Tag Archive for: Craft/All Genres

Writing as Triathlon

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Kathy IzardWhen I first began writing, I believed the most difficult part would be finishing a full-length manuscript, so I only thought it was important to take classes relating to story craft. It was a rude awakening to realize there was so much more I needed to know if anyone was ever going to be able to buy my book and read it.

In a 2002 NY Times article, Think You Have a Book in You? Think Again, author Joseph Epstein cited a study that revealed “81% of Americans feel they have a book in them.” He goes on to use the rest of his essay to dissuade people from writing and suggests instead, “Keep it inside you where it belongs.”

Apparently, a lot of people do as Epstein suggests and “save the typing, save the trees.” On Reedsy.com, a blog states .01% ever make it to their goal of finishing that book. No doubt that is because a crafting great story is only about 30% of the book problem. Once authors type “The End,” it’s only the beginning of a long process to write query letters, secure an agent, sign a book contract and market the book. Add on to that the frustrating demand from publishers that writers must also build a “platform” on social media to sell their work, and really, it does seem like Epstein might have been right.

At the same time, it has never been easier for authors to bypass the agents who are gatekeepers of the Big Five publishing world and create their own books. The idea of “self-publishing” is not new, dating back to 1439 when the first printing press was invented by a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg. Fast forward to 1979, when computers made desktop publishing accessible and the current print-on-demand technology possible.

In the last forty years, Amazon (KDP Direct) and Ingram (IngramSpark) have dominated and consolidated the POD world, creating a level of sophistication that can make a self-published book indistinguishable from traditionally published titles. But to navigate this part of the publishing universe, aspiring writers must learn how to turn their manuscripts into properly formatted files—a process which can seem daunting.

In truth, it simply takes more of the same persistence required to finish your 65,000-word manuscript. You can learn how to master plot lines and dialogue, as well as how to publish your own great book. Take, for example, the determination of Lisa Genova.

In 2007, she was simply a grad student who had received multiple rejections from traditional publishers. But Genova believed in her manuscript based on the story of her grandmother’s early onset Alzheimer’s, so the aspiring author self-published. After gaining popularity with readers, Simon & Shuster picked up the title and republished it two years later under the title Still Alice. Genova’s book, which had been initially rejected, was on The New York Times Best Seller List for more than 40 weeks, sold in 30 countries, translated into 20 languages, and became an Oscar-winning film. None of that would have happened if Genova had not taken the initiative to publish her own book.

In reality, writing a book is like completing a triathlon—and each of the three stages takes training: writing, publishing and marketing. Don’t wait until your last page to think about how to get your book in the world. Start now, learning to navigate the publishing and book-marketing world.

Maybe even more important than crafting your great characters is learning how your readers will ultimately discover them.

Learn About Self-publishing with Kathy

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2023: “Paths to Self-Publishing,” 6:00-8:00 p.m., in-person at Charlotte Lit

So, you’ve finished a manuscript and have made the decision to self-publish. Where do you start? Or, maybe you worry that self-publishing means “settling” for an unprofessional product. No matter on which side of that fence you sit, the volume of information and opinions is overwhelming. It can be difficult to know which services to trust and whether self-publishing is right for you. Kathy Izard has published four books three ways, including self-published and “Big Five.” Kathy will walk you through 10 steps to putting your words in the world. From purchasing your own ISBN number to ordering author copies, Kathy can answer all your questions about becoming a published author of adult or children’s books. Info

About Kathy

Kathy Izard is an award-winning author and speaker who writes inspirational nonfiction, including The Hundred Story Home, The Last Ordinary Hour and her upcoming release Trust the Whisper (Summer 2024). Kathy also publishes children’s books including A Good Night for Mr. Coleman and Grace Heard a Whisper (Fall 2023). Kathy has written essays for Katie Couric Media and her work as been featured on the Today Show, inspiring people to be changemakers in their community. Online: kathyizard.com.

 

Make the Ordinary Sacred

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Angelo GeterThe past two years have been interesting, as we have entered into and through a pandemic, learned new skills, and discovered things about ourselves we may not have known were there.  In the midst of that time, I have found myself reading poems, articles, and stories that speak to real life and emotions.  The overwhelming number of things I’ve read that spoke to me were the courageous things.  The poems about picking yourself out of bed when depression told you not to, reminiscing about eating a meal with your grandmother before she passed, and harnessing the joy of a child’s laugh to name a few. The elements that all these stories had in common was an elevation of the ordinary. They celebrated regular people cherishing the seemingly mundane but also recognizing the effort it takes to do so.

 

The poems that relish and elevate the small things are the ones that have the most impact.  For example, Patricia Smith has a poem entitled “When the Burning Begins” where she details making cornbread with her father before he passed.  While the act of making cornbread isn’t particularly exciting, the vibrant language, colorful storytelling, and active wordplay allows us to exist in the moment and have a greater appreciation for what that act represents.

 

When you are crafting your own work, take a look at the things around you.  What is something that you do every day as a ritual? What does that look and feel like? What makes it something special to you?  Asking yourself those questions can help you find and define a purpose in that routine. Perhaps you brush your teeth a certain way because your mother told you that when you were younger and now it’s also a way to honor her. Perhaps you eat a certain meal on a particular day because it reminds you of something. Take those ordinary occurrences and detail the process of what it takes to create it.  There is always some beauty in the seemingly ordinary.

ABOUT ANGELO: Angelo ‘Eyeambic’ Geter is a dynamic poet, spoken word artist and motivational speaker who merges his passions for poetry and speaking into a unique performance that educates, entertains, and inspires. Over the course of his career, Angelo has amassed several accolades. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Rock Hill, SC, and a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Geter is also a 2019 All-America city winner, 2018 National Poetry Slam champion, Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam finalist, Southern Fried Regional Poetry Slam finalist and has performed and competed in several venues across the country. His work has appeared on All Def Poetry, Charleston Currents, and the Academy of American Poets “Poem a Day” series.

BRING YOUR WORDS TO LIFE WITH ANGELO: Join Angelo for Spoken Word: Poetry and Performance, a three-part class dedicated to the art of spoken word and poetry slam. Examine spoken word work to demonstrate how literary devices employed in traditional poetry are expanded in this genre. Participants will be guided through several prompts and exercises to help them craft their own original work. Participants will have the opportunity to read their spoken word pieces and receive feedback. This class will show you how to literally bring your words to life from the page to the stage. More information here.

Note: This class meets on three Tuesdays, May 10, 17 and 24, 6:00-8:00 pm.

Proof of full Covid vaccination is required to attend in-person Charlotte Lit events. Send a picture of your vaccination card to staff@charlottelit.org

Notebooking

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Zines for Creative Exploration            Timothy: As a novice artist, I once spent several months drawing pictures of lizards and turtles for researchers in an animal behavior lab. I loved being around all the gadgets and learning the jargon of science, but the most interesting aspect was watching everyone fill up stacks of green notebooks with scribbled facts, figures, and thumbnail sketches. This largely unseen work of scientific exploration revealed to me a vastly bigger and more complex process than I’d imagined before.

Since then, my education as an artist has taken a pinball’s path, rolling and rocketing from bumper to flipper and back again. Now in the afternoon of this journey, after trying on a dozen different identities, I tell people (and myself) that I make books about books. But, ever skeptical of neat categories and descriptions, I wonder every day what this actually means.

It helps reaffirm my practice to think back to all those amazing lab notebooks overflowing with blue, black, and red ink. Their rich beauty, not meant for the eyes of the lay public, made me interested in the stories behind stories. Of course, I also have the privilege of living with a writer, who has filled so many shapes and sizes of notebooks with ideas. A finished book on the shelf or a painting on the wall can be wonderful things, but to me the messy, freewheeling preparatory work that flows though notebooks and sketchbooks is every bit as fascinating. So, I make, or at least try to make, book-like objects that talk about the often overlooked labor of art.

 

Bryn: And I have the privilege of living with a visual artist whose sketchbooks burst with wild, beautiful drawings and annotations. Our artistic disciplines intersect in the realm of notebooks: writers, artists, and other creative thinkers, as Timothy mentions, find these compact paper spaces crucial for process and discovery. Time and again, I’ve scratched bits of imagery, scenes, and characters during long walks or early morning coffee; later in the same pages, I’ve refined and expanded those bits or ditched them altogether. I’ve pasted encouraging quotes, pictures, and notes to self. When I drafted Sycamore, I first highlighted and tabbed pages in the stack of notebooks I’d been working in. Some of those scraps made it in wholesale.

Living with an artist, I also know how valuable it is to make a notebook for a project. Book artists in particular build mockups for their projects, mapping and testing structures, and then filling the pages with calculations and notes, before embarking on the final piece. Why shouldn’t writers, too, make their own project-specific notebooks? These serve not only to capture our ideas but to remind us from the start that this work should have its own personalized, playful space that also is practical and portable. Anyone can buy a readymade journal, but slowing down and constructing one from scratch is a kind of promise: This work matters. It’s in my hands now.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORS:

About the Instructors: Bryn Chancellor is the author of the novel Sycamore, a Southwest Book of the Year and Amazon Editors’ Best Book of 2017, and the story collection When Are You Coming Home?, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, with work published in numerous literary journals. Honors include a 2018 North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship and the Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. She is associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Timothy Winkler is an illustrator and book artist whose Modern Fauna Art & Ephemera Studio is currently based in Charlotte. A native of Nashville, Tennessee, he has long studied and worked in all the various media of printmaking. He earned his MFA in Book Arts at the University of Alabama and has taught letterpress printing at Penland School of Crafts and a course on Outsider Art at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Winkler was a 2020 recipient of an Arts and Science Council Artist Support Grant.

CREATE ZINES WITH BRYN & TIMOTHY: The road to a story winds through myriad notes and drafts. Join Bryn & Timothy on April 30, 2022 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for Little Notebooks, Big Ideas: Zines for Creative Exploration. Making notebooks by hand lets writers immerse themselves in the critical early creative process and helps them commit to a project. We’ll make fun, easy, affordable, and portable notebooks in the spirit of zines, closer to Anne Lamott’s index cards than to fussy bound journals. We’ll start to fill the pages with targeted prompts for characters, settings, and scenes, and play with simple printmaking and collage to make them our own.  Register Here

Note: This class includes an hour break for lunch. You can bring your own or visit one of several walking-distance options.

Finishing a Manuscript is Only the Beginning

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Kathy IzardWhen I first began writing, I believed the most difficult part would be finishing a full-length manuscript, so I only thought it was important to take classes relating to story craft. It was a rude awakening to realize there was so much more I needed to know if anyone was ever going to be able to buy my book and read it.

In a 2002 NY Times article, Think You Have a Book in You? Think Again, author Joseph Epstein cited a study that revealed “81% of Americans feel they have a book in them.” He goes on to use the rest of his essay to dissuade people from writing and suggests instead, “Keep it inside you where it belongs.”

Apparently, a lot of people do as Epstein suggests and “save the typing, save the trees.” On Reedsy.com, a blog states .01% ever make it to their goal of finishing that book. No doubt that is because a crafting great story is only about 30% of the book problem. Once authors type “The End,” it’s only the beginning of a long process to write query letters, secure an agent, sign a book contract and market the book. Add on to that the frustrating demand from publishers that writers must also build a “platform” on social media to sell their work, and really, it does seem like Epstein might have been right.

At the same time, it has never been easier for authors to bypass the agents who are gatekeepers of the Big Five publishing world and create their own books. The idea of “self-publishing” is not new, dating back to 1439 when the first printing press was invented by a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg. Fast forward to 1979, when computers made desktop publishing accessible and the current print-on-demand technology possible.

In the last forty years, Amazon (KDP Direct) and Ingram (IngramSpark) have dominated and consolidated the POD world, creating a level of sophistication that can make a self-published book indistinguishable from traditionally published titles. But to navigate this part of the publishing universe, aspiring writers must learn how to turn their manuscripts into properly formatted files—a process which can seem daunting.

In truth, it simply takes more of the same persistence required to finish your 65,000-word manuscript. You can learn how to master plot lines and dialogue, as well as how to publish your own great book. Take, for example, the determination of Lisa Genova.

In 2007, she was simply a grad student who had received multiple rejections from traditional publishers. But Genova believed in her manuscript based on the story of her grandmother’s early onset Alzheimer’s, so the aspiring author self-published. After gaining popularity with readers, Simon & Shuster picked up the title and republished it two years later under the title Still Alice. Genova’s book, which had been initially rejected, was on The New York Times Best Seller List for more than 40 weeks, sold in 30 countries, translated into 20 languages, and became an Oscar-winning film. None of that would have happened if Genova had not taken the initiative to publish her own book.

In reality, writing a book is like completing a triathlon—and each of the three stages takes training: writing, publishing and marketing. Don’t wait until your last page to think about how to get your book in the world. Start now, learning to navigate the publishing and book-marketing world.

Maybe even more important than crafting your great characters is learning how your readers will ultimately discover them.

ABOUT KATHY: Kathy Izard is an award-winning author and speaker who helped bring transformation to Charlotte in homelessness, housing and mental health. Kathy self-published her first book, The Hundred Story Home, which received a Christopher Award for inspiring nonfiction and was acquired by Harper-Collins. Since 2016, Kathy has created her own imprint to publish three books for adults and children in print, e-book and audiobook. Kathy’s work has been featured on the Today Show and NPR inspiring people to be changemakers in their communities. Learn more www.kathyizard.com

 

“I’ve Always Wanted to Write a Book”

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Megan Rich

Megan Rich

When I meet someone new, within the first few minutes, they inevitably ask, “So what do you do?” It’s an innocent question, but one that often leads to an interesting end: “I’m a writer,” I say, and many look wistfully into the distance and reply, “I’ve always wanted to write a book.”

A natural encourager, I invite them to share their ideas. I listen attentively, knowing that the first crucial step to writing a book is often a conversation like this. They try their best to sum up what’s been beating around their heads — sometimes for decades — and in so doing, realize they’ve never tried once to say it aloud. Then they give me the kind of smile reserved for fast friends — for the unexpected society found in the quiet corners of summer barbecues, football games and their tipsy on-lookers shouting in the background.

More than a decade into such conversations, more people than ever are lighting up as they tell me about their book ideas. Maybe it’s just that my friends and I are getting older, and questions of legacy and bucket lists and everything we’ve always wanted to do has become more urgent. Or maybe it’s the time we’ve all had in the last, languid years to dream up new worlds and characters and hobbies. Whatever it is, almost everyone has an idea now. Is it just a passing fad or something more profound: a recognition that the world needs longer, richer stories into which we can sink our teeth?

Sometimes these conversations lead to a practical question: How does one actually write a book? Nearly every time, the light that was so bright in their eyes begins to fade. I have to get up early? I won’t get paid for several years or maybe not at all? I have to convince a string of people, precipitously inaccessible, that my story matters? That sounds too much like work! We laugh and then transition to the next-best thing — a new Netflix series, the strange weather of late, the delicious dip Kelly brought — anything but the dream crashing down around us. We part ways with a tinge of regret.

But other times — and these are the ones I live for — the light of an idea grows brighter. As they ask about my discipline and practice, they begin to think they might want to do it, too. Faced with the long odds of publication and the cascades of rejection, there is a gauntlet thrown down at their feet. In that conversation, in that desire to make their ideas known to a wider world, they take the first, crucial step toward a goal they’ve had forever.

And it happens: they begin to write their book.

ABOUT MEG: Megan Rich has written two books, a YA novel and a travel memoir, and is seeking representation for her third, a literary thriller inspired by The Great Gatsby. She took part in the highly-selective sub-concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, for which she completed a thesis of original poetry. In addition, she’s a graduate of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project program. With fourteen years experience as a creative writing teacher and mentor of students from ages twelve to eighty-five, she is passionate about helping others find and refine their voices on the page.

JUMP START YOUR BOOK WITH MEG: Learn to create a lasting connection with your readers, by developing your voice in Meg’s upcoming class Novel Jumpstart, beginning Sunday April 3. In this four-week mostly-asynchronous studio we will help you decide if you want to write a novel, and if so, will help make the journey must less fraught. Through recorded lectures, readings, online discussions, and short assignments, we will examine the structures of stories, protagonists and their journeys, story worlds, story time, genre, point of view — and the habit, discipline, and support needed to get it done. More information here.

Note: Novel Jumpstart a great choice if you’re considering applying for Authors Lab, which begins in the fall.

Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry

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It’s 1972, I’m 15 years old, I’ve been writing seriously for about a year, I’m holed up in the only bathroom of our crappy run-down apartment in East Charlotte, my sister is banging on the locked door, and I’m slumped down in the lukewarm bathwater reading.

LINT

I’m haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.

I’ve been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.

And the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Because sometimes it does that when I read stuff.

“Lint.” That’s the whole thing. I turn the page to see if there’s any more, and there isn’t, and my sister yells that I’m a selfish jerk who’s hogged the bathroom long enough and other people live here too.

I read “Lint” again. What the hell is it? I look at the book I’m reading. The cover illustration is a photo of a dark-haired young woman in a lacy blouse, grinning crazily, sitting beside a chocolate cake. The author is Richard Brautigan, a writer I’m only vaguely aware of, and the title is Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970.

Stories, I think. How is that a story? It’s only four sentences long!

This is three decades before the label “flash fiction” would be invented. “Micro-essay” won’t be a thing until the next century. Maybe this is a prose poem, I think. But the book says Stories.

“Are you in there reading that hippie crap?” my sister yells, and she kicks the door.

I read it a third time. It’s not a prose poem, I decide.

And it’s not a story. Maybe if you’re good enough, audacious enough, don’t care enough about definitions and rules and nomenclature, you can write a story that’s not a story and still call it a story.

Maybe, I think, maybe you just write it and let somebody else figure out what to call it and you keep writing, keep going on to the next thing. Maybe deciding what it is is not your job.

I wrap myself in a ragged blue towel and unlock the door.

“If you used up all the hot water,” she says, “I’m gonna kill you.”

ABOUT LUKE: Luke Whisnant is the author of the poetry chapbooks Street and Above Floodstage, the novel Watching TV with the Red Chinese, and the short story collection Down in the Flood. His chapbook In the Debris Field won the 2018 Bath Flash Fiction International Novella-in-Flash Award, and his flash has been published in many journals including Quick Fiction, Hobart, The Journal of Microliterature, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and CRAFT, where his “What They Didn’t Teach Us” won an Editor’s Choice Award in 2019. Whisnant’s new novel, The Connor Project, will be published by Iris Press in April 2022. He has taught short-form prose workshops for Charlotte Lit, the South Carolina Writers Association, Wildacres Writers Workshop, and in his own classes at East Carolina University.

EXPLORE SHORT FORMS WITH LUKE: Flash is the genre for fast times, with hundreds of journals and websites publishing shorter and shorter work. In this three-week class with Luke, you will learn some common misconceptions about flash; delve briefly into the history of short-form prose, including prose poetry and micro-essays in FLASH 101: FLASH FICTION & MICRO ESSAY. Fiction writers, prose poets, and concise nonfiction writers are all welcome. This class meets via Zoom on three Thursdays, March 17, 24 and 31, 6:00-8:00 p.m.  More information here.

Haunted by an Unfinished Book

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Kim WrightAs a teacher and coach I’ve seen plenty of writers haunted by an abandoned book. They say things like “I didn’t see it through” or “I gave up.” Let’s face it, most of us write with the intention of at least finishing. Though ideally we want the finished manuscript to be published, preferably backed by an agent and a major house. Even if we don’t always vocalize it, we have fantasies that extend way beyond that – bestsellers, literary prizes, movie deals.

It’s easy to beat yourself up over that unfinished potential best seller, but here’s the truth: every successful writer has at least one abandoned book, probably far more than one. Some books are unfinished, others get lost in the weeds of publishing – never finding an agent or our agent was unable to sell the story.

In some cases we grieve. Other times we reread our lost stories, wince, and thank God they never escaped into the marketplace. Not every book is intended for publication and not every abandoned book is a failure. In fact, I’d say a book is a success if:

  • You learned something from writing it.
  • You honed your techniques and upped your skill level from the sheer practice of showing up at the computer day after day.
  • The process of writing and trying to sell it brought you in contact with people who will be important to your career eventually.
  • It propelled you to your next story.
  • You developed some scenes or characters who – while perhaps not strong enough to support an entire work of fiction – may find a home in a different story in the future.

I’ll cop to seven dead books – three unfinished and four unsold. They’re under my bed in little rectangular boxes, whose resemblance to coffins is impossible to overlook. But those of you who have taken my classes know, I keep “cut character” and “cut scene” files and raid them on a regular basis. Who knows? Some of my murdered darlings may yet claw their way from the grave and live again in a different form.

ABOUT KIM: Kim Wright is the author of Love in Mid Air, The Unexpected Waltz, The Canterbury Sisters, Last Ride to Graceland, and The Longest Day of the Year. As The Story Doctor, she coaches and offers developmental edits. Kim is a Charlotte Lit Authors Lab faculty member and coach. When she’s not teaching, writing, and editing, she’s often talking about writing on social media.

FIND YOUR NEXT STORY WITH KIM: Successful writers will tell you they often make multiple false starts before settling on a concept that can really go the distance––but exactly where do those original ideas come from? In Generating Story Ideas Kim will teach you how to separate the concepts that are mere glimmers from those that hold narrative gold. More information here.

New Times, New Voice

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Megan Rich

Over the last several months, I’ve taken a creative break from my novel project and am working on a new essay collection. In this transition, I’ve encountered an interesting problem. Because I’m what you might call a “method writer,” one who tries to become her characters, I noticed that, even when writing a personal essay, I often slip into the unconscious patterns of my novel’s narrator. I’ve been using her buzzwords, her sentence structures, and her metaphors for so many years, some part of me seems to think they’re mine, too. Most egregious, I’ve even fallen prey to her logical fallacies, the ones I worked so hard to help her overcome by the end!

So, I’ve been actively trying to recultivate my authentic voice. I think sometimes we forget that our voice, in writing and in life, is dynamic; if it doesn’t change over time, it becomes stale and boring to us and likely to our readers. When I first started writing my novel, I was living in the West, teaching angsty teenagers, and interacting with all kinds of people without masks: How could I possibly have the same voice that I have now, working on these essays? In the course of drafting, revising, and polishing that manuscript, I also conceived, bore, and breastfed a human being. So, in order to find my new voice, I needed to spend time unlearning who I was and embracing who I’d become.

The particular essay I’ve been working on intensely over the last few weeks is a doozy. I’m attempting, in 6000 words or less, to fully explore my relationship to reproduction — including several pregnancy losses — and the societal underpinnings of shame attached to some of my experiences. Finding the right register, rhythm, and diction (read: voice) is paramount because I hope this essay will speak to and for those who have experienced this, too. After writing a few paragraphs last week — with a register that felt too submissive and diction that felt too easy — I commented the following, in bold, in the margin: “Remember that you were not comfortable at any point during these experiences. It’s okay for your reader to feel a little uncomfortable, right?” The next few hours were a wonderful experimentation in what that voice might be: a direct, precise woman who isn’t afraid to make her audience a little uncomfortable. Sounds good to me!

To write truly voice-driven work, we must continually define and redefine how we want to communicate; we must adjust to the ways we change over time and to the differing purposes of our work. Often, we have to step outside of the unconscious patterns we’ve built onto every page we’ve already written and say, “Hey! Is that still how you want to sound?” If not, I hope you’ll have the courage to discover what you might write to yourself in the margins.

ABOUT MEG: Megan Rich has written two books, a YA novel and a travel memoir, and is seeking representation for her third, a literary thriller inspired by The Great Gatsby. She took part in the highly-selective Sub-Concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, for which she completed a thesis of original poetry. In addition, she’s a graduate of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project program. With fourteen years experience as a creative writing teacher and mentor of students from ages twelve to eighty-five, she is passionate about helping others find and refine their voices on the page.

FIND YOUR VOICE WITH MEG: Learn to create a lasting connection with your readers, by developing your voice in Meg’s upcoming class Creating an Authentic Voice, February 1 and 8 from 6-8 p.m. via Zoom. In this two-session class, we will study voice at a deep level to learn the best techniques and generative exercises for connecting directly and quickly with our readers. In the second session, Meg will provide thoughtful feedback and advice on your work, helping you refine and deepen your voice in revisions. More information here.

Read Like an English Major

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Betsy Thorpe

My daughter just graduated from college (a semester early, so my savings’ account thanks her dearly!), and now she is looking for a job. Since a lot of interviews take place over the phone for obvious reasons, I end up hearing snippets of her conversations. I’ve preached to her over the years that majoring in the liberal arts teaches you critical thinking skills, so when she’s asked what can a political science major “do” for an insurance firm, or a bank, or a communications firm…she has a ready answer.

Conversely, when people approach me with their books, or book ideas, they apologize in advance when they are not English majors. “I’m sorry—I didn’t study this in school.” I reassure them that you don’t need to be an English major to write a book. But it does help to act like one.

What do English majors do? We analyze how books work. One of my very earliest lessons of this in high school was, how were Hemingway’s books different from Fitzgerald’s? Which author did we prefer and why? A great Twitter thread (that I retweeted, from @literaticat) suggested that if you want to be a children’s book writer, go to the library and read 100 books in your genre from the last five years. “Tear them apart. Why and how do they work?”

Any writer, fiction or non-fiction, can benefit from reading current books that are being published in their genre. Ask, how do the authors I connect with handle structure? Is the book told linearly, by theme, through flashbacks, through different narrators? How are their characterizations, settings, dialogue, pacing, plotting working for you? Are certain methodologies in their writing rubbing you the wrong way, or instead, making you put down the book in awe, your jaw dropping, thinking, Wow, that was beautiful. And then give thought to, Why was it so beautiful?

So much changes in what’s considered “current,” so it pays to be reading in your genre, keeping up, not being old-fashioned. (Are adverbs out or in? What do dialogue tags look like in today’s books? How about…insert drumroll and much controversy and angst…the use of present or past tense!) While yes, it’s good to be you, you don’t want to be the only one who spends twenty pages on the description of an approach to a house, as I found to be true re-reading Jane Eyre and Anne of Green Gables. Back in the 1800s, we needed those descriptions as perhaps we’d never been to England or Prince Edward Island. But thanks to film, we know now what the terrain looks like, and can skip straight to the plot.

Have fun with this reading assignment, and don’t get intimidated by a specific number—just start reading in your genre with a more critical eye! It will make you a better writer, and you’ll be more knowledgeable about current trends.

ABOUT BETSY:  Betsy Thorpe started in book publishing as an assistant at Atheneum, eventually becoming an acquiring and developmental editor while working at HarperCollins, Broadway Books (Random House), Macmillan, and John Wiley & Sons. She then started Betsy Thorpe Literary Services, which helps authors deliver their best work to the public, either through publishers or self-publishing. She is the co-author of numerous non-fiction books, including three featured in the New York Times, and is at work on her second novel, The Writer’s Cottage.

QUERY FOR SUCCESS: Learn how to write a professional and compelling query letter with Betsy in her upcoming class Query Letters for Novels and Memoirs on January 25, 2022 from 6-8PM in-person at Charlotte Lit. We’ll be discussing the essential five paragraphs that make up a query letter, including the elevator pitch, author bio, and the dreaded comparison books. We’ll take a look at some query letters that won the notice of agents, and those that were so awful they got posted online. More information here.

PLEASE NOTE: Proof of full Covid vaccination is required to attend in-person Charlotte Lit events. Send a pic of your vaccination card to staff@charlottelit.org.

Silent Partners

/in , , , , , /by
Kathryn Schwille

Kathryn Schwille

Beside my reading chair is a table that’s been in my family for generations. It’s at least 130 years old, with fluted legs and three small finials gracing each side. The table was once painted off-white, and because my grandfather smoked a pipe, a large burn mark scarred the top. Many years ago, I’d tried to remove the paint and sand the top but failed miserably. Bits of white clung to the fluted edges and the ashtray blotch never budged. It was a mess.

Finally, I took the table to be refinished by a professional. I’d always thought it was oak, but when I picked it up the refinisher corrected me: definitely not oak, probably American chestnut. Ouch. That tree has been extinct for decades. In the eyes of Antiques Roadshow, I’d probably defaced (and devalued) a treasure.

The table is pretty, though, in its revision. It usually holds a stack of my husband’s cooking magazines and recently, my copy of Alice Munro’s collection, The Progress of Love. In the twenty years I’ve owned that book, I’ve read several of the stories many times. One is “The Moon Over the Orange Street Skating Rink,” which opens with a scene between two older characters who haven’t seen each other since they were children, and who suddenly meet. I’m struggling to write a scene similar to that, and I’ve turned to Munro for help. What does Munro do that I might borrow? What do her characters say – and not say? How does she avoid predictable dialogue? (That would be the kind I wrote in my first draft: “Hi Amelia, it’s me, Hank. Been a long time.” Yawn.)

Munro’s character Sam, who’s done well in life, is revisiting his hometown, where his old friend runs a neighborhood store. He finds her behind the counter, reading a romance novel.

Sam asked for cigarettes, to test her. She gave him his change and settled her sweater around her shoulders and picked up her book, all without looking at him. Her sweater was covered with little jiggly balls of pink and white wool, like popcorn. She waited till the last minute to speak to him.

“You taken up smoking in your old age, Sam?”

“I thought you didn’t know me.”

“I’d know your hide in a tannery,” said Callie, pleased with herself. “I knew you the minute you walked in that door.”

Sam is playing a game, and Callie has one, too. The testing and withholding give me an idea. A moment of recognition – or lack of it, or refusal to acknowledge it – is full of opportunity. Sam sizes up Callie from that unsophisticated sweater. He and his better circumstances seem to have given him the power in the scene, until she reveals her game. This tiny scene has tension. There’s plenty to inspire me, and off I go. My story is meant to be refinished over and over – no defacing an antique here. With my writer eyes open to Munro’s technique, each of my drafts will come closer to a piece I can live with.

ABOUT KATHRYN: Kathyrn Schwille is the author of the novel What Luck, This Life, set in East Texas around the time of the Columbia shuttle disaster. Her short stories, which have appeared in New Letters, Memorious, Crazyhorse, West Branch and other magazines, have twice won honorable mention in the Pushcart Prize. In 2013, she was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council.

DEVELOP YOUR EYE WITH KATHRYN: Explore fiction by learning to read like a writer — alert to the craft on the page. We’ll read two contemporary short stories in advance: “The Wind” by Lauren Groff, and “Pedicure” by Elizabeth Strout. In class we’ll look closely at what these master storytellers do and why, with particular attention to their artistic decisions about language, structure, dialogue and getting characters on the page. More information here.

PLEASE NOTE: Proof of full Covid vaccination is required to attend in-person Charlotte Lit events. Send a pic of your vaccination card to staff@charlottelit.org.