I’ve been updating the WRITERS PAGE on my website, and came across a few new links I think would be particularly helpful to anyone submitting novels or short stories, or for that matter pretty much anything. I published quite a few short stories and other short pieces on my way to getting my first novel published, and I highly recommend it as a way to hone your craft and to get some positive energy to keep you writing!

There’s a more exhaustive list on the site, but these are some new ones I’ve come across:

Top Five Cover Letter Errors – brought to you by the folks at Prairie Schooner and phrased contemplating submissions to literary magazines, but their suggestions would apply to pretty much any submission

QueryTracker, an online agent database I offer with the caveat that I don’t actually know how accurate it is, but I’ve heard from others that it’s great

Good luck with your writing! – Meg

You’ll perhaps not be surprised, after you read Tanya Egan Gibson’s post, that I met her through a couple writing groups we both belong to, one of which is SheWrites.com. Her debut novel, How To Buy a Love of Reading – just out in paperback! – has been praised by one of my favorite writers and 1st Books guest author, Leah Stewart, as “a novel for those of us who love both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and F. Scott Fitzgerald,” and “an inspiring argument for the necessity of stories.”  Tanya is also mother to a five-year-old girl who produces countless construction-paper “books” that she insists Mommy “getpublished” and a two-year-old boy who thinks books are for throwing. Somehow she still finds time for – and time to share her story of – writing friends. Enjoy! – Meg

My friend Amanda likes to say she’s the only writer she knows whose kitchen gets a mention in a novel’s acknowledgments.  Also in the acknowledgments of my novel is the cottage of our wonderful teacher, the late Stephanie Moore.  And so, of course, are the people that once populated Stephanie’s cottage on Tuesday nights and now continue to congregate in Amanda’s kitchen.

Stephanie was a vibrant, amazing teacher who forced her students to create work on the spot that we then had to read aloud to the rest of the group.  Because people raved about her classes, I tried a one-day workshop, despite having misgivings: reading first-draft material to strangers wasn’t exactly my idea of fun.  Also, I didn’t like *groups.* I’d been in writing workshops in college and at conferences.  I’d been in critique groups that worked for a while and then didn’t.  But I’d never felt completely comfortable.  And the truth was, I had (and still have) a very thin skin, and people could be mean.

Yeah, I was anti-group.  But after a few more one-day workshops I realized I was producing more work (and better work) on my novel in her cottage than anywhere else.  So I signed up for one of her month-long classes that met weekly–Tuesday nights happened to work best for me.  Because we only had to commit to a month at a time, different “Tuesday People” at first filtered in and out.  But over time, the same Tuesday People kept coming back.  Soon we weren’t strangers anymore–we were a *group*, one trained by Stephanie to critique each other’s work in the most generous, most compassionate, and ultimately most helpful ways.  She had no problem telling us when something didn’t work (“Dear, that was…interesting…but…) but she framed criticism in context of our strengths, teaching us to recognize lovely moments in our own writing and the writing of our peers and to weed out material that didn’t measure up.

Most importantly, she taught us not to impose our own values and goals on other people’s writing. We wrote fiction and nonfiction and plays; we wrote mainstream and literary; we wrote for children and teens and adults.  Yet none of these differences mattered.  Your job, as a member of this group, was to help the other writers bring to fruition their goals, not try to turn their pieces into what you felt like reading.  Becoming this invested in other people’s writing, and feeling other people’s investment in my own changed everything for me.  It became about craft instead of ego.  It felt amazing to be on a team.  And most importantly, I was growing to love these people like family.  We were taking this amazing journey, us former strangers, together.  And it was all because of Stephanie.

Stephanie saw the good in people and the good in people’s writing.  Everywhere she looked she saw potential instead of failure.  I remember hanging around after class one evening to confess to her my deepest fear about my writing—my characters weren’t “sophisticated” the way characters in literary fiction all seemed to me to be.  They had “big round baby feelings” the way *I*, in fact had big round baby feelings, and I was positive that people would laugh at them.  And *me*.  People would laugh at me!  Nobody intelligent had such dumb sappy, unsophisticated feelings! What was wrong with my characters was what was wrong with me: they had weird little hearts because *I* had a weird little heart, and I couldn’t seem to be able to write my way around this.  This is who I was; I couldn’t change.

She said, “*Don’t* change–it’s going to set you apart.  It’s you.”  She said she loved how it was different, she said the people in this class loved it because it was different.  She reminded me that the class cared about me and my book and that nobody was just shining me on.  And she said, “You should write that phrase down–’big round baby feelings’–and put it into your book.”  (Which I did, many years later, to humanize Bree McEnroy, the overly-cerebral writer in How To Buy a Love of Reading, a woman who is afraid to write what is real to her because she is afraid to be vulnerable.)

In July 2005, Stephanie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  Six months later, when she passed away, all I could think was that now there would be no one to hold us together.  Except us.

I–the non-joiner, the anti-group-er–could not imagine going forward as a writer without these people.  They were like a family and I loved them.  I am forever fortunate that nine other writers felt the same way.  Staying with them was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made in my writing career.  Stephanie had this wonderful gift of bringing people together, and it was like she gave us the best gift of all: before she left this world she gave us to each other.

And so we moved from eating Trader Joe’s cat-shaped cookies and sipping cinnamon tea in Stephanie’s cottage to eating cheese and drinking wine in Amanda’s kitchen, where we meet still.  On Tuesday nights we reaffirm our support for each other’s writing and our belief in our “us”-ness.  We are a team.  If my own writing isn’t going well (one catchphrase of our group is “I suck,” which is always accompanied by laughter), hearing about other folks having a great writing week or getting a story published gives me hope, makes me happy. Together, we wage a war on what we call “suckitude.”

We writers need feedback from people who are honest, who are analytical, who are firm.  But from Stephanie I learned that these qualities are enhanced, rather than diluted, by generosity and acceptance and love.  The investment is huge: being happy for other people’s successes, feeling pain at their failures, opening yourself up to vulnerability.  But in return there is trust, loyalty, friendship, and kindness.  And maybe, if you’re lucky, people who change your life.

I am not only a better writer because of those people in Amanda’s kitchen: Cyndi Cady, Chris Cole, Amanda Conran, Tom Joyce, John Philipp, Jill Rosenblum Tidman, Maya Lis Tussing, David Winton and Jon Wells.  I am more trusting.  I am more emotionally connected.  I am, thanks to them, a better person. – Tanya

In Part 6 of this “All-True” series, I blogged about Beth Pearson and her amazing team who, among other things, flagged every place in The Four Ms. Bradwells where I quoted material from elsewhere, and made suggestions where permissions might be needed to include the quotes. To be honest, I’ve been frightened enough of the permissions process to avoid it in my first two novels, but since Ginger in The Four Ms. Bradwells is a poet who prefers quoting others’ lines to revealing herself, I recognized that this time I might bump into some permission issues. Then something happened on the way to the end of the novel: I heard John Felstiner read from his wonderful book, Can Poetry Save the Earth? And the poem he read was Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come.”

This was at a salon hosted by the wonderful writer Marilyn Yalom at her home on the Stanford campus – a group I’d just been invited to join, where I knew almost no one except Marilyn and John’s wife, Mary. So I’m sitting in a room full of strangers – all of them writers, and pretty swanky ones, too – and I’m listening to John read, and I’m trying really hard not to start bawling right there in my seat, because this poem is so moving.

Bottom line, I found a place for the whole dang poem in The Four Ms. Bradwells, and decided it was time to learn about the permissions process.

Which turns out to be easier – if somewhat more expensive than I’d imagined. Let’s just say there was an excerpt from a New York Times column that I’d wanted to use that is not in the book.

But “Let Evening Come” is included in full, thanks to a few emails and a conversation with Frederick T. Courtright, who handles the rights for Graywolf Press. I sent an email with the language Random House likes to see, and he sent me a letter with the language he prefers – and a price that did make me gulp, but, really, it’s such a beautiful poem. So I called him – no, the price was not negotiable – and asked if he could expand the permission to include, among other things, e-books. He added some more dollars to the bill, and I gulped again. I suspect what I’m paying to use this one poem exceeds the average advance for a volume of poetry, but it is such a beautiful poem.

So he sent me a new letter, and I forwarded the letters to Random House to make sure they were ok with the language. And I countersigned the letters and pulled out my checkbook and sent the package back to Mr. Courtright. Easy!

Well, except the writing the check part.

It was a little harder to find a Latin expert to check the Latin I’d used in the novel. I put out feelers to several people I knew whom I thought might know a Latin expert. Nothing.

Then I was at the Tucson Book festival with my best friend, Jenn DuChene, and I started whining about the dearth of Latin experts in the world, and it turns out – surprise of surprises – that she actually knows a Latin expert. A few emails later I was connected with John Downey, who didn’t even want to charge me for his work. He was delightful to work with, and I sent him a check anyway, and I think he’s now the Latin expert on Random House’s list.

By the way, one of the lovely people I met at Marilyn’s salon was SheWrites.com founder Kamy Wicoff. If you don’t know about SheWrites, pop on over there and check it out! – Meg

Kim Wright has been writing about travel, food, and wine for more than 25 years, and is a two-time recipient of the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Writing. People Magazine said of her first novel, Love in Mid Air, “Wright understands female friendships, the interplay of love and envy, the way one woman’s change of fortune can threaten the group’s equilibrium. Astute and engrossing, this review is a treat.” Her post on how she got started writing is also a treat. Enjoy! – Meg

When you first novel comes out one of the classic questions you get is “How long did it take to write this book?” Sounds like a logical thing to ask, but it always confounds me a bit. Because I don’t know if I should count the fallow periods.

In one sense I began Love in Mid Air over ten years ago, just following my own divorce. But I knew that I was working with material too close to home – it felt emotionally raw, and I was also afraid I’d fall into the trap of making the novel overly autobiographical. So I threw my journals into a Hefty bag, one of the big drawstring kind people use for autumn leaves, and put it in a closet for two years. Then I worked on it for two years, put it away for three more, finally got it out and really plowed though a first draft, and then let it sit for another year. The thing is, the world isn’t really waiting for a first novel from an unknown writer. You don’t have any deadlines. There are no agents or editors itching to read it. Real life in the form of jobs and kids is always pulling at your sleeve. Everyone keeps reminding you that publication is a statistical long shot. If I hadn’t formed a tribe of good writing friends during my visits to conferences and retreats through the years I’m not sure I would have had the stamina and emotional courage to keep going.

That’s probably, in fact, the main thing I would tell someone who wants to write. Don’t do it in isolation. Go to workshops, critique groups, conferences, MFAs, coffeehouse readings, use facebook and social/literary websites….anything you can find that will help connect you to other writers. It’s not just a matter of networking – although that’s important and not the dirty word some writers seem to think it is. But you’re also going to need these people for feedback, praise, advice, an ear to vent to, and just the periodic reality check. I recently threw away 200 pages of a book in progress when I realized it wasn’t working. I knew it was what I needed to do but that’s a pretty sick feeling to jettison a year’s worth of work. I was moaning and groaning about it on Facebook and within a couple of hours I got this flood of responses from all sorts of writers ranging from beginners to a Pulitzer Prize winner. They were saying things like “I’ve been there” or “It’s the right thing” or “Don’t beat yourself up.” And you know, it really helped. I ran a copy of their responses and I’m sure I’ll reread them on some rainy day in the future.

When the book was finally finished my cadre of writing friends – four wonderful women I’ve come to trust completely – helped me whip it into good shape and then I started to look for an agent. This was the single toughest part of the process. I got maybe 30 or 40 rejections and finally I broke down and asked a friend if she would introduce me to her agent. I’m not sure why I didn’t ask her to start with, but I had some sort of nincompoop idea about doing it all on my own merit. Publishing a book is just one long exercise in getting over yourself.

So I asked Alison to introduce me to David and we turned out to be a great fit. Having a friend recommend you isn’t a slam-dunk way to get an agent; I’ve since recommended several writers to him that he hasn’t taken on. But I think it’s your best shot at getting a full reading if you’re a complete unknown. David had a list of eight editors he thought would be right for the book and they all passed on it. At this point if you aren’t already drinking, you start drinking. But he promptly sent it on to another round of eight and this time three houses bid on it. I talked to all the editors by phone and we went with the one who I clicked with best. My friends and I had polished so well – and my agent has excellent editorial skills – that they pretty much took the book as it was.

My pub date was in March and at Christmas I told one of my cousins, “All I want is for someone to tell me that I hit it out of the park. But they never say anything like that in this business. Editors and reviewers always equivocate.”

So the miracle was that on January 4, 2010, the first working day of the new year, I woke up and cut on the computer and there was an email from my publicist saying “PW Star” with a million exclamation points. The review started with the line “Wright knocks it out of the park in her debut…” It was like I had dictated it to the universe.

The second thing I’d say to aspiring writers is this: Savor the sweet moments as long as you can. This is a tough business and there are so many moments of doubt. Bad reviews hurt. You never seem to be doing enough. That second book can run itself down a blind alley and require you to cut 200 pages, It’s easy to just sit and watch your rankings rise and fall on Amazon like some demented day trader. But there are also moments of incredible joy. Not just good reviews, but days when you remember exactly why you’re doing this and why you can’t imagine doing anything else with your life. When I have one of those moments I try to stand back and let it sink in. And then I say “Amen.” – Kim

I had such fun hosting poets here on 1st Books for National Poetry Month that I’ve decided to continue the occasional Poetry Tuesday throughout the year. Today’s guest poet is Diane Lockward, the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Temptation by Water. She’s a recipient of the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship, as well as awards from North American Review, Louisiana Literature, the Newburyport Art Association, and the St. Louis Poetry Center. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner, and been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac; and she hosts the lovely Blogalicious: Notes on Poetry, Poets and Books. I know you’ll enjoy her post! – Meg

I’m in a place of high excitement these days. Temptation by Water, my third full-length poetry collection, was released just a few weeks ago. That hardly seems possible when not too long ago I wondered if I’d ever have a first full-length collection.

I am not one of those poets who has stories about what a splendid poet she was in third grade. No sixth grade teacher encouraged me to gather my poems into homemade booklets. No high school English teacher recognized my gift for words. I served as editor of no literary journal in college. In short, I was without any early poetic promise whatsoever. But then, I never had a single teacher who asked me to write a poem, never had an opportunity to fall in love with poetry until years after I’d graduated college, had taught high school English for four years, married, produced three children, then decided, in spite of my lusterless undergraduate performance, to apply to graduate school. And they took me in. There I discovered, quite to my astonishment, that I had a brain! I also discovered poetry—not the writing of it, but the study of it. I fell in love with, of all things, Renaissance poetry. I could not get enough of John Donne.

When I graduated, I returned to teaching. Several years later I saw an advertisement in the English Journal. William Stafford was writing a poetry textbook for high school students, and he wanted teachers to volunteer to test the assignments. What the heck, I thought, and volunteered. Every two weeks for the next six months I received one or two poetry prompts. From the very first one, I was hooked. I had never experienced anything so emotionally intense. Poems danced around in my head all day and often all night. I tucked drafts inside my grade book and worked on them during lunch. Poetry became an irresistible temptation. Then to reel me in even deeper, Stafford took one of my poems, an acrostic, as a sample poem for his textbook, Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises (NCTE). In 1992, that poem, aptly titled “Serendipity,” became my first published poem.

I wanted more. I spent weekends going to workshops and readings. During summer vacations, I attended the Frost Place Conference, the Catskills workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center. I worked with poets who encouraged me to believe I could be a poet. I began sending my poems out for publication. Every once in a while some editor took a poem. Then an entire year went by with no editor taking anything, but that didn’t stop me—I told you I was hooked. I’ve never minded the inevitable rejections all that much. Early on I developed a theory that it takes twenty rejections to get an acceptance, so I viewed each rejection as just one step closer to an acceptance.

As acceptances started coming in again, I stepped up my game and aimed higher. In 1997, Beloit Poetry Journal took two of my poems. I was thrilled. That was by far the most prestigious journal I’d been in. The people at Poetry Daily saw the poems and sent me a letter—they were in their early days and still using snail mail—asking permission to feature both poems. When “Vegetable Love” appeared, it was sandwiched in between poems by Tom Lux and Pablo Neruda. Not bad. When “My Husband Discovers Poetry” appeared, Garrison Keillor spotted it and featured it on The Writer’s Almanac.

I also won a local contest in 1997. My prize was the publication of a first chapbook, Against Perfection. Of course, that set me to thinking that if I could have a chapbook, maybe I could have a book. I put a manuscript together and began sending it out to contests. I spent a significant amount of money on postage. I spent a lot of time waiting. For the first few years, I received only rejections. Each summer I devoted a few weeks to revising the manuscript, taking out what seemed to be the weaker poems and substituting with what I hoped were stronger poems. Every new poem I wrote was headed for that manuscript. Then I had a semi-finalist response from Sarabande. Not an acceptance but enough to encourage the belief that if I just persisted it would happen for me. But six more semi-finalist or finalist spots and it still hadn’t happened. The initial thrill of the gee-I-almost-made-it had worn off, and I was feeling like I’d never get beyond that one manuscript. Not to mention the money flying out the door.

In 2001, I decided to leave teaching and spend my days living as a writer. That summer I took another workshop in Provincetown. One day I checked my email and found a message from some guy in Kentucky who wanted my snail mail address. Hm, whatever for? But his name was vaguely familiar, so I sent the address. When I returned home, there was a letter from that guy, a publisher, inviting me to submit a manuscript if I had not yet published a first book. I remembered why the name had seemed familiar. The publisher used to be the editor of Wind Magazine where two of my poems had previously been finalists in the journal’s yearly contest. Since then, he had begun his own small press, Wind Publications, and was publishing books by poets from Kentucky and the Appalachian region. He’d remembered my name from the contest and had been following my work. When he wanted to expand his roster beyond his established region, he’d decided to contact me. And that’s how, in 2003, my first book, Eve’s Red Dress, came into the world.

In retrospect, I am grateful that no one ever took those earlier incarnations of the manuscript. I know there were poems in them that I subsequently would have wanted to suck out with a vacuum cleaner. I am also grateful to have ended up where I did as my publisher stuck with me for the second book, What Feeds Us, and now for the third. That rarely happens with contest wins.

Now I’d be grateful for some new poems. I find myself in that odd state that’s a mixture of exhilaration over the new book and anxiety about the next one. Right now the folder is pretty empty and the blank page leers at me. I need some self-imposed discipline. I need the thrill of creating, of laying down those words, of getting high on the poems, of capitulating to temptation. I want that back. And I’m going to get it. Patience, persistence, belief, and a bit of serendipity. – Diane

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” — Franz Kafka

This is so true for both readers and writers. How is it I’ve never heard it before today?