Artwork by Krista Brooks of RetroPets

Artwork by Krista Brooks of RetroPets

Dial C for Chihuahua, the humorous mystery I wrote with my friend, Curt Colbert, will be published by Kensington under the name of Waverly Curtis in October, 2012.

It’s the first in a series of three novels about Geri Sullivan and her talking Chihuahua, Pepe.

We have our own web site for the books here.

I remember when it first showed up in my writing life. Years ago I was a member of a writing group led by Brenda Peterson and was getting feedback on a piece I had written (perhaps one of the most personal pieces I’ve ever written) about why my father stopped talking when he was a little boy. It was the primary mystery in my family history, an event that might explain why my father was the silent person he was, and a question I had pursued through three quarters of the family history and genealogy certificate program offered by the University of Washington Extension. I gathered family stories, I analyzed my dad’s speech defect, I read microfilmed copies of old newspapers from Perkins County, South Dakota, looking for clues. I finally consulted a psychic when all my research proved fruitless and though I came to no conclusion, I thought the story was fascinating. The writing group did not agree. They asked “so what?” Well, actually I don’t think they said “so what?” They were way too polite. I think they said “Why should we care?”

This was my first experience with the dreaded “so what?” and it has reverberated in my consciousness ever since. Mostly because at the time I had no idea what to do with it. I cared, I cared passionately about my subject but I had no idea how I could convince the reader to care.

I realize now that one possible way to answer that question would be to create sympathy for the narrator and to show the reader how the search for the answer to this question changed her, or her perception of her father, or their relationship. (In my defense, some of this was in the essay, although perhaps not enough. I tend to underwrite myself as do many of the memoir writers I work with in classes.)

Years went by before I encountered another “so what?’ but it has showed up twice in this year. I think it has become a new catch phrase in the publishing world, the way the word “platform” became ubiquitous five or six years ago.

A few months ago, I submitted a proposal for my non-fiction book, My Year in Flowers, to my dream agency and got a response from my dream agent. She told me the proposal was charming but she needed an answer to the question: “So what?” This time I didn’t take it quite so personally, although again I was surprised it wasn’t obvious.

But I’ve had years of experience editing writers and I know that often what seems obvious to them is not apparent to the reader. Writers love to be subtle. We think hitting the reader over the head with information is clunky. We want to trust that our readers are smart and can read between the lines.

I thought I had clearly spelled out the advantages of my book. Wasn’t it obvious that being around nature is good for people? Wasn’t it obvious that focusing on nature in the city was a trending idea? And that most people live in cities? And wasn’t it obvious that people could learn from my experience and apply some of the same ideas to their lives and explore nature wherever they were living?

Apparently not. I’m in the process of rewriting my proposal and my introduction to make these concepts more explicit, citing authors of comparable books, and, in the process, gathering names of experts I hope will blurb my book, which can only help my prospects of selling it: to my agent, to editors, to readers.

The third “so what?” showed up a month later during a class I took this summer at Richard Hugo House. It was a four-week class on writing for This American Life taught by Bryn Gribben. This was a challenging class for me as I never listen to This American Life, but I took it because I wanted to study with Bryn and that turned out to be a smart decision: she’s a firecracker of a teacher: smart and sparkly.

I was working on the final essay in my book which is about the plant communication workshop I took in October (thanks to funding from Artist Trust). Bryn challenged us to come up with a “so what?” and then turn it upside down.

Most “so what?”’s are thematic. They can be summed up in a pithy sentence, for instance, Being around nature is good. So my statement for my essay was something like: it is possible to talk to plants! Which comes across as either trite, or obvious, or too woo-woo.

At first, I was puzzled by Bryn’s suggestion we reverse this. Is it better not to know what plants would say to us? (Perhaps, and that does point in an interesting direction.)

Bryn also suggested we try an alternate form to express the content of our essays. (This is a strategy I often use with students in my Point of View and Shapes of Stories classes..) She proposed using the structures explicated by Brenda Miller and Suzanna Paola in Tell It Slant. I had just taken Brenda Miller’s awesome workshop on one of these forms—the hermit crab essay—at the Chuckanut Writing Conference and I was eager to try it on my essay which up until then had been told in a fairly straightforward narrative.

When using the hermit crab essay, you take a form that already exists and use it to express your material in a new way. I chose the form of the Book Club Questions sometimes found at the back of books. I always hate those. They are so patronizing. It’s not a form that would work for This American Life and it probably won’t work for the final essay in my book but it did produce an interesting essay and one I think I might be able to expand and submit to a literary journal

And the juxtaposition of that form and my material revealed the twist that could make my “so what?” more interesting. I realized I had more trouble talking to my fellow participants at the workshop than I did in talking to plants.

Are you looking for a “so what?” in your writing?
You could try writing for fifteen minutes in response to the question “So what?”
Or complete any of these prompts:
The moral of the story is…..
And so, ….
Therefore, …
Thus…

The Actual Essay

Discussion Questions for Waverly Fitzgerald’s Essay Talking to Plants

1. The author seems to believe she can communicate with plants. Do you believe her?

2. Describe the dynamic between the author and the other participants at the workshop. How did that differ from the way she related to the plant?

3. Describe different ways the author interacted with her plant.

4. The author discusses the principle of “fascination.” Have you ever been fascinated by a plant?

5. The author included examples from scientific studies about plants and their intelligence. What purpose do these serve in the essay?

6. Would you ever attend a Plant Communication Workshop? Why or why not?

7. The author begins with a question from Charles Lewis: “In what ways do plants in their myriad forms enter our mental and spiritual lives?” Does she answer this question?

For years the path to readership for most writers was pretty narrow. It consisted of submitting your work for approval to a publisher or a journal, enduring many rejections, agreeing to give up a certain amount of control over marketing, and having the final result be delivered to your door or nearby bookstore as a product—a thrilling moment but one strangely outside the writer’s authority.

Just in the last few years, a whole range of new possibilities has opened up that allow the writer to find his or her audience in a multitude of ways. I begin most of my writing classes by asking writers to think about their purpose in writing and their audience. If you are clear about this, you can more easily pluck your choices from the smorgasbord of publishing choices available to you. It’s not just printing technologies that have changed radically but also options for distribution, payment and promotion.

The hand-made book has always been a work of art as well as a piece of literature, an object as lovely to handle and view as it is to read. One of the guest lecturers for my Indie Publishing class, Kate Lebo, created a hand-made chapbook for her popular Commonplace Book of Pie, which she sells through her shop at Etsy as well as at readings. The cover was printed by another one of my guest lecturers, Jennifer Borges-Foster, who creates and curates the literary journal, Filter Literary Journal.

This type of book is uniquely suited to poetry or other small texts (say, lyric essays or short short fiction). If you have the proper distribution channels, you can sell it yourself (at your poetry readings, like Kate does, or your web site). Several local independent bookstores are happy to stock your chapbooks: Elliott Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill and Open Books in Wallingford. Of course, this is a very hands-on process. The author is intimately involved in every aspect of production and distribution.

Also on the art end of the spectrum are gorgeous glossy photo-heavy books produced using print-on-demand companies. I use the Booksmart software provided by Blurb.com to make a little keepsake book at the end of each year. My book contains a page for each month, containing text and photos I’ve taken, plus an appendix of lists, for instance, my top ten books of the year, the writing I’ve completed, classes I’ve taught and classes I’ve taken and (new for me this year) the 10 best moments of the year and the 10 suckiest moments of the year.

The Booksmart software provides ready-made templates into which you can place your photos and text, thus creating a more coherent design than I might be able to attain on my own. Artists and architects often use this type of technology to produce portfolios of their work they can make available to clients; it’s also popular for wedding albums. I can imagine this being a great technology for someone who wants to document a trip or summarize family history research.

The next step-up is print-on-demand publishing, which comes with a huge range of options. If you want a truly local print-on-demand publisher, you can use the Espresso Book Machine, located at Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park) and the University Book Store. You provide a copy of your book as a PDF and the machine prints out a copy. The set-up fee is $50 to $70 and the cost per book varies, depending on page size. You can watch Vladimir Verano operating the Espresso Book Machine on this Youtube video.

Barbara Sjoholm published her book, An Editor’s Guide to Working with Authors, using the Espresso Book Machine. It’s a very nice perfect-bound book, with a classy but not too elaborate cover, containing the wisdom she’s gained working with authors and editors over the years as a publisher, an editor and the director of the Author-Editor Clinic . I got my copy from her in person at an Editors Guild event; I don’t know if she is making it available any other way.

If you are using the Espresso Book Machine to produce your books, I suspect you would have to do your own distribution and promotion. But if you choose one of the major online print-on-demand companies, you could do all your work electronically and have the company ship your book to online customers through Amazon and to bookstore customers through Ingram or other major book distributors.

I published my non-fiction book, Slow Time, through one print-on-demand company, Lulu.com ,  and I published an anthology for my writing group through another print-on-demand company, CreateSpace. I simply sent a PDF file to the company and was able to begin ordering books. Both books look good and I’ve been able to sell them through Amazon. I notice that James Patterson is now using Lulu to publish his latest co-authored books—a smart move as he has the reputation to attract fans to any sales outlet and an author receives more from a properly priced print-on-demand book than from a royalty on a sale through a major publisher.

When you’re publishing a book through print-on-demand, you’re in charge of the way the total package looks. The costs of cover design, page design and several rounds of editing will all come out of your pocket instead of the publisher’s but the other advantage of print-on-demand publishing is that you can create a new, corrected version any time you find a typo (or offer your readers an incentive to report mistakes to you!).

Many authors use print-on-demand books as part of their outreach for their business which may be focused more on lectures, consulting or coaching. Andy Himes, who is another of my guest lecturers, author of the book, The Sword of the Lord , about the generations of fundamentalist preachers in his family, has a fascinating, multi-faceted strategy for promoting his book that includes lectures and workshops, which may ultimately bring in more money than sales of the book.

E-books are another option available to authors these days, especially authors who have a web site or a blog. E-books can be downloadable PDF files, which usually sell well to readers who need instant information (I’ve been selling holiday e-books this way for years). Or they can be books formatted and published for e-readers, like the Kindle or for the I-pad. Amanda Hocking, became a millionaire selling paranormal romances as Kindle books at $1 to $3 a book.(She has since decided to publish with a traditional publisher, to give her more time to concentrate on writing.)

The Internet makes finding an audience easier but you still have to promote your book. Janna Cawrse Esarey, author of The Motion of the Ocean , another one of my guest authors, used various strategies including a video book trailer and a fabulous book launch. She also established a platform for herself before the book came out by publishing articles in magazines and blogging for the Seattle PI.

Master writing teacher, Priscilla Long, another one of my guest lecturers, put together a team of other writers (a smart move—I am on this team!) to help her with the project of publicizing her book on writing, The Writer’s Portable Mentor, which is selling like hotcakes. She is utilizing tools like flyers, postcards and address lists to get the word out about her book, and then observing the effect of these efforts through the Bookscan maps made available to authors by Amazon.

Self-publishing does involve a lot of work, and a lot of education, but it can provide rewards, including more control over the text and look of the book, greater profits for the author and a more intimate connection with readers.

So what’s a writer to do? Priscilla Long recommends at least 15 minutes of writing a day in her inspirational writing book, The Writer’s Portable Mentor, and I know several writers who have taken this on as their new year commitment. Other writers use quotas, like 1,000 words a day or seven pages.

I used to aim for a chapter a week, and that worked pretty well for me and Curt throughout the writing of our mystery novel. But I have to admit, it helped immensely to have a partner who was not only expecting me to show up with writing, but was looking forward to reading what I had written. That’s how we’re planning to write the second in our series of Pepe novels.

Last year, also inspired by Priscilla Long, I began using quotas to motivate me to send my work out. Priscilla had the ambitious goal of sending out 365 queries a year. When Curt and I decided to send out queries for our mystery novel, we had a much more modest goal (though we were inspired and impressed by Mindi Scott’s 75 queries). We were going to send out 50 queries before we would give up on agents and start querying small mystery publishers. Luckily we only made it to 21, before getting the request for the complete manuscript which turned into a contract.

This year I am also going to use quotas as a way to get my essays out into the world. I’m planning to send out one essay to ten different journals each month, for a total of 120 submissions (not as many as Priscilla but far more than the three I sent out this year). I started a list of possible journals last year which will make the task easier.

I am also going to apply the same principle to other opportunities. I plan to apply for two residencies and two grants. This quota will help me choose the best opportunities, which means I won’t waste my time, applying for every opportunity that floats into my purview.

The other lovely thing about quotas is that they give you metrics. Looking back over 2010, my track record for grants was superb. I applied for two grants and got two grants. This is after years of abysmal failure. If you look at my lifetime record, it would be more like 12 applications to three grants. Not bad, really, though for the first eight applications, my number was zero. The interesting thing about success is that it’s only one submission away.

My metrics in other areas were more embarrassing. I submitted one article and got one rejection. I queried on one book proposal, got a request for the complete proposal and then a very lovely and encouraging rejection. Obviously I could do better in these areas.

I have another (rather ambitious) goal of having two book proposals circulating at all times. (I plan to work up one in my Winter Book Proposal class.) This would mean that if anyone bought the book, I’d actually be a bit put off because I would need to whip out another proposal in order to meet my goal of having two proposals in circulation.

I also set goals for professional development. Reading regularly is an important part of my development as a writer and I use the library to give me deadlines. Got to read that book before it’s due (I often renew them up to the maximum first). I’m also planning to attend two writing workshops and two conferences.

I used to plan to attend one reading a month. Now this just comes naturally. In fact, some months I attend a reading a week. So many of my friends and students are getting published that sometimes I have to choose between conflicting events.

In those early days, I was always the person asking “What’s a typical writing day for you?” (Never “where do you get your ideas?” I have more than enough of those. In fact, if you need some, just let me know.) Nowadays I’m more likely to be asking for information on how someone found an agent or a publisher. The writing is done, the writing is solid, and I want to get it out into the world.