Creative process – Mary A. Shafer

The Year of Teaching

Last year, after several years of being asked to consult with other authors and indie publishers, I finally formalized this part of my marketing business into a consultancy called The Indie Navigator. Since then, I’ve been pretty busy making appearances in that incarnation, helping my fellow writers become authors and indie publishers, and helping those indie publishers become better at the business of publishing.

But I haven’t forgotten the whole reason we’re all doing this: Because we love to write, and want to get our work into the hands of as many readers as possible. So one of the things I made up my mind to do this year is learn more about the technical craft of writing for myself, while I help my fellow authors with marketing, promotion and self-publishing.

To make that happen, I’ve been busy the first part of this New Year scheduling appearances as the Indie Navigator in venues where I can do both of these at once. I’m excited to announce that I’ll have the chance to do just that coming up in March, when I’ll be teaching two seminars at The Write Stuff annual conference, hosted by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group.

I first spoke at this conference back in 2009, and was so impressed by how professional and well-run it was, I joined the writer’s group that hosted it. I’ve been a proud member ever since. GLVWG (pronounced “GLIV-wig”) is a friendly, very active group, large enough to support many helpful and enjoyable activities and resources for its membership, but not so large you feel lost or insignificant. I strongly recommend joining for anyone in the Lehigh Valley area who may be struggling with living the writing life and needs some support. It’s a truly warm, welcoming organization wholly supportive of its members success, whether that be as a part-time amateur poet or a full-time professional author…and anything in between.

On Friday, March 21, I’ll be teaching a four-hour seminar from 1:00-5:00 pm, titled “Indie Publishing Intensive: A Quick-Start Guide to Self-Publishing.” The first half will be the “what-to” part – an expansion of my popular seminar, “Identity Crisis: What Is A Publisher, and Should I Become One?” It’s an overview of the book publishing industry, including a brief history of traditional publishing and how that background has shaped our current world of indie publishing. This helps potential indie publishers understand why things evolved the way they have (when so much of it seems not to make sense otherwise). Then it delves deeply into

What it really means to BE a book publisher vs. an author
Why it’s important to perform a reality-based “gut check” to determine if you have what it takes to be a long-term book publisher
The processes and paperwork you need to complete and for the appropriate agencies who can authorize you as legally recognized book publisher in the United States
Moving from manuscript to printed, bound book and ebook
Getting your book listed with the major online retailers, onto store shelves and into readers’ hands
The all-important promotional component

The second half of the session will be the “how-to” element. This seminar, titled “Switching Hats: Moving From Author to Indie Publisher,” gets to the gist of how to go about all the “what-tos” covered in the first half. It’ll cover all the nitty-gritty that’s possible in a single session, supported by a generous Q&A session during which attendees can ask anything they want about the whole indie publishing process.

I’ll also be offering on-the-spot critiques of first pages during the Page Cuts session on Friday evening. Then on Saturday, I’ll be leading a session titled “Narrative Nonfiction: Finding Freedom in Form and Function.” This session will cover the nuts-and-bolts of researching and writing true-life stories with a blend of journalism using fiction techniques in a format popularized by author Sebastian Junger. It’ll be a fast-moving, info-packed seminar on this increasingly popular writing style, now employed across nearly every genre you can imagine.

I hope you can join me, along with my colleagues Kathryn Craft, Phil Giunta, Scott Nicholson and many more, at this always-wonderufl event, this year headlined by keynote speaker Hank Philippi Ryan, bestselling suspense novelist!

Keynote speaker Hank Philippi Ryan always enraptures her audiences.

One Writer’s Christmas Tradition

I don’t know any creative person who isn’t curious about other people’s creative process. I always love to visit other writers’ workspaces, artists’ studios, crafters’ workrooms. I love to hear about their schedules, how they discipline their attention and divide their time to allow them to be most productive. I’m always interested in their little pre-work customs, the secret rites in which they engage to call forth the muse and bless their efforts. I even like to hear about other non-work rituals they enjoy away from the creative altar, that they do simply for enjoyment and to feed their hearts and souls.

I have some of those rituals myself, and it’s appropriate, I think, to end the year sharing with you a pre-Christmas tradition my partner and I have developed over the past ten years. It’s funny how these things come about. You do something once and the next year, remembering how you enjoyed it, you do it again, hoping to recreate the magic. Sometimes you can, sometimes not, but at some point you realize that in the effort, you’ve unwittingly created a tradition. And from then on, you consciously recognize and honor that tradition.

Ours begins with clearing our busy, not-very-often-in-sync schedules for an evening in the weeks before the holiday, after the tree is up and decorations are done. We try each year to choose from among the many fine, old inns and taverns in our beautiful Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and find one we haven’t dined at before. We go online to see the menu and make sure there will be at least one or two options we like (neither of us is big on fish, and I’m not a huge Italian fan, so sometimes that’s a little limiting), and make a reservation for two. We try to really go to the older stone inns, both for their ambience that usually includes a real fireplace, which so enhances that special holiday feeling, and to consciously keep our money in our local economy. We have tried a few newer style places here and there. We just always seem to gravitate back to the old ones, and fortunately for us, there are so many of those in our area.

We usually make an earlier dinner reservation for 6 or 6:30. This allows us to snag desirable seating in a not-yet-crowded dining room, and lets us enjoy a leisurely dinner with a special seasonal beverage beforehand, appetizers and our entrees, and sometimes even dessert, if we’re not too full. Based on our choice of restaurant, we have decided ahead of time where we’ll go afterward, which is always a bookstore. Our preference is to go to locally owned indie bookstores, but sadly their numbers are dwindling in our primarily rural region, so sometimes we must settle for a Barnes & Noble or other big box store.

So, appetites sated, off we go to the bookstore. Once inside, we head right for the children’s section to take our time perusing the Christmas-themed titles. We look for stories that appeal to both children and adults, and length isn’t really an issue. What IS paramount is that the book must offer a good, ultimately uplifting story. It can have sad parts, as long as it ends happily. The secondary requirement is that it must be profusely illustrated with rich, beautiful pictures by a talented artist. If possible, we prefer it be a hardcover with dust jacket. It’s the one time of year we indulge ourselves thusly.

This year, we chose The Carpenters’ Gift by David Rubel. It’s about the birth of the tradition of placing a large Christmas tree in the square in front of New York’s Rockefeller Center, and contains a touching message endorsed by Habitat for Humanity. Though we don’t usually go in for “cause” books, this one was too hard to pass up, and even without the Habitat link, this story conveys a strong message about the true spirit of Christmas through engaging prose and beautiful pictures.

We then make our purchase and take it home. Sometimes we read it together, but most often it’s late by the time we get home, and we save it to enjoy at leisure throughout the holiday season. So we add it to the growing collection we showcase proudly on our living room coffee table until the decorations come down. The colorful covers themselves create a festive area of holiday decor.

The best part of this ritual is that these gifts keep giving back to us every year, as we revisit them and their lovely, beckoning pages. The secondary gift is that we know we have contributed to our regional economy by enjoying a great meal at a deserving local restaurant; have contributed to the health of the book industry by buying a hardcover book; and usually contributed to the health of an indie bookstore by making our purchase there. It’s a winner any way you look at it, and a tradition we now look forward to with great delight each year.

I wish you all an enjoyable holiday season, and a peaceful and prosperous New Year, and leave you with a reminder that the quality of the first draft isn’t as important as the fact that you got it out of you and onto the page. That’s what editors are for.

“Another damn’d thick, square book! Always, scribble, scribble, scribble — eh, Mr. Gibbon?”
– Duke of Cumberland to writer Edward Gibbon