How to turn a manuscript into a bestseller

Editors today generally spend less time in editing because time is money. This is the observation that novelist Ken Spillman gave at a panel discussion on "Uncut: Issues in Editing" at "Read Lit District," the Third Philippine International Literary Festival in Makati City's Ayala Museum.

Spillman

Spillman, author of the successful Jake series for young readers and whose novel Advaita was described by Young India Books as a work of "sheer genius" that "gently pushes the boundaries of language," qualified that "the best writers respect and respond well to the editor's work."
 

Because he also accepts editing jobs, he said that as a reader, he first tries to get "a feel of the manuscript. I look for cop-outs or parts where the author is struggling with a point of view or if he is able to sustain it and be effectively consistent if he switches it."
 

A good editor, he added, "becomes a little bit more of a writer, a partner of the writer. He is inside the work already, not outside."
 

Spillman said a good editor always prefers "less is more." He advised writers, "Don't overwrite. Give the reader space. Help the book become the best it can be." This can be done by reducing the original draft by maybe 10 percent without anything essential getting lost along the way as the writer learns to edit himself."

McKirdy reading from his book of poems

David McKirdy, poet, author of Accidental Occidental and former director of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, said the editor's work is always marked by invisibility. He agreed with Spillman that the better writers respond well to editors.
 

Although he said he had limited qualifications since his daily job is editing a motoring magazine, he had been with Chameleon Press that has put out, among others, poetry books. He has worked with poets whom he described as "completely insane but are great souls." He met one such poet who, apart from submitting a manuscript for publication, demanded that when it was in book form, it must be sold with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
 

He said writers who want to be published "must have a clear vision of what you're trying to sell," adding that the trend in Hong Kong is now print on demand. It is also important for a book to be made available overseas for wider readership.
 

Like Spillman, McKirdy was in favor of simplicity where a writer aims to achieve something clearly when he sends a manuscript to a publisher. For example, a writer must not demand that his book be too big; otherwise, it is hard to display it on a bookstore's rack. "Be practical," he said, "and do research apart from keeping everything simple."

Grames

Juliet Grames, a crime fiction editor based in Brooklyn, New York, said writers who aspire to be authors must consider "career curation" or finding the right literary agent. She added that she is one of the few editors who like being one because she enjoys working with authors, saying, "There is a book for every person and a person for every book."
 

She said as an editor of Soho Press, an independent publisher in New York City, she liked to receive manuscripts that tell "multi-cultural stories which is our bedrock." As for the saleability of a book as an object, she ascribed it to "the person who matters--the reader."
 

She assured the audience that "publishers are not evil people," and they, too, would like to find the right readers for their books. For readers, she said, what matters were the intersecting factors of words, story and issue or message, while for writers, the factors involved are passion, message and money. For publishers it's money, cache and ideas or ideology.
 

Grames also said that every writer always needs a good copy editor and critic even as the publishing model is changing with the advent of e-books.
 

Her employer, Soho Press, puts out from 40 to 50 titles a year, and she bewailed the fact that of that number there are "not many submissions from Filipino authors." She said it was time that Filipino writers look around for their agents who could manage the publishing and financial aspects of their career. An agent gets at least 15 per cent of a book's earnings.
 

She said she would welcome crime fiction submissions from authors from the Philippines and other Asian countries. She added that this genre of fiction could carry the issue of social injustice that troubles  countries from this part of the world.
 

She cited the crime novel The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, published by Sohol and a bestseller worldwide, that deals with the issue of child trafficking.--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files / Yahoo Philippines, Nov. 24, 2012

Creative juices and how to make them flow

For writers, whether they are in journalism or in the literary arts, one source of creativity is the company of other writers.

Tim Tomlinson, co-founder of the New York Writers Workshop, shared this observation at "Read Lit District," the Third Philippine International Literary Festival, at the Ayala Museum in Makati City.
Speaking at the panel discussion on "Juices: Get Creativity Flowing," he said being with writers always "makes me want to write." He quoted Dr. Gemino Abad, poet- professor emeritus at the University of the Philippines Diliman, who earlier said, "The knowing is in the writing."

Tim Tomlinson

He shared how he got into the social media network Facebook to connect with his yoga group, but later found that it could also link him up "to people I haven't thought of in years." So for his workshops, using FB as some kind of model, he would ask participants to hurriedly write down 25 random things about themselves.

Tomlinson, a fictionist and editor of the webzine Ducts, said this exercise opened up the experimental end of literature, "the anti-narrative, the anti-story." Even with an exercise like that, he advised those who do it not to throw anything away. "Never give up. Mining the self--it's a great source of material. We're constantly drawing from our childhood. One way is to draw a map of the street where you grew up on."

He told beginning and mid-career writers that it's important "to guard your time for creativity." He said this time should be "inviolable," citing novelist and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison who once said she got more things written when she began turning down dinner invitations.

Ken Spillman, author of several acclaimed novels for young readers, said he enjoyed following poets on another social network, Twitter, because "it helps me to be in a creative space." He also tried to practice mindfulness, "to be totally present in my work. Several things may be going on at the same time, but (a writer) should shut out everything. Trust yourself. My creative view is you do have the chance to become who you are."

Ken Spillman

He said, "The hardest part of writing is the sitting. Ideas are easy to come by, but books are not. You have to sit a long time before you have a book."

The oft-cited writer's block, he said, meant "having too much to say, too many ideas that it is hard to move forward." He recommended that when faced with a block, a writer does a seemingly random exercise like what Tomlinson earlier cited, then "get an entry point into a story. The human brain is in wild spaces. It gets easily distracted. You must learn to be wired, to be more aware of your surroundings." From that can emerge what he called "the wonder of you."

Spillman said the signs of creativity are when a person is able to bring a new process into something or associate one thing. He added, "Memory takes you to places that were significant to you in past times. It brings you back to yourself. There are  countless numbers of pathways that take us to the unexpected, the unwanted, even the unpleasant places. Making links is an essential part to being human. It takes a lot of practice to still the mind, to be ourselves, to be original."

He cited composer-musician Amadeus Mozart who wrote his father while he was a young man touring Europe that he was not really an original, that his ideas for his music came from everywhere and he hoped that he was creating something that sounded "Mozart-like."

Spillman also said, "If we know ideas have value, it is okay to express ourselves. But the hardest part is to sit, to hold on to the child or artist in each of us. Writing is like being a child again. You must use the gifts you have that you yourself alone have."

He quoted the great poet Maya Angelou who said one cannot use up creativity because the more you use it, the more one becomes creative.

In his introduction to the popular The Portable MFA in Creative Writing (Writer's Digest Books), Tomlinson quoted American literary agent Noah Lukeman about his opinion on the pursuit of a masters of fine arts degree in creative writing.

Lukeman said, "Take the $35,000-50,000 you're going to spend on the degree, buy yourself a good laptop and printer and a bundle of paper, and go off to a cabin and write. At the end of two years, the worst that can happen is you have nothing. Less than nothing is what you'll almost certainly have at the end of your MFA program, because, besides nothing, you'll have a mountain of debts."--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files / Yahoo Philippines, Nov. 22, 2012