Mardi's Link

Author Platform

 

I am suspicious of buzz words. Of jargon, sales talk, spokesmodels, infomercials, and even ventriloquists. Maybe especially ventriloquists.

Remember that crazy Howdy Doody-looking dummy from The Twilight Zone? To recap, in case this is not the stuff of your childhood nightmares: Cliff Robertson plays an alcoholic ventriloquist who tries to convince his agent that his dummy, Willie, is diabolically alive. He fails, his agent thinks he's crazy, and Willie begins to take over their stage act. In the final scene, Willie has become the straight man and the wooden dummy on his lap has the face of Cliff Robertson. Very disturbing.

What, you may be wondering, does any of this have to do with author platform?

Well, when something is being concealed, I always wonder what it is. And I always assume it's bad. Because if it's not bad, why conceal it?

(Yes, I do live out in the country and sometimes things are indeed this simple for me.)

So when a friend and fellow writer's book went out on submission recently and was rejected by several editors because she didn't have an "author platform," I felt my innate distrust of buzz words grow.

I did some looking around to understand what exactly an author platform is. I learned that there are celebrity author platforms and online author platforms, fiction author platforms and non-fiction author platforms. 

An author platform is simply your soapbox. A combination of your speaking engagements, blog subscribers, book sales, publicity, reputation, contacts, marketing skill, and ability to deliver. Author platform then is your (caution, another suspicious word ahead) "brand." Ok, so now I understand the concept, but I still don't feel much better about it.

Because my friend with the rejected book is a very good writer and a super hard worker. And she was writing with authority and had something new and useful to say about a topic that not only had a huge audience, but one she knows a whole lot about. Parenting preschoolers. This book could change the way we parent our children. In amazing, true, confident and loving ways. But, it was her first book, and to the publishing world, she didn't have enough "platform" to sell it.

And that's my problem with the concept. She had the skill to write it, just not the public presence to sell it. She was a sober, reasoned, and skilled Cliff Robertson with no Willie maniacally grinning on her lap. She researched self-publishing but decided that it wasn't for her. She wanted to be conventionally published, preferably by one of the Big 6.

There are certainly books that tanked despite the author having a very big author platform. And so I started to wonder if the reverse was also true. If a writer can get published and sell well without much of an author platform at all.

In fiction you certainly can. Look at novels like, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, Tinkers by Paul Harding, and Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon. But there are non-fiction surprises out there, too. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, Heaven is Real by Colton Burpo, and a new one, Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach.

I understand the push by agents and publishers for their authors to have an author platform. I just think its overated. Maybe that's because my friend's story has a happy ending (And you know how I feel about those!)

An editor at one of the Bix 6 bought my friend's book. This editor has preschool children of her own and tried out some of my friend's ideas when her four-year-old had a meltdown. And they worked. Instantly.

When the screaming hit the eardrum, I'd be willing to bet all thoughts of branding and sales figures evaporated. Skill will always trump platform at such moments. As it should.

What other books suceeded without benefit of a big author platform?

 

 

Repurposing is My Weakness

Perhaps I have pilgrim DNA. Or, maybe it's The Great Depression memories my mother has frequently shared with me. (Lard on toast anyone?) Whatever, I abhor waste.

And when you have a dominant character trait like this, it spills over into everything. I abhor waste in my menu planning, waste in my writing, and waste in my powerbrokers.

Because of this, I have been known to repurpose. Some may even call it recycling. (Though I am not anywhere near the level of this guy.)

Still, that leftover rice? Cabbage rolls. That three thousand word stream-of-consciousness on violent and sudden loss? Chapter Two in my memoir. Political hornswogglers (see above) dominating the headlines? Crow repellant for my vulnerable and just-planted sweet corn.

There is something deeply rewarding about finding a purpose for what otherwise might seem useless. Just be careful not to do this or this.

Happy Endings = Badass

 



Last month I posted a happy ending lament. Ok, not a lament, a gripe. I griped that happy endings in contemporary literature aren't taken seriously often just because they are happy. Not because they don't work, not because they aren't satisfying, not because they ignore plot, but just because they are happy. And I think that is b.s.

I am tickled to see that I have some high falutin' company in that regard. AbeBooks.com has a list of Feel-Good Reads for those in need of some redemption and author Alexander McCall Smith wonders why literature has to be so gloomy. And novelist J. Robert Lennon not only likes happy endings, he respects them. Because they can be, his word, "badass." He talks about this in his Ward Six post, Gimme some happy.

I was lucky enough to have Lennon as a workshop instructor a few years ago. In the spring of 2004 his novel, Mailman had just been published, Library Journal compared him to Joseph Heller and Ken Kesey, and he was hired on to be an instructor at the Bear River Writer's Conference. I was the woman sitting in the Adirondack chair scribbling away like mad, trying to write down everything he said.

Seven years have passed, I'm still scribbling (and occasionally getting my badass on - see above) and I caught up with Lennon on his blog, Ward Six, just as he decided to shut it down. Ending, yes. Happy, no. To quote Axl Rose: Every rose has it's thorn.

Look Out Mama, There's A White Boat Comin' Up the River

Ever since I've been writing, people have asked me if I'm in a writer's group and I've always said no. Not that I haven't tried.

I've been in lots of meetings about writer's groups, emailed other writers to ask them if they were interested in a writer's group, tried to gather the women I'd met in various writers workshops into a writer's group, and even been recruited by other writer's groups to join up with them.

Still, somehow none of that ever stuck. Until now that is. Until (blaring trumpets and drum solo, please) the Powderfingers.

Finally, I'm in a writer's group and now I know what all the fuss is about. And, I wonder how I ever got along without our monthly get-togethers. Our group's name, by the way, comes from that Neil Young song about backwoods conflict, and being as we are from northern Michigan, the writers in my group are all about that.

I joined up to get some objective (and free) readers of my own work and for the comraderie. I'm pretty sure the other three women in the group joined for the very same reasons. And even though there are only four of us, we Powderfingers are kicking some serious literary ass.

Our veteran and Queen, Anne-Marie Oomen, fresh from finishing her third memoir, is  debuting Chatic Harmony, a collaborative work of dance, language and art honoring Gwen Frostic. Our poet, Teresa Scollon, has a new book of poems forthcoming and just won an NEA literature fellowship. Our pragmatist and close reader extraordinarre, Heather Shumaker just signed a deal with Penguin/Tarcher for her parenting book. (Yours truly turned in her memoir and is a ball of anxiety, rolling around hither and yon, waiting for feedback.)

Bully for us, you may be thinking. But here's the thing. None of us joined the group to get an agent, a publisher, or a grant. We joined up to work. To become better writers, better editors of our own and others' work, and to feel connected to a writer's community. Even a small one with four members who can only carve out enough time to meet once a month in the cafe of a local grocery store. Behind the donut case and across the aisle from the liquor.

And that's what I love the most about being a Powderfinger.  Our time together - however brief - still feels long term, as if it is a long-lasting part of a bigger whole, set off to the side from the momentary rush that sugar and book deals and alcohol and fellowships provide.

At this point, it's appropirate to give a nod to Mr. Young, for our namesake song and for this verse especially: "It don't look like they're here to deliver the mail."

 

I miss you, Bear River! See you at the conference tomorrow afternoon on The Publishing Panel. Then I'm hoping to spend a little time admiring the sparkle on Walloon Lake from the porch. Today I'm just remembering the good 'ole days, chatting writing with my Bear River pals, Emily Meier and Aime Merizon.

Wiffle Ball Rules & Memoir

The first day of June and this (not-so-very) young woman's fancy turns to . . . Wiffle Ball. After extra innings this weekend with the family, it occurs to me that there are parallels between the rules of memoir and the rules of Wiffle.

And hey, Mortenson, Frey, Defonseca, Khouri, Jones and Rosenblat. You are not on my team.

From the Official Wiffle Ball Inc. rulebook: "The WIFFLE ball is thrown like a baseball and will curve very easily. Experiment with different grips and releases to find the pitches that work best for you. There is no need to throw the ball hard to produce results!"

"Experiment" doesn't mean invent out of thin air. Plus, there is no need to lie so hard to produce results. Truth can be thrown like a baseball and will curve easily. Curve, not spin. That's what craft, emotion, imagination, and work is for. It's for gently curving truth with the wind of your words into a compelling narrative. That's where home plate really is, anyway.

Here are some memoirists who hit home runs and whom I would draft in a Michigan minute: Rick Bragg, Nick Flynn, Thomas Lynch, Rick Bragg again, and Noel Perrin. And I can't forget the gals; Anne LaMott, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, Mary Karr and Rhoda Janzen. Now that there is what I call a Wiffle Ball team.

Here's how a game with these folks would go down: LaMott would give the convocation then Bragg would lead off the game with a Sourthern-style double. Didion would need just a single pitch to tap a perfect sacrifice fly ball to put Bragg on third. Karr would get the RBI for her triple effort, and Janzen would show up late to the dugout but she'd have a plate of fresh Zwiebach with her to share with the team. Instead of taking his at bat, Lynch would announce the game in his hypnotic Irish brogue, while Flynn tossed Janzen's extra dozen or so Zwiebachs to hungry fans and Perrin grazed his sheep in the outflied. Out in right field, a butterfly would land on Dillard's glove so she could observe its compound eyes up close.

This game is, of course, fiction. I may have wanted it to happen but it didn't. The fake memoirs we've all winced over of late feel just like my imagined Wiffle Ball game. Authors Mortenson, Frey, Defonseca, Khouri, Jones and Rosenblat may have wanted the things in their books to have happened, but they didn't.

I have no idea whether or not author Tracy Seely plays Wiffle Ball. Her new memoir (one I'm looking forward to reading) is titled, My Ruby Slippers, not My Ruby Sneakers. But she does have some illuminating things to say about memoir rules here.