WEbook Blog: A Writer's Resource

Writer John Meils: On Patience During the Query Process

Share:

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.

Beach Reading

Share:

I am in a rut. I haven’t read a book that I truly loved in too long. You know the kind I’m talking about—a book that won’t let you put it down, one that you recommend to everyone you meet, that you might not lend because you know you’re going to read it again. 

This is my fault, I think. Since deciding to write full-time years ago, I’ve gravitated towards high-brow literary novels. You know the kind I’m talking about—a book that makes you feel unworthy as a writer, one that you talk about with your more literary friends but don’t recommend, one that you’ll happily lend out because you didn’t even finish it and will never touch it again.

There are reasons why I torture myself with the likes of Updike, Roth, Pynchon et al. I wasn’t an English major in college and then came to the writing game late. As such, I feel like I have to compensate by flash frying my brain with writers of exceptional talent. Over this past weekend, I was at the beach with a large group of friends and more than half of them were reading one of the books from the Stieg Larsson trilogy (The Girl with/who…). If you haven’t read them (like me), they’re crime novels, good ones apparently. Good enough to sell 40+ million copies worldwide as of this spring. 

Because I haven’t read any of Larsson’s books, I was left out of the conversation all weekend. Currently, I’m reading Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon. It seems like it will be a good book but after 100 pages I still don’t know what’s going on. There’s a set of twins, one schizophrenic the other not, a guy with a severed hand, and a couple who moves to the Midwest for mysterious reasons. It’s very well written. But, with all due respect to the author, I’m quite sure it hasn’t sold 40 million copies worldwide.

Which reminded me of an important lesson for my own writing: plot is king. As writers, we all love literary acrobatics—a well-turned metaphor, one-word sentences, shifting POVs—but readers love story. And if you want to get published, you’ll learn sooner or later that the customer is always right. Ask any agent or editor and they will tell you that a good story can overcome bad writing (but rarely the opposite) any day.

I learned this lesson painfully. When I turned in an early draft of my most recent manuscript to my agent at the time, I was very impressed with the quality of my writing. I’d worked hard to make it flow. I played with sentence structure and variation. I felt like an artist. My then-agent read it in a week and called me to tell me that we were parting ways. I was devastated. When I asked why, she bluntly told me that she didn’t buy the plot; she didn’t believe that it was remotely conceivable and therefore couldn’t sell it.

It was a hard lesson, but one that I took to heart. I dedicated the next two drafts of my manuscript to re-working the plot, adding elements, turns and arcs that made it both believable and compelling. I added a murder. I stripped away characters that didn’t add to the story, cut scenes and dialogue that didn’t advance the plot. I simplified language and made the structure linear. 

The result, I hope, is a much cleaner and gripping story, one that serves the plot and not the prose. Because, as much as I’d like to write like Dan Chaon, I’d rather sell like Stieg Larsson.

The question this week is: How do you make—and keep—your story plot-driven?

—JohnnyM

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.

On Not Writing

Share:

Happy belated 4th of July WEbook nation. I hope you all had a good long weekend (or, hopefully, are still on vacation reading this from a lounger somewhere). I spent the holiday on Cape Cod with family and friends as I do every year. It was a bit more special this time around because I hadn’t seen many of them in a while.
 

Still, I was conflicted. I’ve got about 100 pages left in the final proofread of my novel—the one I started nearly four years ago. To say that I’m close to the end would be the mother of all understatements. Throughout the weekend I debated getting up early, staying up late, or stealing an hour or two here and there to chip away at the last of my manuscript. Ultimately, I didn’t do any of these thigns, and I’m happier for it. I feel refreshed and energized and heard some amazing stories.
 

It got me thinking: when is it good to take a break from writing? When is it necessary?
 

I tend to work in sustained bursts. Schedule and budget permitting, I’ll hammer away eight- to ten-hours-a-day, six days a week for a couple months until a draft is done. Then I’ll take a break, return to paying work and generally scramble to pick up all the balls that fell to earth while I single-mindedly pursued my goal. When I finish a draft or a manuscript, I’m usually spent and need to do other things just to get my head back into life. Sometimes I won’t write for weeks afterwards, at least not creatively. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I need to read, re-charge, wait for new ideas to arrive.
 

My long-range plan is to transition to a more sane writing schedule. I’d like to write every day, but not with such a manic focus. I’d like to consistently produce without having to hurl myself at a particular project because I have only a small window (and savings) to do it that way. I’d like to be a bestselling author with time to burn on my next project. (I would also like to see the Cubs win the World Series, the oil spill in the Gulf to end, and Lady Gaga to chill out, but alas…) 
 

Every time I get a break from my writing—forced or otherwise—I don’t realize how much I need it until it happens. Even if it’s just for a few days, I feel like I come back stronger, and my writing is better for it. Also it’s summer here on the east coast and therefore weekends and holidays are no time to be cooped up inside absorbing the glow of a computer screen. (I say this while currently absorbing said glow, sadly.) And yet the guests are all gone and my family is doing other things today. So I’ll probably work. I have only 100 pages left to edit. I’m close, very close…
 

This week’s question: When do you take a break from your writing, why and how does it help?

—JohnnyM  

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.

Thank You, I’ll Have Another

Share:

I was recently at a wedding of an old college friend. I’ve been away for a while traveling, so it was fun to come back and see him and so many of my other friends all at once. Who doesn’t love a wedding? Free food and drink, dancing, speeches, tears of joy, perhaps a little familial calamity. The only hitch came when I had to explain to people what I’ve been doing for the past few months.

The conversations went something like this:

“What you been up to, man?”

“Almost done with the book.”

“Is this a new one?”

“Nope, same one I’ve been at for a bit—the one about the guy who goes back to his hometown?”

“So you’re close?”

“Yup, just finished another draft but still need to do some more tweaking.”

“Well, I’d love to read it when you finally finish…”

The draft of which I speak is my fifth. And yes, I am almost done. The first draft was to figure out what the story was about, the second draft was a disaster that lost me an agent. The third and fourth drafts I barely remember and the fifth I finally I struck gold, I think. Which is to say, I finally created and followed a detailed outline and then a whole bunch of surprising twists and turns emerged on their own during the writing.

So I’m a proofread away from being done, right?

The truth is I’m not sure. When are we done? How do we know? Here’s what I think: You’re done when you’ve written your story to the best of your abilities. For me, that means multiple drafts, constant re-writes, and endless picking amidst of a ceaseless shower of self-doubt. This is my first novel (second manuscript), so maybe it’ll be easier next time but—as someone “almost” done—I find it nearly impossible to let go until my work is as bullet-proof as possible. And that means my plot must be devoid of loose ends, my character arcs resolved and all my details and threads linked up from chapter to chapter. And the sentence-to-sentence writing has to be solid.

This has taken me an inordinately long time. Like I said, it’s my first and if it doesn’t get published I want to make sure that it’s not for lack of effort or attention to detail.

Now, like all things writing, what works for me or you might not work for someone else. I know successful novelists who do no more than two drafts before turning in a manuscript. I’ve met writers who do five drafts just to figure out what it is they’re writing. Some people outline and research and formulate like mad before even thinking of beginning a draft. Others have only the faintest notion of what their book will be about and start writing just to see where it takes them.

And that, WEbookers, leaves us with the question of the week: How do you know when your manuscript is done?

—JohnnyM

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.

Should You Join the Bloggernaut?

Share:

I blog. Doesn’t everybody? If you’re a writer, surely you have a blog. No? Well get to it. Hurry up already and start posting something witty, profound, and useful every day. How else will you attract a legion of fans overnight, translate them into a massive book deal followed by a hit movie and millions of dollars in licensed products? You’ve always dreamed of managing your empire from a yacht, right? Well, you’re not going to get the big boat if you don’t start blogging.

Or not.

Does blogging matter? Do you have to do it in order to get taken seriously as a writer? Is it necessary to have a blog in order to secure a book deal? It depends on who you ask. Agents and publishers love to throw around the word “platform.” It basically refers to a writer’s potential audience. For example, celebrities have huge platforms—they’re in movies, on talk shows, featured in magazines, etc. Millions of people know who they are and those people are more likely to buy a book by someone they know than somebody they don’t know. Non-celebrities like you and me—sure, we know some people, we might even publish a little bit here and there, but how many people will definitely buy our book? Ten, a hundred, maybe a thousand, if we’re lucky. That means a lot more work for a publisher to insure their investment in us.

Enter the blog. A successful one can have many thousands of readers, even hundreds of thousands if you’re dogged, lucky and/or popular. So you have to blog, right? How else will a publisher respect your platform? Well, successful blogging—building and maintaining a large audience—doesn’t just happen. It takes considerable effort. And if a blog has any hope of attracting readers, it has to be about something those readers care about enough to return regularly. That means posting on a schedule, which takes time and effort away from other writing you might do.

Then there’s the technical and marketing side. You can start a blog easily on any of a number of free blogging sites (Wordpress, Blogger, etc.), but if you’re going to do it seriously you’ll ultimately want to host your blog yourself, add bells and whistles to its interface, and allow for advertisements. That means either teaching yourself how to implement all this stuff or paying someone else to help you. Finally, you have to do a lot of social networking—leaving comments on other sites, befriending fellow bloggers, link exchanges—if you hope to attract readers.

Suddenly, blogging feels like a full-time job and you haven’t touched your manuscript, short story or poetry in months. Then there’s your day job, which is now getting in the way of your blog. Before you know it, blogging has taken over your life and you don’t even have a potential book to shop.

Here’s what I think: you should blog if you have something you’re passionate about and it translates into a blog platform. For example, I like to write humor and fiction and I’m currently traveling in Latin America with my girlfriend while she hunts for a job. This means we’re moving every couple of months to a new place. So I started a blog called WorldofJuan that’s essentially a humorous, quasi-fictional account of our travels.

There are two contributors, John and his Latino alter-ego, Juan (hint: they’re both me). Yes, it’s weird and no, it probably won’t get me a book deal. I only post once a week and sometimes not even that. I do host my own domain, but my interface is very basic and stripped-down at the moment. I might get 500 unique visits a month. I do it because it’s fun and it keeps my friends and family in touch with what I’m doing. Also, I’m finishing a manuscript and I don’t want to dedicate an inordinate amount of time to blogging. However, my next book will be set somewhere in Latin America and eventually I plan to ramp up WorldofJuan a bit and try to build an audience, as they would be the ideal readers for a novel set here.

For me, blogging is about fit. Does it fit with your writing goals? Do you have the fortitude to deal with some of the technical headaches that go along with it? Do you have the time and energy to do it on top of your regular writing? Or maybe you don’t care about any of this stuff and you just like to put you’re writing online for all to see—because that’s fine too!

The question of the week is: Do you think blogging is necessary for writers and why? (If you've got a blog of your own, feel free link. Self-promotion is allowed.)

—JohnnyM

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.

Why Write? Continued

Since there was such a strong response to John's post about why we write, we thought it would be great to get another writer's perspective on that fundamental question.

And who better to throw in her two cents than The Writing Life veteran, Esther Cohen? Nobody, that's who. Take it away, Esther!

Today's post is in response to a question many of you have asked: Why write? I've been thinking about that a lot. It's something about the pen, and my notebooks. I love them both. Micro thin pens (I like Uniball and Pentel. But there are others. I am not pen exclusive. I've never had a Mont Blanc. And if I did, I'd probably lose it).

I've bought notebooks with my money as early as I could. The last few years I've gotten gray hard covers, at the Hallmark Store on Main Street in Catskill. $2.49.  I'm in love with words, too. Indiscriminate, funny, loud and quiet words. Just words. I write on anything I can find if a notebook's not around: menus, Staples' cheapest copying paper. Once I wrote poems throughout my White Pages Phone Book, A to Z poems through the margins. I love the writing itself, words I know and words I don't and words I overhear and words I see and words I just imagine. I've been listening forever.

As a child, I'd sit on the stairs after bedtime, my ear to the heating grate. If what was said downstairs was even a little bit interesting, the speaker didn't matter, I'd write down the words. The subject often had the identical preface: Did You Hear. Did you hear that old Mrs. Steel was actually a witch? Did you hear that Cousin Tillie fell out of love with her husband Max? Did you hear that Anna Demosthenes, the principal of the grammar school, was in love with the school librarian? Love was most often the subject.

I began a handwritten newsletter, called Gab (Blab was my first choice for a title but my father said Gab was better, I believed him) where I wrote stories based on what I overheard. Some were neighborhood scoops, though I never thought of myself as a reporter because I loved making up the details. Joan M, anxious for Mr. Right, went on a blind date with Mary's cousin Ed. (Are there deaf dates? I have always wondered.) She wore earrings mad from feathers she found on her hedge. Ed said her earrings were objectionable. That was it for Joan and Ed, in the version I wrote back then, my own particular Ibsen tale. Joan walked away from Ed. In real life they married three months later. They never liked each other all that much, but that's a story we all know.

What about you? Why do you write? And where do you find your subjects?

Yours, Esther

Esther Cohen shares her writing life on the WEbook blog and teaches Good Stories at Manhattanville College. She’s the author of 5 books, including Book Doctor, Don’t Mind Me And Other Jewish Lies, and God is a Tree. Read more about Esther's Writing Life.

Why Bother with the Writing Life?

Share:

I’ve wanted to write this post since before WEbook was kind enough to give me a forum for it. I should probably wait a bit longer for everyone here to get to know me, but judgment has never been my strength. So here goes: I want to talk about why we write. I know—it’s an impossibly giant and tangled topic, one that’s getting more and more complicated by the business of publishing, the state it’s in, the growing blogosphere that covers it, etc.

So, deep breath, I’m going to offer my take by explaining why I keep doing it, along with a few links to some great recent essays on the subject.

Put simply, I write because doing anything else makes me unhappy. I didn’t start out as a writer. I wasn’t much into reading as a kid. Didn’t even major in English at college. I fell into book publishing when I quit a PR job in a fit of post-adolescent petulance. By the time I worked my way up to editor, I’d already grown tired of paying non-fiction writers advances only to have to fix their sloppy work. I figured I could do it better (my second fit of post-adolescent petulance). I got my chance when I was relieved of my job by a boss who found out I felt this way. Recently, I came across an essay that paralleled my experience. In it the writer—who has also been relieved of her job—postulates that living her writing dream is turning out to be far more expensive than it would’ve been to fulfill her childhood wish of owning a pony. I sympathized.

Since 2004, I’ve intermittently held full-time jobs (thanks, WEbook!) and done a mix of freelance writing and editing. As a freelancer I’ve been wildly successful, which is to say that I’ve been able to live hand to mouth (barely) while depleting whatever savings I had. But I did it. Mostly because I couldn’t help it and because having no money and being able to write everyday made me happier than having money but neither the time nor energy to write as much as I wanted.

So have you read my book? Have you seen it on the NYT bestseller lists? No? That’s because my first manuscript—a memoir about life and death that I wrote, grief-stricken, at the age of thirty-two—wasn’t good enough. And now I’ve spent the last four years (on and off) writing a novel that I’m terrified to finish because that would entail the possibility of it being deemed unworthy (read: I am unworthy) of publication. But here’s the thing: I already have another idea for my next book, which I’ll start researching and developing the moment this one is done. Why? Because I refuse to give up.
Here are some reasons why I should give up (fyi, I could write more but ultimately I’m trying to inspire here):

• The book industry has been trending towards out-of-the-box commercial bestsellers for years, and my novel is a small literary satire about a man who reluctantly returns to his hometown upon his father’s death.

• As a “small” novel, if I do get a publishing deal it will likely be for little money. Certainly not enough to 1) cover my expenses for the amount of time I spent writing it or 2) cover my expenses while I write my next manuscript.

• I’m almost forty, currently writing this from an apartment on a hillside in a South American capitol where my girlfriend is looking for work and I don’t have a back-up plan.

• Writing is hard. If I don’t get enough time to write, I can be mean to the people around me. When I get too much time to write, I get weird. And regardless of the amount of time I get to write, I always think my writing is lousy.

Scared yet? Didn’t think so. (If you are, keep reading—it gets better.) At some point I realized that my passion—nay, my sanity valve—might not pay. And that allowed me to pursue it with more freedom than I’d ever known. This idea was expressed in a recent entry on the NYT’s Paper Cuts blog where the writer essentially declares modern poetry inconsequential (boo!) then concludes that we’re all poets now (prose writers, too) and we should write for ourselves because it’s the only way to make sure that what you create is authentic. (Read the last couple paragraphs—they’re the payoff.)

To be clear: I dream/wish/desire/strive for publication. Every word I write, every hour I sit in my uncomfortable chair and every cell in my body wants my manuscript to be published. And not just because it would validate all the work I’ve put in—I want people to read my story. I want to make others laugh, cry and rage as I have while writing it. And sure, I’d like to earn a few bucks for the effort. But I’d take publication without compensation. It’s not much less than what I currently make off my writing. (Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my mind about this.)

Ready to give up yet? No? Good. And that’s the point. It’s been said in countless ways, but it’s worth reiterating. You might get lucky with your first manuscript or you might just be that talented, but the rest of us need to be dogged. Check out the following essay by Dani Shapiro, who (eventually) gets to the idea of why it’s important and necessary for writers to stick with it, especially now.

In the end I think we write for many reasons. Publication is certainly one of them, but it’s not what keeps us coming back. It can’t be, methinks. For me it’s about happiness. Which leads me to this week’s question:

Why do you keep writing?

—JohnnyM

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.

Write, Rinse, Repeat

Share:

When I got up this morning, my calendar reminded me that I owed WEbook a column. Now, I love writing these posts. I get excited with every conversation I start or new comment that appears. But I was miffed. I’ve been struggling to find time to work on my novel lately and the column deadline felt like the latest wrench. The upside was that my frustration inspired the perfect topic: routine. 

In past weeks, I’ve discussed the need to read and the ongoing challenge of keeping your confidence up. Both ideas are far easier to manage if you establish a routine with your writing. That means carving out a regular and consistent amount of time to write. This is easier advice to give than to take, I know. We all have commitments—jobs, families, classes, etc. Nonetheless, I can’t stress the importance of making your writing habitual. It differs for everybody, of course, but if I’m trying to produce something I need to hammer away on it regularly, every day if possible, until I complete a draft. It could be an essay, a short story or a full manuscript. I might write for a couple of hours or the whole day and into the night. If too many days pass when I’m unable to work on something, I lose my handle on it. I forget the larger points I was trying to make, the nuances of certain characters and the small details that I intended to turn into big things later. And I have to go back and painstakingly review what I’ve already written.

I also believe that routine is the handmaiden of inspiration. It can be easy to simply say that one feels blocked or uninspired to write at a particular moment. My feeling is that the best writing moments happen randomly, so it helps to be in your chair and in front of the screen when they arrive. Luckily, for now, I’m able to dedicate large amounts of time to writing. I find if I just wait long enough, if I pick away at something for a while, eventually inspiration arrives. And this happens every day. Sometimes it’s for fifteen minutes and sometimes it lasts for hours, but as long as I’m focused it appears. And that, I think, is a matter of routine. My writing brain knows that I will be in front of the computer almost every day for a set amount of time and (usually) it cooperates.

So what do you do if you’ve settled into a good routine and you’re still not producing? Write something else—an email to an old friend, a personal essay that you might publish, a blog post. It doesn’t matter really, as long as you use your regularly scheduled time to write, to maintain the habit. If it’s just not happening for me, I go for a run to clear my head and then I add an extra half hour onto my writing time.

So, the question is: What is your writing routine and how do you keep yourself true to it?

--JohnnyM 

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.

The Confidence Game

Hello again WEbook tribe. Thanks for all the great comments on my last post. I wanted to start with something universal—the necessity of reading—and it seemed like it struck a chord. This time I want to broach something equally universal to new (and veteran) writers—maintaining confidence. Next to publication, this might be one of the toughest things to master in the writing game.

As someone in the throes of trying to finish his first novel, I struggle with confidence daily. Am I good enough? Will I ever get a book deal? Am I fooling myself, wasting my time, are my friends and family just humoring me? It gets worse when I read various book reviews and see passages pulled from novels that seem far superior to anything I’m writing. Or maybe it’s the book I’m reading (lately I’m keen on torturing myself with first novels so I can compulsively compare them to my own). At some point, I inevitably decide that what I’m writing will never be as good as what I’m reading and I should just give up.

Here’s another one of my favorite games. I impulsively follow bestseller and “notable books” lists. Naturally my novel appears nothing like those that are commercial or critical favorites and the doubts creep in anew. Or worse, I start questioning my plot or POV or setting and contemplate making changes so it might have a better chance of catching an agent or editor’s eye or be more successful in the marketplace because it mimics something that’s flying off the shelves.

This inevitably leads to a certain amount of despondency (and TV watching, eating, cracking that third beer, etc.). Sound familiar?

The trick to overcoming this is simple. Actually, that’s a joke; there is no pill or vaccination against doubt. It’s something that you have to learn to deal with. Here’s what I do: I remind myself that no one can write the story I’m writing. No one had my exact childhood, my peculiar teen years, my oddball parents, my lovers, my jobs, etc. No one thinks precisely as I do. I also seek out and read accounts by other writers, agents and editors about how they kept faith in an idea or person and were rewarded in the end. Finally I realize that if I don’t write my story the way I want to write it, I’ll never forgive myself if it doesn’t get published. And I strongly believe that agents and editors can tell when you’ve written a book to please them or the market or anyone besides yourself. 

So, the question this week is: how do you deal with doubt when it creeps into your writing world?

--JohnnyM

p.s. My apologies to those who direct messaged me last week. I was out of internet range while traveling and will get back to you ASAP.

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.

Share:

Keep Reading!

Greetings, WEbook nation. Or rather, hi again. Some of you might remember me from my former incarnation, JohnnyWEbook. That was before I left it all behind for my two great loves: writing and my girlfriend. Now I spend more time with both (sometimes too much with the former, to the consternation of the latter).

So I’m doing it, the writing life, for real, finally. After a decade as a book editor, a few stints as a freelance magazine writer, a memoir that netted me an agent and got me close to a deal at a major publisher, then a novel that lost me that agent and which I’m re-working now. I am you, him, her, us—a writer trying to get it together because doing just about anything else makes me unhappy. And that’s why I’m here on the WEbook blog, to share my thoughts and experiences. Because we’re all the same—just at different points on the journey. Like many of you I haven’t been blessed with that big break yet (read: a book deal), but I’m not giving up.

I’ll be contributing a post every two weeks or so. Each one will be (loosely) dedicated to a topic germane to the writing life—i.e., habits, pitfalls, getting published, finding your voice, expectations, etc.—but ideally they’ll only be starting points for discussion (use the comments area below; I’ll jump in from time to time if I can add something useful). Also, please feel to ask me whatever questions you want, either below or to me directly on WEbook mail (penname: JohnnyM). I’ll do my best to answer them promptly. If I don’t have the answers, I’ll find them or even interview an expert on the subject and post it here.

As for my thoughts on writing, I believe there are countless ways to skin the literary cat. The only thing that matters in the end is to write, to keep putting words on the page, the screen, a blog, napkins at a coffee shop, whatever. That’s one of my few universal beliefs about writing: you need to do it in order to get better. And it’s hard and it takes time and discipline, but it’s oh so rewarding. (Ask Corey if you don’t believe me.)

In the spirit of this, I’d like to talk about reading and its importance to writing. For me, it’s crucial to always be reading as a way to fuel my writing. Sometimes it’s a matter of simply learning new vocabulary, picking up a stylistic trick, a fresh way to open a chapter or a POV device I haven’t seen before. I don’t steal stuff outright, but I occasionally modify and mimic what I’ve seen used by established writers.

The book I’m reading now is The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolano. It’s a plot-less romp about a pair of Latin American poets in the seventies and eighties as they travel around the world searching for truths. It’s sort of slow-going to be honest, but as I’m currently living in a Latin American country I find it fascinating.

What are you reading and how is it affecting/inspiring you?

-JohnnyM

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. John, why aren't you on Twitter?

Share: