WEbook Blog: A Writer's Resource

Your WEbook Weekend

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I know what everyone is thinking right now: It's Friday, the weekend has arrived, what kind of cool stuff can I do on WEbook? Well, here's the answer:

Submit to the latest writing challenge: "The "Cheating" Challenge

For this challenge, authors must Write a short scene in which a character "cheats." That could mean a whole bunch of things, right? Well, go here to get some more details and submit your own entry. WEbook will pick 3 winners and award them free entry to PageToFame. The deadline to submit is August 20th, 2010.

If you're curious about the writing challenges in general, you can read some of the past winners here, here, here, here, and here!

The "Dear John" Email Writing Challenge has just closed, and the winners will be announced on the blog next week.

If by some miracle of time-management you still have some weekend left over after expertly crafting your submission to The "Cheating" Challenge, you can also submit a tip to our 911 Writers Block project. If your submission knocks our socks off, we'll add it the actual 911 Writers Block tool, and you could help thousands of writers find their inspiration!



  Have a good weekend!

—Bnaslund    

Writer John Meils: On Patience During the Query Process

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I finished my novel. Really, I did. It’s okay to hate me a little. If I was reading this and I hadn’t finished my novel, I’d curse me too. Here’s another reason to despise me: A well-respected agent is currently reading it.

At least I think he is.

I gave it to him two weeks ago. We know each other a little, so after he read my query he asked for the whole manuscript. I haven’t heard from him since. So about now I should panic, right? I mean, I started this thing four years ago. I wrote more drafts than I care to admit. I’m ready for my eye-popping check followed by a celebrated publication. I am fully prepared for rocket-like sales followed by another hefty advance for my yet-unwritten second novel. Oh, and a movie deal. Can’t forget Hollywood.

Am I delusional? Absolutely. Does that mean none of this will happen? No, but. I’m still checking my email too much. I’m still fishing for compliments from people who’ve read my manuscript and told me it was good. I was a book editor once. I should know better. The publication process is typically slower than a snail on holiday. When I was an editor, I made agents wait while I did frivolous things. I’ve asked authors to re-write their manuscripts wholesale months before publication. I’ve taken years to prepare a single book before releasing it to press. Yet I expect the publishing world to stop because I’m finally ready.

Maybe this is payback for past transgressions. It’s possible. I was a decent editor but by no means the best. I figure I’ll give the agent in question another week. It’s August, after all, and the publishing world practically shuts down this time of year. Or it used to anyway. I’ve debated sending the agent an email. You know, one of those “How’s it going?” missives. But that would be annoying. That would indicate I might not be the ideal author to work with and I don’t want to give this agent the slightest reason to fret signing me as a client.

So I sit and wait. Sort of. I’ve recently moved to yet-another new country, this one for a while. I’ve got stuff to do—learn a language, plan my next novel, buy sheets and towels. While I’m doing this of course I’m thinking about when I’ll check my email next. How could I not? I was impatient to finish the book (which cost me my first agent). I was impatient while plotting and re-drafting the book (which undoubtedly cost me an extra draft or two). Now that I think about it, I’ve been impatient all along.

We all are, aren’t we? This is funny, I think, or ironic. Because writing (and publishing) if anything is a game of patience. Rush your writing and it suffers. Show your work too soon and its flaws will leap off the page. We all love to write first and foremost and yet the great shiny beacon of publication is usually at odds with producing our best work.

Here’s the question: What do you do to slow yourself down when trying to produce, pitch, or otherwise get your work published?

John Meils is currently finishing a first novel, tentatively titled The Warring House. He has written for Elle, Men’s Health, and MyTango.com, among others. To learn more about him, visit johnmeils.com.

Good God Bird's Flight to a New Name!

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As I discussed in a previous post, "What's In a Name?", the title of my forthcoming novel has been something of a mystery for the last few months. Originally titled Good God Bird, my editor and I both felt that a new title was needed to properly and perfectly capture the tone and message of the story.  

For weeks I scanned over page after page of the novel, searching for ideas. I went from biblically inspired titles to ones taken from poems and song lyrics. None of them quite fit like one of my earliest ideas, taken from a chapter title in the novel: The Place Where Things Come Back.

For a while, it seemed this would be the one. I said it over and over again in my head and aloud—trying to get used to a title that would follow me for years to come. I wanted to love it; for it to roll off the tongue with the same pride that Good God Bird had done. I’ll be honest, even after a few weeks, I was still struggling to not use the original name. Then, my editor suggested we drop the first two words of the title. And, though it seems so simple, that was it.  

Where Things Come Back is the official title of my debut novel and I couldn’t be happier about it. I thought about writing a long, drawn-out explanation on how the title fits the story so well, but I instead I’ll let the work speak for itself instead.

I’m happy to say that you can now pre-order Where Things Come Back, which hits bookshelves on May 3, 2011, on Amazon.com and other websites. Below is the editorial description of the novel:

Just when seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter thinks he understands everything about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town, it all disappears. . . .

In the summer before Cullen's junior year, a nominally-depressed birdwatcher named John Barling thinks he spots the ivory-billed woodpecker--a species thought to be extinct since the 1940s--in Lily, Arkansas. His rediscovery of the so-called Lazarus Woodpecker sparks a flurry of press and woodpecker-mania. Soon all the kids are getting woodpecker haircuts and everyone's eating "Lazarus burgers." But as absurd as the town's carnival atmosphere has become, nothing is more startling than the realization that Cullen’s sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother Gabriel has suddenly and inexplicably disappeared.

While Cullen navigates his way through a summer of finding and losing love, holding his fragile family together, and muddling his way into adulthood, a young missionary in Africa, who has lost his faith, is searching for any semblance of meaning wherever he can find it. As distant as the two stories seem at the start, they are thoughtfully woven ever closer together and through masterful plotting, brought face to face in a surprising and harrowing climax.

Complex but truly extraordinary, tinged with melancholy and regret, comedy and absurdity, this novel finds wonder in the ordinary and emerges as ultimately hopeful. It's about a lot more than what Cullen calls, “that damn bird.” It’s about the dream of second chances.

So that's my experience with changing titles. Have any of you gone through this as well? How do you come up with the titles for your writing? I'm all ears!

—Corey    

Corey Whaley hails from Shreveport, LA, where he teaches eighth grade English. He signed with Ken Wright, a literary agent at Writers House, last fall using WEbook's AgentInbox query service. His debut novel was purchased by Simon & Schuster early in 2010. Read more about Corey's amazing story.