publishing Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Elizabeth Maria Naranjo

Interview with Amy Silverman, Author of My Heart Can’t Even Believe It

Posted on April 8, 2016 ·

Author Amy Silverman with her daughter Sophie

Last summer I had the privilege of reading an early draft of Amy Silverman’s new book, which launches May 1 at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe. My Heart Can’t Even Believe It is a strikingly honest memoir that blends investigative journalism and personal narrative to explore what it means to raise a child with special needs—Amy’s 12-year-old daughter, Sophie, has Down syndrome.

With a journalist’s heart (she is managing editor of Phoenix New Times and has twice been named journalist of the year by the Arizona Press Club), Amy asks hard questions about biology, about history, about motherhood, about discrimination, about the future, about Sophie, and about herself. Most of the time she finds the answers, but her daughter—who is a remarkable and charming girl—continuously surprises her mother by defying all expectations and refusing to be solved.

Like Sophie, My Heart Can’t Even Believe It is fearless, honest, and beautiful.

Click here to pre-order the book through Changing Hands Bookstore, which comes with two tickets to the launch party!

My Heart Can’t Even Believe It is also available for pre-order from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About the Book:

In MY HEART CAN’T EVEN BELIEVE IT, journalist, blogger, and NPR contributor Amy Silverman tells the story of the birth and growth of her daughter, Sophie, and the Down syndrome diagnosis that changed everything. Amy wrote the book she desperately wanted to read but couldn’t find, meant not just for parents of kids with Down syndrome, but rather a story for anyone touched by disability, a story about science, and a story about being different: something that all of us can certainly identify with. It’s part memoir, part investigative reporting, part parenting manual — a crash course in genetics, history, politics, pop culture, education, medicine, health care policy, marriage, motherhood and family.

About the Author:

Amy Silverman is managing editor at Phoenix New Times and a commentator for KJZZ, the National Public Radio affiliate in Phoenix. Her work also has appeared on NPR’s This American Life and in The New York Times. Amy holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She lives in Arizona with her husband Ray and daughters Annabelle and Sophie.

Find Amy online at her website, myheartcantevenbelieveit.com.

Elizabeth: You’ve been blogging about your daughter Sophie for nearly eight years. What inspired you to begin sharing your stories, and when did you decide to turn those stories into a book?

Amy: I actually shared my stories about Sophie long before the blog came along. Around the time my first daughter, Annabelle, was born, I began to write memoir – inspired mainly by the now-defunct section on salon.com called “Mothers Who Think” as well as Anne Lamott’s work and what I was hearing on “This American Life,” the public radio show.

I did a few stories for the local NPR affiliate here in Phoenix and managed to get a couple published on Salon. Around that time I also began to teach Mothers Who Write, a local writing workshop I co-teach with Deborah Sussman (and where I met you – yay!). All the memoir stuff started to fall together; I was hooked.

Deciding to start a blog was not easy – I’m old and was not an early adapter of the Internet and all it has to offer. (To say the least.) A co-worker at New Times convinced me to start a blog with the goal of getting me to understand what the company was trying to do online. As a journalist I’d been taught to never give my work away, but I was intrigued by the idea of telling the story of Sophie’s kindergarten year. I started and haven’t stopped, although I’ve slowed down.

And as for the book, to my dismay Sophie did not come with an instruction manual. Not one I was prepared to read. Everything was either too sciency or too touchy-feely – not real. Not my reality, anyway. (Which is not to say that there aren’t great books out there about DS – there are.) As Sophie grew, and as my shock (and awe but mostly shock, I have to admit) wore off, I began to explore what it meant to have a kid with Down syndrome in the 21^st century. It felt like a book. So I pursued that.

My Heart Can’t Even Believe It combines personal narrative with investigative journalism. Can you describe your writing process? How did you approach blending these two different writing styles?

First, I had some amazing role models. If you are at all interested in the genre, I recommend The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman and Crazy by Pete Earley.

Fadiman’s book goes back and forth between a very specific narrative and some wonderfully vast political and historical perspective about the Mong people. Earley, a longtime newspaper reporter, writes about his son, who is seriously mentally ill, and then reports on what it’s like to be SMI in the Miami jail system. Different approaches, both super powerful, both moving from a specific storyline to a broader one.

I read Fadiman’s book when Sophie was in the hospital for open-heart surgery and the book really opened my (sleep-deprived) eyes to the possibility of a different kind of story telling. I’d been trained to never, ever use “I” in my writing as a journalist. Totally forbidden. On the flip side, in my other life as a memoir writer and teacher, there was no reporting.

I began to wonder what would happen if I mixed the two – and then I did, in a story for New Times when Sophie was very young. It worked for me. I was hooked, and began looking for different ways to do it more.

Along with raising two daughters, you are managing editor of Phoenix New Times, run several writing workshops a year, and blog regularly at girlinapartyhat.com. How do you balance work, family, and creative writing time?

It’s not pretty. My husband would tell you I am not very good at it. I am lucky to have a day job that has turned into a 24/7 job as journalism has changed and while that sounds like a negative, it’s been my saving grace because it means that I can slip away during the day for a kid’s school event and make the time up super early the next morning before my family wakes up.

I don’t sleep as much as I should and my closet’s a wreck but if I don’t get that creative time I’m just a miserable person to be around. And family time is not negotiable. I’m not sure that answers the question. There’s an element of smoke and mirrors as well. A lot of time in the car and on the iPhone.

When did you tell Sophie you’d written a book about her and what was her reaction?

People think this is weird and I have to agree, but I didn’t really tell ANYONE about the book until I actually signed a deal with a publisher. I am terribly superstitious (and maybe a little insecure) and at so many points I was unsure it would ever happen. So a few of my writer friends knew and that was it. I told Sophie a few months ago. She was (and continues to be) thrilled. I should hire her to be my publicist.

The first complete draft was due to my editor last fall and on the day it was due Sophie shook me awake, saying, “Your book is due today! Your book is due today!” When I dropped her off that day she instructed me to go print out a copy and leave it at the school office so she could read it. And she was disappointed when it was not available for her winter non-fiction book report project. She is very excited.

Writing memoir means asking hard questions about ourselves and answering those questions with unflinching honesty. You did that here, and the result is an extraordinarily brave and powerful memoir. What did you discover about yourself while writing this book?

I discovered how painfully naïve and uneducated I was before I had Sophie – both emotionally and intellectually. As a child of the 70s and 80s I was sheltered from people who were different from me. I didn’t meet an African American person until college. Growing up, I didn’t know any of my friends were gay.

Sophie was the first person with a developmental disability who I really got to know as a human being. I guess I knew those things before I wrote the book but putting all the pieces together and telling our story really brought it to the surface. I’m not proud of that; I have a lot of lost time to make up for.

On the book cover is a lovely photograph of Sophie. Is there a story behind the photo?

This is embarrassing. I only vaguely recall that photo. We tried several and I was going back and forth with my dear and incredibly talented friend Claire Lawton, who suggested design elements for the cover, and one day she sent a batch that included this image and I said, “Where’d you get that?” And she said, “I found it on the Internet.”

It must have been posted with something I wrote, a blog post maybe, I believe Sophie is 5 or so in the image and I recall the outfit – but not the moment. So yeah, so much for controlling your kid’s image online. Go me.

You have a launch party at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on May 1. After that, where can readers find you on your book tour?

Details for upcoming events are at myheartcantevenbelieveit.com in the “events” section. I’ll be at Changing Hands in Phoenix on May 7 for the Mothers Who Write Mother’s Day Weekend reunion and again May 12 for a workshop called “Writing The Memoir in Real Time.” More info about pre-ordering and ticketing is at changinghands.com.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Amy Silverman, book launch, Changing Hands Bookstore, Down syndrome, memoir, motherhood, My Heart Can't Even Believe It, publishing, special needs, Woodbine House, writing

Spring Forward

Posted on March 13, 2016 ·

Image from Flickr by Saskia Jansen

April is fast approaching, a month with two important dates for me that mark the end of some major projects I began last spring. One of the dates is April 29, when I will graduate from college with my bachelor’s degree in English. The other is April 22, when edits for What Was Never There will (finally!) be completed.

I can say that with confidence because April 22 is not a self-imposed deadline that I can simply extend. To graduate from my degree program, I’m required to take a capstone course for which I choose a culminating project that showcases what I’ve learned—I’ve chosen the final draft of What Was Never There as my project, and that final draft must be turned in to my instructor and classmates in six weeks.

It’s a relief, because I struggled last semester with finding time and creative energy to devote to this second book while balancing homework, and now my second book is homework. It’s also a relief because I at first assumed that my capstone project would have to be the standard 30- or 40-page research paper, and I was dreading it. In January, I learned that I could choose a creative writing project over the research paper and that it could be a work already in progress.

I’ve yet to decide whether to continue school and earn my teaching certificate. If I go that route it would only take one more year, and classes would be at the community college level. Much cheaper! I’ve dreamed of becoming a teacher since my son’s kindergarten year, when I spent a significant amount of time volunteering in his classroom. I’m well aware, however, that it is an extraordinarily tough job, and that good teachers live and breathe their work (and are vastly underappreciated). It’s definitely not a career choice to be taken lightly.

In other news, I had a lovely time reading a birthday-themed story for this year’s Canal Convergence, which was the 30-year anniversary celebration of Scottsdale Public Art. Phoenix New Times co-sponsored the storytelling event, and I was flattered when they asked me to be one of their five readers. The evening was a blast. The story I wrote is called “Still Waters,” and I hope in the near future to have it published so I can share it with those of you who couldn’t be there.

Although I haven’t had much success with my latest round of short story submissions, I received a nice surprise recently when the managing editor of Hospital Drive emailed to ask if she could include my story “The Distance Ratio” in a “Best of” print edition. Of course I said yes, and I’ll let everyone know when ordering information is available!

Finally, thanks for sticking with me these past few months as I cut back drastically on my social media-ing. Now that I’m almost done with school (SEVEN WEEKS!), I’m looking forward to posting more, including sharing some wonderful and inspiring writerly news from several friends (and one very special family member). 🙂

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Canal Convergence, editing, graduation, Hospital Drive, Phoenix New Times, public reading, publishing, second book, writing

Other Voices

Posted on November 24, 2015 ·

Image from Flickr by Drew Coffman

One piece of writing advice you will hear repeatedly—and with good reason—is to put aside your rough draft for a while before starting edits. This is so you can gain perspective on your work. Usually the problem is that after you write something you think it’s fantastic, maybe the best thing you’ve ever written. But sometimes it’s the opposite—sometimes you think it’s the worst.

I felt that way about my story “We Never Get to Talk Anymore.” I wrote the rough draft nearly three years ago, shelved it for a few months, and then reread it. This is terrible, I thought. No one’s going to like Myrna. No one’s going to understand her. Yet another, smaller voice was cheering for her, saying, No, this is good. Keep working on this.

Unfortunately, some stories are that way: no matter how much time you take away from them you cannot gain perspective. Back then I was still shy about asking friends to look over my work, so I struggled on my own trying to decide whether this story had any merit. After submitting it and receiving a swift rejection I felt strangely validated–I knew this was terrible!

I tweaked the story a bit, set it aside for several weeks, tweaked it some more, resubmitted it, received another rejection, and went through the whole cycle again. At no point did I feel truly confident in this particular piece. The fourth time, however, I submitted it to a magazine called YARN, and they would not only publish “We Never Get to Talk Anymore” but nominate it for a Pushcart Prize.

This story that I once thought was the worst thing I’d ever written.

Remember those competing voices in my head? What if I’d listened to the louder one? The quieter voice—the one that believed in Myrna’s story—was right. But often you won’t listen to that voice. Sometimes you won’t even hear it.

What I want to tell you is don’t be shy about sharing your work. Pick two or three writers you admire, and make them your critique partners. Listen to other voices, because when it comes to judging your work, yours can’t always be trusted.

Yes, once in a while a story will come along that perhaps wasn’t meant to be written. Or, more likely, it is simply not the right time for that story to be written. Maybe it really is a mess, completely unsalvageable. Maybe you’re right that it deserves to be permanently shelved.

But maybe you’re wrong.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: editing, inspiration, publishing, writing

The Key to Getting Through Rejections

Posted on September 18, 2015 ·

Image from Flickr by Brenda Clarke

This morning after dropping the kids off at school, I headed to Xtreme Bean Coffee Co., determined to catch up on the one class I’ve fallen behind in (one out of five—not bad, right?). I ducked into the dimly-lit vault (the building was formerly a bank) and planted myself in a corner, vowing that after I checked my email—just this once!—I’d focus only on reading my assigned short stories and scribbling annotations on a legal pad.

Good thing I checked my email. The instructor had sent out a notice postponing the due date for the assignment by one week. And I needed that, because what I really wanted to do today was write a blog post.

Most of you who follow me here are writers, and writers never get tired of talking about one thing—rejection. I’ve written about it before, and how rejections usually don’t bother me. But yesterday I received one that bothered me a lot, and I want to tell you why so you don’t make the same mistakes I made.

The first mistake was letting my number of pending submissions dwindle down to one. Don’t do this. It’s important to keep multiple submissions going so that you don’t pin all your hopes on one single response. There have been times when I’ve received acceptances for stories that I’d nearly forgotten were out there because I had so many circulating, and that’s a nice feeling.

My other mistake was believing that a long response time meant something. Twice I’ve had stories take longer than usual to come back, and when they did it was with personalized notes from editors encouraging me to send more, and admitting that it had taken so long because the work had been carefully considered (although ultimately turned down).

In the case of yesterday’s rejection, it took nine months to arrive, and having previously submitted to this magazine I knew they were pretty good about sticking to their ideal turn-around time of three months. So at about the half-year mark I started envisioning my little story being passed up the chain of editors, all the way to the top, and my hopes climbed too.

But sometimes the reason for a longer than usual response time is simply this: the editors are buried beneath their slush piles. When that happens it’s very likely that all you’re going to get after nine months or even a year of waiting is a form rejection. Which is what I got yesterday.

Which is okay. The key is not to wait.

In case you missed it, my short YA piece “We Never Get to Talk Anymore” was published last month in YARN, a fantastic magazine publishing literature about young adults, and also by young adults. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: publishing, rejections, writing

How Sweet the Silence

Posted on May 8, 2015 ·

Image from Flickr by Mick C

I read something the other day about how we have a better chance at accomplishing goals when we keep them to ourselves.

That struck home, because the first time I wrote a book I didn’t tell anyone. Not my kids, not my husband—not until I had a completed first draft. Back then my youngest was three years old, so it’s not like anyone was asking, “What do you do all day?”

Since that novel was published, however, I’ve struggled to write the next one. I’ve started several, and if you follow me on social media, you’ve probably heard about them, because like most of us on social media I’ve fallen into the habit of publicly announcing my hopes and dreams almost from the moment they’re envisioned.

This doesn’t work for me.

Sometimes there was good reason my plans fell through. I joined National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2013 ready to pen my next novel. I told everyone. And then I got content edits back for The Fourth Wall, and spent the rest of the year knee-deep in edits.

The early months of 2014 were devoted to “preparing for launch”; I’d never been through the publishing process before and had a lot to learn. But by March I thought, Okay. I’ve done all I can do and now I’m just sitting here waiting for a publication date.

So I joined Camp NaNoWriMo on April 1, ready to pen my next novel. I told everyone. And on April 2—yes, really—I received the email with my publication date. Two months away.

Now—one year later—I’m going to tell you what all authors know and most don’t talk about for fear of sounding like ungrateful jerks: once you’re published, everything becomes harder. Your reasons for writing get lost and what you swore you wouldn’t care about—the numbers—becomes all you care about. And then it’s hard to keep going, because the numbers will break you.

I didn’t bother joining NaNoWriMo this last November. Instead, I read throughout the fall and then all winter long, and when people asked me what I was working on I usually told them the truth: nothing much.

But something happened recently, on April 1, to be exact. On that day I made a last-minute decision to join Camp NaNoWriMo, ready to pen my next novel. I told no one. And I ended the month with 30,000 words toward this new book.

So, what’s my book about? I’m not telling. 😉

Not yet.

What I’ve discovered is that keeping quiet about my works-in-progress has enormous benefits for me. For example, if I’d announced on April 1 that I was starting a novel, I may have been completely deflated three days later when I realized I wasn’t writing a novel at all, but a rather long short story. Still, no one knew my original plan; I could change it and write a book of short stories if I wanted. All that mattered was that I was writing again.

So that’s what I did. Last month, I quietly wrote a book of short stories.

I know. It’s impossible to get a short story collection published unless half have already appeared in The New Yorker, or you’re famous, or whatever.

But what if I didn’t know that? Like a scrappy pilot once said while navigating an asteroid field, “Never tell me the odds.”

Or what if all that really mattered was the sense of accomplishment that comes with creating something you can be proud of? That’s where I started, and finally that’s where I’ve returned.

I’m proud of these stories, I can’t wait to tell you about them, and sometime very soon—I promise—I will.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: inspiration, publishing, writing

This Is Why We Write

Posted on March 19, 2015 ·

Image from Flickr by creativecupcakes

On Tuesday I was treated to a presentation of The Fourth Wall by a group of 7^th graders who chose the book for their quarterly language arts project.

That goes straight to the top of the list of amazing and utterly surreal moments in this author’s writing life, right up there with seeing my debut novel on bookshelves.

The kids were assigned individual and group projects; for the group project they decided to put on a talk show. One child was the talk show host, and in a series of interviews with “Marin,” “Frankie,” and “Tom,” he probed the characters with questions about each other that revealed individual strengths and weaknesses and gave insight into the plot.

Because the interviews were conducted before and after the novel’s resolution—separated by an amusing intermission—the audience could see how the characters changed and grew.

It was brilliant. The kids gave nothing away, focusing solely on the real-world aspects of the novel and leaving out the magical realism—which makes sense, as only one of these characters experiences it, and we all know Marin likes her secrets.

But Marin’s dream world is of course a vital part of the story, and the students represented this perfectly. They created a backdrop—a painting of the forest in Marin’s dreams—and displayed it on the wall behind our talk show host and his guests. So it is there all along—framing everything—yet none of the characters can see it.

Before staging the talk show, these 7^th graders gave a brief overview of The Fourth Wall for the audience, including the title, tone, and theme. Their take on the theme? Letting go of the past so you can move forward.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

A huge, heart-felt “Thank you” to Lisa Jones, 6th/7th grade Aspire Language Arts teacher at Connolly Middle School in Tempe, Arizona, and to her wonderful students, for reading my book and inviting me to watch Tuesday’s performance.

Also…thanks to everyone who came out to the Tucson Festival of Books! And a big welcome to my new subscribers. This was my first time participating in a book festival, and it was a blast. We sold a few books, handed out tons of bookmarks, and discovered organic cotton candy.

Really, that’s a thing.

Here are some pictures, and congrats to R.C. who won the giveaway for my husband’s hand-crafted feather earrings!

Click here to purchase The Fourth Wall on Kindle

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: amazing teachers, Aspire Academy, Connolly Middle School, publishing, The Fourth Wall, Tucson Festival of Books, writing

Meet Me at the Festival

Posted on March 9, 2015 ·

This Saturday is the perfect day for hanging out at a book festival.

Okay, ANY day is perfect for hanging out at a book festival, but I’ll be signing books at this one and I’d really love to see you. Here are the details; click the link for more information on the TFoB website:

What: Tucson Festival of Books
Where: University of Arizona Campus
When: March 14-15, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Cost: FREE

*I’ll be at the Children/Teen Author Pavilion on Saturday from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. with copies of The Fourth Wall. Also, with plenty of swag and other free stuff. Like candy.

Some of the amazing authors that will be presenting at the festival this year are Jacqueline Woodson, Joyce Carol Oates, Dave Barry, Katherine Paterson, and E. Lockhart. If that’s not exciting enough for you, there will also be churros, root beer floats, gelato popsicles, lemonade, kettle corn, and chili dogs. Something for everyone. 🙂

In other news, a short story of mine called “Four Mile Road” will be published soon in Black Heart Magazine. I’m super excited about that; this one is very special to me and I’m happy that it found a home. I can’t wait to share it with you.

See you on Saturday!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book signing, promotion, publishing, Tucson Festival of Books, writing

It Only Takes One “Yes”

Posted on December 7, 2014 ·

Image from Flickr by jepoirrier

Friday was the anniversary of a pretty special occasion for me. On that day, three years ago, I received my first acceptance letter, for a short story called “Eleven Seconds.”

I will never forget the moment I received that email. It was a cold December evening, and we were gathered around the fireplace. I remember when I saw the subject line I cried out, and Abbey, who was nine years old, thought something was wrong. Then I hugged her and I hugged my son and I hugged my husband. I would have hugged you too, had you been there.

I’d been writing stories since grade school, but it wasn’t until my thirties that I began seriously submitting my work. Sometime after my son was born I just decided to go for it. I decided my dream of turning the title “aspiring writer” into “published author” was a good dream, and it deserved to happen, and the only way it would happen was if I stopped hiding behind the idea of it and actually put my work out there.

So I did, and I spent years collecting rejection slips. They didn’t bother me as much as you’d think. Simply corresponding with editors made me feel as if I were moving forward. It put me in a different category of writers. There are those who think about submitting their work, and then there are those who submit their work. Only writers from the second category get their work published, and the rejections they collect along the way become a kind of badge of honor.

I’d heard that once a writer breaks through, the acceptance letters start coming in pretty regularly. And that was true for me–within a month I had another one, and more would soon follow.

But there will always be rejections. Nearly everything I’ve had published was rejected first.

For example, “Eleven Seconds” was rejected three times. The Fourth Wall was rejected twenty-two times. Don’t worry too much about how many times you hear “No,” because it only takes one “Yes.”

Don’t give up.

Here’s the text of my little story that could, which originally appeared in SLAB literary magazine in the spring of 2012. Read it, if you like, and then go submit one of yours.

ELEVEN SECONDS

It started in the kitchen. A clinking of porcelain, a delicate, dreadful trembling, cups and saucers and unused dinner plates jumping in the cupboards like those little beans from Mexico. What were those called?

Thunder ripped the ground and the old man jerked up from his chair, instinctively, but the fear passed through him like a bullet. His heart fluttered once. He sat back down.

From his seat in the living room, the old man watched his kitchen heave forward and burst apart. The world could shatter around you; he knew that. Bending forward, he plucked a fragment of china from the ground, like a flower. His wife, Winnifred, had painted this piece, before the cancer took her last year. He could see her clearly, her pale knotted hand curled around the thin brush, looping and twirling like a dancer. The old man pressed his hands together and folded them over the broken china, like a prayer.

Thanks for reading!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: publishing, rejections, writing, writing inspiration

Book Sales and Royalty Statements

Posted on October 31, 2014 ·

Image from Flickr by Leo Reynolds

“So, how are sales going?”

I get this question a lot, along with the more direct “How many books have you sold?” I wish I could tell you. Unfortunately, published authors can’t track their sales in real time.

The only indication I have of how day-to-day sales are going is watching my Amazon rankings, and I have no idea what they mean. I don’t think anyone does, really. The ranking is depicted with a line graph which sometimes spikes, which maybe reflects sales, but you can’t tell how many or where the sales came from.

Other than that, I rely on semiannual royalty statements, and even those don’t tell me much. I can see how many ebooks sold in the prior six-month period and how many books were sold via direct sales (purchased through the publisher’s website) because those sales are final. Distributor sales are different, however; those books are returnable.

For example, for my book launch party at Changing Hands Bookstore, the store purchased 70 copies of The Fourth Wall. Fifty people showed up, half of the copies sold, and the host had me sign an additional 12 copies for the shelves. So that’s 47 books; what happens to the other 13? The bookstore can return them within a certain period of time.

So for my July royalty statement, those 70 copies show as distributor sales, but I don’t get paid yet because the sales are subject to return. My January statement will reflect how many books the bookstore returned, and then I’ll get paid for the remaining sales. Make cents? See what I did there? 😉

Yes, Nielsen BookScan tracks retail print sales which Amazon reports, via Amazon Author Central, on a weekly basis. But that’s not an accurate number; not all retailers use Nielsen BookScan. Amazon estimates the number at 75%.

Anyway, I’m still trying to find an appropriate and satisfying answer to “How many books have you sold?” without burdening my well-meaning friends with the above info. I guess a good answer is this: “More than one and less than a million, but who’s counting?”

Authors, how do you respond?

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Amazon rankings, book sales, publishing, royalty statements, The Fourth Wall, writing

Do You See What I See?

Posted on September 26, 2014 ·

Image from Flickr by gradesi

When a writer publishes fiction, she understands that her work will be interpreted differently by different people. In his book On Writing Stephen King says, “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

You shouldn’t try to force your reader to see something exactly the way you imagined it.

Which becomes interesting when publishing creative nonfiction. It can be surreal having readers interpret in a different way something that actually happened.

Last week I had a piece published in Brevity Magazine called “Code Talkers.” True to their name, Brevity only publishes essays of 750 words or less. I love writing this way, taking a moment in time—one scene, one turning point—and trying to tell a story based on that moment.

I love allowing readers to imagine the rest of the story.

What struck me about the comments I received on “Code Talkers” was that, although the essay is written from a child’s point of view, several readers perceived it from an adult’s point of view; some even saw the cop as a sympathetic figure.

This is intriguing since part of the story has to do with misunderstandings and assumptions. To the young girl those misunderstandings and assumptions belong to adults, but to adults the misunderstandings would naturally belong to the young girl.

Anyway, I’m blown away by the response to this piece. Thank you to everyone who commented publicly and privately. And to those of you who kindly asked after my brother, he is doing fine. 🙂 We are as close as ever, and we still sometimes talk in code.

To read the essay, click here.

Have you ever written something and had a reader see it differently than you imagined or remembered it?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: publishing, writing