writing tips – Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

An aspiring writer asks ….

Hey Marsha! I’ve contacted you before about a book, and decided to write a new one about XXX, this is what I have for now:

Chapter 1 (page or two of story ….)

My response:

Dear xxx,

First, congratulations on plunging into a story! So many people say they want to write but never get around to actually doing it. But I cannot read your story. If I read every story readers sent me, I wouldn’t have time to write. Years ago, as a solution to wanting to help aspiring writers but not having the time to do it, I created a private online critique group for writers.

You would be welcome to join it once you write the first draft of an entire chapter book and you are age 16 or over (I’d want an email from a parent to confirm permission). The critique group is free, but in order to stay in it, you give other participants feedback on their work in exchange for feedback on yours.

So, in the meantime, happy writing. I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

all the best

Marsha

A young reader asks how to get published: my answer

Dear xxx,

Congratulations on being such an avid reader and writer. That’s wonderful! As to the process of having a book published, it is a long and complicated thing. If you google how to get a book published you will encounter all sorts of scammers who just want to steal your money with the end result that your book might get printed, but that’s not the same as getting published. The difference is this: anyone can write a story and get the story printed and bound into book form, but the only people who would ever read that are the people you give it to. When a book is published, the writer crafts a unique story with wide appeal that a publisher (which is a category of business) buys and the publisher has the author work with editors to make the story even better. That part of the process alone can take several months. The publisher also works with marketing people and designers etc etc, and then gets a printing company to do the actual manufacturing of the book. The publisher also sends out advance review copies of the book to reviewers across the country. They read the book and then give it a rating and they write a review of it and those reviews get published in various places and readers read those reviews and it makes them decide whether they want to buy the book or not. The author doesn’t pay for any of that to happen and they’re really not involved in the business end of it. The author gets paid. How much? On a $10 book, an author would be paid $1. So the way to have an income as an author is to write a book that a ton of people will buy. Publishers are very picky about the books they publish because it’s such a complicated and expensive process for them. In fact, a publisher might get thousands of people sending them book manuscripts in a year and they only publish one out of maybe 10,000.

To put it another way, what if you were interested in being a veterinarian? No matter how gifted you were in science, you still wouldn’t do surgery on a dog, right? You still need all the training. It’s the same thing for being an author. There are lots of people who are talented in writing, but they still need the training.

My advice to you is to take your time and learn about the craft of writing now, rather than trying to get published right off the bat. A good way to prepare yourself to be an author is to read widely, which I know you’re already doing. Set yourself a goal of reading 1000 books in the same genre as what you’d like to write. I know that sounds daunting, but reading widely is the way to expose yourself to all sorts of story techniques and give yourself ideas of what may work for you. It’s a pathway for you to develop your own unique writing voice. People who haven’t read widely risk sounding like the last author they read.

The other thing to do is to write every day, which I suspect you’re also already doing. Keep up the good work! Just like a marathon runner trains for a race by running, an aspiring author trains by writing.

If you get your whole book written, the next thing to do is join a critique group where others who are writing books give you feedback on your story and that helps improve it. Writers need to be humble and to realize that they can always improve. It’s a hard profession.

I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was in 4th grade and I wrote my first novel in 8th grade but my first book wasn’t published until I was 42 years old. I did have other stuff published before that though. For example, I was the editor for the school yearbook in 8th grade and wrote for the high school newspaper and was a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines before writing books. I also went to college and did a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a master’s degree of Library Science. When publishers look at manuscript submissions, they also look at the writer’s background. They are more likely to be interested in a story written by someone who has been published before and who takes their writing so seriously that they study in college to improve themselves, so taking these steps at the beginning can lead to long time success.

Good wishes with it all and big hugs to you

Marsha

Overwriting

I run a private online crit group where participants “pay” by giving critiques in order to get them from other participants. Recently, one participant posted this question after my feedback on her work-in-progress

Question: I’m not sure if I totally understand something you advised me on. You said, “No second stage directions in one sentence.”
an example of this is when I wrote a triple stage direction:
“Maria crossed herself, picked up her spoon and said X”

Why, Marsha is 2 or 3 stage directions not to be done? Is it because it is “over-writing?” I looked that term up and I think that is why you advised this. And yet, in novels it seems common to do multiple stage directions. For example:
“Laila kneeled before her mother and took her hand.”
“He coughed, cleared his throat.”
“He hunkered down, pulled her to him, and held her for a long time.“

Answer: It’s overwriting when the actions aren’t necessary to move the scene forward.

The examples you posted from published books are not equivalent to the example from your own work. Maria crossing herself, picking up a spoon and saying something are not three significant actions. One of those actions will move the story forward with fewer words and in a less distracting way.

In this example:
“Laila kneeled before her mother and took her hand.”

Both of Laila’s actions are separate and significant. If you took one of them out, the meaning would change. The writer has used an economy of words and action to progress the story. It’s a beautifully pared down sentence that’s infused with action and emotion.

An overwritten version of the above would be:
Laila smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt, then looked into her mother’s blue eyes. She knelt down onto the small embroidered cushion at her mother’s feet, then reached out and took her mother’s hand.

In this example:
“He hunkered down, pulled her to him, and held her for a long time.”

Again, the actions are quite separate and vivid with an economy of words. You couldn’t remove any of the actions and have the same progression of story. And again, this is a beautiful sentence, infused with meaningful action. Actually three significant actions, vividly shown, in just 14 words.

For more writing tips, go here.

Dealing with Writer’s Block

Regarding your question about writer’s block, don’t worry what you write when you start out because by the end of the writing process, it will be changed a lot. The goal at first is to write what authors call the terrible first draft. You can’t write anything good until you write something terrible. So blat out what’s in your head at first and don’t worry that it sounds terrible. My first drafts are terrible too!

I force myself to sit at my laptop for a set period of time each day with just Word open and all other apps closed. I write for that time and stop when the time is over. The next day, during my writing time, the first thing I do is read over what I wrote the day before and do some revisions, then I write some more. The next day, I do the same — so revising and writing forward during each writing session.

When I begin a novel, my writing periods are 3 hours yet sometimes I only manage to write 200 words. Sometimes when I revise, I end up with fewer words than when I started — that’s okay, it’s part of the process. After I get about one third of my manuscript written in first draft, I’m off and running and can write one or two thousand words during those three hours. Towards the end of the manuscript, the three hours goes out the window. Sometimes I write all day and into the evening without noticing the time flying by because the story is writing itself.

Hope this helps!

Tips on getting author visits, doing them, and getting paid!

These are notes from my talk for the SCBWI Canada East The Art of Story 2017 conference in Montreal:

Author visits are an excellent way to augment income, but how can you carve your own niche in this competitive market?

Once you get a yes, what happens then? And how do you create the content of the visit itself?

Is there a way to transform a single request into more?

How do you become a dream visiting author?

What is an author visit?

Venues for these?

Who books?

And now the meat:

How do you contact these people?

don’t look needy.

Start small, start local – clubs, organizations, TL, literacy

Figure out how your books solve their problems.

Transforming from a non-presenter to a presenter:

do a book launch
DONATE a presentation
Raise money for a cause
Book store presentation that’s offered to your target market.

Take pictures of the above and blast it around social media

During the above gigs, make sure people take pictures of you presenting. These pictures should go up on your website, get tweeted, blogged and facebooked around.

There is an added bonus to doing the above – you will intuitively and organically find out what it is that you should be talking about in your presentations and for each of us it’s something different.

Now, join the Writers’ Union. They offer subsidies for readings and they also have a listing of authors who do presentations. This makes you look professional.

Once you’ve done the above for awhile, you’ll notice requests coming to you. But be patient. It can take months or years. You need a critical mass of books, and you need people buzzing about you.

And now comes the trickiest part. The request for a FREE visit.

Everyone will want a freebie. All librarians and teachers will tell you that there is no budget, that they’d love to pay you but they cannot afford it. Don’t fall for it and don’t give them a freebie. If you do this, you will not get paid visits. If you’ve joined the Writers’ Union, you have an excuse. You can tell them that your union strictly forbids you doing free presentations. You can compare it to their profession. They wouldn’t teach for free no matter how much they’d love to, right?

It’s better to turn down a gig than to do it for free. They get what they pay for. If you do a freebie, they won’t prepare the same and they will not value you. Worse, word will get around that you do freebies. Freebies are the kiss of death for an author.

Confirming a paid visit:

Once you’ve settled on a date and time and you’ve talked about the pricing, send an invoice by email in a pdf attachment with the due date as the date of the presentation. You should be handed the cheque as you’re leaving the school. If you’re a Writers’ Union member, do send them a link to the subsidy and urge them to quickly apply. You can invoice them two ways – one subsidized, the other unsubsized – then tell them to ignore the one that doesn’t apply.

About a week before the presentation, email again to make sure that everything is on track.

More information about the content of your presentation:

Your presentation is basically about filling their needs with your niche topics.

your presentation is NOT about selling books or talking about how great you are.
You are presenting HOPE.
No matter what the topic or who you are, it’s about inspiring the audience, not bragging about you.
Many people have always wanted to write a book, or find out something really interesting and there you are, the embodiment of that dream. Your talk should be about your audience – ie – find yourself in them.
How? Ask questions. Tell embarrassing stories about yourself, and then relate that to your books.
Show your audience that the difference between you and them is overcoming challenges, practice and time and stick-to-itness, not intelligence or privilege.

Your presentation should be flexible, made up of modular parts that can be presented in various orders and sometimes left out altogether. When a teacher or librarian contacts you, you want to know the grade level, the topic they’re interested it, and the size of the audience. Ask if there’s a particular theme that they’d like emphasized and then work it in.

Leave lots of room for white space – questions from the audience.

While you can certainly bring media, don’t depend on it. The problem with power point and other devices is you have less of a chance to read your audience because you’re interacting with the hardware instead. Think of your presentation as a conversation with your audience.

One thing I like to do is make an aisle down the middle of the room. That way I can pace and make eye contact. Most importantly, I can get to the kids in the back row who have the spitballs.

Limit readings. During an author visit you don’t HAVE to read from one of your books. You can story-tell about them instead. If you do read, choose a very short punchy passage. Don’t read again unless the audience begs you to.

When you do a visit, you cannot watch the clock, so ask a teacher to watch the time for you and let you know when you have 5 minutes left. Those last five minutes are perfect for Q&A.

How do you deal with stonewall silence? This will happen from time to time. One sure way to get people to talk is to ask questions. An example, who here likes writing? Then give some quick and amusing writing tips. Another one: ask your audience how long it takes THEM to edit a story they’ve written. Then tell them your process. The teachers will love you for this.

Be prepared for the unexpected, like presenting WWII to babies, or having a leak in the ceiling and water pouring down upon you as you present. Having a student throw a chair at another student or fart loudly as you’re reading a moving scene. Don’t ever get angry. Usually, just pausing and pleasantly waiting for the teacher to handle it is all that’s required.

Is there a way to transform a single request into more?

Your pricing should encourage the kinds of bookings you want. For example, if all you want is a single booking a day, then just offer that on your Author Visit page. If you love doing full days but hate all the travel for a single visit, price a single visit on the high side and a full day economically. If you’re booked for just one or two sessions, ask the teacher if she’d like to share with a neighbouring school and offer her a discount or perk for doing so.

At the end of your visit, ask the TL to spread the word about you to her colleagues.

If you’re just starting out, a single session should be about $200.

The bulk of Canadian visits take place in the GTA. Sad but true. This is also where the bulk of authors live. If you want to break into this market, consider incorporating your travel costs into the cost of the visit. For example, it’s more attractive to offer a full day for $1000 than a full day for $800 plus travel. Or charge a flat fee for gas rather than per km.

Another way is to get a grant from some organization that will offset visit costs. For example, one writer got a grant from Greyhound and that paid for her travel. I’ve got a grant from Internment Canada for specific topic presentations. There are tons of foundations and organizations that would love to have spokespeople for their issues and if you’ve written a book about it, you already know your own organizations. I only offer my grant to venues that have already booked me for a part day of presentations.

How do you become a dream visiting author?

A dream author is one who can cover an entire elementary school in the course of a single day for approximately $1000 + travel and HST if applicable. Schools have a mandate to bring programming to all students. How can you cover an entire school? For JK to grade 2, offer two 30 minute half sessions for the price of a full session. You need to have material that’s geared to all grades and I don’t mean talking about your YA to the grade 4s. The dream visiting author has published a vast array of books and so can entertain any grade level. If you’ve got a bit of a gap in your array, offer a lunchtime writing workshop or a meet-the-author informal Q&A over lunch with select avid student writers.

If you can’t cover a whole school in a single day, figure out what you can offer what others can’t. It’s all about finding that niche.

A dream author arrives on time.

A dream author emails an invoice at least two weeks in advance.

A dream author advises the teacher or librarian of any grants or subsidies available.

A dream author finds out which door to enter and where to park ahead of time, or if taking public transit, figures it all out ahead of time.

A dream author always brings something as a gift.

This can be bookmarks,

a book for the library,

links to free downloadable teacher guides,

a cup of coffee for the librarian,

a 15 minute drop-in to JKs

or sticking around for an extra ten minutes at the end to sign library copies of your books

or to graciously meet with that parent who is an aspiring author.

Illustrators can do a demo and then donate the artwork to the venue

A dream author is flexible and can change a presentation at a moment’s notice when the audience suddenly changes.

A dream author has a recent book, and likely has a number of books out.

Brand new authors are less likely to get bookings unless there’s something very buzzy about them

Do awards help? Yes and no

Age and sex matters — unfortunate but true. So try to be tall, young and male.

question about picture books

The other day I had an interesting question via email:

“In your writing tips, you warned against submitting photos or pictures with the text — commissioning your sister-in-law to paint some pictures for the book, for example, is a bad idea.
However, what if the pictures are your own drawings, and you want to be an illustrator as much as you want to be a writer?”

Here is my answer:

There is one exception to never sending in illustrations, and that’s if you’re a professional artist. Even so, the best way to handle it is to submit the story without illustrations, but to mention in your cover letter that you are an artist. If you have a sample that can be viewed online, give them the url.

Another way around it is to submit your art portfolio without your story.

If you’re an illustrator, consider making up postcards and sending them out to editors.

The reason you don’t want to submit both at the same time is because it gives them two reasons to reject you. What if they hate the story but love the illos or visa versa? That said, there are some publishers who specifically request submissions from people who are both author and illustrators. Those ones should be on the top of your “to submit” list.

Good luck with your submissions!