Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

Great fun last night getting a call from the Mobys from Melville House publicist Megan Halpern, who helped relay my acceptance speech to the fine people at The Griffin.

Thanks to the dodgy connection and the crowd noise, it was a little hard to get exact read on the room. Nevertheless,  I distinctly heard the sound of a single, brilliant, highly stylized, postmodern (and at times exhausting) tear running down the face of fellow finalist Thomas Pynchon.

Don’t take the loss too hard, old chum. Your place in literature is secure, even if you’re kind of eating it on YouTube.

Also, if you’re reading this and haven’t read THE CRYING OF LOT 49, please stop reading this and get yourself reading that. There are some things you don’t joke about.

Finally, a huge thanks to friend and co-conspirator James Lotter for making the vid a reality.

A reader writes:

My name is NAME and I’m currently a junior at COLLEGE COLLEGE. My friend, NAME, who is in the same graduating class as me, referred me to your website. While I am a ACADEMIC MAJOR in a WORLD CITY right now, my true passion is writing poetry, and I’m trying to develop my skills in writing short stories. I am fairly certain that I want this hobby to become my career, but I don’t know where to even start! I will be the first person in my family to graduate with a 4-year degree, so I don’t have any relatives with applicable experience or knowledge. Do you have any advice on where to start?

I’ve been sitting on this question for months, and for our readers who are farther along in their writing careers I’m sure you understand why.

Where to start? Where to start? Is there a more impossible question to answer than WHERE TO START?

The advise that springs to mind is of the “just write” variety, advice that I will not give. “Just write” is dismissive and minimizing, like telling someone who’s clinically depressed that maybe they wouldn’t feel so crummy if they just lightened up and, you know, tried to have some fun and not worry so much all the time.

I couldn’t do that to you, NAME from COLLEGE COLLEGE. You say you have the desire. Very well. Now let’s put some shape to all that ambition. Let’s get you doing a web project.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

Mark Twain

Another way of approaching Twain’s advice is to take the “complex overwhelming task” and shrink it—in its entirety—until it’s small enough to be manageable.

Becoming a writer is a simple matter of mastering ideas, emotion, insight, subtext, research, writing, rewriting, polishing, publishing, marketing, publicity and finding, building and maintaining audience. You’re going to do all of those things, but on a scale you can handle.

Here’s what you need to do:

Pick the project

That memoir about your experiences growing up as the daughter of a cruel pineapple magnate is not a project. That’s your life’s work. A project is something like Skull-A-Day or SMITH Magazine’s Six-Word Memoirs. You will pick a project that is finite, manageable and low stakes, something like 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt.

Do the project

You will write your 36 poems about strawberry-banana yogurt. Or, if you are acting as an editor/curator, you will collect your 36 poems about strawberry-banana yogurt. (Per Doug’s comment, you will also need to set a deadline.)

Produce the project

Your project has to be public, but you’re not going to wait for permission. You’re going to put up a website (36PASBY.com is available, btw). You’ll do this yourself, or you’ll gain the invaluable experience of collaborating with other people who have different skills than you have. Either way you’re going to make it look rad.

Support the project

You will do all the things that people with “real” books do. You will throw a launch party. You will start a Facebook group (even if you are over Facebook). You will pitch a story to your local newspaper. (Again, if you’re up to the task, then collaborate. Doesn’t everyone know an aspiring publicist?)

Put an end to the project

The point of this exercise is to be quick and light and effective. If 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt takes off, then that’s great. If it doesn’t, then you will have already built in a sunset provision. Let your project be what it’s meant to be. Then walk away.

Rest

Rest is important. Rest now.

Asses the project

How did it go? What went wrong? What went right? What was in your control? What was out of your control? Be honest with yourself, but also be kind. It’s just a project.

Learn from the project

This whole time you’ve been (lightly) learning about what you do well, what you struggle with, what you think you could improve, what you’re always going to be hopeless at. Now take a moment to write down the lessons learned.

Rest again

Did I not mention that rest is important? Please rest again.

Do another project

Take what you’ve learned from the first project and do another one. And another. And another. And another. With a little hard work and luck these projects will grow in scope and size and important.

Then one day you’ll wake up to find that your next project is that memoir about growing up the child of a cruel pineapple magnate. Project and life’s work have become interchangeable. Fortunately, the muscles and skills you developed doing your web projects apply quite nicely. You’ll also find that you’ve managed to collect some friends, readers and collaborators along the way.

Then the book comes out, and you go on the radio, and the interviewer asks you how you got started as a writer, and you’ll smile and tell her about 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt and that story will absolutely kill.

You win. The end.

A reader writes:

For background: I’m an author with some decent short story credits, I edit a fiction magazine, I speak regularly at local conferences, I have several more short stories in constant circulation, and I’m shopping an urban fantasy novel to agents. I generally write speculative fiction.

I’ve been thinking recently about offering one of my unpublished novels on my website for free. The novel is a fantasy which has been to several agents, gotten requests, but eventually rejected with kind words, not right for today’s market, etc. This would be for promotional purposes only–another way to build my web presence.

Several authors have done this with great success: Doctorow, Scalzi, Konrath, to name a few.

My question: is this is the right thing to do at this stage in my career to continue building my name or is my time better spent elsewhere? I have built up (and subsequently lost due to my own lack of interest) a sizable audience on my personal blog, as well as edit a free online fiction magazine, so I have some idea on how to promote fiction online, though more tips are always appreciated!

I had another reader approach me recently with a similar question, so I’m going to try to answer both of you in one mighty post.

Favorite agent-with-a-blog Nathan Bransford wrote a great post back in February about “freevaneglists,” writers like Chris Anderson and Cory Doctorow who champion free content as a business model. (Kudos and credit to Nathan, by the way, on the coinage.)

My take on the free people is that what makes it work isn’t the free book. It’s them. It’s the attention getting. It’s the personal empire building. It’s the hustle.

(I also have to wonder if there is confluence of territory and approach. Would they be as successful if they campaigned against Digital Rights Management (DRM) and wrote about South American religious art?)

This is not a knock on the freevangelists. I admire them and their work. But if you’re going to lace up your future boots and follow in their silvery, Utopian footsteps, then I hope you keep the following in mind:

Free doesn’t mean cheap

Do you want your baby to appear to the world as just another file? Of course you don’t! If you want to get something out of your free-ness, then you’ll need cover art, a proper website, widgets, badges, etc. And it all has to look amazing.

Even the “Long Tail” starts with an occasion

The most poorly published traditional book still has a collective energy behind it. That’s why you’ll want a proper launch date, a release party, a social media campaign, reader contests, dance marathons, etc. (If you’ve already launched, take your book down, give it a rest, and relaunch it in three to six months.)

Get organized

Consider gathering five other authors in your genre and having all of you release your free e-books on the same day. Give yourselves a name. Write a manifesto. Something so your book isn’t so all on its lonesome.

Be prepared to fight for your book every day

This is true for a traditionally published book, but goes triple for a self-published giveaway. All the energy behind your freebie is going to come from you. You, you, you. Go, go, go. Bzz, bzz, bzz.

If you’re reading this and feeling like you’re going to barf, then this model probably isn’t for you.

If you’re reading this and are licking your chops in anticipation of the royal beatdown you’re going to put on the world, then I encourage you to proceed.

Final thought:

Traditional publishing frustrates me for many reasons, but I still buy all my books new and in book form. These new, for-sale, paper books are what I’m always going to want to read and write, and I will do so even if Amazon surgically attaches a free Kindle to my skull.

But like the survivalist who stocks up on bullets and spring water, I’m preparing myself for a future where the model is free and/or digital and/or self-publishing. I will go where reality goes, even if it breaks my heart.

Earlier this month I received an e-mail from writer/producer Ian Daffern of Vepo Studios in Toronto. He wanted to know if the following was awesome:

I replied that it is, indeed, awesome. After all, who can resist a book trailer that has

1. self-deprecating humor;
2. a soda-can pipe;
3. Canadians?

I’m looking forward to reading Stripmalling. I will also be keeping an eye on Vepo Studios, a new outfit that’s specializing in Web video for the arts community and for publishing in particular.

My hope is that they find more clients who are willing to take risks. In the wake of the fallout from the “New Think for Old Publishers” panel at this year’s South by Southwest, I’ve been thinking that, when it comes to technology, it might be too late for book publishing to play catch-up.

We need the book business to start leading. I’d love to see publishing develop a Silicon Valley mentality, with start-ups like Vepo Studios taking big risks and pushing the bigger companies to innovate.

So nice job on The Way of the Smock, Vepo. Keep it up and keep pushing the form even further.

This Tuesday, March 17th, the good people over at the Book Roast blog are having a pitch party.

Five real (albeit anonymous) editors will judge book pitches. There is a 75-word limit, and the pitches can be real or imagined. Do it for fun or do it for real—your choice.

There is also a theme, but I wouldn’t worry about that too much. This is an opportunity to get noticed by professionals, so take it.

Finally, as a Book Roast alum, I encourage you to take a look around the site. Despite its homemade look, the Book Roast people are doing something remarkable, a kind of “open source” publicity where authors of all stripes interact with readers in an online cocktail party setting. Nice.

A reader writes:

You know, you’ve mentioned this issue of “readiness” in at least a couple of posts now. [ed. note: she is referring to What the @#$%! Am I Doing with My Life] I think intuitively I get this, but maybe you could talk about how to practice and/or recognize readiness. For e.g., I didn’t get why you said in one of your previous posts that you wouldn’t be ready to write a film. But maybe it’s because you haven’t been living the steps that would lead to that?

Great question. Please allow me to respond with a series of questions that you can ask yourself:

1. Am I ready to do the work just once?

Go read the comments section on Nathan Bransford’s blog. There are any number of posters who you can tell are further along in their dreams than they are in their work. (And bless them for it.)

Depending on what you’re doing, you may be in for a long apprenticeship. Would you really want to get your big break if you couldn’t deliver even once?

2. Am I ready to do the work with some frequency and consistency?

You think Genre Writer X is a hack, but she’s producing a book a year. You laugh at the unintentionally funny columnist in your community newspaper, but his work does meet a certain standard.

Even being consistently mediocre is harder than it looks. You may have an excellent spec script for a sitcom, but could you produce 22 episodes a year?

3. Am I ready to handle the attention?

Say you create your breakout work. Good job. So what else do you have?

“What else?” is the first question the gatekeepers ask. If you don’t have a vision for the next thing (and the next and the next) then there is a chance that you’ve wasted that particular opportunity.

4. Am I ready to go out and attract attention?

Actors have it easy. Their need for attention borders on the biological. The rest of us struggle with promotion, self- and otherwise.

It’s not just a matter of being good at radio, TV, print, etc. It’s being able to take a project, put it on your back, and carry it for years.

5. Am I ready to sustain attention?

You’re a success! Enjoy it! You’re a success! Now you have a f*cking target on your back!

Do well and your fans love you, but they also start to raise their expectations. Do well and your critics and enemies are actively trying to take your ass down. How are you going to deal with all that (in public) while also getting the work done?

6. Am I ready to make use of that sustained attention?

I always think of Michael Pollan as a writer who’s not only at the top of his game creatively, but who’s also assumed a leadership role in our culture.

Now we’re talking about the full integration of work, audience, and public profile. We’re talking about having a direct effect on how people talk, think, behave, vote. Are you ready to be at the center of all that?

***

If this sounds overwhelming, don’t worry about it too much. You don’t have a lot of control over how, when or why things happen. We’re all familiar with stories of people for whom success came too fast. We also know people who never got their due.

That said, if you’re starting out and you have grand ambitions, then the aforementioned questions could help you in your quest.

If you want to be the Michael Pollan of sustainable architecture, then there are certain skills that you can practice to help make that happen. Join Toastmasters in order to bone up on your public speaking. Take up podcasting to work on your radio mojo. The big dream is completely impossible, but also eminently doable.

As many of you know, lack of advertising recently killed The Washington Post Book World. As this Times article on the demise of Book World notes:

The New York Times Book Review is now the largest remaining Sunday tabloid section, publishing at least 24 and as many as 30 or more pages a week with a staff of 15 and contributions from dozens of freelance reviewers. In addition to being included in the Sunday paper, the Book Review is sold as a separate section to 23,500 subscribers. An additional 4,200 copies of the section are sold in bookstores across the country.

And so, in the spirit of the popular The First Ten Books in Little, Brown’s Spring ’09 Catalog, I present to you, without comment or judgment, a rundown of the ads in the February 8, 2009 edition of The New York Times Book Review. (With the exception of the full-page ads, page sizes are approximate.)

• Full-page ad for T.C Boyle’s THE WOMEN (Viking – Penguin Group)
• Half-page ad shared by Marcianne Blévis’ JEALOUSY and Phillip Lopate’s TWO MARRIAGES (Other Press)
• Half-page ad for THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn/Putnam – Penguin Group)
• Full-page ad for One Day University
• Half-page ad for IN LINCOLN’S HAND edited by Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk (Bantam – Random House)
• Quarter-page ad for DAKOTA by Martha Grimes (NAL – Penguin Group)
• Quarter-page ad for Ariana Franklin’s THE SERPENT’S TALE (Berkley – Penguin Group)
• Third-page ad for MARSHMALLOW’S FOR BREAKFAST by Dorothy Koomson (Delta – Random House)
• Quarter-page ad for ANNE PACKARD: INTROSPECTIVE by various contributors (Skylark Press)
• Two small ads for THE JAZZ EAR by Ben Ratliff (Times Books – Henry Holt)
• Full-page ad for OBAMA: The Historic Journey with introduction by Bill Keller (The New York Times/Callway; distributed by Riverhead Books – Penguin Group)

Note:

THE JAZZ EAR and the Obama book also carry the imprimatur of the Times‘ online store.

Finally, there are four classified ads (editor for hire, rare books wanted, etc.) and a very small ad for NationsCourts.com, which promises “court documents in interesting new cases . . . [f]or attorneys, journalists, writers and bloggers.”

Attention Twin Cities metro area readers who for some strange reason have a gap in their schedules, and are interested in taking a flyer on a performance by a relative stranger, AND are willing to do so at extremely short notice:

I will be doing my slide show at the Bakken Library and Museum, as part of their Bakken Evening Out program. For those of you who just clicked the link and came back, yes, the Bakken is indeed a small, independent electricity and magnetism museum. You got a problem with that, chief?

I’m actually very excited to do this show. I’ve performed the slide show version of HEAD CASE in bookstores and in libraries, on college campuses and in bars. This time, I’m breaking it up into 15-minute segments that will run on the hour starting at 5:30 p.m.

How will this go? It depends. The show, which is a mock scientific lecture patterned after the real scientific slide shows I watched while researching the book, tends to function on two settings: KILL and EAT IT HARD. (If you come, secretly hope for EAT IT HARD. It’ll be uncomfortable, but human.)

Thanks to reader JES for sending along this link to An Introvert’s Bill of Rights, which appears on Shrinking Violet Promotions, a blog dedicated to providing book marketing ideas for introverts. It’s too early to say whether or not the execution of the IBR will match the concept, but idea-wise I give this an A+.

Typically, book marketing advice is geared toward either teaching you how to follow the rules of the system, or, in some cases, how to game the system.

For example, because Amazon sales rankings are based on the rate of book sales, some people will tell you to have everybody you know buy your book at the same time, thus catapulting your title up the charts (even if it’s only for a moment). That’s gaming the system.

As for following the rules of the system, you know what that looks like:

Join Toastmasters and learn how to be a public speaker! If you have an upcoming television appearance, practice in front of a mirror! Take an acting class! Try beta blockers! Practice mindful meditation! Do everything humanly possible to become someone you’re not!

What I like about the IBR is that they’re saying to hell with all that. In the world they’re creating, introversion is a virtue, a badge of honor, a strength. Introverts need to band together, articulate their shared experience, and stand up for themselves (albeit introvertedly). Why change when you can organize?

I am usually on the side of adaptation, but in some cases the play is to bend people to your will rather than submit to theirs. It’s not easy, but the long-term rewards can be great.

As Jack Nicholson’s character says during his opening monologue in The Departed, “I don’t want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me.” (Never mind that he gets killed at the end; he had a great run.)

A reader writes:

I am not much of a self-promoter, and, at least online, I prefer to keep a relatively low profile. But about five years ago, fresh out of a summer seminar on publishing, I decided that I wanted my own web site to promote my freelance editing business.

Since then I’ve discovered I really don’t have much of an interest in doing freelance editing and have gotten into radio. Or writing. Or graphic design. Or home remodeling. Or whatever else strikes my fancy. But I will still do freelance editing if the job’s right.

Anyway, I have this web site, and have done NOTHING with it. How do I awesomize it without it being entirely an online résumé/business card with “Hey look what I can do!” links to all my stuff, or just a blog site filled with stories about what I had for lunch today?

Of course, if it has elements of all of these things without being just one of them, that’d be OK. I guess something is better than nothing?

The decision between an active site and a static site has to be put in the context of your overall plan. I love what Miranda July did for her book No One Belongs Here More Than You. It’s static, but it’s also ridiculously delightful. A site doesn’t have to change to be dynamic.

Of course, Miranda July has a presence in other media. Her web stuff is just one component of what she does. But let’s say you don’t have that kind of cultural footprint. Then you’ll want a site that invites people to come back again and again. Maybe it’s a blog. Maybe it’s something that doesn’t have a name yet. Whatever it is, your site helps you build your audience, make connections to other artists in your community, and maybe even get you some press attention.

Final thought: something is never better than nothing. I believe that if you’re going to make the effort, then make the effort. Yes, there are millions of websites and we’re all blog weary and tired, but a great site can still make an impact. Even if you’re starting from zero, you owe it to people to bring them your loud, hot thunder.