REAL WORLD

Planning Your Own Book Launch

March 5, 2019 By Sophie Masson 9 Comments

Your book is coming out soon and you want to mark its entry into the world. You don’t want it to just slide out unnoticed amongst the serried ranks of ‘New Releases’ in the bookshops. You want it properly launched. But your publisher isn’t keen to do a launch. Too much time and effort for too little return, they imply. Unless you’re a celebrity, or a highly publicized first-time author with a dedicated, free-spending, large family and friends network, book launches aren’t a big part of many publishers’ promotional strategy these days. But—surprise, surprise—we authors still love them! And so it’s become more and more common for authors to put together their own book launch.

But launches are not as easy as they might sound to someone who is new to the process—that time and effort cited by reluctant publishers as reasons not to have one are very real things. As a veteran of many launches—both those I’ve attended and those I organized for my own books as an author–I can vouch for that! I’ve also recently organized other people’s book launches as a small-press publisher–generally small publishers are warmer to the idea of book launches than big ones. So I’ve accumulated some knowledge of what can help to make your launch a hit and not a miss!

First of all, it’s about planning. Planning well ahead of time, months ahead of time. Ask yourself:

What kind of launch do I want? Big, small, straightforward, themed–that is, not just themed around your book, but with a certain look? You will not be surprised to learn that a big, themed launch is the most time-consuming and expensive to pull off. However, don’t let it stop you if that’s what you want. With our small press, we’ve run a couple of themed kids’ Christmas book launches with a cast of thousands. Well, not exactly thousands but you know what I mean. Readings, music, party gifts and prizes have worked really well, but have also been a large amount of work to get right, with many panicky pre-launch moments.

The smaller, more straightforward launch, where someone launches the book with a short speech, the author says a few words, then everyone toasts the book baby with the sparkling stuff before hopefully lining up to buy signed books whilst trying to graze on the last remaining nibbles, might not be as glamorous but they can still work really well, especially if this is your first book, you’re celebrating it locally amongst your family and friends, and everyone’s excited to see you in print. When you’ve had several books out, it’s better to space out your launches—don’t have one for each book, because people, even your nearest and dearest, get launch fatigue. And small, standard launches are much, much easier to get right, aren’t nearly as much work, and booksellers know exactly what to expect and don’t get jumpy about unusual activities happening too close to those neat shelves. [Read more…]

Yes, I’m Still Sick: Writing with Chronic Illness

February 26, 2019 By Sarah McCoy 47 Comments

A friend texted me the other day while I was lying on my back under the glaring light of my dental surgeon’s chair.

How are you?

I’m still sick. [Attachment: photo of me on laughing gas.]

You have had the (poop-emoji-est) January ever!

[Interpret ‘poop-emoji-est’ as you wish: wasteful, crap-natious, grossest, unbelievably garbage, and so forth.]

It made me lopsided smile through the dental dam, needles, drills, suction, and mind-altering medications. Because she put it quite right. It has been a doozy of a winter.

If you would permit me a moment of painful honesty and at the risk of exposing myself to be less than super-powered, super-positive, super-super Sarah:

I have Celiac Disease, a severe gluten allergy. I was diagnosed in 2002. For the most part, I have it well controlled with diet, exercise, and strict precautions. That said, it’s a lifelong autoimmune disease that has weakened my body’s ability to fight off most passing viruses. I try to keep as far from infectious disease as possible. Hard to do, right? Even harder when you’re a traveling author handshaking, hugging, and sharing meals with reader friends and strangers. Needless to say, I catch things. But never has it been like the winter of 2019.

In the spans of five weeks, I contracted a malicious fever virus, followed by an upper respiratory flu that turned to bronchitis; paroxysmal coughing from infected airways put me on an inhaler all hours of the day and night, unable to sleep, to breathe, to speak, and producing extreme exhaustion, dehydration, and medication induced GI distress. In the midst of this, I could not put off having planned dental surgery: a tooth abscess and a number of cracked teeth. I stress grind… a lot. All of this. In five weeks. That was just the physical. Emotionally, I hit a major low, which was more debilitating than the illnesses.

I didn’t feel like getting out of bed some mornings. I didn’t feel like getting in bed some nights. What was the point? I was miserable either way. Never before had I experienced such an out-of-body pessimism. I couldn’t read: it hurt my eyes. I couldn’t write: it hurt my head. I couldn’t watch movies: too loud! I couldn’t go outside: I’d catch my death of cold. I couldn’t get warm inside: shivering with fever. There were moments at my writing desk when all I could do was cradle my teacup and close my eyes; block out everything else, remove myself from reality, and float in the nothingness.

In the midst of one of those dark moments, I began to think about writers with chronic illnesses. No, I became obsessed with them. It seemed the only Internet search for which I had the strength. I wanted to know their stories. Because I could not imagine if my malaise and suffering continued for months, years, even decades. What I found gave me a whole new respect for many of my favorite authors; men and women who silently bore lifelong diseases, pushed through the depression that comes alongside of extended illness, and created powerful art.

Here are a handful of the many, living and gone, who exemplify endurance and inspired me to speak up about the realities of being a chronically ill, flawed, less than super-powered, human. [Read more…]

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Care and Feeding of the Weary Writer

February 25, 2019 By Julia Munroe Martin 14 Comments

Photo by Daniel Arrhakis via Flickr’s Creative Commons

Last year I posted here with confessions from a weary writer. I talked directly to the camera, like I was on a reality show. My writing was at a low point, and I was in a flat panic. I was afraid I’d never get back to the writing zone. I no longer felt a passion for writing like I once did, but I wanted to write.

To be honest, when I reread my post, I cringed a bit. My first thought: Was that me? I took that as a good sign.

Today, I’m revisiting that post with updates. Where am I today? What takeaways can I offer?

What’s changed

I’m happy to report I’m writing again—and enjoying it! I finished a short story, started another, and I’m beginning to write a new novel. In addition, I’ve hired an editor to work with me on revisions to a novel I wrote five years ago. I also no longer feel like a fraud, like I did in my original post.

More importantly, I wake up early—sometimes in the middle of the night—thinking with anticipation about what I’m writing. Again, as I’ve been my whole life, when something happens, my first question to myself is how will I write this?

But, true confession time. I do have lingering fear this is only a reprieve. That it’s short lived. That I could relapse and not be able to again write freely, so I don’t take writing for granted like I once did. But this fear is both a blessing and a curse. I’m acutely aware of those dark writing lows, but I also have more ideas of how to address them. And I trust my fear will recede as my confidence regrows.

What hasn’t changed

I’m still afraid I’ll never be traditionally published. This remains a deep and abiding fear. I’ve had a rough path in this regard (as many of us have), but (not to be morbid here) I feel afraid my time is running out. That’s my real fear. I talked to my physician-writer son about this once, and he gave me sage advice: Are you dying tomorrow? What else are you going to do?

This sounds brutal, but it’s really not. What he meant was: keep pursuing your dreams until you can’t or don’t want to anymore. How can I know if I will ever be traditionally published? All I can do is keep trying. If I don’t write, don’t submit, don’t try, I knowI won’t be published.

What’s made a difference—the takeaways

From my initial post, I learned in comments and from personal messages that many of you feel similarly to how I feel. What specifically did I do? What advice can I give? What can any of us do in this situation when we feel we can’t write or aren’t writing with the same zest we once did?

1. Don’t avoid thinking about it. I can’t say for sure it helped me get back to writing faster or helped the time go faster, but I can say that for me it didn’t slow the recovery process to examine my fears and confront them. It certainly felt better to actively pursue my problem. I’ve spent a lot of my life as an avoider. I’m a weird mix. I talk about my feelings a lot, but when things get painful, I avoid doing things about my pain. Instead, I want to push it aside and pretend it’s not there. It scares me too much. These days, I try to look fear (and feelings) in the eye, and though I don’t necessarily embrace my fears, I examine them and look for ways to make things better.

2. Seek help. From friends, from family, and if necessary from professionals. Talk about it. To everyone. This sounds trite and obvious. But it’s also true and necessary. I was lucky that after I wrote my original post, several writers reached out to me, and I emailed them, talked to them, commiserated with them. People gave me good advice, but mostly people just listened. I started working with a very supportive (but tough) editor, and I went to a therapist who has been very helpful especially in helping me realize that I should allow myself to feel the pain and grieve the losses.

A caveat: I actively avoid negative people. I avoid doomsayers and mean-spirited or indifferent people. This is general advice, not just for writing. This doesn’t mean I only talk to people who agree with me, but I won’t spend time with people who make me feel bad in some regard.

3. Think. Deeply. About everything. Whether it’s about why you’re going through what you’re going through or about why the world is going through what it’s going through or about how the squirrel outside your window evolved so it can jump as far as it can jump. Deep thinking is not another description for rumination or spiraling—it’s thinking about the core of life, the meaning of existence, in both practical and theoretical terms.

4. Embrace joy. [Read more…]

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Parenting Advice, Elevator Pitches, and the Essential Heart of Story

February 20, 2019 By Kathleen McCleary 10 Comments

When my daughters were little I used to read all kinds of books and magazines filled with parenting advice, looking for the nugget of wisdom that would help me be the best possible parent. One day, I found it: “Don’t forget to smile at your kids.”

Well, that’s obvious, you think. But it isn’t. In those days I was working full time, raising two toddlers, and helping support my husband through a PhD. I played stuffed animal games while plotting grocery lists in my head, and bustled them into clothes and socks and shoes and coats with determined concentration every morning. But once I took that mandate to heart and began smiling at them more readily, the dynamic in our house shifted. Their faces would light up in response to my smiles, and their happiness made me happy, and it became a virtuous cycle. It remains the single best bit of parenting advice I ever got.

Can writing advice be distilled down to one game-changing essential nugget? I’d say yes: What does this character want? Well, that’s obvious, you think, as obvious as smiling at your kids. But just like that nugget of parenting wisdom, there’s more to it than that. Because what your character wants may conflict with the wants of a host of other characters, for starters. What your character wants may put them at odds with themselves. What your character wants may be not one thing but two things, and those two things may be at odds. And if you can stay focused on all those wants, you will end up with one hell of a story.

So what’s the best way to do that? Here are a few tricks: [Read more…]

“That’s Delicious”, and Other Advice From My Grandmother

February 7, 2019 By Catherine McKenzie 16 Comments

My Grandmother, Dorothy, turned 103 last week. No, that’s not a typo. She was born in 1916 in Lethbridge, Alberta. She grew up in a middle-class family with one brother. She graduated high school and worked at Sears. My grandfather asked her to a dance when she was sixteen and he was fourteen (cheeky bugger!) and she said yes. They married after seven years of dating on November 11, 1940. He died four years ago, at the age of 97, in the year when they would have celebrated their 75^th wedding anniversary. They were together for more than 80 years. Everyone, including my doctor, told me that she would likely be dead in six months, their lives so intertwined that she literally could not go on with out him. And yet… here she still is.

I often get asked what the secret to her success is. My cheeky answer? Cocktails. But there’s some truth to that. I went to see her in October. It might be morbid, but at that age, it feels like every visit that I have with her will be the last. She keeps mostly to her bed, sleeping a lot, but when she’s awake, she enjoys watching the golf on TV (or any sports really) and she is always awake for her 4 PM cocktail. We chatted for a bit and she asked me about my life. She talked about how lucky she was to be able to be in her own house (with help) and to have people come visit her. Right on schedule at 4, her helper brought her her rum and ginger ale (it used to be coke, not sure how the change happened). She lifted her glass, took a sip, and said “That’s delicious!”

And there it was folks, the epiphany. The secret to how she’s lived this long, the reason she’s outlasted my grandfather etc: she is still able to find joy in simple things, including a drink she’s had every day for most of her adult life.

Imagine if we all approached life this way? [Read more…]