Steinbeck and Those He Influenced (Ahem!)

Now I know what my husband does when he isn’t finding obscure movies and plays for us to go to. He’s surfing the Web. But lucky me! He found these quotes for me from John Steinbeck, one of my favorite writers. In fact, Grapes of Wrath was probably instrumental in my choice of themes for both my novel This Is the Place (www.budurl.com/ThisIsthePlace )and my lots of my poetry. I thought you’d love them, too, so here they are:


~The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
~The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
~Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
~Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
~I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

~In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

~No one wants advice - only corroboration.

~The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

By the way, my This Is the Place is out of print. You can see from the Amazon widget above that it is still available as a used book. I just love to have it read! So go for it. Basically it will cost only shipping! But if used books don't appeal to you, I will be re-editing it and publishing it on my own soon. And it will be issued as an e-book.


----- Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Q&A a la Ann Landers: "The Secret" About Giving Up Too Soon

This is from my Sharing with Writers newsletter. Thought it was worth a repeat for those of you who don't get that newsletter with its tons of writing and promotion tips in your e-mail box. (-:

Question:

The Secret [by Rhonda Byrne] says that one reason people's dreams don't come true is that they give up just before they are about to succeed. I am ready to give up. Just call me Peggy, WannaBeWriter

Answer:

I believe that people do give up too soon, especially when it comes to promotion. It's one reason I talk about persistence so much. And The Secret also talks about positive energy. That's what promotion is. It's your best shot being put out into the universe and that sometimes (not always) takes time.

That's not to say that at times it's not natural to feel like giving up. Putting aside having a well-written book that hits the market at the right time, the speed of an author's success is usually strongly influenced by its genre. That's one of the reasons I shared all the stuff I learned when I was promoting my first novel, This Is the Place, by writing my first how-to book, The Frugal Book Promoter. Fiction--especially nonspeculative fiction--is one of the hardest genres of all to promote and I wanted others to know it could be done.

This Is the Place won its publisher's Mille Award for marketing and sales the first year it was published but only after it almost failed for lack of promotion by the publisher and by me! And not until after I lost a really big wad of money hiring a publicist who didn't understand using the themes and other elements in a novel to promote it!

This Is the Place is a literary novel published in 2001 (though it's still available in the new and used book section on Amazon for about $1). I think I sold about 2,000 and even that relatively small number was probably sold because it was set in Salt Lake City and was released just before the Winter Olympics in that city.

But that fortuitous timing wouldn't have helped had I not figured out that I needed to promote it and that I was the only one with the passion to do it right. The Secret also talks about passion--only they call it bliss or joy. Once I got started I even got my novel into a couple of airport book stores.

In fact, one of the reasons that The Frugal Book Promoter sells well is that it isn't general. It's personal and passionate. It's full of ideas based on my personal experience selling the hardest of all genres--poetry, short story collections, and literary fiction. I could add memoir (my next book) to that list.

The point here is that none of the three was a huge success by publishing standards. But they were by my standards. They sold well enough, I learned from writing them and promoting them, and I really relished the little successes when they came. When I couldn't trace great results from the promotion I was doing, I kept doing it and kept adding more ways to do it.

What if I'd given up on one of those dark days when nothing seemed to be working? My world--not just my writing world but my entire world--would be a different place. Am I bragging? Damn tootin’. I knew The Secret long before it was written. And I'm still practicing it.

I hope you will, too.
CHJ

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.

That Book Inside You? Yes You Can Write it and Publish It. Learn How Free!

I want to remind you that publisher Patrika Vaughn, talented Toastmaster award-winner Allyn Evans and I are teaming up to present a free teleseminar to writers who want to tell their own stories, as memoir or as fiction. Thus it is for genealogists, journalers and story tellers everywhere. It is titled "How To Write Your LIfe Story."

I'll share my experience turning my family's genealogy and stories into my award-winning novel This Is the Place and how I used the leftover stories from that effort in a book of creative nonfiction short stories, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered. I hope my experiences will inform those inclined to publish their stories but who need more information about how that might come to be. I even used family memories in my chapbook of poetry, Tracings.

Patrika is author of How to Write Your Own Life Story or Your Family's Saga available as a CD set. She will talk about how to turn this material into a book, covering:

1) why you should write it

2) how to go about it (even if you've never before written anything but emails)

3) how to make it interesting to others


The teleseminar will be moderated by Alyn who is also the author of Grab the Queen Power: Live Your Best Life, based on her own experiences.


Writers are invited to listen and come prepared with their questions at noon on July 12th EST . Call 1-218-936-7999. When prompted use this access code: 390175. If asked participants may need this pin number: 2823.

The teleconference will be available as a podcast afterward at :

Authors' Coalition, www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress/podcasts_&_radio.htm
The ACapella Publishing site, www.acapella.com/
Allyn Evans' site, www.allynevans.com
On Allyn's Queen Power site, www.queeenpower.com .
And on Carolyn's Resources for Writers page at www.howtodoitfrugally.com

Those with questions may contact Patrika at acappub@aol.com

The seminar is offered as a service to the writing community through the auspices of Authors' Coalition (www.authorscoalitionandredenginepress.com) and Vaughn's publishing firm, A Cappela Publishing (www.acapella.com).

We three would love it if you could (or would!) pass this information to your fellow writers. How about your fellow critiquers and writing club members? (-:
h
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.

You, Your Thank You Notes and Google

Your mother would have insisted you use Google Alerts if they'd been around when you were a kid. Why? Because they are you first line of defense for writing thank you notes.

And you all know how important I think thank you notes are! You use them to keep in touch with your valuable readers and to keep networks with your editors and fellow authors alive. Yes, you also continue to send them to your great grandmother who sends you a $1 bill in your birthday card, too!

Alerts is a tool that notifies you when something you need to know about appears on line. It knows what you want to know because you tell it.
That makes it an excellent research tool, too.

Here's how you use Alerts for both thanks yous and research:

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts to create a Google Alert for the subject you are interested in. It might be your name or your book title or some of the keywords for your next book. Be sure to use quotation marks around the full phrase you want. Example: Google searches for "This Is the Place" for me because that's the title of my novel. I don't want it to notify me every time the word "place" comes up. Or, yikes! You can imagine! Or the single word "This."

Google then scans stories, blogs, websites, videos and user groups -- everywhere! -- to find information related to "This Is the Place" and then e-mails me when they find it.

This saves me time because:

~I don't have to do that "self-Googling" thing one really should do occasionally.
~I don't miss anything or don't miss much.
~I can learn when things that relate to "This Is the Place" are appearing so I can pitch feature editors, radio producers, etc. (Google gets news on things like polygamy, women's issues, etc. to me fast!

By the way, when you get a link from Google--even one that doesn't seem directly related to your book--pay attention! It can give you lots more information that you might notice at first. Things like the name of a staff writer interested in your area of expertise, or a blogger or niche magazine you didn't know about.

Put on you Alert hat and be Alert! Let Google help you do it!


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.

Ask Amy Expounds on Family Histories

Only the other day, Amy Dickinson, nationally distributed columnist, was asked why it "so hard to get my parents to write down their stories before it is too late."

Amy, whose column appears in the LA Times's Calendar section, suggests that the child (at whatever age) get involved. She suggests "interviewing them and taping the sessions." She says, "Start by asking them to tell stories you've heard many times before." Then move on to asking about how they met, and other open-ended questions about their earlier lives. She suggests the National Story Corps Project's website www.storycorps.net.

Now, I'm going to tell you something she was telling you indirectly. Stop whining. Get in there and do what it is you want your parents to do. Write down vignettes you were told by your parents, your grandparents, and the ones you tell your kids. Then go one step farther and write down what you didn't tell your kids. Do some genealogy work with your relatives. Once you're doing something yourself, you'll find it easier to enlist them in your project. You'll be inspired. So will they.

My book This Is the Place, would never have been published if I'd waited around for someone else to tell me their stories. I simply used the ones I had been told and wove them with my own. To make a novel of it, I had to embroider a bit and that was lots of fun. You'll never be done once you've started but I promise you will have something to leave generations to come. If I can do it you can do it! This one went on to win several awards.

Ahh, the power of storytelling! You might end up with a book to publish.

If you you want to do that, my other books, the Frugal Editor and the Frugal Book Promoter will help you with that. If you don't, just type them up and stow them with your other valuables. Make a copy for your safe deposit box.

Or go to www.creativememories.com or e-mail Debra Synott (Debra4CM@sbcglobal.net), and she'll get you started on publishing individual books with your stories, books that can even be illustrated with your pictures. You can give them to your parents for Christmas. They'll tell you how you got it all wrong. And then they'll be inspired to do books of their own. Writing is like that.

Maybe later, you'll move on and make a novel out of it. (-: If you don't believe me, ask Amy (askamy@tribune.com).

------

Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.

Q&A: Hate Amazon But Don't Mind Learning to Get Along?

This question came from one of my favorite online egroups, Word_Mage (word_mage-subscribe@yahoogroups.com) listmomed by Billie Williams. One is from a writer who says she loves Amazon and that if she weren't a tree-hugger she'd carve that into the trunk of a big oak. And, of course, she suggests the chapter in the Frugal Book Promoter that talks about the perks Amazon offers.

Then another member was she was really ticked with them because the reviews of her book had gone missing, had even sent them a blistering note. She said she was "as mad a wet hen." So she was glad to see another point of view.

Then another told her to cool it, that sometimes Amazon is just working on stuff and that, like ghosts or fog, they disappear only to reappear in a couple of days. And I commented said that is true. You know how these e-group threads go. (-:

Of course, I still had to chime in with more, a la Ann Landers. So here it is:

Carolyn's Advice:

In the Frugal Book Promoter , I start the chapter with something like "Authors love to hate Amazon and, sometimes, I hate to love them."

The fact is undeniable, though: Amazon can do wonders for writers and that without them -- especially those of us who publish with POD technology (on occasion or exclusively), we are pretty much lost if we intend to do much volume book selling. Collectively, the booksellers certainly aren't going to do it for us.

Therefore we are duty-bound (for the good of our books) to learn Amazon's perks and how to use them effectively. As an example, I am about to take pictures of some of the farm antiques I have from the polygamist grandfather's farm and post them to the This Is the Place page in the photos feature. (This Is the Place is about five generations of hardy Utah women who all married into the Mormon religion and found the hardships inherent in that situation hard to overcome.) It's based on my own genealogy.

So, be mad as a wet kitten, if you want. But keep learning to work within Amazon's system. Let them know where problems exist. Here's how:

 Wait a couple days to see if the problem resolves itself, especially if it involves disappearing features.
 Use their feedback feature to communicate. Do it politely.
 Be persistent if they don't respond.
 When they do they will give you a URL to respond if your question was resolved and another if it wasn't. Use whichever suits the occasion. Know that the one that clues someone (someone apparently higher up on the Amazon totem) that the problem wasn't resolved, gets action quickly but don't use it without good reason.
 Send a thank you.

You want to stay on Amazon's good side. After all, they're just working people like you and me. Approach it that way and you win (and, yes, so do they!)

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.