Pitching, Querying and Proposing

Award-winning editor Ally E. Machate recommended attending writing conferences and online events to make contacts in the publishing world, as well as for learning and meeting other writers, as she spoke on Pitching, Querying and Proposing.

Ally E. Machate

As well as attending conferences to learn and meet other writers, they offer a great way to make connections, she said, especially those with one-on- one meetings. This is a chance to sit down with an agent or editor. Later you can mention this meeting in a query letter, such as “I met you at…and you said…Here is...”

Ally worked with ex-Navy Commander Mark Divine, A SEAL for 20 years, to write The Way of the SEAL, a practical guide to defining and focusing on your goals and how to think like a SEAL.

Having worked in the publishing business for years, Ally was able to explain what your book goes through if it gets past the slush pile or gatekeepers, the decision makers.

For medium to large publishers, you need an agent, someone who knows the houses that publish your type of book. Search for agents who may be interested in your type of writing. Then find out what publishers they’ve sold to and what connections they have.

Lists of agents and editors are helpful, but they often use a generic email address. You may find a better source through networking with others. Find people who may be interested in your type of writing, with sources such as LinkedIn. Research magazines, literary journals and other online sites.

Try to learn a little about the agents or publications you are considering. Then you can write “I read your interview in …” or “I learned you were looking for a….”

Be sure to follow submission guidelines and make sure you get their name and gender correct. Propose one project at a time, although can mention if you have others.

She recommended giving the agent ammunition with a good synopsis. They can use it to sell your book and if they are successful, the publishing house can use it in audio pitches for their salespeople.

Do not send out queries if you are not quite finished your book. If they are interested and ask you to send a copy right away and you still need to finish writing and editing the story, you may lose this opportunity.

Ally and writer Mike Crowl

Ally explained that platform is industry language for anything that can be used to sell your book. This may include awards, publishing credits, a blog or social media column, credentials, ties to large organizations, or connections.  Planks are what you stand on to stand above the crowd.

Agents and editors will search your name, so it helps if you have a footprint online: a website, blog, Facebook or Twitter account. 

For fiction, authors should send a query letter and a synopsis. Fiction and memoir are treated the same. For non-fiction, a detailed book proposal is necessary. A proposal may be more than 20 pages of detail.

Start your query letter with some kind of hook, a personal connection or catchy plot line, she said. Next you want a description of the project. Think of this like writing marketing strategy or cover copy. Then tell who are you and why you are you proposing this book. Give them your credentials. By the end of your query, you want them to ask to see your complete work.

A synopsis is usually three to five pages double-spaced, a complete recap of your entire story – start to finish. Focus on main stuff. Give them a flavor of the book.

Novels are generally 60,000  to 80,000 words.  Non-fiction usually runs 50,000 to 70,000 words.

Ally is a bestselling book collaborator and expert publishing consultant. Since 1999, she has assisted, guided, and supported would-be authors on their publishing journey and takes pride in serving as their books' best ally. You can learn more about Ally at www.thewritersally.com and www.allymachate.com.

Remember:

If you don’t get that first book published it doesn’t mean you are not good, it just means you might not be good enough right now. Keep writing. Also, it is important to get to know your craft. This is a business.

CCMWA President Kerry Peresta
and Ally Machate

Take your business seriously.

This event was sponsored by the Carroll County Chapter of the Maryland Writers Association. For more information, check out www.marylandwriters.org or www.carrollcountymwa.org.

Write What You Know

I recently heard Dean Minnich speak about his life as a newspaper reporter, storyteller and author at the Carroll County Public Library. He also discussed his new book What Price Eden.

I am sure that through the years, he heard the writing advice, “write what you know.” However, Dean may have done that too well, as people keep telling him they know where his latest book takes place and recognize many of the people.

Although he protests that his book is fiction. It takes place in a fictional location with fictional people. But people identify with his characters, places and problems.

Dean wrote what he knew, but like most writers, he changed things. Buildings, businesses and people seem familiar because variations of them are here and in many American small towns. So are the problems. We can understand the problems and the emotions that surround them.

Dean was a journalist so it is not surprising that the town’s newspaper plays a large part in What Price Eden, as several people fight greed, corruption and murder to save unspoiled land and a family legacy.  

He worked for both the Hanover Evening Sun and the Carroll County Times, was a writer in the Navy and a freelance writer. He has published two books of his columns, three novels and a non-fiction book on the towns and villages of Carroll County, Maryland.

I worked with Dean many years ago at the Carroll County Edition of the Hanover Evening Sun. Then a daily community newspaper that had more than 80 percent of the county’s circulation.

Before becoming a reporter for the Hanover Evening Sun, I had written a “Man on the Street” column, a column about Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) and a few other articles for the Carroll County Times.

After moving to Mountain Maryland, I became a journalist again, writing for the area daily newspaper, the Cumberland Times-News, and winning several awards. I was thankful of the skills I had learned working with Dean, Al Starner, Gladys Wimert and Donna Boller.

Elizabeth Houck enjoying
What Price Eden

Dean mentioned that he received his education working on newspapers. I feel the same way. I loved learning new things, covering festivals, government, education, historic preservation, health initiatives, and even emergencies.

There was always something new to learn. I learned and I wanted to share that information with our readers. Having people tell me they enjoyed my article or learned about a program that helped them was rewarding. It was also wonderful to meet so many different people.

Recently, I have been experimenting with different types of writing. I finished a middle grade novel about several children trapped in a blizzard and am approximately two-thirds finished a novel about young people helping with historic preservation in their hometown.

As Dean said, It's fun to tell your own lies, to have things happen your way.

Let your imagination transform your ordinary world into an Eden or a moon base. I am still new at creating my own worlds and characters, but I find it fun and challenging.

I am writing what I know, but also changing it, making it exciting, and hopefully conveying information while telling an interesting story. I’ve even introduced a ghost into one story. Now I have never met a ghost; but “what if” I had a chance to meet an ancestor’s spirit.  How would I act? What would I do?  What would my characters do?

Writing what we know is important, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to learn more and have more information and experience to use in our stories.

Note to writers:

Dean Camlin as William Winchester and Dean Minnich

I was so excited after hearing Dean speak about his newest book, I went home, read it and started this blog. However, I knew he soon was to interview William Winchester, founder of Westminster, MD (portrayed by Dean Camlin) at another library presentation. So I decided to hold this and combine the two events. Then I let Christmas celebrations interfere and the urgency and enthusiasm for this blog dimmed slightly.

Although I decided to finish this blog, I am not conveying the enthusiasm I felt at these events. This is an example of why we need to write regularly, not put it off until we feel we will have more time or wait until inspiration strikes.

When we have a passion to communicate something, we need to go for it, right then, before much of what we want to say fades and may be lost forever.

An Extreme Novelist

Kathryn Johnson, an author of 40 published novels, started our writing year off with a bang at the January meeting of the Carroll County chapter of the Maryland Writers’ Association.

An instructor at The Writing Center in Bethesda, MD, she has her students sign a contract to complete the draft of a complete novel in eight weeks. She encourages them to write at least 90 minutes a day for six days a week. The purpose is to establish a routine. That hopefully will develop into a habit if practiced for at least eight to 10 weeks.

Kathryn Johnson and Kerry Peresta

The Rule of 10,000 shows that practice is more important than having a gift or talent. A study of violinists showed that those who practiced at least 10,000 hours at their craft were the ones who became the most successful. So keep practicing, keep trying to write better and you will get better.

Many people like to write in the morning, when their brain is clear. It is easier for the subconscious to engage before we get busy with other every day events, she told the writers and  writers-to-be at the meeting. Write whenever you can. Find your most creative time and use it.

If necessary, write in small bits, such as waiting at the doctor’s office, or when small children are asleep. Find areas that help you create, such as the library, coffee houses or quiet rooms in your home. Many people can’t write at home because there are too many distractions. You can portion your writing time throughout the day.

Writing your novel will be easier if you have a basic outline or plan. It helps you to keep things straight. You need a beginning, middle and end. You need to know your characters and the book genre.

Don’t worry about writing well in the beginning, just get the first draft of your novel down. If you start to edit your work, your controller will kick in (telling you that you are wasting time, cheating your family, not writing well, or that it is not important).

“Get the whole thing down,” she recommended. Don’t look back. You are only allowed to write forward. You can write notes on the rough manuscript of areas that need more work or keep a journal of additional ideas and details you want to add to the earlier parts of the novel. After you have completed the basic novel, then it is time for revision.

In a nutshell, the basic process is:

1                     preparation

2                     rough draft

3                     revision

Her most recent book is The Gentleman Poet.  Search for more information at her website: www.writebyyou.com.

writing prompts

The purpose of writing prompts - to encourage you to write.

They give you a chance to practice your writing skills.
They can get the creative juices flowing.
They offer a challenge.
They are fun.

Can you write something passable in a short amount of time on a specific subject? Let your imagination run free. No one else has to read it unless that is what you want.

Some dictionary definitions for prompt include: To move to action, to incite, to bring forth, and to be ready and quick to act as occasion demands.

A prompt is just a topic. It can be one word, a sentence or even a picture. You jot down ideas and then try to quickly write something from it.

What if your topic was “night writers.” Would you write a memoir about how you do most of your creative writing at night, after everyone else is in bed? Maybe you could create a story where the revolutionaries met at night to write and print information to distribute the next day. Could what they write lead to the overthrow of a dictator or just land them in prison? Is the pen really mightier than the sword? It is your story and it can go where you want it to go.

Prompts can help a writer get past writer’s block by trying different approaches. Instead of just staring at a blank page, a prompt can get you writing.

It is beneficial to write just for fun, to experiment, to see things from a different viewpoint, before returning to your main project. This is less stressful writing.

Many writing magazines provide prompts for their readers. There are entire books written about the value of prompts to ignite the creative process. You also can find sites that offer prompts online.

Writers are pushed to practice, practice, practice. Prompts give you a chance to do just that.

In our writing group, we can share our prompts and receive feedback on what we have written and also see what others wrote. It is interesting to see the different writing topics and styles that come from people using the same prompt.

You might even take the same idea and rewrite it with different characters or set it in a different time period. Sometimes you might expand your short prompt piece into something longer.

I save most of my prompts and sometimes review them for possible story ideas for future writing.

Whether you use prompts to spur creativity, kick-start a writing project, win a contest, or just to have fun, prompts are a writer’s friend.

So here we go. The following prompt was suggested for one of our recent critique group meetings.

The prompt: 

You wake up one morning to find that you are your five-year-old self, with your parents again, with all of the memories and experiences of your current life. Write this scene and express the emotion and frustration your character undergoes as you internally try to sort this out. 

My story using that prompt: 

It was Christmas morning. I was five years old. My brothers were pulling me out of bed, wanting to go downstairs and see what Santa had brought us. I threw on my slippers and raced down the steps with them.

“Mom and Dad get up. It’s Christmas. Santa’s been here.”

We reached for our stockings, which were hung on the banister. We could go through them while we waited for our parents. Jacks and yoyos, candy and fruit, a new comb and a sock? You never knew what Santa would put in your stocking. It was a fun way to wait until Dad came out to turn on the tree.

We could open one present while Mom fixed coffee, then she and Dad watched us open the rest, one at a time. Torn wrapping paper began to pile up around us. I didn’t take time to play with one thing before I was opening another. Finally, the gifts were open and I looked around to decide where to start.

Suddenly I realized everything seemed so immature. I’d feel silly playing with silly putty and did I really want to be a cowboy, with a red felt hat and plastic gun? Something  didn’t feel right. I looked at Mom and Dad, my brothers and then looked at myself in the hall mirror. Yes, I was five, but something was wrong.

I didn’t feel like five. I felt at least five times older than that. Wasn’t I just thinking last night of going to work today to finish the Bromberg contract?  Thinking that Christmas just wasn’t fun anymore. The magic was gone.

Now it was here again, at least for the rest of the family, and for me at least for a little while. But now I was thinking like an adult again, even if I didn’t look it. How was I going to get out of this mess?

They wouldn’t let a five year old into the office. How would I get there? Would Dad take me? He probably didn’t even know how to get to New York, much less where Clark and Patrick, Inc. was located.  He probably would think I was just playing being an adult.

Suddenly I began to perspire and sat back horrified. How long would I be stuck here? True, no one was waiting for this 25-year-old workaholic, but how long could I pretend to be five?

“Are you okay Billy?” Dad asked, moving over to ruffle my hair. I looked up at him and smiled.

“I’ll fix some pancakes for breakfast,” Mom said, giving each of us a hug before going into the 

kitchen. “Just play with your toys until I call you.”

“I guess Santa thought you were all good,” Dad joked. “He must not have been paying much attention.”

“Can we go sledding after breakfast?” Danny asked. “There’s plenty of snow. We’ll show Billy how to steer his new sled.”

“Sure,” he said, but I was no longer listening. I had forgotten how good it felt to do things with my brothers. I still received letters from them, sometimes with pictures of young nieces and nephews, but I hadn’t been home since graduating college and had never invited any of them to my apartment.

I had forgotten what love and security meant  since leaving my family in the cold mountains of West Virginia for the excitement of New York City. I had moved on and up, no longer embarrassed by my coal mining father nor store clerk mother. But I hadn’t realized how lonely life could be, even surrounded by millions of people.

Just last week I was wishing I could turn back the clock to when life seemed full of possibilities. Had that happened? Was this just a dream or part of a Christmas miracle?

“Pancakes are on the table. Come and get them,” Mom called.

 Rushing to the kitchen with my brothers, I decided to forget the Bromberg contract and just enjoy some of Mom’s hotcakes and homemade jam. 

A Christmas Gift

After months of working on a local anthology, we finally have it in print. Holding physical copies of Christmas Carroll and reading the stories and poems makes it all worthwhile. It is a gift to our writers, artists, photographers and Carroll County, Maryland.

How did this happen, you might ask? Well here is some of the basic information.

Several of us in our critique group thought about producing an anthology of works by Carroll County writers. This would give new writers in groups an opportunity to see their name and their writing in print. We also wanted to include published writers.

We thought about a holiday book and our coordinator Joelle Jarvis came up with the name Christmas Carroll, a play on the county name and our musical traditions. However, even with the emphasis on Christmas, we wanted an anthology that provided variety, including other holidays, traditions and winter stories.

We sent out invitations to critique members first, stressing that this was an experiment and publication was not guaranteed. We requested submissions from our friends in the Carroll County Chapter of the Maryland Writers Association and the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Then we encouraged other writers we knew in Carroll County to submit various holiday celebrations, winter stories, etc. We also sent everyone submission guidelines and authorization forms.

We wanted to have the book out before Christmas. If this happened, members volunteered to help sell it at various author and craft events. Besides relatives and friends, the holiday book would make a nice gift.

Joelle, Mary Stojak and I volunteered to critique the submitted works, to catch errors, and make suggestions for improvements, but we did not require writers to change. It was their writings and we wanted to respect their views. Not all writing nor photographs submitted were accepted, but we considered the best.

A member of our group who is tech savvy, Mike Crowl, offered to prepare the manuscript for CreateSpace. He took charge of the layout and design and did a wonderful job. The front cover art is by Lona Queen, writer and artist. The back cover art was from photographer Mary Anne Baker. Mike did the design for both the front and back of the book.

It may not be a “Best of..” but it was a chance to showcase some of the talent in our county and I am proud of everyone who submitted their stories, memoirs or poems.

We also encouraged artists and photographers to submit something to increase the book’s visual appeal. Shawn B. Lockhart, well known artist and owner of Eclecticity, also provided us with some sketches.

My daughter submitted a memoir and my son let us use a sketch he did when he was young to go along with one of my memoirs.

Funds raised may bring additional speakers and educational programs to the county. If this project is successful, we may do another anthology next year. Perhaps we will choose a broader topic and allow more time for writers to write.

Putting this book together was a lot of work, but it also was challenging, exciting and rewarding. I would encourage other writing groups to try something like this to encourage their writers.

Including brief biographies and photos of the authors and artists makes Christmas Carroll special. As it says on the back cover, “…this anthology written by our writing family for yours.”

Check it out on www.amazon.com.

More Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was a prolific letter writer, expressing his activities, thoughts and writing process.

If you read my September 20^th post about Steinbeck, you will know how much I enjoyed learning about his life from Steinbeck, A Life in Letters, which was compiled by his wife Elaine Steinbeck and good friend Robert Wallsten.

After a week’s break, I continued reading the 800-plus page book and I found so much more I wanted to share. I had trouble finding time to read all his letters, often containing minor information to friends, but I kept finding gems among Steinbeck’s letters, and just couldn’t stop reading.

He was a complex man, as most people are, but few people can reveal their feelings as well as he did. 

He loved writing and penned:

“I must say I do have fun with my profession…”

“I’m starting a new book and it is fun. They are all painful fun while I am doing them.”

“I approach the table every morning with a sense of Joy.”  “The yellow pages are beginning to be populated with people and with ideas.”

 “To be a writer implies a kind of promise that one will do the best he can without reference to external pressures of any kind.”

One winter he wrote, “The air has muscle.” What a great way to describe it.

“It takes just as long to write a short piece as a long one.”

About plays – “Dialogue carry the whole burden not only of movement but of character.”

“…it never gets any easier. The process of writing a book is the process of outgrowing it. I am just as scared now as I was 25 years ago.”

He wrote to Peter Benchley in 1956, “”A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.”

“Of course a writer rearranges life, shortens time intervals, sharpens events, and devises beginnings, middles and ends and this is arbitrary because there are no beginnings nor any ends.”

As a former journalist, I was pleased that he was not completely against journalism, as so many people are today.

To John P. McKnight of the U S Information Service in Rome he wrote, “What can I say about journalism? It has the greatest virtue and the greatest evil. It is the first thing the dictator controls. It is the mother of literature and the perpetrator of crap. In many cases it is the only history we have and yet it is the tool of the worst men. But over a long period of time and because it is the product of so many men, it is perhaps the purest thing we have. Honesty has a way of creeping in even when it was not intended.”

He included some basic hints about writing in a letter to Robert Wallsten, 1962. I am just using excerpts from the letter.

“I know that no one really wants the benefit of anyone’s experience which is probably why it is so freely offered. But the following are some of the things I have had to do to keep from going nuts.”

1. “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.” He advises Wallsten to write just one page for each day. “Then when it is finished you are always surprised.”
2. “Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down….” Good advice if you are planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo).
3. “Forget your generalized audience…..In writing, your audience is one single reader….”
4. “If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it – bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.”
5. “Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you.”
6. “If you are using dialogue – say it aloud as you write it.”

We’ve heard most of this before, but it never hurts to be reminded.

In 1960s, he wrote, “I find I love words very much. And gradually I am getting the a series of dictionaries of modern languages. The crazy thing about all this is that I don’t use a great variety of words in my work at all. I just love them for themselves.”

Steinbeck wrote newspaper and magazine articles, plays, short stories and even some poetry, besides his famous novels. He was often controversial. But he wrote with feeling and clarity. It was not surprising that he was awarded the Novel Prize for Literature 1962 and received Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

“…a writer like a knight – must aim at perfection, and failing, not fall back on the cushion that there is no perfection. He must believe himself capable of perfection even when he fails. And that is probably why it is the loneliest profession in the world and the most lost,” he wrote. “I come toward the ending of my life with the same ache for perfection I had as a child.”

Less Distance Between Us

Reyna Grande, author of The Distance Between Us, recently spoke about her experiences as a young undocumented immigrant and becoming an American at the Carroll Arts Center in Westminster. 

Her story is relevant in light of the government stalemate on a new immigration bill and media coverage of undocumented children coming to the United States.

Reyna was nine when she came to the U.S. from Mexico, crossing the border with her parents and brother and sister. She was undocumented and not able to speak English when she started school in California.

Like generations of immigrants before them, her parents chased the American dream and wanted a better life for their children. They and their children worked hard to obtain that better life.

Only four years old when her father left, she had a picture of him but to her, he was just a face behind the glass. The children’s situation and life without her parents was more difficult for her older sister, who tried to take care of the younger children, she said. Her sister and brother helped with the book, sharing their memories.

Dr. Bryn Upton, a professor at McDaniel College, led the Question and Answer period. He asked Reyna about life “in the shadows” and to describe her early life as an undocumented immigrant. She said that taking ESL classes and being able to speak English increased her confidence in school. Then President George W. Bush’s amnesty bill allowed her to get her green card at 13. That helped bring her out of the shadows.

After attending Pasadena City College for two years, she went to the University of California, Santa Cruz and graduated with a B.A in creative writing and film and video. She was the first member of her family to graduate from college. Later she received an M.F.A. in creative writing from Antioch College.  Now she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension.

She couldn’t write this book when she was 22. It still was not easy at this stage of life, but it has been a catharsis, she said. The writing was cleansing. It was therapy.

A professor told her what she was writing at first was an autobiography. She was writing about too much of her life A memoir covers a limited amount of time.

Reyna realized she had to stop looking at her parents as a daughter and look at them through the viewpoint of an author. She began to look at them as characters in a story. As characters, their good points as well as their bad points were revealed, as well as the history that affected them, that made them who they were. She saw her parents were products of their own upbringing.

Before writing this memoir she had written two novels. She received an American Book Award in 2007 for Across a Hundred Mountains. In 2009, Dancing with Butterflies was published.

In her novels, portions of her life are revealed. Worry about a father not returning, came from fear when she was younger that he wouldn’t return for her.

Thoughts about writing were scattered throughout her speech and during the question and answer period.

She said, “Whenever I listen to another writer speak, I am inspired and motivated.” I also think new ideas or changes to an existing work while listening to other writers, just as I did during Reyna’s talk.

“These ‘ghosts inside’ were demanding attention,” she said. “I also am reminded about the basics: good characterization and setting.”

It bothers her that so many people look at immigration as numbers, not as people. Individuals lose their identity. She included only one statistic in the book: that 80 percent of children in ESL classes come from families split by immigration, and hopes teachers keep in mind the hurdles they are facing.

All Americans are immigrants, but the younger generations tend to forget where their ancestors came from. All had difficulties when they first came to their new country.

I wish I had written this blog right away instead of just jotting down notes. I feel I’ve lost a lot of the impact of the evening. It was interesting and enlightening to share some of this writer’s life and thoughts. If you have a chance to attend one of the events featuring Reyna Grande I definitely would recommend you go.

Thanks to the Maryland Humanities Council, the Carroll Citizens for Racial Equality, United Hands of Carroll County, McDaniel College  and the Carroll Library Partnership for sponsoring this program.