, and understated language.  Being familiar with story poems allows you to see your story from a different perspective. They are also good teachers of craft elements that make your writing strong.

To learn more about story poems and my work browse three links from Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler’s Women’s Memoirs site.

Read story poem as memoir tool here.

Listen to a recording of our discussion on story poems as memoir:

Check out Kendra’s review my audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music” :

Effective Openings, Memoir Writing Craft, and SCN's Stories from the Heart V Conference

Opening Salvos # 13 by Matilda Butler

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

An Opening Sentence Indelibly Inked in Our Minds

If you follow this Opening Salvos blog, you know that I focus on effective ways to begin a memoir. My writing and business partner, Kendra Bonnett, and I regularly interview memoir authors to get their perspective on multiple topics, including openings. As soon as I saw the date for today’s SCN Telling Herstories post, my mind immediately turned to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's opening sentence in his message to Congress asking for a formal declaration of war. There are many ways that he could have started that speech. Yet the carefully crafted beginning was so effective that many of us can recite it from memory 68 years later. 

In pursuit of effective openings, I continue to seek multiple answers to the question, “How do you write in a way that gets the reader’s attention, that makes her want to know more, that causes her to turn the page to see what you are saying next?” That’s really the point of this blog and as you’ll see that the end of this post, I’ve recently gotten some new perspectives from award-winning author Sue William Silverman. 

More To It Than Just Openings

Effective openings, of course, are just that. They are important, but even the best written opening will only hold a reader’s attention for a couple of pages. Writers have to deliver compelling content page after page. How can you take a story, any story, and tell it in a way that engages readers? That’s the question that students ask us frequently. Even those who are writing for their family tell us that they don’t want to create a boring memoir that their children and grandchildren won’t even read. 

It’s the question that my business partner, Kendra Bonnett, and I have been asking ourselves directly and indirectly over the past seven years, first as we wrote our collective memoir (Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story) and now as we teach women’s memoir writing classes and regularly blog on our website: womensmemoirs.com  Sometimes we get a glimpse of what it takes to write effectively, such as using the five senses. We tease out that particular writing element, hold it up to the light, research it, develop writing materials, and teach it. Each time we do this, we see improvements in our students writing, but we know that just like effective openings, a single element is just a part of the whole. But what is the whole?

In the spring this year, Kendra drove out from Maine to spend a month with me in California. We do this once or twice a year, a time of joint teaching, planning the coming year, and developing new products. A major focus for 2009 was better ways to teach writing. Lots of ideas, but nothing seemed to really answer our question. We had even come up with a concept for a book about writing although it seemed too derivative of what had already been done. Several weeks into her stay, we drove to San Jose for a concert, a rare and well-earned evening of relaxation. We arrived an hour early so that we could hear the composer discuss his composition, which would be publicly performed for the first time that evening. During the lecture, he described and demonstrated the deconstruction of the piece into its three basic elements. About three-fourths of the way through his presentation, Kendra and I turned to each other and whispered in almost the same words at the same moment, “That’s it. That’s what we’ve been looking for.” Both nodding, we went back to listening to the composer. I suppose Louis Pasteur would listen to our story and repeat his line that “chance favors the prepared mind.” 

Experience Our New Writing Concept at SCN’s Stories from the Heart V

Kendra and I spent the rest of her stay developing our new concept for effective writing, an approach that we will present in our SCN Stories from the Heart V pre-conference workshop in Austin on Friday February 5, 2010. Our writing approach has come a long way from our aha moment. We have now elaborated the concept, researched the elements, found examples in the writings of bestselling and well-known authors, developed materials about what have become five elements, taught the approach in many courses and have students regularly using this approach in their memoir writing. We have seen writers produce professional quality work as soon as they embrace our technique. In addition to teaching students how to use it, we are finishing our book that fully explains and exemplifies our approach, a book entitled Five Magical Elements that Turn Your Words into Gold: Secrets of Writing Alchemy. For more information about our SCN pre-conference workshop, Click Here. 

An Invitation to Join Us and Others in Austin, February 5-7

We invite you participate with us in Austin as we join with keynoters Heather Summerhayes Cariou, author of Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir and Mary Gordon Spence author of Finding Magic in the Mundane, and a group of 27 incredibly talented memoir writers, teachers, coaches, and editors who are bringing their ideas to Austin, February 5-7 to share with you in a vibrant and insightful series of workshops.

Before You Know It, You’ll Be Writing from the Heart 

Give yourself and your writing a holiday present by signing up now for Stories from the Heart V. The SCN early-bird registration discount is only good until December 15. Click Here for more information about the conference and to register before the conference fees increase.

Back to Opening Salvos

Of course, this is Opening Salvos for December so I want to give you two presents -- both audio interviews with well-known memoirists. The first is a link to our interview with Susan Wittig Albert, known to you as founder of Story Circle Network, author of multiple bestselling series including The China Bayles Mysteries and The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter among others, and the author of Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place. If you are engaged in writing your memoir, or thinking about beginning to write, you’ll want to listen to Susan describe both her experiences with writing her memoir and her advice on how to handle various aspect of memoir. Click Here to go to Susan's interview.

My second gift to you is my just completed interview with Sue William Silverman in my Memoir Moments series. Kendra and I conducted a longer interview with Sue about her memoirs, but in this recent interview, Sue and I focused on memoir openings. In her interview, you’ll learn how your opening helps to create a portal into the experiences you want to describe. Especially important are her comments about "giving details an attitude" so that they help to convey your emotions. Click Here to listen to Sue William Silverman’s interview.

Cycle 5-2: Critique--Group Ears, Eyes, Voice, and Heart

We want to do good and help our sister writers. We join groups to do just that. When like minds come together with the same purpose—intent on trust, kindness, and truth—everyone benefits. How do critique groups produce virtuous rather than vicious circles?

Caption: Wizard & Elf Bring Gifts

Doing Good

·    A good match between writer and group encourages writing.

·    Thoughtful critique makes work stronger.

·    Beyond the individual piece by the individual writer critique offers the entire group lessons in effective writing. What is good writing? How do we do it?  How do we communicate beyond ourselves? Discerning critique opens our eyes to new ways of thinking and confirms what we’ve already intuited or believed.

Who are you as a group?

Know what kind of group you are. Here are a few possibilities.

1)  Witnessing—Story Circles  “encourage and facilitate story-sharing” without analysis or correction. Susan Albert in “Writing From Life: Telling Your Soul's Story,” says: We are mutual presences, simply, and in that attentive being-with, that delicate, careful listening, we help one another bring forth—ourselves." (p.12)

 2) Listening Back is a term I coined as an alternative to “feedback”. How can you be useful and specific in your comments while creating a cozy, supportive environment? Clive Matson’s “syngenetic workshop” (having the same origin) illustrates a version of listening back.

 Clive’s Crazy Child process is based on the writing itself. Group members take notes on the piece they’re hearing and reading in order to repeat memorable lines exactly; clearly and positively they say why these work. The author also takes notes and speaks only at the end. (Clive’s complete process is on Pp. 16-17 “Let the Crazy Child Write.”)

 3) Craft-based or genre-based groups focus on developing writing skill in more detail. Such groups may be directed towards refining work to present to the marketplace.

How to Critique?

Be a Girl Scout: trustworthy, kind, and truthful.

Trust.  Act and speak so that each writer in the group feels that her work is respected.

Kindness. You would never say to a new mother “What an ugly baby!” Remember that the writer is showing you her literary baby.

Truth. If your group is one that gives feedback, make it specific, honest and respectful.

 Kindergarten Rules: Structure

Choose someone to facilitate the group. You might choose to rotate this role. The facilitator keeps the critique on track and redirects unhelpful feedback. A timekeeper is useful as well.

Set up levels of feedback.  These levels provide readymade goals for each person’s turn. Ask the writer what she wants and address only that. For example, does she want her piece to be witnessed as she reads it? Does she have a specific question about craft (perhaps pacing or length)? Is she open for a broad band response? Grammar and nitpicking is off the board.

 What did you like? The humor? Beautiful language? Skillful structure? The idea behind it? Specific passages? Be specific.

 Follow up with concerns and suggestions. Is the writing clear? Is the language appropriate to the genre? Where and how can she improve her writing? Be specific.

Manuscripts at the ready. When we have the written words in front of us, we can more easily be helpful and specific. Small changes can be noted in the margins. These copies go back to the author at the end of the critique with names at the top.

Note it! In addition to individual notes on the manuscript, appoint a recorder to capture group responses and suggestions during the discussion.

Anything else? Have you addressed the writer’s questions? The writer may want to follow up on comments.

With practice and attention your critique group can, as Denise Levertov says, allow each woman “to say or sing all that she can, and to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to  her in language”.

How does the writer contribute to a good critique? Tune in next month. 

END NOTES

Column written by Janet Grace Riehl of St. Louis in collaboration with Stephanie Farrow of Albuquerque.

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog in the comment section below.

See the Creative Catalyst archive at: http://storycircle.typepad.com/scn/creativity/

Go to www.riehlife.com to sign up for a free download of a 10-minute audio from“Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music.”

Finding Our Voices Online

Do you have a blog? Do you plan to start a blog? Do you wonder why anyone would want to have a blog? Do you wonder what the advantages and disadvantages of blogging are?

For the answers to these and other questions about blogging join us for the Finding Our Voices Online panel discussion with a group of SCN Star Blogger award recipients on Sunday February 7 from 9:00-10:AM at Story Circle Network's Stories from the Heart V conference in Austin, Texas from February 5-7, 2010.

I (Linda Hoye) will be moderating a panel discussion with the following incredible bloggers.

Nita Lou Bryant maintains two blogs.  Check out Cafe Nita Lou for Today's Special, and Electric Nita Lou where she shares her adventures on an electric bicycle.

In addition to posts about writing, daily life and fascinating tales from the Middle East  Rhonda Esakov's Rhonda's Ramblings displays beautiful photographs of her gardens.  Rhonda is sometimes serious, sometimes thought provoking, and if you are looking for tax-tips for writers it is the place to go.

You'll find Kara Flathouse at Eskimo Kisses and Air Hugs.  Kara's blog is chock-full of nuggets about her faith, writing, family, home, garden, crafts, and life in general.

Over at Seasonality, Becky Lane (also known as Hill Country Hippie) writes about living her own good live in the Texas Hill Country.  Check out her very creative To-Do lists.

International Mom, Judy Miller, is the mother of four beautiful children, a writer, and adoptive parent mentor.  Judy's blog is a wonderful resource to anyone involved with adoption in any facet.

Becca Taylor, at  Becca's Cyber Home shares beautiful photographs from her travel adventures and, in her words, "celebrates both the magical and the mundane".

I'd love to have you stop by My Own Velvet Room and leave a comment or two as well.

Finally, if you have questions or topics you would like us to cover in the panel discussion, please post them in the comments below.  We'll see you in February!

What Would Rip Van Winkle Say?

Kendra Bonnett--Getting Read #10

If I am forced to use just one word to describe the publishing world in 2009, that word has to be CHANGE. And as soon as I’ve uttered it, I’m going to cry foul and demand a second word. What would my second word be? I’m sure you guessed it, EBOOK.

If you doubt me, then imagine what Rip Van Winkle would find upon waking from his 20-year nap. He falls asleep in 1989…probably waiting for his acoustic modem to connect to CompuServe. He awakes to a world of iPods, iPhones, and Kindles. It’s a world where bookstores in the United States are shuttering their doors at a rate of about 400 a year (according to Grant Thorton LLC’s August report on retail, and that number is up 500 percent from 2008). A world of print on demand, Amazon.com, and ebooks…thousands and thousands of ebooks and millions of downloads. 

I love stats for their ability to give a quick view of trends. Here are a few I've corralled for you:

• 3 million smartphone ebook application users (according to Flurry.com book apps overtook game downloads in September) 
• 700,000 is the number of ebooks offered through Barnes & Noble’s new eBookstore (they expect the number to surpass 1 million in 2010) 
• $46.6 million is the third-quarter revenue from ebooks in the United States (from the International Digital Publishing Forum). 
• 3.6 percent is the amount book sales are UP for the year 2009 (so far, according to the Association of American Publishers); we hear so much bad news about book sales, it’s nice to report some good news. 

Join Us in a Discussion on Getting Published

Change and ebooks are big topics in any conversation about publishing…and now a word from our sponsor. Austin, Texas, is the place to be this February 5-7, 2010, when Story Circle Network hosts its Fifth National Women’s Memoir Conference: Stories from the Heart V. You can follow the link to the conference program. This is going to be an exciting conference, filled with hands-on workshops, interesting speakers, and excellent networking opportunities. 

Specifically, I want to draw your attention to the publishing panel discussion on Saturday from 11:00 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., moderated by Helen Ginger, who in addition to her editorial and marketing services writes one of my favorite blogs, "Straight From Hel." The panelists include my co-author and business partner Matilda Butler, author Susan J. Tweit (whose "Walking Nature Home" also ranks among my favorite blogs), poet and lover of all things western Laurie Wagner Buyer, award-winning journalist Linda Wisniewski, and me. I expect this will be a lively discussion. By my quick count, the six of us have written more than 30 books (and we've all published memoirs), so I think it's fair to say that we have a few stories, and probably even several war wounds, to share.

Do You Have Questions?

With so much going on in the publishing industry, I’m sure you must have questions. So why don’t you share your questions in the form of comments appended to this post. Helen has asked her panelists to suggest topics for our discussion. I thought it would be useful to open that request to all of you.

 

One More Word

I have one more word that I have to use when describing the publishing industry in 2009. But to learn what that is, you must follow this link to my post over on Women’s Memoirs.

Telling--and Re-telling--a Thanksgiving Story

One of the most basic issues in writing is how to tell the story: where to start, where to end, what voice or voices to use, what to include, and at least as important, what to leave out. Perhaps it's obvious, but sometimes we forget that any one story can be told in many ways with many different results. Which way you choose depends in part on what your aim is, as well as on the audience you're speaking to. Knowing how to tell a story involves enough introspection to know what the story says,its underlying meaning. (Sometimes we only learn the underlying meaning by writing out the details of the story and then letting it sit a while--I call this letting it compost--and reading it anew to see what it has to say.)
 


Here's an example of telling one story--in this case, a life-story, part of my ongoing project to write memoir about my life as it happens--in two different ways for two different audiences. The first version, "A Tale of Two Hospitals," is on my blog at http://tinyurl.com/ybkbmet. Read that first, and then read the version below, which appeared in my weekly newspaper column as "Thanksgiving Is For Giving Thanks."

One unseasonably lovely November afternoon a few weeks ago, my husband, Richard and I drove over the mountains to Denver. We left on time for once, the weather and traffic cooperated, and we arrived in the Metro Area before rush hour got crazy.

I should have known things were going too smoothly.

We had planned to bring dinner to my parents, who live near the city. But when we arrived at their senior community, we learned that my mom been taken to a nearby hospital, with my dad accompanying her.

We drove straight there, and found my mother in a room off the busy ER, looking tiny under a mound of blankets and attached to a plethora of tubes and wires and monitors. She was sitting up though, and devouring her hospital dinner.

Turns out that the sore throat she had reported when I called the previous weekend had been the beginnings of pneumonia. Hence the antibiotics dripping into her veins from one bag and the saline solution from another, plus oxygen chuffing into her nose, and electrodes attached to her chest to monitor her heartbeat.

Now that she was stable, she was slated to be transferred to a regular room. So we drove my dad back to their apartment and fed him dinner.

By that time, Richard and I had almost forgotten why we ventured the long drive to Denver in the first place--almost. Our destination was another hospital, where Richard was scheduled to meet with Oncology to learn what's next in the journey that began with him hallucinating birds more than two months ago and continues through treatment for brain cancer.

By the time we left the city the next afternoon, headed back home over the mountains, my mother had improved so much that she hoped to be discharged from the hospital the next day. And we had conferred with Richard's oncologist, who explained that his tumor, a Grade 3 Astrocytoma for those who track these things, is serious enough that they want to treat it aggressively.

That means radiation to start, accompanied by chemotherapy to enhance the cell-killing effect, and then a course of chemo by itself.

That's where Thanksgiving comes in: Our two-hospital trip reminded me of why I give thanks. Not just on Thanksgiving, or just for the turkey, no matter how delicious it and the trimmings might be.

No, what I give thanks for on this holiday and every day is not stuff--nor the chance to stuff myself with food, nor money, power, or prestige.

My giving-thanks list is short, comprised of the essentials that I believe are worth more than any things or money: Sharing my days with Richard, my mother's recovery, being part of a far-flung-in-distance but close-in-heart community of family and friends, the gift of practicing our art and writing, and of being able to live in a generous and sustainable way in a place we love.

Those blessings are what make every day Thanksgiving for me.

Notice that both versions begin with almost the same words, and tell the same story. But the blog version, besides being longer, includes more details of the actual events. It's memoir-in-the-making: here's what's happening, and how it affects my life, plus a bit of the lessons I take from it. The newspaper column version gives an abbreviated version of the events, and then teases out a connection to Thanksgiving (the week the column will run). It's an opinion piece, not a news piece, but it's actually less personal than the blog post, with a tie-in to a more universal meaning. Essentially, it says, "This is what has happened in my life, and it reminds me of things we can all think about and learn from." Both versions are memoir, both tell the same story from my life; where they differ is in the voice and interpretation.

Here's an exercise to practice with your writing: take a story you've been working on. Write it out, and then go back and write it a different way: choose a different beginning, a different voice, add musings about what it means.... Then compare the two versions, read critically, and see what each has to tell you!