Weighing in on Writing and Publishing

Brenda Bevan Remmes

by Brenda Remmes 

I have had a lifelong fixation on publishing a book.  At the same time I’ve fantasized “skinny” as somewhere in my future. The two ideas co-habitat together in a strange sort of paradigm.

The book writing thing…it ebbs and flows.   I go through moments of brilliance (at least in my thinking) and then suddenly sink into jabberwocky as if I live in Wonderland.  In fact, Wonderland is an ideal place for fleshy authors.

I get up every morning and flip on the computer in one continuous motion as I walk by my writing desk to the bathroom. I live by the rule that extra pounds of dirt and grime have mysteriously weighted down my body during the dark hours of the night and I take a long hot shower to rid myself of what I know will tip the scales unfairly.   Then, unclothed (completely stripped down…. …I’ve stopped even wearing nail polish) I mount the scale and get my first daily dose of  “Whew, it’s not too bad”,  or  “OMG, that can’t be.”

 My husband duplicates this morning adventure on the truth monster in a much more whimsical fashion, fully clothed.  What a show-off!   After forty years repeated morning after morning, the same words always follow.  He climbs on the scale and I mouth with him, “Oh, down another two pounds.  I wondered how I did that after all that ice cream I ate last night?”  I’ve considered divorce over that one morning exchange, but habits are hard to break and dissolving a marriage requires far more time and energy than I  have.  I am much too busy writing jabberwocky. 

My computer is now humming, even if I’m not. I clothe myself in weighty garments that add an additional fifteen pounds and proceed to read the last few pages that I wrote the day before. “P-lee-se, tell me it ain’t so.  Did I really write that?  What was I smoking?”  I start to slash and burn wishing that I could delete excess fat as fast as I can a days’ worth of work on one chapter.

I’m weighing constantly.  Too many words here, not enough description there.  Did I show or tell?  Are the words dank and stale or shimmering with their own individual pearls of imagery or symbolism?  I know I write as well as many commercial writers, and not as well as literary MFAs who annually attend the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. But I’m getting better.  Even Hemingway gets three out of five from some Amazon readers.

Success came fast and easy for me and then vanished overnight one day last October when  my editor broke a two year contract.  It was all too good to be true. Like winning the lottery, and two years later being told your game was rigged.   It hurt, of course, but I’m not as naïve as I once was to the publishing business.  Everyone has to make money and if the numbers don’t work, then neither does the novel…at least not for that publisher. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad novel.  It means the publisher put it on a scale for potential profit and the book didn’t carry enough weight for the long haul.  The irony, of course, is I’ve always looked for a scale that would mitigate weight.   Be careful what you wish for.

Adam Gopnik writes in a recent Talk of the Town in The New Yorker, (3/18/13) “The future of writing in America – or, at least the future of making a living by writing – seems in doubt as rarely before.  Thanks to the Internet, the disproportion between writerly supply and demand, always tricky, has tipped:  anyone can write, and everyone does, and beginners are expected to be the last pure philanthropists, giving it all away for the naches.   It has never been easier to be a writer, and it has never been harder to be a professional writer.”

I have been a convinced Quaker for more than thirty years now.  Quakers have taught me the value of patience.  I didn’t get it right away, but I’ve learned in the presence of weightyQuakers much more humble than I.   When you’re not sure what to say, say nothing. When you’re not sure what to do, step back, seek clearness.  Over the years I’ve found this to be a healthy process every time I begin to doubt myself.  Philip Gulley, one of my favorite Quaker writers, wrote on his web site last week, “The world cares little for our convenience.  It does not care that we expected one thing and were given another.  Reality is no respecter of our expectations and demand. I pray this year, for myself and for each of you, that the gift of flexibility, for that wonderful gift of elasticity, for the ability to deal constructively, bravely and lovingly with the unexpected changes we face in  life.”

Thank you, Philip, for that gentle reminder.  Regardless of the way the scale tilts, I hear your prayer.

Find a Good Critique Group

by Brenda Remmes

              I’m always surprised at how many people tell me that they don’t want anyone to read what they’re writing until they’re completely finished.  Most agents say they don’t need to read more than five pages to tell whether they’re interested in the rest of the manuscript.  You’re hoping they’ll get through at least the first three chapters.  My thoughts are you might as well get those first five pages out there as soon as possible for some feedback so you don’t make the same mistakes throughout the rest of your writing.

               I was very lucky to fall into an excellent critique group on my first try.  That doesn’t always happen.  Critique groups are different.  Whether you wish to start a group on your own or attend one already in existence, here are my rules of thumb.  1)  Look for some members where at least a few people have already published or have some professional experience in publishing, even if it’s in the local newspaper.  There’s no better educator than experience.  2)  Stay clear of family members and friends.  They tend to be too kind.  You need honesty that is cushioned with respect and appreciation for the work and method involved in writing.  3) Establish the guidelines for participation in the group.  Everyone should be writing something.  Meetings should be regular.   Submission requirements should be consistent.

               Here is the way my critique group works.  Our group has ten members.  Average attendance is about six, which is a good number, because it means each person can submit for every meeting if they wish.  Larger groups allow people to submit only every few months.  We have a coordinator who e-mails reminders before each meeting.  We meet twice a month for two hours.  Anyone who wishes to submit may do so four days prior to the next meeting by e-mailing to every member up to ten pages (double-spaced in submission format) of whatever they are writing.  Participants are asked to critique each piece prior to the meeting.  I stress the word “prior” because this is a point on which a lot of critique groups differ.  Some critique groups read the submissions at the meeting.  We have found it much more effective to individually critique the submission before the meeting and then discuss it at the meeting.

               We are not an “editing” group.  While we may note misspelling or grammatical corrections on our copy of the manuscript that we return to the author, this is not what we come together to discuss.  Our role is to make comment on the character development, plot and background stories.  “What worked for me when I read your piece,” and “What didn’t work so well.”  During this process, I have learned that my weakness is my inability to give enough descriptive detail to a scene.  “I can’t see this scene in my head, yet,” is the critique my group makes.  “What’s in the room with them?  What noises are going on in the background.  Are there certain smells I should be aware of?”  Incorporate all of the senses, not just the visual.  The group will often give me ideas and make suggestions of what might work.

               We remain respectful of each individual’s efforts and their particular genre, recognizing that we don’t have all the answers by a long shot and reminding one another that what one publisher may not like, another might love. One of our members joined another group in addition to ours where they worked specifically with children’s books.  She shares what she learns from them. 

We continue to remind one another that one person’s opinion does not an absolute make, but we suggest that if two or more people raise the same issue, it might be something the author wishes to consider.  In the end, the author always has the final say on whatever they choose to write.

               As for me, there is no doubt in my mind that I would not have made it as far as I have at this point without the insights and recommendations from my critique group.   I would have wasted valuable time submitting one manuscript  after another to agents without understanding why they got rejected.  I now have a contract on a book.  In addition, I have a new group of friends, who remain kind and compassionate in regards to my writing.  More importantly, they’re not afraid to challenge me to do better and continually improve my writing skills.  

Illustrations:   rudall30, Yury Shchipakin/ Shutterstcock.com

Dancing Naked in the Cemetery: When Fiction is Perceived as Fact

by Brenda Remmes

I have the unique joy of being able to trace my family heritage back to the early 1700s.  The tomb stones of many of those relatives are placed behind an historical country church established in 1759 less than two miles from where I live today.  Consequently, I’m not just talking about tracing on a genealogical site, I’m talking about walking up to their grave and saying out loud… “See here, right here I stand.  The fruit of your loins 200 years down the road, and counting.” 

Fortunately, I have a family that not only remained local, but also believed in education and schooled their children to write extensively.  It’s in my genes.  As icing on the cake, someone had enough insight to save their letters and pack them in a crate for me to open 150 years later.  Those letters have been great fodder for my imagination. 

Imagination is the key word here.  Predominantly, I write fiction, so I juice things up a bit.  I play around with names and take a bit of one person’s history to combine with another.  I create places of intrigue and there’s nothing more fun than ghosts and spirits and sounds in the night.  To put all of that in a grave yard, well, the combination is irresistible.

Herein lies the problem.  The embellishment of these stories by me and others over the years has become viral, and with the onslaught of tweet and twitter and all these nasty little messenger devices, the church sees more action at night than during the day.  The congregation only meets every other week for one hour.  The cemetery is busy from midnight to dawn.  Our surveillance cameras caught a bevy of not-so-tantalizing beauties dancing in the nude last weekend.  It was hard to identify them because they didn’t have any clothes on but their bare breasted frolic would have been more pleasing had more been hidden.  Just my personal opinion, of course.

Do I care?  I didn’t used to.  Get your jollies by tiptoeing around graves under a full moon or pretending that some ghost appears to reclaim his golden arm at the stroke of midnight.  What I care about is that frivolity is turning more often to vandalism and we pick up beer cans, liquor bottles and broken glass on a regular basis.  Our “no trespassing after dark” signs are ignored and the security camera and lights are destroyed.  Recently, church windows were broken.  Last night I ventured out and confronted six more young people at midnight.  Really, midnight is long past my bedtime.  I don’t like doing this, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to start prosecuting for trespassing in order to close the flood gates.  And yes, we already have a gate that stops no one.

I write this because this senseless destruction has made me rethink my own writing.  What have I written that people actually believe is true? I used to think that was the height of a good writer, to be so convincing that your reader confused fiction with reality.   I’m having second thoughts, especially now that tweeting appears to be able to broadcast tidbits of misinformation to thousands within seconds, without anyone having read the book.

I’m open for suggestions.  

Every Writer Should Consider a John Deere

by Brenda Remmes

Five years ago when I retired my husband gave me a very special present.  We had a screened-in sleeping porch off of our upstairs bedroom. He replaced the screens with ceiling to floor windows, extended the vents for air-conditioning and heat, put in electrical outlets and bought me a wrap-around desk.  “Write,” he said.  “Write to your heart’s content.” 

I did.  I do.  I still want to.

Last month my husband retired.  Lord knows the man deserves to retire.  He’s worked almost every day of his life since his first paper route at age eight. At the same time he’s been an attentive son, a devoted father and a loving husband.  But he’s now about to drive me crazy.

I’m an early morning writer.  I wake up, I’m ready to write and go full steam until around 3 p.m.  If I’m on fire, I’ll go into the night.  If I’m stalled, I put my head back and stare out into the forest through those magnificent windows, mired rewrites rambling through my head.  Someone, somewhere, called that the creative process, so I claim the caption when lost in thought.

Normally, my husband would be up and gone by 7 a.m.  Now he wraps his arm around me and whispers, “Stay with me, just a little longer.”

“I’ve got to write,” I say.

“Don’t get up yet,” he pleads. 

I untangle myself around 7:30 to get to my computer.  He talks to me from the next room.  “What are your plans for the day?  Going into town?  Need anything?  Shall I fix you breakfast?” 

I’m already starting to get agitated.  Once he goes downstairs I’m sure things will be better.  I hear him bang through the pots in the kitchen. Then he turns on NPR.  Since we both have some hearing loss, he turns it up loud enough for me to start to catch tidbits of disturbing media excerpts.  I close all the doors between him and me with unnecessary force. 

If it’s good weather, I’m blessed by the fact that he’ll then go outside and straddle his John Deere tractor for a couple of hours, regardless of whether or not the front forty needs mowing.  All I hear is the rumble of the tractor going back and forth.  I can deal with that.   In reality, John Deeres are every man’s sedative.    When in doubt, in lieu of marriage counseling, get a John Deere.  It’s a better long term investment.

By noon he’s back upstairs.  “Planning to break for lunch?”

“Not yet.”

“Should I fix you something?” 

“Don’t bother.”

“Okay, well, then…”  back downstairs, more banging of pots and pans, NPR back on for unsettling noon news  which requires me to go on-line to find out what the heck is going on in the world now.  Then I go and close the doors he left open on the way down.

Forty-five minutes later he’s back upstairs.  “Whatchadoing?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Can I help with anything?”

“Not yet, maybe later.”

“I’ll  just read some,” he says as he settles into the chair across from my desk.  “I’ll be quiet, I promise.”

I don’t know about you, but having someone seated across from me while I’m “thinking”…even a quiet someone…is somewhat distracting.  But it is a beautiful spot in the house and on hot or cold days when the back porch won’t do, I try to be mindful of his needs, too.

“Listen to this,” he says.  “It’s really good.”

“I’ve already read the book,” I say a bit too spitsy.  “Remember, I recommended it to you.”

“Oh, right,” he concedes, “but I really like this particular part.”

I give in.  “Read it to me.”  He does.  I agree it’s good.

“Thought I’d go into town.  You wanna come?”

“Did you finish the lawn?”

“Will do the rest tomorrow.”

“Need anything?”

“No,” I say, but I’m thinking fast in hopes of coming up with something that requires his departure.

By 4 p.m. the car pulls back in the drive from town and my creative juices have ceased altogether.  My husband unloads the car with pretty much the same groceries he bought the day before and today chicken legs were on sell for .49 a pound.  The fact that we already have about twenty pounds of chicken legs doesn’t deter him.  I try to find a place to cram them into our already stuffed freezer.  I’m feeling pretty guilty by now. Who could ever begrudge such a goodhearted soul and I know that one day in my life I may yearn to hear him whisper, “Stay with me just a little bit longer,” and wish that I had made a different choice.  Time gives life such better perspectives on what’s really important.  I succumb to figuring out what to cook for dinner and being a bit more commutative.  After all, we’ve made it forty years, and this, too, will eventually find some natural flow.  But, it is a new and different challenge in our lives.

What Inspires?

by Brenda Remmes

                   Old poker table  from early 1900s still resides in the back room of the small town pharmacy.

Repeatedly, other writers tell me “get to know your character, put them in the proper place and your story will emerge.”  I don’t think I appreciated this fully until I was working on about the fifth draft of my novel and while there were multiple chapters I had written and discarded, it was in these discarded pages that we became friends.  There was too much background material to include in the novel, but enough for me to get a clear picture of the people I had created and where they lived.  They become real in my mind as I began to place them with their everyday families and jobs.  I have to remind myself that, like Lake Wobegon, they are all fictional.

In developing a character and the place, there is usually something that starts my juices flowing…someone who always wears pink, or a particular meeting place where the locals all go.  Once you notice a quirk, it’s a lot easier to embellish and move forward. How did that quirk evolve?  How do other people respond to it?  It’s kind of fun watching people and places shape up.  I spend a lot of time doing research, although I pale next to the likes of Anne Clinard Barnhill, Nancy Bilyeau, and Sophie Perinot who have taken on topics in foreign countries centuries ago. The extent of their research is impressive. My research has been focused on more mundane things like flying an airplane, sitting around a fire house discussing fires(if there had been an alarm, they would have taken me with them), learning how to shoot a Colt 45, or going to a free range turkey farm to watch them slaughter turkeys.  My research is focused on a small town in Eastern North Carolina eighty years ago, and the most fun I’ve had is talking to older folks about the way it was when they were kids.

I’ve lived in small towns most of my life, so I’m familiar with the rhythm.  They’ve changed a lot, just in the past twenty years.  The economy has taken its toll on once thriving little businesses.  Every town had a handful of stores you could depend on. One of those stores used to be a pharmacy.  Another was a local restaurant.  Both of these places are where much of the action occurs in my novel.  While the local mom and pop diners haven’t yet become extinct, the small town pharmacies are getting hit pretty hard.  When you take into account the chain-drug outlets and recognize anyone can get their prescriptions filled at most grocery stores and then add the online Medcos and Express Scripts  there’s not much room left for Shuckers Local Pharmacy on the corner.  Pharmacists now stand behind mega counters shuffling pills and plugging in insurance codes while supervising a half dozen pharm techs.

When I started writing about a small town pharmacy operating in 1992, I remembered a place where people helped themselves to a cup of coffee out of the pot that sat on the counter and you spent the first ten minutes catching up on the family before the pharmacist got up to fill your prescription.  Twenty years isn’t that long ago.  Seems like yesterday to me, and yet when I realize how much has changed since then, I am astonished at what no longer is.  When I wanted to find out how it was in 1932, I talked to Billy.

Billy walked me through the years he worked as a soda jerk when he was in high school. The soda counter sat at the front of the pharmacy. Ice cream and milk shakes were the order for the after-school crowd.  Seltzer water with a spurt of cola syrup or lemonade made from a jug of sugar water and two or three squirts of hand squeezed lemon juice were other favorites. In the morning there was a checker game going in the front room.   Billy was responsible for having all the orders off the table in the back by 3 pm in preparation for the daily poker game.  The poker table (pictured above) had ash trays set in each corner of the table for the cigarettes which kept the back room in a smoky haze that wafted into the front area of the store. A lot of those cigarettes didn’t make it into the ash trays as the game got hot, as evidenced by the circles of wood burns.

Certain customers were known to have their favorite drinks waiting.  A teaspoon of bromine in a coke could settle-your-nerves, and a squirt of ammonia in a coke was used for a pick-me-up.  The first sales of Coca-Cola began in a pharmacy, Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, on May 8, 1886, with an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass.  It was claimed to cure everything from headaches, heartburn, and depression to impotence.  The cocaine was removed in 1903 when the Stephan Company in Maywood, NJ, started using a cocaine-free coca leaf extract.  To this day it remains the only manufacturing company authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant.  

The particular pharmacy I knew in 1992 isn’t there anymore.  The owner died.  People either mail order their prescriptions or pick them up at a Wal-Mart thirty miles away.  A couple of independent pharmacies still hang-on in adjacent towns, and yet Americans are buying more drugs than ever before in our history.  Still, I write about how things were, (not so very long ago, really) not so much because I want to return to those days, but because some things are worth remembering.  The local pharmacy “where everyone knew your name,” is one of them.  As one grandchild asked, “Grandma, how did you get on the internet before computers?”  Come sit down, child, and let me read you a book.  Let the book tell the story.

Celebration Time

 by Brenda Remmes

The importance of celebrating small successes can never be overestimated.  Would that we could cheer ourselves on in our daily successes the same way we cheer on our babies and toddlers with each tiny accomplishment.

We are writers and writing is a time consuming occupation.  We write and rewrite; critique and revise, analyze and test and then rewrite again.  We need to celebrate more often.  Each day that we get up and sit down at our computers one more time - celebrate.  Every time we find a better word to express a thought – celebrate.  When we nail an emotion so well that we, ourselves, burst into tears – good heavens, what a moment to celebrate.  If we only celebrate when we finish the book,  find an agent,  get the contract,  or receive the five star reviews there are too many other opportunities that slipped by. What do we hang onto when we don’t find an agent, don’t get the contract, or don’t get the five star reviews?

I had a wonderful aunt who started every conversation by saying, “I have the best news to tell you.  I am so lucky.”  She would then launch into a description of something as mundane as the nicest server who brought her an extra serving of potato salad at lunch.  Regardless, we would all listen intently, smile, and rejoice with her at the conclusion of her story.  I will never forget the day she told me, “I have the best news to tell you.  I am so lucky.  I committed my son today and he understood exactly why I had to.”  I looked at her in complete disbelief.  Instead of bemoaning a hardship, she celebrated her strength in making a very difficult decision that she believed to be for the best.  It was.  What a gift she shared with us.   Her smile was contagious.  Her presence electrifying. 

This weekend I turn sixty-five.  Do I plan to celebrate?  You can bet on it.  I’ve been working for a long time to get here.  I’ll start by trashing all of my underwear and going out and buying new ones, as I do every year on my birthday.  A good foundation is the basis on which new goals hold firm.

This year I might get a book published.  I’ve still got some challenges ahead of me, but regardless, it’s been a good trip.   I learn more about myself each step of the way, and I continue to meet new and interesting people as part of the process.   I plan to continue to celebrate each morning I wake up and sit back down at my computer.  Both of those things deserve applause, individually and together.  If one day I should decide to skip writing and do something different, that’s okay, too.  There are other things in my life that I want to celebrate.  You never know.  I might just get an extra helping of potato salad from a waiter who smiles back.

The Pitch

Brenda Remmes

I know there are a lot of fine writers who struggle endlessly to get a book contract and finally give up.  Many a good novel has died for lack of a home.

My perspective on what I had to do and how hard it was going to be came when I attended my first writers’ conference with the SC Writer’s Workshop in 2008. I learned more about the publishing world in those three days than I had in the previous two years surfing the web. 

Some conferences are made for craft and some are made for marketing.  Like many new writers, I put the cart before the horse and went to the one on marketing first.  But I learned a lot and I got hooked up with a truly wonderful critique group that has guided me through many beginners’ mistakes.

During the next two conferences I continued to rewrite my novel and perfect my pitch.  A pitch is that three minute summation of what you’ve written that might hook a perspective agent or editor.  The common scenario is what is called the elevator pitch. You’ve just gotten on the elevator on the eighth floor to go to your next workshop.  Standing next to you is Ms. Bess Agent from the OMG Publishing Company in Gotham City and your heart skips a beat.  You say, “Shazam, we’re delighted you agreed to attend our conference.  I’ve just completed my novel and I’d love to tell you about it.”

Being Ms Bess Agent, (and honestly I’ve found all the agents I’ve talked to at conferences to be extremely cordial), she says the magic words… “What’s it about?”

Voilà, opportunity just knocked.  Grab it!  You now have approximately three minutes for your pitch before the elevator reaches the lobby.  “My sixty thousand word romance novel tells the story of how Rover Wolf tries to seduce poor beguiling Mercy Flowers, unaware of the fact that she’s on to his dastardly dog tricks and plans to remake him into faithful Fido to fortify her feline fetish.”  Door opens and Ms Bess Agent says, “Sounds interesting.  I’d like to see the first chapter.”  BINGO.

Here’s where my opportunity knocked.  I was at a baby shower in Atlanta.  I never go to baby showers.  I mean never.  Send a gift, stay at home and write is my motto. But this was for my grandson.  What kind of grandmother was I anyway?  So I put on a little lip stick, sucked in my stomach and climbed into a pair of panty hose.  At the refreshment table one of my daughter-in-law-friends says, Mrs. Remmes, let me introduce you to Ms. Bess Editor from Gotham City.”  My ears perk up.

“I’m working on a novel,” I say, watching her body language for any tell-tell signs of a seizure.   I imagine her eyes rolling back into her head as she thinks, Please God, spare me…not another writer, but she can’t help herself and she does what all good editors are trained to do and says, “Really? Tell me about it.”  I lunged into my pitch, promising myself I will shut up in three minutes and leave her in peace. After two mints and a cookie she says, “Here’s my card.  When you start looking for an agent, call me and I’ll give you a couple of good names.”

I did.  She did, and the agent she recommended signed me and sold my book in two weeks.

I know that few writers have had such luck.  This is not the typical story.  I had geared-up to spend a year or longer to find an agent, and at a baby shower a fairy godmother dropped her wand and it hit me on the head. I had gotten the long end of a wish bone.  The mints were laced with a hallucinogenic drug.  Who knows?  But my three recommendations to anyone hoping to publish are:   1) Go to conferences, 2) Get into a good critique group and 3) Polish your pitch.  I probably should add go to baby showers, but then you wouldn’t believe the first part.