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by J.L. Greger
“Couponing” for Authors

Every shopper likes a good deal; every writer likes a clever idea. Most of us see lots of great ideas, but forget most of them. That’s why I “coupon” them.

Is “couponing” a real word?
One definition (found on The Free Dictionary) is the sending out or turning in coupons. That’s not the meaning I want to focus on today. I want to target all the “guides to couponing” found on the WEB and in popular women’s magazines.

Couponing ideas for writing:

I substituted the word ideas for coupons in a composite guide for couponing. My examples will focus on the development of my two novels Coming Flu, a medical thriller published by Oak Tree Press in July 2012, and Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight, a medical mystery to be published in April 2013. They are the start of a medical mystery series set in the Southwest.

Look for ideas everywhere. Printed materials, TV, ads, etc.
I like to include bits of science in my novels to add authenticity. So when I read Science and other scientific journals weekly, I pull pages that look interesting. I save maps and postcards (with notes) when I travel. Now for the hard part.

Identify a use for ideas.
Write on each saved item an anticipated use when you clip it.
For example in April 2010, I read an article “The Microbes Made Me Eat It” (Science 328: 179-180) and labeled it, in my messy scrawl, “novel on obesity.”

Focus your collection activities.
Random collections are difficult to use and bulky to store. That’s one problem with computers, most of us save too much unsorted (or poorly sorted) fluff.
 
Throughout 2010, I looked for and found interesting articles in medical journals on how the trillion microorganisms in our guts influence us, including our weight control or lack of it. The result was Dr. Izzy Roth and Dr. Richard Varegos, the diet doctors in Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight. Of course, Izzy is killed in the first chapter of this medical mystery and Richard is suspected.

Keep a file of quotes.
Ads and students comments in classes often provide the best quotes.
Currently I’m trying to create a character to be described by this quote from Oscar Wilde. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”

Don’t save stuff that is easily available on the Web.
To emphasize how difficult it is to lose weight, I set many scenes in Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight in popular restaurants in the Albuquerque area. I used the menus published on the web to give descriptions of food.

File ideas the day you get them.
This is a good idea, but I can’t give an example because I’m not that organized.

Review ideas regularly and purge.
In 2006, I started saving articles on mutations in the flu virus, the development of vaccines, epidemics, and the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act with the intent of using them in a novel. Re-examining the file when it was a half-inch thick finally gave me the incentive to start writing Coming Flu. Yes, I did use this information to create a realistic (certainly not optimal, but not a worst case scenario either) of what could happen if a new and deadly mutation of the flu virus hit a community before vaccines to the new virus were available.

Are you ready now to start couponing your ideas?
 

JL Greger was a faculty member in the biological sciences for more than for 25 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also served as the associate dean in the graduate and medical medical school at UW and as VP of Research at the University of Connecticut. Now she enjoys putting tidbits of science into her fiction. She hopes her novels help to increase interest by women and minorities in careers in science.
 
Coming Flu (paperback and ebook versions) is available now on Amazon.
Look for Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight in March 2013.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I read a Salon post by Joseph Lord— “Walking Dead” author is OK with AMC’s creative liberties“–  on Sunday that struck a particular chord with me.

The article was about Walking Dead creator,  Robert Kirkman’s, thoughts on AMC’s plot changes and character changes for the series (Walking Dead started out as a graphic novel.)  Basically, as the post’s title indicates, Kirkman was fine with it. 

But what I was especially interested in was this statement from Salon writer Joseph Lord:

…he doesn’t mind the implicit criticism — and revels in the opportunity to revisit, re-craft and re-create five-year-old writing.

The article goes on to explain that Kirkman is creatively involved with the television show, which means he’s helping craft the changes.

What I found most thought-provoking was the attitude behind this statement—that creative fulfillment can be found by tinkering with a completed, published story.

Now, the reason Kirkman’s story is changing is primarily because it’s going from one medium to another.  But I’ve also noticed this post-production editing phenomenon with the sudden popularity of ebooks.  Even with some of my stories.

No matter what you might hear about traditional publishing’s superior editing process—mistakes still happen.  I hate to admit that.  I didn’t catch them, even though I read the manuscripts until I was cross-eyed. My editor didn’t catch them and Penguin’s proofreader didn’t, either. I’ve made small mistakes in, I believe, nearly every single one of my books.  Not big mistakes—but hey…they’re all big mistakes if readers contact you over them. 

And readers do contact you.  They don’t look at the acknowledgments page and find the editor’s name and send her an email.  Which is fine—it’s my book.  I’m the public face for the book. 

I’ve heard about a variety of different flubs on my part with my Penguin books.  Each time I apologized to the reader who drew it to my attention, explaining that the last thing I wanted was to draw her out of the story.  And…that was basically it.  When the reader asked if the book could be corrected, I said if I was told it was going into another printing, I’d ask my editor to see if it could be corrected.  As far as the ebooks…I’ve never heard it suggested that Penguin will correct those after the fact.

On the other hand…I’ve also heard about a couple of minor errors (still…errors…grr) in my Myrtle Clover self-published mysteries.  You won’t find those errors—I removed them myself and republished the books.  Again, I apologized to the readers who drew my mistakes to my attention.  But this time, I had the real pleasure of telling them that I would correct the errors.  And that was a pleasure.  There’s nothing like fixing a problem. 

That’s a big difference right there between traditional and self-published. 

But, aside from proofreading….what might evolving books mean for the future?

I have some mixed feelings about changing books, post-publication.  I’ve read posts where writers argue for story integrity—the story is the story.   I understand where they’re coming from.

What if our story is a bit outdated?  What if we mention Facebook in our ebook and Facebook goes under (oh happy day!)?   Should we go back into our story and remove the reference and republish?  Or will this destroy historical texture in our books?  Okay, maybe we won’t do that with a Facebook reference.  But what if our backlist book referred to the Twin Towers and we were republishing it as an ebook?   Would we update those types of references, given the opportunity? What if Dickens and his descendants had updated his story all the way to the present day? 

Of course, nonfiction might acutally benefit from this approach.  Imagine creating a resource that doesn’t become obsolete or outdated.

On the pro side—I don’t think I’m the only one who has ever reread an old book I wrote and wanted to make changes.  A better word, a better bit of dialogue.  A stronger verb.  Who’d even notice the difference?

On the con side–there is such a thing as over-writing. I know I used to write the life out of my story and the personality out of my characters by scrubbing relentlessly at my manuscript over and over again…when it was really fine to begin with.

What about reader preference?  What if an author read complaints about the sagging middle of his published book—then he had a fantastic idea about changing it?   Should the readers influence the book’s text?

Maybe the above example was a weak one…because I think many authors would want to fix a weak scene or two if they knew how to.  What if it were a more controversial change?  What if a writer received complaints about the profanity in his books?  Should readers get a vote on that?  What if it were fifteen readers complaining?  What if it were a hundred?  Would that change our answer?  How much input should readers have?  How responsive should future authors be and what’s our responsibility to our readers, ourselves, and our story?

One other point…we do need to get on with writing our next book, don’t we?  To establish a name for ourselves, income, and a career.  It’s probably not in our own best interests to stay stuck on the same books…after a certain point, anyway.

Or—can we/should we, as the article stated—“revel in the opportunity to revisit, re-craft and re-create”? 

How much messing with a book is too much?  And y’all…I don’t have an answer for this, so I was hoping you could weigh in. Maybe our responsibility is to the reader to provide the most perfect entertainment we can and to capitulate to their requests. Maybe that’s outrageous for a finished book.  Maybe our responsibility is to the story itself.  But…I know that when I’ve gone into my self-pubbed books to make my proofreading corrections, I couldn’t resist tinkering with other stuff, too.  Where does it stop? 
 
Image: MorgueFile: jdurham

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This post has spoilers for Beth Spann. (I’ve already texted Mama and asked her not to read my Monday post—Mama, if you are reading the post, this is your spoiler alert!)

I was at a garden center last week, looking for a Christmas cactus to give my mother for Christmas.

There was a really pretty plant there—it’s in the picture, above.  It was obviously the best choice for a gift.

While I was looking around, the owner of the garden center bustled around, answering questions and sounding extremely knowledgeable about plants. But by the time I’d make it to the register, she’d disappeared to a different area of the nursery.  There was another lady at the register who smiled at me.  “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I don’t have much luck with indoor plants,” I said.  “I need to make sure this plant makes it until Christmas.  Do you have any tips for me?”

The woman looked at me with wide eyes.  “Let me see if I can find Sara real quick.”

She did her best to find Sara, but she was nowhere around.  The woman returned slowly to the register.  “I’m afraid she’s not around.”

“Do you know how much water it needs?” I asked. “I usually have problems with watering.”  There wasn’t one of those little plastic stakes that usually tells how to care for the plant, either.

The woman took a deep breath, seemed to do a mental search of all her knowledge on cacti, and said, “Well….the soil should be moist, but not wet to the touch.  You need to keep it out of direct sunlight and make sure it’s not under any heat vents.”  She continued talking about the plant, getting more confident as she went and giving me more and more information about Christmas cacti.

I thanked her for her help, and then said, “You seem to know a lot about the plants.”

“Oh, I take care of them,” she answered.

So…she took care of the Christmas cacti every day, but didn’t seem to trust herself to explain to me how to care for them.  She wanted to find the expert—the owner.

This is the way I think many of us feel when we’re writing, too.  We don’t trust ourselves to tell the story.  We hesitate as we’re writing, thinking we can’t tell the story the way we want it to be told.
 
We read up on the writing craft, but sometimes this reading takes the place of our practice time.  There’s definitely a point where we need to put our how-to books aside and just write our story. 

Like the lady who took care of the plants—when we practice, we learn.  And once we finish our first draft, we have ample opportunity to edit our story to ensure it’s exactly the one we meant to tell.

A few tips for making sure we finish our story:

Set a manageable goal.  Revisit that goal if it proves not to be manageable.

Show up.  Meet that manageable goal we set for ourselves by sitting down and opening up our document.

Be flexible with our writing time and the places we write.  Be open to writing on the spur of the moment.

Read books in our genre. It’s the only way to learn how to structure books, or to get a sense of the right pace for our stories.  Read blog posts, books, and articles that help us improve—but don’t let the how-to reading interfere with or take the place of our writing time.

Be forgiving of our first draft.

Stop comparing ourselves to others.  Enjoy others’ work, learn from it.  But develop our own voice and confidence in our writing…by writing regularly.

Do you trust yourself to tell your story?  How do you work through your insecurities to finish your draft?  Tips for staying motivated?

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

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