Tag Archives: publishing

Creativity takes Courage. Announcing the Creativity Series eBook

21 August 2012

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When I began this journey back in May, it started out as a selfish quest for an answer. I’d started writing my novel and kept running into the same roadblocks of fear: fear of failure, fear of wasting my time, fear of not being good enough, fear of being made fun of. So I went to some friends and some people I’ve never met and asked them the questions that resulted in this Series.

From you I learned that creativity takes courage.

I feel like Meister Eckhart is speaking to me when he asks, “Why is it that some people do not bear fruit? It is because they are busy clinging to their egotistical attachments and so afraid of letting go and letting be that they have no trust either in God or in themselves.”

This Creativity Series has shown me I need to trust, not only in myself and in the process, but also in God, that he his faithful and he will do it. Do what exactly? Move when I move, jump when I leap, walk when I take that first step, and be present when I write that first word.

The eBook

I was very afraid to do this, but I went ahead and…

I have published the Bereshit Bara Creativity Series in an eBook format available here.

It is available for the Kindle, the iPhone and iPad, on your computer, or other devices like the Nook.

It is 99 cents and any profits will go to the charity I work for: worldschildren.org. It might be silly to charge a dollar for a book you can read for free, but you can at least feel really good about the purchase and know you’re making a difference in a poor child’s life. I haven’t told the charity I’m doing this. I want it to be a surprise. Hopefully a big surprise. If you feel so called I’d really appreciate it.

Adele Konyndyk’s post tomorrow will bring to a close the Bereshit Bara Creativity Series, but the Creativity Series will continue with Part 2 and I’ll have more information on that next week.

oprah

What Kind of Writer Are You? A Career Writer or Just a Writer?

23 May 2012

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I daydream about doing television or magazine interviews where I talk about my upcoming book. And instead of being forthcoming I’m vague and mysterious and the interviewer is frustrated and I’m smiling at my genius on the inside.

This would be the imaginary life of my career as an author. In this life I turn down the chance to be on Oprah and instead invite her out to Oregon to play a game of wiffle ball, or walk through the woods, where her or her conduit will really get to know me, the vague mysterious me.

I wish I was joking about this.

There is a difference between the Writer and the Career/Professional Writer (like the one I imagine).

The literary agent Michael Bourret once said,

It’s a balancing act, but being an author and having a career as an author are two different things.

The Writer is someone who writes because they must. The Career/Professional Writer is at first a Writer, but then becomes a person who does not write because they’re busy selling their book. According to the novelist Helen DeWitt, Jonathan Franzen hasn’t written in over two years, because he’s busy pushing his product.

She’s a bit cynical and frustrated and I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and forgive her for the rant, but I also like that she doesn’t romanticize the subject,

The writer who is literally an addict, the writer who can’t help himself, the writer who HAS to write, can never be anything but an amateur, because the industry requires the professional to put writing on hold not just for a day or two, or a week, but for years.

(This is a comment in response to this Paris Review post.)

But I do think there are writers who make the effort to write everyday and still be professionals. My mentor Bret Lott comes to mind and his novel Jewel was picked for the Oprah book club.

There is still a difference. Most of us are just writers, writing because we must and dreaming about making it a career. Understand that a career often means selling and not writing. Marketing and spending your own money to get the word out, to find readers, to sell yourself.

Tim Kreider laments his long lost days of simply being a Writer,

But now that that long-anticipated day is almost here, after all that work and longing and postponed reward, I find myself unexpectedly missing the hard part, the boring part, the long slog to get here. Sitting at my laptop listening to music on headphones and watching steam from a vent unfurling outside the window in the darkening winter afternoons, forcing myself to write for just 40 more minutes, may have been as good as it’s ever going to get

I guess be careful what you wish for. Or maybe start preparing now.

Most books today are selling only to the authors’ and publishers’ communities

19 April 2012

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From “The Ten Awful Truths — and the Ten Wonderful Truths — About Book Publishing”:

7. Most books today are selling only to the authors’ and publishers’ communities. Everyone in the potential audiences for a book already knows of hundreds of interesting and useful books to read but has little time to read any. Therefore people are reading only books that their communities make important or even mandatory to read. There is no general audience for most nonfiction books, and chasing after such a mirage is usually far less effective than connecting with one’s communities.

8. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers. Publishers have managed to stay afloat in this worsening marketplace only by shifting more and more marketing responsibility to authors, to cut costs and prop up sales. In recognition of this reality, most book proposals from experienced authors now have an extensive (usually many pages) section on the authors’ marketing platform and what the authors will do to publicize and market the books. Publishers still fulfill important roles in helping craft books to succeed and making books available in sales channels, but whether the books move in those channels depends primarily on the authors.

(Huffington)

This all seems new, but it’s not really new. It’s been apparent for years now. How many years? I don’t know, but still apparent.

Publishing in the New Yorker takes care of those blank faces when you say, Yes I’ve published

12 January 2012

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As Dubus put it in my interview with him, “I think most writers quit between the ages of twenty and thirty for various reasons. They are alone then unless they have exceptional parents; even if they have very loving and tolerant parents, they still know in their heart of hearts that their parents wonder about what in the fuck they are doing. Unless they live in a community of writers, like at a graduate school, they don’t have friends who really understand what they are doing. They don’t get published. They work and of course, don’t get money for it. There is no one to set the alarm clock for. There is no one who cares whether they get there to work, no one who can threaten them with firing or reward them with money, and you put all that on one poor young man or woman’s back, and it takes an awful lot of courage, because it comes down to that person believing in him or herself and saying, I will do it. While having a job that supports me. And you finally do publish in something as lovely as Tendril or Ploughshares, for example, and you call your mother or father and tell them, and they say, ‘What’s that?’ I think that is why young writers can be persuaded so easily to change things to be in The New Yorker. Not for the goddamn money. What’s three thousand dollars going to do? You can’t live in Mexico on it and write. Not for long anyway. Won’t change your life. I think they do it because it takes care of those blank faces when you say, ‘Yes, I’ve published,’ and they say, ‘Where?’ and you say, The New Yorker, and they say, ‘Ooh! You must be real!’ “

–Thomas E. Kennedy