Look for magazines that publish the types of story you are submitting.  If you can afford it, but a copy or two of magazines or journals that you would like to submit to.

When you submit a short story, the cover letter should not tell what the story is about.

To find magazines and journals that publish the type of story you are writing,  check the annual Best American Short Stories collections to see where the stories were originally published.

Source or inspiration:  Michelle Wildgen’s class in Advanced Novel at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival, 2009

Writing a book is the hard part, except when compared to getting published!  Here’s some tips for finding an agent:

To find potential agents to query, look at similar books that you love.  Check the acknowledgements, which quite often mention the author’s agent by name.

Publishersmarketplace.com, a paid subscription site, shows what agent sold which books.

Your novel synopsis should be  a single page that gives a feeling for both the tone and content of your book.

A reputable agent will never ask you for money up front.

Source or inspiration:  Michelle Wildgen’s class in Advanced Novel at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival, 2009

Take your writing tips on using humor from Shakespeare: whenever things got really gloomy in Shakespeare’s plays, he sent in the clowns.  There were always clowns, even in the blackest tragedies.

Avoid the ISW “I am a Serious Writer” syndrome.  Too much self esteem annoys your readers.

If you can write, think and smile at the same time, you will instantly stand out.

It takes some effort, but don’t just write what you know.  Write in order to know more.

Dorothy Parker – The difference between wit and wisecracking:  “Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

Source or Inspiration:  lecture given by humorous essayist David Bouchier at the University of Iowa, July 2009

Writing Tips:  Personal Essay and Memoir

When writing personal essay or memoir, and you can’t remember certain events or why something happened, write from “perhaps” to loosen your memory, or even to make things up.  Whatever follows “perhaps” does not have to be the literal truth.

A personal essay utilizes a more idiosyncratic voice than  journalistic writing.  Be as much of yourself as you can bear to reveal.

Source or Inspiration:  Cecile Goding’s weekend workshop in personal essay at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival, 2008

Writing Tips for fiction and creative nonfiction writers:

Writers often find similar images coming up in their writing repeatedly. Of course you will edit them out to avoid redundancy, but if you find yourself using the same constellation of images over and over – what is your self-conscious trying to tell you?

Try using uncommon vocabulary to talk about a subject.  For example, instead of battling a disease, and eventually conquering it, try a different family of words.  You could go more military –and wage a campaign or crusade, with skirmishes and frays.  Or how about gardening terms – weeding and hoeing, fertilizing and watering.

Readers want to be able to do more than just see what you are describing.  They want to hear, smell, taste and feel it. When you have completed your first draft, make a chart of which senses appear in a piece.  You may discover one or more senses that are missing.

Source or inspiration: Cecile Goding’s class in personal essay at University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival, 2008

For 10 years, Deborah Halverson edited children’s books before starting to write herself. She is the author of teen novels “Honk If You Hate Me” and “Big Mouth”. Her most recent book, “Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies”, gives aspiring writers for young adults writing exercises, tips, and more. She has also written three books in a forthcoming series for struggling readers and a picture book about Santa Claus to be released. Deborah has a master’s degree in American literature and a fascination with pop culture. She is also the founder of the writers’ advice website DearEditor.com. Deborah currently lives with her husband and triplet sons in San Diego.

Don’t miss this delightful conversation that gives a behind the scenes look at the world of book publicity. Molly Brouillette works for Penguin books as a publicist at Tarcher, an imprint focused on mind/body/spirit books. Molly, a life-long lover of books, has worked on campaigns for books ranging from healthy soul food to the upside of aging to near-death experiences. Her career has included such experiences as doing facial yoga on Good Morning America, hand-modeling for the cover of a dating book, and attending a UFO conference. Keeping up with the always changing publishing world isn’t easy, but Molly finds it worth the effort to have a career that revolves around reading, writing about and talking about books.

Dan Buettner is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Zones and the author of “The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest”. In 2004, Dan worked with National Geographic and some of the world’s top longevity experts to identify places around the world where people lived measurably better. That research provided the basis for “The Blue Zones” book. “Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way” uses a similar approach to find the areas with the happiest people.

Don’t miss out on this very inspirational Writers’ Voices! Allan Lokos, the founder and guiding teacher of New York City’s Community Meditation Center, has written “Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living”. In our fast paced, ever changing culture, patience is often our most needed, but least cultivated virtue. Allan’s book lays out a helpful and compelling path to deeper patience. Drawing on his many years as a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, as well as interviews with people who have had their patience dramatically tested, this book provides a realistic approach to becoming calmer and happier with one’s self, in relationships, at work, and with the world.

Author, speaker, and consultant, Seth Braun discusses his new book, “Indestructible Success: Creativity, Leadership and The Art of Small Business”, and shares about his passion for helping others reach their fullest potential. In his book, Seth lays out a blueprint for both inner and outer success. His book explains how to build your mind, heart and actions so that you can live your dreams and make the world a better place. Seth lives with his family in Fairfield, IA and also enjoys gardening, playing music, and chocolate

Author, speaker, and teacher, Melissa Tosetti founded the online magazine, The Savvy Life, and, with coauthor Kevin Gibbons, wrote the book “Living the Savvy Life: The Savvy Woman’s Guide to Smart Spending and Rich Living” (Morgan James Publishing 2011). Her book explores ways the reader can save money, so you have more to spend in the areas that are important to each individual. Melissa teaches courses on savvy living in the San Francisco Bay area and at Chabot College in Hayward, California. She also teaches Kung Fu and Fearless Fitness classes. Her hobbies include traveling with her family, horseback riding, gardening, and cooking.

Cheryl Fusco Johnson discusses storytelling this week with Larry Brooks. A critically acclaimed best-selling author of six psychological thrillers, Larry has written “Story Engineering”. The book describes six core competencies that any writer should master. Larry is also the creator and editor of Storyfix.com, an award winning instructional writing site.

Don’t miss this fantastic informational conversation!

Cheryl Fusco Johnson hosts this conversation with long-time educator, Sharron McElmeel. Sharron is an award-winning literacy advocate, author of educational materials, and publicist for many Iowa authors. She has been awarded with Iowa Reading Teacher of the Year and nominated as Iowa’s Teacher of the Year. She has written extensively on integrating literature into every part of curriculum.

Don’t miss this very informative conversation!

Writers’ Voices welcomes back best-selling author, Dr. Rick Hanson. The author of “Buddha’s Brain”, which has been published in 21 languages, Dr. Hanson recently wrote “Just One Thing: Developing a ‘Buddha Brain’”, a pocket-sized companion to “Buddha’s Brain”. Featuring many quick, easy, yet helpful practices to change the neurocircuitry in our brains to enable us to have greater happiness, love and wisdom. Dr. Hanson is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s taught at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvad, and in meditation centers across the world. His work has been featured on the BBC, U.S. News and World Report, and Consumer Reports Health.

Environmental educator, writer and historian, Dr. Bruce Hopkins has written the book “When Foxes Wore Red Vests”, a collection of poetry, essays, drawings and photographs that show how sense-of-place can serve as a role-model for future generations, as well as helping us learn how we can best inhabit our communities and the natural world around us. Dr. Hopkins career has included teaching in Nebraska, New York, and Iowa, and serving as chief administrator of an Iowa area education agency. He currently focuses on helping people of all ages connect with nature, a greater sense of community, and the literature of place.

By Rudy Wilson

Over the years since the Knopf published The Red Truck, two other books have come out, with smaller book publishers, never with the clout of Knopf, and never seen by Gordon Lish as he had left Knopf by then.

Gordon continued to be magnanimous. He wrote, “”Excellent Rudy What a dear heart you are to write. I am so glad you are of high heart and I am always happy to read anything you wish me to – for Q or for Knopf… All yours, signed GL.”  He said more than once, “We write for God and art.” I brought up Bret Easton Ellis’s success, and he said, “Well, maybe, but once you get dirt on the floor, you will never get it clean.”

Some years later The Red Truck was published by a second press, which was inept and sold maybe fifty books in a year. Gordon sent condolences and suggested I read his most recent book, Zimzum.  I asked him advice on how to run a Writers’ Workshop and humbly, he laughed and said, “You’re asking me?”

His latest, probably last note to me, last summer was so perplexing. It concerned the third, out-of-mothballs publication of the battered  Red Truck, with Ravenna Press. I sent him a copy, as well as a second book they printed, a collection of short fiction I had published over many years, Sonja’s Blue.

His note read, oddly, surprisingly: “Thanks for the book! Curious – that you did not like Knopf, especially given the citations (from reviews) on the back cover, too, that your kindness nowhere mentions the distance and manner of The Red Truck’s travel from original ms. to finished ms. Do you remember? Are you aware? Are you willing to give credit? Explain, please.” No signature.

I felt confused, even sad. I had no control over the new issue’s cover art or jacket information. Perhaps I should have dedicated the book to Gordon or put his name on the cover. I recalled, thinly, “I wish I could put my name on it…” Maybe I’d hurt or not credited the man enough, somehow.

There was always a sense of isolation about Gordon Lish. He presided in a position of personal power, a master in his world, well-respected, with strong opinions, and a history of making and breaking of authors. And yet, his notes to me over the many years and the most recent one indicate and inform me that he is a man of heart and sensitivity, humor, even with a certain fragility after all this time of infamy in the business. He was my friend. And I give him all the credit he deserves.

I’ve pretty much ridden the Red Truck into the ground. It sits outside in my tall-grassed, back yard, silently, a faded, now red-orangish, 1950 pickup, cracked windshield, birds’ nests in the front seat with wild flowers and weeds in the back truck-bed. A sentimental icon of the years: there’s the worn steering wheel, having been to NYC many times. Somewhere, in the glove compartment would be a black and white picture, twenty or more years old of myself and Mr. Lish, Capt. Fiction, standing close to me on a Manhattan sidewalk, uptown – one of us smiling.

By Rudy Wilson

As the novel release date for The Red Truck approached, my editor Gordon Lish wrote: “Yes, it’s a damn fine-looking and fine-reading novel, and there’s growing excitement here about it. I fully expect a not inconsiderable triumph, certainly one of a critical kind…..Sit tight.  All is good. I will write jacket copy presently.  Cheers, G.”

Gordon asked me to try and find pre-reviewers with some lit rep. I found a few, mainly through The Iowa Workshop. Gordon wanted to get the great Leslie Fiedler to review it, but to no avail.
The book came out in May, 1987.  The reviews, the notice was wonderful and very positive, from Kirkus. LA Times, Wash. Post/Times, NPR, NY Times, twice, once by the ‘only reviewer to be feared,’ Michiko Kakutani, positively. She called it “more of a long prose poem, than a novel.” The 250 pages of narration cut from the book might have accounted for that, but overall I was quite happy with the notice. As was Gordon. When he read the first review, from Kirkus, he wrote, “Call me soonest!”

The book got good reviews and yet just “sat there,” according to a woman at Knopf I talked to some time later concerning paperback possibility. “We expected it to take off and it just sat there.” I always felt that there was no book marketing although the reviews were good all around the country, and even in the International Herald Tribune. But…it wasn’t commercial. Soon it was remaindered and sold for 99 cents, within 6-9 months after publication. So it goes with the big time. My brother sent me a t-shirt that had printed on it, “RED TRUCK FOR SALE 99 CENTS.”

The book did not receive ‘all the awards possible,’ but did receive a Michener Award and an NEA a year later which took me to Maui for a year. From there, I wrote Gordon a letter explaining where I was and that I was living with a ‘terrifyingly beautiful woman.” He responded: “Your life must be grand there – the woman…send me her photograph and I will decide if your description is an accurate one.” He went on to say, concerning the stall of the Truck, “Not to fret, Rudy – I will always be on your side and always concerned to advance your best interests…” And if I recall, he did like the photograph.

Meanwhile Gordon suggested I push on with my new book. When I submitted the finished manuscript to Gordon, his response was priceless: “No writer can twice get away with a novel whose characters’ actions are pointlessly lunatic.” In an interview with my local paper concerning the NEA, they used his quote as title: “Wilson gets national arts grant to finish ‘lunatic’ novel.”

Gordon finally rejected my second book as I hadn’t “re-invented myself enough,” a phrase I was to hear concerning the next three novels I sent him. I think it was a pattern with him and the writers he found, very possibly all fringe lunatics. Meanwhile Gordon published a story I’d written, entitled, Horsie-Child of Mine, in The Quarterly. He didn’t like this title either. He wrote: “Let me call it MEAT …and I will take the story for Q3….Hardly a sou in this, but swell showcase, I can assure you.”

We eventually compromised and called the story Cake, although neither title had anything remotely to do with the story, except the frail possibility that Cake seems softer and more feminine than MEAT, as the story did have a prominent female, child character. He did write and say, “R –I was only funning. “Cake” it is. Cheers. G”
And, lucky me, to show up in The Q! I suggested I come to NY and have a drink with Gordon. He said, “God, Rudy, we’ll have a helluva lot more than a drink…”

By Rudy Wilson

The editing process began, the correspondence with Lish mainly on typed Knopf notepaper, and the calls, after he insisted I get a phone.  Once, I had a very violent scene from Taxi Driver, as my outgoing phone-machine message and came home to a message from Gordon.

“For my trouble today, in calling you, I got the sickest answering message… get back to me soonest. Click.” It was awhile before I heard from Mr. Lish again. But it was basically all very good, amiable work. Gordon Lish was always kind to me and very encouraging. He settled my nerves and suggested I continue on with writing books: my second novel, also with a title he disdained, Shiny Apalaris.

Gordon took The Red Truck to France for a month and finished the edit. “Dear Excellent Rudy,” he wrote. “Here’s the edited version of what I think now is best titled Cartoon. I will not expand on my remarks on the phone, save to aver, once again, that I think you have a first-rate text here, one that will gain you exceptional notice. The work was, I suspect you must realize, tough to do. But it is behind us now; now the next step is to come to terms with what we have here. I hope you will find yourself persuaded to go with it as it is. But the decision is entirely yours, of course….” The note ended with “Be well and feel good. I have a safe copy here, so call if there is anything you can’t dope out.”

I went into shock.  I sat in my old brick house, on a dirt alley, note and manuscript in hand. I couldn’t understand the book now. The ending completely threw me, practically into contortions and panic. It made no sense to me, rationally, irrationally or on any feeling or metaphorical or allegorical way: in no way whatsoever, to me.  He had taken a line from the middle of the book and stuck it at the end, totally out of any humane context. I fell into a two week long, silent depression.

He called. “What’s the problem?”
“I just can’t live with the book like this, and the title makes it sound silly, almost absurd,” I said. “It makes no sense to me now, all the narrative being cut, it’s just not the book I wrote.”

I must add that Gordon Lish did not write one word of the book, but cut, cut to the bone, and rearrange he did, drastically. There has been recent controversy concerning Gordon’s work with Raymond Carver, of which I know nothing, firsthand. From my experience I would assume Lish did what he did to my work, simply cut and arrange the furniture to his artistic perception.
“Ok, “he said. “Put the book together as you will and let’s then see what we have. If you can make it work for you, we will go with that.” I sensed his quiet disappointment after the work he’d done, but for me it was an absolute necessity.

I rearranged the text, adding some narration for a semblance of a plot and we agreed on the outcome.  Later, The Washington post commented: “…Wilson reveals himself as a prose stylist of genuine gifts; perhaps next time he can create characters and plot to match.”

So it went.  In Aug. ’87  I received some numbered details from Gordon: 1. MS here. 2. Looking good…. 5. Title is to be The Red Truck. 6. We are in good shape and we have a great book and it is time you started being thrilled… 12. Be happy…Feel good, racing, G.”

What a fine, helpful man he was to me, all those years ago. He wrote about the cover art. “Just in — gorgeous stuff. Can you see the Cross? Feel good – G,” and, “The book is simply wonderful. It reads powerfully – I wish I could put my name on it.”

I told him that he may as well, really, as it’s now cut down from four hundred plus pages to one hundred eighty-seven…

Gordon responded, “Rudy, you are the dearest man. I send all Christmas cheer.. G”
As the publication date drew near, Gordon wrote me many notes.  “Rudy, go over these proofs with a fine tooth comb, combing every speck of the page…(Looks gorgeous to me. Oh, boy, what great times ahead!) Cheers, G”

I found the man to be always magnanimous, generous, and strong, also strongly opinionated but nowhere have I ever glimpsed the ‘frightening’ workshop teacher that scares so many people. “Stop,” Lish reportedly told GQ writer Neal Karlen, who took the class and then wrote about it in the late ’80s. “Karlen, I don’t feel like I need to know this to keep on living.” Well that’s not so tough, really.

However, I asked him if there should be a picture of me on the jacket. He asked me for one. “Do you still have long hair?”

“Well, it’s not long, since that picture, but yes…what am I supposed to look like?”
“I think it best if you have no image of you on this book, because after people read it, it may be best to remain anonymous…for your own good.”

By Rudy Wilson

In the summer of 2010, I got a disturbing note from a very tough guy: Gordon Lish, the infamous, New York genius of the literary world– top Knopf editor, prolific author of over fifteen books, editor at Esquire, with his own top literary quarterly that catered to the best writers, especially new ones, ‘Lish’s discoveries,’ of which there were many. He taught, and still does, the most prestigious Writing Worskhop in New York, according to many.

He hung out with Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, in the 60’s, Neal Cassady, and maybe even Kerouac, was often in the news, and is again lately. His note took me back over many years to the communications and connection we once had.

In another summer — 1986, Gordon Lish pursued me. He saved my life: my literary life. I was living in a small, one room house, writing, writing and writing, living obscurely, hiding out in the cornfields of an Iowa town, south of Iowa City, realm of so many well known authors. Saul Bellow, and Dylan Thomas read there: Flannery O’Connor went through the program, among so many ‘well-knowns.’ At that time, I’d never heard of Mr. Lish.

Now, I’m pursuing Mr. Lish, and must simply say: Dear Mr. Lish, it ain’t over yet…

It started in a little pizza parlor in a small, Iowa community, with a phone call.
I had no phone then and lived in a quiet hell.
“A guy named Gordon Leish called you this morning,” I was told, checking my messages. I’d published one story, in The Paris Review in 1984, receiving an award for it, so maybe that was the bait.

I was interested in NYC, so I took the message and called back.

The man who answered informed me he was a senior editor at Alfred Knopf and his name was Gordon Lish. I still didn’t know who he was. I was pretty well read, had my hopeful MFA in hand from Iowa, but I wasn’t too aware of editors, although Mr. Lish was also well known for his books, Peru just coming out that summer.

“Knopf likes your novel. I like it, and can offer you $6,000 as an advance against royalties to publish it.”
I didn’t hesitate. Best book publishers, best editor, well known personality. And I read that he loved Salinger’s For Esme- With Love and Squalor. “Yes,” I told him. “Sounds great.”
“Well, I think it will be a fine novel…after it’s edited.”
“I see,” I said. The book was titled, Samskara and was a 440 page manuscript, submitted to him by my newly acquired NY agent. “Edited?”
“Yes, of course. It’s obvious there’s much here but I will have a real job to carve it out –“
“Oh…sure.”
Who would say no, fumbling, from the pizza parlor? It was the first book I’d written, and Alfred Knopf calling…
“What needs to be done first is to cut out all explanations and apologies. That should reduce it significantly, and the perplexing scenes can be cut, the ones no one will understand, and then I believe we will have a fine book. As it is now, only the lunatic fringe will read and it will get very little, if any notice. Leave it to me and it will receive excellent reviews. Not too sure of sales, as it is an odd book, but we will win every award we can.” I was sold.

Most of my communications from Gordon Lish were through notes, and phone calls, and looking back reveal his style, his stand on art and what writing is about.

Without Gordon Lish, I’d have been digging ditches in those years and the many that followed, as Knopf opened doors for me, two more books published with other presses and some awards. The book he edited is The Red Truck, and was published three times, the third in 2010 with Ravenna Press. I sent Gordon a copy, as we have remained in touch over the years, and he had also printed a story of mine in The Quarterly, his NY literary magazine.

He never liked the original title, Samskara and I see why, of course: it’s eclectic and few know what it means, even myself. ‘Scars on the soul,” I explained to him. “Nonsense,” he said. “Make a list of possible alternative titles and get them to me.” He laughed most of them off but found The Red Truck suitable. “Ah, what a swell title,” he said.

Have you got a little money to spend on self-publishing, but not a lot of time before you need the finished product?  Companies like instantpublisher.com offer subsidy publishing with orders shipped in as few as 7-10 days. It’s also very affordable at under $100 for your first 25 copies.

What I like most about instantpublisher.com is that they offer two options for your ISBN number. For $75 you can purchase an ISBN which lists them as the publisher. For $95, they’ll sell you an ISBN which lists you as the publisher.

They offer a 58 page publishing guide, which is a well written and easy to follow policies and technical manual complete with screen-shots. They also provide a PDF uploading video tutorial. Of course, any site will give instructions for use, but in browsing around I found that instantpublisher.com was well organized to take me from curious web-surfer to understanding the whole process in record time.

When it comes to your publishing project, is “shoestring budget” an understatement?  Well, there are actually a number of ways to publish for free. I don’t mean blogging or creating an e-book, either.

You can end up with a nicely bound book offered for sale on the web, with no money for setup, on websites like lulu.com. You set the selling price, taking into account their cut for printing, and you don’t pay until you order yourself a copy of your book.  It can stay as simple as that, or you can buy additional marketing services. My favorite feature is that you can order yourself an ISBN number through lulu and skip the step of becoming a “publisher” yourself, which involves registering a business name and buying a batch of ISBN numbers.

Another way to publish for free is through a company like PublishAmerica.  Their motto is, “We treat our authors the old fashioned way – we pay them.”  This is a traditional publisher that doesn’t charge a publishing fee, pays royalties, and will even pay an advance. They make their money by selling books. Unlike many traditional publishers, they are marketing to the self-publishing audience, actively seeking submissions. You don’t need an agent to submit.  One nice feature I notice about them is that they are happy for the author to include their own illustrations. PublishAmerica does the layout and cover design. The process can take a few weeks to several months.

With so many publishing options, it really pays off to take the time to shop around, read the fine print, and find the publishing company that is uniquely tailored to your situation and goals. Happy publishing!

I’m embarking on the task of comparing publishers and publishing methods, to decide which way we should go to publish a novel written by Monica Hadley, founder of Writers’ Voices.

Now, my nature is to want to get a comprehensive list of all the publishers IN THE WORLD, or at least the country, and compare and contrast them all.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, there are way too many choices out there to consider them all.  They even defy categorization by offering a huge range of financial arrangements. It would be neat and clean to draw a line between “traditional royalty publishers” and “subsidy publishers”, or between publishers who carefully select what they’ll publish and those who don’t. But, some publishing houses who publish anything will pay royalties, some do-it-yourself companies are free, and some have traditional royalty arrangements and take submissions from anyone.

The good news is that if you look around enough, you can find just about any arrangement you feel comfortable with.

The main questions to ask seem to be these:

SIZE AND REPUTATION OF PUBLISHER

How does one submit a manuscript?

Is an agent needed to submit?

Does the publisher specialize in a certain genre?

What percentage of submissions get accepted?

What is the reputation of the publisher in the industry?

What well known books has the publisher published?

PRODUCTION

Who pays the cost of printing the book?

Does the author pay to get copies of their book? How much?

Is the book printed in large batches or is by print on demand?

Does the publisher offer editing services or print the book as submitted?

Who covers the cost of these services?

Who makes the final decision on editing? The author or the publisher?

Does the publisher offer graphics services?

Who covers the cost of these services?

Who makes the final decision?

Does the publisher offer page layout services?

Who covers the cost?

Who makes the final decisions?

DISTRIBUTION and FULFILLMENT

Does the publisher have the ability to get your book onto mainstream book store shelves?

Does the publisher have the ability to make your book available by order through major book stores?

Does the publisher fulfill wholesale orders?

MARKETING

Does the publisher market your book on their own website?

What else will the publisher do to market your book?

Does the publisher reserve the right to discontinue marketing efforts?

What are the publishers expectations of the author in terms of marketing efforts?

What are the consequences to either party if marketing follow through does not meet the agreements?

RIGHTS and ROYALTIES

Who maintains the copyrights to the book?

Are royalties paid to the author for books sold by the publisher?

Generally speaking, a mutually beneficial relationship has to be established where the author and the publisher strike a balance between risk and reward. Publishing companies advertise what they are offering, and the savvy author will shop around until he or she finds a company that offers an arrangement comfortable to their situation and goals.

A publisher who takes all the risk by paying for production costs, may retain more of the rewards, like keeping the rights and a healthy share of sales proceeds. Whether this is a good deal for the author or not depends on the size and reputation of the publisher and their marketing prowess. It’s better to end up with 10% of $100,000 than 50% of $100.

Another thing to consider is that a publisher who is willing to take a large risk by putting up all the money upfront and even paying the author an advance, is more likely to want more creative control.

Choosing the right publisher involves clarifying what is more important to you, the author. Creative control? Retention of rights? Financial reward? Financial risk?

In future blog posts, I’ll be reviewing and comparing some of the more prominent and interesting non-traditional publishers and self-publishing methods.

Our interview with Allan Cobb on 4/13/ is a great tutorial on Print on Demand publishing.  Allen did everything himself and got his first 50 books for a total investment of $300.  He breaks down all the costs, right down to shipping.  He also discusses the pros and cons of self-publishing verses traditional publishing, purchasing ISBN numbers, listing yourself on Amazon, and much more.  If you’re looking into self-publishing, this is interview is a must-listen.

Pay-to-Publish companies can have an array of contracts and services.  They all require money from the writer to print the book, but they often do some marketing, retain rights to the book, and take a percentage of proceeds.  They may give the writer a few complimentary copies and sell books to the writer at a discount. In some cases, you pay at the front end to be published and marketed, and you pay again to get copies of your book.

Print-On-Demand companies are pay-to-publish companies who are set up to do very small runs of a book.  This means that the initial total cost can be much lower, but the price per book is much higher. This usually means that the selling price of the book needs to be much higher to cover the printing cost.

My research for this project will yield a self-publisher comparison chart that I’m looking forward to sharing on the site.

When a royalty publisher considers taking a risk on an author, an already established fan base and track record of book sales is a big plus.

I remember when, in music circles, self-produced CDs were known as “coasters”, anticipating the eventual fate of those stacks of CDs most of us had of our own work.  But now, the tables have turned, and producing your own CD is an important step in getting a record deal.  Record companies woke up to the idea that they needn’t risk millions of dollars on new artists when they could select from self-produced artists with an established fan base and already impressive record sales. Why gamble when you can invest in a sure thing?  I saw this first hand when I travelled with a friend to Nashville for a meeting with a major record label.  The label was very interested in her work and encouraged her to keep writing, and to contact them again when she had reached 50,000 sales on her own.

This wouldn’t have been possible in the past, but in both music and writing, this is now possible, and for many artists, it is the way to go.  Among successful “self-published” authors are Mark-Twain, Mary Baker Eddy, and Deepak Chopra.

Books Review: by Cheryl Fusco Johnson

Iowa author Wendy Henrichs debuted two children’s picture books in 2011.  Released by Peachtree Publishers, I Am Tama, Lucky Cat pairs Wendy’s often lyrical text with soft, stunning watercolors by award-winning illustrator Yoshiko Jaeggi.  In When Anju Loved Being an Elephant, published by Sleeping Bear Press, John Butler’s majestic, uncluttered paintings shift from gray to amber tones as the title character transitions from lonely solitude to companionship and elation.  In both books, a beleaguered animal eventually achieves a better life thanks to the belated kindness of strangers.  Generosity, patience, and friendship play a large part in both books, as well.

After adopting two cats, Wendy noticed one often raised a paw while sitting, just like the Lucky Cat figurines displayed in Japanese restaurants.  Curious, she did some research.  In an afterward, Wendy explains she based I Am Tama, Lucky Cat on a popular version of the Lucky Cat legend, which probably originated over 350 years ago.

Concise, vivid details clearly establish this book’s exotic, ancient setting.  In the opening, a cold, hungry cat stumbles upon “a rundown temple at the foot of a majestic snowcapped mountain.”  Inside lives a kind, impoverished monk who names the cat Tama after a river, where “brilliant, blue-backed kingfishers fly.”

Tama offers the monk “a touch of fur to keep him warm, a mouse caught to protect our meager rice supply, and a happy companionship.”  Together the new friends watch “carp swim between the plum petals floating on the pond” of “the overgrown garden of the temple.”  Later—when thunder “barreled down the mountain.  Boom! Clap! Crash!”—Tama brings good fortune to the monk, his hollow-cheeked followers, and a weary samurai warlord.

Concisely establishing lyrical settings contributes to the success of When Anju Loved Being an Elephant, too.  Wendy created a fictional elephant, Anju, after reading about real elephant friends separated during their youth, then accidentally and ecstatically reunited decades later.  This picture book covers Anju’s travels from Sumatra, where long ago she “romped and rolled in rivers and mudholes” with her best friend Lali, to present time and the “hard floor of the trailer truck” where “the chain clinks and clanks at her ankle.”

After many lonely years, Anju is leaving a small zoo: “Through the trailer window, she sees the tall spindly Carolina pines, rooted in their rusty-red soil, for the last time.”  En route, Anju remembers that 50 years earlier she and Lali slept in “tall, ticklish grasses, heartbeat-to-heartbeat.”  When the trailer truck stops, Anju rediscovers joy.

Embodying kindness, generosity, patience, and friendship, both Wendy’s animal tales entertain readers while subtly directing them towards better behavior.  That’s why one online reviewer compares the comfort of reading Wendy’s books to the happiness she feels eating Granny’s soothing chicken soup.

Perhaps a bit dated, but incredibly timeless, hit old, still familiar chords of childhood, those innocent perceptions and fears, the secrets — and in this book there are childish secrets and understandings as to how the world works, as well as very severe secrets of Soviet defection of a scientist to Canada, and the murder of a child. There are moments of odd child abuse by a fourth grade teacher, so subtly created, written at angles and shadows and indirect imagery, sadly, frustratingly experienced by us, the helpless readers. It touched me as well, the reality of how a family works and what it was like, exactly like for this particular one, a Canadian Air Force family, moving from post to post.

The writer creates several important subplots, all somehow woven together, from the relationships within the family of four, (a French mother, prone to exasperated expression in her native tongue, the father, and Madeline and her teasing, but loving, older brother,) to the quirky, crippled girl across the street who carries a switchblade knife, with her German Shepard dog, to the many young girls who are abused in the seemingly innocent Air Force base school, never to be known about except by us.

MacDonald’s seamless, natural writing comes to us smoothly, beautifully, and it appears her words flow out, all original, not a single worn out phrase or cliché, as easily as though falling through lovely space. She was clearly meant for the purpose of expression through language as she is a master of the craft. Her form, her pacing, her lack of fear to take the readers into the depths of character, all so natural, as if the story were being copied down from tablets shown to her, miraculously. I find it a flawless book.

The story line concerns a Canadian Air Force officer and his family as they move location to location, most recently from Europe to a small post in Canada. It’s peacetime, 1962 and most of the novel is seen and felt deeply by eight year old Madeline, and at times by her father, a good man, Jack McCarthy. Through one impossibly timed perception connects himself with his daughter through a terrible secret that they keep, without ever literally sharing it, the murder of a little girl….and who may have done it. The best part of Anne-Marie’s writing is the intimate understanding and real experience of the characters, especially the girl and her father. We experience her thinking, her fears, her views, her growing up, her confusion, her joys, her pains, her everything. We get to know her possibly far more than we could a real person.

And that’s the thing: we, in short, love these characters. I found myself missing them while away and have rarely regretted putting a novel away. The title itself, obscure at first, by the end takes on an amazing, uniquely startling perception of and in itself. The novel is a 738 page delight. I wish it’d been 1738 pages.
Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian, playwright, novelist, actor, and broadcast journalist who lives in Toronto, Ontario The daughter of a member of Canada’s military, this novel seems likely to be familiar territory for her. MacDonald won the Commonwealth Prize for her first novel, Fall on Your Knees which was also named to Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.

Books Review: “The Way The Crow Flies”, by Ann Marie MacDonald

New Book Review “A Stranger Like you” by Elizabeth Brundage Viking, published Aug. 5, 2010

This is a tough novel to review as it’s so good and at times so bad. There’s story and then there’s the presentation, the language, the fictional dream an author tries to create. And it’s so, so easy to break that dream, even with one sentence or one phrase.

Brundage is a master story teller, without many flaws or breaks in this dream….rarely. I recall the first chapter of  The Sound and the Fury, a completely flawless first person account of reality and experience seen through the eyes of a 33 year old,’idiot.’ The ability to create this perfection in a fictional piece is almost impossible, especially with such a heady work as Faulkner’s.

Back to Brundage.  Her story is multi-layered, involving Hollywood, the land of dreams, with some very well done illustrations of the machinations of how the film industry works and how politics and parties play into it all, as seen by a disappointed screenwriter and a producer, with other supporting characters. The story draws one in as there are strong emotions and plans for revenge against the powerful producer, a strangely drawn woman, Hedda Chase. She has rejected his screenplay, after the former producer had given it ‘the green light.”  The drama begins.

I enjoyed the storyline, the twists, the revenge and possible murder. Then there is the huge twist, three fourths into the book, something completely out of left field which draws us in even deeper. I won’t reveal the plot or outcome but the book’s main theme is about power and the freedom from wielding it, even freedom of living itself.

Brundage is adept with structure and rhythm and word choice. She attended the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and received a Michener Award, which is given to a promising writer in hopes they will use the money and time to complete a piece of work.  This story used time and plot in odd ways, not really unique, but it moves back and forth in its presentation. We may be reading the story, and at a chapter break, we find ourselves back ten years, tracing the life of one of the characters, and often it’s not obvious but confusing, even irritating at times. Yet her development of one of the main characters is so well done, we have no idea who he really is until deep into the book, like when a camera pulls back to reveal what’s really happening.

The problem for this reviewer is the language. It’s generally standard, used to push the story along and we hardly notice it;  it doesn’t break the dream,  but then she goes and says trite expressions like , “She laughed nervously….” Or, “He ran up the stairs quickly.” For me, a lover of originality, this threw me. She knows better than to cheat the reader of seeing just how did this woman laugh nervously. If she would have used her obvious skills to design and create a real character who had her own mannerisms, which she does, but not enough, it would be a tremendous accomplishment.  Once she lets down her guard on expressions and cheats on clichés, it reduces A Stranger Like You,” to a very likable, easy to read mystery, but not a literarily superlative novel, which of course quite likely means little to most readers.

I recommend this book as a fun read, at times even spellbinding, but felt let down too many times when the author showed her hand. “Authorial intervention,” of any kind, went out in approximately the 18th century in literature.  “Dear Reader, at this point in our story, let me tell you…etc.”
is almost never, ever done unless in dialogue or for some specific purpose, but never unknowingly, which I feel Brundage does at times. This is nitpicking but it concerned me as I know she can do better.

Brundage is also the author of The Doctor’s Wife, which is a mirror to this book, same structure, same style and a good, strong story, very good in fact. Enjoy her book and put it away on the shelf to be basically forgotten, although a good time was had by all!

In Epiphany you will find a seamless combination of interviews with people from all walks of life telling their individual stories of epiphanies, with author Elise Ballard’s reflections on these stories, and the people telling them.  Both elements offer an uncommon opportunity to connect with the humanity behind the written voice.   A book that informs us may be worth reading.  A book that entertains may be a best-seller.  A book that does both becomes a classic.  It is rare to find a book like “Epiphany” that not only informs and entertains, but makes you feel like you know, and wish you could know better, the people you find within its pages.

It is an intriguing assortment of people, and reading how Elise connected with each of them pulled me in.  Even some of the celebrities, such as Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Deepak Chopra and Barry Manilow, were part of her personal network developed over her career as an actress, independent film-maker and producer (she produces Dr. Oz’ “YOU” DVD’s.)  Others she reached out to specifically for this project, including Dr. Maya Angelou, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nell Newman. The same holds true for the lesser-known subjects.  Many are Elise’s long-time friends and colleagues, while others are people she met or was referred to while in the process of asking everyone she knew if they had ever had an epiphany.

“Epiphany” is not primarily a memoir, and yet an enchanting portrait of Elise is revealed, bit by bit, even in her brief introductions to each subject. For example, she writes about being mesmerized by the trailer for “Horse Boy, ” a documentary of author Rupert Isaacson and his family’s healing journey through Mongolia on horseback.  She continues:

‘Rupert did the voice-over, but you could never really see his face, only his hair. Several weeks later I was driving down South Congress Avenue… when in my peripheral vision I saw a man on a horse… Wait, that man had longish blond hair and was on a horse… I pulled over, turned around, and screamed out my window at him, “Are you the Horse Boy guy?!”  And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I’m hoping the same is true for me and Ms. Ballard, at least through her books!

Books on writing fall into three main categories.  There are books to get you writing – filled with exercises, writing prompts, and motivational insights.  There are books on technique -”how-to” develop character, devise a plot, get from point A to point B.  And there are books about what it really is to be a writer.  Natalie Goldberg’s latest book on writing, “Old Friend from Far Away: The Practiceof Writing Memoir” brings all three of these themes to one table. It’s a smorgasbord, with a hint of the pot luck; the kind where you want to sample every dish and if you go away unsatisfied you have no one to blame but yourself.

Goldberg is the guru of timed writing exercises. Writing practice. Writing as spiritual practice. Her first book on writing, “Writing Down the Bones,” introduced the concept of timed writing – 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, whatever you could commit to – to millions of readers. Keep your hand moving, don’t edit, don’t think. Just write. Write junk, write “I can’t think of anything to write about.” Just keep writing. Eventually, you get to the root, the heart, the good stuff. The scary stuff. In “Old Friend,” Goldberg focuses the use of this technique in writing memoir. “Ten minutes of continuous writing is much more expedient than ten years of musing and getting nowhere,” she tells us. If you look to memoir as a way of learning who you are, and why you are, rather than simply a means of self-expression, this book can help you on that path.

So yes, you get the exercises, the writing prompts, lots of them. “Tell me about your mother’s hands. Go. Ten minutes. Three minutes on a time you were freezing in July.” I can do that one! “Tell me about how a relationship ended.” Do they ever end? Or just morph into something different, something lesser, or greater, than what you thought you wanted. And you get technique – verb choice, structure, how to come at your memoir sideways instead of head on. Goldberg hops from exercise to technique and back again, barely pausing for breath.

But when she does pause, it is for my favorite parts of the book. The stories of how she, and other famous writers, did it, or said it, or lived it.  James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Zora Neale Hurston and many more.  Goldberg tells their story, or lets them tell it, and then says – now you, reader – it is your turn. Ten minutes.  Go.

At the end of a satisfying week of Advanced Novel workshopping at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival last week, our instructor gave some final recommendations to the class.  One of them was to buy this little book, “The Artful Edit,” by Susan Bell. That gave me the excuse I was looking for to rush right out to Prairie Lights, one of the best independent book stores in the world, and on one of my favorite places to hang out in Iowa City.  They only had one copy, and it was mine.

Published in 2007 by W. W. Norton, this book is destined to be a classic, right up there with Annie Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,”  which is one of my all-time favorite books on writing.  Bell has been a professional editor for over 20 years, for Random House books and Conjuctions magazine.  But even better, she is a great story-teller.

My favorite writing books provide a combination of technical advice, and anecdotes about famous writers  (and some not-so famous ones as well.)  Technique is useful, but how do I know a specific technique really works?  By seeing how it worked for someone else – preferably someone whose writing I admire.  As Bell states in Chapter IV, Master Class, “I cannot furnish a formula for editing, as none exists.  Instead I’d like to offer what has helped me hone my skills: a close look at the work and work process of other artists.”

She does this by revealing a specific technique through anecdote – either from her own experience or that of another writer, and is careful to include the specific results that were achieved by use of the technique.   She weaves in quotes from other writers, historical and cultural references, writing exercises, and excerpts from books and essays to yield a multi-layered tapestry studded with writing gems.

The book is short yet substantive.  It is divided into five chapters.  The first three give a top-down view of self-editing, from Gaining Perspective, to Macro Editing and finally to Micro Editing.  In Chapter IV, Bell gives space to three writers and two artists to discuss how they revise their work, and Chapter V is A Brief History of Editors, from ancient scribes to some of the most effective editors of the 20th century.

A Good Man by Larry Baker is one of those books that came to me under a halo of synchronicity.  There’ve been a few like that in my life.  For example, Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar which literally fell off  the bookshelf at my feet in a used bookstore days after I had seen an interview with Alice Walker in an anti-war documentary that really hit me.  So I bought the book, and found in it a theme that was completely consistent with something going on in my own life at that moment.

“A Good Man” was sent to me by the publisher, Steve Semken of Ice Cube Books in North Libery, Iowa.  The cover caught my eye.  A grainy, colorful photo, blue sky and tawny sand, and a man holding the hand of a small boy, both walking away from the camera. But I set it aside, because we had a full schedule for the next couple of months.  I’d learned that Steve publishes interesting books by articulate authors, so I wanted to do the interview… someday.

Then the coincidences began.  First, we had a slot open up in just a week, due to miscommunications when an author switched publicists.  We called Steve to see if one of his authors was available.  Larry Baker was the first to respond.  I picked up the book. As usual I started with the blurbs on the back cover, where I learned that A Good Man was, in part, an update of several Flannery O’Connor characters from “The River,” one of the stories in O’Connor’s seminal collection,  A Good Man is Hard to Find.  Which I had just bought, and just read, for the first time.  I had just discovered Flannery O’Connor, and now here were some of her characters seeking me out.

I started to read.  At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  It was a novel, with photographs, interspersedwith excerpts from newspaper columns and blog posts, with a few poems feeding the story line.  The chronology jumped around a bit, but not too much.  It tackled big themes  - politics, religion, 9/11, salvation – in the venue of a small town radio station.  Soon the main character,  Harry Ducharme, finds himself interviewing writers on his talk show.  Coincidence  number three.

But what really sold me onthis book was the interview I did on Writers’ Voices the same day I started reading it, with Hugh Ferrer,  associate director of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.  This interview was based on a lecture I had heard Ferrer give on the Big Silent Dialogue – and the many ways that writers use and even hopefully steal material from those who came before them.  I realized very quickly that Larry Baker was a living example of many of the techniques that Ferrer had divulged to our listeners.  Like Baker says in his Notes to Readers, ” This is a work of fiction that sometimes relies on the words of writers other than me.  That is an important point of the story.  Read the book; you’ll understand.”

And I did.

By Rudy Wilson

The thing is, most writing is standard, informative journalism or worse, terrible fiction that is tragically unoriginal and that’s why no one wants to buy it!  I encourage all people to write but most “writers” seem to be conformists and incapable of real honesty. They have no idea what “original” means, in terms of language and story. I receive many manuscripts from people that want me to help them, edit their work, (free of course), and 96% of it is trash. Why? Because it’s not real, it’s fake, it’s some made-up thing that people think is what they are supposed to write.

Let’s admit it: most writers and people are not creative or original but basically ignorant of art or anything new or …..well… sadly…anything but the straight way of life, and their writing reflects it. They try so hard to be original and real and all that but most come off sounding, at best, like imitators of other writers. And, no this is not about me, or my work. I am prone to the society’s influence as are you, but I disdain it in terms of its standards. Watch the lower channels on TV, the networks,  for 10 minutes and if you aren’t sickened and afraid to live here, then drop your pen and get a bad job.

But you are different.  You are willing to open the vein and bleed on the page; to go deep and bring up the true feelings that you find within, no matter what they look like.  But you need writing help to express these truths in your work. There is a term we learned in childhood: SHOW & TELL. The balance between the two is so important. There is no fixed percentage of showing and telling required but at least shoot for 50/50.  Imagine a story or a novel which was all narration, or telling.  It would take an incredible magician to pull that off,  but basically it’s information or journalism, fine if that’s your preference. But the key to fiction, even good creative non-fiction, is SHOWING!  Action, dialogue, characters doing what they do, pushing the story and the conflicts forward, as we watch these people or situations grow, mutate, change.

The joy of having characters, be they human or hobbits or animals, is that these individuals become alive and we begin to TRUST them as we watch their growth and see them struggle and fall, get back up,  survive, succeed or fail. There are so many different types of characters: the protagonist or hero, (the star), the antagonist  (the mirror of the hero,) who stirs things up, causes problems, tries to bring down the protagonist, and it can be a person or situation or any number of angles. Then there’s the foil, a supportive, character who is expendable and generally helps the protagonist, and yet falls or sacrifices themselves for the betterment of the hero. They are usually obvious: the kid who we all know will get killed in the battle, the kind but weak friend to the hero who will ultimately sacrifice for his friend.  We must show these characters in action! We see them talking, walking, crying, dying, LIVING!

We must give them plenty of breathing room, meaning, once we get to know them, they begin to take on their own personalities if we can let them, and we MUST let them.  We must let them live, and then we follow and record and love them and show them! And we tell things in the right balance, narration when needed.  It all depends on how you want to present your work and also how brave you are in trusting yourself to allow, ALLOW  the story that already exists in your sub-conscious, and allow your characters to LIVE, BREATHE …etc. Good luck! Create something and watch it come alive…Nothing better! More on all this later! Read on.

by Rudy Wilson

If you are looking for writing help to create a character, here is what you must know: One must, as a writer fall in love with your characters. They must be seen, experienced as real people, entities, souls. I wrote a book once, my favorite, SHINY APALARIS, as the inspiration and the entire story came to me on a bench in Iowa City. As I sat in the sunny side bench alone, I felt a presence as strong as if a truck load of flowers had been dropped onto me, completely unexpected. “She” was as real as anyone else I knew. She told me her story. I wrote it down as fast as I could. Thank God I had pen and paper. She was a soul, and wanted, evidently to tell me her story. I have always believed she had been my sister, as the story involves a brother and sister. It is the saddest story I know, and the point is, it came directly from someone, ‘someone,’ to me. I still feel her presence. Now, admittedly, this was an unusual way to get in touch with a character.  Most likely it was a strong urge from my subconscious about a story I want to tell, but it felt as if it came to me from outside.

Usually, we have some story, even some part of a story to tell, and then there are the people we want to use, to write about, to move, to see change and grow and resolve. The experts so often discuss conflict and resolution and it’s true – it’s inevitable – whenever anyone in writing or even in life does anything there are results, and therefore conflicts, and resolutions, not always good.  So we have our idea for a story about so and so people and the plot is beginning to appear and we have an idea, an image of characters that we care about, that we need, that we must have to move the story forward. Can you have a story with no characters? It’s done, but there are abstract or obtuse characters somehow, but that’s a separate topic for writing help.

We feel the story, and I believe that once we have an image, an idea, a story, that it’s already done, basically, in the psyche, the subconscious.  All we have to do is, in some kind of silence, see it, feel it, find the story and let it roll out and follow it, and our characters are the most important part of how to move our story ahead.

How to create a believable character? We must begin by having some feeling, some knowledge of him, or her, or them. We then feel them, we begin to see and sense them, physically at first perhaps, or mentally.  We must begin to know them; to know all about them, even facts we will never even use, but we must treat them and embrace them as real people. As we fall asleep at night, they are there with us and we learn more about them. When we awaken, we might have an image or a detail about them, a mannerism. Mannerisms are important. They cannot be generic mannequins.  I once knew a young girl, and I told her I liked her mannerisms. She, funnily, said, “I’m too young to have mannerisms.” But that was a mannerism.

We have to see these people, how they function , how they see the world, how they exist.

How?

That’s the hard part, the artistic demand. How?  Simply by doing it.  We have imaginations and they live there. We calm down and see, and know them and express them through words and actions.  We watch them grow, and get defeated and grow some more and resolve their lives, or fail.  We have to somehow be open enough, and honest with ourselves, to sense them, love them, let them grow and exist as we would our children, our creations, as that’s just what they are. Know them, love them, see them, learn who they are and let them go to grow.  Then follow them where they take you.

I feel very fortunate in that I was always drawn to language, as a form of expression, even as a child. My older brother was a great writer, a poet, and I’d mimic him and create verse and rhymes as a child in order to learn to write. He turned me onto some of the great classics, especially J.D. Salinger’s writing, which contains much knowledge about how to write. I spent many, many years reading the great novels. David Copperfield, for example was a Bible to me in my late teens. Dostoyevsky also had a major impact on me, and, as said, Salinger, in a more American, modern way.

My writing roots definitely spring from the South. I was born and raised until age ten in a small town in Mississippi and that has had a value to me, immensely. So many of my favorite writers guide are from the South. The South’s literature is rich and filled with originality, color, texture and earthiness.

I have been also fortunate in that once I see, or find or feel an image, then the building begins to create itself. My first successful short story, that ended up at The Paris Review, began with an idea I heard from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi concerning “desire, impression, desire.” I thought that if two people loved each other enough, it could bring them back to each other even over long time spans, lifetime after lifetime. I compiled two characters, one mainly myself, as I almost always write in the first person, and one was a girl who was drawn from a few females I’d admired or loved. The truly amazing gift here, not my gift but a given gift, is that once thought of: done. The story began to simply unfold before my heart and eyes and I followed the characters and memories that surfaced.

The critical ingredient in all of this, for me, is an openness and a form of honesty that allows me to let go, let the words and sentences write themselves as I simply follow along. It’s not always as simply, or as easy as that may sound. But, generally when I get an idea, then the book is done, and it’s just a matter of writing it down as I see the characters and can draw on my own experiences and imagination and possibly a desire to love. I say love, as I love my characters and often have to witness them do things I do not want them to do, but there they are, living out their own lives.

I love language more than story. I have been criticized about this but it’s true. The New York Times called my first novel, The Red Truck, more like a long prose poem. I feel deeply that form does equal content.

I am not a disciplined writer at all. I often go months without writing fiction. I cannot type and this has slowed me down. I handwrote my early books and the pain of two-finger typing them into the computer was horrible, and yet it is where much, if not all of the editing occurred, so perhaps it was a good thing. The House of Gizmo, an unknown, unpublished book I wrote, took me three years to type from several notebooks.

Now, as to punctuation! What a joy it is to me, the varieties and the creativity punctuation gives us. I taught for years at Indian Hills Community College, and one year at the University of Iowa undergraduate writing workshop and generally I’d stumble onto my favorite ‘lecture,’ punctuation is more fun than sex. I think the young people enjoyed that discussion. “The joy of the semi colon, imagine, a partial stop, with so much promise ahead, etc.!” Each aspect of punctuation contains easy references to this type of fun.

I am disciplined only in that, once I get going on a book, which I am now, I fall for my characters and especially this time, the writing is coming out as something so raw and real, even frightening. I am literally running after these people, listening, and observing and trying desperately to keep up with them. They are alive, they have their own personalities and souls, and it’s simply my job to trust them, to not betray them by writing what I think they should do, to be honest with what I see and feel they are doing — and to be open: allow, allow them to breathe and live freely, and then the great fun is on, the joy of writing down what I see in the language and form that I love.

The brutal, real truth about being a writer: all one needs to really do, pen or keyboard in hand is: WRITE. To be a writer, you must simply write, get the truth out of your head and heart and put it down in some form. All you have to do is SEE! Open your eyes and heart, your original, personal brain and soul, God given or from somewhere!

Our society does not encourage honesty. Surely we are not blind, regardless of all of the television and the conformity taught to us in school. Just SEE and then simply report it: write it down. And stop all the editing and censoring and worrying and fear. Fear will ruin a writer. I say writer, meaning a writer of personal, specific truth: your reality. You could, like many, write cook books and TV guides and easily accessible articles for mass production. But if your interest is in creating something new, brand new, original; then you must see the truth around you, whatever it is and simply write it down. Simply see reality as only you can see it.  Then write it down, in specific detail!

So: wake up! Take a look.  Take a chance.  Write it down and forget about the words, in the beginning, just get it down…worry later!  Edit and censor and fix it later.  And yet here comes the hard part: you, as someone who assumedly wants to create something worthwhile as a writer must, must drop all the stories that you carry with you, the judgments: as many as possible and then as purely as you can, write down what you want to write.  Even if it seems wrong or odd or scary: so much the better.

It’s one thing to wake up, shake off the straight world, and start to get it down, but how? Firstly, again, just write, pencil or pen, computer, just write it down, fast, especially if you have to keep up with the tremendous amount of input flowing in from outside and inside. See it, write it. Remember you have a blank sheet of paper in front of you.  You can write anything you want to. What freedom! And again, quoting the late, great John Gardner, who wrote at times, 16 hours a day and many novels:  DETAIL IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF FICTION!   Don’t ever forget this.

If you don’t use specific detail then you are a cheater, a selfish writer. Why write “The garden was beautiful!”  Why is the garden beautiful? And more importantly, why is it beautiful to you, only you, not according to gardening magazines or your friends or husband or wife, but very specifically, why and how is it beautiful: tell us, for goodness sake.  Show us.  Show and tell: now there’s an entire reality, the balance of how much to show and tell: fodder for another article.

Once you’ve written, in specific personal detail, about a chicken or a dog or a house or an interaction between whomever, or a street, or the rain, then what? Then comes a huge decision: form and presentation.  One can write and write, freestyle, free writing, journal style, and that’s important, but how to create the form you want and is available to the audience you might want to address?  I say forget any audience. Write it for yourself, even the form.  Then, if you must, due to finances or need, you can edit or fix it to fit into some audience. This all depends on whether you want to be a journalist, a straight writer, catering to the norms of our society, or an artist, on the fringes.

Writing help is in some ways, the easiest art form of all. It requires no brushes or paint or clay or hands on involvement: just your own private, special details and guts. The hard work is in simply seeing and writing it down.  It’s all there: all you have to do is be honest and report it.

Of course there is more to it. How to create real characters; the rhythm and syntax and balance of  language,  dialogue and structure.  More on that later.

In search of a writers guide to perfect happiness

The point

Why do writers write? Why do we do it. Probably for the same reason that cats paint. You realize what the success of that book says about us humans. We believe that cats could never paint, cats as animals could never, would never, paint. But our cats, what we make of them out of our imaginations as pets , our cats would paint. Of course they would. They’d paint better than we do.

We think creativity belong to us.

It does not belong to us. Has it never occurred to anyone that perhaps crop circles are made by the crops themselves, or the earth they grow out of. We think the universe needs us. So is that why we write? Because somewhere deep inside we know that it does not need us. Our very lives do not really belong to us. They happen to us. So perhaps it is out of a desire for control that we write about ourselves, alter the tense of everything, try to see ourselves as we would be, in the third person or as many people with different voices and faces. Of course everything we think that we create has already been done. We cannot step outside ourselves. When you read a book you are reading only what was given to the consciousness of the writer to write. You are reading them and yourself and neither of you are really your own creation.

Or are are we. Perhaps we all create this universe together. Then of course animals do create. They create their lives in the same ways we do. Together we have been created by each other and as we move through time, we create. But cats don’t seem to feel the need to paint. Why is it then that we feel the need to write? Our self conscious awareness of ourselves perhaps. Then it would be a burden and not a joy, but it is a joy. As much as we moan and gnash our teeth, these are the finest and sweetest moments, the times we place words, words that have been used millions of times, billions of times, by other people, we take these common groupings of letters and place them an order, that is special, unique and personal, something that could only come from us. Yet if only our egos wrote books no one would read them. More than that, their would be no joy. Do the animals miss the joy? If you look in the eyes of a deer, if you really look, you can see, they are missing nothing. Listen to the frogs as they creep across the windows eating small bugs at night. You can see the joy. But then whose joy am I seeing, I cannot step outside myself either.

Who can know another’s life, animal, vegetable, mineral or person. The universe is created anew each time we open our eyes. Words keep telling us that, words in books and words in emails and words on websites, everywhere. Over and over, I am told how wonderful life is, once a week at least, by chain emails sent me by my sisters, emails who threaten me if I do not return them or make them multiply.

Why do we write? To communicate? To spread something great like jam or peanut butter on the plain and everyday thoughts. Yes of course. To gussy up those things we never think to say to actual people, to write them down, to be proud of them. Always and forever. But also it is to have something we can leave behind, to have some bit of ourselves that we can point to, something of ourselves to show other people so that we can say, see that, that is me. Why is it is so painful then, when those precious parts of us, those sacred words are read.

Why do we write? If we do not want such words to be read by other people, why do we write. To express ourselves?

But if no one is going to read the words, there is no point. And so then perhaps, the point is, there is, no point.

Typing this I realize that it is very probable that no one will ever read these words; if they do I will never know about it. So this then is a message in a bottle and I will launch it, tossing it out to float upon the sea of words that is humanity’s creative universe; and eventually the bottle will break and the message will dissolve into letters, vowels and consonants; punctuation floating freely.

I J. K.

Lm, N.

Op, Q r;

.stuv.

W.

X,

Y………..

- Z

Part 2 – Fiction versus nonfiction

My husband thinks I lie to people. We were still dating the first time he talked to me about this problem he thinks I have. I remember it very clearly, it was after a party one night, we had gone back to my place, I had taken off my coat, he had kept his on. I already knew he was upset. “You told Claudia that I called you fifteen times to remind you about the party, I only called three times, three is very different than fifteen.”

I was puzzled.“ Yes it was only three.” I said slowly, “ It seemed like fifteen but it was only three.” My voice was absolutely neutral. I had not been aware of any reason that he had to be upset, but if I had to pick one I would never have come up with this. I was sort of relieved except that my reply seemed to make him even more upset.

He was actually pacing back and forth. He stopped across the room from me. “ You lied to her.” he said, “ and you made me look foolish in front of my friends.”

I was shocked I went over to him, he looked so wounded. I put my head on his shoulder. “ Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun of you, but Claudia knows you didn’t call me fifteen times. I wasn’t lying, I was exaggerating, I was trying to make our life sound more interesting, I was being entertaining.”

We have had this very same discussion, much less emotionally, many times over the ten years we have been together. In the first few years he even attempted to break me of the “habit” using logic. I have tried to explain my behavior to him in different ways always hoping for a breakthrough. I’m not sure even now that he believes me.

You see my husband is an engineer, before he met me he had no idea what a storyteller was or what stories are made of.

When you ask my husband what the weather will be like tomorrow, be prepared to wait until he has the latest information from at least one website, but possibly two, he may also tell you his estimation of the accuracy rate of the websites he is quoting, because he has been checking the weather hourly all the previous the day and noted how far off they were from the actual weather at our house.

For his sake please take into account that the preceding paragraph has been written with a certain amount of exaggeration… but not much.

I believe we are all to a large degree, fictional characters. No one has any real facts about anyone, and what are facts in relation to truth anyway. This is the theory upon which I conduct my life. The world is essentially unknowable, so I might as well make my part of it sound interesting. I believe in Fiction.

Non-fiction is just a variety of fiction that tells bigger lies about itself because they believe their own stories. I love watching the science channel programs where they all declare that they know how the universe got started. I pay special attention to the part where they remember to call everything a theory. I want to note right here that I love science and that bible study groups are a great deal less honest in that they won’t admit that a book that has been edited many times and is obviously very entertaining in parts, to be a work of fiction. Of course using my definition of non-fiction the bible is one book that really fits it, but religion is such a fascinating topic. I think everyone should write a bible.

If my husband wrote a bible it would be very thoroughly researched like the article he’s contemplating on the comparative merits of the various smartphone operating systems.

The opening would have to include all known opinions about creation, possibly a statistical analysis of the likelihood of each being true based upon current scientific data.

My bible would be much like the one currently in use, but I would cut out the boring parts and update the apocalyptic visions, say the world ending with Jesus coming back in a spaceship or warping all the saved into a parallel dimension; perhaps all the liars and storytellers would be left behind, That would be ironic. Think of the parables. If heaven is for non-fiction only, Jesus wouldn’t make it in.

Lesson one – writers guide to complete happiness

I have known ever since I was born, that I am a writer. At seven I tried writing scripts for cartoons, mice tricking at cat into giving them a ride – The Shoebox Choo Choo, not ground breaking, but a beginning. At nine I formed my own “publishing “ company with my best friend. I would dictate while she would transcribe my every word, a series called The Ghosty Woods about a family of ghosts with a Mr and a Mrs Ghosty Woods and a teen age daughter named Ghostina. It ran to three volumes. In seventh grade I was the editor in chief of my very own magazine. In high school I had my own poetry corner in the student newspaper. In college I wrote short stories and plays based on classical works. I never made any money with anything , but I have been willing to suffer for my art. The only sliver of doubt that ever assailed me was my horoscope. I have had it done many times and they never mention writing, they are certainly wrong.

My first novel, self-published, was not a success, I just assumed I was ahead of my time. None of my writing teachers ever understood me.

Then I wrote another one, trying to make it more accessible and when it was finished I gave it to a friend to read. I had even given it a cover and a spiral binding.

She read the first chapter, all eleven pages. Then she called me to talk.

I remember very clearly that I was standing by the couch and looking at the clock when I answered the phone, it was four thirty two pm. We were still on the phone when my husband came home at six.

She had a lot to say. I’m not sure I actually heard very much of it. I will say here that it didn’t really matter that much to me that she didn’t like it. But something about the intensity of her criticism , the minutia of her dissection paralyzed me completely. I cannot write anymore without doubting my ability to judge it’s worth. My friend and she is still my friend, in her relentless pursuit of her own truth, has called into question the one thing in this world that I thought I knew for sure, that I am a writer.

Reading, writing, words are my vocation. I search in everything I read for that line, that sentence that makes me stop and say, “that is what I want, I want to do that.” I must do that or perish trying.

But now …. Oh it is terrible, I still want nothing else, even if I am no longer feel that I will be able to. And that has been a kind of death for me.

This all happened a while ago and at that time I had a series of dreams that followed me night after night every time I closed my eyes to sleep.

In this dream world I was not myself. I was as different from how I experience myself to be as was possible. Because in the dream no one liked me and I was very very bitchy. People went out of their way to make problems for me and I couldn’t get along with any one. I couldn’t keep a job and it came down to a night when my landlord kicked me out just for the hell of it. I was stubborn, I argued with him, but he pushed me out the door in the middle of the night was falling and I had no where to go and I was tired. Night after night I wandered the streets. I had no friends, no one would take me in. It was late, the street lights made paradise in the green trees overhead and the houses all belonged to strangers. One night after many months the dream changed. In my waking life I had decided something and I don’t even know what it was but in my dream I stopped complaining, I stopped whining about how people were unfair. I was simply tired and wanted to sleep, I accepted that no one wanted me. It wasn’t really okay, It was just the way things were.

As I was walking along I found a lounge chair someone had left by the curb.. It wasn’t broken or dirty just old and unwanted. I spread it out right there on the sidewalk and laid down. I fell asleep. I awoke in my dream to see myself surrounded by people treating me with respect and asking questions of me about their lives as if in my freedom from caring I had accomplished something amazing.

Confidence is neither won nor lost, but taken and given. The universe has given me mine and I take it back from those who would even without their knowledge deprive me of it. Even if I never publish a word.

“Consider to self publish eBook with all your best work for faster distribution and higher quality.”

This article by Gloria Wendroff offers another way of understanding the zone that artists, athletes, and writers talk about, that place where the flow is so smooth and strong that it feels like it isn’t just you any more, that you have gotten out of the way and something else has taken over. Most of us experience these “in the zone” moments, and seek for ways to re-create them. The added beauty of this type of writing is that it creates a profound meditation on that mysterious relationship between God and Self. If we go deeply enough into our unconscious, will we find a place where there is no distinction?  If God lives in our hearts, then perhaps all we have to do is listen to our hearts to hear God.  Gloria illuminates a path of inquiry through experience, and a way of accessing a richness that is just beyond our normal consciousness.

–Chamaigne Montana, Writers’ Voices Producer and Co-Host

A note from Gloria:

This article contains some of my experience and delight in Godwriting™ as well as the first Godwriting of three people in varied parts of the world. This article isn’t meant to be an instruction manual, nor can it be. Godwriting is more like Narnia. There isn’t a map. You can only go there!

There Is a Boatman to Carry Us Across the River

I always wanted to be a writer. After all, books were my parents. Books fed me, raised me, taught me ideals and gave me hidden clues as to who I might be.

For so many years, I wrote and wrote and rewrote. I was adept at moving words around, but the fact is I didn’t have much to say, and no knack for thinking up plots either. My writing was primarily moving words around. I could rewrite a line of poetry until three in the morning and not get it right. None of this kept me from writing, however – over and over again. There is something about writing –  hard or easy – we have to do it.

I remember craving someone to come along who would give me a plot or theme to write about!

Incredibly, about forty years later, it was like the Greatest Storyteller of All came into my heart and did tell me exactly what to say. No plots however, though my life itself began to hold the twists and turns that fiction writers dream of.

What I call Godwriting, the Voice for God, you might call Higher Consciousness, Inner Voice, Spirit or Divine-writing, this writing from our pens or our laptops at its inspired best – sometimes, but not always — galloping out of us so fast we can hardly keep up with the words of this miraculous writing that come from “somewhere.”

Every day for twelve years, I have been Godwriting™ and sending out the messages I receive to subscribers all over the world and from all walks of life. Twelve years is over 4,000 days! Gradually, over time, I discovered a side benefit –  ALL of my writing got faster and easier!

I didn’t have to do the endless rewriting and moving lines around and going back and forth. My writing became, well, spontaneous. From business letters to poetry to blog to newsletter, pretty much all of my writing takes care of itself now without struggle.

The easy God-given writing I’m doing now is spiritual. But fiction books have been written in the same or similar way. Fannie Flag did not take credit for writing Fried Green Tomatoes. It was an inspired book that came to her. All she had to do was to let it come.

In writing down The Heart of a Gopi, Raihana Tyabji wrote as fast as he could the words he heard whispered from somewhere deep inside. He didn’t know what was going to happen next any more than a reader of a book knows until he turns the page.

Mother Theresa said: “I am a little pencil in God’s hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. And He writes beautifully.”

Naturally, the writing I speak of comes from a deeper level of truth than our surface knowing or effort. This writing is effortless. It has to be effortless, or it would not be Godwriting. Godwriting cannot be forced. But it can be invited. And once in a while, when we’re lucky, it comes unbidden.

God is the boatman Who ferries us across the river of writing. But to get to the shore of the river, we have to move ourselves over to where the Boatman so patiently waits to take us across.

Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat, Love, Pray, tells how she got to the river bank while she was sitting on the bathroom floor in despair. Despair and her bathroom floor got her there.

We don’t have to sit on the bathroom floor, nor do we have to be in despair. To hear on this deep level, we don’t have to be anything at all but what we are. A subtle sense of sound, an inner hearing, comes to the fore, and we take a backseat. It’s like we turn the dial of our mind ever so slightly, the same way we fine-tune the dial on a radio station, and the static goes away.

I love what Elizabeth Gilbert writes. Furthermore, I loved the talk she gave on Ted’s Place. www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html. Elizabeth tells how genius used to mean a creative spirit that shares the room we write in. In those times, the writer wasn’t a genius. The writer had a genius. The writer couldn’t take the credit. It was understood that all great writing was inspired writing. Today the typical belief is that only a rare person is a genius. In contrast, Elizabeth Gilbert is sure that every one of us has a genius.

I agree with her. I have seen it. I have seen this shift come about in Godwriting workshops across the U.S. and in Greece, Turkey, England, Romania, Germany, and Israel where the publishers from three of those countries, miraculously paid my way so that people in their countries could be introduced to this deep-level writing and come closer to God and all that greater closeness brings with it. Everywhere people, writers and non-writers, found themselves writing down amazing wisdom in their own unique style of writing.

I would like to emphasize that it takes no special talent to Godwrite. It comes from the deeper levels that exist within each one of us. Everyone can plumb those levels. All we have to do is to leave the shores of the known and enter the beautiful and vast Unknown.

At the same time, I’m amazed that Godwriting came to me.  When I really think about it, I can’t quite believe it.  For so many years, I have been receiving beautiful Heavenletters™, and still it hasn’t quite sunk in. That I actually Godwrite seems like one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Yet I know it’s an ordinary process and what is really surprising is that we haven’t been doing this all along.

Here are incredible samples of the first Godwriting samples of three people, one from Fairfield, Iowa, one from Italy, and one from a gentleman in South America who took the Godwriting workshop in Romania!

J., a young woman in Fairfield was positive that she would not be able to Godwrite. She was so sure she couldn’t. Here is her first Godwriting:

J. to God:

Dear God, why am I having so many problems in my personal relationships?

God:

You are not having problems in your relationships. You are reaching out to encompass the world and, in that, losing the identities of those around you. They are as you of mind and body. Free as blossoms floating in air on wind.

Accept all occasions as waves or currents meeting in an ocean, touching and whispering to one another in certain directions but ultimately letting each take their own paths. Love is not lost. Feelings do not change. The heart loves. But as atoms move in the air, so do all mankind.

The following is from a single mother in Italy. Naturally, she heard God in her native Italian. For our benefit, Pitta has translated her first Godwriting from Italian into English. Pitta lets nothing hold her back.

Pitta to God:

My dear God, words one on another and I try to capture them and write them on my paper, and your words more fast than ever. Wonderful, it remembers to me what I have always wish in my life. But words are limits, words close every expressed concept where in imagination is more vast. Meet us here, in that point, where I am aware that You are me.

God to Pitta:

We can talk for all Eternity. I have much time, so you. Meet us on the paper, wonderful, yes. Words close, you tell. They could. But when we meet, also in words, your heart beats in a different way and so doesn’t exist closing. Everything can close or can be an instrument.

Now I give you a secret, a secret not for all yet. Men ask to Me: “God, oh my God what I have to do?”

But they are deaf, because I always reply. “YOU, tell me what YOU want to do, and I will do.”

Men ask Me what they have to do and they complain because I don’t reply them. I say: YOU, YOU, what You want to do? YOU, creator of your life, builder of your creations, what do you want? YOU who have all my instruments, YOU what do you want? What do you want to conclude, obtain, create, reach for? How do you want to mold this unarmed material in your hands?

I AM GOD and I will do all you want. Surprise? Shocking? Thinking well. Isn’t like this that world has gone on during all the time? What, what do you wait again? What signs do you want more? Look around, isn’t full, fullness, the measure of signs? Why do you think I am the responsible when things happen?

YOU tell me what you want, and I will occur for you. If you come wrong doesn’t matter. I am well-disposed to begin forever, infinity times. If it would not be so, if you couldn’t free choice, if I lay down the law, where it could be the Truth We have talk about? How could be the perfect Love? Perfect Love means perfect freedom.

Oneness, if oneness have to really be, doesn’t know Chief. Upsetting? So it is, or it would be not Oneness at all.

Santhan from South America is a yogi, and he refers to God as Bhagavan. In this Godwriting, God talks about Godwriting itself.

Santhan to Bhagavan:

There is an impulse to write.

Bhagavan to Santhan:

You hesitated to write your name, just as you hesitate to write these very words down, wondering who is it that’s writing. I too am Wondering. I am Wondering at the beauty of the moment.

We, and that is to say We in reference to the feeling of you and I, slowly melt into the I.

It’s like lying on the beach on a bright sunny day, with My Sun aligned at the perfect angle with the water so that He shines My Light to reflect on the water in such brilliance that everything is Light. You, the water, the sun and the light all become One.

So it is with Godwriting. We all flow together. All in awe and wonder of our Oneness.

The shower, the blessing of rain that I send you now, those miraculous sparkles of water that I send from the Heaven, the pitter pat of them falling on the tin roof next door, that sound which arises from their falling, the breeze that tickles the leaves in the tree and drifts in through your window to nudge the door which creaks, “Hello!”

The distant rumble of thunder, like a grunt of an old wise sheep dog, the big smile on your beautiful face. They all rejoice and share and bring together a symphony of this miraculous moment.

For the first time you write for your Self. You write for Me. The words flow from you, and you stare with glistening eyes of wonder (and the big smile) at these words that pour out. Fun, isn’t it? Yes, that is all I wish. This practice is a taste of Oneness experiencing Oneness.

The rains flow from the heavens, My heaven, your heaven, My clouds, your clouds, onto the ground, trees roofs and wet sheep dogs.

Oh, yes, it’s pouring now. That is flow. This is flow. It is flow from the Light within. The Light whispers. I whisper. I always whisper. My whisper is a song. I am the vibration, the composer and the instrument. I am experiencing your writing for Me Who is you.

All resistance will soon dissolve as our communication deepens and becomes more consistent. As you learn to look towards the Light within, the flow intensifies. At a certain point which we may call a threshold, you and I are One. It’s where you jump off the cliff. You let go completely to Me. Your awareness dissolves into the Light.

When the desire for Oneness to experience Oneness arises again, you return to awareness of your experiencing Me, yet you will still be flying.

So, beloved, you have begun Godwriting. Hear me, the Old Sheep Dog, chanting My song from the Heavens. Hear Me blessing you with rain. Wonderful, isn’t it? It’s the beauty of following your heart. It comes from an impulse. Like the impulse you have to climb up the stairs and stand on the roof right now. Go.

I am wowed by the writing of brand-new Godwriters.

What I’ve written here barely touches on Godwriting. So many questions remain. Why aren’t we already Godwriting? Why Godwrite? How is Godwriting different from automatic writing, free writing, inner child writing, and channeling? How do we know Godwriting isn’t just our own writing? How much do the two hemispheres of the brain have to do with Godwriting? What do Einstein, St. Catherine of Siena, Bernie Siegel, M.D., Melvin Morse, M.D, the Kaballah. and a Nobel Peace Prize winner have to say that relate to the process I call Godwriting?

Here’s my website:  www.heavenletters.org

And here’s my blog:www.godwriting.org

In both places, you can find out more about Godwriting. You are also invited to post your questions and comments anywhere on either site, and I — and others — will respond to you right underneath your comment.

What good fortune comes up for you? Click to be WOWED!
http://www.heavenletters.org/random-heavenletter-universe.html

____________________________________________________________________________

“Come Play with Me!”

Godwriting™ Workshop in Fairfield, Iowa

Know the Heart of God — Discover God’s Words Personally Meant for You

“Take a moment now to feel My love. It is in you and around you. It is of you. It is your loveness meeting My loveness. We become a string that twangs in the joy of its One Self…”
Heaven Sutra # 211 – Supreme Oneness of Love

Saturday, February 20 and Saturday, February 27  12:30 P.M. to 5 P.M.
1 Workshop 2 Consecutive Sessions. Both Sessions Required for Good Journey.
703 E. Burlington Avenue, Fairfield, Iowa

Email gloria [at] Heavenletters [dot] org  Call 1 773 979 0083
http://www.heavenletters.org/godwriting.html

When I take a trip, I like to travel with someone. It’s enlightening to have another person’s perspective, to see things through someone else’s eyes, to be encouraged to go a little further when I might have given up. Writing is a journey on which I also benefit from having others travel with me.

A decade ago, I struck out on a new road, a journey of creative writing. A 30-year career in public relations ensured that I wrote plenty, but business writing and creative writing are quite different ventures. Business writing is a bit like going to the convenience store.  Get in, get out, quickly, concisely, and persuasively. In less than one page if at all possible. Creative writing, on the other hand, is more like a road trip on which you spend hours exploring some unexpected hole-in-the-wall museum. A five-minute experience may expand across pages.

I’ve been fortunate to have many travelers join me on this journey.  Many have been short term tour guides who helped me explore aspects of creative writing ranging from humor to personal essay, from ‘taking a smaller picture’ to developing extended metaphors.  These knowledgeable guides joined me through well-known programs like the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City and various writing seminars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They also include a rich underground writing culture in my own backyard in Des Moines. Workshops held in home basements and church halls, places where other travelers gathered to explore prose styles, spiritual memoir, and story telling.

All these tour guides not only added to the suitcase of tools I use in my writing, but also expanded my awareness of myself and the meaning of my life experiences. The perspectives gained in these workshops have been as eye opening as those I gain seeing other cultures during travels through foreign countries. I have come away from every workshop experience inspired to keep on exploring, keep on writing.

Equally important, from the early days of my writing career, has been the chance to hook up with like-minded fellow travelers who have been an ongoing source of insight and encouragement. Several of us formed a writing group that agreed to meet every two weeks to share our writing. With very few breaks, we have kept to that schedule for nearly five years.  While some members have come and gone and come back again, two of us have held the core together.

This writing buddy and I spent four days this summer sequestered at LaCorsette Maison Inn, a wonderful bed and breakfast in Newton, Iowa. Our intent was to write, and write we did.
After an early morning walk and breakfast provided by our hosts, we applied ‘butt glue’ (one of my favorite terms picked up at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and also known as dedicated effort) and applied our fingers and our minds to our keyboards for the rest of the morning.

Endless cups of coffee later – along about noon – we printed out the fruits of our labor, read each other’s work, and provided feedback. Then we headed back to the computers to continue writing through the afternoon, until ‘the sun was over the yardarm,’ as my friend who spent years sailing said, and it was time for cocktails. Which we usually sipped as we continued to write, throw out plot challenges, and work through possible solutions.

The outcome of this concentrated block of time was that we each brought home greater understanding of our characters and the stories we are creating, in addition to several chapters of new writing.

Our hosts joked that they could market retreats like ours as ‘Writer’s Blocks.’ I like it! Instead of viewing writer’s block as a problem, now I will think about writer’s block as the solution. It’s all in the perspective. New learning gained from traveling another road.

The result of my writing journey has been gratifying. I published a memoir in 2008, as did my writing buddy. My stories about growing up on a family farm in the middle of the country in the middle of the 20^th Century have sent me on another journey to learn the ins and outs of book publishing, distribution and promotion.

What I have been learning on that journey, I have been able to share with my friend who subsequently published her memoir about leaving a secure job on Wall Street to sail around the world. A journey, I can imagine and live through her writing.

My creative writing journey is far from over. The world offers endless places to see, writing offers limitless worlds to explore.  I trust I will have travel companions to ensure I make the most of both.

Carol Bodensteiner is the author of Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl, a memoir published in 2008. She writes from the acreage near Des Moines where she lives with her husband. Her website is www.carolbodensteiner.com

I’ve been attending writing workshops and taking writing classes off and on for many years, in an effort to improve my skills as I write a novel.  Often, I fear, I sign up for a workshop thinking that it will give me a deadline and thus motivate me to get more writing done; the reality is that the class itself becomes a way I can convince myself that I am doing something to make progress with my writing without actually having to spend the time writing.  Even so, I almost always get something useful from the class; something that truly does improve my writing.

One of the most significant points that I have learned came from a week-long workshop I took at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival in 2007. The class was titled “Novel Solutions” – we writers love plays on words, don’t we  – taught by Wayne Johnson.  I got a lot of feedback on the 18-page excerpt from my novel in progress.  Much of it ws positive, which I really needed.  But there was plenty of criticism as well.  As is always the case, I didn’t feel all of the criticism was valid, but there was one point that kept coming up that finally made me aware of a major flaw in my writing.

I needed to learn to stay with the scene to the end.

I could set the scene.  I wrote vivid detail, employing all the senses. I used strong verbs to bring the action to life.  And then, just as things were getting really interesting for my readers, I summed the rest of the action up in a sentence or two of narrative and moved on.  Or worse yet, I left it for my readers to figure out what actually happened.

I thought I was being clever. I had convinced myself that it was a deliberate style choice, that it fit with my writing aspiration – to tell the story in as few words as possible, each word conveying maximum meaning.  Spare, yet rich.  Like Hemingway perhaps. (Okay, I said it was an aspiration.)  I wanted to give the reader enough to stimulate her imagination , then let her fill in the blanks.  Isn’t that more interesting than being given the entire picture?

What my first readers told me was, no it’s not.  When I painted a scene, I brought the reader into it with me.  By leaving  them there abruptly, I wasn’t being clever.  I was being lazy.  When I examined the parts of my manuscript where I had done this, I realized that I had stopped writing in the middle of the scene because I wasn’t sure how to get to the end!  Like many things in life, the only way out is through.  I had to stay there with my characters until the end.

Here’s an example.  My character, Miranda, is an Iowa farm girl in the 1930′s.  She has gone to town with her father and in the general store dressing room tries on a ready-made dress that she has been admiring for weeks.

The dressing room was lit by a single electric bulb and a small window of etched glass high above her head.  There was a mirror, tall and narrow, that produced a slightly waverying reflection.  In the unfamiliar light, Miranda stared at herself in this mirror.  She was fourteen years old and fully grown in height, but thin, with hips that were still slim and breasts that were small, high and firm, but this dress, this beautiful soft green dress, made her feel like a woman.   She twisted her shoulders, first one way, then the other, and back and forth until her whole body was twisting, and the full skirt swirled around, rising and then falling again to graze her calf.  Finally she spun completely around, and the skirt rose almost parallel to the floor to make a full circle, brushing all four sides of the small room before falling gently into place.

Miranda had been taking the extra eggs into town every Friday morning before school for six months, and she had saved just barely enough money to buy the dress.  She wore it to church the very next day, and she was sure that everyone looked at her differently than they had before.

The reaction I got from the workshop was – “I loved the scene in the dressing room , but why did you stop?  I want to see Miranda buy the dress.”  My solution was to mention the egg moneybefore she actually gets to the store, and replace that last paragaph with this one:

Miranda carried the dress to the front of the store and placed it gently on the high oak counter.   The clerk, whose every grey hair was tucked neatly into her bun, peered over her glasses at Miranda, her gaze moving from Miranda’s curly slightly mussed hair to her obviously homemade white blouse.

            “I’d like to buy this dress,” Miranda said.

After that workshop, I re-read my entire manuscript and found multiple instances where I stopped in the middle of the scene, or sometimes just a few moments too early.  Learning to stay in the scene has definitely improved my writing.

I have long admired Anne Lamott, ever since reading her wonderful book on writing – “Bird by Bird”  which came out in 1995.  I love how honest she is.  In “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith,” published in 2005, Lamott rescued me from despair over the state of Christianity in the modern world, giving me hope that there are still people in America who call themselves Christians who have not turned their back on Jesus’ radical message of social justice. 

“Plan B” has been sitting on a dresser right beside my back door for awhile.  About a month ago, as I was leaving for work, I noticed it there and had a thought.  “I sure would love to have Anne Lamott as a guest on Writers’ Voices.”  My second thought was that would be a long shot, but maybe I should try.  That evening when I got home, I found a package from Penguin Books containing Lamott’s new novel “Imperfect Birds.”  The next day I got an email from her publicist with her book tour shedule and a request for an interview.  Talk about serendipity.

Tomorrow morning at 8 am, Cheryl Fusco Johnson and I will be interviewing Anne Lamott over the phone, broadcasting live on KRUU 100.1 fm in Fairfield.  The interview will be rebroadcast Friday April 15 at 1 pm and can also be heard via live stream at www.kruufm.com.  It will be archived there and on www.writersvoices.com.

Lamott will be appearing in Des Moines, at Hoyt Sherman Place Theater this Wednesday,  April 13 at 7:00 pm, sponsored by the Des Moines Public Library.

Did you read “The Secret?” Or see “What the Bleep?!?” Do you watch Oprah or read “O” magazine? If so, you definitely have heard of the Laws of Attraction, aka “conscious creation.” January 28 (1 pm CST) on Writers’ Voices, we will hear from Brent Marchant, author of “Get the Picture: Conscious Creation Goes to the Movies,” about how the principles of conscious creation play out in movies of all kinds. Not just spiritual or feel-good movies, but dramas, thrillers, sci-fi and more.

Take this year’s hit movie “Social Network,” based on the true story of the founding of Facebook. Marchant points out how the power of belief contributed to the growth of the internet in general and Facebook in particular, both of which seemed to take on a life of their own. The Facebook founders may have been flawed, but they were passionate believers in what they were creating.

Bruce Miller, KRUU’s resident film critic and co-host of the ever-popular Filmosophers, which airs just before Writers’ Voices at 12:30 pm central on Fridays, will join us as we delve into this intriguing subject and discuss this year’s Oscar winners as well as movie classics.  If you miss us live on Friday, March 4, 1 pm, or the rebroadcast Monday, March 7 at 8 am, check our Writers’ Voices podcasts.

Our guests for September on Writers’ Voices bring a wide range of motivational messages to  www.kruufm.com and online free radio airwaves.

First on September 3, Dr. Eboo Patel speaks from experience as an American Muslim about the need for interfaith cooperation, and especially the need for all religious traditions to help their youth find common ground with believers of other faiths.  The story of how he came to understand his own heritage through heroes of other faiths, and with the support and mentorship of  leaders of many traditions came to found the Interfaith Youth core,  is moving and revealing.  “Acts of Faith: the Story of an American Muslim,the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation” is required reading on some college campuses.

How does a life coach and online radio host come to coauthor books with such luminaries as Dr. Stephen Covey, Deepak Chopra and Dr. John Gray?  Find out as Sallie Felton, host of  “A Fresh Start with Sallie Felton,”  joins Monica and Caroline to discuss her recent project, “GPS for Success”  on September 10.

On September 17, Dr. Charlotte Reznick brings a program developed over years of working with children to Writers’ Voices.  Listen in as she describes the Tools in “The Power of Your Child’s Imagination: How to Transform Stress and Anxiety into Joy and Success.” 

A special bonus program will air on September 17, as guest host Cheryl Fusco Johnson joins Monica Hadley to bring us an insightful interview with former Iowa wrestler Matt Hoover, second season winner of the reality TV show, “The Biggest Loser,” and author of  “Matt Hoover’s Guide to Life, Love and Losing Weight.”  Matt knows what it’s like to be down – really down – and he knows what it takes to become a champion.  Find out the words of advice Matt received from legendary Iowa wrestling coach Dan Gable that changed his life.

Finally, we wrap up the month on September 24 with Linda Joy, founder of Aspire Magazine and Inspired Living Publishing, who joins Monica and Caroline to introduce her new anthology: A Juicy, Joyful Life: Inspiration from Women Who Have Found the Sweetness in Every Day.

We hope you will join us on Writers’ Voices this month!

Back to school is the perfect time to learn about great new books and find inspiration for your own writing. Check out this list of upcoming guests  – the dates and times are for our live broadcasts on www.kruufm.com where you can listen via live streaming.  The podcast will be posted on www.writersvoices.com about a week later.

Amy Boesky, author of "What We Have"

August 27 1 pm CST, August 30, 8 am – Amy Boesky, “What We Have: A Memoir” from Gotham books. Amy Boesky is a previvor, someone with a “cancer gene.”  This deeply moving book goes right to the core of life in the face of cancer.

 September 3, 1 pm CST,  and September  6, 8 am, Dr. Eboo Patel, “Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation.”   Dr. Patel is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to building bridges between young people of different faiths, through finding shared values and service to humanity.

 September 10, 1 pm CST and September 13, 8 am – Sallie Felton, whose popular radio show “A Fresh Start with Sallie Felton” empowers listeners to bring change to their lives.  Sallie is the coauthor of “Stepping Stones to Success” with Deepak Chopra.  We will be discussing her forthcoming book, “GPS for Success,”  which also features contributions from Stephen Covey, Les Brown, and Dr. John Gray.

I hope you can join us for these informative conversations -
Monica

Geoffrey Hoppe

Every week brings new insights into the writing process on Writers’ Voices.  Sure, we delve into the content of our guests’ writing – but then we take the next step, to find out why they write, how they write, how they get published, and more.  Check out this list of upcoming guests  – the dates and times are for our live broadcasts on www.kruufm.com where you can listen via live streaming.  The podcast will be posted on www.writersvoices.com about a week later.

August 20 1 pm CST, August 23 8 am – Geoffrey Hoppe channeling Adamus Saint-Germain, “Masters in the New Energy.” This book was the product of a 2007 gathering  in Amsterdam of a group of New Energy Masters, intended as “a gift of wisdom and inspiration to those humans who choose to step into mastery in this time of great and profound change on the earth.”

August 20, 1:30 pm CST, August 23 8:30 am – Freddy Niagara Fonseca, “This Enduring Gift: A Flowering of Fairfield Poetry - 76 Poets Who Found Common Ground in One Small Prairie Town.”  Listen in to learn about what of the most creative small towns in America.   

New poetry anthology edited by Freddy Niagara Fonseca

August 27 1 pm CST, August 30, 8 am – Amy Boesky, “What We Have: A Memoir” from Gotham books. Amy Boesky is a previvor, someone with a “cancer gene.”  This deeply moving book goes right to the core of life in the face of cancer.

September 3, 1 pm CST,  Dr. Eboo Patel, “Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation.”   Dr. Patel is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to building bridges between young people of different faiths, through finding shared values and service to humanity.

I hope you can join us for these informative conversations -
Monica

Linda Egenes with her husband Tom

Tune in to kruufm.com this Friday, August 6 at 1 pm Central time or Monday August 9 at 8 am for a repeat visit from award-winning author Linda Egenes.  Ms. Egenes joins us to discuss her latest book “Super Healthy Kids: A Parent’s Guide to Maharishi Ayuveda,”  coauthored with Dr. Kumuda Reddy.  This is the first book on Maharishi Ayuveda and children.  We last spoke to Ms. Egenes in May of 2009 regarding her lovely descriptions of the Amish community, “Visits with the Amish: Impressions of the Plain Life.”  Linda Egenes is the author of over four hundred articles and two other books on Maharishi Ayuveda.

What do the words “borderland” or “frontier” conjure for you?  Is it revolution, mystery, freedom, the wide open West?  Or perhaps poverty, outlaws, desolate landscapes?  In “Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives“, husband and wife Steven and Reefka Schneider, along with translator Jose Antonio Rodriguez, team up to portray the depth, beauty, joy and sorrow of the culture of the Mexican/American borderlands through art and poetry.

Tune in to livestream on KRUUfm.com this Friday, July 30, 1 pm Central , or Monday August 2 8 am, to listen to Monica and Caroline interview these artists about this moving project.  Or check back at  www.writersvoices.com  to download the podcast.

Tune in to KRUU-LP 100.1 FM or kruufm.com this Friday, April 9, at 1pm Central to hear Monica Hadley and Cheryl Johnson interview the next big fantasy author, Sarah Prineas.  Sara is the author of The Magic Thief and The Magic Thief: Lost.  She holds a PhD in English literature and has taught honors seminars on fantasy and science fiction literature at the University of Iowa. She not only writes about dragons, but has a large collection of dragon action figures.  Sarah is married to John Prineas, a physics professor, which gives her lots of ideas when she’s writing about magic prisoning devices and pyrotechnics. They are the parents of Maud and Theo.

Writers’ Voices returns to the Land of Oz this week, with an interview with Carol de Giere.  Her book, Defying Gravity, takes readers into the creative world of Broadway and film composer Stephen Schwartz, from writing Godspell’s score at age 23 through the making of the megahit Wicked. For this first authorized biography, de Giere draws from 80 hours of interviews with Schwartz and over 100 interviews with his colleagues, friends, and family. Her sympathetic yet frank narrative reveals never-before-told stories and explores both Schwartz’s phenomenal hits and expensive flops. The book also includes a series of “Creativity Notes” with insights about artistic life, and more than 200 photographs and illustrations.

For more information on this book, please visit http://www.defyinggravitythebook.com/