How Do You Finally Get Your Book Finished (and Published)? Passion and Determination--An Interview with New Author, Atina Diffley

Atina Diffley, an organic vegetable farmer in her former life, is now an organic consultant, author, and public speaker. Her just released memoir, Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works, is called "a must read love story, a lesson in entrepreneurship, a master class in organic farming, and a legal thriller."

Atina showed up at one of my writing workshops at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis a few years back. She had a book in mind.  She was passionate about the topic, and--from her determination to make others passionate about it too--I could tell she would be successful at writing her book.  Although she'd written quite a bit, she needed help structuring and developing the material.  As an experienced organic farmer, she wanted to share what she knew, but in memoir form.  Her life, and her farming, were and are very intertwined.

From that first workshop, Atina got fired up.  She liked what she learned about book structuring.  And over the next year or so, I saw her again in a workshop, then another.  She began bringing along her writing friends to learn about structuring their books.

Flash forward to last Friday, when I was back in Minneapolis teaching at the Loft Literary Center.  It was the same two-day book-structuring workshop that Atina had first attended.  She wasn't there.  But two of her  friends were.

Before class began, they handed me a book.  Atina's just-published book:  Turn Here Sweet Corn.  University of Minnesota press had accepted it, and they'd done a great job publishing it.  On the back cover were strong endorsements, and I've heard since the class that Atina is getting good reviews and interviews.  As an author, she's launched.

I felt very privileged to share in her writing journey, from early days of crafting her manuscript to finally glory.  This happens fairly often in my classes, I'm happy to say.  One of my favorite moments is when a former student stops by and hands me their published book or sends me a copy by mail.  I'm so happy to celebrate with them.

So I asked Atina to share her writing journey, from seed to sprout to published memoir.  What did she learn along the way that might help other writers who are dreaming of a book?


When did you begin writing this book--and why was it so important to you to write?

I thought about writing a book for over a decade, but I’m glad I waited, as crucial parts of the story hadn’t been lived yet. It became a priority for me in November 2009.

There are so many reasons I wrote Turn Here Sweet Corn. To pass on the support and guidance I have received to other women and farmers, for personal healing for my family and myself, to bring more people into the conversation on food and farming, but the most powerful—the subconscious driving force that kept me on task—was the ecological collapse I experienced in the development of our first farm.

This was burning to be shared.

Any obstacles you encountered along the way?

Mostly myself. I had everything—all the support and teachers I needed. Sometimes self-doubt would interfere. I had to learn to trust.

What was the biggest turning point in your writing process?

Two weeks in, I wasn’t accomplishing much at home so I went off alone to write for two weeks. I didn’t really know what the book was about beyond being a memoir based on my farming experience. I started to write and it was like my life was on a Rolodex card file and each card contained one moment. I couldn’t figure out which belonged in the book.

 Painful memories piled up and became emotionally exhausting. The thought of publishing made me feel completely exposed and vulnerable. The card file spun faster and faster, and I became so overwhelmed that my body developed bursitis of the right shoulder. I was in excruciating pain, close to vomiting and passing out.

I spent the next week doing nothing but emotional work and by the end of the week the bursitis was cleared and I was one determined and committed writer.

I later learned in a writing class that the body sometimes acts as a “gatekeeper” to prevent a writer from going into areas that are emotionally painful.

What would you do differently, based on what you know now about book writing?

I LOVE the island method I learned in Mary’s class "How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book." It solved my problem of not knowing what the book was about. Once I learned to trust the process and my subconscious to bring forward the needed storie,s the islands literally poured out of me.

 I couldn’t write them fast enough. Next book I’ll start right in on writing islands.

Any advice to first-time book writers?

Believing in ourselves is the most powerful thing we can do. When I sit down to write, I thank my inner critic—her name is Sylvia—for all she’s done, and I assign her the role she has in my present work. (I learned this from Mary Carroll Moore in a class at the Loft Literary Center.) During freewrites Sylvia is sent on vacation. While line editing she is appointed the responsibility of “specific” and “constructive” feedback. If she’s having a bad day and insists on self-defeating criticism, or her ego is raging out of control offering talk shows with Oprah, I send her packing.

How did you land your publishing contract?

Every writer’s dream! Turn Here had a fairy godmother, food writer Beth Dooley, who not only mentored me during the writing, she also connected me to her acquisitions editor, who just happened to be a freezing-corn and canning-tomato customer of ours from twenty years ago. I never even wrote a query letter.
The University of Minnesota Press was fantastic to work with and many of the staff had eaten our produce over the years so they had a personal connection. May the stars align again for my next book!

What's it feel like to have your book out there? 

The thing I felt most vulnerable about--not having any control over the reader’s relationship with Turn Here or their interpretation of my writing--has turned out to be the greatest experience! Readers are telling me how the book is affecting them and of parallels in their own life. I am receiving stories of their own loss and grief, and celebration, in connection with land and nature.

Their relationship with the book has brought me deeper understanding of the inner story of Turn Here and of my own life!

What's the reader response so far?

Readers are loving it, and it is meeting my goal of a compelling read for people from all walks of life! But there may be some liability issues. The story is so engaging that readers are reporting irresponsible behavior. One person turned a kettle on high, started reading, and forgot until hours later when smoke was pouring out of the kitchen, another reported forgetting to pick his kids up from daycare, there have been marital disputes about who gets to read, and one reader laughed so hard, and for so long, that she couldn’t drive and was late for work.

How has writing your book affected your life?

I’ve heard that writing is cathartic, but writing Turn Here has transformed me! It gave me the structure to completely reevaluate my life experiences and what they mean. In the process I learned that bad things happen but me, I’m fine, in fact I’ve thrived.


Anything else you'd like to share with others who are writing a book?

The world needs your story. Trust yourself and the process. Make a commitment and let the writing happen.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
1.  Evaluate your commitment to your book, especially your passion about or interest in its subject.  Does it meet the level required for the journey to publishing, as Atina describes?  Why or why not?

2.  Visit Atina's blog and see what else she has to say about her passion.  Think about starting a blog of your own.  If you already have a blog, post a comment at the end of this article and share your blog's URL with readers.

3.  Interested in attending the same book-structuring class that Atina took?  You can enroll now in my 12-week online version of the class--take it from your home, do the same exercises, and get feedback each week from myself and your fellow book writers.  Check it out at How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book.  Sponsored by the Loft Literary Center's online program, this class begins the week of May 14.

4.  And read Atina's article on the Loft's blog, Writer's Block, at .http://www.loft.org/writersblock/?p=2769 .

The Timeline of a Book Project--How Long It Can Take, What to Do at Each Stage

D.W., a reader from the West Coast, emailed me this week with some great questions about the timeline of a book project and how a writer can best assess her needs for feedback at any stage.  D.W. just read my new book, Your Book Starts Here, and is working on her first manuscript.  "Thank you for your wonderful book on getting published," she wrote. "It has been the biggest help.  But I have a couple of questions."  And she listed them:

1.  At what point do I spend the money for a professional editor?
2.  Does one wait until they find an agent and let the agent guide them or should it be done before the agent sees the work?
3.  When does one get their work copyrighted? Is that part of the work an agent helps with also?

D.W. is right to ask these questions.  Books have particular timelines, and they need different things to help them grow at different stages.

For many years--and the last eight books I've published--I've worked with a successful timeline for building a manuscript and moving into the editing, then the submission process.  Of course, it varies with each new book, because books, like babies, have their own plans.  Some take a lot longer than you expect; others are very fast because you've done so much of the "gestating" before you put fingers to keyboard.

Writers know that a lot of book writing happens solo.  You, your words, the dream worlds you're occupying, are not shared with others in the beginning.  No editors are involved because there's not a lot to edit yet.  This is as it should be.  You're gestating something very fragile, easily destroyed by other eyes.  I love the support of other writers and creative artists, including professional editors, during the writing journey, but if I share my work too early, their voices blend too easily with my own and confuse me.

I need time to listen to my own thoughts, let my own ideas emerge.

Unlike other creative artists who give themselves this important time to explore and "birth" their idea before sharing it with the world, lots of book writers have publishing in mind immediately.  I know very few new artists who paint with the goal of a gallery, few beginning musicians who are composing for that recording contract.  But writers tend to be motivated by the starry dream of seeing their name on the cover of a published book.  Or by the hopeful royalties that will let them quit their day job.

Give yourself the dream time, first.  Books aren't that different from paintings or a musical composition or a dance--there needs to be open, goal-less space in your timeline.  Space for just writing, for exploring your book idea, before you imagine an audience.

Truthfully, you must enjoy a dedicated one-to-one conversation with your book, before you are able to produce a publishable manuscript.

The essence of your book, the story only you can tell, comes from the unstructured part of the creative self.  This part loves the dream time of incubation.  Go into it and live in it for a while.  You'll gradually get a sense of what your book is really about.  Its voice is unique to you; you must have time and interior space to find it.

That the first successful step on the timeline:  to have a chance to explore.  A sabbatical from the goal of publishing it.  For this stage, I advocate the "island writing" method promoted by writers like Ken Atchity and Natalie Goldberg, where you allow yourself to scribe a collection of random scenes or ideas, then begin to structure them.  You allow yourself to be in the "process" of writing your story, exploring it and getting deeper into your material.

Moving into Conversation with the Reader
But at some point, you do need to think of the book as a "product" as well as a way for you to personally explore ideas and images.  At this second stage, welcoming the reader into the conversation is essential.

This is where we begin to work with structure.  The book moves out of the dreamy place forever--and we structure the islands so that the reader can actually understand the dream too. 

I find we cycle back and forth between these two stages--dreamtime and structuring--as we create the manuscript.  For instance, we may run into an obstacle or a big question--and we're not sure how to proceed.  So, it often helps to return to the exploration of the material, do some research or create a collage--a wonderful exploration tool used by many professional writers--to see which direction is best.

This two-part experience takes however long it takes.  I always advise getting a lot written before structuring, then pull the bits and pieces (islands) together into a rough draft before editing too much.

When It's Time for Editing Help
With my first books I didn't worry about when to bring in an editor.  I didn't need to hire one, because back then (the 1980s) publishers had in-house editors.  Part of my book contract was assistance from an editor.  They were trained to help me see the forest instead of just the trees, the whole book instead of just my individual words.

This doesn't happen as often anymore, except at some small presses.  Agents can help a writer with editing, but rarely the early stages of editing--only the final polish.  So it's up to writers to decide when their manuscript is holding together well enough to warrant an outside editor.

I encourage writers first to learn some editing skills and try to edit their own material.  How do you do this?  Take writing and editing classes.  Learn the areas you need better skills--characters, for instance, or dialogue or balancing your information with enough illustration (anecdotes) if you're writing nonfiction.  Study good books to see how those writers did it.  Read (a lot!) in your genre.


When I've polished as best I can, I work with my writing partner, my writers' group, to see what else needs attention.  I learn my blind spots as a writer.  Many things I'll be able to fix myself if I can see them. 
Then, when I've done all I can, I find a professional editor for hire, someone who is not familiar with my every word and can give me a clear perspective that peer reviewers can't.  I work with a professional editor for each book I publish.

Again, writers ask:  Don't agents give this kind of help?  Some do.  But only after the manuscript is very clean (well edited) or the subject matter is so compelling or the writer is so famous or well-connected, it's worth the agent's time to dive in.  Most agents I've known will not take on a manuscript that hasn't been through editing.  And usually, you only get one chance with an agent, so it's best to take care of the editing yourself, before you approach an agent.

Before Submitting--Do You Need to Copyright Your Manuscript?
Some writers feel it's important to register their unpublished manuscripts with the U.S. Copyright Office (click here to find out more).  For me, in all my years in publishing, I've found that few people steal other writer's works.  Of course, there are exceptions, but the reality is that publishing is a very small world, especially with the internet.

I've been happy to just add a copyright notice on my works that go out to readers either electronically or in print, just by writing (c) [year] [my name] and All rights reserved on the bottom page of the story, article, essay, column, or manuscript.  This serves as a warning and has protected me well without the hassle of registering the work officially.

Publishers take care of this process, as well as getting the book its ISBN, etc., and if you self-publish, you'll be guided by the online printer as to the steps to register yourself.

These are the different stages in my book writing timeline.  Be comfortable at the stage you're in now, give it the time it deserves before moving too fast to the next.  Your book will benefit.  

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
1.  Brainstorm on paper a possible timeline for your book project.  Ask questions like:
*  Where am I now in the process, based on what I just read?
*  With my work, family, and other obligations, how much time can I devote to my book each week?
*  Where would I like to be with my book in a year?
*  What editing skills can I learn in the meantime?  What is missing in my editing toolbox?

How a Writing Partner--or a Writers' Group--Can Help You Finish Your Book

Finding a writing partner is like finding gold.  A solo journey to writing a book--or just making time for regular writing practice--can be hard.  I've worked with a writing partner for many years, and we meet monthly by phone to report on our writing progress and set goals for the month.  My writing partner holds me accountable and gives me encouragement when I feel blue about my creativity.  I found my writing partner via a writers' group that disbanded; she and I stayed in contact and decided to start our partnership.  It's morphed over the years as our writing needs have changed.  We're both working on books, and we both believe our partnership has helped us keep going.

Lynn and Carole are two blog readers who live in the Midwest.  They are writing partners.  After my book, Your Book Starts Here, was published, Lynn asked if it could be used as a weekly study guide for writing partners or book study groups. Of course! I said.  

Over the year since my book was released, Lynn has updated me on their progress.  They have been steady about using the book to help their writing partnership (and their writing!) grow.  

Such a support team is inspiring--and I thought you might like knowing how to put one together for yourself.  I asked them a few questions about their writing partnership.

How long have you been writing? Are either of you working on a book--and what kind?
Lynn:  I have been writing (letters) since grade school and dabbled around with stories in my early thirties.  In 1993 I attended a seminar/writing conference in Minnesota where I started taking writing more seriously.

Coincidentally I met Carole at this seminar and we realized we both lived in St. Louis. Carole’s been dreaming up stories for years. She started writing in junior high school when a teacher inspired her with creative writing assignments. When Carole recently moved out of state, we wanted to keep checking in with one another. So when Your Book Starts Here came out, we both knew we’d want to use it for the stories we were working on--and for future stories.

How long have you been writing partners, and how often do you meet?

We started helping each other with writing a long time ago, but we began working together with your book in July 2011. We check in with one another on a weekly basis. We decided to work together on a chapter each month in Your Book Starts Here. 

We stay flexible; sometimes we need to spend more time on a chapter, so we will. Or if we get through a chapter sooner, that’s fine too. Of if something comes up on either of our ends and we can’t finish, we don’t punish ourselves!

How has your writing changed from using a writing book as a study guide?

Having a book on writing to follow is a great tool.

I’m not structured at all when it comes to writing a story. I can’t do outlines, etc., but Your Book Starts Here helped me see that it’s not as scary as I thought. Carole is all about structure and outlining, so freewriting and "island" writing in Your Book Starts Here was a new approach for her. We have different writing styles and have been able to help each other in that way.

When you try the writing exercises, do you have favorites--ones that have helped your writing the most?

A hard question!  We are only on Chapter 10, so we haven’t gotten through them all yet.

Lynn liked Chapter 4, p. 53,  "Letter to Inner Critic" – since she struggles with the Inner Critic and since she love to write letters.  She says she needs to do it more often! Carole liked this exercise too, not realizing how powerful the Inner Critic was and how inhibiting.

Lynn also liked p. 25 "Following the Unexpected" and p. 78 "My Life and My Writing," which asks you to list the minimum requirements to keep a writing practice going in your life.

Lynn:  I started using this book with a completed rough-draft manuscript in hand. I thought I could skip ahead and figure out what I needed to do to make it better. When I read a chapter where I thought I could start at, I realized I needed to go back to the chapter before. Once I got to that chapter, I again had to go back to the previous chapter.

It finally became evident that I needed to start right from the beginning. This has been a bit of a challenge—applying things to an already written story… like Chapter 10 which focuses on working with Acts 1, 2 and 3.

I had a hard time figuring out where those were in my story. But with Carole’s help and talking through it, I started to understand and then could see more clearly where the different acts were in the story.  Having a writing partner to work with has made all the difference!


Anything you'd recommend to other writers who want to get support for their writing, or use Your Book Starts Here as a study guide?

Lynn:  I’d imagine you could use this book on your own if you wanted, but I think it’s really helpful to have at least one other person you can work with because you can bounce things off one another—especially if you’re styles of writing are different like Carole and mine.

What works for me sometimes doesn’t work for Carole, but when we talk through the process she can see how it could work for her, and vice versa.

Also by going through the book with someone, it holds you accountable.

As a writer—especially a new one—you can easily get discouraged or distracted and put it away if you don’t get it. By working with someone, there’s less chance of giving up—it’s like you’re encouragement and inspiration for one another—just like the book.

It may take us a while to get through Your Book Starts Here, but I think having it as a guide will help it along faster than trying to write the book alone, and will ensure that it will get finished. When I’m finished with all my “in progress” manuscripts, I’ll be excited to use this book for a fresh idea.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

1.  Consider the benefits of a writing partnership.  Is there someone who might support you in your writing journey?  A fellow book writer, especially?  Take one step toward exploring this idea this week.

2.  Visit Carole and Lynn's blogs--they are wonderful.  

Lynn: Present Letters
http://lynnobermoeller.blogspot.com/

Carole: Lasting Impressions
http://letterpressdaughter.blogspot.com/

A Cure for Writer's Block: Value Writing--A Surprise Post by One of Mary's Editors

Mary is off writing, which is a good thing for a writing teacher to do every now and then. News flash: many writing teachers don’t actually write all that much. Of course they used to. There were the novels, the plays, the essays, the articles. And better yet, payment for their writing. They were “real writers.”

Then …for quite a few of them, the writing sort of dwindled. This may be your story, as well. It’s definitely mine. (I am a former publisher/editor who is hard at work NOT working on a book about Montaigne the writer who invented the personal essay.) 

I have got good excuses. Life gets in the way—there’s all that family, health, laundry. You know, "issues." And in the grand world of employment, writing often does not pay that well. Writing can start to feel like you are building a house on spec, where you use your own hard-earned cash to build a snazzy house in the hopes that when you sell it you will recoup your money and make a pile in royalties. The thing is, I don’t have the money or patience to write on spec. Does that qualify as writer’s block? Not really.

Spec is short for speculation, a noun that can mean “contemplation of a subject” and “engagement in a risky business transaction in the hope of profit from changes in the market price.”

Know anything else that calls for the mutually exclusive acts of contemplation and engagement in an activity in the hopes of big payout from market changes? Hint: it is what I am trying to do right now.

So I got to thinking… why don’t more of us go off and sink some time into our writing like Mary? For the same reason most of us don’t buy shares in a gold mine in Peru. You could make a bundle, but chances are you would lose your shirt. Why? A gazillion reasons--the mine is about to be nationalized; the mine is lying on a fault line; the mine doesn’t even have gold in it, it has silver. When you are trying to sell spec stuff, there is no way to know all the variables. The same goes with writing.

Writing is a risky business. You invest gobs of time, and the upside is a book contract with the six-figure advance. Great! Ah, but the downsides are huge, and here is the kicker: you won’t know why your book didn’t pay out. The reasons are just as specious as the Peruvian mine. For example, the publisher you sent it to says it now wants vampires not zombies, the editor “just” did a book like yours two years ago, the one agent who got back to you said your main character does not have enough “fill-in-blank” adjective, the book group who read it said it was too long, another group said it was too short.

No surprise when risk does not get rewarded, it leads to risk aversion and money gets stuffed under the mattress. When it comes to writing, risk aversion leads to something known as …. wait for it… writer’s block.  How many of us have a book stuffed under our bed? This is not necessarily your fault. It is simply the price you pay when dealing in an unregulated publishing market.

What to do? How do you turn speculation into safety? There are lots of answers, but it has occurred to me recently that maybe it pays to actually discover what the market wants to read. That means attending publishing conferences, marketing seminars on how to sell books. Learn the business from the publisher’s point of view. Learn who their customer really is. Hint: it is not you.

Now here is where it gets weird: while publishers claim they want safety, they secretly pine for the new, the different, the unknown. They want a piece of that risky Peruvian mine. They just want it to be really well written.

What’s a smart writer like you to do? There are a ton of ideas out there, you probably have read all the do’s and don’ts like me. But here is a new “do” idea—do what the most successful investor of all time does. Ignore the market. Warren Buffet could care less about the market’s ups and downs; he invests for the long haul. And only in those companies that have a significant competitive advantage over its competitors. He calls this advantage the "economic moat," and the wider a company’s moat, the more valuable the company. The trick is figuring out what a company has going for it that sets it apart from its competitors. For Warren, his value investing called for a new type of analysis that requires some number crunching and a whole lot of gut checking.

Value Writing--The Cure for Writer's Block
The cure for writer’s block could be something remarkably similar: value writing. Perhaps the problem is not with the writing, but the way we analyze our writing. Maybe all we need to do is to start asking better questions about our work.

Start with the basics: what you like to read and why. Do you read to escape from the everyday drudgery? Do you read to learn something new? To be moved by the actions of complex characters?

Before you can write to be read, you need to start asking tougher questions about your story. What moved you so much it you found yourself writing it down? Was it the drama? The complex characters? Solving a mystery? Wanting to share family legacies? Does this come across in your own writing? If not, why not? What does come across in your writing? If you are answering these questions truthfully, you should start to feel a little buzz of energy about now.

Now get ready for the really big value-illuminating question: what is the question your book is attempting to answer? (I can see your eyes starting to cross. Knock it off!) For a book to have value it needs to ask at least one really compelling question and then answer it. Will Oliver Twist grow up to live a long and healthy life? Can a white would-be writer manage to tell the story of two black maids in the deep south in the 1960s? Does knowing the personal history of Henrietta Lacks shed new light on how we look at cancer research? Yes, yes, and yes.

Does your opus have a compelling question? If you stopped writing it midway through, I can almost guarantee that it doesn’t. Hence the writer’s block.  Get on our knees, and dig out your manuscript from under the bed. Blow off the dust bunnies, and see if you can’t find that question. Once you do, the drive to answer it will fuel your writing and add a whole lot of moat to your work.

Our guest blogger is a former editor with a large book publishing company.  She was also the editor for Mary's newest book, Your Book Starts Here, for which Mary is eternally grateful. 

A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future

Did you grow up thinking you were an alien on a very strange planet, because you liked to daydream and doodle and muse over words and invent weird plots for stories?  Even as an adult, until I became a writing teacher and started publishing those plots in books and stories, I worried a little that my brain was not working like everyone else's.

I got good training in how to think linearly, but I really preferred thinking from a global view, seeing patterns and systems and how the disparate pieces intertwined, rather than looking at their separate and orderly parts.

Daniel H. Pink's well-loved book, A Whole New Mind:  Why Right Brainers Will Rule the World, gave me hope.  I wasn't crazy.  I was just a right-brainer.  Many writers are.  Especially book writers, who need to have a holistic view to make their books work for readers.

Pink is the also author of Drive, which is about human motivation.  He understands the brain and how it works--especially for creative thinkers like book writers--and I find his theories helpful in my classes.  For 12 years I've been trying to help book writers learn the right-brain skills that will make their books read as a whole rather than a series of parts.

Cultivating a Holistic Viewpoint--Your Book Needs It
Holistic viewpoints are the work of the right brain.  While the left brain, as I understand it, sees things in sequence and in part, the right brain sees the whole.  Many book writers find themselves at a loss when trying to create this holistic feel to their book.  Chapters come across as individual units rather than part of a larger whole. 

Two skills that Pink describes--narrative and design--are born in the right hemisphere and are useful when you want to make your manuscript feel like one instead of many.

The first, narrative, might seem obvious.  After all, we're book writers, we have a narrator, we write narrative.  But do we really?

Narrative is actually the aspect of story that I call "flow" or pacing.  Strong narrative keeps a reader reading. The flow is like a strong river.  It's often simply a matter of good transitions, how fast you deliver your information, and excellent design. 

Design is about making a story logical yet also appealing to the aesthetic senses.  We consider design when we think about knowing how much to add, and how much to just imply.  It's about skillfully shaping your book with enough image to fire the imagination of the reader.   

This week, your weekly writing exercise is to find a copy and try one of the Portfolio exercises on narrative or design that Pink offers.  Let me know how your right brain likes it.

And check out Pink's other writing at this link.

Making a Map of Your Book's Structure--Three Different Kinds of Storyboards

Storyboards, the visual map that filmmakers use, are a lifesaver for writers needing to brainstorm the structure of their books. I use them to chart the primary pathway through my piles of material.  A great tool for organizing and structuring novels, nonfiction books, and memoirs, they can be approached in three ways.

Both my online classes and my Grub Street workshop on February 26 play with storyboards , so I wanted to revisit the three kinds you can use, depending on where you are in developing your story.

First, remember that storyboards benefit both writer and reader, but in different ways.  For the writer, they give the first glimpse of the book's structure.  I couldn't possible create publishable books without them.

For the reader, the storyboard smooths the pathway through the story.  Holes in the narrative become very apparent and can be filled.  Too much talking also shows up clearly--as well as digressions.  Storyboards help you trim the fat and bulk it up--wherever each is needed.

But storyboards can also help you chart a character's growth, or the development of a place (setting).

Storyboard Resistance
Many writers resist storyboards.  They aren't always as fun as the "flow" writing that we think of when we imagine creative writing.  You have to use the more linear part of your brain. 

On good days storyboards yield tremendous insights into why that &*%% chapter feels so out of sync or what kind of ending might work best. 
On bad days, storyboards feel like bossy mother-in-laws, telling us what we're doing wrong. They point out exactly what we don't want to look at about the book-in-progress: where we have too much blah-blah-blah, where we've skipped a juicy opportunity for conflict, where we've stayed on track or gone on a tangent. Essentially, it becomes clear as day where the book isn't yet working.

This can derail some writers. 

Storyboards also present, often for the first time, the glimpse of how your book will be when it's actually published.  Sometimes this is so scary (the thought of actually being published!) that writers abandon the project in emotional overload. 

But I believe in storyboards.  I create several for each book I write and I keep the best ones on my office walls, reminders that I am grateful for their linear know-it-all attitude.   Better realize the problems now, via a piece of posterboard in the privacy of your own home, than later via a rejection letter from an agent, yes?

The Golden Opportunity of Storyboards
A big question as you begin your book is this:  How are you going to know if your story flows when it's outside of your own inner worlds?

You can craft a draft, of course.  Get it typed out and printed, read through it.  But it's still hard to see if the idea you presented on page 31 will thread through to page 231 in a way your reader will track.

Some writers make long lists.  I do this too.  Facts to check, threads to follow.  The lists on my desk are as numerous as my printed drafts, after a while, and I start to go crazy under all that paper.  Here's where storyboards present a golden opportunity, like a good map out of a swamp.

A writer needs to know the structure of her story flow, the placement in time and space of each idea or plot point.  It's not just enough to churn out the words. The sequence matters, a sequence that readers can follow, and you need some method to clearly see sequence. Filmmakers use storyboards to provide this.


I use a giant W to structure my storyboards or a row of empty boxes lined up on my posterboard. I place Post-it notes along the W that represents scenes or ideas or chapters, then I move them around until the sequence of ideas equals a reasonable flow for my book.

This kind of storyboard charts the events, the outer story, and you can see if you have enough happening. 

Character Storyboards
Another kind of storyboard charts the character's growth through the book. 

Early in the revision process of my novel Qualities of Light, I did a storyboard for each of the main characters.  I learned, to my dismay, that one of them, Chad, had dropped out of sight in chapter 10.  Not so great because he was competing for Molly's attention as the other love interest in the story.  By crafting a character storyboard for Chad, I could immediately see the problem--and it was not apparent when I read the draft. 

I used a character storyboard to chart the progress of my reader through my nonfiction book, Your Book Starts Here, and realized I had planted too advanced material too early in the book.  Once I saw that the reader (my character, in a sense) wouldn't have understood some of the basic principles by that point, I could rearrange the chapter order to not overwhelm or confuse.  Much better sequence. 

It's not uncommon to emerge from a storyboarding session with an awareness of what still needs to be written--whether it's an event or a scene to show an aspect of a character.  I usually find missing sections or even chapters, places where a character or location has dropped out of sight, transitions that need to be made. Research still to do. 

Setting (Container) Storyboards
Sometimes a book's setting is so real and vivid, it is like a character.  I love books like this.  When I want to create them, I use a storyboard to track the "development" of my setting--how it grows in influence and changes in impact through the story.



So a third way to use storyboards is for your setting, or the "container" of your story--its culture, value and belief system, its history and atmosphere, the physical and psychological effect it has on the people and events. Chart the images, when you do this one.  How do they change as the story proceeds?  (Scroll down to review the impact of images in the post from last week.)


What If You're Just Starting ?  Using a Storyboard to Brainstorm I also use storyboarding during the first weeks and months of my book journey--when I have little written.  I imagine, or brainstorm, ideas for how I might create the narrative.  On the Post-It notes, I jot scenes or ideas or things I want to include.  Then I begin arranging them on the W storyboard, just to see what I have.  Most of the time, I get more ideas from this.  In fact, ideas start flooding in.

Storyboarding really lets you see possible ways to bring your book into manifestation.

So you can use storyboards to begin your journey or to organize it when you start to feel restless and overwhelmed with the amount of words you've collected.  It's always a good time to storyboard when you want a clear direction and development of your original idea.

This Week's Writing Exercise
This week, watch the video below. 

Then get yourself to an office supply store. Buy a posterboard and some Post-It notes. Go home, take a deep breath, and try creating your W storyboard.  Start with just two moments:  the opening and ending of your book, by asking yourself the questions below.

1.  Where might you begin? What moment do you see launching your reader into your topic or story? Write a note about this on a Post-It and place it on the storyboard.

2.  What moment might end your book? Where would you like the reader to be at the last page--with what new understanding, hunger, idea or feeling? Write a note about this too.

If you get brave, if you get enthused--as I did--see how many of the other Post-its you can place on the W.

Creating the Image Arc for Your Book

This week I'm in Florida, treating myself to a workshop with my wonderful painting instructor, Susan Sarback of the School of Light and Color.  It's truly a gift to myself to be able to get away from the chill of New England and get saturated with images of sea, sun, and sky.

It seems fitting that last week one of my online classes created the "image arcs" for their books, a process I didn't have a clue about as a new writer, but which transformed my understanding of story when I found out about it.

Image arcs exist in all books--essays and short stories often have them too, although they are most apparent in longer works.  Images thread something called the "inner story" which is where readers get the emotion from your writing.  Events provide momentum; images provide emotion.  Both are needed to (1) keep a reader reading and (2) make your story have an impact on more than just an intellectual level. 

When readers "fall in love" with books, it's usually because the image arc is strong and well threaded throughout the chapters, from beginning to end.

But how does a writer begin working with her book's image arc?

I didn't even know the image arc existed when I began my early books, and I worked primarily with editors at the publishing houses who took care of that sort of thing.  I was responsible for the material itself, they did the fine-tuning.  But as I published more and taught more about how books are constructed, I found out about this very important element. 

So this week I want to share with you the writing exercise that my online class has been working on (Part 3 of Your Book Starts Here class, sponsored by the Loft Literary Center).  I find this exercise interesting to do at any stage of book writing, but it's most helpful at revision.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise:  Creating Image Arcs
Images link the parts of your book's inner story, providing a pathway for a reader to follow. 

Images are part of "language" revision.  This exercise asks you to track the key images in your book to see if they create this all-important pathway for your reader.

1.  Look at the 5 main moments of your book.  You can use the W storyboard, as explained in this video I made.  Write down the events associated with these moments, as specifically as you can.  To do this exercise correctly, it's important to choose one event or a small series of events that happened in the same time frame (not over weeks or years, for example, but in several hours or one day). 

2.  List the primary location for each of these 5 events.  You may also notice that certain objects, or details of atmosphere such as weather, stand out in these events. 

3.  Find the key image in each of these 5 locations.  The key image might be a body of water, an object, a certain sense like smell or weather, a building, a color, a texture.  Make a list of these 5 main images.  Note:  you may have images that repeat within these 5--that's fine.  Ask yourself how the repeating image changes, evolves, at the different points.

4.  Now look at the chapters between each point.  They are bookended by a pair of images, yes?  (Act 1 has two main points, triggering event as #1 and end of act 1 as #2.)  How does each chapter between those bookends continue the image you begin and transition to the image you end with?

5.  Can you build this pathway, or image arc, in the chapters between your points?

This is a wonderful but challenging exercise.  If it interests you and you'd like to work more on it, consider attending one of my summer or fall retreats on beautiful Madeline Island (July and September this year), where we spend five days together exploring the deeper levels of your book--including its image arc.  

Drawing Solutions--How Visual Maps Help Your Book-Writing Dreams Come True

I first met Patti Dobrowolski at a seminar on the East Coast, at a time when I was trying to manifest a new goal with my writing--finish and get my book on writing, Your Book Starts Here, published at last. I knew I was stuck.  I felt overwhelmed by the need for a good editor and a bigger vision for the book.

I had lots of chapters, but I knew they weren't especially good.

Patti is a fireball on stage.  She loves what she does, which is mostly about drawing or visually mapping the goal-setting process.  She handed out copies of a simple goal-setting worksheet made up of three parts:  (1) a place to describe the vision of how you'd be or feel when your goal was realized, (2) any obstacles that stood between you and your goal, and (3) three bold steps to take.

Patti is the founder of Up Your Creative Genius, a consulting firm that uses visuals and creative processes to help companies and individuals around the world accelerate growth and change. A critically acclaimed comic performer, internationally recognized keynote speaker, writer and business consultant. She talked about how she'd imagined getting into a Broadway show in New York, and how she used this goal-setting method to imagine it.  Of course, it came true.  Since then, Patti has brought her innovative visual practices to NGOs, Fortune 500 companies, small businesses and individuals around the world.


So, in that seminar, I wrote down my vision for my book project.  I imagined finding a wonderful editor who would help me take it the final steps to publication.  I saw it being the basis for my classes, and I wrote down how it would benefit all the writers who would use it. 

Three Bold Steps
The last aspect--three bold steps--intrigued me the most.  I thought about this seriously.  What would be my wildest dream?  First, to find a fabulous editor who believed in my book and would be able to help me take the final steps in shaping it.  I knew such an editor in New York, but she was pretty busy.  I took a deep breath and wrote as one of my bold steps to email her and ask.  She might think I was insane but it really wouldn't hurt.

The second bold step was to take the plunge and get my website revamped.  It was old and tired, and I knew just the right person to help with that.  But what I had in mind would cost thousands.  Was I really able to justify the cost right now?  Would it make that much difference?  I imagined the book being published, people visiting the site, and decided yes.

The third bold step was about my book cover.  I wanted something really great.  I also wanted the interior to look amazing, with some graphics and a clean feel and wide margins for taking notes.  So I wrote down:  Find a designer and typesetter whose work I love.

After the seminar, even though I was reinvigorated by Patti's unique method, I put the chart away as life went on.  Daily demands took me away from my book ideas and it wasn't until a month later that I remembered Patti's chart and what I had promised myself.  I found it and looked over my three bold steps.  They still seemed incredibly scary to me, but I knew they were what I wanted.  I started taking action.

Miracles Happened!  This Method Works!
The editor, to my drop-dead astonishment, said yes.  She and I began working together and within months the manuscript took shape, becoming something so much better than I could've imagined.  With the enthusiasm of that success behind me, I contacted the website designer and forked over the money to start working with her.  When she sent me the template for her redesign I was astonished again--a huge step up.  Amazingly, she also did book design work and I talked with her about a possible cover.  Again, the results were better than I had imagined.  The best typesetter in the world was also easy to find.

Was this magic?  Or just good visioning, with the help of Patti Dobrowolski's wonderful template?  Had she really allowed me to tap into my creativity--my creative genius--in some new way, which allowed these miracles to happen?

I'm a great believer in good visioning.  And a firm supporter of Patti's way of doing it.

Her new book is just out, which gives all the details of how to do this visioning for yourself.  It's called Drawing Solutions and it's wonderful.  She's doing a book give-away contest the week of February 12 and click here to enter the contest.

Questions for Patti
I asked Patti to answer some questions about her process and how she discovered it, then wrote her book.  Here's our conversation:

When did you first know you wanted to write a book?

In 1995, I began experimenting with using visuals to goal set and develop the Snapshot of the Big Picture process. I realized how simple it was for me to make change when I had a visual to help inspire me, and be a road map for the success.  It was at this point that I thought, I should really write a book about this.

 

How long did this book take to write, from first written word to publication?

I started writing the book at a workshop lead by a writer's coach, Tom Bird.  I remember sitting next to a woman at a conference and she was the speaker and her book had just come out.  I asked her how long it took and she said, "Five years."  I thought to myself, I just finished my first draft, it will never be five years, maybe 1-1/2 at best.  How long did it take me?  Exactly five years!

Who do you imagine is your ideal reader for this book?

The ideal reader is someone who has a dream but isn't sure quite how to get it started.  It may be as simple as writing your first book, or creating that change that keeps you up at night, that you fantasize about.  That is the perfect reader, because this book helps to motivate you and get you doing by helping you see that by using a visual and lining up your brain to start working for you, you too can make that dream a reality.

What are some of the funny/tragic/inspiring experiences you had during the book-writing journey?

Tragic:  the typos that were found after I had two copy editors review the materials!  Funny:  how easy it was to get derailed in the process.  Anything became an excuse not to edit!  Here's a synchronistic thing:  Early on when I sent out query letters to get an agent, and one of the agencies that approached me gave me some really solid advice:  The agent said, "Look at other people's websites:  you have to have a slick video, a cool platform, a unique differentiator."  He then offered to coach me for about $10,000.  I declined, of course, thinking I could get that stuff together on my own (which I did).  

Recently I got a referral from a friend to do a private coaching session for a woman in transition (this is a two-hour session I do in person or on Skype and I draw a big map for them real time)  That woman was the former business partner of that agent.  She had left the agency and was going out on her own.

What's some advice you might give a new writer who is interested in putting together a book? 

Discipline is critical!  In my case, what I learned from Tom was to get up every day and write for two hours or a certain number of words, without going back and editing.  

Also, I went all the way through just writing the book before I came back and edited it.  I wrote longhand and when I went to transcribe it into the computer, that was my first edit.

What's your experience with publishing these days and why did you decide to publish the way you did?  

While I did land an agent, he couldn't ever figure out how to get a publisher interested in my book. So I decided to do POD (print on demand self-publishing), which Tom Bird outlines in his writing.  

I think, for me, this was absolutely the best choice. I am still learning about it, but all that money that would have gone to a publisher goes directly into my pocket and that is very satisfying.  It does go right back out the door, however, for advertising, etc.  But I think it is worth it.

What would you never do again, in terms of book writing or publishing?  

Probably never work with an editor I didn't know. I spent a huge amount of money getting a "writing coach" and a New York editor who was recommended by a  friend of a friend.  While I was happy to have them, I see now that they took me down a path that diverged from me developing my own voice, and I eventually scrapped what they had me write and went back to my original idea.

Anything else you want to share? 

While writing a book is an enormous amount of work, there is nothing quite as satisfying as finishing it.  It feels like a huge mountain, but once you are on the top, you see the whole range of mountains there are and yet each of those next peaks do not feel quite as daunting as this one.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
The weekly writing exercise is to check out Patti's book!  You may have some miracles appear in your life because of it, as happened to me.

Imagine your personal three bold steps, and see what it might take to bring your book into manifestation.

Working with Images to Get More Emotion into Your Chapters

This week, a fellow writer in New York sent me this bit of wisdom from writer Richard Bausch, who is known for his wonderful short stories. Bausch has been published widely, and he currently teaches in the writing program at the University of Memphis.

His thoughtful ideas on image and emotion will be the basis for our writing exercise this week.

"Make your feeling in things, images. There is so much more in an image because that is how we experience the world, and a good story is about experience, not concepts and certainly not abstractions. The abstractions are always finally empty and dull no matter how dear they may be to our hearts and no matter how profound we think they must be. I am perfectly aware that I am presently speaking in abstractions. So here is an example: there has been an auto accident. A head-on collision. We can say it contains all the horror of death and injury, and the terrible shocks to existence that await us all. Or--as my pal Allan Gurganus did once long ago in a workshop we were in, talking about this very matter--we can say a man with blood trickling from his ear and eyes wide and glittering unnaturally, knelt, shaking, at one of the broken headlights, trying, with trembling fingers, to put the pieces of shattered glass back into place. That opens the richest vein of horror, and it is experience, and we witness it, and feel it. So, in revision, get rid of all those places where you are commenting on things, and let the things stand for themselves. Be clear about the details that can be felt on the skin and in the nerves."

This is echoed in one of my favorite writing books, From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler.  Butler recommends doing away with any interpretation (thoughts and feelings about things, essentially).  Let the things stand for themselves.

Readers are awfully smart.  They can get the meaning behind the message, if the message is delivered through images. 

In my writing classes, I help writers see how their book's "inner story," or the message of meaning in their writing, is primarily delivered to the reader through these images that reveal emotion, rather than through abstract thoughts and feelings.

This often seems counter-intuitive to the new book writer.  But look at your favorite stories.  Often the emotion is presented at a peak moment through a gesture, an object, the way light glints on a table top that's just been shined.  Images are how readers absorb the emotional impact, or payoff, of such a moment in a book.  I find this true, no matter which genre we're working in.

For this week's writing exercise, I encourage you to test this out. 

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

1.  Choose a passage from your writing that is abstract:  maybe it's internal monologue, or thoughts and feelings from a character or narrator or author.

2.  Locate a tangible "thing," as Bausch says, that could possible convey this emotion or thought.

3.  Play with taking out the abstract and letting the thing speak for itself. 

4.  See if the emotional impact is enhanced.

Pros and Cons of First and Third Person Point of View

One of my online students recently emailed me with a very good question.  Many book writers struggle with this during revision:  which to use, first person or third person. 

Which has the most impact on the story?  What are the pros and cons of each voice?

Sometimes the writer will create "islands" or scenes or snippets of writing in different points of view, as she moves through making the manuscript.  This is absolutely fine--it gives our random creative selves freedom to test out many options.  But when you've finally assembled your first draft, you need to settle it down.  You need to choose a point of view that tells the story best.

A wonderful writer, much published, once told me this secret:  for newer writers (new to book-length works), it's easier to get to know the characters in first person voice.  "The first book is often first person," she said, "the next ones are in third person." 

I found this true.  My first novel was attempted in third person but I had a terrible time bringing the main character to light on the page.  She seemed so distant.  On the advice of a writing teacher, I converted her scenes to first person. 

Suddenly she was visible, audible, clear to me.

But when I began work on my second novel, the me-me-me of first person was a bit hard to take.  First person can come across very self-absorbed.  Which is beautiful in short pieces, tiresome in longer ones, like listening to a rant.  To make first person palatable, much has to be worked in the environment of the story--letting the setting (container) reflect the emotions of the first-person narrator, rather than the narrator always delivering them.

In crafting my first book in first person, I learned this the hard way.  My teachers red-penciled out long and, to me, lyrical passages of self-reflection.  I remember one x-ed out an entire page, writing "Enough!" in the margin.  And it was.  I'd learned one of the downsides of first person voice--it can be way too much. 

My current novel, written in third person, is difficult in its own way.  Third is more distant, so I have to work harder to bring out the emotions of each character.  I usually write "islands" in first person, in their voices, to get to know them.  Then switch over to third for the actual scenes and chapters 

Memoir--Its Particular Challenges
Memoirists have a tricky task here--memoir is always written in first person (except for very experimental memoir) because it's all about me, the narrator, anyway.  It's my story, and no one else can tell it.  So the memoir runs the risk of being very blah blah blah about their own precious thoughts and feelings, which the reader may not care about. 

I've been enjoying two memoirs this week that do very well with the first-person challenge:  Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller, and Let's Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell. 

Fuller makes use of setting brilliantly--we completely get her personality in the story, but we see it against the very large backdrop of the Rhodesian civil war, and that puts her personal angst in perspective beautifully. 

Caldwell falters occasionally in her memoir.  A long chapter about her alcoholism left me slightly bored with her; I found myself skipping ahead to where the story reunites with her friend's story, the meat of this book (about her friend's death).  I found it hard to just have Caldwell's musings without the stronger backdrop of something of bigger importance than a single life.

As my student wrote, "First person gives more immediacy and emotional punch," and it certainly does.  But one human life, with its singular thoughts and feelings, needs always to be balanced in literature with a broader landscape.  Otherwise, the self-absorption will deafen the larger voice and theme of the book.

She also wrote, "Third person allows for more backstory, summary, and the internals of more than one character at a time. It allows for more emotional coloring."  This is true.  The range of colors is wider, too.  Which makes for a potentially more profound story. 

She was kind enough to send two examples from her book, which she gave me permission to share here.  One is written in third person, the second in first person, with the same narrator.  Which appeals more to you, as the reader? 

Third person
Jenna is always touched with a wisp of melancholy when she sees him and she chides herself for thinking of him other than the way he is now. She knows that, his tall figure is slumped in his wheelchair, his stringy muscles gone flaccid and shrunken; his forehead is a map of wrinkles and brown spots below a no longer existent hairline. Still, he holds her fast to this earth though he is disappearing before her eyes and it matters, more than anything, and not of knee-jerk reaction either, to please him.





First person
When Dad isn't in front of me, I forget; I think of him as he was when he was younger. Now, every time I see him, I'm overcome with melancholy. I stand a moment at the door to the sun room and the surprise sweeps me again. His tall frame is slumped in his wheelchair, all his stringy muscles gone flaccid and shrunken; his forehead is a map of winkles and brown spots just below where his hairline used to be. Still, I think, he holds me fast to this earth and being his stand-up girl matters as much as it did when I was a kid.


Very different effects, yes?  


Your Weekly Writing Exercise


1.  Take a passage from your own writing, about the length of the one above.  Write it in the opposite voice as you've chosen.  If it's third, make it first.  if it's first, make it third.


2.  Read each aloud.  Which feels more layered, more interesting to you?


3.  Even if you are writing memoir, try this.  It's very revealing--you can see immediately where you've neglected the larger landscape of your story.