Caren Johnson Literary Agency

by Carrie Lofty

Criticism. Does any writer really enjoy criticism? Can’t say that I do, certainly not like I enjoy doughnuts and dancing. I have, however, fostered a keen appreciation of the helpful criticism I receive from my critique group.

I joined the Online Romance Writers Circle in September of 2006 after completing my first novel. Simply happy to have completed a manuscript, I posted my Austrian-set romance and waited for my haloed anointing.

Oooh, was I in for a s shock. I’d never shared my work with anyone. Ever. The impact of reading their comments knocked me off my chair. Because our group is entirely online, I wound up refusing to open e-mails after 6pm. Reading those initial critiques too close to bedtime meant a lot of sleepless hours.

Over time I identified my pattern, one that remains today: 1) Hot, flushed-face offense, 2) Ego shock, 3) She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, 4) Damn. She’s right.

Writers spend months and even years working on their projects—pressed too close against a lengthy rabble of words—which can lead to tunnel vision. I’ve learned that a good group is an extra batch of eyes and clever brains. Are there slow parts? A lack of emotion? Glaring, nova-sized plot holes? My beta readers find those story-stoppers before I pass them on to my agent or editor.

Stay focused on the goal. In offering up a raw, young work for critique, I’m not asking for gushing praise—that anointing that never came. I know better now. There will always be flaws and flubs and places where my work can be stronger. My initial flushed-face response still rears it’s head, but then I get back to work—and the end result is stronger.

But just because I’ve had success with a critique group doesn’t mean everyone will. Many successful authors work solo, though I don’t know how they do it! Others find the task of integrating multiple opinions only dilutes their voice—a sort of “too many cooks in the kitchen” feeling. Still others believe the added demand of offering critiques in return limits time they could spend writing.

I lucked into my group, and only now do I realize what a blessing their diversity and openness has been. If you’re looking to join one, I have a few pieces of advice.

1. Work with people you respect. Before you join up, read potential critique partners’ books or ask for unpublished samples. Submit a page or two of your own work to see what their feedback is like. Get a sense of whether they’ll be a good fit.

2. Avoid the drama. If a critique group is filled with backstabbing or grudges, it won’t be an honest place for your work. You want these partners to be on your side, to respect your work and your career, and to be fair.

3. Don’t narrow your focus. The romance writers in my group have almost all moved into new territory. Our varied reading habits, ages, educational backgrounds, publishing experiences, and approaches to writing guarantee at least a few different opinions to choose from.

4. Reciprocate. Sure it takes some time, but I’ve found critiquing informs my writing. If you can spot issues and weaknesses in someone else’s work, you’ll be better equipped to find them in your own.

5. Find the exit. There are lots of writers out there. If one group isn’t working for you, try another. Take the time to find the one that works for you.

So even thought I’ll never enjoy a thorough critique as much as I love to dance, I value all of the advice my partners have given me. Each one helps me tell a better story—and that I do enjoy.

In part two, I’ll discuss what you should expect from a good critique, as exemplified by Chicago North, a notoriously incisive “critique chapter” of the Romance Writers of America.

Carrie Lofty

By Terri Clark

Do you ever reward yourself for writing-related accomplishments? Three chapters? 100 pages? The end? Admit it, a trinket here or there is a nice pat on the back. And if you pick something out ahead of time that dangling, ripe carrot is the perfect motivation to reach a goal. Heck, even Caren has admitted that she likes to reward herself with shoes. So, if you’re looking for a little incentive you might consider a few of these fab finds. Not only will they brighten your day, they’ll benefit literacy. And that, my friend, means you can shop guilt free. Unless, of course, you haven’t reached your goal.

Designer Karen Neuburger and children’s author Laura Numeroff (Give a  Mouse a Cookie) have teamed up together to create these adorable Mommy and Me pajamas. A portion of their proceeds go to First Book, which gives children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books .

First Book also sells these simple, but profound tees and totes. For more info and choices shop their Café Press store.

Build-a-Bear Workshop, that fun DIY stuffed animal wonderland, also sells Read Teddy to benefit First Book .

However, my favorite First Book contributor has to be Astraea Candles and their magical story candles. These organic creations, with clever packaging, are said to be made with “a mix of fine fragrances and imagination.” With scents inspired by Snow White, Cinderella, Rumpelstilzchen and Alice Wonderland, you know you can’t buy just one.

As authors we read A LOT. So why not join Harlequin’s 100, 000 Book Challenge? The online community intends to donate one book for every book read to the National Center for Family Literacy. The NCFL’s mission is to create a literate nation by leveraging the power of the family.

Finally, my favorite discovery is the ABC Literacy Store . A writer could go broke shopping on this site. And for every product you buy the site donates children’s book.

Look at this gorgeous Peruvian Moons Handmade Journal. The papers are handmade and dyed with plant and flower dyes.

Drool over these to-die-for Peruvian Tapestry Bags. Three children’s books will be donated with your purchase.

So just remember when you shop, shop for good. Whether you buy a reward for yourself or a gift for someone else, remember you’re contributing to literacy and as Elizabeth Hardwick said, “ The greatest gift is a passion for reading.”

Terri Clark

Author who followed clothing tags around the world interviewed

Quest featured on the World Vision Report’s one-hour fashion special

Muncie, Indiana, February 21st 2008 – “Where am I wearing?” It seemed like such a simple question to freelance journalist Kelsey Timmerman as he scanned the tags of his favorite items of clothing. But the question launched him on a global quest to Honduras, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China in search of the factories where his clothes were made and the workers who made them.

Timmerman recently spoke about the quest with host Peggy Wehmeyer of the World Vision Report, a nationally-syndicated radio program that focuses on the world’s poor. In the interview Timmerman talks about everything from his Bangladeshi Christmas boxers to his all-American Levi’s that were sewn together by 85 Cambodians. The interview is a part of the World Vision Report’s one-hour fashion special.

A book on the quest is scheduled to be published by Wiley & Sons in November 2008.

Visit Kelsey’s website here for more information on the book. To find out about rights or to schedule an interview contact Caren Johnson at cjohnson@johnsonlitagency.com.

By Barbara Caridad Ferrer

So Caren and I were emailing back and forth the other day, talking about the next few months and potential timelines. I’m going to have a deadline shortly for my second round of revisions on the Carmen project, but other than that, any deadlines for the foreseeable future are going to be self-imposed or worked out with Caren. She observed that I’ve never actually missed a deadline and that I’ve only once asked an editor for any kind of an extension. Jokingly she asked, “Is it your Virgo nature that makes you so disciplined and good with your time management skills?”

Um… well, if you buy into the astrological sign you’re born under influencing your traits and behaviors in any way then, yeah—I’m pretty much as Virgo as Virgo gets. I mean, I plan everything—even planned my midlife crisis. When my husband mentioned that he didn’t think that’s the way midlife crises worked, I merely looked at him and said, “Hel-lo, have you met me?” By the way, the midlife crisis is named Alejandro and he’s gorgeous and very powerful.

It’s my car, y’all. (I know what you were thinking.)

Anyhow, back to time management. I thought a little more about it, because I can’t simply put it down to being a Virgo—anal-retentive tendencies aside. There are a few things that go into my being able to manage time so that I make deadlines. Some of them are worth emulating, some probably not so much. The more I broke it down, the more I realized that what it came down to, the big secret to my time management is that I know myself very, very well. Kind of unnaturally well, actually.

I know how I write. I know that when I begin a project I usually lose myself in research during the day and write at night when there are fewer interruptions. It’s during this period that I’m more amenable to interruptions from Real Life. I’m actually a human, in other words.

I know that once I have a few chapters down and I’ve gotten a handle on my characters and the storyline is really taking shape in my mind, that’s when I sit down and write a chapter by chapter outline for the rest of the manuscript. This acts as a mental trip switch of sorts. I know the story and characters are going to start taking over and my levels of sociability are going to lower.

Once I hit that particular stage, too, I take a long look at my calendar and give myself a deadline. If there’s a conference or holidays in there, I account for them. I know that with a conference, for example, I’m generally useless for anywhere from a week to ten days, depending on the conference. I don’t like writing at conferences, although I’ve been known to do it. The holiday thing is also a biggie—I had a revisions deadline a week before the holidays this past year and that was a mistake and what led to my asking for a two week extension. Lesson learned there.

The thing about working in this manner, too, is that for me, seeing steady progress is a complete charge—I absolutely love it. It’s something that inspires me to keep going and I continually pick up steam as I go along, writing for longer and longer stretches of time and feeling the spell of the story wrap itself around me until that world and the people in it almost feel more real to me than the corporeal world. I think this is something that harkens back to my training as a classical pianist—the early days of learning a difficult piece were always so piecemeal, working through sections slowly, learning them, learning the personalities of the various movements and the story the composer was trying to tell, but then—once I had it—once the music and I had melded together and formed this gorgeous symbiotic relationship, it was like magic. Practicing became pure joy, just losing myself for hours in the sheer beauty of what I was creating.

Okay then, coming back off the tagent…

So—once I’m that far into a manuscript and have a set deadline is where I think the real key to my particular style of time management kicks in. I become very, very selfish. I make it clear to my family that I have a deadline, that my world consists of what’s going on in my head, and if they interrupt me for anything other than measurable blood loss or bone shards poking through skin, it’s at their own risk. I then put my head down, lose myself in the world I’m creating, and don’t emerge until I’m done. Usually at that point, I discover that I’m covered in a layer of dust and a bill or two may have gone unpaid. However, at the same time, I’m reassured to discover that the world has continued to revolve and no one is any the worse for wear. That was the biggest lesson for me to learn—that I didn’t have to be everything to everyone and I could actually reclaim time for myself. What a novel concept!

Now, is this the solution for everyone? Oh good heavens, no. Again, it works for me, because I know myself. At heart, I’m an introvert. While I love getting out to conferences and socializing, it exhausts me and I have to retreat to my cave in order to recharge my batteries. Therefore, I have no problem holing up and hiding out for long stretches of time. I also like the comfort of my office with MY music and MY coffee cup and MY endless supply of peanut butter M&Ms and Diet Coke as opposed to being out and about. When I’m deep in writing, I like focusing just the project, rather than multitasking—multitasking tends to annoy the ever-lovin’ you know out of me, because it’s just an irritant. Something that distracts me from what I really want to be doing. Sleep actually almost begins to fall into this category near the end of a manuscript—I have a lot of trouble sleeping because the story is just that anxious to get out.

It also works because I have a very, very supportive family, because I’m fortunate enough to write full-time, and because I made it clear from very early on that this was my job and they had to respect it as such. We had a few colorful moments early on when the munchkins would come to me with a question while I was hip-deep in writing and I’d exasperatedly ask why they hadn’t gone to their father first and the reply was “because Daddy’s playing City of Heroes.”

Yeah, we got those priorities straightened out right quick, let me tell you.

So if you thrive on adrenaline and chaos, obviously, my style doesn’t work for you. If you need some mix of the two, my style’s not going to do it for you either. I simply can’t stress enough that what it comes down to is knowing yourself as best you can and then applying lessons learned.

And to those of you who hold full-time jobs, run households, and still manage your writing careers? Hats off to you, because you’ve REALLY figured it out.

Barbara Caridad Ferrer

By Faye Hughes

Write What You Know. It’s probably one of the most common pieces of advice a new writer will receive. I think I was 13 when someone first shared that bit of wisdom with me, and I did what a typical 13 year old does with advice she doesn’t want to hear: I ignored it. That means, instead of writing about a socially awkward 13-year-old girl who lived in a small town in Mississippi with a beautiful, though slightly crazy aunt who took her indoor house cat for walks in their bougainvillea-scented backyard while wearing a flowing, hot pink negligee, high heels and a tiara she’d gotten when she won a beauty pageant in college some 15 years earlier, I wrote about an 18-year-old college student in Montana, the wild mustang she’d adopted one summer and the battle between environmentalists and ranchers. If you’re thinking that I’d never been to Montana, knew nothing about mustangs, ranches and environmentalists or how an 18-year-old woman felt, you’d be right. Still, that’s the story I chose to write.

Pretty stupid, huh?

Yeah, well, the book was awful. But when I was 13, I wrote about Montana and wild mustangs because I felt my real life in Mississippi was boring and uninspiring. As funny as that is now, I’m probably not the only one who thinks their everyday world is boring. Lucky for me, I finally figured out that there’s much to be said for writing about what you know. And lucky for you, I like to share.

Here are some suggestions on how you can use the ordinary to create the extraordinary in your writing:

Use Your Day Job in a Novel. Is your job boring? Dead-end? A total waste of your creativity for eight hours every day? Not a problem. Whatever your job, you can probably find a way to use it in a novel. Make your workplace funny, make it scary, even make it sexy. Let your imagination fly. Sure, you’ll have to change the names to protect the guilty, but all of those great office gossip stories can be mined for literary gold!

Use Your Family and Friends as Inspiration for Characters. Okay, you can’t identify them by name, nor can you describe them in such a way that they’ll recognize themselves and cry foul because of the unflattering spin you’ve put on them. (The last thing you’ll want to do is give people ammunition for lawsuits or ill feelings.) But you can take the peculiar traits of those nearest and dearest and apply them to a character in your novel.

Which Day-In-The-Life Anecdote Gets You The Most Applause? When you’re regaling your friends about your latest run-in with a soccer mom at the local mall over a parking space, do you find that strangers at the next table over are eavesdrop on your conversations at Happy Hour? Sure, it may just be your delivery, but if the story isn’t amusing/intriguing/horrifying, they wouldn’t continue to listen. Use one of your best anecdotes as an opening scene in your novel, and see where it takes you.

Write About Life In Your Hometown. Large city or small village, every place has something unique and different about it. And if you can’t think of a single reason why your hometown would inspire a reader to turn the pages of a book set there, then write about that. Have your protagonist acknowledge that he/she lives in the Most Boring Town in America. Then have him or her stumble across a dead body in the frozen food aisle of the local Wal-Mart. Your knowledge of the streets, restaurants and landmarks of your hometown can save you a bundle in researching a new location!

Find the Emotional Connection. Good fiction evokes a strong emotional response in a reader—fear, lust, laughter. Take a memory that evokes the same emotional response that you need to have your character experience, remove its emotional soul and transplant it into the scene. For example, you may have never been stalked by a killer, but by transferring the memory of how you felt when your older brother scared the pants off you one night when your parents were away can put you in touch with the core emotion. Use it.

I hope these suggestions have given you some ideas of how you can take the ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary within the pages of your book. If you’re still not convinced that your life has what it takes to make for exciting fiction, then try this: Make a list of the top 10 reasons why you think your life sucks as literary inspiration. Then take that list and come up with 10 ways to use each of those reasons as a plot trigger in your WIP. Who knows? You might just find something extraordinary.

Happy Writing!

Faye Hughes

THE EVERYTHING GUIDE TO WRITING A ROMANCE NOVEL (Adams Media, 09/08)