There's a new resource in town! The agents at Books & Such have introduced a new tool for authors called Library Insider.
It consists of two parts - a database of libraries and their acquisitions information to help authors target their marketing materials to the people and regions best suited to their titles. It's subscription-based and you can find out more here.
Along with it they offer a training package to help you learn how to navigate and best use the database. Behind the Stacks, with author and 25-year librarian Judy Gann, walks you through the process and the best way to get a positive response as an author. As they say on the blog:
"The database is half the equation; the training is the other half."
It looks to be a great resource (and there's a contest for a subscription discount running until Thursday! Check the blog for more info.)
As an artist that works fairly often with acrylic paints, the need to be able to walk away from my work for awhile has presented some problems. Once out of the tube/jar/bottle, acrylic paints dry. Ironic, isn't it?
Where this really becomes a problem is when I've mixed a batch of custom color and then have to put the painting aside for awhile. I know, I know, where's my dedication to the craft? But, hey, life happens.
I've tried a few different products that are supposed to help prolong the open life of acrylic paints. Some were inadequate. Unless I'd mixed WAY too much of a color and could peel the skin off to reach fresh paint underneath, they simply didn't do the job.
One product that's pretty good is the Premier Sta-Wet Palette By Masterson. It did a very nice job of keeping the paints fresh for up to 3 weeks. But the depth of the palette meant they had to be pretty small portions of paint. And as time went along, the moisture level in the palette made the edges of the paint dollops get rather watery and begin to run into each other. And after three weeks, the paints were still wet but were starting to smell funky.
A last issue I had is that the papers for the Masterson palette were very difficult to find in my area. Plenty of sponges available but no paper. I did find though, that freezer paper would work in a pinch.
Then I found two better (and much cheaper) option.
Number 1:
It began in a workshop by Jeannie St. John Taylor, when she showed us how she used the lids of margarine tubs (or whipped topping tubs) as her palettes for small dabs of color. If she needed to save a color for a while, she simply popped the top of the tub back onto the lid and, presto, an air tight seal. If it had to be extended, she gave the paint a short mist of water and closed it up again.
I borrowed this idea and bought some cheap food storage containers at a local dollar store. The clear containers were much better for me so I could see what colors I had on the go. I use the lids for the palette and the "tops" for rinse water as I paint. When it's time to stop, I simply rinse the "top", then snap it over the lid. The little bit of moisture left from the rinse keeps the paint fresh for up to four weeks (depending on the size of the paint dab). If I don't get back to them in time, it doesn't solve my color dilemma but I simply peel the paint off and save the dried, flexible paint drops for use in an abstract later.
One drawback to my particular system to note: the colored lids can affect your color perception as you paint. I test on my background so it's never been a huge dilemma but you can see how it might become one.
Number 2:
For large paintings, I still needed something that would hold a generous amount of paint but really hadn't found a good option yet. But then, in preparing for a large live painting session, I grabbed a deli-type container on the way out the door. It seemed like a good all-in-one option for big amounts of paint and having some rinse water nearby.
It worked very well and after clean-up, I simply slapped the lid back on thinking I'd deal with it at home. Well, home took over and it was two weeks before I got back to my temporary palette. To my amazement, the paint was completely fresh from top to bottom. Problem solved!
Here's how it works: take any multi-compartment deli container (you know the type that come with veggies and dip, or crackers and cheese) and use the compartments for your paint colors, but leave one compartment empty. When you need to close up the paint, put 1" of water in that compartment and snap the lid on. The paint I've currently got in there had been in this make-shift palette for 5 weeks and is still completely usable and moist. As the water evaporates slightly, it creates enough humidity in the container that the surface of the paint does not dry. I'm going to leave a little paint to see how long I can really keep it going, but for the purposes of my latest painting, it's been perfect.
Team writing intrigues me. Whenever I see two names on a script or a book cover, I begin to wonder about them as a duo and how they managed the mechanics of coauthoring. I recently met a woman that writes with another person (actually her sister-in-law). And a few years back I met a dynamic mother-daughter duo that write together. When I meet these teams, my first thought is usually, "How's that working for you?"
A very interesting article on the subject by Randy Ingermanson is below (and the legal stuff that says it's okay to post it is below that. Then a Monty Python clip is below that. It's all good so hang in there.)
I've learned from experience that team writing differs significantly from the editor/writer relationship. There's an implicit hierarchy involved in the editor/writer arrangement that really gives one person or the other the final say. In a writing duo, that has to be spelled out more carefully but can be a good thing to do up front, so to speak.
I also think there are styles of writers that work best together. That's why I find the clip below so funny. I will say though, that my friend and her writing teammate seem to be handling the challenges very successfully. At least neither of them has gnawed their own arm off yet.
Organizing: Coauthoring Without Murder
By Randy Ingermanson
"We're Best Friends Forever," she said, tilting her head toward the woman sitting beside her at the dinner table. "And we're writing a novel together. Isn't that COOL?"
I nodded noncommitally. "Sounds . . . great." We were eating supper at a writing conference and I was hosting a table and trying to get to know the other writers at my table. But anytime I hear that two friends are coauthoring, I get nervous, because writing a novel together can be murder on your friendship.
"We heard you coauthored a couple of novels with your best friend," one of the BFFs said. "And those worked out great, right?"
I nodded. Yes, I wrote two novels with my best buddy, John Olson. Yes, we sold the novels, won several awards, and remained best buddies. Yes, it worked out extremely well. Yes, we would do it again.
But the fact is that writing a novel with a friend doesn't always work out great. In fact, it rarely works out at all.
Coauthoring is serious business, and there are a lot of ways to go wrong. John and I were too ignorant to know better, or maybe we wouldn't have tried it. But we did and it worked.
The main reason -- probably the ONLY reason -- you should ever coauthor a novel with anyone is that you each bring some skill to the table that the other person doesn't have.
With fiction, the most common reason two people coauthor a novel is that one of them is an expert on the subject of the novel, while the other is an expert at writing fiction.
The reason this works so well is that fiction needs both good content and good craft in order to work. Normally, an author brings both the content and the craft, but it makes perfect sense to team up one person who has the content and another person who has the craft.
For example, the LEFT BEHIND series, which sold tens of millions of books, teamed up Tim LaHaye (famous in certain circles for his interpretation of biblical prophecy) with Jerry Jenkins (a talented novelist). Tim brought the content; Jerry brought the craft. Together, they made an enormously successful team.
So whenever I meet BFFs who are working together on a novel, the first question I ask is, "What does each of you bring to the project that the other doesn't?"
A lot of times, this draws a very long, blank look, and the words, "Well . . . we're FRIENDS."
My next question is, "How do you split up the writing?"
If this also gets a blank look, then I know this partnership is in trouble. You have to split up the writing somehow. You have to. You can't sit there at the keyboard all cuddly and both type at once. (John and I NEVER tried this, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work.)
I've often thought about what went right with John and me. There were several reasons that we made a good team.
First, we have complementary organizational skills. John is a visionary guy who is great at setting strategic goals. I am good at taking a vision and translating that into a set of tactical goals. So our first novel, OXYGEN, was John's idea (although I contributed a lot of ideas). I made the battle plans (and John played a key role in revising those plans).
Second, we have different areas of expertise. John is a biochemist. I'm a physicist. Our novel, about the first human mission to Mars, required a ton of research. John handled the life-science aspects. I took on the physical-science stuff.
Third, we have different skills as fiction designers. John is exceptional at developing plot and he LOVES writing synopses. I find character development easy and I LOVE writing character sketches. So we each did what we liked best in developing the story and writing the proposal.
Fourth, we have complementary emphases in our writing. John loves to "write from the shadows" -- giving each scene an air of mystery and intrigue. I like shining a bright light on things, so that the reader always knows exactly what the viewpoint character knows.
So when John edited my scenes, he added some mystery and shadows. When I edited his scenes, I clarified things that might have confused the reader. Somehow, it all melded together into a unique style that was neither mine nor John's. Our editors were completely unable to guess which of us wrote which parts.
Now here is where things could have gone badly wrong. If we'd asked anyone for advice, they'd have told us not to both be the writer. It's very hard to mix two people's styles into something that works.
But we didn't ask for advice because we didn't know there might be a problem. So both of us wrote first draft material and both of us edited. Our biggest problem was scheduling things so that we were always up to speed on what the other guy had written.
Early on, we thought that if we each wrote a scene at the same time, then we could work twice as fast. But then we discovered that the scenes simply didn't work, because the tone of one scene's ending determines the tone of the scene that follows. And you don't know exactly how a scene is going to play out until you write it.
So eventually, we hit on a plan where we'd map out the scenes for a week in advance. It would go like this: Randy will write a scene Monday morning and send it to John. John will edit that Monday night, then write the next scene, and send them both to Randy. On Tuesday morning, Randy accepts or rejects John's changes, then edits John's scene, then writes the next scene, and sends it all to John.
Repeat until the end of the book. It's a little complicated, but it worked without anybody losing an eye.
There was another rule we had. Each of us "owned" certain characters and we got to write the first draft of any scenes in which our character was the point-of-view character. John "owned" the female biochemist astronaut named Valkerie. I "owned" the male physicist astronaut Bob.
There was a third character named Nate who had a fair number of viewpoint scenes. Nate was a very rude and belligerent guy, and it turned out that I'm ruder and more belligerent than John, so I wound up writing Nate's scenes. This evened the work out, because John's character Valkerie had more scenes than my character Bob.
If you are going to work with another author, then one key requirement is that you both have to leave your ego at the door. This is hard. Writers have big egos (otherwise, they'd never do something as egotistical as believe that they might be able to write something that many thousands of people might actually want to read.)
I think what made things work for John and me was that we each had a very healthy respect for the other guy's talents. We had been friends for a few years, and each of us knew what the other was capable of doing. I think each of us felt lucky to be working with the other guy.
There is a very bad reason that people sometimes give for coauthoring: "It cuts the work in half to have two people working on it."
No. It cuts the MONEY in half. But there is always some inefficiency in getting two people working together. I suspect that in most cases there is a LOT of inefficiency.
Don't kid yourself on this. It may take more time to coauthor a novel than to write it alone. I used to joke that "John wrote 80% of our book . . . and I wrote the other 80%."
But I suspect that each of us actually put in about 120% of the normal effort for a book. This would be foolish unless the end result is better than either author could have done alone. In our case, I think we did get a better result as a team than either of us could have done solo.
When John and I first pitched the idea for our book to an editor, one question he asked was what we'd do if we disagreed. We hadn't thought about that, but the answer seemed obvious to me. The book was John's idea. So if we couldn't agree, then he had the deciding vote. For the same reason, his name would go first on the cover. And if we decided to break up the team, then John would own full rights to the book.
Our editor thought that made sense. It would have been wise to spell that out in writing, along with a few other details. Maybe we should have. I've heard that it's a good idea to write a contract between coauthors, but we never did.
Should you write your novel with a coauthor? Before you do, here are some questions you MUST have answers to:
* Why can this NOT be a solo project? * How are you going to split the work? * How are you going to split the money? * When you disagree, who gets to decide? * Whose name will go first on the cover, and why?
You'll notice that none of those questions has anything to do with whether you're best friends with your coauthor. Friendship is a fine, fine thing, but you need a good sound business reason before you enter a business relationship with anyone.
I never heard what happened to the two BFFs who were writing a novel together. Maybe they finished it. Most likely they didn't. I hope they're still friends.
People ask me once in a while if John and I are going to write another novel together. The answer is always a good, firm, "Maybe." We'd like to. Working together was great fun, and I learned a lot about writing from John. I hope that he may have learned a trick or two from me.
But it has to be the right book, at the right time, for the right reason. When that happens, we'll do it. If it doesn't, we won't. I value John's friendship more than I value any book we might write together. ___________
Award-winning novelist RandyIngermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 16,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.
Have you seen the Dr. Wicked site? Apparently Write or Die is now in version 2.0, with extra devious gadgets and nefarious consequences should your writing falter.
I found it in the comment section of Rachel Olson's blog and must say, it's a very convincing (and slightly masochistic) tool for getting through writer's block. Give it a try! (insert evil chuckle here...)
It's been a while since I've posted and I'd love to say that I've been deep in a creative effort. And I have, sort of, but it's been a bricks and mortar kind of creative effort. It's the time of year when the weeds take over without some really intensive effort so I've been on my knees battling Bermuda grass (came up with a few new epithets - I suppose that's writing related) and getting landscaping in order. We were given two loads of fresh cedar mulch, too - just the smell conjures up images and stories start to dance around in the fragrance. And I do feel the creative juices start to stir as my yard has become filled with raised beds, climbing roses and gently curving walkways. Lovely.
But I did take time for a seminar of sorts. Not a new one but a fascinating one. My husband came into the studio one night and told me I had to listen to this. "It's a geek thing but I think you'll get it."
Now that alone was enough to pique my curiosity. There's not many geek things I "get." I'm a technodummy of the nth degree. So away I went.
The presentation is Guy Steele's keynote at the 1998 ACM OOPSLA conference (it's a computer thing). If you have a chance to watch it, it's fascinating both in concept and in construction. If you don't have time for the whole thing, I've put a few of my own thoughts below.
Did you watch any of it?
If not, SPOILER ALERT!
The premise of his talk is that he does not use words of more than one syllable unless he defines it first. (It takes him about 9 minutes to explain that.) And he does this for almost an hour!
As a writer, I found it to be a fascinating exercise. (Probably my background in linguistics plays a part too.) But particularly as a children's writer, I want to expose kids to fun and extended vocabulary but I must be careful to leave enough context or enough familiar language in the text so that my readers don't get lost. Just like the computer operates within a set of rules, so young readers are taught a set of rules to help "decode" the language they encounter. The more decoding they have to do, the harder it can be for them to grasp the story. I don't want them stuck with "small language" but must pace the growth too, so that the purpose is not overwhelmed by a language that is too complex too fast.
And so we build a language together as writers, teachers, parents and caregivers that work with children through reading and writing. And from that language come the images, ideas and worlds that we can revel in to accomplish big things.
I'd heartily recommend finding time to watch the whole thing.
It's that time when we writers and artists are (many of us) looking at our shoe box of receipts and thinking, "I need to do this better next year." Many of us creative types are just not as strong in the area of record keeping and that "Type A" sort of stuff. I've learned to do it but it's still not one of my favorite things, especially when it comes to inventory tracking. (And sometimes learning means learning to hand it over to someone that understands the tax forms better than we do.)
But there's hope. An interesting blog by Allena Tapia points out some of the more common financial mistakes creators make on the Wow! blog called "The Five Fatal Finance Mistakes Writers Make." And if you want more information about some of those pesky deduction categories, Sandy Cathcart has available "Totally Honest Tax Tips for Writers." It has forms for record keeping, how to calculate home office deductions, handling things like office equipment and phone calls and more info for tax time.
Until then, though, keep that shoebox in a safe place.
They say the title is one of the most important things you will ever write for your new manuscript - though probably the query letter still ranks a little higher. There are definitely some titles that catch the imagination or pique the curiosity. Some of my favorites include: How Are You Peeling?, Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type, A Bag Full of Nothing, Mr. Pinkerton Finds A Body, No More Dead Dogs, And God Created Squash, and the list goes on...
We'd been talking about titles in the residency I'm currently teaching (I'm done at the end of the week so will stop talking about it eventually) and doing some brainstorming about what should and shouldn't be in a title. Some kids had a snappy option right off the cuff, others just stared and shrugged. (I think I could tell which ones have more AR points.)
I got home with a head full of titles and then saw this sitting on my kitchen table:
Maybe it's just because I was hanging around with 9-year-olds but doesn't this strike you as possibly being an unfortunate choice? I can't imagine a parent walking into a book store and asking for the book "Things to Do with Pooh."
(Okay, actually I can. And I can also imagine the look on the staff member's face when they hear the request. I mean, if you didn't know it was connected to Disney's version of A.A. Milne's classic bear, what shelf would you start looking on?)
Needless to say, it's gotten some mileage around our house, and it's served as a caution to me too. Our titles need careful attention. Do you want to see if your title measures up? You can put it to the test at the Lulu Titlescorer or, for the more sports minded, put two titles to the test at the new Lulu Titlefight!
. It did a very nice job of keeping the paints fresh for up to 3 weeks. But the depth of the palette meant they had to be pretty small portions of paint. And as time went along, the moisture level in the palette made the edges of the paint dollops get rather watery and begin to run into each other. And after three weeks, the paints were still wet but were starting to smell funky.
