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How to Publish: Build Your Platform

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

While you’re working on building up some credentials and gathering information in order to improve your chances of publishing, you should also work on building up your platform of potential reviewers, supporters, and customers. This doesn’t mean you’ll need to establish some kind of fan club, but it does mean you need to start networking with people who may be able to help you spread the word about your book. Publishers are looking for writers who have ready-made networks for selling their books.

While sitting on a panel on publishing this past weekend one of the speakers mentioned that selling a book is a person-to-person transaction. If you can think along those lines, then you’re in the right mind set for building a publishing platform. How can you spread the word about yourself and your future? That is where we’ll start.

Anyone who is planning on writing a book should seriously consider blogging. It’s one of the most effective ways to establish yourself as an expert in your field. If you can build up a strong blog that readers find helpful or insightful, you can then send a copy of your blog stats to a publisher as a concrete example of your appeal to readers and they will serve as one effective avenue of connecting with potential readers and continuing to connect with them after they have read your book.

Start thinking about events, conferences, or gatherings where you can begin to talk about your work. If you’re involved in children’s literature, write some stories and start visiting local schools to read for the students or host a free workshop on how to illustrate a book. If you’re into fiction, consider starting a newsletter where you send out a new chapter each month or week from a specially written story. If you’re writing nonfiction, you can either attend or lead a workshop, join a local writing group, or publish your own newsletter in either print or over e-mail. 

Submitting articles to a few key online or print magazines will also put you on course to build a portfolio of published works that will make yourself more marketable to a publisher. Keep in mind that your best bet is to focus on roughly five magazines at first and establish a relationship with the editors so that you can provide exactly what they’re looking for. They may even help promote your book in the future. Over time you’ll hone in on the magazines that best fit the kind of writing you do, and you’ll also be able to explain other markets that may work.

Of course you may not be able to start teaching or leading a workshop right off the bat, but these are goals you should be aiming for as you work to establish a platform of potential readers. The key is to determine what you want to write, and to then think of ways you can start connecting your writing with readers.

Perhaps one of the hardest things for writers to confront when breaking into this field is the need for self-promotion. However, if you can keep in mind that you’re providing a service to your readers (advice, wisdom, or just a great story to enjoy), you should be able to start looking for ways to promote your writing and your insight as an author. This dilemma of self-promotion is where we’re go next.

The Elusive Vermont Accent

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

It’s got something to do with the “a’s” and “r’s.” At least that’s what I think.

I overslept one morning, and so, unable to make my own coffee, I ran into the general store on my way into work. Next to the assortment of Green Mountain Coffee is a large round table where the local guys sit and chat before working on the farms, in the woods, or wherever they take their pick up trucks after 9:00 AM.

Passing up the French vanilla flavored milk, I pumped out some hazelnut coffee—I know your opinion of me has just dropped a little, but it was a rough morning. While I topped off my cup, I heard it. That gentle bending of “r’s” and a subtle touch of an “h” at the end of an “a.” It’s not as hard as a Boston or Maine accent. It doesn’t sound like they’re prying an “ahr” sound out of words like park or farm which magically become “pahrk” or “fahrm.”

It’s a gentle accent mixed with the country twang that you’d expect to hear in any rural area, especially the mushing of “th” into a “d.” “I dunno, but somebody’s down ‘dere fishin’ fur trout.” To make matters worse, these guys talk fast and low, a style of their own. When I call our propane service guy—a local if there ever was one—I can hardly understand what he’s saying.

And that’s the problem, I want nothing more than to understand and to one day mimic the Vermont accent. This is a much bigger deal for me than it should be.

A huge part of my identify for years was my strong Philly accent. Water became “wooder,” “huge” became “uge,” and dog became “duawwg.” Ah, but it has since been lost when I moved north. Without my accent I feel uprooted, a wandering vagrant without an audible identity.

And so I am seeking a badge, a mark that I now belong in Vermont. I admit that I’m not a local, homegrown Vermonter, but I covet the chance to travel somewhere and have someone say, “You sound like you’re from New England.”

Then I’ll look them straight in the eyes and say, “Yep, I’m a Vermontah.”

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Playing in the Dirt

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

It’s raining today, but I’m not as bummed out as usual. I can’t explain how it happened, but I’ve experienced a budding interest in plants, flowers, and, to be frank, dirt in general. I have somehow learned to love plants, growing things that are either edible or nice to look at, and enriching my soil—of all things. When I want to make my wife Julie nervous, I call them my plants “crops.”

“Crops” just sounds more serious, more permanent. But don’t take me wrong; I’d make a lousy farmer, the chief reason being I hate working on engines and just about anything mechanical. I still don’t know how our lawn mower will respond this spring after I did zip to prepare it for the winter.

Can you imagine if my livelihood depended on maintaining a large John Deer tractor?

My recent infatuation with dirt and planting stuff is most likely a mix of two things. The first is Barbara’s Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which documented her family’s heroic struggle to eat locally, and primarily home-grown food for an entire year. To be frank, I never gave much thought to where my food came from, so long as I could find a grocery store.

Thanks to Barbara I learned about the meat industry, the benefits of organic food, and the energy required to support our current food infrastructure. Of course it’s not as simple as “Eat local and you’ll save the world,” but in many circumstances it sure helps. If anything, I’ve learned to only buy certain foods if they are grown organically. For example, apples suck up the pesticides. Imagine drinking a shot glass of pesticides with that apple each day.

And then Barbara drove me to start shopping at local farm stands and farmers markets. While these aren’t the places to save a buck, I learned to pick up select items at these markets. Of course when you spend some time hanging around farmers and finding out how your food is grown, you start wondering if you should give it a try.

But really, why stop at growing a few crops such as tomatoes and lettuce? Having just purchased a plain ranch house surrounded by a sea of grass and two meager bushes, I decided it was time to start investing in some flowers. It began ever so modestly with a few pansies who sweltered in the summer heat. However, a few elderly women caught wind of my new home and started dropping off bags and bags of perennial flowers they had removed from their own gardens. Unfortunately I had no place for these offerings, and so the digging began.

It started with two flower beds in the back yard and one on the side of the house last year. The flowers thrived and are now springing up. Of course that spurred some further ambition that has now extended to the sparse front of our house. On a warm spring day I dug out a 20 foot by 3 foot flower bed, peeling back the grass and laying down some fresh top soil. I followed with the signature pansy mix. Under a fluorescent light in the guest room we have some cosmos, flocks, and bunny tails—yes, flowers called bunny tails—waiting to be added. It should be a very full flower bed by the time we’re done with it.

But why stop with a massive flower bed out front? We’re also working on tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, peppers, and lettuce for a brand new garden out back right next to the blueberry bushes we planted last year.

I think I have a problem.

I should be clear about this: I really never cared all that much about growing my own flowers or “crops” until last summer. Now I’m spending entire Sundays tearing away grass, dumping in dirt and mulch, and sticking a divider around the flower beds. What happened to me?

In my more romantic moments I tell myself that I’m reconnecting with the earth, with the way things have been until the industrial revolution or perhaps the interstate system forever changed the way we transport food. I feel like I’m not really doing anything all that novel or new, something that thousands of people do and have been doing, but somehow I’ve been missing. And perhaps this “missing out” is what drives me. I’ve been missing out on something so normal, so natural for a human being: working the earth, growing flowers, and tending his own food.

I can’t imagine what I used to do two springs ago.

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How to Publish: Build Your Expertise

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

If you’re already committed to a particular topic for your future book and you’re reading as much as you can in your area of interest, the next step is to build your expertise.

For example, would a degree in your area of interest help? Perhaps you’re locked into a job you find dull or draining and a career change into an area of interest would be a huge boost for your day to day life. However, the proper academic background will provide the resources, contacts, and credentials to help move you toward success as a writer. My own career was helped immensely by a few key professors from both my graduate and undergraduate studies. They may even have contacts in the publishing world and can help jumpstart your career.

Academic courses will also ensure that you have read the best books available and have access to journals and any other research that may be closed off if you were not a student. Your fellow classmates are the perfect people to provide critique for your book ideas, bringing up angles you may have missed and helping you refine your ideas. Informed feedback will be a wonderful help as you move your book ideas toward a proposal.

As you read and build your expertise in your field of choice, look into ways you can begin to share it. If you’re going into writing, then you really need to think about starting a blog on your area of interest. Begin by looking for the top blogs in your area of interest. While a Google search will help, look into blog awards, blog rankings, and blog search engines (such as Technorati). Begin reading these blogs by subscribing to their RSS feed that be displayed either in your browser, on your Google homepage, or on your own RSS reader such as Bloglines. Be sure to look up the blogs listed in the sidebars of the top blogs and read them as well.

Once you have a better idea of what’s out there, set up your own blog either through wordpress.com (free but not necessarily a unique site with a unique domain name) or a hosted service such as Blue Host or any other budget blog hosting company. You should aim to spend about $4 to $7 per month if you go with a hosted service the provides a domain name and complete access to your blog’s design. Get your ideas out there, read other blogs, comment on the sites of others, and respond to whoever comments on your own blog. Commit to occasionally reading a site about professional blogging such as problogger.net so you optimize your site’s potential. This is the time to build your knowledge, refine your writing skills, and build your contacts and expertise.

When you present your book to publisher this preliminary leg work will pay off in dividends as you can show that you have established yourself as an important voice in your subject area. You’ll have a network of experts and fellow bloggers who can help review and promote your book and an easily accessible way to connect with your readers. The internet is far too important for budding authors to ignore it.

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How to Publish: Knowing Your Field

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

If you are planning on publishing, you’ll want to narrow some of your interests to some particular areas of expertise. Perhaps it’s parenting, religion, recipes, gardening, or a particular kind of fiction. And if you’re looking to publish fiction, you’ll need to decide if you want to write high-end literary novels, say Ian McEwan or A.S. Byatt, or gripping page turners like those penned by Agatha Christie, Dan Brown, or John Grisham. There is no shame in focusing on the everyday happenings of life, whether the best way to handle a gang of teenage girls sleeping over, or writing an action-packed novel, because all writing requires a certain kind of craft and skill. The audiences and goals are just different.

So now you have some topics in mind, but perhaps you can sharpen your focus. If you’re interested in parenting, then you may want to focus on a particular age group. If religion, perhaps you could focus on a particular denomination, period of history, or type of theology. When you have your topics in mind, it’s time to start… reading. Of course you need to carve out a bit of time each day to write, let’s say about an hour or so if we’re aiming for the ideal. But you’ll also need to read and read and read.

There are a number of reasons why you’ll want to read as much as you can:

Read Good Writing

Once you have a field or two in mind, you’ll want to read the best that field has to offer. Pay attention to the kinds of sentences, words, and pacing each author uses. Do they focus on short declarative sentences, bunch their thoughts in huge paragraphs, or grind the narrative to a halt with a two-word paragraph? You’re reading for the enjoyment, but also for the insight into the craft of writing.

Spark Ideas

You can’t expect to come up with every idea on your own. That doesn’t mean you’ll be pinching the thoughts of others, but you can use their ideas as a jumping off point for your own articles. In fact, you may find after reading several authors that a certain pattern emerges in their thinking and you now can write about these connections. All that to say, there always is a need for original thoughts that crop up during long, quiet walks, the restful moments before falling asleep (You do have a note pad by your bed, don’t you?), or in-between verses while singing in the shower (The notebook may be a bit harder to pull off in there, but not impossible).

Research

As you write you’ll typically need to do quite a bit of research. Even if you’re writing a novel you’ll need to research settings, characters, and occupations. Let’s say you have a character who is a firefighter, you’ll need to learn about volunteer firefighters vs. full-time firefighters, how fire burns, and everything else that has to go with emergency response. However, if you’re writing non-fiction you’ll also need to stay current on statistics, studies, and articles. You’ll find that an online bookmarking tool such as del.icio.us is a fantastic tool for storing and sorting online information. If you use Mozilla Firefox you can install a button that allows you to click on a "tag" button and you’ll have any link saved.

Writing Kung-Foo

Writing is a daunting, lonely task at times, so you’ll need some encouragement, support, and insight. Stephen King, Anne Lamott, and Natalie Goldberg are just a few of the talented writers who have published fantastic little books on writing, and believe me, there are tons more to choose from. You need to capture the norms for a writer, the bumps to expect, and the flow of highs and lows just so you don’t get discouraged, or worse, go crazy. Pick up a few magazines on writing at a book store and do a few searches online. Perhaps your favorite writer has a blog where you can find encouragement and ideas. Even an hour spent reading a book on writing in a book store may give you some fantastic clues on how to succeed as a writer.

Coming Up: I’ll take a look at ways you can not only do your research, but build your expertise and much more.

The Road to Publishing

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I have added a new category simply called publishing. Within this category I’ll be listing the various steps involved in getting a book published, but more importantly, what you can do to get your work published.

While my focus will be on getting a major publisher to pick up your book, these strategies and ideas will help you become a more effective writer not matter what you set out to do: magazines, blogs, etc. My goal is to provide a wealth of resources, ideas, and strategies that will propel writers forward with their work.

And so we shall begin with the most obvious, but nevertheless most important word of advice I have ever received and will ever give: write. Carry a small journal, buy pads of paper, treat yourself to the yellow pads if you like them better, invest in some nice pens, look into that lap top you’ve had your eye on, get up a half our early or stay up an extra half hour, treat yourself to a coffee or cup of tea five days a week if that will help you write for 30-60 minutes.

Just make sure you’re writing.

Depending on the area of expertise you’re gunning for, you can use snippets of overheard conversations, use passages from books, TV shows or movies, a simple word, a prop, a memory, or a person to spark your thinking. Just go with it and write. Write horribly. Write the worst thing you’ve ever done.

It’s OK, you can always revise later. So much of writing is creating the habit, learning to cultivate your mind so that you can capture ideas, run with a concept, and ultimately jot it down and expand it, exploring the places each idea takes you. In order to begin that journey, writing often–not necessarily well–is the crucial first step.

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When You're Really Done Editing

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

There were at least five occasions when I declared to friends and family that I was officially "done" with my book Coffeehouse Theology and the two respective study guides. On the first occasion, I had just finished my first drafts and sent them off to my development editor in the fall. I knew that a few chapters were weaker than others, but my overall scope, research, and plan was fairly sound.

I had no idea what was about to hit me.

Having rarely ever used the review feature of Microsoft Word, my editor gave me a quick and shocking introduction to the notes and corrections pervasive in my drafts. While my writing was OK and most of the material was fine, I was too academic in tone, many of my chapters lacked a sound structure, one chapter needed to be divided in two, and another chapter needed to be deleted altogether.

Following the lengthy comments made by my editor, I began to drastically revise each chapter.  I generally followed the following procedure in making edits:

  1. Print out the draft marked up by my editor.
  2. Review this draft during lunch breaks and make notes and suggested changes.
  3. Start with a blank computer screen and the print out with my notes.
  4. Rewrite the chapter from scratch, copying and pasting from the older draft when possible.

This was not a hard and fast rule, but it generally worked. I reorganized the chapters, inserted more stories, cut down on the technical information, and worked on connecting with my ideal audience–a friend I knew back in Pennsylvania. Cutting apart your work and revamping it can be tough work, requiring a certain disconnect from your writing. Nothing is sacred. Everything is on the table. I quickly found that I could not effectively edit until I learned how to delete.

Choosing the Easier Road

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

Slipping all over the wet, packed, uneven snow, I rolled to a stop at the pond loop. The sticky snow had been rubbed off my skis during the descent and now I faced the prospect of either a relatively short ski to the Flatlanders trail that lead back to my car or a longer loop around the pond that eventually leads to the Flatlander trail head, albeit after slogging through some wet bits. I opted for the short cut.

As my skis ground along the packed snow, sometimes jutting gracelessly to the side, I noticed a man standing in the middle of the trail at a key junction where five trails meet, including the Flatlander. He was most likely in his 60’s and hailed from a southern, suburban location by the way he waddled about on snowshoes. His wife stood under a small pavilion with a large trail map and a bin of maps hikers can take with them.

They looked lost, which is really hard to believe since every trail is marked with distinct colors, arrows to delineate the direction of each color, and the aforementioned maps. Thinking that I’d better hang around for a moment just in case, I pulled off to the side and tucked my hat in my pocket. That was all the prompting needed.

Shuffling over in his snow shoes, he asked, “Where is the black gate?” Directly behind the man loomed a large black gate leading to a few parking spots on the street. On the other end of the trail system, near the main parking lot, stood the remains of the former red gate and a newer gate that has green and black parts. Assuming he couldn’t possibly mean the gate directly behind him—which may have been giving him too much credit—I asked, “Where did you park?”

“By the black gate.”

“There’s a black gate right here” I responded with the appropriate pointing gesture, “but I’m guessing that you probably parked on the other end of the trail system by the old red gate and the new black and green one.”

“We just want to get back to the black gate.”

This guy had one thing on his mind and he wasn’t giving it up without a fight.

“We started at the black gate,” he continued, “and now we just want to get back to our car.”

Thinking we’d best eliminate some options, I asked, “So did you park at the bottom of this hill or did you park on the other end and take the Flatlander trail over here?”

“We didn’t park on this side,” the woman said, wresting control of the conversation from her husband who clearly was not up to the task. “We parked on the other side and took Flatlander over.”

“In that case,” I said, “your best bet is to take Flatlander right back. You could always take the Snicket trail, but that has a few small hills.”

“We just did the Flatlander,” the man said. “Can’t we just get to the black gate by going down the hill and cutting across another way?”

I was dumbfounded.

“You could go down that hill, but it’s steep and icy. Then you could turn left onto the road, but it’s narrow and cars drive very fast on it. When you get to Maple Hill road turn left and you’ll have to walk up a steep hill to get to the parking lot. The Flatlander trail will work much better.”

“Nah,” he said, “We’ll take the road back.”

Despite having spent close to $20 on snow shoe rentals, despite my warning about the safety of the road, and despite the logical conclusion that I had provided the shortest and easiest way to move from one point to another, the man and woman took off their snowshoes, picked them up, and began walking down the hill.

As I slipped along the Flatlander trail, I wondered why anyone would do something so odd. You can walk on a busy road and dodge cars anywhere, why keep it up when you paid to rent snowshoes and have some perfectly good trails to hike?

Perhaps part of the issue is we like to stick with the familiar. Trudging in the woods with snow shoes must have felt so odd, so uncomfortable for this man and woman—definitely at least for the man. They had maps and signs, good traction, and well-broken trails: this trail system is as far from rugged as you can get while remaining in the woods. But still, it was a leap for them. And so, even if the trail was a safer, easier option, they took the more dangerous path and harder hike because it was familiar. And that familiarity bred comfort, safety, and created even a sense of ease.

Taking note of the icy patches on the final hill before the parking lot, I zipped down, removed my skis, and set off for the local café to do a little writing. As I turned onto the main road, the narrow one chosen by the man, I saw them merrily trudging along single file, carrying their rental snowshoes, and clinging to the shoulder.

I’m sure they went home and told their friends about their adventurous hike in the Vermont woods. However, tucked away in a lonesome Vermont valley by a rushing stream, there is one person who tells a very different story.

From Blog to Book: Finding A Friendlier Tone

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

The more I reread my own writing during the editing process of my book, the more I’ve noticed just how combative and preachy I can sound. In fact, the more I read blogs in general I notice that many are written with a sharper tone: preaching, ranting, provoking. That’s kind of the blog style I suppose.

After making the major changes to the content and structure of my book, the majority of my time is now spent rewriting the parts that come off as condescending or combative. Part of the problem is I’ve been blogging for three years now and each blog post is a brief article on a particular topic, a drive-by of sorts that engages with a particular point and then runs off to the next topic. I can hit hard, soften my tone in the comments, and generally assume that most of my readers have a certain level of familiarity with who I am and won’t get too worked up. Even if I don’t say it well, I think readers are more likely to give bloggers the benefit of a doubt.

A book is a different animal. It’s kind of assumed that if you’re writing a book, you have to know something about your topic, and so writers face the challenge of using their expertise and perspective, but not flaunting it, rubbing the readers nose into it. Books are the focused development of very specific ideas, not the topical grab bag of a blog, no matter have niche-focused it may be.

Continue reading From Blog to Book: Finding A Friendlier Tone

Balancing Projects

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

Writing revolves around meeting deadlines. This means that work sometimes piles up and one project in particular can demand all of your attention for a brief period of time. When a deadline for a major project looms, all lesser works are often forgotten, if perhaps worked on sparingly.

Pacing and planning are the keys here.

We cannot always control our deadlines or the sudden demand of a project, and that is why journaling, jotting down ideas, and keeping a running list of projects is a huge help. Think of this as a savings account of writing ideas for those extra busy seasons. When the rush hits for a deadline, but you still want to send out a short article, post something on your blog, or send out a newsletter, it really helps to have a reservoir of ideas and topics.

I did not adequately prepare myself for the crunch of revising my book Coffeehouse Theology, and so my "monthly" newsletter dropped off the face of the earth for a period of time. I managed to keep up some bare bones blogging, but any extra work on articles simply fizzled. At this point I’m filling my writing journal with ideas, filling up the dry erase board in my office, and saving some blog post drafts in my blog writer just to be safe when the big crunch comes next week.

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