The Writer’s Journey

Writing and Non-writing fun

My son and I watch movies together late at night and we both make comments along the way. He’s studied film in university, so he’s about ten up on me. But I fall back on the good old hero’s journey and am able to make comments like “There, the hero is trying to get back to his ordinary world, but the bad guys are chasing him. (Step 10 in the hero’s journey) Or I can say that the hero has just undergone the ordeal (Step 8).

Try it yourself. Watch a movie and apply the hero’s journey. Or maybe the book you’re reading, or a part of your life. It’s a helpful and interesting tool of analysis.

1.  Heroes are introduced in the ORDINARY WORLD, where
2. they receive the CALL TO ADVENTURE.
3. They are RELUCTANT at first or REFUSE THE CALL, but
4. Are encouraged by a MENTOR to
5. CROSS THE FIRST THRESHOLD and enter the Special World, where
6. they encounter TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES.
7. They APPROACH THE INMOST CAVE, crossing a second threshold
8. where they endure the ORDEAL
9. They take possession of their REWARD and
10. are pursued on THE ROAD BACK to the Ordinary World.
11. They cross the third threshold, experience a RESSURECTION and are transformed by the experience.
12. They RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR, a boon or treasure to benefit the Ordinary World.

A Writer or a Marketer?

A writer or a marketer? I once heard a woman speak at a writers’ conference in the States. Since I had read her book and enjoyed it, I hoped she would use her speech to announce a new work. After all, it had been four years since her previous work. I had to pay an extra $40 to attend the dinner and her talk.

After a $7.99 dinner, she took the podium to polite applause. Here it comes I thought the announcement of her next novel. She told of her adventures selling her book from city to city – New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, LA and many others. She traveled by car from city to city, from bookstore to bookstore, from dinner speech to campus talk. I knew from her stories that her travels had eaten up the years. No announcement. No new book. Damn.

What are we – writers or marketers?  I think we have to be both, but in what proportion?  Everyone is different, but I hope the ratio favors the writer part.

I’m 90% writer and 10 % marketer. That’s not good. I have to work on marketing.

How about you? A writer or a marketer? What are you and in what proportion?

 

 

Images courtesy of:

• impactfactory.com
• jumpmarketing.com.au
• damyantiwrites.wordpress.com
• boxofficeindia.co.in

Getting Published

Why do we writers use the word “submission” to talk about sending our work to an agent or publisher?  I don’t know about other writers, but I’ve taken a lot of abuse from agents and editors. For example:

• An agent represented my first novel for six months. She returned it to me saying, “There are too many men to make it a woman’s novel and too many women to make it a men’s novel.
• A publisher (Hancock House in BC) returned a manuscript to me three years after I sent it to them
• A Texas literary agent rejected a work of another author and sent it to me.
• I’ve had publishers say, “Get an agent,” and agents say, “Get a publisher.”
• Yes, I’ve gotten a few great rejections. I could paper the bathroom mirror with them. The rest of the house would be the other rejections.

Many writers today are bypassing this abusive system and selling their work as ebooks or as Print On Demand.

Images courtesy of:

• goodbusiness.co.nz
• admit-one.net

How To Get Published

What does it take to get published?

In her book, Anybody Can Write, Author Jean Bryant suggests that a manuscript needs something beyond being well written and interesting.  It needs transcendence.

Transcendence usually arises out of personal conviction or passion: the essential being of the writer is invested in the work.  A clear intention, plus a sense of your audience, coupled with a sense of necessity that you, the writer, share this in written form, set the stage for transcendence.  It is a quality which evolves from interaction with the subject.  It can seldom be plotted or planned, or it will feel contrived to editors and readers alike.

She goes on to quote the New Yorker:

One of the characteristics of transcendence is care without which high quality is unattainable.  Care is itself an artistic statement that expresses love.  For example, a novelist who chooses compassion for his subject but then draws his characters sloppily really expresses contempt.  On the other hand, a novelist who writes about underworld violence but takes the time and expends the energy to bring his characters, good and bad, into being performs an act of love, a gratuitous act of caring, which stirs love in the reader as well and becomes the true statement — one could even say action — of the novel.

The ability of the novel to uncover the sanctity of every person, no matter how debased, and also to reveal the miraculousness, the preciousness of the humblest details of life is what makes the writing and reading of novels a humanistic enterprise of great importance….(The New Yorker, March 15, 1982)

Transcendence – you won’t find that in the how-to-sell-your-novel books.

Images courtesy of:

• fivehourfitness.com

Print On Demand & Ebooks

What’s wrong with Print-On-Demand (POD) and Ebooks?

Sometimes we don’t feel like real writers unless we are published commercially. That means that we need the affirmation of a ‘real’ publisher to tell us that we are good writers.

A ‘real’ publisher has access to book distribution channels, print-on-demand (POD) does not have that – yet. However Ebooks are listed on Amazon and other electronic booksellers, right along with NY Times best sellers.

Will a ‘real’ publisher advertise your books? Yes, if you’re name is John

Print On Demand

Grisham. No, if your name is John Smith. “You’re on your own, John,” just like you are with POD and Ebooks.

If your book doesn’t sell, a ‘real’ publisher will not do a second run. I’ve known of writers who couldn’t even find a copy of their books anywhere. POD and Ebooks live as long as the author wants them to live.

In general, Ebooks and POD are less expensive than commercially published books. More people can afford them.

I am not predicting the end of commercial publishers. Printed books will be around for a long, long time. I am saying that it’s a very exciting time for us writers. “Getting published” used to be very hard. Now it’s open to all of us. Yes, there is crap out there in Ebooks and POD, just as there is crap in commercially published books.

In the past, the publishing industry looked down on POD, hinting that it wasn’t very good. As Ebooks and POD rise, I think both parts of the publishing world will see that we need each other.

Images courtesy of :

• techdigest.tv
• comicrelated.com
• prismdc.com