I’ve been working on a new picture book manuscript, my first one in a while. It’s a poem that came out of experiences with my kids and with others’ and the troubles they face.
I put it away for a couple days, pulling it out again this morning. Now that I’ve decided it’s a picture book, I’m revising it with an eye to the requirements of the format.
O the horror! It’s unillustrateable!
(Yes, I just made that word up.)
What do I mean? Continue reading
Be careful! If this guy throws down the gauntlet, it’ll probably hurt.
So yesterday I read this post by the Rubber Ducky Copywriter. In it, she posts about her first rejection letter after going out on a limb and submitting a short story. Despite her success as a copywriter, fiction is a new endeavor for her, and rejection hurt.
First of all, I’d like to cheer her on. Despite the rejection letter (and my readers will know I’m no stranger to them), the Rubber Ducky Copywriter did something a lot of us writers don’t do: try something new.
A lot of us avoid writing new things, especially after we find success (especially financial) in a particular niche. I know that it took me a long time to start writing for adults after I’d succeeded with kids’ lit. Other changes were also scary, because they carry risk. What if you invest time and emotions and no one ever publishes it?
But the pay-off can be big.
For years, I focused on my fiction. When I ventured on occasion to write a personal essay, it would inevitably face a quick rejection. Out of frustration, I gave up writing personal essays for a long time.
But, when I came back to it, I did better. My years of practicing fiction helped me hone my storytelling abilities. The first personal essay I’ve had published shows this and found a much wider audience than my fiction thus far has.
So here’s my creative writing challenge:
Continue reading
I’m sure I’ve blogged about rejection numerous times at this point, but since I continue to collect rejection letters, why not continue blogging about them?
Mom! I think you just got another rejection letter!
Over the summer, I wrote a story that my husband adored. He likes almost all my stories, but this one he really, really liked. He particularly enjoyed the nasty anti-hero at the center of the story and the unhappy ending.
On the other hand, I didn’t like the way I’d originally executed my idea, so I set it aside for a couple months. Eventually, I brushed it off and polished it up a bit before sharing it with my writing group. They provided extensive feedback, and I acted on it, hoping that the new, much improved story would dazzle the editors. Continue reading
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been picking up the pace of my submissions, and also broadening the variety of publishers I’ve been submitting to. What I didn’t realize when I committed to this strategy is how much this would test my patience.
You might as well take a seat…this is going to take a while.
Let me explain. Usually, I write for Jewish magazines. If I submit a book, it’s usually a picture book involving Jewish subject matter. The world of Jewish publishers is very small, and the editors receive fewer submissions than those who handle secular material. The response time in the Jewish publishing world is much faster than in the secular publishing world. Moreover, some of the editors have gotten to know me over the years because they’ve employed me, read me online, or just like my style. I suspect that my subs don’t always go in the slush pile, at least in certain offices, B”H & bli ayin hara. Yes, I have to wait for a response from editors, but the wait is relatively short.
Re-entering the realm of secular publishing is a wake-up call to the realities of that world. Continue reading
Yesterday, I was reading the daily post of a great blogger, Bottleworder. His topic? The benefits of being dumb. It’s worth reading.
Today, I’m not going to write about the benefits of being dumb, but something that afflicts many writers: feeling dumb.
“Have you read this yet, Eugenia? It’s brilliant, I tell you! That Rebecca Klempner’s going to win a prize one of these days!”
When I read something I’ve written in the past, I usually have one of two reactions:
1) That was brilliant! I wrote THAT? Was I channeling or something? Wow.
2) I can’t believe I wrote that. Why, oh why didn’t I (insert suggested improvement here) before I submitted? It could have been so much better. People are reading this drech? And my name’s attached to it? Can I hide now?
I think that writers like me have the self-confidence of a pogo stick. Up-down-up-down. If this were just a matter of my self-esteem, I’d keep this discussion to myself, but it actually affects my decision-making skills relative to my writing.
When do I submit? Is it good enough? Will it be accepted as it is, or will some editor laugh at my sub and then tell his buddy in the next cubicle about how terrible it was.
Is what I wrote actually funny, or did the members of my writing group (and my darling husband) only laugh because of the intonation of my voice while I was reading? Or because they were feeling punchy after too little sleep?
You catch my drift. Continue reading
Picture credit: http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/18900/18980/book_18980.htm
Okay, okay, so my title is a bit of an exaggeration. Here’s the story:
I get lots of questions from new writers about how to format manuscripts for submission. My first piece of advice is always to follow the specs articulated by the periodical or book publisher you are submitting to. However, if you don’t know where you’re sending it to, I’ve always preferred to use a sans-serif font like Arial or Helvetica for titles and author info, followed by a double-spaced body written in a simple serif font like Times New Roman or Courier. (Serif fonts have those little crowns and tails, sans-serif do not.) You can always reformat later, thanks to the magic of Microsoft Word. And don’t forget to insert a footer with a page number and your email address on every page.
In the past, that magic formula has always worked. But now that I’m working on something longer–in fact, an entire book– things have gotten complicated. It’s simply harder to be consistent across more than a hundred pages. I can’t remember how I numbered the chapters (with numerals or the numbers as words), if I put in an extra line after each chapter heading, or what size and font I used for each. Sometimes I paste in pieces from other documents and the font and size may differ. My document was turning into a mess. And don’t even ask me what happened when I went back and started to rewrite!
That’s where LuLu stepped in. You see, I was doing a lot of research last week and the week before regarding e-publishing (hence a couple blog posts wherein I mentioned it). If you publish an ebook through LuLu, you have to use a very specific format. Or, rather, you Style instead of Format.
Most of us look at the Style menu in Word and have no idea what to do with it. We write using the Format menus, sometimes just out of habit. Even if you don’t plan to use LuLu, your editor will still be much happier if you use Styles. Doing so can save you time, but it also will increase consistency throughout a document and prep it for conversion into other document formats like Adobe InDesign or ePub. In fact, if you use LuLu, you have to use Styles, because that’s what triggers page breaks for chapters and creates your table of contents.
Some people hate the way the Styles look, or object to the fonts and spacing used. That’s okay! With a little practice, you can create your own Style and apply it throughout your Word document. Want to learn how to do this? Here are some links that can help you:
http://floridawriters.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/tool-time-using-styles-in-word-to-help-with-your-formatting/
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/04/authors-keep-formatting-when-they-should-be-styling/
http://daiya.mvps.org/bookwordframes.htm
I doubt I’ll go the LuLu route, but I owe the company a debt of gratitude. My reStyled document looks beautiful and is perfectly consistent and organized. Now if only I can finish my rewrite…
Rebecca Klempner 