writing – Page 33 – Patricia J. Parsons

Putting pen (or pencil) to paper

Posted on 8 Nov 20118 Nov 2011 by Patricia J. Parsons

Do you ever write with a pen and paper? Hmm? Or are you forever hunched over the computer keyboard like most writers these days? If you only ever write at a computer keyboard, I think you might be missing out. Stay with me for a few moments all you tweeters.

I wrote a guest piece for our students’ new online newsletter Symmetry recently on the topic of creativity and how it can be leveraged in fields other than the traditional “creatives.” Some people think that writing creative pieces needs to be done by putting pen to paper – literally.

Ever since I discovered her work in the late 1980’s, I have considered Natalie Goldberg to be one of my major writing teachers. I’ve never met Natalie Goldberg. My writing is not one bit like Natalie Goldberg’s writing. But her early books on writing practice, most notably Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, were my signposts along the journey toward finding my own voice as a writer. And although I’m seriously dedicated to writing while hunched over a keyboard, Natalie’s approach to teaching writing has often given me pause to consider if there is a difference in the extent to which we might be able to mine our creativity when inputting words to a computer versus letting them flow onto paper through our writing hand.

Natalie’s approach to writing is that it is a ‘practice,’ and that by practicing, we improve our writing. We don’t have to publish everything we write. Writing is often for ourselves only. (To tell you the truth, I often read material that I wish the writer had kept to him or herself!)

I’ve talked about Nataile’s timed writing approach in previous posts, but her ideas bear further reflection. She tells us to just “go!” and “keep your hand moving!” That’s where the pen and paper thing comes in—you can’t do this kind of practice with a computer.

She also tells us to “lose control.” This is easier said than done, but I believe that this is how we mine our personal creativity. As writers, we put pen to paper and if we’re able to lose control and keep the writing hand moving, interesting ideas just seem to flow.

Lee Rourke wrote a terrific piece in The Guardian’s book blog recently. In it he refers to longhand writing as a “secretive pleasure.” He says he “can sit in a corner of a café unnoticed and write to my heart’s content. I’m less conspicuous than the iBook brigade, cluttering up London coffee houses and pubs with their flashy technologies.”

Of course, my personal obsession with writing journals is related to the notion of putting pen to paper. Sometimes it’s just nice to sit in a comfortable chair and think. Then pick up that journal and just write. Okay, I will admit that these days I often pick up my IPad and do this, but to tell you the truth, it’s not the same. I highly recommend a good dose of the Natalie Goldberg approach to writing practice – with that pen firmly planted on a piece of paper that (preferably) is contained in a beautiful notebook.

The virtual book tour: virtually useful?

Posted on 31 Oct 2011 by Patricia J. Parsons

Anyone who thinks that public communication about anything and everything has not changed much in the past few years is clearly living a life of denial. Organizations these days have learned this lesson – often the hard way. Now, in these days of do-it-yourself book marketing, authors need more than ever to be vigilant for new opportunities.

I’ve talked in the past about how book marketers at publishing companies seem to have a different role than marketers of other products and services. There is an urgent need for anyone who writes these days – and expects to be published – to be able to articulate clearly how the work can be marketed and to whom. And this isn’t just for self-publishers.

Traditional publishers these days are even requiring book proposals to have fairly well-developed section on exactly how this book might be marketed. This means that keeping abreast of the new approaches is vital for writers.

We’ve talked at length about book trailers and have yet to come to any conclusion about their effectiveness. The next newest approach to book promotion is the virtual author tour. It is much on my mind this week as I tackle such a plan for my latest book. So I thought I’d let my blog readers in on the research I’m doing and the action I’m taking. Maybe some of my work might help you.

Let’s start by defining the virtual book tour. Any kind of a book tour is a marketing technique that puts a writer front and center in public communication vehicles. In a traditional book tour, a writer moves from venue to venue giving interviews to media personalities – radio, television and print (newspapers & magazines). The traditional book tour (effectiveness notwithstanding) is generally predicated on the notion that the writer will tour around and talk about the book. In a virtual book tour, the tour is virtual (the book usually not!).

And there is a whole cottage industry that has sprung up around the notion of virtual book tours (also known as blog tours). There are even tour coordinators. Who knew? Precisely. The problem in my view is this: no one seems to know much about virtual book tours except the people organizing and implementing them. Excuse me for a moment, but I thought that the main purpose was to publicize a book to potential readers. If readers don’t know about virtual book tours or are not tuned into those pieces of social media where they take place, then what’s the point? I digress…

In his book Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors, Steve Weber provides some useful guidelines for setting up these tours. In his view, these so-called blog tours are “especially valuable for authors unable to travel, uncomfortable with public speaking [remember my discussion about author readings?] or whose dispersed audience makes touring impractical.”[1] Of course, not only are book tours often impractical, they are expensive and the ROI (return on investment) is often not substantial.

My virtual book tour (because I told my publisher I’d do one) is currently in the planning stages. I’m following Weber’s advice and am doing the following:

I am first building a list of target blogs that might actually be read by potential readers of my book. I’m looking for content that is congruent with the kinds of things these readers might be interested in – since this is in the historical fiction genre, that’s where I’m looking. In this case, much of what I’m finding is book blogs – and there are hundreds of thousands of them. This is going to take a bit of time. If I were trying to organize a blog tour for one of my earlier non-fiction works, I think the job might be easier. The smaller the niche, the easier it is to find blogs whose owners might be interested in guest bloggers on their topic
are (especially if the guest blogger is an expert).
The second step that I’m going to take is to evaluate these blogs. I need to find out if it’s worth my time to even approach them. If the blog in question has only a trickle of readers, it’s probably not going to be worth it to me. I need to find those blogs spaces where large numbers of my readers accumulate. Weber suggests looking at not only traffic volume, but also reader involvement – this is what I’d call online engagement. (He provides details on how to accomplish this.)
While I’m doing the above, I’m working on the excerpt that I’ll offer to the blog and the Q & A author interview that some bloggers might be interested in using rather than sending along their own questions.

All throughout this process, I’m continuing to question the effectiveness of this marketing strategy. I’ve been looking for stats on this, but like in the case of the book trailer, no research yet exists on the effectiveness of these tours. Maybe one of my grad students will take this on? Hmm? Anyone out there listening??

[1]
Weber, Steve. 2007. Plug your book: Online book marketing for authors. Stephen W.
Weber, p. 87.

Backstory, Ideas generation

The genesis of an idea

Posted on 18 Oct 2011 by Patricia J. Parsons

I’m not a literary writer in the artistic sense of the word. I don’t write literary novels or short stories. I write both fiction and non-fiction stories (and make no mistake, the non-fiction is based on story-telling in its best sense) that result from an active process of looking for ideas. Oh, once in a while I stumble on something, or I end up using an idea in a very different way than the way I started out; but on balance, finding ideas is for me a very proactive process. And although I am not part of the high-brow literati, I can still appreciate that those who are might be able to articulate an idea in a different way – not better or worse, but differently.

Emily Dickinson, a literary-minded writer in her own right of course, put it this way: “Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.” I wish I had written that – I didn’t but I identify with the concept. I open every door to see where those doors might lead.

The idea of inspiration, and what it is, has shown up here before; being open to inspiration is a kind of internal process. There is clearly a relationship between the ethereal notion of being inspired to create something – whether it’s a piece of choreography, a new theory, a strategic plan or a new book – and the idea upon which that creation will be based, but in my view they are not exactly the same thing. So, finding ideas is an external process – or at least requires interaction with the external world.

Being open to inspiration requires a certain frame of mind that makes that mind a fertile place for that idea generator to take root and grow. The question now is not how to keep your mind open, but how to find that genesis.

So, where does an idea for a creation come from? I’ve gleaned ideas from any number of places over the years. Some of these have included the following:

Long conversations over wine (this is essential) with my husband and sometime collaborator. Never underestimate the power of those meandering conversations with someone whose ideas you respect. Putting your two heads together even without the goal of finding a writing idea often results in transformative ideas.
Newspaper articles. This is a no-brainer for writers no matter what kind of writing you do. It might be that headline story (you’ve heard of the ripped-from-the-headlines type stories), but my experience tells me that more often the idea is likely to come from a small piece, the piece that you might easily have overlooked. I’m currently working on a contemporary piece that is based on a ten-line article in a newspaper. This is when you take up your trusty scissors or those newspaper cutters that should be beside your reading chair at all times, cut it out and paste it in your journal. Or if you re reading electronically, use a select and paste tool (but I do need to point out that often these ten-line gems of stories that fill up column inches often don’t make it to the electronic version).
Interviews with both celebrity types and every day people. Sometimes you’ll be watching someone being interviewed on television, or hear it on the radio while you’re driving your car and one line might get you thinking. You need to have a way to capture those lines – a journal if you’re not driving, a voice recorder if you are.
Conversations overheard. Everyone expects writers to be slightly odd, so eavesdropping isn’t as far off the radar as you might think. If you take public transit for example, you are awash in a sea of possible writing ideas. I’ve sat on the subway in Toronto more than a few times and overheard snippets of conversation that seem to evoke a sense of character or even a story. (I don’t live in Toronto and never take public transit at home – so I really feel I’m missing out on that one!). And what about listening to other parents when you’re waiting for your children at school? Or at the school concert? Or audience members around you at the ballet, the theater or even the movie? The hockey rink? On a beach while on vacation? At a bar?
Online conversations “overheard.” This is a bit more controversial, but nevertheless full of juicy material. If you lurk around on social media sites, people might think that you are spying, but practically everyone does it to one extent or another. Reading posts on forums without actually participating in the conversation is the definition of lurking and it has its controversial side – but it can be for the greater good. For example, if you are interested in women’s health issues and you lurk around a social network focused on these issues, you might very well be inspired to write an article or book that will help people. So, it’s not all bad!

And finally, my personal favorite…

Academic articles. For anyone who happens to read academic articles, you’d be surprised how often one of them can contain the germ of a story. I once read an article in a medical journal back in my medical writing days about how Edgar Allan Poe died (or what wasn’t known about it to be more specific), and that ignited an idea.

These are just a few places where ideas spring forth. Ideas come from everywhere and often coalesce to form that big idea that eventually becomes the genesis for a story. It then takes on a life of its own as the settings, characters and plots take over the writing. Ask a writer where his or her idea actually had its genesis, and sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint. But for me, I can usually tell where the germ actually comes from.

And when it comes to my historical fiction work, the idea is usually as a result of an unanswered question from history.

GRACE NOTE began to take shape many years ago. In the late 1990’s, there was a resurgence of interest in a little-known Roman Catholic mystic who lived in 12^thcentury Germany. Her name was Hildegard of Bingen.

Hildegard was born in 1098 and when she was about fourteen years old (the historical dating is inconsistent) she was tithed to the church and walled up in a hut attached to a Benedictine monastery, proclaimed dead to the world, to live her life as an anchorite. Of course, history tells us that she didn’t stay walled up forever, rather went forward and accomplished a great many things in her career as a nun and abbess. She has been proclaimed a feminist (!), physician, mystic, teacher, and very prominently, a composer, often referred to as the very first female composer to live. The problem is that there isn’t hard evidence of the actual authorship of her music and in 1998 an article appeared in the journal Early Music provocatively suggesting that there is no evidence that she accomplished so much. That’s where my story began. And GRACE NOTE is the outcome of the idea genesis followed up by lots of research on what is known and what is not known.

Where have you found your ideas?