From Lost to Found: Book review

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Katherine

I imagine it is rare that a book brings a New York Times reviewer to tears. In my mind the reviewers from the Grey Lady are word-weary, poker-faced readers with stiff upper lips. And yet, the NYT reviewer Dwight Garner admitted to being ‘obliterated’ by Cheryl Strayed’s most recent book, WILD. In his words, ‘I was reduced, during her book’s final third, to puddle-eyed cretinism’.

In the first couple paragraphs of his review I was hooked.

I quickly found out that Garner was not the only person to be lavishing praise on the book. Strayed was receiving the sort of attention that would make a movie star blush – Oprah had resurrected her book club to tout WILD, Reese Witherspoon had signed it for a movie deal and book signings around the country were turning into mosh pits, with standing room only for her devoted fans.

Having read the book, it is clear why. Strayed is someone we understand, someone we want to be, on our best days. Her book, WILD, tells the story of the months she hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, following the death of her mother and the unraveling of her life at the age of 26. She was inexperienced and under prepared for the adventure, her body throbbing and blistering in revolt against her gargantuan backpack. She was faced with rattlesnakes, bears, swarming frogs, intense heat, record snowfalls and intense loneliness, and yet she moved forward. As she puts it in the book, “the thing that was so profound to me that summer…was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the one thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial.”

Strayed is famous, and loved, for her once-anonymous Dear Sugar columns in the Rumpus. She has written endless pieces helping others by drawing on stories and metaphors from her own life. In WILD, she has pieced some of her stories together, fiercely and honestly she has remembered herself. With beautiful hard-won sentences, WILD teaches us what it means to persist and prevail, what it means to try and heal ourselves.

Judging a book by its cover

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Katherine

The book has a title. It is bold, intriguing and memorable. Now we just have to find a cover to match.

Cover designs are not at all easy to come up with. It seems like the best ones draw you in, they persuade you to start the journey and they convey the story’s essence. The most poignant and beautiful covers are pieces of art, they remind us why we still cling to ‘real’ books.

Our designer has been working on images for weeks now. Finally, I think we have a winner. It is something I’m proud to hold in my hand, a image that mirrors the story, a cover that I think I’d be drawn to on the book shelf. I’ll share it with you as soon as I get the final thumbs up from my editor but, in the meantime, here is a very subjective collection of some of my favourite covers to date. I love simple designs, strong colours, surprise, quirkiness and a design that tells me what to expect, what sort of a story I’m sitting down to read:

What about you? Do you have any favorite book covers?

Out With It and the Good Life Project

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Katherine

Have you ever had that dream where you walk down the road naked? Do you remember the moment you realize that everyone is staring at you in your birthday suit?

Now, imagine that it isn’t a dream. Imagine that, for a moment, the world gets to see you and all your bare humanity. How do you feel?

I feel petrified, or at least that’s how I felt as I stared at my laptop screen 5 days ago, in the wee hours of the morning. Jonathan had sent over advance access to the Good Life Project interview that would be aired in the morning, and I was watching the interview with headphones stuffed into my ears as Jeremy peacefully snored away in the other room.

In the morning, the video would be sent out to Jonathan’s tribe of avid fans and posted for the world to see on YouTube.

I had just gone very, very public with my stutter.

I had no idea how everyone would react. Would they hate it? Would my inbox be filled with vitriol? Would I be laughed at or criticized?

All the negative thoughts were chased by more hopeful ones. Would it comfort some people? Would it start to change the conversation about what is normal, about what it means to stutter? Would it inspire others to be fearless, to embrace whatever vulnerability they were dealing with?

I slept fitfully and woke up feeling hung-over, the image of my own face blocking, repeating and smiling etched into my mind’s eye.

By the time the interview was posted, I had readied myself for every bad reaction I could imagine.

And yet, in the past few days, my fears haven’t been realized. Not even close. Instead, I have been shocked by the messages I received full of nothing but support and gratitude. I have opened incredible emails and messages from strangers, from businessmen and mothers, from friends and people I barely know. I am still in awe of their kindness.

As one of them said, “I can’t imagine how hard it is to have something so personal so public. But I bet it is liberating!”

Liberating is a good word for it. Vulnerable and strong and never cowed. It was how I wanted people to see the book, the pieces that I had been struggling to express in the title.

Just before the video was posted, I heard from my editor. The publisher had given the thumbs up to our title: Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice.

What do you think?

The agony and the ecstasy of choosing a book title

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Katherine

I think I may have sprouted a few grey hairs.

My editor had to hand in my final book title today. Our past two working titles had been thrown out, and a sudden deadline gave us only three days to come up with a great title.

You would think that it would be fun coming up with a book title. Or maybe you have more sense than me, and realize that distilling a book’s essence into a few carefully chosen words is not exactly a walk in the park.

I pictured myself being struck by inspiration whilst relaxing over a picnic in Prospect Park. Instead, my brain melted in New York’s tropical heat-wave and I drove myself slightly insane trying to dredge up an idea.

On Friday I made lists of titles as the AC buzzed next to my ear. Too vague, too passive, too literal. I threw them in the bin and started again.

I formed towers of non-fiction books around my desk for inspiration. Look Me in the Eye, The Glass Castle, How To Be A Woman, Me Talk Pretty One Day…

I liked strange titles, titles that surprised me in some way, titles that made me laugh. I left the house, attempted to go for a swim (every pool in Brooklyn required a 3 block sweaty wait and the promise of Lycra-clad hoards) and came home hotter and more disgruntled.

I looked at my tower of books again.

One word titles started to stand out. Some of them were too vague or too grand. But others were bold and memorable and perfectly concise.

LIT, MIDDLESEX, WILD, QUIET…

They stuck in my mind and followed me around all weekend. I thought about them as I danced to a funk concert, as I drove north of the city and as I watched Jeremy coaching little league.

My editor and I exchanged title ideas whenever we thought of something that we didn’t hate. Emails were shot back and forth and, finally, this morning, hours before the deadline, we decided on a title. At least, we think we did. It still needs to go through the hurdle of our publisher’s approval.

While I wait, I’m keen to hear what you think….

What makes a great book title? Do you love or hate one-word titles?

How do you get a book published?

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Katherine

There is no easy process from start to finish. Learning how to write well, practicing every day and then coming up with a great story is an amazing start but the rest of the journey gets a bit more murky and uncertain from there. The statistics aren’t cheery. Approximately 2% of books that are written every year get commercially published. The true figure may be even lower. Self-publishing is now a much more viable alternative but many people still want to go down the traditional path. And the traditional path generally means a shocking amount of rejection and false starts.

Have I scared you off? Hopefully not. 2% of people are published and there are definitely ways to make sure that you have the best chance possible. For the purposes of this piece I’m going to be speaking about non-fiction (from what I have heard about fiction it involves writing a brilliant novel and then going out and convincing an agent and editor that it would be worth their while to publish it).

Non-fiction requires more planning and strategy up front. It requires you to think like a marketer, to try and answer all the questions that some future editor might ask.

Sound like fun? Perhaps not, but writing is a job, and, just like anything else, there will always be parts that aren’t as wonderful as others. You need to create a professional looking proposal that tells agents and editors that you are serious, that you will help them to sell your book, that you are not sitting around waiting for them to do all the hard work. There are lots of things you should do and no ‘right’ way or going about this but your proposal should probably include:

Cover Page
Table of contents
About the book (1 page summary)
About the author
About the market
About the competition
Production details
About promotion
Table of contents (title for each chapter of your book)
Short summaries for each chapter
2 or 3 sample chapters

Your finished book may end up nothing like your proposal but it is a good start, a good path to start going down. Once you have a proposal you can create a succinct, polished query letter to send out to agents. Take your time over this – in many ways the query letter is the most important few paragraphs you have written so far. It has to grab their attention and get them hooked enough to ask for your entire proposal.

Give yourself an outrageous goal. For instance, I told myself that I wouldn’t stop sending my query out until 100 agents said no to me. Hopefully you won’t get anywhere close to that number but it is good to prepare yourself, to grow a carapace of sorts. Lots of agents will not be interested. Don’t let that stop you. Keep sending out your query letter, keep networking, keep telling everyone about your book. Be shameless at trying to get an agent because, as difficult as it is to land an agent, your chances are far better than going directly to the editor and having your work end up on the dreaded slush pile….the graveyard of unsolicited manuscripts.

Once you have a good agent you have someone who can take your manuscript to the ‘right’ publishing house and steer you through the pitfalls of the whole process. At the end of it all, once you have signed a contract with your agent and a publishing house, you can breath easy for a few hours. But only a few hours, because now you have to write the book that you sold to them so well. The fun is just beginning…

Improving your writing & becoming a great storyteller

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Katherine

Most of us experience doubt at some point in our creative lives and all of us are constantly striving to improve. So, how do you make your work match your ambitions? How do you make yourself a great writer?

First, you need to love writing and you need to know what good writing is. As Ira Glass explains, most people get into creative work because they have good taste. They may not be able to create great work immediately, but they know it when they see it. You have to read enough to know what good language tastes like, what it feels like on the page. Even Hunter S. Thompson used to type out pages from “The Great Gatsby” just to feel what it was like to write like Fitzgerald.

You need to understand the rules. You need to understand structure and character development and plot and the cadence of spoken language. You can get that from reading, from asking questions, from taking lessons, from whatever source you fancy, but you need to make yourself an expert in your chosen field. Then, once you know the rules, you can break out of the structure, or choose stay with in it. You can be as creative as your imagination will allow.

You need to see your writing as a job, a skill that you want to hone. You don’t have to write on a typewriter, or only write great work, or ask for others praise. You just have to write. You have to write every day. You have to have faith that the rubbish you are putting down on paper will gradually improve into something you can be proud of.

It may take you years but, once you have created something that you don’t hate, you should start to get feedback. Start off with your mum or your best friend if you want. Give yourself a little confidence boost. Then choose people from your field and ask them to be brutally honest. Heed their advice. Edit. Show them again. Try not to be destabilized by negative reactions. Start again if you have to. Push yourself to improve. Don’t give yourself a hard time if it takes a while. That’s normal. Keep going. Finally, be proud of yourself. Be proud that you stuck with it. Be proud that you have created a piece of work that you don’t hate, something that know is pretty great.

That’s my advice but what do you think? How do you make your work as good as your ambitions?

Check out this great video made to the words of Ira Glass:

Freelance Routine: What’s your perfect day?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Katherine

I have been thinking about making a routine ever since I read this piece on the writer Jodi Piccoult:

“She is devoted to her routine. Five-thirty a.m.: Walk with a friend. Eight a.m.: Start writing at the computer, typing so much and so hard as to wear out several keyboards over the years. Write until 4 in the afternoon. That’s the schedule, five days a week.”

5:30am-4pm, I’m impressed, inspired and completely intimidated. I don’t think I have seen what 5:30 looks like since I last barreled out of the house to catch an early morning flight.

My schedule is far less organized. We have two people who work for us so we have a basic 9-6 with an hour break for communal lunch in the middle. But it is all too easy to be sitting at my computer until midnight and forget that weekends are a time when sane people do fun things like farmers markets and brunches.

The joy of having your own business or writing or freelancing, is that you make your own schedule. Or that’s what people say. I think it can be a lot harder than it seems.

I may not have it as together at Mrs Piccoult, but I have some thoughts of what makes a good schedule:

1. Getting up and getting dressed before 8am

2. Doing some form of exercise (be it running, yoga, dog walking or simply walking to the bakery 3 blocks away)

3. Doing what you love for most of the day

4. Doing the things that you love less and not letting them drag you down

5. Seeing friends

6. Meeting strangers

7. Making a plan and sticking to it

8. Keeping your inbox under control

9. Fully completing at least one full project every day

10. Keeping weekends free for things that make you laugh

What about you? What schedule do you think would make you happiest?

Writing Group: In praise of the collective

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Katherine

Writing is a largely lonely occupation. It is something you do hunched over a desk, possibly with breaks for communal lunches and phone calls with friends at night and, hopefully, with the final comments of thoughtful editors and agents. But the creative process is done alone.

Yet, when we are alone, it can be difficult to get perspective. We can go quietly crazy in our introspection.

A few months ago I joined a writing group. That makes it sound very formal. It is not at all. There are three of us, were friends, the other two just happen to be great writers. We are all working on books. I’m the only one doing non-fiction, the others are working on fiction novels. They know far more than I do about plot and character creation and literary illusions and language and imagery, and all the other fascinating stuff that you learn if you do an MFA in Creative Writing.

When we first started meeting I was a tad nervous, it was the first time I was showing my very personal memoir to people who knew me. I was also horribly intimidated.

Luckily, they stepped softly on my manuscript. They also showed me their work and listened as I gave them my feedback. They asked questions, they pushed me to do better.

We started over sensible afternoon tea, then less-sensible cocktails and, finally, supper. We have kept our other-halves up till midnight wondering where we were, and how talking about writing could possibly keep us out so late.

I wrote the book thanks to the amazing support of my parents, Jeremy and my friends and because of the honesty of the hundreds of people I interviewed. But my writer’s group made sure that I handed in my manuscript, on time and in a respectable fashion, to the publisher two days ago.

I hope that I would have created a reasonable book if I had never met them, but I’m not sure. They shaped my thoughts and kept me writing. I suspect the book would have been very different and I know, for certain, that the writing would have been a lot less fun without them.

It turns out that I’m a communal creature after all. I suspect that most of us are. I’d love to hear about any groups that you are in that keep you on track, sane and motivated?

Book deal: An ode to Lady Luck

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Katherine

6 months ago I was despairing. I should have been celebrating. Jeremy and I had just launched www.ExchangeMyPhone.com, we were still high on paint fumes (having rolled 7 gallons of eggshell white all over our Brooklyn flat) and were paying our bills.

We had moved to New York with no jobs and no savings and we had survived our first winter. I was proud of us.

And yet my latest rejection from a literary agent was staining my desk. Memoirs were no longer vogue, she wrote. Stuttering wasn’t a subject that had mass appeal. Good luck elsewhere.

I added the last rejection letter to my pile. I knew what she was really saying. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t be an author. I’d never get a book deal. My dreams were foolish.

Fortunately when Lady Luck thinks she has trampled on your soul enough times she decides to give you a break. Yesterday I danced around my office, drank a celebratory Manhattan and ate some amazing homemade pasta with friends. I had just received my signed contract from Simon and Schuster.

It took me three years to get my book deal. I’m not sure whether that is a long time or a short time. It felt long. It felt hopeless towards the end. When I left England in October 2008 to research my book I had no idea what a challenge I was setting myself up for.

Writing was no joy ride. I faced far too much rejection, mockingly blank pages, a year of horrendous work and a very sad looking bank account.

Is it worth it? Definitely. I met Jeremy, I met hundreds of people from all over the country, I travelled, I lived in Chicago, I moved to New York and finally, at the end of it all, I ended up with an amazing editor, a highly respected publisher and a lovely agent.

I still have a long way to go. I have to finish the writing, I have to prove myself to everyone who has put their trust in me, and I have to get the piecemeal manuscript on my laptop into a real life book. But, with this book deal, I’m one step further along than I was.

I have no advice, sadly. It seems like there is no one clear path. It is not like becoming a lawyer, or an accountant, or a banker. There’s no clear ladder to scramble up with a pot of gold at the end. You do it because you have to, because nothing else will do, because you have some latent faith that, at some point, maybe, you will see your dreams come true.

Travel Writing: The best job in the world?

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Katherine

Not many jobs include taking a holiday in the name of research, snapping some shots, talking to locals and then writing a piece that inspires people to follow in your footsteps. I’ll admit that it may involve quite a bit of internet heavy research before you set off, but we not exactly talking hardships here. It all sounds pretty ideal.

I sense that the NYT’s Frugal Traveler may have nicked my perfect job, but there is still hope for me yet. I have been commissioned to write a couple articles on the wonders of New York State by a very nice editor at Car and Travel magazine.

I hadn’t quite realized what a large area New York State covers. The project feels akin to researching the entire country of England. I had thought about taking one very large trip but it turns out that taking two weeks off work is slightly impractical. So I’m doing it in long weekend stints and I’ve asked Jeremy to come along for the ride. This past weekend I sold it as a fun-filled road trip to the Adirondacks. I may have forgotten to remind him about my car-induced narcolepsy or irrational fear of merging.

It turns out that road trips are fun if both people can stay awake long enough to keep each other company, there is a radio station that plays something other than organ music, you can sneak in some exercise so your legs don’t seize up and you end up at a very nice cabin in the woods at the end of the day.

Being a travel writer seems to mean experiencing the good, the bad and the ugly on behalf of your readers. They don’t need to face the same navigational hysterics or drive through the multitude of disappointing towns. Instead they can eat at quaint cafes, take some glorious hikes, pack the necessary plasters and end their peaceful day at a cozy cabin in the woods.

Because even if you fall in the mud on your hike, drive for miles in the wrong direction or find yourself screaming at the radio, a rustic cabin and a fireplace can do wonders to make it all seem like the glorious adventure it was supposed to be.