Writerland » Memoir

When Should We Limit Literary License?

Meghan Ward — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:24:15 +0000

An interesting discussion took place over lunch here at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto last week. The topic: literary license. The talk was sparked by The Lifespan of a Fact, a book co-authored by essayist John D’Agata, who teaches at the University of Iowa, and his former fact checker, Jim Fingal, that was published by W.W. Norton in February. It all started in 2003 when D’Agata wrote an essay for Harper’s about the suicide of a teenager in Las Vegas. Harper’s ended up pulling the piece because it was riddled with factual errors, but D’Agata resold the essay to The Believer, where he met Jim Fingal, who became his fact checker—for the next SEVEN YEARS. The result is The Lifespan of a Fact, a curious juxtaposition of the original text of the essay alongside the correspondence between D’Agata and Fingal about whether the information in the essay is factual (for the record, some of the correspondence was fabricated specifically for the publication of the book, so the book itself is as spurious as the original essay). For example, in response to the line, “It’s estimated that only 40 percent of suicides are the result of chemical imbalance”), Jim responds, “No source for this, and I couldn’t find anything that says this.” Dispute over the first line of the essay runs on for two pages.

D’Agata defends his factual “errors” by claiming that he is an essayist, not a nonfiction writer. But what is the difference? That is what Grottoites heatedly disputed over tuna sandwiches and tofu stir fries last week—the distinction between fact and fiction, between essays and nonfiction, and whether there should be a new category altogether, one for stories that are 98% true. (If all the facts in a story are true except for the details about the weather, the color of a car that was parked in front of a train station, and the name of one of the characters, should the story still be labeled fiction?)

In one camp are the journalists who believe that no work should be labeled nonfiction unless it is 100% factual. That includes calling a red car red and not blue. The assumption is that an essay—unless stated otherwise—is nonfiction. In the other camp are the memoirists, who, having learned that it is nearly impossible to write an autobiography that is dramatic enough to sell without fudging some of the details, are a little more lenient about the “truth.” One Grotto memoirist said she thinks it’s okay to say a conversation that took place on a telephone really took place in a restaurant (assuming that the location of the conversation bears no significance on the story and that the transfer of the conversation is merely to add some color.) Another writer disagreed, stating that that is taking too much literary license. Barring extreme cases like James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces and Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea, both of which fudged much more than details, most memoirists agree that is okay to:

1. Recreate dialogue to the best of your recollection

2. Fill in details that cannot be verified, like what clothes people were wearing, what the weather was like, and what color car drove past

3. Condense time. Many memoirs take a story that really took place over several years and condense them into fewer, so as not to bore the reader with the passing of too much time during which nothing significant happened.

4. Change the chronological order of events. The point of this is not to exaggerate events but simply to create a narrative that has a strong arc.

5. Disguise characters. In other to protect the privacy of friends and relatives, memoirists often disguise characters by changing their names, their physical characteristics and even their backgrounds or nationalities.

6. Combine characters. Not all memoirists agree on this point (or any of these points for that matter), but some authors combine similar minor characters into one. For example, in my own memoir, I dated several male models. In one scene, I combined two of them into one. Everything that happened is true, and combining the two men does nothing to change the truth of the scene or even to heighten the drama, it just allowed me to add a little more color.

The big difference between memoirs and essays? The disclaimer. Most memoirs have a disclaimer at the beginning stating that the author condensed time, changed the names of characters, or wrote the story “to the best of his/her recollection.” Essays do not. And that was the mistake of D’Agata—to pass off what may be “true” in the metaphorical sense as “fact” without adding a disclaimer. Jonathon Burnham, a senior vice-president at W. W. Norton, points out to NPR writer Travis Larchuk that, “The expectations are different for newspapers, magazines, literary journals and books.” The disclaimer is, according to Burnham, “an almost essential piece of qualifying information that alerts the reader to the fact that not every single word in this book is true.” Like Craig Silverman points out in an article on the Poynter website, newspapers used to use a phrase in the headlines of newspaper articles that weren’t verified: “Important if true.” Maybe it’s time we brought back.

What do you think? Should “truth” be limited to the “facts” in essays and memoirs? Is it okay to fudge details as long as a disclaimer is attached? Do you assume, when you read an essay, that every word is factual? Or do you think it’s okay for essayists, like memoirists, to take some literary license in order to create more colorful, dramatic pieces of writing?

2011 Books in Review

Meghan Ward — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 06:01:16 +0000

Happy New Year! Can you believe it’s almost 2012? I feel like I’m living in the future.

Sierra Godfrey’s post last week reminded me that I used to wrap up the year with a list of the books I’d read that year. My goal is always to read two books a month, and with two little munchkins, I just barely made it this year:

1. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
2. 13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro
3. A Tiger in the Kitchen by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
4. Hold Still by Nina LaCour
5. Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow by Nathan Bransford
6. We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media by Kristen Lamb
7. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
8. Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
9. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
10. Room by Emma Donahue
11. The Peacock Sings for Rain by Alison Singh Gee
12. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
13. Plastic by Susan Freinkel
14. Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff
15. Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne
16. How I sold 200,000 e-books by H.P. Mallory
17. Blindsight by Chris Colin
18. In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
19. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
20. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
21. In the Mirror by Ann Best
22. A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres
23. Twenty Somewhere by Kristan Hoffman
24. The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

I hate to pick favorites because so many of them are really wonderful books, but I did particularly enjoy Room, In Zanesville, and The Tiger’s Wife. I’m a sucker for great literary fiction. What about you? What were your favorite books of 2011? Any recommendations?

34-24-34: The truth about fashion models

Meghan Ward — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:21:14 +0000

A friend of mine sent me a link to fashion model Jenna Sauer’s (aka Tatiana Anymodel’s) interview on Jezebel.com with the note, “I wish you could do this questionnaire too—I’d like to see your answers vs “Tatiana’s!” Well friend, here they are. But first, a little background about me:

When I was 18, I moved to Paris to model full time. I worked there for six years before returning to the States to attend UCLA. I wrote about my adventures and misadventures in Paris, Tokyo, London, and Hamburg in my memoir, Paris On Less Than $10,000 A Day. And now I’m a writer. Who writes in neon yellow fleece pajama pants and a gray cashmere sweater full of holes. I’m that much of a fashionista.

Do models eat?

When I first started modeling at 18, I still had some baby fat. I was 125 pounds and my hips were a whopping 93 centimeters, which translates to about 36.5 inches. The ideal measurements for a model are 34-24-34. Although I was 5’11½ ” and had been mistaken for anorexic most of my life, I was told that I needed to lose weight. I started working out and running, and my weight dropped to 122 and stayed there during the course of my modeling years. But I was one of those models who could eat anything and never gain an ounce. My boyfriend was always telling me I was too skinny, and one client told me I was too thin to do his show, so I tried to gain weight (which was stupid in retrospect. I worked the most when I was 122 pounds), but couldn’t. Once I went on vacation to Italy, and my boyfriend fed me five course meals for lunch and dinner every day to fatten me up. On the third day, I vomited from overeating. At that point I decided to accept my weight for what it was and stop trying to please everyone.

There were other models like me, but there were also many models who dieted, and others who had eating disorders. Many of them had mild bulimia or anorexia, so unless you lived with them and watched what they ate, it wasn’t obvious. I had one roommate who only ate baby food and Wasa crackers. I had another who ate large meals and then threw them up. Every now and then you’d see a girl at a show or at a casting who had dropped below 100 pounds, and everyone would be whispering about what happened to cause her to go to that extreme. We’d all feel the need to talk to her and to encourage her to eat, but no one ever dared because we didn’t want her to feel worse about herself than she already did.

Are Eastern Bloc pre-teenagers the only ones who get work?

Well, I can’t speak for today (according to Jenna Sauers, the answer is yes, along with Brazilian girls), but I was working in Paris when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and when the USSR collapsed in 1991, and the market was suddenly flooded by girls named Natasha and Natalia. I liked them. They were shy and polite or bold like army generals and always serious. The Brazilian girls, by the way, were more prevalent in Japan, and they were loud and boisterous. I used to wonder if only rich Brazilians got into modeling because they all acted so entitled.

Is it as tiring as they say?

I remember going to castings late at night during show season. I remember flying to Tokyo and arriving at the Narita Airport after a sixteen-hour flight to find a manager waiting to drive me on show castings—straight off the airplane after having been up half the night. I remember arriving at one of those castings at 9 p.m. to find a roomful of Japanese men sitting in plastic chairs lined against the walls. A man in the middle of the room turned on some loud rock music and told me to dance. And I did. Tokyo was insane like that. I often did two—sometimes three—jobs in a day, getting up at 5 or 6 a.m. and rushing from a fashion show to a photo shoot and sometimes a second photo shoot after that. I would get home and collapse into bed and get up the following day and do it all over again. I had to request a day off when I became too run down. I remember eating acerola drops to fight off colds because they were full of vitamin C.

But there was a lot of down time, too. In Paris I could go a month without working. And even on jobs we spent a lot of time sitting around smoking cigarettes and reading books while the other models got their make-up and hair done, or while other models were shooting. It was one extreme or the other.

Okay, but the money’s pretty awesome, right?

It could be. It was when I worked in Japan, and it was when I worked for Jil Sander. But there were weeks—months—that I hardly made any money at all. Magazines paid $100/day gross. Vogue paid $75/day. You couldn’t live on that. You had to do catalog and shows or advertising and TV commercials to make a living. I think at one point I calculated that I was making $8 an hour once I factored in all the time I spent pounding the pavement on castings. Overall, I averaged $50-$100,000k per year. I think my best year I made $150,000k. It sounds like a lot, but we were spending a lot, too. We were expected to wear designer clothes and get $100 facials, and we paid our own travel expenses to places like Australia and Japan.

Are models vain?

Models are the most insecure people I know. They are acutely aware of every one of their physical flaws from the ear that sticks out to the crooked toe to the veins in their hands. And I think that insecurity often comes across as aloofness.

Does everyone do mountains of coke or what?

Most models I knew smoked pot now and then, but none of my friends did hard drugs. We couldn’t afford meat let alone cocaine (My first year in Paris I ate rice, pasta, and Burger King every night because it was all I could afford.) I heard stories, and I saw track marks on the bottom of a famous model’s feet one time at a show, but I was never into the party scene, so I didn’t witness coke at parties, let alone on jobs.

Are models dumb?

Yes. All of them. I’m kidding. No, they’re not dumb. Most of the models I met read constantly (this was before cell phones and laptop computers much less smart phones, so there wasn’t much else to do). They spoke multiple languages and were as familiar with Ginza, Bondi, the Reeperbahn, and the Marais as they were with their hometown in Ohio. Most hadn’t gone to college because they would have been too old to start modeling at 22, but that didn’t make them dumb. They were worldly and urbane. So what if they didn’t know the definition of “egregious” or “apocryphal”? They could order sushi in four different languages.

Do a lot of models have, uh, a Naomi Campbell attitude?

Fortunately, the only model I ever met with a Naomi Campbell attitude was Naomi Campbell. Models, on average, are very friendly. There is a hierarchy, however. At shows I did, the supermodels only talked to other supermodels. They didn’t talk to us not-so-supermodels. But I attributed that more to the fact that they knew each other from previous jobs than that they were consciously snubbing us. Movie stars at a party don’t generally walk up to people they don’t know and strike up conversations. They talk to people they know.

Okay, so what is the worst part of the job?

Where do I begin? The boredom. The uncertainty. Being thousands of miles away from your friends and family on your 21st birthday. Being told you need to lose weight when you’re 5’11” and weigh 125 pounds. The toll it takes on your self-esteem not to have begun college at the age of 25 when all your friends back home are finishing up their master’s degrees. Shooting bathing suits in December and fur coats in July. Making vacation plans and then having to cancel to do a shoot for Marie-Claire. Making weekend plans and then having to cancel in order to fly to Germany at 5 a.m. the following morning for a catalog job. Not having a TV, a plant, a pet, or long-distance telephone access in your models apartment. Having to buy phone cards to use the payphone down the street to call home. Losing a huge job because you cut your hair too short. Losing a huge job because you refused to cut your hair too short. Feeling like the only thing you’re contributing to the world is making women feel shitty about themselves. I could go on …

Are You Plagued by Perfectionism?

Meghan Ward — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 06:57:06 +0000

I arrived at the tail end of an interesting lunchtime conversation at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto last week—just in time to hear author Julia Scheeres utter, “Well, that was depressing.” From there the conversation continued on about how women tend to submit less often to journals, magazines, and newspapers (and by extension, agents and publishing houses?) than men because they have less confidence. Women tend to take rejection more personally than men do, and they tend to doubt themselves more.

As someone who just finished the last revision of my manuscript Monday night (Hurray! I’m taking the day off to go to the hot springs tomorrow, my favorite reward), this rang true for me. I sent an earlier draft of my memoir, Paris On Less Than $10,000 A Day, out two years ago to five agents. All five requested fulls, and all five had positive feedback but ultimately turned the book down (No wait, there was a sixth, the fabulous Nathan Bransford, from whom I received a form rejection, but who hasn’t received a form rejection from Nathan?) Rather than send it to more agents, I spent the next two years rewriting the book. I don’t regret that decision because I think the book has greatly improved, but now, as I prepare to send it out again, I have one goal: No matter how many rejections I get (assuming I get some) I’m not allowed to revise my book again, unless an agent specifically requests that I do so.

I’m confident that my book is well-written and marketable. I’ve read enough publishing blogs to know not to take rejection personally. It’s an impossibly tough market, the business is incredibly subjective (It’s all about finding the right agent, the who will fall in love with my story), etc. etc. I know all that. And yet …

I also know myself. A month from now, after having received three or four rejections, I’ll begin to doubt myself. I’ll doubt my book and my writing in general. I’ll analyze rejection e-mails for clues as to what could be improved. I’ll kick myself for not having gotten my book out there sooner. I’ll wonder if having a bigger author platform would make a difference. I’ll tell myself that memoirs are a thing of the past (unless you’re a celebrity from the 80s), that modeling books are out, that the only chance I have of getting published is to sleep with Oprah’s hairdresser. I’ll wonder if my book is too serious. I’ll tell myself that if only chapters 1, 6, 9, and 18 were as funny as 2, 7, and 41, it would have sold by now. In other words, I’ll be plagued by self-doubt.

Back when I was rock climbing, I wanted to get my lead card at my local rock climbing gym. I’d heard from several people that no one passes the first time they take the lead test. Climbers often have to take it two or three times to get their cards because their lead has to be PERFECT—perfect clips, smooth, strong climbing on an overhanging 5.10B or 5.10C, and no stepping on or behind the rope. I passed on my first try. Not because I’m a great climber, but because I was so afraid to fail that I practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced long after any sane person would have taken the test. I would not take the test until I was confident that I could do it flawlessly. Why? Because I’m plagued by perfectionism, the cousin of self-doubt.

Perfectionism can be a good thing. It can lead to great accomplishments. But it can be damaging, too. It can slow us down, it can prevent us from putting ourselves out there, from taking risks. And in order to get published, we need to be willing to put ourselves out there. We need to take risks—in our writing and in our lives.

What about you? Are you plagued by perfectionism and/or self-doubt? Do you find that men are more confident than women when submitting their writing for publication? How do you remain positive in the face of rejection?

Author Advances: Survey Results

Meghan Ward — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:45:02 +0000

Thank you so much to the 105 authors who took the author advance survey! Here are the results (now with author comments added below):

Average and Median of All Advances

Five people reported multi-book deals (four two-book deals and one four-book deal), which skewed the results a bit. Below are results counting the multi-book deals first as one deal, then as separate deals.

Counting each multi-book deal as ONE deal
Average advance: $73,897
Median advance: $25,000

Counting each multi-book deal as SEPARATE deals
Average advance: $63,776
Median advance: $25,000

Big 6 vs Non Big 6

64.8 % of authors surveyed sold books to Big 6 publishers (Random House, Hachette, Penguin, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster)

27.6% sold books to small publishers

7.6 percent sold books to medium- to large-sized publishers other than the Big 6 (Norton, Harlequin, McGraw-Hill, etc.)

Percentage by Genre

30% sold nonfiction books (including narrative nonfiction)

22.9% of authors surveyed sold Young Adult books (Disclaimer: I added the YA category after 13 authors had already taken the survey, but only one of those first 13 sold a novel, so this number is likely correct)

21.9% sold novels (including one novella)

19% sold memoirs/personal essay collections

3.8% sold short story collections

2.9% sold “other” books, including an art book, a humor book, and an illustrated art/style book

0% sold poetry books

Percentage of Advances by Year

1990 .95%
1997 .95%
1999 1.9%
2000 .95%
2002 .95%
2003 3.8%
2005 8.6%
2006 9%
2007 6.7%
2008 9.5%
2009 17.1%
2010 18.1%
2011 24.8%

First Book vs Subsequent Books
61% of authors surveyed said the advance was for the first book they sold.
37% said the advance was not for a first book.

Agented vs Non-Agented Authors
82.8% of authors surveyed were agented at the time of the sale of the book
17.2% of authors surveyed were not agented at the time of the sale of the book

Disclaimer: This question was added after approximately half of the authors had already taken the survey. If you were one of the authors who didn’t get a chance to answer this question and you want to add your response, you can e-mail me at meghan (at) meghanward (dot) com.

And now for the graphs!

Number of Authors/Advance Category

This graph shows the number of authors who received advances in each category. For example, the first (and tallest) bar is $0-$20,000. The second is $20,000-$40,000, etc.

Number of Authors/Advance Category II

This graph shows the same data split out into smaller categories on the lower end. (The numbers are $2k, $5k, $10k, $20k, $40k, $60k, $80k, etc.) Multi-book deals are counted as one deal, including the million dollar deal for four books at the far right end of the graph.

Advances by Year and Genre
The following graphs show first all genres combined, then each genre separately, divided by the year the advance was received. The red portion of each bar is Big 6 advances; the blue portion is non-Big 6 advances. There wasn’t enough data to make graphs of short story collection or “other” advances. 2008 was a great year to sell your book—right before the Kindle changed the publishing world

All Advances by Year

Nonfiction Advances by Year

Novel Advances by Year

Memoir Advances by Year

YA Advances by Year

Big 6 vs Non-Big 6
The following graph shows average advances for each genre given by Big 6 vs non-Big 6 publishers. The lefthand side shows advances given by non-Big 6 publishers, and the righthand side show advances by Big 6 publishers. This graph is a bit confusing because it includes a two-book deal for a short story collection and a novel that went for $315,000, and a humor book that sold for $125,000. However, it is evident from a quick glance at the graph that Big 6 publishers tend to garner higher advances than small publishers.

Agent vs No Agent
This graph divides authors who were agented at the time they received their advances (Y) vs those who weren’t (N), and then further divides those groups into first-time advances (Y) and non-first time advances (N). The clear message is that agented authors tend to get higher advances than non-agented authors. Disclaimer: Because I added the agent question after about half of the authors had already taken the survey, this data is based only on the second half of responses.

Minimum, Average and Maximum Advances by Year
This graph plots minimum (blue), average (red) and maximum (green) advances by year. The peak for both average and maximum advances was in 2008.

Scatter Plot of All Advances
This is one of my favorite graphs because it plots every advance reported, with multi-book deals divided into separate deals (eg. $80,000 for two books is listed as two separate advances of $40,000 each) according to the year in which the advances were given.

Advances by Genre
Lastly, we have a pie chart of all reported advances by genre. Nonfiction book deals are the most prevalent.

* * *

Author Comments

Author who reported a $15,000 advance for a nonfiction book sold in 2009:
“Am currently shopping around a second proposal and since we didn’t earn out our advance, my agent thinks our chances of securing another contract are almost nil (even with major press coverage from the first book and a lengthy appearance on Dr. Phil!). Considering self-publishing the second time around.”

Author who reported a $60,000 advance for a memoir sold in 2005:
“Agent negotiated. Small bidding skirmish—first offer was $50K, another offered $55, RH topped it at 60. I went with RH for their reputation as much as the $ but later wondered if I would have had more editorial and publicity support with the other (a smaller imprint of a bigger company).”

Author who reported a $15,000 advance for a novel sold in 2008:
“Still waiting for my advance from my publisher, who owes money to everyone!”

Author who reported a $100,000 advance for a YA/Middle Grade novel sold in 2011:
“I sold 9 books to penguin between 2005 and 2009. My advances were between $5000.00 and $7500.00. I’m now self publishing via amazon and make that amount and many months more than that.”

Author who reported a $5000 advance for a novel sold in 2006:
“The advances are now given out in a way that makes even a large advance not enough. I got one quarter on signing (minus my agent’s cut), will get another quarter on acceptance (not delivery, an important distinction), another quarter on publication and the last part on publication of the paperback. No wonder authors are always broke.”

Author who reported a $2500 advance for a crime fiction novel sold in 2011:
“I have four books, one each in the last four years. The advances were: $3000, $3000, $2500, $2500. The first three did not earn out. The fourth has done much better and may have lifted the first three past the threshold. I don’t yet know precise numbers yet, but I do know the fourth earned out in its first month and has continued to do well. Still keeping my day job though.”

Author who reported a $25,000 advance for an illustrated art/style book sold in 1990:
“I have published more than 20 books with traditional publishers. Now I am thrilled to be developing my own publishing enterprise.”

Author who reported a $150,000 advance for a memoir sold in 2010:
“I had two strong platforms. I don’t think my advance is the current memoir norm.”

Author who reported a $120,000 advance for a nonfiction book sold in 2008:
“I was the second author. The book sold mainly on the platform of the first author, an expert in his field. The original advance was actually higher, but the publisher bullied us (through our agent) into giving back part of it for reasons beyond anyone’s control.”

Author who reported a $60,000 advance for a nonfiction book sold in 2010:
“My advance was a little less than HALF what I made for a very similar book (which has been very successful) in 1998. But: Great house, known for smaller advances, great marketing. I intend to make the money on the back end rather than the front end. Still, it bites.”

* * *
And there you have it! Questions? Comments? Observations?

Survey: Author Advances

Meghan Ward — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:04:38 +0000

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey! (All 105 of you). I’m still analyzing results and will post data tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov. 2.

It’s survey time! If you are a published author who has received an advance or who is contracted to receive an advance, please take a minute (it literally takes a minute; there are five questions) to fill out the survey below one time for each book you have sold, and please pass this on to any published authors you know. (You may have to open the survey in a separate browser to take it more than once. Otherwise you an e-mail me your answers at meghan (at) meghanward (dot) com and I’ll add them to the results. They will be anonymous and confidential.) The deadline is midnight Halloween night. I’ll post results Tuesday, Nov. 1. Thank you for participating!

Meghan

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

New York Times Bestselling Author Julia Scheeres Talks About A Thousand Lives

Meghan Ward — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:00:02 +0000

Some of you may remember this interview, which I posted in November, 2009, with New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land, Julia Scheeres. Nearly two years later, Scheeres’ book about Jonestown, A Thousand Lives, has been released after rave reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.

To celebrate, I am giving away one signed hardcover copy of A Thousand Lives. All you have to do is comment below (and be a Google Friend Connect follower) before midnight of October 17. I will pick one name at random from those who comment and announce that winner in next week’s blog post, on October 18. And now, a little background about Jonestown from Julia Scheeres before our interview:

Jonestown was a utopian community formed by Americans in Guyana, South America, under the leadership of a Bay Area preacher named Jim Jones. On November 18, 1978, 913 of Jones followers died in a mass murder/suicide by drinking a cyanide-laced punch. Jonestown will explore what happened during Jonestown’s last year as Jones became more drug-addled and paranoid, his followers became more disgruntled, and the Socialist utopia they attempted to create deteriorated.

MW: How did you get interested in writing about Jonestown?

JS: I was working on a novel about a fundamentalist minister, a charismatic preacher, who takes over a small Indiana town, and then I remembered that Jim Jones was a charismatic preacher from Indiana, so I Googled him as part of my research and found out that the FBI had just released all these documents. Then my journalist side kicked in, and I knew I could sell the project because no one had written a book about the documents before. They included 50,000 pages of diaries, letters that were never sent home, crop reports, meeting notes and suicide notes that they picked up off the ground in Jonestown after the massacre. The FBI held onto them until they were sued to release them under FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act). The problem was they released them on three CDs but without an index. So a letter might start on page 235 and end on page 687. It took someone working at San Diego State University about ten years to put them in order. He had completed the index not long before that, so I got the index from him.

MW: Last year, you went to Guyana to visit Jonestown. What was it like?

JS: There’s nothing there now except for the rusted-out carcasses of a few vehicles. You look at the pictures of Jonestown, and they built this town in the middle of the jungle, with cottages and kitchens and wood shops. It was a town. Now it’s just a big field that the jungle has mostly reclaimed.

MW: How did it feel being in Jonestown?

JS: I almost passed out from the heat. I can’t imagine in Jonestown there were people working from six in the morning until six at night, doing agricultural work. After being in the sun for fifteen minutes, I swooned. I thought I would feel more since 913 people died on the place I was standing, but the grassy field that’s there today is so incongruous with the magazine pictures of the bodies piled up.

MW: What happened to Jonestown after the mass suicide?

JS: It burned down after people left. The locals are really poor, so they carried away the pieces of the corrugated metal roofs and anything else they could potentially use.

MW: What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned about Jonestown doing your research?

JS: The extent of the lies that Jones told the people to goad them toward committing mass murder/suicide is the most troubling. A third of the people were children, a third were seniors, and all of them were lied to to some degree about what was going on. They were told that they were surrounded by mercenaries who were going to torture and kill them. It was a lie. There were no mercenaries in the jungle.

MW: What is your process for paring down so much information?

JS: It took me a year to read through the FBI materials and organize them and decide what the story was going to be and which characters I was going to follow. I’m mostly interested in the people who got to Jonestown than in Jim Jones himself. I am basically following five people, some who live and some who die. Thanks to my training as a journalist, I know how to do research and track people down, to organize massive amounts of material, to write tightly and to tell a true story.

MW: How has writing Jonestown differed from your experience writing Jesus Land?

JS: It’s a lot easier in that I have no personal involvement in this story. It’s also been a thousand times more complicated because I had to do such a massive amount of research, reading through 50,000 pages of documents, tracking down the survivors and talking to them. Jesus Land was very personal, and this does have some personal elements. Jim Jones’ church was supposedly socialist, all about equality, eradicating the isms—racism and sexism, elitism and classicism. They were going to banish all of that and be truly equal. The race element was huge. If you’ve ever been to Glide in San Francisco, there are blacks and whites worshipping together, and you never see that (anywhere else). Having had black brothers, we were always longing for acceptance, a place to fit in. The Peoples Temple was a place where blacks and whites lived and worshipped together.

MW: Looking back on your career, is there anything you would do differently? Any advice you have for nonfiction writers who are just getting started?

JS: It’s really difficult to balance all aspects of motherhood and career. I feel like I’m doing a good job at both, but my goal is to stay really focused and when I’m at work. And I’m a big fan of setting writing goals. Even if I don’t meet them, as long as I give it my best shot to meet those goals, I feel better about myself. Otherwise the project seems really overwhelming. It’s easy to be mediocre, and to make your living as a writer, you have to go to the extra mile. One thing I do when I’m writing is use those ear protectors to filter out any outside sensation so I can really hear my writing as I’m writing it, and it works. It looks crazy, but it really works. So I’m not interrupted by horns honking on the street and people talking in the other offices. I just have this uninterrupted thought process.

MW: What is your work day like?

JS: Sometimes I’m researching, and sometimes I’m writing, but when I’m at the Grotto, I get there at 10 and leave at 5. I never leave the building. I always bring my lunch and spend 30-45 minutes eating with everyone else and then return to my office. It’s not an ideal situation, but I’m working on a book deadline.

MW: Jesus Land was published by Counterpoint, an independent publishing house. Jonestown will be published by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. How has your experience varied working with two very different types of publishing houses?

JS: At Counterpoint, I got paid a lot less for the book, but I knew everyone from the sales team to the promotions department to the other editors. It was kind of like a small family, which was great and really warm. I know from my initial dealings with Free Press that they’re too big to coddle me like that. My editor has too much on his plate, too many authors. Both types of houses have their pluses and minuses. I’m just happy to get published at all!

MW: Do you feel a strong connection to your editor?

JS: Yes, he’s always there when I really need to talk to him, although
mostly I dealt with his associate — which surprised me. However, she
turned out to be a fine editor herself, and consulted with him on
changes before giving me feedback. They wrote the editorial letter
together. I guess that’s what happens when the editorial director buys
your book. In addition to editing manuscripts, they are busy reading
proposals, dealing with marketing and managing the imprint. So the
editing gets farmed out. I’m very happy with their joint edits, however.

MW: Do you have advice for a writer looking for an agent?

JS: My best advice is to see who is representing writers you love or who is writing in similar genres. Chances are the agent likes a particular genre or subgenre and will be interested in looking at your stuff if it fits that genre. I think the best thing is to do something to get your work recognized, to get excerpts of your book published or to win an award. New York publishers are all so timid to take any chances, but if you win an award or get your stuff published in a journal or a magazine, then slowly the attention starts to snowball, from what I’ve heard.

MW: When you were working on Jesus Land, you attended the Squaw Valley writers’ conference and then joined a writing group. Were they helpful? What is your feeling about writing groups and conferences?

JS: The writing group was the best thing I got out of Squaw. Squaw was okay, but the writing group was the best benefit. Having writing goals and getting feedback was really valuable. If you can find a couple of people in a writing group whose critiques are helpful, then it’s good. A lot of times there are people who don’t get what you’re doing or hate what you’re doing, but you need to find two or three people whose opinions you trust and disregard the others.

MW: You are a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. What are the benefits of working alongside other writers?

JS: Commiseration. Writing is such a lonely activity, that it’s such a great thing to have someone to eat lunch with and to have someone to talk to during the day besides your spouse. Plus there are no reminders of home. It’s all about work, which is mentally helpful.

MW: How have the downturn in the economy and the publishing industry in particular, and the growing popularity of e-readers, affected your life as a writer?

JS: I needed an additional six months to finish my Jonestown book and was told by my publisher that it was probably just as well because books aren’t selling right now.

MW: With bookstores closing and e-readers selling like hotcakes for the holiday season, what do you see in the future of publishing?

JS: Writers will always need agents and editors to shape and promote their work, so I don’t see those factors disappearing. As far as e-readers, I’m somewhat of a Luddite. I have no interest in getting one. I’m tactile, I like to read in bed and can’t imagine curling up with a stiff piece of plastic. And I’m an incurable underliner—I take a pencil to most books I read to underline inspiring phrases or passages. Also, what about folks who can’t afford such gadgets?

20 Great Places to Publish Personal Essays

Meghan Ward — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 02:44:38 +0000

I frequently receive e-mails from people looking for places to publish their personal essays. Fiction and nonfiction writers alike all have a great story about the time Aunt Harriet came for dinner and left on the back of a horse, or the time the cat disappeared and returned six years later, or the time they had an epiphany about the meaning of life while walking through the woods at dusk. But where can you submit that funny, poignant, life-changing essay that’s gathering virtual dust in a folder on your computer? Who will publish it? And who will pay? Here are 20 newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and anthologies to help you begin your search:

1. New York Times Modern Love—Start by reading a lot of Modern Love columns to get an idea of what they’re looking for. You may even want to buy this Modern Love collection. And don’t miss this article on Media Bistro on how to turn your Modern Love column into a book.

2. New York Times Lives—TheNew York Times Magazine Lives column is another great place to get published. The best way to submit to any large publication is to have someone put you in touch with the editor of the column. The rest of us can e-mail our essays to the Lives section at lives (at) nytimes (dot) com.

3. Newsweek My Turn—Start by reading “How To Get a My Turn Essay Published in Newsweek Magazine.” Then read some of the past essays that have been published to get a good idea of what they are looking for and what’s already been done.

4. Christian Science Monitor Home Forum—The Christian Science Monitor is a highly respected international newspaper and is not religious-based. It’s Home Forum page includes a personal essay that can run from 400 to 800 words. After you read the Monitor’s contributor guidelines, check out this article for advice on how to beat the odds of getting your essay published.

5. The Sun—A monthly magazine, The Sun pays from $300 to $2,000 for essays and interviews. They receive a thousand submissions (including fiction and poetry) for every issue, so don’t be surprised if you have to wait six months for a response.

6. The Smithsonian Magazine—The Last Page of The Smithsonian is a humor column running 500 to 650 words and pays $1000. For more information, read the submission guidelines.

7. Salon—From what I’ve read, the pay is low for Salon essays ($150?), but it’s better than nothing and a great way to get exposure. Check out this list, and then click around the different departments (Life, Sex, Poetry, etc.) to see what they’re publishing. Finally, see their submission guidelines, which aren’t all that helpful.

8. Slate—Slate publishes some essays, but I was so distracted by their targeted banner ads (Camping gear! Children’s outdoor play equipment!) that I gave up on my search before I got very far.

9. The Rumpus—An online culture magazine, The Rumpus “[tries] to maintain high standards even though we don’t have any money and can’t pay for writing.” For details on submitting essays or book reviews, see their writer’s guidelines.

10. 7×7—Another West Coast publication, 7×7 has an Urban Ledger column for which readers can pitch their personal essays. They pay $1 a word, and their essays run about 1000 words. For more information, contact the editorial department.

11. Skirt—An online women’s magazine, Skirt accepts submissions up to 1500 words, but—like most online publications—does not pay. For more info, read their contributor guidelines.

12. Granta—A British literary magazine, Granta publishes original memoir pieces between 3000 and 6000 words. They do not accept e-mail submissions. Read a few copies of the journal (you can find most journals at a library) and then read their guidelines.

13. Tin House—A literary journal, Tin House accepts essays as well as poetry and fiction from Sept. 1 to May 31. The suggested deadline for their Spring 2012 issue, themed Weird Science, is Oct. 1. The real deadline is Nov. 1. Click here for submission guidelines.

14. Zyzzyva—You have to live on the West Coast to publish in Zyzzyva, but it’s another literary journal that accepts personal essays. The best way to learn what any publication is looking for is to read several issues of that publication, and Zyzzyva is no exception. Start by buying a copy. Then read the submission guidelines.

15. Traveler’s Tales—Traveler’s Tales is currently accepting submissions in the women’s travel humor and travel humor categories. Visit their website for submission details. The deadline is TODAY (Sept. 21) for their Fifth Annual Solas Awards, so get it in fast if you have something ready. Otherwise, you can submit year-round and your submission will be held for the following competition.

16. Literary Mama—An online literary magazine “for the maternally inclined,” Literary Mama is looking for “revelation so stark that it hurts. Pathos can reveal, but so can humor and joy; superior craft (clarity, concrete details, strong narrative development); and ambiguity, complexity, depth, thoughtfulness, delicacy, humor, irreverence, lyricism, sincerity; the elegant and the raw.” View their submission guidelines for more info.

17. Brain, Child—The magazine for thinking mothers (as opposed to literary mamas), publishes essays between 800 and 4500 words, which are “the signature pieces of the magazine.” They pay “as much as we can, although our fees are still modest for now.” View their writers’ guidelines.

18. Chicken Soup for the Soul—It doesn’t seem like there’s anything left to publish in this series, but there is! There is! And here are the submission guidelines.

19. Seal Press Anthologies—Seal Press publishes books “By Women. For Women.” They aren’t currently accepting submissions, but check back periodically for upcoming books.

20. Adams Media books—Adams publishes nonfiction books, including some anthologies. Right now they’re taking parodies of Jane Austen writing for an anthology titled Bad Austen.

In addition to those listed above, there is a plethora of other literary journals that publish personal essays. NewPages.com provides an extensive list with descriptions. Writer’s Digest also has a great article called Tips to Help You Publish Your Personal Essays. They also publish the trusted Writer’s Market directory, which you can access online.

Do you have any publications to add to the list, or details/tips about any of those listed above?

My Sister Doesn’t Want Me To Publish My Book

Meghan Ward — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 07:21:50 +0000

“I don’t want you to publish your book,” my sister said to me last week when I was visiting my family in Michigan. It was after midnight and we were sitting in the ER waiting for my three-year-old son to wake up from his drug-induced state after getting stitches. Playing tag in the dark with his cousins proved not to be such a great idea after all. But while he was knocked out, my sister confided in me that she wasn’t comfortable with some of the content of my book. She didn’t think people should air their family’s dirty laundry just to make money, she said. I explained to her that the scene she was referring to was just two sentences out of a 350-page book and that there were few others like it. She didn’t care. She wanted me to take them out. “Dad read it and he didn’t mind,” I told her. The sentences were about my dad, so I let him read it to see how he’d react before preparing to send it off to agents. “He’s not going to say anything,” she said, “but he doesn’t like it.”

I toyed with this dilemma the entire time I worked on this book. During my MFA program I faced mental blocks to writing scenes about my family because I was afraid of what they might think or say. My teacher told me not to worry about it, to just write the stuff now and worry about it later. But I did worry. How could I not? I knew that one day the time would come when my book was finished and ready to send off for publication, when someone in my family would say, “I don’t want you to publish your book.” I was SO relieved when my dad gave it the thumbs up. The other person I would have worried about was my mom, but she’s been dead for fourteen years. I toned those sentences down after my sister saw them, and I’ve written very little about my family despite advice from some readers that I should include more of them, not less. I’m happy with the result, and I think my sister will be, too, once she reads the whole book. But these aren’t easy decisions for a memoirist to make, and they can stifle a writer’s ability to write openly and honestly about her experiences. I admire memoirists who bare all, especially about themselves, like Bill Clegg in Portait of an Addict As a Young Man and so many other great memoirs I’ve read lately (All Over The Map by Laura Fraser, The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott). But it’s always easier if you’re estranged from the people you are writing about, if you don’t care about their feelings or how they will react. That’s not the case with me.

What about you? Have you written memoir or personal essays? Have you written about other people in your life? How did you strike the balance between telling the whole story and managing their feelings? Did you show them your work before you published it? And if you haven’t written memoir, what do you think you would do if one of your family members told you he didn’t want you to publish your book?

Bestselling vs Bestwriting Books

Meghan Ward — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:04:41 +0000

First, I want to say that I was fortunate enough to meet Samuel Park in person when he read from his debut novel This Burns My Heart here in San Francisco tonight. I was so drawn in by the story and his dialogue that I bought THREE copies–all at full hardcover price. So if you’re looking for a great summer read, buy his book!

Next, I want to share a discussion I had with Roni Loren last week on her blog. Roni’s post “How Fast Do You Have To Write To Build a Successful Literary Career” struck a nerve with me. She stated that although the standard expectation of writers for decades has been to write one book a year, today writers are expected to write faster. In order to create her backlist and quit her day job, she said, “I KNOW I have got to be able to write more than 1-2 books a year.” She mentioned that romance author Maya Banks writes 8-10 books a year and that proof that her quality hasn’t suffered is that she hit the New York Times bestseller list last year.

In May, I wrote a post about social media books in which I quoted a story told by Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad, Poor Dad, a personal finance book I’m sure you’ve heard of. Kiyosaki told a reporter who had had trouble getting her novel published that she should take a marketing class. When the reporter appeared taken aback, Kiyosaki pointed out that the cover of his book read “bestselling author,” not “bestwriting author.” I used that anecdote to illustrate the importance of social media marketing. What I didn’t mention is that the best-writing part is equally as important. ONCE you’ve written your book as best you can, THEN you should worry about selling it and marketing it, but not at the expense of the quality of the writing. And just because a book hits a bestseller list, does not mean it is well written. It means that it has sold a lot of copies, for whatever reason. (Think of all the blockbuster movies that make gazillions of dollars but get terrible reviews.)

IF you are lucky enough to be one of those authors who can truly crank out two great books a year without letting the quality of your writing suffer, go for it. I am not one of those people. The first draft of my memoir was 520 pages, and I’ve spent the past four years revising it and editing it down. I’ve never heard that there is any expectation for writers to write more than a book a year. Most published authors I know spend 3-4 years on a book. (Samuel Park spent 3 years 9 mos on his). Roni’s rationale behind writing 2+ books per year is that she needs to create a backlist in order to make enough money from her writing to quit her day job.

The argument for a backlist is a good one. (The point being that if someone reads and likes one of your books, he can go out and buy the others.) It’s an argument to stop being so anal about your first book being a super-mega-bestseller and just GET IT OUT THERE because if people like your second book, they’ll go back and buy your first. That happened to Alice Siebold. After the runaway success of The Lovely Bones, people went out and bought her earlier memoir, Lucky, which hadn’t met great success when it was first published.

But why does a backlist have to be developed in six months? What’s wrong with publishing a book every two or three years? You’ll still create a backlist, just a little slower. Like slow blogging. If you blog once a week, you’ll still build a following, just a little slower. My argument that I’d rather see authors take time to write a really good book than to rush them to publication was countered with many comments by people arguing that more time writing does not necessarily equal a better book. Of course it doesn’t in all cases. But I bet if you piled all the books that took less than one year to write on the left side of a table and all the books that took more than one year to write on the right side, well, first the table would tip over. But I bet you’d see a greater number of high quality books—regardless of genre—on the right side. Now, there will be some great books on the left side. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine days. There will be YA books and novellas that took little time because they are short. There will be books by experienced writers who have so much practice writing that they truly can crank out a good book in less than a year.

But I hope everyone doesn’t get into a two+ books a year frenzy. There are many ways to make a living as a writer. You can publish your books and earn money from your backlist, but you can also teach, edit, consult, speak, and publish shorter pieces like book reviews and magazine articles.

I think it’s wonderful that Roni is so motivated and that she has a clear goal for herself in mind. I think it’s wonderful that writers are mastering social media and how to market their work. But I think it’s even more wonderful when someone spends four years—or three years and nine months—on a book to create a truly wonderful book that will enlighten and entertain his or her readers.