Ben will be reading at Book Passage in Corte Madera at 7 p.m. tonight night (Tuesday, May 15). In his quiet, self-deprecating manner, Ben calls himself a 54-year-old debut novelist.

MW: Can you tell us about your new book?

BF: It is generally speaking about football, cheerleaders, the Iraq war, capitalism, family, sex, death, and the general insanity of American life. Specifically, it’s about a group of eight American soldiers who are in the United States for two weeks doing a public relations tour to boost support for the Iraq war. The book takes place on the very last day of their tour. They’re guests of honor at a Dallas Cowboys game. And after that they go right back to Iraq, back into combat.

MW: Were you in the Iraq war?

BF: No.

MW: How did you research the book?

BF: I read lots of soldier memoirs, lots of reportage. Every magazine article that I came across I would put in the file, and after three or four years or research I had four or five big, thick files. I got to know a couple of vets of this war and had conversations with others. But there were two main relationships.

MW: Is your protagonist based on one of those relationships?

BF: No. Bits and pieces, but the main character, Billy Lynn, is really someone from my own head.

MW: So you spent three to four years researching before you began writing?

BF: Yeah, I was writing other things. So when I would read at night or on vacation, I would read something about the war. I was working on a novel called The Texas Itch at the time, which crashed and burned.

MW: Why?

BF: It wasn’t good enough.

MW: What wasn’t good enough about it?

BF: It took too long to get going, and the plot relied too heavily on arcane matters of law, at least according to my editor.

MW: And before that you wrote a collection of short stories?

BF: Correct. It’s called Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, the stories that I wrote between 1999 and 2004. I started writing in 1988, and I wrote for a good ten years before I started writing work that really pleased me. So all the stories in that book came after I’d been doing this for ten years.

MW: Who are your favorite authors?

BF: Robert Stone, Joan Didion, Walker Percy, Norman Mailer. I think Mailer went as far as any writer I’ve come across in trying to figure out the American Psyche—along with Joan Didion and Robert Stone. I think Fitzgerald wrote the Great American Novel.

MW: The Great Gatsby.

BF: Yes, which I didn’t like for many years. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I really appreciated it. And now I read it every few years, and I’m more and more ravished by it.

MW: What is it about it that ravishes you?

BF: He got it all. In one sense, the essence of American life in that love and identity are so bound up in money and also the idea of reinventing the self on the basis of money. And it’s a heartbreaking love story and a wonderful love story.

MW: What is your writing routine?

BF: Five days a week I’m at my desk by 8 and I work until lunch, say noon, and I read The New Yorker while I’m eating lunch, then I’ll lie down on the floor by my desk for 20 minutes, then I’ll get up and write for a couple more hours—so between 5 and 6 hours. And then I’m done. So I’ll go out and try to sweat at that point—run or ride the bike or work in the yard. I also like to work on Saturdays, but I’m not real hard on myself on Saturdays. I’ll work for half a day and make notes.

MW: Do you have goals during the week for how much you want to get done in those 5-6 hours?

BF: No, not as far as words or pages, no.

MW: You mentioned at lunch that you’d written one other novel.

BF: There were two. I worked on the Haiti novel from ’91-’96 and then there was The Texas Itch that we talked about.

MW: What happened to the Haiti novel?

BF: I got an agent for it, and we got respectful responses from the big publishers and the small publishers, but nobody would take it. It just wasn’t good enough. It was a very labored piece of work. It was very much an apprentice piece of work.

MW: How so?

BF: I didn’t know how to skip steps back then. I thought everything had to be spelled out, and everything had to be in its own dedicated scene. I hadn’t figured out how to go straight to the heart of it when that was called for. There was lots of bloat in that book.

MW: Was it long?

BF: Yes, it was about 600 manuscript pages.

MW: What did you do differently in your new novel?

BF: I’ve gotten better at knowing what to leave out and maybe become a bit more skillful at leaving it out. But the words that are in there carry all that weight. I suppose something I’ve gotten better at is compression and concentration, getting as much bang as I can out of each page.

MW: How did you develop that skill?

BF: By writing. That’s the only way to do it.

MW: You mentioned at lunch “keeping it simple?”

BF: Yes, it helps if you aren’t very smart to keep it simple, and that’s where I’ve come out.

MW: What are you working on now?

BF: I turned in the final version of this book in mid-January. That was on a Friday, and on Monday I started this new thing. I didn’t know if it would be a long short story or a novella or something in between. It was just something I wanted to write, and I thought it doesn’t have to be anything because I just finished a book, but it seems to be developing into a novel. It starts in Nicaragua and ends in Haiti.

MW: Are you using any of the research you did for your first Haiti novel?

BF: Well, I continue to go to Haiti. I started going in 1991 specifically for that novel, but I’ve been going there twice a year since then. So I’m drawing on all of my experiences there—twenty years’ worth.

MW: Why do you go to Haiti twice a year?

BF: I’m connected now. I’ve got two godchildren there. I’ve got a lot of friends there.

MW: How much time did you spend in Haiti when you were researching your first novel?

BF: I was going two to three times a year for two to three weeks at a time. But then I would have a specific agenda. Now it’s much looser. I get to see my friends and just see where things take me.

MW: How important is it for writers to read?

BF: I think it’s really important. Maybe there are certain times when you step back from reading anything serious. I’m sure there are writers who don’t read much of anything, but for most of us, if nothing else, it’s a great pleasure. It’s one of the pleasures of living, so why not.

MW: How much do you read?

BF: I read The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, and I’ll skip around in Harper’s. Lately I subscribe to The Paris Review. I think really interesting things are happening in there. And books. I try to keep a French book going and a poetry book going.

MW: Do you speak French?

BF: I read it, but my speaking is pretty bad.

MW: What is your last favorite book that you read?

BF: This will sound kind of snobby, but René Depestra is a wonderful Haitian writer. I think he should get the Nobel Prize. He wrote this wonderful book of short stories called Eros dans un train chinois. It’s hysterical and wonderful and tender and full of humanity. At the back of it, he has a glossary of slang terms for the male sex and the female sex, and it’s hysterical. That’s worth the price of the book.

MW: Is it translated?

BF: No, it’s in French. My last favorite thing in English is Of A Fire On the Moon by Normal Mailer. It’s his reportage on the Apollo 11 moon shot.

MW: What do you think of the changes going on in the publishing industry?

BF: I think everyone’s running around looking for their ass. Nobody really knows what’s coming. Borders is gone, that was a huge part of the bookseller market. B&N seems to be hanging in there. I think the e-book revolution is really turning things upside down.

MW: Do you have an e-reader?

BF: No. I’m not really a gadget person. I like books. I like the way they feel and I like the way they sell. E-books, as far as I can tell, have no smell.

MW: You don’t have a website.

BF: No.

MW: Why not?

BF: It would be another thing to take care of. I try not to look at e-mail until the afternoons. It’s hard enough to do this work without having a million distractions coming at you. And plus I’m just not that interested. Instead of doing a website, I’d much rather be reading.

MW: Is it possible to make a living as a full-time fiction writer?

BF: For me, for the first fifteen years I would have starved a thousand times over if not for my wife. Now I’m making enough that I could pay rent, pay for groceries. Paying for health insurance would probably be beyond reach.

MW: But you’re not interested in teaching?

BF: I like teaching, but for me it takes a lot of time and energy, and I’m very wary of any kind of path that would have me teaching full time.

MW: Because it would take away from your writing time?

BF: Yeah. Writing time and energy. It’s what you walk around with in your head. Are you walking around with your story in your head or sixteen students’ stories that you’re trying to do justice to?

MW: Do you think it’s important to write every day?

BF: Everybody’s got to figure out their own way. For me it’s important to write five or six days a week. I’m pretty slow, so that’s the only way I’d get anywhere.

But writers are busy. Some are too busy to take my classes. So they ask, “Can I hire you to do my social media for me?” My answer is no. I will be happy to work as your social media coach. I will be happy to set up your website and your blog, to build your Facebook page, and to get you started tweeting (I did this with a client this morning). I will be happy to add all the bells and whistles to your blog and sit down with you to compile a long list of topics that you can blog about. I will be happy to show you how to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) and how often and when to tweet. But I can’t do it for you. For one thing, it would cost a fortune. For me to write your blog posts and post updates to Facebook and Twitter every day as well as respond to blog and Facebook comments, retweet and @reply people, and follow (or not) people back on Twitter would take several hours per week—at $75/hour. Do you really want to spend $300+/week, or $1200+/month, for someone to do your social media networking for you? We could cut the cost down a little by posting one short blog post per week and simply sending that to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ in addition to advertising your readings and publications. We could skip responding to blog comments, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, retweeting and @replying people—but you wouldn’t gain many followers that way. And you certainly wouldn’t make any friends. The whole point of social media is to connect with people, and the more strongly you connect with them—through regular correspondence, online interaction, or, better yet, in-person interaction—the more likely they are going to champion your book when it comes out—to retweet that article you wrote for Salon.com, or congratulate you when you win that PEN award. Your readers want to connect with YOU, not with your social media coach. They want to hear YOUR opinions on writing, they want to read posts in YOUR style of writing, they want to learn more about YOUR life.

If you’re a company with a product to sell, or if you’re famous enough that simply having a web presence is all you need to win friends and influence people, then by all means, hire someone to blog and tweet and post status updates to Facebook for you, so you can spend more time selling products or writing. But if you’re a midlist author, a beginning author, or an unpublished writer hoping to connect to your audience, you’re not going to do yourself any favors by hiring someone else to do it for you. You can hire a coach to get you started and guide you along the way, or to help you take your game to the next level if you’ve been doing social media for a while, but then it’s up to you to take the helm and steer your ship—off into the social networking sea.

What about you? Do you know authors who hire other writers to blog for them? Tweet for them? Post to Facebook for them? Would you ever consider hiring someone else to do your social media networking for you?

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?

1. Ask questions before you join. Find out how many writers are in the group and what kind of experience they have. Then ask to sit in for a session. This should give you the opportunity to read the other members’ works and discover whether the group is a good fit for you. If you’re a poet, for example, you may want to join a poet’s group. If you’re a literary writer, you may not feel comfortable in a group full of sci-fi and thriller writers.

2. Groups work best when there are rules. There should be page- or word-count limits on submissions. Find out if writers expect written feedback in addition to verbal feedback. There will likely be a set number of writers who get critiqued each night. (For example, my group has a limit of 20 pp per person, three people are critiqued each meeting, and we meet every two weeks.) Some groups don’t allow the writer whose work is being critiqued to talk during the critique to prevent her from getting defensive. Some groups give critiques one at a time followed by a more free-for-all discussion at the end during which the writer whose work is being critiqued can ask questions and the others can respond. Others follow a more open format during which anyone (except the writer whose work is being critiqued) can jump in at any time. It’s important to have a time limit for each writer, and to avoid too much repetition of critiques.

3. Don’t take the criticism personally. Remember, it is your work that is being critiqued, not you. There are no good or bad writers, just beginning writers and more advanced writers. Everyone started at the beginning.

4. Practice humility. This is one of the most challenging aspects of being a writer. It’s not always easy to take criticism—not when you’re a newbie and not when you’re an experienced writer. But if you think your writing is perfect and you refuse to heed anyone’s advice, you may find yourself with six unpublished books in your drawer. Make it your goal to put your ego aside and learn as much as you can from your fellow writers. Do everything you can to improve your writing through better dialogue, a stronger story climax, more well-rounded characters, etc.

5. Don’t make every change everyone suggests. While practicing humility, be careful not to assume that every writer knows more than you, or that they are always correct. They are not always correct. Take note of which suggestions were made by two or more people, and consider making those changes. But do what feels right to you. You can’t please everyone all of the time, and if you did, your writing would be too plebian to be interesting.

6. When giving feedback, use the sandwich technique. A popular method of critiquing someone else’s work is to start with something positive followed by some constructive criticism, and then close on a positive note. Remember, it’s much easier to criticize than to praise. Make an effort to point out the positive aspects of the author’s work. And when providing criticism, don’t just point out what doesn’t work. Make suggestions for how to improve the piece. Your job is to help the author figure out how to become a better writer.

7. Don’t get hung up on copyediting the author’s work. A writer’s group isn’t a place for you to show off your editing skills. Feel free to correct glaring typos and spelling errors in the text, but don’t use your critique as an opportunity to lecture on the virtues of the Oxford comma. Focus on what does and does not work in the dialogue, story arc, character development, descriptions, etc.

8. Read each piece twice—once straight through to get the gist of the story and then a second time with your red pen. If you mark up the text on your first read, you’ll find that many of your questions are answered later in the text. Give the piece a chance to stand on its own before providing it with crutches. Then go back and read it a second time while making notes in the margins.

What about you? Are you in a writer’s group? What suggestions do you have for someone joining a writer’s group for the first time? What has and has not worked for you?

Our local bakery sells Irish soda bread, but this year we were out of town, so I called my sister and got my mom’s recipe from her and made it myself for the first time ever. It is SO easy and SO good. And you don’t have to wait until next St. Patrick’s Day to make it! Our bakery sells soda bread all year ’round. So here it is:

4 c flour
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2 T carraway seeds (optional, but I love them)
3/4 c sugar
1 c dried currants (or raisins, but I prefer currants)
2 T butter, melted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 c buttermilk

1. Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl
2. Add the carraway seeds, sugar, and currants
3. Stir in the butter, eggs, and buttermilk

Plop it on a greased pan (I used a round cake pan; the bread will also be round). Attempt to cut a 1.5-inch-deep cross-cut using a serrated knife. Don’t worry if the dough sticks to the knife and your cross-cut is barely visible.

Cook 45-60 mins at 350 degrees (Mine took 50 mins). Take it out, let it sit 5-10 mins in the pan, then remove it to cool on a rack. Eat while warm with butter. Wash down with Irish whiskey or Guinness—or better yet, a cup of tea.

Enjoy!

Response to Publicity Doesn’t Sell Books
By Paul J. Krupin

Quite a number of authors express great frustration and anguish over the fact that the publicity they received didn’t result in lots of book sales.

In fact several of them conclude that publicity doesn’t work.

Their experience with media may be due to a lot of things. But to me what appears to have happened is that whatever the media published certainly didn’t result in them “turning their people on.” I don’t see that as a reason to conclude that “Publicity Doesn’t Work.” I see that a failure to make effective use of any number of golden media opportunities.

In the middle of February, one of my clients, JJ Smith, did one interview on The Steve Harris Morning Show, and sold over 6,000 books and made it to the top of Amazon’s best seller list ahead of The Hunger Games trilogy. Sure, it was only for 24 hours or so, but it was a single talk show interview that did it.

One of my favorite authors, Vince Flynn, did an interview with USA Today on Feb 6. He’s a best selling author of 13 books. He was asked three questions, and he spent one to two minutes more or less, answering each question. I was tickled to see how he handled the last question from the USA Today interviewer, one that he apparently had never been asked before: “What is it about your stories that brings the reader in?” BTW, it worked since I ran to the local bookstore and bought a copy.

For those of you who have worked with me, I challenge you with this very same question: “What do you do that turns people on?” Whenever we seek get media coverage whether it is for a review, a feature story, or an interview.

Think about what happens—just for example, when was the last time you read the newspaper or a magazine or watched TV and grabbed your credit card?

It probably doesn’t happen very often., does it? In today’s world, it may actually happen more often if you read something on a trusted blog or on a friend’s Facebook and they say, “This is cool. You gotta have it.”

Think carefully about the times that it does happen. How did you feel? Weren’t you amazed, galvanized, and stunned? Wasn’t your attention riveted?

Well, if you want publicity or any other marcom (marketing communications) that you create to do that, then you’d better figure out what is happening when it happens to you first. Then you have to learn what you can say and do to make it happen to others.

Realize that if you want to be a successful author, you not only have to write a really good book, but when you get in front of media you need to turn your audience on. You have to learn how to do that or else people won’t respond the way you want them to.

Now I’ll share with you something I’ve learned doing publicity for a few tens of years.

I believe that you can learn to do this anywhere. I call this the miracle of the microcosm because I’ve found from working with real people, from all over the country, that it really doesn’t matter where you are. You can learn what to say that turns people on one person at a time. Yes you can.

You just have to keep talking to people and pay attention to what you said when it happens!

You can ask people at a speaking engagement to tell you. You can have a partner watch the audience and take notes while you are speaking. You can record your talks and track sales or how many people raise their hand or come up to you after your talk. You’ll find hints in your reviewer comments and testimonials where people tell you why they love what you do.

The miracle is that once you learn the magic words that produce the action you want, you can then you can use all the media and other marcom technologies as a force multiplier to repeat the message and keep reproducing the effect.

In a nation with 330 million people, you have very good reason to focus on that message. Even if you are successful in reaching and converting an itsy bitsy tiny percent, you can be phenomenally successful.

Before you think that doing publicity or any other marcom technology is going to help you, you really need to learn what you can say and do that turns your people on. You need to develop a script that produces action.

Can you stand in front of 50 people and talk for three minutes so that half the people come flying out of their chairs and hand you money? That is what you need to be able to do. You need to hit their hot buttons by being the very best you can be. You need to give people a transcendental emotionally engaging experience. Learn how to do this in a small audience and then place that script into your interviews and feature story proposals.

The same is true by the way with social media. The real promise of social media is only achieved when what you’ve done is so good people rave about it to all their friends. If it’s not good enough, it’s just panned.

If you learn how to turn people on, and then use that in your targeted communications so that you help the people you can help the most, you’ll see your success with the media hit maximum levels. This isn’t easy to do. But if you are strategic and test, improve, and prove your communications systematically, it can be done.

Make sure that the content you offer is like candy. Create a recipe that tastes so good that people just can’t get enough of it. and they want the whole bag.

BTW, I’ve created a five minute, self-serve Prezi that describes how to do this process in a highly entertaining and visual way. Here’s the link.

Enjoy.